Fast forward a decade or two, and it is like you said, people who don't have a strong interest in computers starting taking CS as a major as a path to jobs and income.

Now, as a manager of engineering teams, I'm constantly surprised by Software Engineers that don't even own their own computers and/or have very little knowledge about how they work.

And, of course, that one year is totally useless when one is subject to multiple breaches per year. Throw in the fact that so many breaches aren't even with a company that affected individuals have a direct relationship with, and it becomes virtually impossible to fix this.

At this point, I'd be in favor of making any company that handles personal data pay in advance for the monitoring, and get refunded when they prove that that OR THEIR PROVIDERS haven't had a data breach.

Those were my favorite system design rounds ever, thanks to the problems being interesting and the interviewers also being very dynamic. It was also pre-Covid, so it was just awesome whiteboard design sessions.

sigh I miss in-person interviews.

I had this happen in a Google interview. I did back of the envelope math on data size and request volume and everything (4 million daily events, spread across a similar number of buckets) and very little was required beyond that to meet performance, reliability, and time/space complexity requirements. Most of the interview was the interviewer asking "what about" questions, me explaining how the simple design handled that, and the interviewer agreeing. I passed, but with "leans" vs. "strong" feedback.

Since fabricating new boards took time and was expensive, a lot of work was done to make in situ modifications that involved an insane amount of wirewrapping. One member of the team did that all day, every day as their full time job, and I was always amazed by their ability to focus consistently at that level for so long.

This really is the issue. Of the 5 or so data breach notifications I received last year, none are from an entity I have a direct relationship with. They're all from a vendor used directly or indirectly by these entities.

The real answer is more serious penalties for having data breaches. Having 6 concurrent "identity monitoring" services is of zero value to me.

IMHO, it's actually worse than we realize. The Medical Loss Ratio requirement is good because it requires insurance companies to spend 80% or 85% of premiums on health care. It's bad because one way for insurance companies to make more money is to have inflated health care prices to justify increasing premiums so they can get 80% of a bigger pie. It also gives them incentives to provide care themselves so they can capture some of that 80% spend.

> For the uninsured this sort of thing is actually really common. Had an online friend who had to get emergency treatment and they sent him a bill for $20k.

I experienced this personally with my own insurance. My bill was over $20k, and it took a year to convince the insurance company that removing a few feet of my intestines was actually emergency surgery. I ended up paying $800. My roommate in the hospital had no insurance and ended up not paying anything (which I did not begrudge them at all, since the reason for no insurance was debilitating back pain that led to unemployment)

My dad died of cancer when I was 26, and I had very frequent dreams where it felt like he was real and present, though never speaking or interacting directly with me. The grief persisted for years.

Nearly 25 years later, my mom passed away this summer, and it's been a totally different experience. The grief was just as intense as when my dad passed, but contained to a few weeks.

Our bodies and brains are complicated.

I purchased it somewhere in the 1996 to 1998 timeframe. When I graduated to Blu-Ray, I gave it to my mother who used it once or twice a week up until she passed away this year.

Obviously that's purely anecdotal, but that one unit was a workhorse.

The Zune was 100% uncool, but man did I like the hardware and software sooo much better than the iPod / ITunes. I was just sad that I never found anyone to "squirt" at.

IMHO, this isn't a new phenomenon. Close to 18 years ago, I lived in a city with a popular pizza spot that was about a 10 minute walk away. Normally I'd walk, but having a newborn make that challenging, so I'd get delivery.

Typically, the delivery would take 60+ minutes on a busy night, but after a few consecutive Fridays of a decent tip for the order, the pizza would arrive "burn your fingers" in about 20 minutes.

The white-label versions where 100% identical in appearance and functionality except for name in the app store, startup logo, and color scheme. Our original app had been in the App Store rules for many years. Our results in submitting the three white-label apps to the App Store for review were: 1 approved immediately, 1 approved after some back-and-forth w/explanation of purchase model, and another that never got approved due to every submission receiving some nonsensical bit of feedback.

I feel like to goes beyond writing to really any form of expressing this knowledge to others. As a grad student, I was a teaching assistant for an Electrical Engineering class I failed as an undergrad. The depth of understanding I developed for the material over the course of supporting students in the class was amazing. I transitioned from "knowing" the material and equations to being able to generate them all from first principles.

Regardless, I fully agree that using LLMs as our form of expression will weaken both the ability to express ourselves AND the ability to develop deep understanding of topics as LLMs "think" for us too.

>Equity as an incentive truly favors the employer. With vesting, equity rarely works out to be better than having a market rate salary, unless the company becomes a household name

I've worked at 4 different startups. Two were acquired and two are still going, with one making a small profit and being a lifestyle business for the founder, and the other having a great product and still growing.

For the two acquisitions, one of which I held 1% equity in, the value of my options was $0, which was very disappointing. In that case, I did get a cash bonus as the VP Engineering and an offer from the acquiring company that was 3X my cash comp, but the stock was worthless.

At this point in my career, I value stock in private companies at exactly $0 and treat it like a nice bonus should it ever amount to anything.

This is the real issue, IMHO. I work for a European SaaS and we've had a small number of customers ask about our plans to host our services in datacenters not owned by US companies.