Once upon a time there were engineers that used software. Just like any other tool, and usually in combination with electronic, electrical and mechanical equipment, all of them being very well aware of the laws governing it all.
But it was so great as a tool that some engineers didn't want to deal with the burdens and limitations of the physical world, and started focusing on software more and more.
Then the software engineers came, for whom the physical and mathematical aspect of the whole thing was just a distant history lesson (and preferably a problem in someone else's computer).
And after software engineers, the only constant in the entire ordeal will remain: engineering, in a shape or form that very likely nobody can predict right now.
As someone not old but young enough to not have experienced a world before software, Im not sure that engineering rooted in the physical is a necessary prerequisite.
I appreciate your comment but the entire world I happened to experience in my coming of age was at the dawn of the consumer internet. And so “web stuff” was how I cut my teeth. And its my profession. And i never went to school for it, im basically a dumb untrained web dev, borne from the script kiddie days.
There’s a stigma to it sure, but im well past it. All to say I just dont think CS principles down to the physics level is the root and all is an abstraction. Theyre just different things now.
I'm from the times when you had to purchase a separate chip to perform floating point math. It was called a math co-processor. [1]
After a few generations (and over a decade) that was indistinguishable from the CPU chip itself.
It's a long hyperbole, I know, but I think local inference is inevitable; and the big fishes know it.
Will that be a complex technical setup? An appliance? An additional chip in your motherboard? So transparent it's burned right into the CPU? Those are just implementation details. We're probably just one generational breakthrough away from it.
I agree, as I was one of them. Rightfully so, because PHP 20 years ago was the prime example of a complete disaster. Not just occasionally, there were long years of incompatibility, missing implementations, incoherent errors, security issues, fragmentation, etc.
Paid my share of dealing with those problems with PHP 5 and 6 (after coming from PHP 4). I think it became a more sane ecosystem around very late 7.x to 8.
I won't touch PHP ever again, but I'm glad (no irony) that they finally were able to pull it off. There were some good ideas there, then they quickly became victims of their own success.
Nowadays, there's places (Amazon) where PHP is just forbidden at a company-wide level (not joking) because of their early, long-standing reputation of being a mess. Or places where they just gave up and re-implemented their own PHP (Meta). I don't see that changing any time soon.
If you were there, you'd remember the UTF8/Unicode fiasco (how long it took, how many people was both relying and struggling with it, and how they needed to cover it up after even some hosting providers attempted a beta upgrade and had to roll it back).
There was a PHP 6 (I'm including the non-updates in PHP 5 "waiting" for it), they just had to rewrite history as of PR damage control back then. That's what the article you linked describes, pretty much.
Invariably, this "simpler life" type of reasoning is unmistakably the product of an urbanite.
There's nothing romantic in progress-adverse, ostracized, uncivilized lifestyles. There's only a small subset of people that would really find it preferable in practice. In the best of cases it implies grueling non-stop hard work. And still you're one bad winter away from being obliterated.
The world is a complex place, but if you find it unnecessarily complicated, scientific and technological progress are not the problem.
It's usually the psychopaths taking advantage of everyone else and ruining it for the rest of us, technology or not. They've lurked around in "simpler times" too.
Yes. We can complain that technology is "too complicated" but so is the human brain, consciousness, and every other biological system which we have failed to fully understand.
Knowing that we are surrounded by systems we can never know is both a gift and a curse, but offering a chicken to the sky god for more rain is not a world I'd like to go back to.
> It's usually the psychopaths taking advantage of everyone else and ruining it for the rest of us, technology or not. They've lurked around in "simpler times" too.
Indeed, this is the main hard problem of human societies. It's great that we can now put a name to the issue and there is more and more awareness of it. It's also refreshing to see human history being examined through that lens, like in Luke Kemp's "Goliath's Curse": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliath's_Curse
Look, I agree with a good part of this article. I also agree that the whole "unregulated internet" is terrible for humankind in general. Crypto is a scam. Meta should be, plain and simple, shut down. Twitter is a madhouse. The list is endless.
However, every single time I feel like stricter regulation should be in place, a congressman speaks about "servers"... and yeah, maybe not.
The congressional technology committee Gingrich killed could've fixed this. You can't half ass democracy, you have to keep getting better at governing and convince people it's worth it.
Monero gives people the ability to transact privately online. Privacy is a human right; therefore, through the technical innovation of private cryptocurrency, Monero allows individuals to exercise this right, adding value to the world.
Please look into Monero and try to understand privacy activist's, marginalized peoples', and my point of view. You don't have nitpick, you can accept this one cryptocurrency as having benefits—I agree that a vast majority of cryptos are a scam and are unnecessary and bad for the environment, but there are some cryptos that are less flawed than the banking system.
Monero is only as private as its entry and exit wallets and the availability of the appropriate keys.
This can be done with cash delivered via post with no return address. Observers cannot know who sent the money or even that the receiver is getting money without opening their mail. The sender remains anonymous regardless.
Anyway, we can compare cash to Monero. I'm not sure why some people here are obsessed with cash. I like cash too, it has some advantages any digital payment solution in general, but it's not more anonymous than Monero. It's not as easy to use as Monero, it's not as secure as Monero, and it's much more centralized than Monero.
Cash is more private than Monero. It is possible to engage in untraceable transactions through drop sites and post, whereas Monero wallets can reveal transaction participants when view keys are available.
I don't need to connect to any network to exchange cash, or engage in mathematical backflips to convince the network to accept my transaction. That makes it more decentralized and more fault tolerant.
>Ok. Where is crypto currency used in a way that fiat currencies cannot be, and is adding value to the world?
>I can think of nothing.
Buying/selling drugs, weapons, hiding bribes/extortion transactions, pretty much anything that the issuers of said fiat currencies would put you in a cage for doing.
That's not to say that fiat currencies aren't also used for such things, but relatively untraceable coins like monero make it easier to do those things across large distances, while fiat currencies need to be physically exchanged.
Addenda:
Replying here to Cider9986's (now dead) reply[0[ to the above, where they said:
So Signal or Tor is only useful for criminals? Privacy is
a human right, financial privacy is no exception. 1000s
of legal service accept Monero.
Buy Italian cheese with XMR (https://xmrbazaar.com/listing/LJ4F/)
I'll ask you, where exactly did I say anything about Signal or Tor (I use both, BTW, as well as using monero for the stuff for which it's useful -- to pay for my VPN subscription, among other things)? In fact, I didn't mention either at all. Don't put words in my mouth.
As for your Italian cheese link, GP asked "Where is crypto currency used in a way that fiat currencies cannot be, and is adding value to the world?"
Am I unable to purchase Italian cheese with fiat currency? What additional value is there using Monero to purchase such cheese rather than fiat currency?
I'd also point out that since you replied to me, I cannot mod you down, nor would I have done so if I was able. That said, you're not making a very good argument for monero by railing at (really bad) strawmen, especially since I think monero is a good thing, because governments love to put people in cages for really stupid reasons.
Not sure why you're so bitter/angry, but it might help to talk to someone.
The EU seems to have a different take. As I understand it, regulations are much more malleable in Europe. When problems arise, regulations are put in place. When regulations are problems... it takes a lot longer to remove them, but can still happen eventually. Nothing like the USian deadlock system.
And when they do write them, it's always about general principles. The GDPR doesn't speak of cookie consent banners, instead it speaks of personal data and data controllers and data processors and the reasons you may control or process personal data, one of which is consent, so of course the industry made it as obnoxious as possible.
There are probably places that are doing even better than Europe.
In some languages, but not really in English. Convention in the cultures of the Anglosphere is that the world comprises seven continents, and the Americas comprise two of them, not one. And in English, both formal and informal, “American” is generally considered the demonym of the United States of America, not the Americas. Although I call myself estadounidense in Spanish (an odd term—why don’t people from Estados Unidos Mexicanos count?), the equivalent English term is “American,” not “United Statesian.”
I'm citing a rule, not making one. American is in the dictionary, used by the UN, recognized by everyone and their dog as the proper demonym for citizens of the United States. Who are you to question that authority and replace the proper demonym with a neologism?
I didn't. Languages aren't defined by dictionaries. If they were they would not have come into existence in the first place and they wouldn't evolve the way they do.
Because of onerous regulations, the EU has much less startups. You may think that’s good, but I’m sure some missed-potential startups would’ve improved QOL. They at least would’ve increased the EU’s economy and internet control and decreased its dependence on the US.
"Because of onerous regulations, the EU has much less startups". That old trope.
Is that also the reason Miami or St. Louis have less startups?
I have started companies in the UK. The process is about the same as in the USA. The problem in Europe is that there is a lot less VC capital. Just like in Miami. It had nothing to do with regulation.
I generally agree with you message but the UK isn’t the EU anymore, and starting a company in Germany, France is definitely more expensive and involved than in the UK or the US. Regulation also has a responsibility, but not in the way people on HN generally think. The EU single market is messy, lots of things haven’t actually been consolidated, you have to take in account all the differences between each member state regulations if you want to get access to the whole EU. And if not you’re limited to mostly one region.
If the EU can complete the single market we should be in a way better position to compete.
I really hope we can see The 28th Regime[0] becomes reality soon, that would be such an improvement
And of course the reason that there is a lot VC capital in Europe has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that you'd be crazy to do a startup in e.g. Denmark (because doing so will likely be personally ruinous even in the unlikely case that you get some traction, due to unrealized gains tax) or to directly invest in one in e.g. Germany (where you'd be expected to physically sit through, on location, a few hours of a notary reading stuff out to you)? Do you actually have any idea how much additional legal risks, costs and time wasting bureaucracy are associated with even just forming a company in a typical EU country?
Miami, and Florida in general, have basically zero universities anyone has ever heard off, and still boast a higher number of unicorns per capita than Germany, despite the latter having at least one world-class technical university.
Europeans are aware of this but they do not want to engage in a race to the bottom. Socialism was a conscious political decision in response to the oligarchy.
It is incomprehensible to Americans but not everyone wants to be like them. It would actually be a capitulation.
The policies I mentioned (just as nepo-baby Mamdani's programs to abolish programs for gifted children) have, of course, precisely and deliberately the effect of cementing an existing parasitic elite and screwing over talented and hardworking people from a non-privileged background.
Which part of this do you fail to understand? Who do you think will be more inconvenienced by the removal of gifted programs, some intellectual mediocrity who goes to a $70'000/year private school anyway, or a smart child from a family with a yearly total income that's a fraction of that schooling cost? Who do you think is going to be more likely to find themselves financially ruined by being hit with enormous taxes on illiquid assets (such as equity in a pre-IPO startup they founded or where an early employee in) -- someone entirely self-made or your "oligarch"?
One reason there's less VC capital because they don't control the world reserve currency like the US does, so they can't just print money and export inflation. Thankfully the current US leadership is intent on resolving this discrepancy.
To be fair to us, the Euro is also a world reserve currency, alongside of course the US Dollar, the British Pound, the Japanese Yen, and the Chinese Renminbi. And the Euro is in fact the second largest in terms of external reserves, being only beat by the USD.
Of course, the USD has been for a while the largest one of these, but as you say, they're really trying to get away from that. And a currency falling in relevance isn't new, one can always ask the Pound about that.
There's an innate tension between "freedom of speech" and "weaponized misinformation".
I think Karl Popper’s "paradox of tolerance" needs to be front and center in this discussion -- as it's playing out as predicted: free speech is embraced by those who are empowered by it, who then clamp down on free speech to suppress dissent.
All the noise from the "absolute free-speech" folk who wanted to promote their conspiracy theories and hate speech are notably quiet now. And ironically, their "free speech" rants were not First Amendment issues as they were complaining about being platformed by private parties.
I understand that your advice comes from the right place. However "High-agency" is the "Full-stack Engineer" of the AI era.
A single salary covering many disparage positions and roles. It's been reworded b/c with AI, apparently you don't even need to be an engineer (or expect to be paid as one) anymore!
Hmm, I think "generalist" is the more current term for "Full-Stack Engineer." But that's more about technical skills. "High-agency" is more a combination of personality traits and technical ability.
So in terms of buzzwords it would be something like generalist + self-starter + go-getter + hustler + finisher.
They won't say it, but everyone wants basically a solo founder, except one who (to your point) gets paid as an employee.
Which is why I am saying this is going to be the most important skill. If they don't pay you enough, you could just go be a solo founder for real.
I'll add that treating the inmates like cattle is actually the most expensive option of all in the long term. The USA has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world largely due to high recidivism due to the system not providing proper rehabilitation.
So it's costing the USA 65k/yr per inmate on average right now with the 5th highest incarceration rate in the world. The 4 countries above it are not nice places to live contrary to the thought that locking even more people up would make the USA just like the other western nations of the world.
No other country is as stupid as the USA when it comes to homeless. They don't spend a lifetime $65k/yr repeatedly locking up such people. Instead they spend a fraction (when amortised over a lifetime of jail costs) on rehabilitation and public health programs.
Disagree. When the tax-paying public doesn't feel safe around the people living on the sidewalk, they move and take their tax money with them. That means less money for services, roads, education... everything taxes pay for.
The cost is not measured in dollars, but rather in the pollution of the pubic space. People feel less safe and more bothered. Stores nearby get less business, and suffer more theft. Passerbys get accosted.
But it was so great as a tool that some engineers didn't want to deal with the burdens and limitations of the physical world, and started focusing on software more and more.
Then the software engineers came, for whom the physical and mathematical aspect of the whole thing was just a distant history lesson (and preferably a problem in someone else's computer).
And after software engineers, the only constant in the entire ordeal will remain: engineering, in a shape or form that very likely nobody can predict right now.
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