Speaking of low salaries, I saw a $30K/year job ad in a western EU country for a research engineer who will need to build a secure and scalable infrastructure - and I laughed hard. It wasn't even scam, quite to opposite.
Probably so. The part of the population that reacts in any way to "delete your account" is probably 0.25% - FB knows that, too. Fine if every other month a #deletefb campaign comes around, the MAU is a harder fact.
The next big thing must flush you with probably an order or so more dopamine - maybe some free artificial/AR world with hundreds of new cool friends who aren't real but make you feel better. That would be so 2020s!
Sad to see that FAANG is so attractive - sure, pay is nice, technical problems are nice - but you are actively working on walled gardens. You become a walled gardener.
Good for them. I find it strange that we have this org setup at all. A union illustrates the clear divide between capital owners and workers. It sounds so 19th century, but it's just as valid today, unfortunately.
I don't know. I see the nice HSBC building in my city and all I can think of is that half of the business of theirs is crooked, money laundry, trafficking, drug cartels. No shiny building can change what you actually do.
I can see that mining is a good incentive to look for excess energy in all kinds of places and make use of it. That's a capitalistic motiv, finding solutions to derived issues, when something else is at the core of the problem. But anyway.
B$ still looks ridiculous, let me explain.
* world electrical energy consumption: ~25000 TWh [1]
* bitcoin energy consumption index: ~77 TWh [2]
Bitcoin today consumes as much as 0.3% of the total energy available on this planet.
That's fine, if half the world would use it and would do meaningful things with it.
What is it actually used for most visibly?
As a betting ground with galactic momentum, a technology promising to be the solution to everything, and just outrageous claims that only the bovine left to be excited about.
It's not that the algorithms and data structures are not cool, the certainly are - but we can do so much more today with technology than this.
That's my #1 reason to be bearish on B$ - it's just a complete environmental cluster-fuck. And in order to not see this, you'll have to ignore a lot of facts - which in turn tells me a lot about those inside the crypto-bubble, namely that they do not care that much about facts.
To put it into perspective: You give me $72K and I'll set you up a 1PB replicated storage infra with a total of 100+ available CPU cores and half a TB RAM.
I saw people burning through cash in the cloud, which makes you wonder weather money is any concern at all.
Just sampling: The last billionaire I looked up was a north american mining guy. He owns mines, in Africa. Can you guess which country? Yes exactly, the one that prospers much more than the others.
Basically, the "work" has to come from somewhere. The reason FB is rich is because 2+B people choose to work for free. The reason Google is rich is because they do not have to create the content (in fact, "content creators" are pushed to the back seat). The reason Amazon is rich is because you can use cheap labor and sprinkle tech-efficiency on it. The reason all gig-companies are rich is because they can circumvent many "worker-rights". The reason Microsoft is rich is because they give a damn about compatibility and competition (the will extinguish probably even the classic "open source", given enough time).
Some hedge funds are rich, because they buy the order-flow data of poor people playing with their money - maybe they use it against them, maybe not.
I cannot see non-exploitation in any of these. Another grandiosely self-serving essay by a rich man, who thinks he has figured out how the world works.
If he really had, he would probably want to change it. For the better - which is probably much harder then just doing more of the same.
Edit: I sometimes think people who write these things are painfully aware of the kind of illusion they create and choose to create it nevertheless. Mundus vult decipi.
Maybe it is a better way to learn independently, with regular, e.g. monthly or quarterly check-ins with an experienced mentor?
Would solve quite a few problems altogether - people getting more independent and following their interests. You would still have competition, but that would be moderated by actual needs, both in the private and public sector.
Not sure an end to the classic higher-ed system would be a bad thing.
One exception may be Niklas Luhmann, a German sociologist, who was a prolific writer. His note taking method was part of his philosophical process, I assume.
I had an ok, low life once. Today I work 80h to catch up with capital gains of those who sell me food or own my place. The essence of capitalism is embodied in private equity today - a company is not there to make shoes or build a car - a company exists to make money.
Everything else is rather accidental, which is my take on the uber-exhaustion of the western world. I work hard to catch up with capital gains, which I know I cannot.
edit: What keeps me sane is that I basically reduced my life as much as I can. I life and work in a small room, have no car, I have clothing for a week, that's it. The flat I life in is about 70 years old and has hardly be modernized. I buy food and cook myself. I do not fly, my phone is old, I do not stream anything, I ad-block (otherwise I could not use the internet) and I support some core sites of the (old) internet with a bit of money.
I do not crave any of the "niceties" of today's world (I use dish washer and washing machine, do not get me wrong), let alone the tech world. No social media, except HN and a few very specific sites. Basically a modern day recluse, as it is the only way I can implement sufficient distance to this world.