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I don't think people do repetitive, automatable jobs because they can't do any other kind of job, but rather because our current market conditions make it a good choice for them.

And by market conditions I mean everything from wages to availability and cost of education to immigration policies and welfare benefits.

Once the dust has settled after major advances in automation I don't see why people wouldn't be able to work as managers, designers, programmers and engineers even if those were the only jobs left in the economy (but of course there are many more skilled jobs that will not be automated anytime soon). It's just a matter of training and expectations.

I don't think a world where people only need to work 20 hours a week, and where we have 5x the number of every kind of skilled specialists we have right now is a bad place to be. And it doesn't require ditching capitalism entirely, just regulating it differently (taxation, welfare, etc.).

It's only the transition to such a world that is worrying because it will happen faster than people can adjust, not the end result.

SSR is only easy if your frontend is written exclusively in SSR-compatible libraries and your backend is node.js, and even then you need to adjust your frontend code for SSR because node.js doesn't have all the browser APIs that your code could be using (like XHR or the real (not virtual) DOM).

On the other hand, puppeteer executes your application in virtually the same environment as the user's browser, without polluting your frontend architecture with SSR concepts and limitations.

Yes, you'll need to set up a bit of infra initially. Depending on the use case it may very well pay off.

I haven't had a chance to try it myself yet, but from what I've read the extra delay is sub 100ms. Caching or pre-rendering the HTML output for bots in advance is an option too depending on the particular use case.

I would certainly consider this ahead of SSR driven by "isomorphic" Javascript for frontend-heavy apps.

SSR for the purposes of SEO can be achieved in a simpler way, without complicating your whole app to support SSR.

Just pre-render the page in headless chromium / puppeteer when a search engine bot requests it and return the resulting html.

The fine is already based on Google's European (not global) ad revenue as someone else quoted in the comments.

Your user account, if you're logged in to google

Can't speak for people who actually care about celebrities, but the predictability and insincerity of this manufactured cycle would definitely bug me personally.

Problem is, your interpretation of freedom of speech principles is very disagreeable.

Seems like you just want your freedoms to trample over Amazon's freedoms. Why? Because they're big?

You put your personal interpretation of the general principle of freedom of speech above actual rights and freedoms. Nothing noble about that.

> Also, why not create multiple scala-Js projects to do what you're looking to do?

That won't help. Scala.js banks heavily on whole program optimization to reduce the size of emitted Javascript. Two independent Scala.js modules will contain redundant code including likely upwards of 100kb of Scala standard library (collections, futures, etc.)

There is an issue about webpack-style code splitting support for Scala.js somewhere on github, and Sebastien said it's doable with the current architecture, so we'll likely get that eventually, but it's not there yet.

I do love working with Scala.js - great language and great interop with JS.

They will not like that, and will likely take action against either you or your users (depending on the nature of your service) if they notice. Approved way is to use their API.

> We should strive for a society where we do not have to work ourselves out to pay off the loan

When we have such a society we can reevaluate. But right now we don't, and in the current environment creating more ways for inequality moves us away from such society.

Junior remote is hard, which is why I'm saying get the skills first. This is not just a one year journey, you should be planning your path for the next 5-10 years. Optimize for skills and learning first, then go for maximizing income (as much as you can afford this delay). Always keep interestingness and quality of life up high in priorities.

Get a local internship / job first either in your town or in a bigger town like Vancouver / Montreal / Toronto. Learn the trade, best practices, best technologies, get an open source presence, etc. All of this will require a genuine interest in the field and hard work on your own time. You will of course also progress your skills on the job, but relying solely on that you will grow much slower, and will be strictly capped by the quality of your workplace dev culture. You can start your growth before even getting a job btw.

In Canada, lots of companies hire juniors, both big and small. Look at your peers and know how to stand out. Did you build a simple app, put it on github and host in somewhere? Congrats, you have demonstrated more skills than 90% of your peers, and you haven't even interviewed yet. Google your way into finding these companies – see angel.co, many lists of companies hiring remotely, local job fairs, etc.

As for cross border contracting – yes, working for US you will most likely be a contractor unless the company is big enough to have a Canadian office. Better that they don't, then they will be less likely to offer you a Canadian salary. Being a long term contractor is not really a problem as long as you have the skills you advertised. Taxes are easy for contractors. There are legal things you need to know, and you will know after you do proper research on this, but there are no showstoppers there. If you want to take the most from this career, you don't let some paperwork or the illusion of job security get in the way. You work hard to become the best developer you can be, and allow the highest bidder that you're interested in working for pay you for your work.

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This might sound very... effortless and maybe pompous and out of reach but it's entirely doable. Knowing who you want to be, being interested in your work, and spending a lot of effort on becoming a better developer year after year is really all it takes. It's a long path but thousands of people have walked it.

> non-top-tier, non-US city

Up your relevant demonstrable skills enough to work remotely for a company in a big US city.

Alternatively, immigrate either to US or to a country from where it's easier to work for US (hello Canada).

Maybe move to a bigger city in your country and work for its Google or Microsoft office if there is one and if it pays well.

An average nondescript town is not a good place to be a software developer. Low wages, uninteresting, unchallenging work (hello agency work, drupal websites, 15 year old enterprise java codebases), working in an IT dept that is a cost center rather than revenue driver, etc. We can't possibly know what exactly it's like where you are (better ask on a local forum) but that's what it's like more often than not. It might certainly be better than other careers locally, but it's worse than you can have if you're willing to make the effort.

> People should be encouraged to trust their intuition

The proliferation of fake news doesn't do that. Fake news just reinforces people's biases as they self-select to read a fake news outlet that they agree with, killing any remainder of sceptisism and critical thinking.

> People should be encouraged to trust their intuition even if it occasionally leads them to make mistakes.

That's how it works with real, good-but-not-perfectly-impartial news. Fake news on the other hand is almost entirely lies that remain unquestioned by its consumers, resulting in many many more "mistakes".

"accomplished a degree in a host country and obtained a relevant job offer thereafter" is a very good proxy for a lot of desirable properties in immigrants, at least in Canada (per official statistics).

Besides, foreign education credentials and work experience can be very easy to fake depending on home country, so it's understandable that it's worth less in the eyes of immigration systems.

In Canada we have lots of foreign students, and while there are some issues (nothing is perfect), they pay much more than domestic students, essentially funding the higher education institutions. Education is some of the best things you can export, if done properly.

This is often negotiable if you're a good fit and willing to work as a contractor, at least on the senior level.

> They don't target the lowest common denominator.

Maybe not _technically_ yet, but certainly in spirit. For example, Apple removed a lot of features from their Photos (formerly iPhoto) and iMovie Mac apps to match the much more limited iOS versions.

It can be both "worth it" and "horribly overpriced" at the same time. That's just how cartels and monopolies work. They charge you vastly more than their cost, and use the profit to legalize measures that inflate the "market" price to their desired level.

If you're giving up on the future already, might as well travel all you want while you can. Why care if we're doomed anyway.

If you're NOT giving up on the future just yet, you'd be much better off maximizing your impact on public policy (from municipal to federal levels) instead of trying to become an inert object.

You can be part of the solution without needless self-imposed extremism.

There's at-will employment model on one side, and the Japanese Salaryman model on the other side (low vs high loyalty). As usual, the sweet spot is somewhere in between the extremes.

Alternatively, sleazy marketing is in no position to define the meaning of words, even if that's most of marketing.

A cable package or car loan does not magically become a GREAT DEAL just because a billboard said so. We're just used to constant lies and aggrandizement in advertising, so all that bullshit looks normal, entirely expected now. It's still bullshit though.

By that measure pretty much every product except the most generic crap is unique, but that word means more than just "slightly different".

Example from the article:

> The UpCart ® line of products solve this problem with a unique line of all-terrain folding carts and hand trucks that have been engineered to reduce effort while going up and down stairs and over irregular terrain

A casual reading of this sentence leaves the reader with the impression that their carts are unique because of how they reduce the effort of going up and down stairs and over irregular terrain. This is corroborated further by other messaging such as their logo.

However, that is a lie. There have been similar other carts with exact same wheel setup.

The only unique part of their product is the folding mechanism, and they are clearly trying to project that uniqueness onto the wheel mechanism. And it will definitely work on people who have never seen such wheel setup before.

> It does appear that they invented the first folding 6-wheel hand truck

They certainly make it appear that way, but it's a lie.

I've seen very similar dollies more than a decade ago, as did others in this thread. Their patents are either invalid or cover some minor aspect to make an impression that they invented the three wheeled stair-climbing mechanism.

Growth is expressed as % over the previous period, not of previous period, so 70% is the right number in this context.

Voyager 2 has been "leaving the Solar System" regularly for quite a while now. Example from 2007: https://www.nature.com/news/2007/071210/full/news.2007.365.h...

I guess the actual thresholds crossed are different but at this point who cares, unless you actually know those thresholds. It's out there and getting farther out. Yay.

If you can't describe an achievement without sensationalizing the hell out of it for the Nth time, maybe don't describe it.

If we keep going the way we're going now, by the time population decline puts a negative pressure on land and housing prices, they will be so high that 99% of people will have no way of ever owning it other than by inheritance.

I don't think we will arrive at declining housing prices the way you suggest. Something will have to give way before that.

Monopsony is the same kind of problem as monopoly, but on the buyer side. If you think we should have laws to limit monopoly power, then yes, we also should have laws to limit monopsony power. If not, then not.

We also have laws to make sure government purchases are made by means of suppliers bidding on government contracts. Giving out arbitrary tax breaks should probably go through a similar process for the same reasons.