BytesAndGears

I like your thought process here, but let me propose an alternative. I’m going to assume that we’re talking about Senior->Senior level reviews here. Junior engineers should obviously always get more guidance. But for Seniors, the alternative is:

Be extremely picky for PRs from new hires, so that they do things the way that your company does them. Make sure they put files in the right places, and adhere to the “flow” of the rest of the codebase. Also the sorts of style that aren’t picked up by a linter — like architecture choices — should be heavily scrutinized to make sure that they fit with your company’s paradigms.

After a while, they’re fully assimilated and you have a coherent style so that everyone is on the same page. Future code reviews go quickly because everyone makes similar architecture decisions and you’re never surprised. This also makes code easier to read if it all follows the same subset of patterns.

I’m not actually sure which way is better, but I think that both options have benefits.

At least with my AirPods or my fancy Master&Dynamic over-ear headphones, there is a pretty big difference in Apple Music vs others, but I don’t think it's necessarily about bitrate. I think Apple just gets higher quality masters of some songs. Same thing as Tidal when I used that, but Apple seems even a step further at this point (which is unfortunate because I really don’t want to rely on a mega-corp for everything).

Especially the ones with the Dolby Atmos (Spatial Audio) mixes. Even if you don’t have super high-res headphones, the difference in dynamic range is pretty obvious, and it makes songs just feel more alive.

I don’t have any stats to back this up but it seems that Apple Music has at least managed to somewhat buck the trend of the “loudness wars” with the masters they use. I wonder if this is actually published or written about anywhere…

Yeah but how many people never ride a bike because of this danger? Or let their kids walk anywhere near a major street? Almost everyone that I know in the US shares that fear, and they aren’t entirely wrong to feel that way (due to the current state of things).

Even when I had to take a break from running due to injury and started cycling, my doctor looked me stone cold in the eyes and asked me to please not risk my life like that.

Like, what the hell

This is also where the paid search engine comes into play. I get to pin Wikipedia so it’s always at the top whenever it’s relevant to my search, and there is almost zero SEO spam. And no ads.

I use a mix of that and chatGPT together depending on the specific thing I’m searching for, and it’s truly better than even the old Google.

Is it even possible for a sorta-non-profit-with-loopholes to IPO?

Yes, in my case, but also fastmail includes unlimited @fastmail.com email addresses, delivered to your normal inbox, and can even be generated on the fly by password managers like Bitwarden.

Very true, but I’ve still been interrupted a few times, and it’s always been positive. Makes me not want to wear earbuds, except that it can be really nice to listen to a podcast on the commute home.

Once on a train, two women come up to me as they’re getting in, and start talking (so I take out the earbuds). Turns out they just needed directions and were here for vacation, with no phone service. I saw that they needed to take my stop, so I offered to help and had a nice conversation for 15 minutes with their broken English. They were super friendly and excited to be traveling through my city, and it really made my day to be able to help them and learn about their travel!

I wish I had moments like that all the time with strangers.

Agreed, except that nobody has done it. So SSN is your username and password anyways, despite everyone* knowing they’re all public knowledge at this point

*: except judges and juries, apparently

Density of the entire country is not super relevant — the vast vast majority of travel is within a city or two away from where you live.

I’m not saying that nobody should ever drive, and if you have a long ways to go between obscure locations it totally makes sense to drive.

But if the US optimized for the 99% of trips that people make, within 30 miles of where they live, then it just comes down to regular urban planning where density can be “whatever you design”.

But yeah this is specific to cities and suburbs, I’m not trying to imply anything about people who live further out or who are making far-away trips.

If your household only needed one car for the monthly trips to grandmas or out for camping in the wilderness, and you didn’t need to drive at all around your city, that would still be a huge win for Americans today. Especially those with kids who depend on the parents for transportation by car.

Is buying old cars instead of new ones not voting with your wallet, as you suggest? I can’t think of a better way to convince car manufacturers to change than not buying newer cars. Especially if resale values of newer cars is lower than older cars, consumers will be less likely to buy a newer car even if they want one!

Very true! I’m positive that there are places that don’t fit my experience — but I think the majority does seem to match, at least in the places I’ve been (most of the popular Western European countries)

Maybe not all, but there also aren’t really suburbs here anyways. The “suburbs” are their own mini cities which are also walkable with everything you need. I travel out there often for different things like unique shops.

Each little “suburb town” has a train station which is usually directly connected to the city center

Edit: the suburbs here are usually a bit less dense though, with plenty of row houses and a some single family homes (close together). Still far more compact than the US though.

I do live in a particularly good country (Netherlands), which is definitely worth noting, but I think my experience in lots of traveling helps that I’ve never been limited in where I can go

I had a hard time reading this, but this quote really killed me:

> public-transit options between distant suburbia and city centres are roughly comparable in America and Europe

I used to live in America in four different cities, from east to west. I also traveled all over the US.

I now live in Europe, and travel to many countries here as well.

Every time I visit the US these days, I don’t have car access at first. Whether visiting parents or friends in many different parts of the country, it is impossible to exist without a car. I might be able to do a couple things nearby, but not much, and I feel incredibly stranded. The best option is Uber, since one bus an hour that often doesn’t show up at all, is quite hard to plan around.

Meanwhile, every European city that I’ve visited, I haven’t driven a car once. Actually, I’ve never driven a car on this continent despite living here for a year. I’m still able to visit wineries in the countryside of Italy, remote towns with wildlife and hiking, and all of the groceries and restaurants you could possibly need. Only by taking incredibly easy and efficient public transit.

Also in my home country of Europe, I commute to work in a different but nearby town, just like I did in the US. Each commute is similar in length, ~30-35 mins. The difference, is that I pay maybe 60-90 €/month total, for all of my transportation at home. Commuting, visiting friends, going to the further-away park. In the US, it was easily $600-$800 per month for insurance, gas, depreciation, and maintenance, and I didn’t drive that fancy of a car. Multiple that by two for a household and it makes an absolutely enormous difference. Also, it’s a comparably-sized apartment in both places, but in Europe it’s about 30% cheaper and I’m close to the city. It’s just more dense here, which is what makes everything else possible.

So, no, it is not even close.

These things that you call Disney land parks, are where I’ve been living for the last year. It’s not Disneyland at all, though, since there is a bustling and productive economy (that I work in), even in the cities with minimal tourism.

Actually some of the nicest walkable neighborhoods that I’ve visited since moving here, I was the only tourist that I saw.

If you’re genuinely curious, I’d love to give you more information about my city (as an American that moved to Europe). Let me know.

But I have 5 grocery stores within a quarter mile of my home, I take public transit and bike for all of my daily errands, and haven’t driven a car once since moving here. I see my friends whenever I want, often by either walking or taking transit depending on distance.

Just last weekend, I took a train to another city to buy a new racing bike, and took the train most of the way home before riding it the last mile or two. It was easy, and I went all the way to a neighboring town to shop for it (since they had a model that I wanted to try).

You can minimize it by calling it a glorified Disneyland park, but then you’re basically just skipping over the hundreds of millions of people who work non-tourism jobs (engineering, law, business, farming, medicine) and live within these generally well designed places.

I think your last paragraph ties this together.

Every recent generation has felt like they have it harder than their parents, and it is usually brushed off as just hindsight bias. But I feel like we don’t look at it enough that maybe things have actually gotten worse overall (for those of us in relatively rich countries).

I think a lot of things have gotten better in the last ~60 years, especially medicine, in terms of improving the lives of people. But some things, especially community related, have definitely gotten worse. And maybe those things are more important to our health than we’ve given credit to.

I agree with you that car dependency is not the only problem that young people are facing. But it definitely exacerbates the other problems they’re facing.

Financial insecurity, and needing to spend 30 mins and 2 gallons of gas just to see a friend, means that it is prohibitively expensive and hard to see people.

Community has become fractured in many ways, like what’s specifically referenced in the article, but the requirement to drive just to meet up with anyone just compounds the issue further.

I had this same problem when I lived in the US as a young millennial. You could never just accidentally run into your friends, you all had to plan and commit to a whole drive just to see each other.

I moved to Europe, and now I can just ride my bike over to a friends place in 10 mins, or take an approximately free tram/bus. I think this would greatly help those in the US as well

Yeah I totally get that.

I’ve created projects that are used by the entire business and customer facing part of the company, which are so rock solid and user-friendly that the users and even developers who’ve come after me completely takes the functionality for granted.

One feature in particular, I came up with a lot of the UI myself, even while working with a designer. I made the backend work. I spent a lot of effort making it just feel good. It went out, I got congratulations, it was great. Now, 3 years later, it still works with minimal maintenance. Entire processes of the business have been built on top of that functionality. Everyone completely takes for granted that this highly complex system has worked with nearly zero issues for years, and allowed a ton of new features using it as a base.

And honestly building something complex that works so well that everyone takes it for granted is an amazing feeling.

I’m just extremely lucky to have management that recognizes it and has seen the value in that contribution. But I don’t know how I’d ever sell this to another company if I were to look for another job in the future.

Living in a European city and relying 100% on public transit and walking, with occasional biking for longer distances, it’s easy. It does not require 5-10x the population density, maybe just 2-3x, at least compared to San Francisco (which is already somewhat dense in parts). It is not a major shift in lifestyle easier. The tallest buildings in some cities in the Netherlands are 2-3 stories, and those cities still have regular buses, trams, and trains.

There are even some suburbs full of single family homes, with yards, which still have buses every 8 minutes all day long, and long-distance commuter train service every 20 minutes.

Yes the US needs more density for this to be feasible. But San Francisco isn’t that far off on the density that it would needs

Wow I’ve listened to that album since I was a teenager and still never figured that out until right now

I think their issue is that in standard Unix terminal you have to use Ctrl-Shift-C, since Ctrl-C is exit.

This isn’t an issue in Mac because you use the Cmd key instead of Ctrl for copy, so there is no overlap

I feel like the problem though is that people don’t trust their community, and they don’t trust that the kids will be safe.

If the child’s playground is right next to a block of houses and shops with people walking around all day, it is much less likely that the child is taken away. Whether it’s actually safer, I’m not entirely sure, but it definitely feels safer to have your kid playing near a busy pedestrian area, compared to an abandoned playground down a quiet road at 4pm. And the feeling is what matters regardless.

And that is a big part, but also just the feeling of trusting your neighbors increases when you live in a walkable place and see your neighbors all the time. [0] That source isn’t maybe the most thorough, but it echoes my experience of moving to a quiet but walkable neighborhood in the Netherlands from the US. People really do trust their neighbors much more here, and I’ve changed in that regard too. Everyone is always offering to help each other out.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1448008/

> Fast forward 10 years and the same problems will remain.

I don’t have a strong opinion on UBI, but I want to challenge you on this.

If everyone gets $20k per year, let’s say the median earner goes from $40k to $60k. An increase of 50%. And let’s assume that we don’t increase taxes, even though it would definitely play a role.

Pretty soon, inflation kicks in and everything goes up 50% in price.

But a low income earner of $16k per year is now making $36k per year. More than double! So the 50% increase of prices means that the UBI helps the lower income person’s purchasing power to be on a more level field with the middle earners, even though the middle earners obviously still are better off with their larger income. Just less so.

And the person making $200k is now making $220k. But the 50% inflation means that they have to lower their consumption a bit, to be more in-line with the median earner.

So introducing UBI like this causes an automatic rebalancing between different levels of income, somewhat, even if the median earner is unaffected. Obviously this is greatly simplified though.

I don’t know if that’s true. I currently live in Europe but lived most of my life in the US.

I’ve had amazing Italian and Indian food, and more authentic, in Amsterdam, than I ever had living in the US (lived in multiple cities and regions). Also incredible fresh Mediterranean food in Amsterdam and Switzerland, in addition to Mediterranean countries.

I’ve had delicious food in the US, but it was usually so good because of fat/salt content. When I have good food in different European countries, it’s more the freshness of the ingredients and preparation, as well as unique flavors. It’s rare to find food as fresh as I’ve gotten used to in Europe when I visit the US now.

This is the key. You can’t have a vacant building charging ridiculous rent because of “speculation” while there are 10 similar buildings nearby that charge half the price and have tenants. No sane investor would fund that

You can’t built a “$2k rental”. You can only build a rental that someone will pay for. Landlords are building luxury housing because it’s the only thing that’s profitable right now due to the immensely ridiculous laws that don’t help people. But if an apartment building popped up in downtown SF charging $800/mo, it’s not like only the low income people would live there. Many people living in $3000/mo apartments also want cheaper apartments, which pushes up the price! So you can’t build “cheap apartments” or “luxury apartments”. Only “apartments”. And lots of them.

But if we suddenly built a million “luxury” apartments in each major city, then they couldn’t all charge high prices because there would be a bit of competition for tenants. Prices on the “slightly less luxury but still nice” apartments would have to drop faster.

I replied above to someone else about this same thing — you might be interested in that reply!

Absolutely not! Just that it’s more likely for someone to be able to take a job like that without becoming homeless or hungry, since there are a decent amount of young people who don’t need a lot.

I was mostly just trying to give a steel-man for the previous person’s thoughts before sharing my bit of info. Because it’s a complex issue and I don’t want to dismiss anyone acting in good faith.

The other part of my comment was, I thought, the more interesting part. About how this weird “able to support a family” vs “not” dichotomy seems to be a US problem that hasn’t hit Europe.

The Netherlands does have a more complex minimum wage law though, which starts low for a 15-year-old, and gets progressively higher until you’re a young adult (at 21) [0]. And it also has a clause that if you’re supporting yourself, then the highest level minimum wage applies regardless of age. I think that helps resolve the issue I mentioned above.

[0] https://www.government.nl/topics/minimum-wage/amount-of-the-...

It’s totally relevant because someone in their 20s might be able to live with their parents, or has multiple roommates etc. The amount of money that they need is much less than that of someone more established.

It is a really interesting contrast though, that in Amsterdam where I now live (and many other parts of Europe), this divide doesn’t exist as strongly.

We have a perfectly happy and healthy ~40 year old woman come to the office to tend to the plants, and she’s paid a totally fair livable wage. The guy who works at the cafeteria for the office complex supports his family in that job (and I’ve talked to him about it). Same with many other “low skill” workers that I talk to.

Baristas at a cafe seem to still be mostly 20 year olds, but maybe a bit less so than in the US

It goes against their core principle though, of ensuring that their users are their customers, not the product.

If advertisers become their customers, then the incentives might start to break just a little at a time. As long as you’re the (only) one paying them, you’re the customer. It’s a big part of why I trust them so much.

The subheading says:

> When prompted with an idea, ChatGPT will automatically generate tailored, detailed prompts for DALL-E 3

Then there’s a video of someone typing into ChatGPT and it responding with images