louison11

Yes but it’s a festival; with food vendors etc right? Very different from a city that builds itself from the ground.

Techies/wealthy people remain a minority, not a majority. In fact, if you tell someone you're in tech, expect to be booed/slightly shamed; as it's the type of people a lot of regular burners have a judgment against. But again, nobody's gonna ask you what you do at Burning Man. And if they do, just say "I'm alive." That's gonna fit the culture.

What I'll say is you'll definitely see an influx of more superficial/wealthy people coming for the last 3 days. Rich shallow people who don't care about the Burning Man spirit and just want to come for the final party, they don't bother to come for the whole week, they just rent an expensive RV for the last few days.

If you do go, go for the whole week, and you'll get to experience the real burning man in the first few days.

It's absolutely true. When you're there, there is no doubt it is absolutely the best place to be as far as party and creativity goes. That being said, it depends on what you're looking for in life. But the energy, time and investment that people put into this thing is absolutely mad. It doesn't compare to anything else that exists in the world, not even by a factor of 1:10. It's just insane.

And there are also honestly very few countries that 1/ would let this happen without intervening, 2/ even have such a wide open space to make this happen for 70k people with just desert everywhere in all directions.

This seems so… obvious? How can a company of this size, with its talent and expertise, not have standardized tests or specs preventing such a blatant flaw?

This article is like people in the early days of GUIs complaining that graphical interfaces make using a computer so much slower versus just typing the right command in console right away. That was true at first… until it wasn’t. AI is still in its infancy and a lot of the noise discussed in the article is real. But it will eventually create an Internet/OS interface we can barely fathom. Just project yourself 50 years from now: our current web pages will look archaic. Everything will be conversational, using language, vision, the whole spectrum.

30 min a day or 3hrs a week in a gym is all you need. I’ve been working out for 10 years, and if I can pull 3 hours in 1 week, it’s a great week! And it’ll keep me real strong. Plus, makes you sleep better, which means you probably need to sleep less. Working out is almost always a “you get more than what you gave” kinda deal.

Nah it's still very easy. The logic is pretty simple. Europe could really use more talent... and the bar is quite low. Any developer/engineer of any grade will easily get a visa. Any retiree will also easily get a non-work long-term visa with just 1 year worth of minimum wage (around 20k in most of Western Europe) as savings to prove self-sufficiency. So it's extremely easy and almost a non-issue compared to the other side of the pond.

This is true, I have omitted this path because I am not so familiar with it. The trouble however is that this only works for employees, not for self-employed or startup founders. So in some way I guess they make it kind-of easier if you just get a job, versus try to create jobs... which is pretty strange?

You are correct, however the criteria are a lot more relaxed in Europe comparatively. Most positions in tech, engineering and healthcare are often exempt from labor market tests. Also, there are plenty of options for "entrepreneurs" and self-employed digital nomads, often requiring some savings to prove sufficiency. I live in Portugal, and I believe the amount required when we moved was about 12k. In France, I believe it is closer to 21k (which is basically minimum wage multiplied by 12). Still dramatically easier than 800k in the US.

The standard for employment-based permanent residency (green card) is extraordinarily high. As in, would likely place you in the top 1-5% of the most successful people in the country. That, or you have to invest $800k and create 10 jobs.

No other country in the world requires foreigners to be significantly more qualified than its own population. You can move to France with a regular paying job no problem or just a few thousand euros in savings. Impossible in the US. You have to be extraordinary (they literally call their criteria, "extraordinary abilities") or you have to make top 5% money (so if you work in tech, that would be at least $500k-1M/year in many cases).

The only other way is to get married. This means there is a massive discrepancy between the qualifications of self made immigrants, versus those simply lucky enough to fall in love. It's pretty unfair, but that's how it works. But that's also the reason so many immigrants are so successful in the US, the bar is so high, that it creates a massive motivation to succeed to become eligible for the criteria.

My heart goes to the stack overflow community which has always been very kind and helpful, essentially working for free. As a self-taught developer since the age of 8, I literally grew up learning how to code through SO, asking hundreds of questions and answering many more. So many bugs that would take 2-3 days to fix would eventually find their answer through it. But now ChatGPT does that in minutes… so it’s for the best!

Exactly. But we're talking about the present, aren't we? And with all its flaws, the present isn't all that bad. Capitalism has been a powerful instrument for economic growth and financial liberation. Declining global poverty rates, more opportunities, etc.

If it's always been this way, can you explain why most people today live in far greater conditions than 2000 years ago, or even 100 years ago? Or the dramatically declining global extreme poverty rate during that same period? If being rich always meant you took it from the poor, then you'd never have any improvement for anyone that does not result in worsening for someone else, mathematically.

It seems to me economic growth is the proof that money is not a zero-sum game, and that one can create value, that creates jobs, opportunities and a betterment in life across the board. A tide that lifts all boats.

You can validate that by looking at world economies. The countries with no innovation/entrepreneurship aren't better off for having less people building wealth: everybody is just poorer. In contrast, more capitalist wealth-oriented economies tend to create more opportunities.

Early Christian teachings were deeply anti-wealth — but context matters. Back then, wealth mostly came from land grabs, tax farming, and debt slavery. The rich were rich because the poor were poor. Christianity started as a movement of the oppressed under empire, and its ethic of radical sharing was a way to survive a brutal, zero-sum system.

Fast-forward to today: most people aren’t living under that kind of direct economic violence. In fact, doing what early Christians did — selling everything and giving it away — would often create more suffering. Try paying for healthcare or your kid’s college without savings. In a modern context, investing, and wealth-building can be acts of love and protection — not greed. I don't think it'd make me a better man and father to just subject my entire family to poverty.

So maybe the point isn’t “money = evil,” but “systems that enrich some by grinding down others = evil.” The ethical challenge is still valid — just adapted for a world where your 401(k) isn’t funded by enslaving your neighbor.

It's not that we should interpret the Bible differently and make it say whatever we want; but that like any story, we need to look at the context within which it took place.

Money invested from abroad is money coming inside the economy - whether the person lives there or not. That money goes to the seller, who'll then get taxed on it, spend it somewhere else... Or that money could be used, as I said, to build new buildings and rehabilitate old ones, thus creating jobs in the process. If the system was well set up for it, foreigners investing in a country is usually a good thing. The US is super foreign-investment friendly for example, doesn't hurt them.

Besides, if foreigners are investing solely to speculate - if they did fix the supply constraints, the opportunity for speculation would greatly decrease. It's only an attractive investment because the supply is so finite.

I'm not saying it has zero effect. I'm saying it's a misdirected effort that would cause them more harm than good. Spain isn't exactly in the fittest economic position. It needs to attract foreigners to cultivate its growth - hence their Beckham law and other benefits for foreigners. You can deter people from coming and see the country stagnate/go down, or you can actually match the demand and foreign dynamism, and use that as an opportunity for the whole place to grow and modernize.

Blaming foreigners for housing prices is misdirected. The real culprit is slow bureaucracy & zoning laws making it impossibly slow to get a permit to build anything in both Spain and Portugal. Both of these countries for example have so many abandoned houses needing to be renovated, and so many foreigners coming in with money to do it - but they can never do it because you can't get a permit in literally forever... I don't know about Spain, but another problem in PT is the building companies too, are unreliable, and typically don't deliver houses in less than 3-5 years if you decide to build new. Increase the supply, and the prices will go down.

You gotta pick your battles. Part of being in a startup is to be comfortable with quick and dirty when necessary. It’s when things get bigger, too corporate and slow that companies stop moving fast.

The thing is you also can’t reduce psychedelics to science because they open an innately subjective (often called “mystical”) experience.

What is reproached to some of the parties here is to have a spiritual ideology, but that’s precisely what working with these medicines opens up. The healing that takes place is not so much physical, as it is psycho-spiritual, it’s the change in perception of the world - often in the direction of spiritual beliefs, that contributes to the betterment of the person’s mental health condition.

So you can’t isolate the two easily. It’s just tricky, and still this article raises important points.

I'm French. It's important to understand that France has been very bitter about missing the tech train with its failed "Minitel." And since, instead of making necessary changes to become more business-friendly and technologically relevant, they've just remained bitter and try to tax/punish US giants any way they can.

Thus, instead of becoming the type of places where the next Google or OpenAI could be incorporated, they're promoting the brand of a country that loves playing the Robinhood for its corporate friends in the newspaper business. I get the logic of the fine, and it's also sad to see them be proud of fining these foreign companies, instead of actually doing anything to change the fact that the country is becoming increasingly irrelevant in the modern technological age.

Yep. Don’t get me wrong, I think 23andme deserves the heat. Mostly for allowing so many relatives from being visible on their page. If 14K accounts were compromised and 6M relatives were downloaded, that’s 428 per account.

I can’t imagine anyone would benefit from finding relatives beyond sharing a great-great-great grandparent. It seems to be a mistake to allow for hundreds if not thousands of matches to be displayed.

Cause although the DNA data wasn’t hacked. You could quite accurately infer what a relative’s raw DNA could look like if you had the raw DNA of the compromised account AND the percentage of shared DNA.

Misleading title - from what I gather, the raw DNA data wasn't hacked. It's the interpretation (racial percentages and family links) that were obtained.

Seems like they asked this Paraguay official to support their UN application to be recognized as a sovereign nation. So how is it that he didn’t know it was a fictional country? That’s kind of the point that if a country seeks sovereignty, it isn’t yet recognized as one. I don’t understand the logic of the article.

I feel you. I have all kinds of ideas for when he gets a little bit older. For example: a voice-controlled (perhaps motion activated) electric train. I think having a child gives me an excuse to express my inner child's passion for tinkering.

Great minds… I published something very similar (albeit less advanced) that also went viral on HN back in September: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37379801

Mine is a webapp 80% generated by GPT that makes a sound when a plane enters a certain radius around the user’s location.

Bom dia meu vizinho.

I understand that you disliked my comment. I live in Portugal, and I have lived in France and US as well. I’m sorry to say that people trashing stuff in nature is far worse here than these other countries. You don’t see people dumping fridges or old bathtubs in nature there. I see it in Algarve, Alentejo, outside Lisbon… that + the poop everywhere on the street, I’m sorry man but people don’t have the same standard for respecting nature and keeping the streets clean. Doesn’t mean anything about the people themselves, people are very nice and considerate to each other. I think that’s alright to recognize flaws though.

I mean, 13.2 vs 10.3 is quite a big difference - and that doesn’t address the fact that a lot of these old ‘95 trucks or weird scooter-truck things have pitch dark exhaust fumes and are driving around like nothing’s going on. I’m pretty sure you’d get pulled over by cops and forced to fix your car in France or US. It’s not legal in these countries to drive cars like that. Again, I get that people don’t have the money to get a newer car, I’m not blaming them. Just noting that while the electricity is clean, a lot of progress remains needed in other parts of the economy.

It’s hard to predict what these jobs would even look like in a few decades. If computers become more ubiquitous and work can be achieved with natural language, with better screen technology, maybe holograms, more presence in the physical environment, why not. But if it’s sitting behind a screen for decades, I wish my son a better life.

PT used to be very energy dependent due to not having much local fossil fuel. They had to import most of it. Simultaneously, they have a lot of sun, a lot of wind, and the tide. Also turns out it’s warm so they don’t need all that much power. So yeah, renewables are optimal for them in this specific scenario. That’s definitely a positive thing.

It’s good PR but I just find it relevant to point out that it’s not necessarily an “example” beyond that. But yeah, they are getting cheaper. They’re just particularly cheap for a country with great weather and wind with low consumption.

Meanwhile many Portuguese cars are 25+ years old and a portion of them have black exhaust fumes that stink from a 100 meters. As in: proper black smoke coming out of the exhaust as it drives. I don’t know if there are SMOG tests, and if there are, they’re clearly not enforced.

The reality in poorer countries is that pollution reduction is not as much a priority as saving money. So yeah, I mean, I always find it funny when Portugal is presented like this ecological example. Again, it’s not “their fault,” it’s poverty, but let’s not fool anyone here. There are also piles of old furniture, concrete, and other construction materials that people are just in the habit of dumping on the side of the road in most rural areas.

A follow up question I have is why create a company if you think you’re gonna have no to little revenue? Why not just wait until you actually make money to register? Adding a business entity before having any cash flow will probably only make your life more complicated.