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maxrecursion

177 karma · joined August 11, 2023

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maxrecursion··on Some colleges will soon charge $100k a year – how did this happen?
The main political realization I had with growing up lower class, still live in poorer areas, and making it to being high income is that basing government programs around income is terrible policy.

1. It's extremely unfair

2. It punishes those working to get ahead

3. It creates 'welfare cliffs' where people become worse off for getting jobs. Losing Medicaid is the best example of this.

4. It makes the program exponentially more expensive to maintain because you have to hire people to track who gets it and who doesn't, look for fraud, monitor for when the income threshold needs changed, etc..

It's just terrible policy all around. We learned this during covid. It's so much easier to write people a check and tax the the high earners more to make up for them getting a check.

maxrecursion··on Peter principle
> Leadership is what's needed for leadership jobs. It's in the title. All leadership is the same: inspire the troops, block the bullshit, elevate the good shit. How you do that changes by rank.

A big part of leadership, which might be covered under your 'block the bullshit' point, is fighting the higher level managerial battles, and only relying on your lower level staff for their specialized support.

If there is one thing I hate about some managers is throwing their employees to fight political battles with other managers, or high level Executives, while the manager hides in the bushes.

The manager's job is to fight those battles, and yet I've seen them hide from them a lot, while using their workers as shields.

maxrecursion··on Thoughts on the Future of Software Development
This is pretty muchy experience as well. AI is a fantastic helper, and it will make devs more productive, but it is not going to put all software devs out of work. Probably a tiny fraction of them at best.

However, with recent grads flooding into IT for remote work and high pay, they could be hurting as AI reduces the need for entry level roles. Entry level was already saturated, and now it will be more saturated, with AI reducing the need for jobs.

maxrecursion··on 50 Ideas for Life I Repeatedly Share
First 25 have some really good points about personal growth. Second 25, while not being bad, aren't near as insightful.

Could prune that list down a lot and have some really good self improvement facts.

maxrecursion··on Don't Invent XML Languages (2006)
I used the OVAL "Open source Vulnerability Assessment Language", written in XML, daily to automate STIGs. Finding documentation for it was awful, but once I knew the syntax development was a breeze. Most chill job I ever had. A job like that is my retirement plan once I have enough money that salary no longer matters.
maxrecursion··on Yuzu emulator developers settle Nintendo lawsuit, pay $2.4M in damages
Emulation is great because it preserves games that would be lost to time after the physical media dies off. Emulation that allows piracy of brand new games is straight up stealing. While I don't feel sorry for large corporations because they screw everyone over as well, there are plenty of cheap older games people can play, or get game pass.

People like to act like they are entitled to these new releases for free. They aren't. Play another game and get it for cheaper later, or emulate it long after its release.

maxrecursion··on Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect
Our governments are so dysfunctional and corrupt our only hope is that AI will actually be benevolent and can help guide us and solve problems. Because, as the comic, and thousands of other examples show, our governments aren't actually capable of leading and solving problems, even when the problems are blatant. Same when the solution is easy, but it will cause the wealthy to lose money, see US health care and taxation systems.
maxrecursion··on Walmart to buy TV maker Vizio for $2.3B
I want to offer supporting evidence. Had a Vizio that is closing in on a decade old and runs great. Was given a TCL 4k Roku TV that is a piece of crap. Can't complain too much since it was free, but I'll never buy a TCL or Roku TV. And I used Roku's for almost a decade since I was an early cord cutter.

Both of the early cord cutting companies that drove all this are on the decline: Roku and Sling. Google especially has stolen a lot of marker share with Chromecast and YouTube TV, respectfully. Kind of sad to see it happen, but monopolies are the norm now.

maxrecursion··on Almost every infrastructure decision I endorse or regret
"Crap docs aren't always the fault of the guys implementing though, sometimes there are time constraints that prevent proper docs being written."

I can always guarantee a stream of consciousness one note that should have most of the important data, and a few docs about the most important parts. It's up to management if they want me to spend time turning that one note into actual robust documentation that is easily read.

maxrecursion··on Car insurance in America is too cheap
"The policy is probably the de facto assumption that driving is a right: the United States has been rebuilt around the need to drive everywhere and the entire system tends to implicitly assume that anything which would impede someone from driving is unconscionable unless you get to the point of a serious collision or fatality."

They take away driver licenses all the time in the US though. DUIs being the most notable, but even getting enough tickets can result in losing your license, or having it suspended. I know at least a dozen people who lost their license at some point.

maxrecursion··on Balancing engineering cultures: Debate everything vs. just tell me what to build
I'm not a PM, but you are exactly the kind of PM I love to work for.

So many PMs are either over bearing or scared to make decisions; or, the worst, that do both, over bearing and micromanaging all the time and then blames the team when their decisions back fire.

maxrecursion··on Remote work % in industry not correlated with excess productivity growth
A vast majority of people want the federal government to legalize weed. I think the average of polls is over 70% of the population. Even on polls of just conservatives it's over 50%.

It's the most obvious no brainer thing to do, that a majority agrees on across the board, in a time where they agree on nothing else. Yet, it isn't happening because powerful alcohol, tobacco, and pharmaceutical lobbies are against it.

People can unite and call representatives all they want. Unless you can primary a representative in a local election they won't give a crap, and will gladly please their donors.

maxrecursion··on Remote work % in industry not correlated with excess productivity growth
Society doesn't care when big business fails, but those businesses have the money and power to make the government care, so they get help. The rest of us don't have the ability to make the government care about us, so we get screwed, and the government just shrugs.
maxrecursion··on 23andMe tells victims it's their fault that their data was breached
So, to play devil's advocate, 23andMe shouldn't allow credential stuffing to happen by rate limiting logins after so many failed logins, or locking accounts after failed logins.

They could've blocked source IPs making all the login requests, but that was probably being changed to not set off alarms. However, there wasn't enough information in the article to go on, but since they suffered so many breaches of user accounts, they probably had to do something wrong. I'm too busy to dig into the specifics.

maxrecursion··on Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets
>>"He wasn't. It was a very top-bottom initiative and that rarely works when culture is involved."

I work at a very large organization where the top is too scared to give any direction whatsoever, so it's middle managers and their lower staff henchman, that battle it out over major decisions with politics and schemes to get their preferred stuff implemented. It's more terrible than you can imagine, I never seen a more chaotic place.

So, I just want to say top-down management isn't the worst thing. I'd prefer that to no top down management at all.

maxrecursion··on Delete or hide life-wasting apps
I usually read tech stuff that doesn't require hands on coding to understand. At most, I just read their code examples to understand the concept. If I feel exploring it hands on will be worth while, I'll go back over it on my computer at the end of the day.

However, there are tons of great content linked from this site alone that doesn't require any hands on to understand. Get a few ebooks too, and you're set. But I'm general I don't sit on my phone a lot because I have kids, this is a 5-10 mins a couple times a day thing. Not long stretches at all.

maxrecursion··on Delete or hide life-wasting apps
Ditched reddit about halfway through 2023 and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. I study and read actual stuff on my phone now, instead of browsing increasingly crappy content.

I do log on occasionally but it's only ever to ask a specific question or look at a game thread for one of the sport team I follow, and that is only once a week for a couple minutes. Hope I never go back to being a regular redditor.

maxrecursion··on Wine 9.0 RC1 – Run Windows Applications on Linux, BSD, Solaris and macOS
Care to share what "Steam's more convenient method of running Windows games" is?

I love Linux, but gaming is the only thing keeping me going back to Linux as my main OS. I heard that Linux can play most steam games except Multiplayer online games due to the anti-cheat software not being designed for windows.

maxrecursion··on AI and Mass Spying
That guy clearly has never been around 10 years olds, and vastly over estimates their intelligence.

I'm fact, all evidence points to younger generations being less tech savvy because they don't have to troubleshoot like the older generations did. Everything works, and almost nothing requires any technical configurations.

maxrecursion··on The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers
Western societies are already down to around replacement levels with some going below it. It's pretty clear cut as societies evolve that population growth evens out. It's 3rd world countries driving the population growth. Over-population of humans being a danger to the earth has been proven false time and time again.
maxrecursion··on US Smartphone Shipments Decline 19% in Q3 2023 as More Americans Delay Upgrade
Eventually you'll just have to upgrade because the phone is too slow. I had to upgrade from my galaxy S8 earlier this year because it slowed to a crawl, my wife commented on how slow it was every time she used it. I had it for 5 years. I still hate not having a headphone jack, but having 5G and an insanely fast phone made it worth it.
maxrecursion··on Hard-to-swallow truths they won't tell you about software engineer job
Point 9 - Eventually you do become able to disconnect from your job. One day the fucks just run out. Embrace that early on and save yourself a lot of stress.

This is the most important life lesson anyone can learn, but I think it can only be learned by going through a flaming dumpster fire that burns all those fucks away.

You can't get that confidence and no fucks given attitude on your own, at least not for most people. You have to go through the shit and earn it.

maxrecursion··on We have used too many levels of abstractions
"But there will be a point in time when we will go on retirement and there will be only precious few people who had perseverance to really understand all those things by diving into obscure, historical manuals."

I just hope when that time comes I'm well compensated for studying erudite texts on low level computer science while chilling on my phone instead of browsing social media or playing games. But honestly, I enjoy reading and learning about ABIs, C programming, network protocols, etc... more than mindless scrolling anyway.

maxrecursion··on Teens inundated with phone prompts day and night, research finds
Holy crap, that's insane. Whoever made the decision that all middle school children need smart phones to ride the bus is an idiot.
maxrecursion··on Teens inundated with phone prompts day and night, research finds
My kids are 6 and 2. Right now the wife and I are trying to hold off getting them phones until they are driving. I'm sure that could change when they're in middle school and high school, and whining because all their friends have phones. But, I'm going to try my best to hold the line.
maxrecursion··on Ask HN: How do you make time for side projects and Leetcode grinding
My kids are 6 and 2. The only time I have for this is after they are in bed, which is around 9:30 when they're both fully asleep, and I'm usually just ready to sit down and mentally checkout at that point.

I feel motivated all day to go to my office at nights, like I do right now, but I'm so drained after parenting kids all day.

I'm sure you're aware of this having a 6 year old, but once the 3 year old is a bit older you'll be able to do it during the day. I study and do stuff on weekends with my 6 year old while he plays Minecraft on a laptop next to me. And I try to explain how mods work and such. So you're almost there to when you can have some time back to do that stuff during the day.

maxrecursion··on Privacy Nightmare on Wheels’: Every Car Brand Reviewed by Mozilla
I'm confused how all of this doesn't violate the GDRP in the EU? I'm not an expert, but at face value I'd assume none of this is allowed by the GDRP, unless they found a loophole or no one was aware of it.
maxrecursion··on TEMU Is Cleverly Hidden Spyware That Poses an Urgent Security Threat to U.S.
If something seems to good to be true it probably is. I agree with the people saying the article isn't the best, but TEMU selling products so cheap because the main product is the data taken from the customers phones who installed the app, makes more sense than this random company can sell products so cheaply, for reasons unknown.

Clearly China has been proven to be untrustworthy when it comes to their technology, apps included, so I tend to do the opposite of give them the benefit of the doubt, and just assume their apps are untrustworthy by default.

maxrecursion··on Silicon Valley faces a crisis of nonsense
Solving the myriad of social problems has always been the best quest IMO, but you have a vast number of manipulators that have a financial and social incentive to prevent solving these problems because solving any economic/social problems in America starts with effectively taxing the rich so the government can afford these programs. Good luck with that.
maxrecursion··on Ask HN: Is it still worth doing Red Hat certs?
The RHCSA and RHCE certs are more to show you know Linux and Ansible, respectfully, rather than anything RedHat specifically. The reputation of RedHat as a company doesn't really matter in that regard. The certs still prove you are capable with Linux and Ansible, and since they're hands on practical exams they do a really good job of that.
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