LapsangGuzzler

> Genuinely create value for society - not just look to make a buck. It's more sustainable and rewarding in the long run.

I loathe reading stuff like this. Money is so important until you have it, and then it becomes fashionable to talk how there are more important things.

To any SAAS founders who feel strongly that there are more important things than money, feel free to give away your fortunes to feed the hungry if you’re in search of a higher calling. There are many who would appreciate it.

You’re shooting for one of the hardest types of jobs out there: entry level remote work with decent pay. There’s not much of that around, which means it’s gonna be highly competitive.

I’d advise against setting a hard timeline like 6 months and instead focus on finding something that is interesting and you can devote free time to.

I started out in software sales a decade ago and realized it wasn’t for me. I learned basic web dev at home in my free time and got my first dev job after about a year of building stuff at home. I found a path that was sustainable and cultivated my interest, which is the most important part of career switching imo.

Also, working in an office for a few years was invaluable, I had to do it to get the experience that has allowed me to work remote. If you restrict yourself to remote jobs then you are cutting yourself off from vital opportunities and experience.

> Now, in reality amazon is basically an internet flea market

That is the perfect description of Amazon. The internet’s flea market.

This a perfect situation for cheap knockoffs to proliferate though.

My dad wanted a Theragun and bought one on Amazon. He thought he got a deal and it looked just like a Theragun until it arrived and he saw the cheap power connectors and no external battery.

Amazon is more than happy for cheap knockoffs to spread and rip people off by gaming thr product search system. Sure, middlemen are being cut out, but in many cases, so is the previously trusted vendor.

No one is saying that you can’t build something at your kitchen table.

This is why labor organizing is so important.

The Hollywood writers got major protections against AI exploitation in their new deal, and surely SAG will follow with their own version. Hollywood can’t exist without its writers or actors and they’ve made it clear to the executive class that they will not take these changes lying down.

Whenever I read a piece like this or another UX blog, it just becomes so obvious how little we care about a11y.

“Good” (as in accessible) design is pretty boring and decluttered compared to most modern expectations of web apps. I read Adam Silver’s book on forms and came away realizing that we’re doing it entirely wrong from an a11y standpoint but that’s just not a priority.

This is how I’ve felt about it. I’m a member and I had no idea you can vote for board members, that never came up during the pitch to sign up. It was all about the member-only sales events and cash back rewards.

I’m sure the ad-driven subsidy on TVs plays a huge part. TV prices have declined as “dumb” TVs have been phased out of the market. A more niche tool like a large e-ink display might not make as much sense from to price this way since ad systems need large networks of users to be relevant.

> and fortunately or unfortunately, for many, work provides that function.

I agree with this, but the problem is that there is no guarantee of work being available to everyone. With the rise of AI and hyper-specialization of work, that problem is only going to get worse.

Typically, folks who are running or thinking about running don’t directly answer questions about it.

It’s also very common for inside knowledge on an exploratory committee to be leaked to the press ahead of a run. Serious candidates hire a team to strategize months before making an announcement and it never stays silent because the exploratory committee itself tends to leak in order to gauge the early reaction. We’ve seen neither of these things from Newsom.

I don’t think an attack like that works on the national level, he’s very polished in his media appearances and his public persona.

His personal life is a potential liability, though. He’s a pretty well-known philanderer and that’s exactly how the right knows how to attack opponents.

That, I could see.

I’m very skeptical of this, I think he’s slowly raising his profile for a 2028 run.

He’s categorically denied over and over again that he’s interested in forcing Biden into a primary and I think it’s a misread to see this as anything more than a governor doing their job. He’s never left any ambiguity in his answers on this topic.

You could apply this argument to so many modern workforce changes, for example, the 40-hour 5-day workweek. Throughout history, most workers have not had the kind of rights that they do today.

I think we all deserve to make progress on things like retirement instead of making arguments like this. Sure, retirement hasn’t always been a guarantee, but can we agree that this isn’t a good thing?

We never question the desire to innovate in how to make money, but we’re often very quick to dismiss the idea that we can also dream to innovate society in a way that’s decoupled from profit, which is sad.

I imagine that trying to incorporate a new community and starting with a clean zoning code would reduce some costs, but there are still major concerns around the incentives. That private project sounds more like a company town attempt than what this piece describes.

My company has a similar policy and it’s worked pretty well, but has some downsides.

A big one is that being a smaller, super ambitious startup means that we are shipping at an incredible rate (yay). However, the fidelity of our planning has declined quite a bit because we’ve taken the time previously allotted to meetings and increased our overall throughput with it. Because of this, there’s more deviation from what was planned and designed to what was shipped and there’s less alignment across teams, so it’s harder to coordinate feature development. Overall, we’re shipping stuff that tends to churn faster, but the hope is that it’s just temporary.

Could be, it could also be that they tanked morale with massive layoffs and now they want to make it look like everything is good and they’re back on the growth train.

When a company has to cut a specific percentage, it’s impossible not to cut good people alongside low performers. The other problem with the “low performers” theory is that it assumes a competent management layer and ELT. How often has upper management made it harder for you to do your job because of poor communication, resource management, etc.?

I agree with this, but I also think we’re going to start to see a social rejection of AI being applied this way if things continue.

It’s threatening so many people across so many industries that I think it will become a brand risk to companies, particularly in high profile industries like entertainment.

Anecdotally, I watched the new Indiana Jones movie and I found the de-aging scene to be so weird and creepy, the friends I was there with felt the same and it was widely discussed among reviewers and critics. It really represents the planned uselessness of humanity in the AI era and I think more people are going to wake up to that reality as time goes by.

> Hollywood is not really in transition.

This is not true, the pay and corporate culture in Hollywood has changed dramatically in the last decade, there’s a ton being written about this right now.

The streaming services are a huge part of Hollywood now because they’ve represented the growth while the networks have faded as people cut the cord. All kinds of folks have been seeing the stability of their jobs disappear in the Netflix era.

I agree that we need more transparency on pay and how it impacts the bottom line, even just being able to publicly post total comp on all employees would dramatically change the tone of the conversation.

That said, I don’t think there’s anything dishonest about forcing employers to pay living wages, particularly with inflation as it’s been.

Yeah, it’s an interesting idea but I still don’t think it’s viable because this already done in some industries and comes with its own problems.

One high-profile example is “Hollywood” accounting for residuals paid out to actors and staff on projects. Peter Jackson sued New Line cinema because they argued that they lost millions making Lord of the Rings and therefore didn’t have any money to pay his residual, blatant manipulation and this happens all the time. Companies are good at moving cash around the world to avoid paying taxes, this same mechanism could easily be used to show workers a manipulated version of their value. Who really trusts their employer to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

The fact that the automaker CEOs (and even POTUS) were putting out statements that they didn’t believe a strike was imminent only to turn around and see 150k workers authorize the strike says a bit about their mindset.

> nor do I agree with the minimum wage, which is a similar overstep from the government into employer-employee relationships.

Read up on the history of the minimum wage in the US. It was demanded by striking workers who were tired of working in sweatshops for terrible pay.[0]

By the way, the 40-hour workweek also came about due to worker strikes. Would you prefer we all go back to working 7 days a week?

0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_S...

It’s interesting to see how they’re strategizing this strike by individually shutting down plants to apply pressure to the automakers gradually instead of all at once. This keeps more workers collecting a paycheck while the threat of a larger shutdown looms. It’s a great idea from a labor organizing standpoint.

Adding friction makes sense in this context. The ease with which we as technologists move customer data between systems directly contributes to the privacy problem. It’s not the only avenue to improve end-user privacy, but as long it remains easy for companies to move sensitive customer data between systems, this will continue to be abused.

> As highlighted in the National Cybersecurity Strategy and its Implementation Plan Initiative 4.2.1, the ONCD has established an Open-Source Software Security Initiative (OS3I) to champion the adoption of memory safe programming languages and open-source software security.

This says nothing about "requiring" OSS to use memory safe languages. This headline is misleading.

This is a nationwide problem, it's not restricted to states that opted out of expansion. Federal Law requires that ERs treat anyone who comes in, regardless of ability to pay. Until the poor are able to access other resources like urgent care clinics, this is going to continue to be a problem.

My understanding is that medical debt would still be collectible and could be sold to third party debt collectors. It just couldn't hurt your credit report.

True, but there's also the reality that maintenance costs increase over time for software projects as upstream vendors change their pricing models and codebases grow in size and complexity. I can see why a product like Kagi wants to keep their traffic tied to recurring revenue instead of selling a bunch of credits upfront.