mkramlich

I can not realistically picture them ever paying the debt off or going back to a zero deficit. I bet the most likely endgame will be some kind of future war against The Bad Guys (which they'll make sure to do sufficient propaganda demonization against for the low-brow general public) and then they could use that situation to justify "retiring" (not honoring) the debt. There is historical precedent. And while there are many good and honest human beings working throughout the US gov it would be a naive mistake to think the most important decisions are made by "good" people. History suggests the opposite. In (almost) all countries. Throughout history. And again, ignore words. Any words that come out of a politician's mouth just ignore. Only weigh actions, results and tangibles. Looking at those, the weight of evidence suggests they'll never eliminate the yearly deficit or debt. Just keep increasing it until some huge "oopsie!" reset excuse is found. The kind that will likely involve much loss of blood by the working/labor/non-wealthy classes, world-wide

That's the historical record, reinforced many times over millenia.

shame on anyone that contributed to that. you're part of why HN has such a hateful, obnoxious sub-culture that drives more mature people away

Wikipedia and Google are quick ways to answer most kinds of "what is X?" questions.

expert is used in the sense of the standard definition in any English dictionary

one could be an expert at programming, and though that's a valid topic and craft to have expertise in, its not a domain in the sense of "domain expert" you're asking about

you've just eliminated perhaps 90% of the folks who've recently decided to switch to "hacker" as their career! ;-)

could have been innocent reasons, an algo shift. it happens. sometimes you win the SEO lottery, sometimes they pull the rug out.

my own experience: roughly 3-5 years ago (don't remember off-hand) I woke up one day to learn that Google had listed me as the top search result, first page, for a particular combo of terms. I forget exactly what it was but it was something like "Java Python Flash Linux game developer" or whatever. I had learned about this from an out-of-the-blue client lead who emailed me. I was shocked when he said that's how he found me. I then went around to about a dozen different computers, different types, different geo locations in my state, both auth'ed and anonymous, and sure enough I always came up as top result, first page. It was... an awesome time to be taking on contract/consulting work, let me tell you. So many more leads coming in than before. Not enough hours in the week/month to help them, had to turn down otherwise interesting gigs.

Then it came to an end. Rug pulled out. Woke up one day, rankings changed, no longer on top like that.

Lesson (one anyway): that's a huge eyeball funnel. bazillions of people doing searches. even getting a tiny slice of it means tons of eyeballs stumbling upon you. quality is important, of course, being great at what you do, having the right leads, a good fit, avail, etc. But quantity? That has a quality of its own.

For example, right now, I run an organization of precisely 1 employee and 1 leader type, both residing in the same body, and you'd be surprised at the exotic, hyper-efficient, dare I say sometimes quasi-communist-libertarian-artistic-entrepeneurial-self-empowered management techniques I/we use. :-)