A ghost bicycle?

I figure it still requires someone who can pedal and knows where they want to go before you get anywhere useful, and perhaps that slightly aligns with Hickey's point. But on the whole I feel like Hickey is arguing about the meaning of words, which is shrug-worthy.

Corporate is 100% forked tongue snakes. Loyalty to _a machine_ is foolish. I am happy when team members move on by-choice and improve their situation.

But, _I_ am not corporate, and you make my life shittier and devalue my work and demoralize me when you whine like a baby about the work and then quiet quit. Just quit quit if you are going to be a dirtbag to the rest of us.

I also like Lodash'es transform[1]. It's like reduce, but expressly for transforming one collection to another. The signature is a slightly different from reduce in that the accumulator is a collection that is passed as an argument to the iteratee who is expected to mutate the accumulator with no need to return it. This frees up the return value from the iteratee for a new purpose: if the iteratee returns a boolean false, then transform early outs. I have used that feature more than once!

[1] https://lodash.com/docs#transform

Our public education is so pozzed in Dem/Blue states, though; that has nothing to do with ethnic makeup in the students. Bloated budgets fueling insidious DEI agendas with openly consumer-hostile teachers unions. Maybe in sane states it's better.

> and the most advanced healthcare

We have miraculously great trauma medicine and surgery and diagnostics. The NICU medicine I've seen at work is like science fiction.

That said, I'd argue my family doctor is just a brainless expert system for prescribing toxic pharma products. There's nothing healthful about that aspect of our healthcare. The terrible US diet and these wretched drugs are why we're so sick and the trauma doctors are so busy. It's complicated why it costs a fortune and yet we're so sick.

Americans need consumer protections so badly!

* Pull up the ladder (probably this)

* Gulf of Tonkin/Yellow Cake false flag premise for war (economic or kinetic)

* Fear of the big bad, space race we need public funding research grift AI Manhattan Project

Whenever there is fear pr0n or a national affront in the news, I assume another screw job is underway.

Yours is a reasonable meaning assuming you meant the computing sense, but the more common understanding of the word would skew towards personal insult the way you used it.

Unfortunately people can't read your mind over the internet and unicode does not convey intent.

The cascade was a mostly mistake except for interesting applications like dark mode, imo. It does not scale easily for large orgs and its original usecases were tailored for balancing user/publisher/content creator presentation concerns. The market has spoken and the content creators rule.

First and foremost, we satisfy the biological needs and work our way up from there. I think that imperative has been hijacked to become "you must live the 'good life'", which in modernity equates to consumerism. Hooray for plastic and glass and lithium.

I'm not saying don't create eWaste as a part of living, and there's a lot of waste to just existing in all regards. But, the longness of time is an awful thing to contemplate - our insignificance in the grand story of Long Time makes trinkets meaningless.

Anyhow, starting from biological, we subsist and reproduce. Reproduction is the closest thing we'll get to immortality. If we physically can do it, we are foolish not to if we care about mattering at all in Long Time. And, we should make more babies than replacement just to account for mishaps and developmental failure.

Along those lines, females are more valuable than males if you consider Long Time. Men are quite disposable historically, so keep your head on a swivel but also protect the women and girls you love if you are a man.

Beyond the biological, we get all the human civilizational gravy: culture, writing, government, architecture, chemistry/medicine, physics/energy, computing/AI, etc. All that stuff must synergize with the biological or it will either be cast off or fester and then undo and destroy us.

Any groups or leaders promulgating actively antagonistic social movements or technologies are either herd management fanatics or anti-human or both. Even if some of those individuals are earnest and well-meaning, if they are promoting anti-human agendas, they must be opposed.

If you look at fertility rates worldwide, we're on the brink right now, and I contend that's not an accident. Everywhere you look are social campaigns against family formation, chemical pollution and toxic medical and street drugs, and crap food weakening us. We're two generations from complete collapse if you look at the birth rates and health indicators.

> when you have kids your mindset flips to being a provider.

I'm convinced it's brain chemistry, and it's friggin' glorious when (ok yes, if) you can come out the other side triumphant. Your body and mind remember the challenges and fear, and it's a big reward to living and overcoming that. Let me say it again differently - making kids is a key aspect of being human, you're not fully living unless you jump through that portal if you are able.

> Well these days that can take 30 years.

There is a long series of choices that leads to kiddos' inability to mature, assuming they are physically healthy. Mobile apps and Youtube/Reddit/Roblox have been a real retardant to child development. You can have a house policy against it for kids, and you can always allow them to pig out on the mental candy when they go to friends' houses.

> Throw in a divorce, which is pretty common along the way

I am ashamed to admit I didn't know how low the real divorce rate actually is[1]. It looks like it stands at 14.6 per 1000 married women become divorced per year, down from the boomer peak in 1980 at 22.6 per 1000. Them's good odds you can make it work, don't believe the "50% of marriages end in divorce" hype!

I think men and women need each other because it's so rough out there, and people are generally loyal after they make a commitment. Knowing Jesus gives you a 50% bonus to staying together until one of you dies[2].

> Having the drive and energy to launch and lead something entrepreneural in your 50s is pretty rare.

The numbers say 45 is the sweet spot for successful entrepreneurship[3]. I agree that lack of energy is the most concerning impediment to success, but most people are not cut out for going their own way and taking on extra risk anyhow. I'm looking forward to freedom and putting all my energy into my startup when my boys are graduated. I'm in my 50's and I feel healthy enough to do it.

Finally, I know everything I'm saying above is stuff nobody ever says. I'm right and all of those other people are wrong/misguided/evil (sometimes). And, I'm ok with not having all the answers and making the wrong choices myself in my own life.

[1] https://www.bgsu.edu/ncfmr/resources/data/family-profiles/FP...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20210624081456/https://hfh.fas.h...

[3] https://mitsloan.mit.edu/shared/ods/documents?PublicationDoc...

Life will get interesting when 89% of people learn about the regular corruption in elections and the rehypothication of stocks.

I know, you're on Hacker News, you gotta ship code and sell your startups, but hear me out.

Starting a family in your 40's really sucks. Fertility is waning by then, and kids are f'ing exhausting. There us so little energy left at 40. I think much of the sourness of raising kids is because so many of us start in our late 30's and 40's, and we're tired.

Nature set us up to make babies in our teens and twenties and then be _done_. I say go to college, make it your mission to find your sweetheart there and then get married and have however many kids you want through your twenties. Stop at 30, vasectomy time if she's a champ at baby making.

You are only on the hook for 18 years after final baby is born. That is the plan at least, obviously some kiddos need more supports than that. That is a major risk you run - but a risk that only increases with geriatric pregnancies. The vast majority of babies are healthy.

Here is the beauty of this system. You're done and free at 50, they're probably out of college and starting their own family if you got going early enough.

How many startup entrepreneurs only have a hit in their 50's and later? The vast majority of them.

Here is how you win at life: find your niche/passion as a kid, get your skills and networking built out in your twenties, thirties and forties, and then execute your plans for businesses after the kids are out of the house. If you can do it while they're in the house, great, but don't be an absentee parent because that's dickish.

Having business success is nice and purpose is what gets people out of bed in the morning. But you're going to die and you wont get to take it with you. Time is always very fleeting.

Building a great family gives you purpose too - men grow up quick when the first baby comes, a chemical switch gets flipped. Starting a family creates a kind of rabid survival mode. Legacy is a treasure and family history can start with you.

The whole point is to slow them down and put em to bed. So read a real book to them, whatever you like. Sets a good example to read real things, they just love the attention and to hear your voice, and they fall asleep with big words in their ears which is great for brain development.

You must buck aspects of modernity that are obviously stupid to you, not commit legacy suicide because modernity is obviously designed for morons. (The designers hate humanity.)

There is a negative karma to putting this kind of nihilistic message out into the world. Obviously everyone should shoot for the stars, not the dirt. The goal is to give one's life meaning and purpose. If the job is a snooze, adjust your aim. Treasure your family and start your own if you are able. Life will be infinitely more interesting and meaningful when you take on that special burden.

You may have seen the regular stream of youtube videos in your feed with the hook that reads something like "humans will be obsolete in two years" or "software development as a career is over".

I disagree, and furthermore, that's a psyop! Don't believe the hype!

You may have seen the endless stream of technical articles here complaining about the craft going out of coding and devs being reduced to AI slop pull request reviewers.

I scoff at these devs, have they no agency? I also choose to believe they are part of the psyop even if they are real people with real experiences because their articles get boosted with a purpose.

And what do I believe the purpose is? What is the psyop? I think it is many-pronged.

We developers are quite powerful in society, and it is useful to humble us from time to time. It is useful to keep us compliant. Having us accept a dire fate makes it easier to tamp down wage inflation (which helps pay the AI tab in the short term, BTW!).

Also, regarding cycles and generations, having AI pump out an ocean of tech debt creates busy work for future generations to unravel. This make-work aimed at maintaining and fixing things is useful in that it keeps people steadily employed and controls the rate of new development and technological advancement.

Sometimes I muse when I hear stories about AI vendors' ability to "turn up/down" the intelligence factor on coding agents. Is this a fine tuning of the slop error factor getting it just where they need it to be?

I observe in my career that getting developer tools paid for by corporations has been a bit like getting blood from a stone. Yet suddenly, corporate america is in a rush to put this super costly _subscription-based_ tool in my hands. What gives?

Yes, latest fad/bubble/craze. A few sillycon valley tech bros are trying to make a computer god superintelligence to worship and control, maybe, ugh I guess probably some of them.

But, from a metaphysical standpoint, one can argue there is a "spirit" to every age. This age's spirit seems obsessed with management. And, there are high level leaders who are obsessed with managing the human population with ever-increasing fidelity. So of course AI will be the latest finance/technology/information system that is released along those lines.

It's your choice how to proceed, as with all things use your free will. I will observe you do everyone you know and all of your descendants the most good if you constantly strive to have the highest aims.

In my opinion, 'slop' creates an unacceptable crisis. Slop will continue the wheel of wasted energy and potential that we are in now. To break this cycle, developers need to be obsessed with controlled code, zero bugs, and human-led software design.

What does any of that mean in practice? How? The answers come from our community, from thought leaders and taste makers. We need to develop industry standards to judge one another by and then hold one another accountable.

As to you personally and your passion problem, I get it. I am feeling the same. I hope you have a small personal project, maybe never to be shared, that you can at least retreat to when your energy is low.

I recently stayed up late and upgraded the build system on mine, just some busy work I knew I needed to get done and which let me ply some new devops techniques I learned. It felt really good to be reminded that I could be productive and clever even in a low energy situation. And my week improved after that.

Companies like Valve can continue largely unshittificated because they are private. Once that is no longer the case, all our game rentals will be squozen away from us.

OTel is a fine system for learning observability; it does an okay job of exposing capabilities given how diverse the vendor ecosystem is.

One of the last definitions of empathy is to possess a supernatural mind reading ability to understand what others are thinking. I must admit to my inability to read your mind in person or over the internets.

Asinine means "utterly silly or stupid" and "ass-like".

You can't separate criticizing the person making an argument from criticism of the argument when using a charged put down like 'asinine'.

I have made reasoned arguments, nowhere near asinine tier. If you want to appeal to authority/experts or cite lefty prop, okay I guess. Otherwise, I've heard it all and done the research. I've lived too long and watched decades of doomer predictions fail. It's exhausting! Be tired with me, collapse! :)

Finally, I never want you to shut up, I just want the grift you prefer (or at least tolerate) to end. The best I can offer you is political exile to the wasteland of failed ideas forever. ;)

I work with cloud everyday and am disgusted by the waste - not cracking 5% utilization on huge clusters. It feels like globocorpo money laundering to me.

Every once in awhile you get to see good utilization in cloud with distribution and amazing scaling and failover with big data and it all seems worthwhile. :)