jetsnoc

I've been in what I think is a similar place before. Every now and then, I still find myself right there on the edge. In those moments, for me, it's not that I want to exist, or not exist, it's just ...grey. And, an average grey at that - let's call it #CCC. Nothing drives me or energizes me. I just ... am. The advice you mention -- finding friends, connecting with the world around you, finding purpose, finding passion, finding things that satisfy the brain -- was always useless advice to me. It's honestly good advice if a person is in a position to receive it and when they try it, it actually works and moves the needle. It just didn't work for me because it was the wrong timing. I needed to solve my first problems first.

I had to figure out my brain chemistry and what my brain needed. Once everything was mostly fine-tuned through some meds and therapy, I was able to better figure out what I needed.

I found the advice that was previously useless to me made a difference. It's not like code though where you knock something out and after twenty hours of hard work you feel like you achieved something grand and you're proud of your work. No, this is a much slower pace and it requires persistence. Small attempts day by day leads to things looking entirely different after a year.

I needed to work on my physical health and exercise more. I needed healthier habits and boundaries with work. That put my brain chemistry in an even better position.

I needed a connection to people. I too am not the best at maintaining relationships. My brain has issues with object permanence. If it is not in front of me, even people, I just don't think about them. I set up a notebook as a personal CRM and I try to check in with a group of friends and a very close friend as often as I can. Be sure to make a close friend or two. Someone you can share who you really are with. Talk about the things that are not going well in your life. Our culture doesn't promote people being vulnerable with one another but it makes a huge difference if you can find a friend you feel comfortable getting close to. It was challenging for me in my mid to late thirties to try and connect with people again. People are married, have kids, and have moved on and I simply did not stay in touch. Here I was suddenly 'showing back up' as if I hadn't flaked on them for the last 15 years. It has made a difference to have friends. At the end of the day, we're a social species, even the most introverted of us. It may not feel natural or it may not even feel like it's improving your situation but keep grinding it out to create some close friends. I'm a software developer too. I find I like the ritual of being tenacious and pushing through to solve interesting problems. It's a dopamine hit for me to have an interesting problem and solve it. I then love factoring the solution until it is the best abstraction I can come up with. But, my brain has an issue with classifying "interesting" correctly so I have to hack my motivation on mundane work frequently. If an issue isn't interesting, my brain loses motivation. If it is something that really interests my brain, I'm fully on board until I understand the inner workings. I find I have to hack my motivations with relationships, too. I started to treat it as a social experiment and something I needed to figure out.

You might try to find some gregarious folks who do things outside of your comfort zone. Find people with passions that are different than yours but not in a mediocre way where you will be bored and not interested when they talk. You write code and debug it and build up a mental model of how it works. You're going to want to find people with similarly challenging work and passions. It could be anything, maybe they like riding horses, magnet fishing, riding ATVs, camping, shooting, goofing around on a podcast, rock climbing, ballroom dancing, sewing, or painting. Maybe they're just funny and make you laugh and you appreciate the hours of hard work and their ability to craft and weave an interesting story and nail it with a punch line. Find a friend that will call you up on a Saturday and get you to do something you haven't done before. Some of my best memories with friends are of them pushing me out of my comfort zones and me pushing them out of theirs. If that is too far of a reach, I've found working on open-source software gets you into a community and it's not that far of a stretch to make friends in those communities. I met a lot of people through the Asterisk PBX community decades ago. I couldn't value any of this though until I solved my first problems first.

I don't know if any of my advice is helpful or resonates. I am absolutely not an expert. I'm just another person slinging code, trying to find my wallet or keys in my house, living on this rock that is hurling through space at 1.3 million miles per hour.

My personal email is in my profile. Don't hesitate to reach out to me either.

My great grandmother Julianna died in 1935 aborting herself with a coat hanger in Southern Idaho. She was born in 1915 and died in 1935. Twenty years old. I’m a fifth-generation Idahoan, my family moved to Idaho during the great Mormon exodus of Illinois.

They were extremely impoverished. It was the Great Depression and in one of her letters, she writes about not even having the luxury of bone broth They were barely able to take care of their two children and she writes that it was better to save two children than let three starve. In her letters, she describes her guilt and the emotional pain she endured watching her two children be hungry. One of those children was my grandmother. She describes her concerns of being malnourished, she had been opting not to eat as much to let her two children eat, and how that would affect her unborn child.

She wrote that her pregnancy was early enough that she could reconcile her faith in allowing her two other children to survive and that not giving birth to a malnourished child would also be the right thing to do for that child as well. In college ethics classes, I became enamored with her situation and had a dozen or more conversations with my grandmother, I read my great-grandmother's letters and heard the story as passed through the generations. I will always cherish those conversations with my grandmother.

This of course ultimately developed my personal beliefs. I am thinking of her and my grandmother today.

I’m in a same-sex marriage and my stomach dropped reading Clarence Thomas’s opinion and his reference to Obergefell. It wasn’t that long ago I wasn’t able to see my now-husband in the hospital — the emergency room - here in conservative Idaho. I do understand his opinion and context but even if legally sound, it affects me.

We the people of the United States of America know how to edit our living constitution and make the rights that we want a constitutional guarantee. It seems impossible at the moment with the divisiveness, polarization and in-fighting but we know that religion is on the decline and you will see that represented in elections in the coming decades. It is possible, we just don’t know the path today. It can be done, but it won’t be easy.

I’m sorry, this isn’t all that related to Hacker News. To relate it back, I guess I am saying that we’re hackers, we can hack society, we can hack belief systems, we can take unrelated ideas and bring them together to create something new just like we do inventing new categories of products. We can disrupt things through big ideas and through execution. If we want change, it will be a lot of hacking and hard work. After all, I think it was social / political hacking by the creators of this movement that got us here to today.

I personally experienced something similar 20 years ago. Mine was due to piss-poor policing as well. Thank The Universe that I wasn't in a jail-cell for two weeks and it wasn't during a pandemic.

My story.

I was living in Utah and a City police department in Idaho had a larceny warrant out for my arrest.

Why? Before I had moved to Utah, I lived in Idaho. I drove a friend to another friends house and dropped them off. I later picked them up again. He didn't have a license or a car. Unbeknownst to me, allegedly, he stole a laptop when they were at the other persons house. The plates for my vehicle were written down and filed in the police report as a detail. The police report was clear that I didn't commit the theft, the other person did, but I drove them. The detectives were supposed to come get my statement and used my vehicle registration to call me and investigate. Someone got lazy and they put the arrest warrant out on me as the owner of the vehicle.

Two years later, I'm driving to work one day and I get pulled over for a missing taillight and as they run my information, they find I have a warrant for Larceny theft for something over $2,500 out of Idaho. They throw me in Jail and keep me for four days. I was a naive and unexperienced "kid" (21 years old) thrown into a rough environment where others really had stolen cars, had hard drug problems and violent offenses and Utah was just waiting for as long as they wanted to extradite me back to Idaho. The environment was shocking to me. Insinuations of violence if I didn't give another "kid" my pillow, extreme anger and extreme homophobia everywhere.

I couldn't get arraigned or get in front of a Judge since it wasn't a warrant out of Utah. My family in Idaho retained a lawyer, the lawyer interviewed the person who filed the police report and she knew who stole it and knew it wasn't me and she even told the police as much which cleared my name and got the warrant squashed and got me released.

The company I worked for let me go without cause. Right to work state - Utah. The situation made them uncomfortable.

Of course, no repercussions for a false warrant. I was in jail for four days, I lose my job, during the arrest they impounded my vehicle and I have to pay fees to get it out. I'm fortunate my family had the means to retain a lawyer and get the warrant squashed but if it wasn't for that luxury, I likely would have been there for at-least another week as Idaho took their sweet time to send a Sheriff to Utah to come pick me up.

There really should be reform for the criteria required for a warrant and the criteria and timeframe for extradition. It should be a crime to imprison someone for four days or two weeks without being arraigned even if extradition is involved. It's 2022, can't extradition be required within 24-hours? We have planes and that expense would hopefully encourage a police department to be smart about the warrants they place.

I wonder if I could have won a civil case for the shoddy police work leading to my legal expenses to get me out and my lost wages but didn't have the means to pursue it against the City Police Department. I licked my wounds, moved on and didn't really think about it again until this article.

Navigating up a uri path works: https://jobs.lever.co/twisp/

Competing companies are able to launch their own satellites. Amazon is launching Project Kuiper satellites as soon as Q4 2022.

KRS | Full time | Remote (US/EU)

  https://krs.io

KRS is a private company that specializes in back-office accounting, customer specific marketing, data analytics and payments solutions for over 1000 US clients. Our software teams have been remote-first since the early 2000s and we will always be remote. These positions are fulltime remote employee positions. We primarily hire from the US/EU but will make an exception for exceptional talent. KRS will _not_ consider agencies, outsourced or software development contracts for this role. We are looking to hire fulltime, W2 or Contracted if in the EU.

I have the following positions available:

- Python Cloud (AWS) Data Engineer

We are seeking a senior level Python developer to create advanced data analytics pipelines using S3, Glue, Apache Hudi, Athena and Redshift.

https://www.ziprecruiter.com/job/b7856859

- C#/Xamarin Mobile Developer

Build and maintain iOS and Android mobile applications for our Loyalty and Mobile Payment solutions. https://tinyurl.com/krs-xamarin-dev

Additional contact information for me is under my profiel.

They have a lot of issues if they "want everybody else on Discord" They cancelled an account of mine because it shared a phone number with a secondary account of mine. (1 for work; 1 for personal use.) Support said "Account ban is valid - FRAUD/SPAM" with no ability to have a conversation with them or escalate. My cellphone number is now blacklisted for SMS validation. Incredibly weird. No support for their products, not really.

KickBack Rewards Systems | Full time | Remote (US/EU)

  KickBack Rewards Systems
  http://www.kickbacksystems.com
  http://careers.kickbacksystems.com

KickBack Rewards Systems (KRS) is a bootstrapped company that specializes in customer specific marketing and payments solutions for over 1000 US clients. Our software teams have been remote-first since the early 2000s and we will always be remote.

- Javascript/Frontend Developer

We are seeking a mid to senior level frontend developer. ReactJS Shop. This is a fulltime remote employee position. We primarily hire from the US/EU but will make an exception for exceptional talent. KRS will _not_ consider agencies, outsourced or software development contracts for this role. We are looking to hire fulltime, W2.

Fixed. Thank you!

KickBack Rewards Systems | Full time | Remote

  KickBack Rewards Systems
  http://www.kickbacksystems.com
  http://careers.kickbacksystems.com

KickBack Rewards Systems (KRS) is a bootstrapped company that specializes in customer specific marketing and payments solutions for over 1000 US clients. Our software teams have been remote-first since the early 2000s and we will always be remote.

- Python Developer

We are seeking a mid to senior level Python developer. This is a fulltime remote employee position. We primarily hire from the US but will make an exception for exceptional talent. KRS will _not_ consider agencies, outsourced or software development contracts for this role. We are looking to hire fulltime, W2.

https://kickbackpoints.bamboohr.com/jobs/view.php?id=38

- Mobile Developer

We are seeking a mid to senior level mobile developer with experience in Progressive Web Apps (PWA) and Xamarin (C#.) We primarily hire from the US but will make an exception for exceptional talent. KRS will _not_ consider agencies, outsourced or software development contracts for this role. We are looking to hire fulltime, W2.

https://kickbackpoints.bamboohr.com/jobs/view.php?id=58

To apply: Email me, my contact information is located under my profile, or, visit http://careers.kickbacksystems.com

KickBack Rewards Systems | Full time | Remote

  KickBack Rewards Systems
  http://www.kickbacksystems.com
  http://careers.kickbacksystems.com

KickBack Rewards Systems (KRS) is a bootstrapped company that specializes in customer specific marketing and payments solutions for over 1000 US clients.

- Lead Senior Software Engineer

We are seeking a Senior Fullstack Developer with leadership experience to act as a technical team lead. We’re looking for someone with a strong software development background in PHP, JavaScript and Python.We need a leader who can mentor and help the team develop better applications. This is a fulltime remote employee position. If remote, candidate must be willing to work around regular MST (-0700) office hours. KRS will _not_ consider agencies, outsourced or software development contracts for this role.

https://kickbackpoints.bamboohr.com/jobs/view.php?id=11

To apply: Email me, my contact information is located under my profile, or, visit http://careers.kickbacksystems.com

GitLab declines applications very quickly without any detail. I of course understand that their may be some department of labor politics involved "Don't tell the applicant the reason" but it sure is disappointing. My advice? Be careful with the apply with LinkedIn button. It probably makes the application look ridiculous and unworthy of a decent reply.

You can't predict the market but I think they still have some growth ahead of them and that their shares will still rise. They won't rally and grow as much as they have forever but I don't think the market has softened up for them yet. I'm going to buy while they are a little down.

Sorry, I was spouting hyperbole to counter-act hyperbole. You're right, that is not helpful, I agree. As someone says below: Only Apple can conclusively provide the numbers and they have no desire to do so. So, everyones opinion is just that. Anecdotal and an opinion because _no one_ can back up their claims. I'll take my statement back though, because it's not useful to fight hyperbole with hyperbole. What I can say is, I was impacted twice and I have since switched vendors.

Good point. I was pretty myopic when I wrote that. Having a good keyboard that does not fail is something all laptop users would want.

Google apple keyboard class action lawsuit

I think a lot of people vastly underestimate the size of the problem with the keyboard. Apple has had atleast three class action lawsuits regarding the defective keyboards. They have setup a warranty program to try and placate consumers and resolve the lawsuits. It's a real problem and just because it did not impact you does not mean that millions of others have not been impacted. So here we are, I'm a developer of 1 and have been impacted you're a developer of 1 and have not been impacted. It doesn't make yours or my experience any less real but I think the class action lawsuits speak for themselves. For me personally, it's hard to write a lot of code when keys don't hit or they endlessly repeat. So, I picked up a Lenovo and through Linux on it and ditched the MBP.

I honestly don't know how any of the other market shares can put up with this failing keyboard either. For students, teachers, scientists .. any one that uses a keyboard frequently... it would have to be real hard to write a paper with keys that fail or keys that start repeating constantly.

In the article they cite the MBP as being the most popular notebook for developers so this niche must be important, otherwise why list it?:

> Already the most popular notebook for developers around the world, the new MacBook Pro can compile code faster and run multiple virtual machines and test environments easier than before.

What we want is a functional keyboard. They are losing this market-share quickly but you're right maybe they don't care about this market anymore. They must not since they aren't doing anything about it.

Hiring folks also increases the communication overhead. If you are a team of 3 and hire a 4th you now have a new person that needs trained, needs to learn tribal knowledge, asks the other 3 people different things and keeps them busy distracting them from what were doing - finding product market fit. Any more, I prefer lean & scrappy teams. Small teams get more done. Only scale up the other bullshit when you absolutely have to.

I'm 35, I've had issues with heartburn for most of my adult life. A few times, I've used baking soda temporarily when I don't have access to another antacid. I quit doing that, because of the last three times. The two times before last, my right knee dislocated ("popped out") hours after and I fell to the floor. That was startling. I didn't "correlate" that it could be related until the second time it happened. The final time I had it, I woke up to a burning and excruciating pain that coursed my entire back. I don't know if it was the ligaments, the discs, or what not but it was painful. I've felt that a few more times in the middle of the night without having had baking soda. So, very likely not related since it was a single dose. But, I'm not experimenting with baking soda as an antacid again with my knee having dislocated twice! There must be no relation but it's a lot like never eating a food again after getting terribly ill. Not gonna do that again!

I manage software development teams. I spend my days in video meetings, writing emails, reviewing code (sometimes writing it on side projects to keep current) and writing documents. I type 120 WPM and live and die by my keyboard. Most of the time I am using an external keyboard but when I travel or work flexibly away from my house, it's all on the butterfly keyboard. After a year, several keys were useless, - enter ;, j and e. They would stick and repeat the character too much, or not recognize a hit at all. Like a good Apple fan boy I always purchase Apple care so I was able to send it in for repair but being without a machine for three days was a non-starter. So, I ordered a Lenovo T480S, installed Linux and prepared an environment for when my MBP 2016 touchbar unit went back to Apple. My MBP has been back from Apple for two months now and I have yet to boot it.... The keyboard on this Lenovo is ridiculously great-- it's amazing to be able to work again :) And, its not just me we've had 4 MBP Touchbar retinas have keys fail around the 9mos to 1yr mark. One 3 of them, Apple gave us grief as if it was standard "wear and tear." Uh, ya, these $4K aluminum rigs are going to be around dust, and humans have hair ... and... well its on you to make a more resilient key switch Apple... As for me, sticking with Lenovo box from here on out.

No, it means each person works 9.5 to 10 hours per day and can set his/her start/stop times accordingly to achieve that.

KickBack Rewards Systems, Remote

  KickBack Rewards Systems
  http://www.kickbacksystems.com
  http://careers.kickbacksystems.com

KickBack Rewards Systems is a privately held company founded in 1999 that specializes in customer specific marketing and payments for over 1000 US clients. Our clients include a half-dozen Fortune 50 companies, one of them is an anchor partner in our national coalition loyalty program. This candidate will be joining a medium sized team of 13 developers who all commit to their projects as a labor of love and their lives work. If you are interested in any of these positions my contact information is located under my profile.

- Lead Senior Software Engineer

We are seeking a Senior full-stack Developer with leadership experience to act as a technical team lead. We’re looking for someone with a strong software development background who has deep JavaScript experience who can help the team develop better applications. The correct person must be a polyglot and should feel comfortable reviewing JavaScript, PHP, Python and have a willingness to learn C# (Xamarin) for mobile projects. Candidates with previous experience on Agile teams will be well suited for this position. This is a full-time remote employee position. If remote, candidate must be willing to work around regular MST (-0700) office hours. KRS will _not_ consider agencies, outsourced or software development contracts for tihs role. -

To apply: Email me, my contact information is located under my profile, or, visit http://careers.kickbacksystems.com

I'm at the tail end too, and don't "get it" but I can see it for what it is, I think. I think for a number of people, money is more of an achievement than something you convert in to goods and services. It's a number on a leaderboard to track and I think likes/favorites/hearts on Social Media may be real similar and far easier to achieve since there is little to no risk and very little work required. They collect them for recognition, self-esteem and to rank higher on a leaderboard, not much more to it. They are earning that next level and winning a game.

> no one actually believes that anyone can code. [..] When did an entire industry of people get pre-judged as lying?

I've been hiring recently for a senior developer and I have had a dozen or more candidates not be able to explain composition and inheritance or the differences between an Object Oriented or Functional language. One person started describing how to define functions and another couldn't really explain inheritance.

For my company, candidates lying on their resume is our experience. A number of people ARE lying on their resume. we've front-loaded a lot of the "we don't trust your resume" in to the screening process and the first 30-minute screen because so many people list the dogs breakfast on their resume, but really can't do those things. I think a lot of times, someone else on the project team may have hacked on that type of thing and so they list it on their resume. There aren't a lot of good answers -- besides validating those skillsets -- since people can list anything that they want on their resume. I would love for someone to have an accreditation or certification program that was widely used so that we could know someone could do the work and most importantly do the work well since the implementation and the patterns they will be choosing will be with our company for years to come.

KickBack Rewards Systems, Remote

  KickBack Rewards Systems
  http://www.kickbacksystems.com
  http://careers.kickbacksystems.com

KickBack Rewards Systems is a privately held company founded in 1999 that specializes in customer specific marketing and payments for over 1000 US clients. Our clients include a half-dozen Fortune 50 companies, one of them is an anchor partner in our national coalition loyalty program. This candidate will be joining a medium sized team of 13 developers who all commit to their projects as a labor of love and their lives work. If you are interested in any of these positions my contact information is located under my profile.

- Lead Senior Software Engineer

We are seeking a Senior full-stack Developer with leadership experience to act as a technical team lead. We’re looking for someone with a strong software development background who has deep JavaScript experience who can help the team develop better applications. The correct person must be a polyglot and should feel comfortable reviewing JavaScript, PHP, Python and have a willingness to learn C# (Xamarin) for mobile projects. Candidates with previous experience on Agile teams will be well suited for this position. This is a full-time remote employee position. If remote, candidate must be willing to work around regular MST (-0700) office hours. KRS will _not_ consider agencies, outsourced or software development contracts for tihs role. -

To apply: Email me, my contact information is located under my profile, or, visit http://careers.kickbacksystems.com

I'm using Cloud9 and Bitbucket. I was thinking just the other day how I would love to ditch my main rig for an iPad. Researching this some it looks like Duet or Puffin Browser gets Cloud9 mostly working.

What do you score on?

AI is really exciting. A computer system modeled after the human brain and nervous system detects neural connectivity issues in the human brain and nervous system brought on by Alzheimers. And, we are just scratching the surface of this technology. I believe the pace and acceleration of innovation for AI will be like nothing we've seen before. At some point, and we have seen a little bit of this already, it will basically build and enhance itself. This may become an arms race of corporations and countries having the largest neural networks. At first, these networks will be aggressively learning and making themselves more intelligent by modifying themselves.

That is a good point. When I wrote my note, I was wondering about the middle-ground. An engineer that meets the criteria above but aren't interested in risk so instead of the spoils of millions, they trade their risk for the spoils of tens or hundreds of thousands. Basically, good bonuses for being a high-performer in a high-performing organization. The more I thought of it, the more I realized the middle ground already exists in Corporate America. If you want to trade ping pong tables for income, found a start-up or move in to Corporate America and starting playing the ladders.