UweSchmidt

To be fair, there is a lot of progress going on these days, but even if there was none - there would be all kinds of "growth" to be squeezed out of what the giants before us built. The internet can still bring a lot more of that "literacy" to the world.

But you can't deny the diminished optimism about technology, and the future in general. We can't get Fusion, we can't get quantum computing, we won't have a base on the moon, expensive physics experiments find nothing practial.

- blocking of IP addresses on an ISP level, introduced via court order

- folks who organize hockey lose some revenue

For me, the former is a 10/10, the latter maybe a 3/10. About as severe as ..bike theft. Happens all over the place, costs normal people quite a bit of money and distress, and no one does a thing about it.

This reflects an inappropriate influence of that sports league on law and society, don't you think?

Even if you get a little more as a freelancer, workers in general have not benefitted appropriately from the productivity increase since the 70s.

Similarly in Germany we used to have only had 3 state TV channels, ultimately controlled by the ruling parties. Thinking about it now, I'm sure it was quite biased in all kinds of ways. And yet, people got their vaccinations without rioting.

We used to have a neutral ground of, say, a respected newspaper or TV show which had the ability to reign in radicalization, and would present issues by weighing both sides in a fair and representative way. This does no longer exist. It's us-vs-them, the other side is evil. Additionally our competitive society has no issue with creating and vilifying classes of losers and accepts a growing divide between rich and poor.

There you have your shooters. There you have Trump 2024 or who else comes along (what kind of politician can only thrive in this climate?)

My solution? I'd recommend everyone to smoke or drink some of your favorite drug or play some peaceful music and meditate over why the other side from your perspective is human, and what valid arguments they could have, or what made them think the way they do.

Of course Discord has no responsibility in what people talk about on their system. Otherwise they should claim partial ownership on all good ideas that come out of it too.

I blame a divisive society pitting people against each other and allowing no middle ground, leading to radicalization, and the availability of guns that allow people to immediately act on their hate.

"Surely doing wild west genetic engineering would be bad, right? So let's have oversight and laws around it."

"But our friends advised us to check out that one clinic when we're in Dubai next time, and their kids are really exceptionally pretty and are doing so well in sports. I want to be careful for our baby since my grandfather had that one condition..."

"The social and political implications of gene editing are also huge unknowns, and unfortunately there’s been scant debate among policy makers and the general public."

Capital and social capital is already giving their offspring an uncatchable advantage on, or outside of levelled playing fields. Genetic engineering could finally cement them into a biological royalty.

as well as "germline editing, in which changes are made to the DNA of an embryo".

The author is concerned by the latter and I think you describe the former.

I think the dream of finding ambitious and cool people in a hot location and succeed with a true startup, i.e. not something backed or done by people who are already successful or well connected is dead anyway even in Silicon Valley and never really existed anywhere else. Over there however you still have those mystical FAANG salaries...

Dublin and London might be different from Irish and English perspective, respectively.

Anyone got any examples for that the author might mean with that?

You can go for that Berlin lifestyle and to work in some neat startups (as an underpaid employee) but that's not the canonical definition for succcess imo.

You can either remain the central forum hub of the internet, or be replaced when the next big thing comes around. Just think how many major websites came and went during those last short 20 years.

Dropping everything in life for that one perfect game will always be a temptation... ;)

In Germany a lot of that stuff is illegal already or needs to be approved by the Betriebsrat (work council) but can come in through the backdoor as little known features of common software anyway.

Also better music, relaxed dress code and light chores in between sets.

Recently there was an article about the wife of a deceased coworker who had to use the tech support channel to inform his former colleagues about his death/suicide. There's something to be said about an implicit, unconditional belonging to a community (not to be confused with being a 5$-supporter of a Twitch streamer) and that is something we have lost in western society for the most part.

If the Digital Corps can't get it done with people who can only make 25k a year, I guess we need some free market consultants for 200$/hour!

Now, as the career matures, more Linux won't help us any more, so we focus on team dynamics, social skills, business logic, and, if you're entirely over it, eventually leadership.

But, if the practical quantum computer came along tomorrow, opening up another tier of income and glory if we'd spend our weekends tinkering with the prototypes, we'd sure love it all again!