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The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

ericlippert.com

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Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#471

Post by KptMarchewa »

dathinab wrote: post #119
a4isms wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's the same thing as people say about fires. When you put out a fire you are a hero. When you prevent the fire in the first place, everybody thinks it's business as usual and nobody understands why you are needed. I got a dose of very cold water about this thirty years ago when I was building payware that improved developer productivity. I gave a presentation about its ROI, and afterwards, a developer walked up t…

Ironically this quote also show how broken the US is: It's normal to take pain killers. It should not be. It should be a last resort. You should take what fixes the problem and give your body time to heal not take pain killers and pretend nothing is wrong. Pain killers are addicting, can have an increasingly reduced effect, can have a bunch of side effects and can make the end result much worse by not healing wounds…

My head hurts because atmospheric pressure changes fast. If you solve this problem I'll stop taking painkillers, and in the meantime you could stop using appeal to nature fallacies.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#472

Post by WorldMaker »

rrishi wrote: post #365
WorldMaker wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't watched this particular video yet, but a similar explainer video that I came across this week has me feeling a lot like "Those who have forgotten Second Life seemed doomed to repeat it (badly)". I had a bit of a rough moment realizing that statistically most of the engineers at Meta are probably too young to remember Second Life. (And some of the ones that are old enough like Mark Zuckerberg were too busy i…

I wasn't exposed to Second Life. But I do feel that the alternative life within a metaverse isn't going to appeal to a lot of people. What kind of socio-political lessons did you draw from Second Life? Would love to hear your take.

Second Life briefly had That Moment where it looked like it won: it had a metaverse that everyone wanted to buy virtual real estate in. There were virtual malls full of shopping with Real Brands. There were virtual office parks for Real Companies to get Real Work Done (Virtually). There virtual campuses for Real Universities with Real Lectures from Actual Professors. Nearly every avatar had Legs! (I can't believe that needs to be stated in 2022, thanks Zuckerberg.)

There were small businesses, even, little mom and pop artists generating avatar clothing and customizations and hoping to make a buck from all these tourists that were around Really Shopping or Really Learning or what have you.

You know what else was Real that people brought with them to Second Life? Real Crimes. There were scams (not all those mom and pop artists were on the up and up). There were attacks (give coders enough scripting tools and they will code all sorts of terrible things). There was sex and porn so there was also sex scandals and sex workers and prostitution rings and allegations of sex trafficking. (Relatedly to that, EA sometimes doesn't want you to know that Sims Online ever existed because of events that happened in only a few days of a Beta test that spooked EA so terribly they stopped publishing MMOs for like a half-decade. Semi-relatedly to that, there's a recent sex trafficking lawsuit against Roblux, with Discord co-listed, that was recent-ish news that made it to the front page of HN. History repeats itself and Meta/Facebook should be listening.)

Eventually all the Real Brands and Real Companies and Real Universities and all that got bored and left. (Even despite the luxuries of avatars with working Legs! Lol, Zuckerberg.) Most of what was left was the furries and the crimes.

(To be fair, I think Second Life being mostly sex-positive was a good thing and the "Furries mostly" era of Second Life produced some fun content and wild stories, much of it positive in its way. The criticism is not at all that Second Life tolerated sex and porn; crimes happen all the same without sex involved, I certainly gave other examples. It doesn't help that crimes that the FBI likes to investigate tend to involve sex, but that's a different matter.)

I think Meta/Facebook are still in the phase of pretending like building any sort of Metaverse is just inherently good and separate from real world problems or concerns. I think Meta/Facebook are still publicly acting like a Metaverse would somehow "save" them from the real world problems of running Facebook and Instagram (and their various existing issues with world crimes). I think they have already forgot some of the lessons from Second Life that if you invite Real People into your virtual world you still get Real People with Real Problems including Real Crimes. It's in no way different in a 3D AR/VR (Now with Legs!) space, than an early Oughts 3D space (Always with Legs!). It's very much the same. (ETA: The technology may feel different, to some. But it turns out: the people are kind of the same. That shouldn't surprise anyone. Especially not anyone who has seen, I don't know, Facebook.)

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#473

Post by astrange »

opo wrote: post #402
astrange wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, D+K is the best one to take. D only can lead to heart issues (atherosclerosis), and multivitamins don't really have enough to help here. It doesn't replace getting real sunlight though. Or if you're an Inuit, eating polar bear livers.

>It doesn't replace getting real sunlight though. Or if you're an Inuit, eating polar bear livers. Not that I expect HN readers to likely end up in a situation where they have to decide whether to eat a polar bear liver, but that is definitely a part of the polar bear that no one should eat: >...A polar bear’s liver contains an extremely high concentration of vitamin A. This is due to their vitamin A rich diet of fis…

Oh, I was thinking of animal fat in general. They have some minor genetic adaptations to get more vitamin D from it (since there's not much sunlight) and after moving away from the traditional high-fat diets now lack it as much as anyone else.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#474

Post by midoridensha »

oldsecondhand wrote: post #456
midoridensha wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Maybe I'm in a bubble, but most people I know who wear glasses don't actually enjoy doing so and would really rather not if they can avoid it. I think you're in a bubble. We have a way of avoiding glasses: contacts. But people choose glasses instead. I wear contacts, not glasses, but every time I ever talk to a glasses-wearer about why they wear glasses instead, they usually can't imagine wearing contacts and think…

Glasses need less maintenance than contacts, and aren't as weird to put them on, so it's an easy sell.

Contacts don't need any more maintenance, probably less. You just clean them quickly after you take them out for the night, or in the morning just before you put them in. Glasses need to be cleaned regularly. Plus you throw the contacts away after a while (daily, biweekly, or monthly usually) and use new ones.

Putting contacts in takes a few seconds if you're used to it. What's weird is walking around with heavy metal contraptions on your head and ears.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#475

Post by Too »

andrewflnr wrote: post #392
walnutclosefarm wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds just as much like what critics said about the Segway, which was supposed to revolutionize pedestrian movement, and which ... well, let's just say the critics turned out to be right. Which is to say, I don't think you can tell much about the stickiness of a technology from what it's proponents say for or against it. History is full of well-hyped failures, and not a few overperforming fringe ideas.

Yeah, it turns out what we wanted was e-scooters, OneWheels, and the like. That's actually a pretty solid example of the same principle.

Let’s not forget the price difference of a e-scooter and a Segway is like 50x. Even more if you consider the new and popular rental model.

Maybe they are cheaper nowadays, I remember the early days they would cost almost as much as a car. Whereas e-scooters today are in the price range where you can buy them as toys for your kids.

A segway that competed in the price range of bikes instead of cars would be much more widespread.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#476

Post by fanick »

treeman79 wrote: post #450
fanick wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn, I think I might have similar issues. Also diagnosed with Leiden. Should I be worried?

So you have any symptoms of TIAs? I had symptom of one every 6 months or so since high school. Got exposed to some chemicals and it went to a couple per week. Blood thinners keep it under control.

I got hospitalized once with the suspicion of having TIA but it turned out to be migraine with aura. I had those since I was a kid but never so intense (part of vision going poof!). I identified that the trigger is intensive smells (like vinegar for example).

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#478

Post by ekianjo »

marssaxman wrote: post #455
ekianjo wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> t is intensely weird to me that people hold the opinion that their company is building something that is bad for the world, and yet they stay there and continue to help build it. Most people work for the pay. Thats why you pay people: to make them work on something they dont necessarily like. Not everyone needs to be or to act like an activist.

Some people are driven by more blatantly mercenary priorities than others, but most people prefer to perform work which aligns with their morality and gains them the respect of others; it's part of that whole "hierarchy of needs". It is of course possible to meet one's higher-level needs in other parts of one's life, but if your career is actively opposing your values, it becomes that much harder to make up for what…

> most people prefer to perform work which aligns with their morality and gains them the respect of others; it's part of that whole "hierarchy of needs".

Your values can only be worth that much, and a big check will make you forget them faster than you think. After all, that's what corruption actually exists: people willing to compromise on whatever they believe or used to believe for financial benefits.

Also don't forget that people will rationalize everything. There's no one going to work every day and hating it - if you stay in a place you don't really like, ultimately you will find reasons to stay and to justify your choice.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#479

Post by the_only_law »

rob74 wrote: post #91

> Speaking of cutting costs, the company is still pouring multiple billions of dollars into vaporware called “the metaverse”. News flash: no one wants to wear VR goggles to spend any time in a digital heaven where the role of God is played by Mark Zuckerberg and you can do anything you can imagine, including “work” and “shop”. You can somehow feel that he has been dying to say this for years, but couldn't while he wa…

I never understood the VR hype. Sure it’s cool for games, and both AR and VR could have commercial uses, but people were talking to me like it was going to be the most significant computing revolution since smartphones and we would all be interacting with VR/AR user interfaces primarily in the near future.

Then Meta comes and it seems like it’s just a ripped idea that’s been done multiple times + some buzzword tech and graphics that make Xbox player profiles look good. The idea that this was seemingly going to be some grand new flagship product for the company was laughable from the beginning.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#480

Post by Aperocky »

ericlippert wrote: post #239
rob74 wrote: post #91

> Speaking of cutting costs, the company is still pouring multiple billions of dollars into vaporware called “the metaverse”. News flash: no one wants to wear VR goggles to spend any time in a digital heaven where the role of God is played by Mark Zuckerberg and you can do anything you can imagine, including “work” and “shop”. You can somehow feel that he has been dying to say this for years, but couldn't while he wa…

I see your point and don't mean to be argumentative, but a couple small corrections. First, the pivot to "meta" was just over a year ago, so it hasn't been quite years. Second, I haven't been shy about sharing my opinion internally, though I haven't been broadcasting it either. The first thing I said in our team group chat when we'd heard this announcement was (context, I am much older than most people on the team) "…

Having previously worked at a data team before the pandemic eon which raison'd etre was "saving cost", the reality is it didn't.

We used advanced statistical concept and vended models for other teams/services to consume, but the truth is either it was just really obvious cost solutions that they didn't bother, or it didn't really work all that well (stats model are, unfortunately, prone to many interpretations).

I've since moved on to feature based team where I feel like I'm more on the ground. And recently was able to get rid of lots of cost just by.. looking at them. I remain skeptical of the teams that base itself on statistical models to reduce cost.

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