Definitely not at the point when they have a car model that is leading in top 5 most purchased new vehicles (not just EVs, we are talking overall) in multiple large markets like EU or US. Which was the case for 2024.
The real skill is “problem-solving”, not “doing lots of specific manual steps that could be automated and made easier.”
Unfortunately, some people confuse the two and believe they are paid to do the latter, not the former, simply because others look at those steps and go “wtf, we could make that hell more pleasant and easier to deal with”.
In the same vein, “creating perceived job security for yourself by willing to continuously deal with stupid bs that others rightfully aren’t interested in wasting time on.”
Sadly, you are ultimately right though, as misguided self-interest often tends to win over well-meant proposals.
Agreed heavily. I am still mustering up the energy and trying to dedicate time to actually read Infinite Jest. In the meantime, I have been reading DFW’s short stories, and they are fantastic.
I heavily enjoyed the one about playing tennis in midwest, the one about adult industry, and the few other ones I struggle recalling in the moment.
Something about DFW’s writing and train of thought (in his short stories) hits me just right. The musings on how he related certain math concepts to playing tennis in the wind specifically blew me away, as literally nothing about that should be relatable to me (neither from midwest nor play tennis nor have any interest in it), but it feels like it is.
(1) If you're struggling at first, set a goal of just trying to get through the first 200 pages. Things will be confusing at first, especially with the nonlinear-ish plot and, uh... worldbuilding, so it's okay to let some of it wash over you and laugh at the funny parts without totally understanding it all. Things will click later. But there's a scene around 200 pages in that's pretty straightforward and very, very engaging, so if you get that far you're almost guaranteed to get hooked enough to plow through the remaining 800. (Nearly everyone I've given this advice to did end up finishing the book.)
(1a) There's a part about 20 pages in that's verrrrrry dense and slow and hard to get through. ("Where was the woman who said she'd come.") If you can muscle your way through that part, almost everything that follows will feel light and breezy in comparison. The whole book is not like this :P
(2) Not a requirement by any means—I didn't use it on my first read-through—but if you find yourself stopping to Google stuff a lot, the Infinite Jest Wiki is a great resource. They have a spoiler-free page annotations to define some of the more esoteric vocab and explain some of the more niche cultural references. You won't miss a ton by not using it, but there are nice little tidbits.
> If I get scammed or treated badly in person in a real public space, I can immediately punch the perpetrator
No, you cannot. Especially not if the person treating you badly in a public space is either twice your size or has a group of people with them.
Unless we are going to dive into the concealed carry fantasies (which don’t even apply to most countries in the first place), imo that whole line of reasoning about physical vs digital public spaces is a dead-end.
Having done Ottawa-Toronto many times, Via currently charges about 60-70$ for advanced economy tickets. Same day tickets are typically in the 120-150$ range, but I have seen over 200$. So definitely cheaper than flying currently. Hard for me to judge how much that price would increase in response to HSR cost and popularity.
Every time this argument comes up, I just feel like rolling eyes, it is so overplayed.
Yes, in a direct confrontation and an all out war, the populace stands no chance against the US military (assuming the military will unwaveringly side against the populace), no argument there.
But an all out war is not an option, the government wouldn’t be trying to pulverize an entire nation and leave a rubble in place. If you completely destroy your populace and your cities in an all-out direct war, you got no country and people left to govern. It is all about subjugation and populace control. You can’t achieve this with air strikes that level whole towns.
Similarly, if the US wanted to “win” in Afganistan by just glassing the whole region and capturing it, that would be rather quick and easy (from a technical perspective, not from the perspective of political consequences that would follow). Turns out, populace control and compliance are way more tricky to achieve than just capturing land. And while having overwhelming firepower and technological advantage helps with that, it isn’t enough.
A first world military that has remotely piloted drones with IR cameras and other surveillance tools will have no problem crushing any form of resistance. They don’t even need to field any troops, they can remotely kill the rebels. How on earth do you wage a rebellion against such a force?
> How on earth do you wage a rebellion against such a force?
I am not an expert, but taliban+al qaeda forces from the Afghanistan war era (that ended in 2021) should be able to provide a solid answer to your question. All I know is that they definitely didn’t make the US give up due to their military tech/firepower advantage, that’s for sure.
The geography of Afghanistan is much different than the United States and fundamentally why Afghanistan is difficult to control, both for invaders and local leaders. It’s called the graveyard of empires for a reason, and that is mostly geographical, and partially cultural.
I roll my eyes when I see this blissfully naive LARP/mallninja imagined scenario, but I do have to remind myself that the US was founded on the basis of forming a milita etc. and I would probably say the same thing if I had that upbringing. You forget that the vast majority of people are stupid and easily scared (this is not a solvable problem)
Help me out - how can policing possibly work if no one is legally required to be policed? You just end up with murderers, rapists etc. expressing their right to "resist" with arms like in spaghetti westerns. It is totally symbolic, and would crumble at the first instance of serious government interest of arresting 'troublemakers', which would of course start with a well crafted PR campaign to get the rest of the public on their side. I think it's naive.
This feels like a strawman because you’re only hypothesizing a situation in which it wouldn’t work well.
Imagine a dark future with a sudden military coup by a small faction of extreme radicals that 85% of the population opposes. could enough citizens rise up and stop them? Could the calculus of being that coup leader be changed by the likelihood that they will be assassinated in short order, by one of millions of potential assassins? Quite possibly. These are not everyday concerns, of course, but the concerns of dark and dangerous times. It’s a bit like buying life insurance: hopefully I never need it.
Snowden didn’t go to Russia because of the government there “valuing personal freedoms,” he went there bevause it is one of the very few major countries that absolutely will not cooperate with any extradition requests from western countries.
If you are thinking of going to east europe (and especially Russia) in search of personal freedoms, I got a bridge to sell you (for context, I grew up in Russia). The only “freedom” some of those countries might provide is the freedom from the long reach of the hands of western governments (and even that is a “maybe”, as Andrew Tate has been discovering recently).
Source? Because I found plenty of studies on the topic, and there seems to be a fairly universal consensus that goes the exact counter of what you claim. I.e., studies state that weight and resistance training helps with improving bone density significantly, while aerobic exercise (walking/cycling/etc.) doesn’t.
Here are excerpts from one of the papers[0], but you can find many more agreeing with that take:
“Prolonged aerobic training (e.g., swimming, cycling, and walking) is widely beneficial to all body systems, but there are clinical evidences suggesting that none of these activities provide an adequate stimulus to bones”
“Based on the available information, RE [resistance training, e.g., weightlifting/machines/etc], either alone or in combination with other interventions, may be the most optimal strategy to improve the muscle and bone mass in postmenopausal women, middle-aged men, or even the older population.
I think you need to read that a bit more closely - they describe running and jogging as high-impact as opposed to walking, swimming, and cycling. These articles are almost always saying something fairly specific.
They specifically mention a combo of the two from one study: "A combination of RE and weight-bearing aerobic exercise (e.g., running, skipping, jumping, or high-impact aerobics) is recommended as RE training provides muscular loading while weight-bearing aerobic exercise provides additional mechanical loading to the bone above gravity."
And they still describe a need for end-to-end evidence for improved outcomes: "For determining the effect of RE on the reduction of fall and fracture risk, further large-scale studies are needed to be investigated."
Btw, don't confuse weight-bearing activities with the weight-lifting that I did quote previously.
Resistance training alone, as for example cyclists do, has shown to not improve bone density as pre this meta study https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1741-...
> Traders, private equity, hedge funds fall in this bucket.
How do you think the money in 401k, pension funds (government, teachers, etc.), S&P500, and any other financial instruments typically relied on by all sorts of average people grow? Do you think they appear out of thin air by the magic will of the market?
Or maybe there is some mechanism through which efficient price discovery happens in a way that benefits both the average people utilizing common investment vehicles and those who actively manage/administer those?
There is a difference between making staggeringly unhealthy amounts of money in days, than making money slowly over decades.
Traders do next to nothing and are able to acquire this relatively quickly and not give anything of value back.
If your idea of placing your money in a pension fund and locking it up for 40 years and only then you are 60+ years old able to use it a way of giving back to society.
Then you might as well say you’ve been scammed of your time slaving away only to enjoy that money when you have little time left.
Every employee with a pension is praying for their pensions to go up continuously for decades, traders can bet both ways of the market and still end up rich.
One recession and you’ll get a lot of disillusioned employees whose pensions are worth less than they put in years ago.
Fair, but YouTube is imo one of those services that seems pretty fair about price increases. Disclaimer: pricing is regional, so I can only speak for the US pricing (as that’s what I personally dealt with).
It was $7.99 on launch in 2014 (as an early adopter price that they actually let people keep until 2024), $9.99 in 2016, to $11.99 in 2018 (for new subscribers only, you could still keep the old price if you were already paying), to $13.99 in 2024.
While the 2024 was rather steep, it imo doesn’t seem unreasonable (especially for the family plan that went from $17.99 to $22.99, which lets up to 5 people join with their own Goog accounts).
Sidenote: I personally don’t care in the slightest whether people decide to pay for this or just watch with ads or deal with adblockers (or other workarounds). But discussions of YT premium on HN have been a major eye opener for me, as they made me stop believing entirely in all the claims I see on HN in regards to “omg only if Facebook (or any other popular service that is free but makes money through ads) allowed a paid tier without ads, I would instantly pay, as this is an honest business model I support [followed by a large support of that opinion in replies]”. I always took them as genuine takes, but turns out that if even on HN that doesn’t end up holding true (given the discussion in this thread), it stands no chance among the general population.
As for me, I am glad that this option exists, simply because Youtube is one of those online services I peruse quite a lot, and not having to deal with their ads (or even thinking about them or being aware they exist) has been something I am glad to pay the amount they are asking for. Plus, I genuinely support the model of being able to pay a small amount instead of dealing with free-by-making-money-through-ads, especially for services that I spend a ton of time using.
Definitely not at the point when they have a car model that is leading in top 5 most purchased new vehicles (not just EVs, we are talking overall) in multiple large markets like EU or US. Which was the case for 2024.
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