Hacker News: mtberatwork

New comment by mtberatwork in "The movie Hackers was released 27 years ago"

mtberatwork — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 15:29:02 +0000

What about "Three Days of the Condor"?

New comment by mtberatwork in "The movie Hackers was released 27 years ago"

mtberatwork — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 15:25:26 +0000

There are all kinds of people in tech who are self taught without CS degrees though. I don't think it's that beholden to the universities...at least not like other professions. I think it's simply that people took notice that all the money was being funneled into tech. The MBAs all followed.

New comment by mtberatwork in "Ask HN: What is the lowest hill you're willing to die on?"

mtberatwork — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 18:33:42 +0000

In the US, "right on red" should be abolished. It's abused way too much at this point.

New comment by mtberatwork in "Ask HN: When will big tech be taken down a notch?"

mtberatwork — Tue, 13 Sep 2022 14:14:52 +0000

What headwinds? The Western world is a consumption driven society (with the US being an extreme version I would say), so I don't think advertising/PR spending will be reduced, just transferred from one focus to another. The businesses that are driven by ad revenues will pivot to wherever the ad dollars go.

New comment by mtberatwork in "Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices"

mtberatwork — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 12:01:36 +0000

This is a gray area too as unnecessary testing can be costly and lead to worse care: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/06/13/1104141...

New comment by mtberatwork in "Workplace surveillance is coming for you"

mtberatwork — Mon, 22 Aug 2022 14:53:53 +0000

> and other laws, like those protecting unions, that defeat at-will employment

This is backwards. Union membership is at its all time low and at-will employment has mostly taken over. A union would be the best tool to curb "boss-ware".

New comment by mtberatwork in "Ask HN: Why server side rendering is not used anymore"

mtberatwork — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 20:38:06 +0000

You certainly do not need to build out an entire SPA or use React to reload part of a page just to swap in some HTML or load something asynchronously in the background.

New comment by mtberatwork in "Ask HN: Any viable alternatives to Google News?"

mtberatwork — Wed, 29 Jun 2022 12:53:53 +0000

> Google News refuses to permit socially conservative viewpoints (Fox News doesn’t make that list for me) to make up a user’s personalized feed.

This isn't true. I just looked up a few conservative publications, from the center-right to the heavy-on-conspiracy and they all show up as available news sources.

New comment by mtberatwork in "The Biggest Potential Water Disaster in the United States"

mtberatwork — Fri, 13 May 2022 15:01:26 +0000

"Various pockets" seems to imply the problem is not that wide spread. But it is:

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/31/americas-tap...

[2] https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news...

New comment by mtberatwork in "“It Is Getting Worse. People Are Leaving”"

mtberatwork — Mon, 09 May 2022 15:16:46 +0000

Software engineers can buy worker rights, overtime limits, etc? That's news to me. Also, goes without saying, not every engineer is making FAANG-level salaries.

New comment by mtberatwork in "What Dinner Will Look Like in the Next 100 Years, According to Scientists"

mtberatwork — Mon, 09 May 2022 15:03:15 +0000

> I think we probably at some point will realize that food like we ate in the past are way better than it is today and the type of heavily processed food we eat today is unhealthy.

That point is here, right now. Michael Pollan and much of the food blog-o-sphere has been writing about this for years. The article is tone deaf to say the least.

New comment by mtberatwork in "Emerging evidence that mindfulness can sometimes increase selfish tendencies"

mtberatwork — Mon, 09 May 2022 11:18:46 +0000

Not sure why you are being downvoted...you aren't wrong.

> Except the Buddha and his stories explicitly advised against asceticism...

Yup, the Middle Path.

New comment by mtberatwork in "Managing mental health while running a startup"

mtberatwork — Thu, 21 Apr 2022 20:26:22 +0000

Who ever mentioned anything about repressing thoughts? Quieting the mind does not mean repressing feelings. Observe the thoughts when they arise, but do not judge. This is nothing new.

New comment by mtberatwork in "Managing mental health while running a startup"

mtberatwork — Thu, 21 Apr 2022 14:41:25 +0000

> At the best of times these routines of habit are just an escape from the stress...

No, not an escape. Amongst the many benefits, exercise, meditation, etc are a means (but not the only means) to quiet the mind and give a pause to thought. They force you to focus on the present moment and not to dwell in the past or future. Humans are incredible prediction machines but generally not all too accurate. Too much time spent thinking about the past and future without balance of the present creates needless suffering. None of this is new and has been known for millennia.

New comment by mtberatwork in "Why is there so much self-help featured on Hacker News?"

mtberatwork — Mon, 18 Apr 2022 16:09:05 +0000

> Society, economics have changed to keep up.

I think that is debatable, at least from the Western standpoint. Much of Western society and its economics produce tremendous amounts of depression and anxiety (rooted mostly in fear).

New comment by mtberatwork in "Ask HN: When do you give up on Silicon Valley?"

mtberatwork — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 14:03:28 +0000

Be careful for what you wish. As OP alludes, much of your income is taken up by housing, childcare, healthcare, retirement funding, etc. Just about everything is "out of pocket". In terms of safety nets or other societal benefits (e.g. family leave, vacation time, etc) that Europeans take for granted, the US has none to very little. As a result, Americans work non-stop and more than half the country is stressed out on a daily basis [0]. It's really not a sustainable way to live IMO.

[0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/249098/americans-stress-worry-a...

New comment by mtberatwork in "Maybe you should do less 'work'"

mtberatwork — Mon, 28 Mar 2022 15:24:07 +0000

A note on burnout: once you have had one burnout, the next one comes on faster and with less triggers needed.

New comment by mtberatwork in "The illusion of evidence based medicine"

mtberatwork — Fri, 25 Mar 2022 11:46:24 +0000

> My autoimmune disease is likely caused by modern technical advances

I'm absolutely certain that my autoimmune disease manifested itself later in life due to chronic stress at work (a modern advancement so to speak). While not the cause, it was certainly the catalyst. Now that the proverbial Pandora's box of autoimmune diseases has been opened inside of me, there's no closing it back up and I can only manage it to some degree.

> There's very limited research done on on fixing it and lots done on treating the symptoms. Each commercial I see advertising a new medication to treat the symptoms is like a slap in the face.

Yup, exactly this. You have to take things into your own hands and figure out what works for you in terms of management. Not many doctors are going to take the time to sit down with you to figure out the root cause(s).

New comment by mtberatwork in "Ask HN: Why is the Instagram desktop website so unreliable?"

mtberatwork — Mon, 21 Mar 2022 13:49:35 +0000

This is odd because the web version is almost always the first experience for a new user of the platform.

New comment by mtberatwork in "I discovered thousands of open databases on AWS"

mtberatwork — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 11:31:20 +0000

> If managing a server becomes just another bullet point in a developer job, this is exactly what we get.

Yup...the same management are the ones that laid off the DBAs, system admins, network engineers, etc because "the cloud" hand waves all this stuff away now.