The MUD I play (Aardwolf) averages about 200 players online at any time, but it's effectively dead as a MUD. There's very little player interaction, which is what made MUDs special originally. Part of this is that nearly all multiplayer features have been abandoned, and the rest of the features are centered around loot box equivalent features. Despite this, there are a couple hundred people who seem to enjoy the gamification. The MUD is highly optimized for scripting, so it scratches the side project programming itch for me.
This reminds me of a chat room interaction I had maybe 25 years ago. The other person was adamant that humans can't see the infrared from TV remotes, and I was adamant that I could. It was pretty a widespread belief (even in school science books) at that time that humans couldn't see infrared. Since then more science was done to prove that, in fact, some humans can see some infrared under some conditions.
I share that mainly to state that humans are amazing and have a wide and inconsistent range of capabilities (and sometimes even mutating into new capabilities!) Personally, I will always hesitate to say "nobody" and I lean towards "no typical human" instead. :)
Where is your time being spent? I.e., when you aren't feeling motivated to do X, you must be doing Y instead, right?
Y might be working more than you are expected. Y could be sleeping more than needed for a healthy night's sleep. Y could be browsing Reddit, Instagram, or other sites. Y could be playing the same maps over and over in a game. It's probably a combination of several things that only you know the answer to.
Are you happy with Y? Answer both questions honestly and thoroughly, and I think you will be on the first step to solving your original question. If, by chance, you aren't happy with Y, then consider reading and adapting a methodology for change like those presented in the books Tiny Habits or Atomic Habits.
Corporate BS is the topic I want to study if I ever pursue a PhD. Not only BS that is directed from the top down, but also BS from the bottom and laterally. I'm curious what in corporate culture allows it to grow and what slows it. I also wonder if it's always bad or if it's beneficial in small amounts.
Anecdotally I have seen BS used to delay or avoid making commitments. BS can mask someone's lack of knowledge, or lack of execution. Middle managers seem to be the position to squash or spread BS. They often have a hard time detecting BS because they are too far from the work. When I think back to the best Directors and skip-level managers I have had in my career, they were all great BS detectors. They didn't let smooth talkers in their organization rise based on BS alone. They didn't let dependencies wriggle out of their commitments based on BS.
It's a start. I agree HN is a bubble and doesn't reflect real life as a whole. But I do think HN has a significant bearing on US tech. I've been reading HN for nearly 19 years and in that time almost every new major tech, unicorn, or big culture shift is discussed here before it is mainstream.
There has also been a backlash against verification in other communities like Reddit (also a bubble), mainly stemming from Discord's recent announcement.
The discourse is good, and while I wish every user and potential user understood all the pros, cons, and ramifications, I'm also happy we are finally talking about it in our bubbles.
At Amazon, their travel trainings always recommended giving out your laptop password if asked by law enforcement or immigration, regardless of whether it was legal in the jurisdiction. Then you were to report the incident as soon as possible afterwards, and you'd have to change your password and possibly get your laptop replaced.
That kind of policy makes sense for the employee's safety, but it definitely had me thinking how they might approach other tradeoffs. What if the Department of Justice wants you to hand over some customer data that you can legally refuse, but you are simultaneously negotiating a multi-billion dollar cloud hosting deal with the same Department of Justice? What tradeoff does the company make? Totally hypothetical situation, of course.
I use Facebook for a specific automotive model group. All the forums that used to host content have either shut down or gone inactive, and it's the literally the only active online community for the car platform. I've learned to scroll slowly over the car posts, and never to engage or linger on other content.
I found even if I am interested in other content (e.g., NFL football) nearly all other interests are flooded with false AI content. A common pattern is pages will paste "BREAKING NEWS" then describe a trade of players between two teams that never happened. Another pattern is "<most popular player on team X> does something <positive or negative> towards the LGBTQ community." These generate tons of engagement with people either for, against, or upset that it's fake. Fortunately the car community I follow is obscure enough to not have engagebait.
I'm glad the absurdity of verification is getting attention. I was "forced" to verify by Linkedin to unlock my account. It was last year, and I had left my previous job, but I had not yet lined up a new job. So one of the only times in my career I might actually get value from Linkedin, they locked me out, removed my profile, and told me if I wanted back in, I'd have to verify. I felt helpless and disgusted.
I gave in and verified. Persona was the vendor then too. Their web app required me to look straight forward into my camera, then turn my head to the left and right. To me it felt like a blatant data collection scheme rather than something that is providing security. I couldn't find anyone talking about this online at the time.
I ended up finding a job through my Linkedin network that I don't think I could have found any other way. I don't know if it was worth getting "verified".
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Related: something else that I find weird. After the Linkedin verification incident, my family went to Europe. When we returned to the US, the immigration agent had my wife and I look into a web cam, then he greeted my wife and I by name without handling our passports. He had to ask for the passport of our 7 month old son. They clearly have some kind of photo recognition software. Where did they get the data for that? I am not enrolled in Global Entry nor TSA PreCheck. I doubt my passport photo alone is enough data for photo recognition.
Evaporative cooling (like a "swamp cooler" for residential homes) is how most data centers in the US are cooled. The water is primarily consumed by evaporation. When you continually evaporate water from a system, eventually the remaining water in the system gets concentrated in salts and other minerals and is dumped and replaced with fresh water.
Much of the day/season, evaporative cooling is not needed and data centers can pull in outside air. Ultimately you state the main reason in your comment: using outside air + evaporative cooling is cheaper and consumes less power than any other approach.
In a lot of cases, even if the server chips themselves are liquid cooled (for example, in an NVIDIA GB200 rack), then liquid is then air cooled through a cooling distribution unit (basically a giant radiator.
It's a shame that Lua did not evolve in a more backwards-compatible manner. In addition to Roblox, lots of others projects started adopting Lua 5.1 as a scripting language in the late 00s. Lua itself is now at 5.4, but it did not keep backwards compatibility. LuaJIT and related projects pretty much only support 5.1. It's similar to the situation Python had with 2.x/3.x, except that the majority of Lua users I am aware of are preferring to stay with the older 5.1.
I agree with starting with a specific repair is ideal. One thing about electronic repair is devices that need repair and are easier to repair will often have walkthroughs on forums, blogs, or YouTube. Starting with projects that others have solved will be an easier ramp up than starting with an obscure repair.
For example, I had a pair of Samsung LCD monitors that stopped working. I looked up how to repair them and found that they suffered from leaking capacitors. Some video showed how to identify the capacitors and how to desolder an solder replacements. I followed the instructions and got the monitors working again. Another example is I have a Delco car radio from the 90s with burnt out illumination bulbs. Again there are walkthroughs on repairing these.
For in-person roles in larger cities, there is usually one or more tech community Slack groups with a job channel. It's a good format because often the roles are posted by a member of the community, so you can check their message history or DM them for questions.
The IRS does have an option for tax payers to electronically fill and file those mail-in forms directly. [0] No printing or mailing required, and there's no income limit. It's called Free File Fillable Forms, and I've used it for the past 4 tax years.
Having grown up in Arizona and attended ASU, ASU has always been this way. ASU has always accepted students at a high rate and has always been sure to structure degrees and classes to meet existing accreditations. "New American University" has always been more marketing rather than some radical change. There are several public universities with similar goals across the country, such as Colorado State or Indiana.
It's a great model for churning out highly educated workers. We need that, and there is a place for higher educational institutions that do that well. But for all of its graduates, ASU doesn't produce many thinkers, founders, philosophers—people who are going to move the needle of our society. To see this, compare the notable alumni lists of, say, ASU and Stanford (both founded in the same year). Look at Turing Award recipients, Nobel Laureates, etc. It's not a new American university - ASU is the same as it's always been.
When I look at the largest universities in the US by enrollment, I think the closest university to a true "New American University" is UIUC (no affiliation) in Illinois. Enrollment is in the top 10, similar in size to ASU. They have multiple programs ranked in the top 10 including computer science. While past success doesn't predict the future, there are some heavy hitters on the UIUC alumni list - Marc Andreessen, Steve Chen, Max Levchin. Would love if anyone happend to attend both ASU and UIUC and could compare the two.
One big difference in determining performance for a manager versus an engineer is the length of the feedback cycle. A software developer can start getting feedback after a few code commits. A manager needs a few months at a minimum at most companies to assess progress towards goals, hiring, etc. Unfortunately this means a bad manager can wreak havoc and jump ship before upper management notices.
- Compensation: This is one of the few things that I know before accepting a role. The larger the company the more comp I expect.
- Culture: generally I look for roles where I could wear any hat. Anywhere where employees are empowered to fix problems.
Red flags:
- Team activities: I do not want to play volleyball, paintball, or go to the CEO's house for cornhole on the weekend. Occasional lunch or happy hour is fine.
- Adtech, blockchain, or crypto: nothing against folks who work at companies in these spaces, but I have never been interested in these domains and probably never will be.
My biggest regret is drifting apart from family members and friends. I moved to a new state which was great for my marriage and my career, but it has slowly distanced me from the rest of my family.
I quit a previous job in 2016. The role had transitioned from software development to system administration. I realized it was no different for my career's future to just stay home instead of upgrading build servers. I gave a two and a half week notice and quit.
I was fortunate to have little debt, plenty of savings, and a supportive spouse. I ended up playing a lot of Counter-Strike Global Offensive and other computer games. I attended more meetups. I applied and interviewed for jobs that sounded interesting. I turned down two offers and accepted a third. In total, I took 9 months off work.
There's a piece of me that wished I had been more productive during that time off. But it was relaxing, and I attribute that time off as my best career move yet. The job I finally took paid 2x more to start and I still feel like I am thriving at my "new" job 5 years in.
I think that an employee who has little to lose is going to make better decisions and. take smarter risks. An employee who feels they can't lose the job is probably going to be overly cautious and not risk speaking up or taking action when they should.
Again, I agree tax preparation should be easier. Most income is already reported to the IRS, so it stands to reason that the government could calculate my taxes for me.
I still think we're playing into the tax preparation industry by calling it daunting. I maintain the current process, while inefficient, is in fact easy for most Americans.
The IRS provides free fillable forms regardless of income level. The process for individuals is to first collect all of one's tax documents, read the instructions, and copy the numbers into the correct boxes. The forms calculate most of the math for you. If you make a mistake, the IRS will likely tell you. Not perfectly efficient, but far easier than I was led to believe.