Yeah, cash out and leverage to bigger investments. Rinse and repeat.
2,584 karma · joined June 2, 2012
Things themselves do not exist outside of conceptual thinking. Unless we can get down to the true atomic source of everything, then maybe you've found the distinct "thing", but you cannot experience that, only describe it.
For example, my "body" is made up of the ultimate fundamental atomic unit just like everything around it. There is no line of delineation, it's just a sea of atomic units. My body only exists as a distinct "thing" because that's how we interpret this sea of units with our limited senses.
I see it a little like pixels on a display. The array of pixels all display light, they are all the same, but as we zoom out we begin to interpret the many pixels forming distinct objects on the screen. This does not change the fundamental reality that the pixels are not that thing, and that thing does not exist outside of our interpretation.
And all of this is assuming reality is fundamentally atomic, which has yet to be proven.
Either way, why use "links" as the analogy, why not just call them relationships? That's what they are. We know what relationships are just as well as we know what links are so no need to pick a familiar concept and extrapolate.
There is no revelation in seeing that everything in the entirety of existence, physically or conceptually is built out of related stuff. Nothing exists outside of everything else, except a parallel universe maybe, everything is derived from something.
Russia cutting off oil doesn't seem to be synonymous with the intent of Morgenthau, it may have a similar side-effect but it's not the same as far as I can see.
Anyway, you are more wrong that I am.
As for hindsight, governments are supposed to have foresight in how they manage the country. The myopic vision is what I object to.
Can you give examples, because from my limited view all Canada has in terms of renewables is hyrdo.
All of our automotive industry is owned by foreign manufacturers and relationships with Detroit are strained [1]. Plants have been shut down [2]. Canada has only just started to adopt EV, Europe is way ahead [3]. I will concede that both Europe and Canada aim to phase out IC engines by 2035.
In my opinion the stupid investment in that pipeline the government bought from the Americans after they backed out was a huge mis-step. That money could have been spent investing in solar.
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/car-plants-bridge-1.6346556 [2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/gm-closing-oshawa-fac... [3] https://www.canadianmetalworking.com/canadianmetalworking/ar...
I see crowdsourcing as being a distinctly modern phenomena enabled by the internet. I don't see it as being the same as historical methods of collecting monies from the populace. Are taxes often referred to as 'crowdsource'? No, and that's because there is a nuance.
My suspicion is this is rife given how many articles read poorly and are almost entirely fluff. If this is true it would appear we are doomed to algorithms shaping our online experiences, which is worrying given the existing shrinking diversity of opinion and content. It's like a entropic gene pool in nature, but with information.
Sighted developers and QEs will miss testing elements if they aren't aware they should be there.
> The BBC has an entirely separate board that should have no relationship to the current government in power
The director/board all report to the Queen, who defers to the government who enact mandates for the BBC. The government appoints senior members. I just don't see how you can say the BBC is autonomous in terms of what its board decides.
> From Wikipedia: The chair and four non-executive members representing the four nations are appointed by the Queen-in-Council, on the advice of the UK Secretary of State. Five other non-executive members are appointed by the board and the four executive members are chosen by the board.
I mean, seriously, how is that independent from the government? They literally have government appointed people on the board.
> Comparing the BBC to Sky is like comparing TfL to Uber
No it isn't. TfL is not a private car service, like at all. BBC and Sky are largely apples to apples in terms of their primary interests.
Sky manages to operate a very broad set of programming, a news division, its own distribution technology, Sky employes 10k more staff than the BBC too.
I think this article kinda sums up what I feel is the reality of the BBC's government independence: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ourbeeb/bbc-is-neither-inde...
The BBC is the government one way or another. So given the ministers are effectively the CEO then they are the ones who should be adapting as they have the control and report to the citizens who are analogous to shareholders. So yeah I can criticize the BBC for failing to adapt and do things that the people in control are able to do.
A government controlled corporation should be held accountable to the people, and the people obviously don't think the license fee is fair given the modern avenues of entertainment consumption. I mean charging a license fee for watching YouTube is absolutely insane. The government did not produce any of that content, individuals did, it's not even their infrastructure. Essentially the government could charge a fee for you emailing a family video to a friend.
It's archaic, unfair, and unsustainable. Make it a real tax, allow advertising, monetize BBC content on other platforms, charge subscription fees. I mean the options are wide open, behave like a competitive corporation or tax it. All of this is under control of the people who ultimately operate the BBC.
So yeah, first step is to wake up and abolish the license fee as it's just loopy so as much as I dislike BoJo, objectively he's making a bold and inevitable move which is perhaps motivated by his desire to stay in power.
It's also worth noting the UK govt' spent $5.1bn on the BBC last year, in contrast Sky operated on $5.2bn in revenue. There are clearly some huge inefficiencies at the BBC that can be remedied internally without government approval. Bemoaning $5.1bn as not being enough is garbage. I mean, ITV operates on $2.1bn in revenue. Cutting back the waste seems appropriate to me.
I think the reality is the license fee is overwhelmingly unpopular, has been for decades. The BBC has not evolved its business model to keep up with democratized broadcast and if BoJo is the one to do what is inevitable then who can blame him to use the opportunity to be the one to pull the trigger.
The license fee is unfair, unsustainable, and in my opinion unenforceable given today's technology. It used to be that having a "TV" meant you implicitly watched the BBC. As the decades passed cable and satellite became popular and so people could own a TV and never watch the BBC, but the BBC would still insist you were watching their service and send inspectors to your house.
They would threaten you (I've experienced this myself) and ask to come into your home as if they had the authority, which they did not. So many people let these assholes into their homes to "inspect" their viewing habits and issue a fine if they found a TV in your home, because obviously if you have a TV you MUST be watching the BBC. What's even more crazy is you get a discount for a B&W TV, that's just how stuck in the past this license thing is.
Today you can legit have multiple TVs (now displays) and never watch the BBC. But the BBC thinks that because you have an internet connection you must be watching the BBC.
It's just nuts, and as I said, unenforceable. So it must end. The BBC has had the opportunity to adapt over the last ~30 years as the internet and other entertainment sources came into people's homes, but they chose not to. I say let the BBC fade away or adapt on their own feet.
Sounds like a form of communism to me.
From the author's account they seem to have extremely supportive managers. Not only that, the business spent a lot of time and care helping the hire figure out if they are a good fit and with all that invested I am sure they'd prefer a shot at fixing the problem. I'd be a little upset if as a manager my report resigned cited any of the issues the author reported without at least allowing me a chance to work with them on it.
Also worth noting, the author is a senior dev.
Who evaluates your land value?
Also, if we all do what we want to do who is gonna pick up the garbage, who is going to slaughter cows for your burger that no one wants to flip?
I mean, these are the easy things I can think of.
Additionally any of the welfare states and experiments with UI are with small scale countries who have simpler socio-economic makeups. Try doing what you are prescribing in America where Trump, Bezos, and any number of psycho CEOs and politicians are doing very well for themselves. Not to mention the fundamental myth of America is bootstrap to individual prosperity.
Edit: to expand on "doing what you want", what if what you want to do is build a huge multi national corp and accumulate stinking piles of cash and yachts? What are you going to say to all those folks?
This is at best naieve. How can you possibly reduce all of the complexities of a nation's multiple economic wants and needs to that conclusion? This is the problem with the movement, myopic and idealistic notions of being free from work. Universal income basically drives up inflation, if you give everyone a free $10 everything becomes $10 devalued. Money works partly because it is scarce and takes work to accumulate. Other people want to exchange their effort for yours. If there is no effort, there is no value.
Even if the above is not true there are surely numerous other forces at play that don't fit in with your simplistic idealism.
If you think it's the boomers keeping you down, wait until all the YouTube and social media players get into their 40s and see how they feel about giving away their wealth. People are greedy, selfish, family first, and tribal regardless of a generation.
Did you ask for a change of team / change of work focus? Did you bring up your issues with a manager? If you were on my team and an attrition risk due to not working in the tech you were hired for I'd have made sure that was changed.
Five months is just about enough time to find your feet in a large org's codebase, I think having exposure to the Rails side is to your benefit, and given a bit more time you could have worked to resolve the other gripes. Shopify is a huge, profitable organization, with many, many, many opportunities for developers to do their best work. I find it hard to believe there isn't something fascinating there for anyone who likes writing code.
Good luck in whatever you are doing now though, sounds like you have the talent for doing whatever you wish which is a great place to be in.
FWIW I do not work for Shopify.