Let me guess- you've never worked at Amazon, have you?
There may be 40 million lines of C++ code there, I don't know, but I do know there was a massive Java code base, plus every other random hip language that had a moment of popularity. That was part of the problem- nothing was consistent or coherent, and you had to babysit a lot of old code written in the language of the moment by a team of ok programmers with bad management that has long since been dissolved (or if the code is only a couple years old) moved onto some other part of the platform.
AWS is a new code base, and it isn't very innovative. In fact I don't think it is a very good cloud system, but then my criteria are probably different than yours. The idea that "nothing comes close" seems kinda silly.
And no, they don't pay well. They don't even pay what they promise.
"Its sad to see HN turning into a language fanboi and apple fanboi club."
Your account was created within an hour of writing that. I think that the decline of HN is more due to the influx of people who think those who don't hate apple are "fanboi"s and think that name calling is appropriate. Personally, when I see the use of that term, it communicates to me that the person calling others "fanbois" is prejudiced against anyone who doesn't also hate Apple or "LIPS" [sic]
Amazon is a company with a strong corporate culture, but this culture does not reflect reality. They talk about "door desks" and like to think they are a startup- but the door desks actually cost them more than if they bought regular office furniture.
I can only speak of the areas where I worked, but none of the management, even at the lowest levels, was made up of engineers.
My boss had his degree in criminal justice! He originally wanted to be a prison guard, but someone somehow got him a job at Amazon. His mentality was that of a prison guard, and by the time I left, he had driven away %60 of the engineers in our team from mistreatment. His boss (she wasn't an engineer either) backed him up and it was that way all the way up the chain of command.
It is really hard to write software in an environment where the boss thinks all the employees are lazy, thinks that changing his mind all the time is ok, and that any delays this causes or complaints are insubordination.
In fact, it was not uncommon for him to tell us to work on some system that was not part of our area, because he didn't understand how the software was structured. We had a big chunk of responsibility, but more than once he chewed us out for bugs that were in code handled by other groups!
One of the other sayings is "B players hire C people, but A players hire A people". The hiring process is extremely arbitrary-- for instance the guy with a criminal justice degree was interviewing programmers and in order to get hired you had to get his thumbs up.
The offices were way overcrowded. Probably four times the density of any of the startups I worked for (and about 8 times the density of Microsoft). I worked in a hall, and I was lucky. It was noisy and a high interruption environment.
The pay is mediocre and they like to play games with your compensation, including promising things and then not delivering.
As others have pointed out, the code base is a mess. The company is in the habit of rushing off in some direction and then dropping the project. For instance, they used to have movie listings and restaurant menus on their site. They also used to (or maybe still do) have a search engine. So they force code changes across the ecommerce codebase to support these things, and then, once the feature is launched the team is moved onto something else. When I left the restaurant menus and mail order catalogs were several years old. This produces a lot of cruft.
As a result, they have a lot of engineers and a lot of engineer turnover. They have the same random changes in direction as any company. (I remember one thanksgiving we had to give up because Bezos changed his mind on thanksgiving eve about something we'd raised several weeks earlier and could have taken care of in plenty of time)... but since things are so poorly managed these changes in direction involve a lot of time and wasted effort.
They hire a lot of H1B people. Good people and I enjoyed working with them, but this was one of the sources of engineer turnover. The poor treatment and poor environment generally meant that engineering projects were slow and expensive.
This is why Amazon spends a lot on R&D. Not because they are really innovative. I think that probably %3 of their engineering effort is made up of really innovative engineers who are insulated enough to actually cut new ground. The rest of the workforce-- no matter how talented the engineers may be-- are hobbled by the code base and the extremely poor management structure.
No question it was the worst company I've ever worked for-- and I've had some intense painful startup experiences.
Amazon is a retailer that thinks it is an engineering company, led by people who don't know how, or don't care to, produce a good engineering environment.
They really care about fulfillment and customer service, but they don't really care about their engineers and have no clue about how to be innovative (generally).
But Bezos likes to go out and make pronouncements-- like a politician-- about how he cares about R&D and how critical engineering is, and all that kind of bunk.
You're looking at tertiary effects and missing the first order effects that are much stronger.
Everyone needs capital, and whether your net worth is $1 or $1B, you need that capital to live. If you're starting a business you still need that capital- whether it is $10k from your grandmother or $10M from your VC who has $10B under management.
"Strong" and "weak" are terms used to discuss the dollar in the context of other countries currencies. The policies of those other countries affect half of the equation there and are out of our control.
Monetary inflation is bad for everyone, rich and poor, except for government. It is a mechanism whereby the government taxes everyone without most people recognizing it.
The fears of "deflation" are propagated by government to let them get away with inflation. But they are in error. They describe economic collapse as "deflation" but you can have an economic downward spiral in a high-inflation environment (what we had in the great depression, the 1970s and what zimbabwe experienced.) Without regard to the value of the underlying currency, people can lower prices because there is collapsing demand. This is more likely when the currency is rapidly losing value and people focus on buying necessities rather than other items in the economy.
Monetary deflation, historically, produced a more robust economy, moved the USA from third world status to first world status in a rapid period and was well on its way to ending poverty in the country when the inflationists managed to gain political power and end the ascent of the country.
Unfortunately they also control the schools and the "economics" education, and thus most of the populace doesn't understand the nature of money, let alone grasps inflation.
One of the signs you're dealing with a troll is that their ignorance is all the justification they need to make personal attacks, and they stay relentlessly focused on such attacks while failing to provide any substantive argument for their position. Often even failing to actually state their position.
There are too many trolls on HN. This is why the site sucks.
Says the college student who, let me guess, never worked at microsoft.
As someone who has, PMs are not technical people, at least not in that company at the time I worked there.
I think ignorant college students who are not smart enough to know the limits of their own knowledge are the reason that hacker news has gone the way of slashdot.
Oh, since you're probably under 20, slashdot used to have good discussion from actual engineers who were knowledgable, then it got overrun by ignorant gnu weeneis around 2001 or so-- back when you are 8.
That is the first definition from the dictionary definition. It is very difficult to debate an issue with people who are not aware of the basic definitions of the terms, and, despite their ignorance, make snide characterizations like "your pretend definition".
That they were not passed as government money is an affirmative defense.
That you idiots keep chiming in making personal attacks and espousing your ignorant perspective as if it was relevant is what makes this site pointless.
I'm not even involved with the Liberty Dollar. Why am I wasting time defending them against people with no integrity like you?
I have looked at the relevant laws, an the liberty dollar does not violate either. They never passed it off as government money, nor did they mint any coins. (Coins are government only, so to have minted them they would have had to pass them off as government money.) These are not easily mistaken for government money, and there are a variety of other currencies, such as disney dollars, that are passed off, are physical objects, and are exchanged "as money would be" (though that phrase is not relevant legally, that standard is your opinion.)
No, you're rewriting it by omitting the relevant clause. The race discrimination is one of the clauses that can invoke it, not the only one.
Let me quote it with line breaks for readability:
"Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, "
So, anyone who dies this.
"or to different punishments, pains, or penalties, on account of such person being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, than are prescribed for the punishment of citizens, "
Or who does this based on race, residency....
"shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both"
Shall be punished.
You can invoke the law by doing the first set of things, or by doing the second set of things.
It is an OR clause, meaning if A OR B are true, then the penalties apply. IF there were an AND on race, it would be the way you read it.
"Just because they decided they didn't think they were legally coinage"
This is a dishonest characterization. They had opinions from independant council, the secret service, members of federal reserve branches, etc, all saying that the product was legal.
"very obviously the intent."
You believe this because you want to believe it. However, the decade of actions that the organization took, between 1998 and 2008, involved monthly newsletters, and repeated production of brochures, the website, and other writing all of which made it clear that people who had liberty dollars were not to put them forth as if they were us government money. They spent the majority of their educational effort in conflict with what you claim is their "obvious" intent.
"Their whole disclaimer is delivered with a wink and nudge."
I understand that you feel you can just tell lies about people and somehow you feel justified in doing so. But in honorable society, doing so reflects very poorly on your own integrity. I have to wonder, what motivates you, who have clearly no knowledge of this organization or its actions, to attack them with these dishonest smears?
Unfortunately, many americans think like you do. The FBI calls them terrorists, railroads them and people think the justice system works.
It is no wonder things are moving the way they are in the USA if your views, as I suspect, are widely echoed.
I don't think anyone denies that there are areas where the constitution is not sufficiently detailed. However, the constitution still says what it says, and many actions that are considered "legal" today do not fall into the areas of constitutional vagueness, but are simply laws that violate the constitution that have never been sufficiently challenged.
The constitution is pretty black and white, and this is a good thing, because it means you can tell what is set out by it, and what is up to the legislature.
All the areas where the constitution enumerated powers it gave the legislature a free hand to determine what is right.
Thus for the areas that the constitution does address, it is pretty black and white and it is meant to be enforced by the people.
... and it really isn't hard to understand, nor does it require much interpretation. Just careful reading.
I won't attempt to argue that the Liberty Dollar wasn't a misguided enterprise. Even when the law is on your side, the fact that the government controls the courts assures that you'll never get a fair trial.
You're misunderstanding the constitution and what the "right to create currency" means. There are many currencies in circulation, and there have been many state and even private currencies over the years. Even today there are localities that make their own currencies- such as the Ithica Hour
http://www.ithacahours.com/
What the constitution reserves to the federal government is merely the power to determine how many grains of silver are contained in a given dollar.
Thus, actually, the current paper US dollar, which is not denominated in silver, is illegal, it is counterfeit!
Thus it is clear that tradition has long ago seperated from the law. But this is relatively recent. In 1930s it was that the government made ownership of gold illegal and switched from silver certificates to unbacked dollars, but even then the dollar was backed internationally with gold, until Nixon closed the Gold window in the 1970s and defaulted the US government.
An excellent book on the history of Money in the USA, is "The Creature from Jekyll Island" by G. Edward Griffin.
Alas, the wayback machine won't let me see the video, but even the name of it is bad since it contains the word "coin".
Most may assume that "dollar" means USD, but that is not the legal meaning. Dollar is a generic term, as Canadians use it, for instance. But further, if I were to say "20 USD in Silver" I'd be referring to the US dollar and I'd be naming a price for this amount of silver. This is no different than saying "$5 in coffee beans".
Edit to add: My real point is to disagree with the idea that the liberty dollar advocated (generally) passing it off as US government money, as they spent a great deal of effort trying to prevent that perception or anyone associated with the organization doing so.
I'll concede that you saw a video where someone didn't make it explicit enough that it wasn't government money and that put you off of the idea... and in fact your quote might even be exact. In which case you are not misremembering.
My point isn't really to debate the video, so much as the intent of the organization.
1. something that is used as a medium of exchange; money.
2.general acceptance; prevalence; vogue.
3. a time or period during which something is widely accepted and circulated.
4. the fact or quality of being widely accepted and circulated from person to person.
5. circulation, as of coin.
Currrency can refer to physical money. But it also refers to gift cards, visa cards, and any thing else that is, quoting the first definition, a "medium of exchange". Since you called a gift card a "medium of exchange" while saying it wasn't "currency" the dictionary proves you wrong.
Your understanding of my mental state and argument is also wrong, and I think you're projecting.
Since you apparently aren't familiar with the dictionary definition, I trust you will apologize for your assertions about my lack of knowledge.
After the fact you are able to try and prove that the money or assets were not used in the commission of a crime. How one could ever prove a negative is beyond me, and the burden of proof is higher than that required by the constitution which (IIRC) take the innocent until proven guilty perspective.
These poker sites have not been convicted of anything, nor was there a court proceeding where the siezure was proposed and the owners of the property had an option to defend their rights.
Further, as we've seen in case after case, even in situations where the victims are not involved in crime at all, the courts are stacked against them.
It would be cut and dry if you could show any "utterances" from the Liberty Dollar / NORFED, where they represented their products as US government money.
They did not, and further, they were careful to put disclaimers on their warehouse receipts, and various features on the physical pieces to make it clear that this was not being represented as government money. For instance, ever piece contained a copyright statement on it, something the government would not do.
My understanding of economics is sufficient that I understood we'd be having a housing bubble in 2001, and by 2007, I'd profited massively from it and gotten out, well before the crash of 2008. All of that came from my application of economic principles.
I don't think I'm entitled to my own facts. But I have read the laws here, and I find your response to be devoid of any actual argument or citation of facts and full of smear and insinuation.
Actually, the document was written with the intention that anyone could read it and easily tell if their government was violating it or not. There have been a lot of people making up a body of work commonly called "Constitutional law" but much of that body of work seems to serve the purpose of trying to say that you can't just read it.
But if you read it, it is very clear.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
It is cut and dry. All of these siezures are not taking evidence, they are stealing property.
Money is property, it is not evidence of any crime, especially when it is electronic funds in a bank account.
There may be 40 million lines of C++ code there, I don't know, but I do know there was a massive Java code base, plus every other random hip language that had a moment of popularity. That was part of the problem- nothing was consistent or coherent, and you had to babysit a lot of old code written in the language of the moment by a team of ok programmers with bad management that has long since been dissolved (or if the code is only a couple years old) moved onto some other part of the platform.
AWS is a new code base, and it isn't very innovative. In fact I don't think it is a very good cloud system, but then my criteria are probably different than yours. The idea that "nothing comes close" seems kinda silly.
And no, they don't pay well. They don't even pay what they promise.
"Its sad to see HN turning into a language fanboi and apple fanboi club."
Your account was created within an hour of writing that. I think that the decline of HN is more due to the influx of people who think those who don't hate apple are "fanboi"s and think that name calling is appropriate. Personally, when I see the use of that term, it communicates to me that the person calling others "fanbois" is prejudiced against anyone who doesn't also hate Apple or "LIPS" [sic]