Hacker News: burntoutfire

New comment by burntoutfire in "$9.99/month"

burntoutfire — Sun, 17 Jul 2022 19:40:25 +0000

Do surgeons purchase any od they equipment they use on the operating table, or does hospital provide it all?

New comment by burntoutfire in "$9.99/month"

burntoutfire — Sun, 17 Jul 2022 19:39:43 +0000

When I use usem, I mainly do that on the job and Jetbrains IDEs provide value to my employer, not to me.

New comment by burntoutfire in "I just finished reading a book and took lots of notes. Now what?"

burntoutfire — Sun, 17 Jul 2022 12:24:47 +0000

I had to basically memorize a particular academic book for a tough university entrace exam. I created around 50 pages of dense hand-written notes on it, and could recall all the arguments contained in the book with detail. 15 years later, all I remember from that is that the book was about early humans, tool making... or something along those lines. The note making helped with short-term retention, but did nothing for long term retention.

New comment by burntoutfire in "Ask HN: Anyone run their family like an Agile team?"

burntoutfire — Sun, 17 Jul 2022 11:52:38 +0000

Let's not forget about putting kids on the PIP.

New comment by burntoutfire in "When coal first arrived, Americans said 'no thanks'"

burntoutfire — Sun, 17 Jul 2022 10:24:12 +0000

In my city in Poland (one of the most destitute ones in the country), until very recently, there used to be regular coal train robberies. On segments of the track where trains were moving really slow (like 20-30 km/h), the thieves would jump on the coal wagon and open it up on the side. All the coal would spill along the side of the tracks for the next dozens of meters, and the thieves would prompty load it up on a cargo truck and go away. With recent huge coal price hikes caused by Russian aggression, I suspect this practice might come back.

New comment by burntoutfire in "Learning The Elite Class"

burntoutfire — Sun, 17 Jul 2022 09:36:01 +0000

Trading firms are paying $500k a year to people who just graduated from college?

New comment by burntoutfire in "Learning The Elite Class"

burntoutfire — Sun, 17 Jul 2022 07:52:21 +0000

At least in Poland, for whatever reason, the communist apparatchicks mostly didn't get rich off of their power. They had a higher standard of living - but that meant a house and a car, and not a small flat and a bus pass, like most of the population. I think the ideology was still strong enough to make such behaviours completely non-palatable and would mean exclusion from the party. Only in the eighties, when it was clear that the system is broken beyond repair, the communist values crumbled and the elites started to accumulate wealth. Even with that, there are very few if any former high party official on contemporary Poland's top 100 wealthiest people list. Of course, if the system continued to reign, as is in China's case, the people at the top of the party would probably amass giant wealth.

New comment by burntoutfire in "Learning The Elite Class"

burntoutfire — Sat, 16 Jul 2022 20:51:48 +0000

There's struggling, and there's "grab Starbucks on the way to work" struggling...

New comment by burntoutfire in "Learning The Elite Class"

burntoutfire — Sat, 16 Jul 2022 20:49:33 +0000

I agree. Tom Cruise was also well-cast for that. He typically plays hot-shots, and here he again is a hot-shot upper-class doctor, but one who by happenstance brushes with forces in the society that are way out of his league and whose existence he didn't even suspect. He comes out of it thoroughly humbled.

New comment by burntoutfire in "Learning The Elite Class"

burntoutfire — Sat, 16 Jul 2022 20:45:11 +0000

The classes got wiped out in all Central and Eastern Europe countries which went through communism. Pretty much all of their wealth was confiscated and they were persecuted to a various degree. From society's perspective, it's actually one of the positives of going through the horror of communism - the societies were reset to be much more egalitarian. Even to this day, wealth disparity in post-communist countries is lower than in Western Europe - there wasn't enough time yet for the true billionaire elite class to emerge from the egalitarian soup.

New comment by burntoutfire in "Bill Watterson’s refusal to license Calvin and Hobbes (2016)"

burntoutfire — Sat, 16 Jul 2022 10:23:14 +0000

I think it's ok to cash out once your career is over. It's bad to do while creating, because the money people will inevitably influence your works. But, if you're not creating anymore, then there's no great harm in it.

New comment by burntoutfire in "Ask HN: What makes you optimistic about the future?"

burntoutfire — Thu, 14 Jul 2022 20:50:38 +0000

We even stopped trying getting to cheap nuclear energy, which seems to be a vastly simpler problem.

New comment by burntoutfire in "Ask HN: What makes you optimistic about the future?"

burntoutfire — Thu, 14 Jul 2022 20:45:00 +0000

> Microtransactions required to activate heated seats in your car.

I'm sorry, but the fact that this is the first thing you list under "grim" is just comical to me. This isn't even a 1st world problem, this is a 0.1-world problem.

New comment by burntoutfire in "Volkswagen enters battery business with $20B investment"

burntoutfire — Thu, 14 Jul 2022 10:44:41 +0000

In my city, there's maybe a parking meter for every 20 spots. Plus, most spots are in non-metered areas. PLUS, the meter does not require a very high voltage power line...

New comment by burntoutfire in "Volkswagen enters battery business with $20B investment"

burntoutfire — Thu, 14 Jul 2022 07:40:07 +0000

There'd have to be charger every 5-6 meters or so along most sidewalks where I live to make electric viable. Certainly not impossible, but sounds like an absolutely massive investment.

New comment by burntoutfire in "Helion Needs You"

burntoutfire — Wed, 13 Jul 2022 21:05:11 +0000

Saving the world would still happen if these people got 20 vacation days. The main difference would be the small decrease of ROI for the investors.

New comment by burntoutfire in "Tell HN: I have the perfect job, why is it not enough?"

burntoutfire — Mon, 11 Jul 2022 20:04:52 +0000

Sounds like an addiction almost. Addictions are often a signal of something being wrong or off-balance in life.

New comment by burntoutfire in "Tell HN: I have the perfect job, why is it not enough?"

burntoutfire — Mon, 11 Jul 2022 19:31:31 +0000

I've had pretty similar path (minus the long exotic trip). I've also pursued personal projects and interests very seriously, only to find out that I don't know why I'm doing them really. I found that I'm most satisfied with hedonic/epicurean lifystyle: hanging out with friends, spending time outside, cooking, reading, playing some of my favorite games. Even a job is not that bad, given how easy we can have it in the software profession. I guess any interests and ambitions I had were imprinted on my by external capitalist pressures, and I only realised that when I no longer had to run on the threadmill (I'm leanFIRE already).

New comment by burntoutfire in "Tell HN: I have the perfect job, why is it not enough?"

burntoutfire — Mon, 11 Jul 2022 19:22:14 +0000

A job is a prison. Yours is just very, very comfortable, compared to most jobs (and prisons). It's not wonder you still yearn to be out.

New comment by burntoutfire in "Exit, pursued by a bear"

burntoutfire — Mon, 11 Jul 2022 18:03:41 +0000

Quite the contrary, you can and should blame Germany for hiding their head in the sand for the past 10+ years, while a massive threat was growing next to them. It was obviously a catastrophic policy failure. They must have some intelligence services warning the leaders what Russia is really up to. They were being warned by Poland's leadership for quite a while as well. They chose to ignore all that and instead chose to pretend that the threat isn't real - for the sake of short-term convenience and, no doubt, some profits under the table as well.