Totally agree that it's an overlooked problem and we've been quietly working to solve it for years. Early on we realized the key was to build "everyman" mapping tools that facility managers can use themselves to keep data up to date.

We're increasingly focused on our developer-facing tools and I'd love any feedback if you end up taking a look! (https://www.mappedin.com/mapping/sdks/)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27292950

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25777950

Points: 1

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So: * lockdowns are guaranteed not going to eradicate the virus the way it has in China. * lockdowns are guaranteed to crush small businesses and restaurants, creating an L-shaped economic recovery and putting the West at a disadvantage in future geopolitical conflicts. * the vaccine works but will take a year to rollout to everyone and it is unimaginable that the public will tolerate a lockdown for more than a month * herd immunity might work

I truly welcome any debate on this as I'd love to be wrong about my critique of my country's (Canada) approach to all this. We seem to be not having our cake and not eating it too.

I get that other professional training with certifications would be harder to do online, but those tend to be done in community colleges anyway. The most "abusive" shops are universities offering BS degrees to students swimming in debt.

I hope to convince you to hate the game, not the players. So that we can focus our efforts at the root cause. And to take a measured approach: it's not all bad. I'd rather have our current quality of life (in Canada) than to live in a pre-industrial world in the longhouses of the Aboriginal Peoples who used to live where I do. It seems romantic, but I'm sure I'd be a terrible hunter. I choose to believe that human progress will continue to solve the problems we face, in time. Because historically we always have. Let's root for more Elon Musks instead of hating on the average capitalist.

Even if they don't increase total consumer spending by offering better products and winning market share, they do increase consumer _wealth_. I'm glad I can buy a 65" 4k TV for as much as my parents paid for a 15" CRT 20 years ago, adjusted for inflation.

That's the median outcome. Then you get outliers like the sewing machine that greatly increased the productivity of vast amounts of workers, making those users much richer and society wealthier because clothes got cheaper.

I find it disingenuous to claim, as the OP did (perhaps unintentionally), that innovators are bad faith actors playing a zero sum game. Surely that's the exception, not the norm. Just as there are bad actors in academia and any other profession.

Scientists turn money into knowledge. Entrepreneurs turn knowledge into money. It's a virtuous cycle. Scientists lament that they don't get their "fair share" but it's wrong to blame innovators, better to reevaluate their own economic strategy. What if we had private research institutes turning out cutting edge research? Or vertically integrated ones that commercialized their own discoveries, like Spacex?

But there is another more sinister reason people dismiss new ideas. If you try something ambitious, many of those around you will hope, consciously or unconsciously, that you'll fail. They worry that if you try something ambitious and succeed, it will put you above them. In some countries this is not just an individual failing but part of the national culture.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24341902

Points: 2

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[1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-world-bank-... [2] https://globalnews.ca/news/3354398/bombardier-trudeau-hammer... [3] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/bombardier-what-happ...

Writing 1+ page essays and MLA citation formatting is work that seems to only exist in academia. It wouldn't surprise me if community college educated people transferring to university programs needed a refresher on that stuff.