NeverFade

The internet created vast new opportunities for software engineers to create value. Generative AI is about replacing software engineers in creating that value. These are very different things.

Hamas is the favorite to win an election in Palestinian state:

> If elections were held today, Fatah would lose to Hamas 17 to 34 percent.

https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/03/22/poll-hamas-remains-p...

They are also the party that won the last (and only) election held by Palestinians, as well as the current rulers of Gaza.

Their explicit goal is to kill every Jew in Israel, and they have acted it out in the genocidal 10/7 massacre.

So not only do Palestinians support a party that promotes the genocide of all Jews in Israel - by all available evidence, this party is currently the favorite to control a Palestinian state.

Not to mention there's pretty solid ground to believe that if Fatah (Hamas's only viable rival) controlled a Palestinian state, they'd also support the genocide of Jews. Just look at the education they provide to West Bank children, describing Jews as subhuman monsters that must be eradicated.

You'd rather Israel doesn't have the technology to target terrorists with precision, and instead will be forced to use crude methods to carpet-bomb large areas where they hide?

They didn't just "protest" their company's work with Israel.

They took over company offices, including the office of Google Cloud CEO in Sunnyvale, and refused to vacate them for 9+ hours.

In what form of government is a vocal minority of activist workers allowed to take over their employer's place of business?

Please don't say "communism" as they would be sent to the gulag or worse in every communist regime that has ever existed.

Employment is high, but real wages have been trending down for more than 2 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_wages#/media/File:Wages_i...

So the average working person is in fact worse now economically than they were 2-3 years ago. It's not just a subjective feeling, and the other positive metrics don't change that.

Actually doing it is of course only for other people.

Yes, they're already crippling international shipping: https://apnews.com/article/red-sea-yemen-houthis-attack-ship...

The threat has already been realized. Ships are already being rerouted en-masse due to Houthi attacks: https://apnews.com/article/red-sea-yemen-houthis-attack-ship...

We all know the US military can defeat the Houthis. But so far it hasn't used its capabilities. It warned and threatened endlessly, while the Houthis continued their campaign of naval terror.

Now the Houthis are facing a competent military, that is so infused with progressive moralism that it can't use any of its competencies, and is very careful not to kill any Houthis.

Unless this paradigm breaks very soon, Houthis seem favored to win. Pretty easy to win against a military which bogus morality won't let it harm you, its enemy.

Yes, MBS is terrible, and his regime is autocratic.

Also, intelligent mature people make policy based on real-politik and the aggregate sum of its consequences. They don't just respond to whatever moral sentiments they experience in the moment.

The decision to push the Saudis away is destabilizing the whole region and will allow a violent, aggressive, revolutionary Iran to start and escalate extremely bloody conflicts throughout the region.

While it's a shame that one journalist was killed, was alienating the Saudis really worth the many thousands of lives lost as a result?

Iran is using the Houthis to apply pressure on a regional rival, Saudi Arabia.

The Saudis used to be a close American ally against Iran, but purist progressives in the Obama and now Biden admin pushed them away, and Iran was able to bring them to terms by wielding the Houthis in their backyard against them.

Iran is also using the Houthis to flare up a conflict that will prevent the Saudis from normalizing relations with Israel; Iran used Hamas to execute the 10/7 attack toward the same goal.

Finally, Iran is using one of its proxy (the Houthis) to preserve another proxy (Hamas). The Houthis are disrupting one of the world's most important shipping routes, which will eventually drive up prices (read: inflation) in an election year. Biden doesn't really want to get into an intense military operation in an election year, and his main alternative is to pressure Israel to let Hamas survive - as the Houthis demand.

Without presenting a full argument, just based on your own post, if everyone is starting to do this almost in unison, in cartel-like fashion, then each individual company has no consequences to worry about.

Seems like the good old false Marxist argument, in a sexy new "mathematical" package to appeal to a geeky crowd. I predict it will do extremely well here.

Their economy was stagnating for at least a decade before 2018. They've gone from near-zero growth to negative. It doesn't matter what the reasons are, really. The pandemic hit everywhere, and their choice to "value free time" is the problem here. Turns out you can't sustain a high quality of life without enough people working hard to produce the products and services that create this high quality of life.

The EU economy fell way below the US (after being roughly equal) because they were never able to compete in the new digital economy. All the big tech companies are American. You also have to ask yourself why the ECB and European governments had to cut spending. Perhaps because the levels before weren't sustainable? Perhaps because you can't just keep living beyond your means, as eventually you'll run out of other people's money?

Stagnation isn't "a good thing" when you're comparing to societies that are progressing. And it may be a zero sum game, when stagnating nations are drained of talent and brains, so this model is even less sustainable, as anyone who can do better leaves, and the rest are left to support those who don't do particularly well.

The only problem with this model is that it doesn't seem to be working long term. Economically, Europe has been stagnating for a long time, and recently its been in a decline. So it's a nice model as long as you can maintain it, which doesn't seem to be very long.

https://archive.ph/5eZjb

"Hate speech" isn't well-defined, which is the core of the problem with any policy trying to censor "hate speech".

What if you discuss sensitive health-related details with someone other than your doctor, for example your attorney?

The privacy issues here are bottomless, and so are the legal issues.

It seems like violations that used to be rare and unique, and a huge deal like Watergate when they blew up, have become completely routine.

Seems like we get such stories every week now.

Yes. Consider the case of Sandra A. Sellers, who was cancelled and fired after remarking that black students consistently end up at the bottom of her class: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/11/us/georgetown-university-...

It's a real problem, and you can see why nobody is addressing it honestly when these are the consequences of doing so.

> And does a phrase like "the bottom of the class" mean all that much when you're talking Harvard students?

Yes, very much so. It's no secret that we're starting to see a bi-modal distribution of outcomes for top school students. Contrary to the myth, graduating Harvard isn't (at least, no longer) a ticket to an exceptional career. Plenty of graduates proceed to have a normal (or worse) career that isn't better from what a graduate of a lower-tier school would achieve.

In tech, that means that while some top school grads end up in high-flying unicorns and desirable FAANG positions, others end up in sleepers like Oracle.

I can't think of a "good faith" reason for why the grievances of some races are elevated to a top priority, while the grievances of other races, that are often more recent and relevant, are not just ignored - but these races are further penalized by these "social justice" policies.

It's likely that individuals that support the social justice cause have good intentions, however, the cause itself as a system is leading to paradoxical outcomes that are different and sometimes the opposite of what it pretends to promote.

The promoters of "social justice" decided to penalize the Vietnamese the US harmed 1 generation ago to atone for the sins of 4 generations ago.

The real reason is because they want equity - equal outcome for all. That means penalizing the overachievers and redistributing the outcomes they deserve to the underachievers.

Race and other grievances are just excuses.

Also, embedded stereotypes are strengthened when the bottom of every class is full of AA admissions.

The social justice movement presumes to "make things right", but often it's hard or impossible to do so, and trying can have the opposite effect.

Case in point: a black family whose great-great-grandparents 200 years ago were slaves, versus an Asian family that immigrated from a nation impoverished by colonialism last year. The child of the former will heavily benefit from Affirmative Action, while the child of the latter will be heavily penalized.

Why?

Who is to say that the child whose ancestors lived in a rich country for the past 200 years, is more "disadvantaged" then the child whose entire ancestry as far back as the records go always lived in a dirt-poor nation, further impoverished by colonialism?

I suspect the real reason for this is to make job hopping harder, and improve the employer bargaining position.

If pay for UK engineers is so low, and housing costs are so high, that you cannot possibly afford a place with a private office - then your condition is materially different than US engineers. So much so that the discussion of your situation should be separate.

Either way, I don't see the point of your arguments. Nobody says that engineers who want to work from the office shouldn't be allowed to. We're just refuting the bogus argument that the office is some sort of distraction-free paradise offering ideal work conditions, compared to noisy WFH setups. Because for the vast majority of US engineers, it's rather the opposite.

The typical engineer will absolutely be able to afford this, especially as their remote status allows them to live in a low-cost location where they can rent a small house with a yard for the cost of 1br in SF.

> Homes are full of distractions

Offices are even more full of distractions, over which you have far less control.

At home, I can designate my own closed office. I have full control. I can remain distraction-free.

How does that compare to an open-plan office? People constantly walking and talking around you, many of whom have nothing to do with your job. You simply can't control that. You can't control the noise. You can't control being called into useless meetings or getting pulled into senseless distracting conversations. If you're a senior, you might get pinged multiple times every hour by juniors asking for advice, instead of being able to buffer these interruptions once every hour or two. Hard to buffer requests and questions when they are a tap on the shoulder instead of a message waiting in some inbox.