Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | ghshephard's comments login

I don't get why there would be any risk of polluting the local community. Just create a second-landfill, properly lined - in exactly the same way thousands of landfills each year are created near to the first one - then just run an industrial-conveyor from Landfill A -> Landfill B. Create a spill-container underneath if you want to be 100% super certain 0.000% of pollution.

Run at a reasonable rate - should be relative straightforward for a team to pick through the garbage, particularly because it's metal.

This project gets rebooted when/if bitcoin hits $1mm.


It would be terrible for air pollution - this isn’t just a big pile of trash, it’s years of compacted municipal refuse that has to be excavated and pulled apart. If you dig through 100k tons of landfil, you will fill the surrounding air with toxic/pathogenic dust.


Liquids.


Monkey butter.


The new thing in Corporate controlled apartments is they have your apartment fully set up with remote telemetry, which also means they have WiFi Hotspots installed in all units. From there, they track things like the hot water tank, water in the sink, heating/cooling, etc..

I can see "PartySquasher" type technology becoming a feature in w/corporate controlled apartments. Mine is particularly intrusive (Park Place, San Mateo) - in that they also have all the doors digitalized as well as the entry into mailroom/complex via Bluetooth authentication. Just to make sure you have to digitally log in to your apartment - they also lock you in 120 seconds after entering, so you can't just leave your door unlocked.

You just know that this is absolutely the future of housing once private equity starts to dominate the corporate landlord space.


Gosh that's just awful. "Hi ghshepard, welcome home! Before we unlock your door for you, please watch this 30 second ad! Oh my, once a day you'll need to fill out a survey - what did you think of the ad?" "your commons room use is 5 minutes over the limit. you'll need to pay the $200 excess use charge, or you can upgrade to our UNLIMITED commons room plan, which lets you use the commons room for five hours a month"


Even better - and I kid you not - the first notice I had that my door no longer accepted my key was when I came home one night and there was a new digital lock on the door. It was late, and thankfully I was able to find some details in my spam folder that let me get into my apartment that night.

They did the same thing to me a second time with the bluetooth connection to the apartment complex - and were very passive aggressive about let me know how to activate the application. Initially told me I had "a problem with email" if I hadn't properly read their single random-sourced mention of a new app I needed to install on my phone a couple weeks earlier that I had instantly dropped into a spam bucket as obvious phishing.

I really hate corporate apartment management.


Passkeys aren't susceptible to phishing. 2FA TOTP is. Also -your seed/token can be trivially stolen from a password manager. Getting the passkey private key somewhat more challenging.


In all fairness regarding his comment about Netscape - anyone who invested in Netscape at the IPO (and certainly before the IPO) at $2.9B - made a ton of money on the Internet. On the last day of trading, after the AOL exit 4 years it was worth (cash, stock, etc...) around $10B. Thank Mike Homer for pushing that one through, and Jim Barksdale for being savvy enough to recognize it as the right play.


Also, they started from scratch, they didn't take NCSA's Mosaic public, they left the university, brought in some established players, created a new company, and re-wrote the entire browser from scratch. SamA wants to take everything the non-profit created and just make it for profit. If he want's to do that he can create a new company, lure away the talent, start from scratch, and run from there. This "it's just like Mosaic -> Netscape" line is total bullshit and either Gruber doesn't remember like I do or he's intentionally misleading for some other goal.


Agreed. I think originally, it would have been more accurate to say IE was based on Mosaic. If I recall correctly, I think Microsoft bought out Spyglass Mosaic to base IE on, and that browser had been licensed from the NCSA. Netscape on the other hand had originally been Mosaic Communications(anyone remember home.mcom.com?) and changed the name when they did the clean rewrite. I think the name Mozilla came about because they were looking for a 'Mosaic Killer' or something along those lines. Memories are kind of fuzzy so I'm sure someone on here has a better recollection.


Yes. Microsoft licensed a version of Mosaic from Spyglass who got license from NCSA.The name change had nothing to do with the re-write. They never used Mosaic except in the name and were facing a suit from NCSA or the university (I can't remember) so they changed it. You are correct about Mozilla. I worked for Mozilla for 25 years and can attest to that.


Here is Eric Sink's recollection: https://ericsink.com/Browser_Wars.html


Microsoft didn't buy it from Spyglass, they licensed it and agreed to pay royalties per copy. Then they gave it away for free to avoid paying royalties [0] while illegally sabotaging Netscape's business at the same time.

[0] https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/19970102/2516784/sp...


> Good, a job that cannot support biological needs should not exist.

There was a time in the not so distant past, that close to 100% of those "Minimum Wage" jobs were held by teenagers and youths with close to zero market value as employees, who needed their first few jobs to develop the skills, knowledge, resume and references so they could get an actual job.

Places like McDonalds and Summer Resorts and Amusement parks - were great places for youth to learn these skills. The real distortion is when you started having adults working in McDonalds. It was never a job to support a family - it was a minimum-wage job for kids to get started.


This is just historically inaccurate (and a regrettably common claim among older conservative-ish folk.

Those "minimum wage" jobs that you had a teenager in the 1950-1986 time period? They paid more than minimum wage does now, on an inflation adjusted basis. That $2/hr job in 1962 would be paying $21/hr if it had kept up with CPI.

That's the whole reason why adults started working in them.

Over time, federal minimum wage did not keep up even with national inflation rates, let alone regional cost of living changes. The result is that these employers, who were once forced to pay even their lowest level employees a living wage, can avoid paying even that.


>and a regrettably common claim among older conservative-ish folk.

This is an excellent way to tell everyone you’re comment is just political garbage and can readily be dismissed. It completely drowns any possible signal out with a huge red flag.


You mean that the fact that this mistruth/lie/distortion is predominantly told by people with a particular view of the world should simply be ignored?


It’s irrelevant to your point, so yes.

You’re either making a statement about conservatives or you’re talking about actual ideas. You can’t have a meaningful conversation about ideas if you’re doing tribalism.


and yet the history of ideas is shaped by and often labelled according to "tribalism".

i am talking about an actual idea. an actual idea that happens to fit much more nicely into one political worldview than another. an idea that is repeated much more often by people who hold that worldview than by people who do not. an idea that is more or less demonstrably false.

so i am talking about both the (false) idea and the fact the it is an idea that continues to be talked about (despite its falsehood) by a particular group of people. that can be a meaningful conversation even if you don't like it.


"The introduction makes me feel insulted or uncomfortable, therefore your conclusion must be false."


Nope, the introduction is unfounded flame bait. So I assume someone using that is not engaging with any intent to have a meaningful discourse.

It has nothing to do with feeling uncomfortable, it’s a statement about held beliefs being associated with a particular group and there is no evidence to back it up.

It doesn’t matter who he thinks holds that view. Discuss the idea and refute it directly or shut up. Drop the appeals to tribalism


The idea has been refuted by others over a period of several decades.

At this point, it is more interesting that one political worldview still seems quite attached to the idea than the idea itself, which has been clearly shown to be false.

It's quite analogous to trickle-down theory aka the laffer curve. Shown to be false multiple times over the last few decades. Still promoted by people of one particular political worldview and not others.

That's the story here. The idea has been refuted, why are people still talking about it?


I apologize - the point I was trying to make and failed, was that there were no (able bodied) grown adults working those jobs like Mcdonalds 30 years ago. These are entry-level jobs that require no prior experience and no job skills, and as such were ideal for people just entering the job market. The exchange was that teenagers would work these jobs, and that, for a modest sum, they would primarily get work experience and some pocket money.

What's gone awry in the last 40 or so years is that the labor market hasn't created enough new employment in what I could call "career" or "occupation" work - for adults, and as a result, they've started working in jobs that were never really meant for them, certainly not for doing things like paying rent, utilities, etc... and as a result - the working poor as a class has grown.

And $21/hour is not near enough to survive on in my region - (and is also a bit less than what most people in my area make at McDonalds (bay area)) - So you are in a round-about way proving my point.

Let me be as clear as I can be - "Increasing the minimum wage to be a living salary of $40-$50/hour would eliminate many opportunities for people entering the workforce who can't justify that kind of investment currently".

Leave it at the market-clearing level of $20-$25/hour, and ideally return to having teenagers/young adults working those jobs while grown-adults move onto other opportunities that our economy should be creating.

Jobs that that cannot support biological needs should exist as they are great for developing job-skills and experience in youth.


> the point I was trying to make and failed, was that there were no (able bodied) grown adults working those jobs like Mcdonalds 30 years ago.

I think you made that point. The other posters point was that this point is patently untrue. And it's very obviously untrue just by thinking about it for a few minutes. Peak hours for fast food restaurants (and most restaurants) are lunch hours where most teenagers would be in school.

They also tended to be open late night. The hours that teenagers can work are and have been heavily regulated for a very long time. No highschooler is working the 11pm - 4am shift at wendy's.

They were very obviously mostly employing adults.

And if you want a little anecdotal evidence, my father supported my family for a number of years working in fast food in the early to mid 80s during the oil crash

if you want further anecdotal stories, when in high school I worked retail. There were other highschoolers that worked there, but the vast majority of my coworkers were in their 30s.

When in college I worked graveyards at a certain 24 hour breakfast establishment. I was by far the youngest. Everyone else on that shift was in their 40s and had kids and families they were supporting.

We also literally have tropes about the old lady who's been working at the diner for 1000 years... "what do ya want hon?"

That trope didn't just come out of no where.


Exactly. My boyfriend’s mom is that waitress trope. She sure was happy when he got an EE degree though. Hard work to do forever.


MIT claims that about $35/hr would be a living wage in almost every part of the USA. So that's our "high" point for thinking about this. Currently, it gives $23.06 as the figure for my nearest city (Santa Fe), $28.08 for NYC and $20.16 for Manhattan, KS. I've seen people disagree with these numbers.

https://livingwage.mit.edu/

Do I think there should be jobs that would only be done in the context of parentally- or other-provided housing, food and clothing? I'm not sure. I lean towards the answer being no, but could be convinced otherwise.

I still don't agree with your 40 year take on this. When "fully grown adults" started flipping burgers, it was because you could live on the income that provided. Now you cannot (and ditto for lots of other minimum wage jobs). It was not the case that these jobs were "teenager only" and people took them even though they were impossible to live on, 60 years ago. They took them (slowly, over a period of time) and they gradually changed from teenager only work into "real jobs", and over a slightly longer period of time no longer acted as viable living wage work.

That said ... sure, the income levels for the lower 4 deciles of the population haven't kept up with things (until very, very recently at least), and this means in part that new jobs at appropriate (lower, but still livable) wages have not been created at sufficiently high rates.

> "Increasing the minimum wage to be a living salary of $40-$50/hour would eliminate many opportunities for people entering the workforce who can't justify that kind of investment currently".

Firstly, as I indicated above, I don't think it has to be that high. Secondly, I think that if there are "opportunities" that cannot afford to pay a living wage, I'm not sure anyone is foregoing much by them not existing. To be clear, what is meant here by a living wage is something that a full time job pays roughly 3x the local rental rate for an appropriately sized studio (perhaps 1BR) apartment in reasonable quality.

> Leave it at the market-clearing level of $20-$25/hour

"Currently, 34 states, territories and districts have minimum wages above the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Five states have not adopted a state minimum wage: Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee. Two states, Georgia and Wyoming, have a minimum wage below $7.25 per hour."

There is not a single state that has the "market-clearing level" you mention, so "leaving it" there seems impossible. Tukwila, WA is the only city in the country with a minimum wage above $20.


> for an appropriately sized studio (perhaps 1BR) apartment

I had a roommate when I started out and could not afford an apartment. At the time one could also rent someone's spare bedroom. Government zoning also got rid of boarding houses.

> haven't kept up with things

The increasing share of the economy that the government vacuums up comes from somewhere.


I am specifically arguing that full time minimum wage jobs should allow you to live independently in what would currently be considered "normal". Sure, the definition of "normal" can change over time, just as the ownership and use of portable mobile computing devices or gigantic flat panel displays or cars have changed.

I also started out with a roommate when I had my first computing job, which was with a massive multinational. I could not have afforded my own apartment in Cambridge (UK), though that was caused by post-grad student debt than the salary level. I went on to rent a house with someone else until I emigrated to the US.

The fact that there are actually multiple pathways through life doesn't mean that we can't, as a society, draw up our own guidelines for what working for 40hrs a week ought to make possible, even if some people choose to (a) not work 40hrs a week (b) live differently.

Total government revenue as a percentage of GDP has been remarkably flat since the end of WWII (actually distressing to my preferred narrative in which it has declined and should not have).


all the sources I see say minimum wage should be around 12 USD where did you source the 21USD number?


$21 is an MIT-provided living wage number for many parts of the country (including Santa Fe, where I live (or close by)). There are places where that's still not enough: I think $35/hr just about covers anywhere in the US at this point.

It's also the CPI-adjusted equivalent of 1960s minimum wage numbers.


1963 @ $1.25 or 1957 @ $1.00

giving me $1.25 * (304.702/30.6) = $12.44 or $1 * (304.702/28.1) = $10.84

my sources: https://www.dir.ca.gov/iwc/minimumwagehistory.htm https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/consumer-pri...


https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

January 1962 $2 => Nov 2024 $21.03

Using $1.25 in Jan 1963 gives me $12.97 ...

I used $2 in 1962 because in the 2016 Republican primaries one of the candidates made a reference to their job working in a burger store using these numbers.


I just Googled for "1962 mcdonalds hourly wage". It was much less than $2. Minimum wage was 1.15, and a Federal Reserve study called "Employee Earnings in Retail Food Stores, June 1962" says about 1.70. Also, cumulative inflation from 1962 to today is about 10.5x.


There is no single measure of inflation. There are multiple different ones, each with their own pros and cons and suitability for purpose. CPI is a common one, and that would put $1.15 in Jan 1962 at $12.09 in Nov 2024.


> The real distortion is when you started having adults working in McDonalds. It was never a job to support a family - it was a minimum-wage job for kids

Nonsense: Fast-food chains never had a business model of closing during school hours! They remain open, and that shows each role has always required some adult employees with adult budgetary needs.

One can argue minimum-wage jobs are only for kids in school, or one can argue that a regular-businesses-hours company can have min-wage positions, but both together is incoherent.


Indeed, in what universe were all these store front businesses open only from 4pm-9pm when high schoolers were available.


Plus 1 on this - I've probably had direct responsibility for managing fleets of roughly 50,000 linux hosts - never seen an immutable distro. We usually just burn a fresh image of whatever mainline ubuntu is offering every week or two into the fleet. Saying that containers are becoming a defacto standard is reasonable though - pretty much every company I've worked with and my coworkers have worked with have shifted everything into containers (at least in companies with x00k microservice instances running on ~100k machine environments).


>I've probably had direct responsibility for managing fleets of roughly 50,000 linux hosts - never seen an immutable distro.

plus, given your wealth of experience, I'm more interested in what linux you run on your personal laptop


WSL2 + Ubuntu. It's either MacOS or Windows in BigCorp with all the Okta/Crowdstrike/... stuff they require - and I like the apt-get convenience.

Most of my time is in Tmux anyways. Over the last 15 years the client side has been one of MacOS, ArchLinux, Ubuntu, and now Windows/WSL2.

The real activity has shifted up to the orchestration and service discovery layers - nomad, k8s, consul, and whatever fleetmanagement/cluster management layers maintains the hosts (a lot of homebuilt + terraform + chef/argo-workflow in our world). It's been years since I was really that concerned about the linux host side of things - why care about "immutable" when the entire machine/image is ephemeral for < 1 week (or in some cases, <1 day) anyways?


I vividly recall in the late 80s, sinking a huge chunk of my total net worth at the time (just out of high school) into dBASE IV. I had made tons of money doing small consulting jobs on dBase III+ - knew it inside and out, and was looking forward to the new platform - good lord, it had SQL.

I still recall the night I picked up the massive package, unpacked the 5 1/4" floppies, started it on my 286 (I don't even think I had a HD in 1988) and ... It didn't work. The most basic straightforward functions in then manual failed to perform the way they were documented. I was certain that it had to be my computer, because there was no possible way that Ashton Tate could ship a product, beautifully packaged, and documented that was just ... broken? And Slow.

I'd forgotten how tragic that loss was (it was a lot of money for me ).

I have to believe that whatever processes or behavior that led up to that was the trigger for the downfall of Ashton Tate.


Not bad - < 20 minute outage. Good work. Will be interesting to hear what happened. This is one of those services that honest-to-goodness needs a heck ton of 9s


... And it's back.


Lot of stuff hosed. CDN issue?

https://downdetector.com/


Join us for AI Startup School this June 16-17 in San Francisco!

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: