61–69 of 69 posts
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Wow. Do you enjoy the adventure, move for the job, or some other reason?
I'm looking for someplace to call home. Each city hasn't fulfilled my dream (e.g. too hot, too congested, too boring, too expensive).
I see it in another way, a bit nihilistic though. Sure, there are plenty of exits. But we will all have to make the final exit at some point. Either now or 10 years or 50 years. We will all have to go. And statistically, the chance that you would be someone who is remembered 100 years from now is kind of slim. And 100 years is, in the grand scheme of things, a blink of an eye. Even 1000 years would be inconsequential…
Yep, even famous people in their time are quickly forgotten. How often does anyone under age 60 think about JFK? In another 50 years he’ll be a name among many in a history class, which is more than most people get but that will be the extent of it.
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About being forgotten: There is a good fiction book in Russian on the topic: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1%82_%D0%B... Plot: After you die, you get to another place, call it heaven. Every time someone who is alive remembers about you, you get a coin. Coins are used in this afterlife community for food, entertainment, labor, etc You cannot steal them, although can give as gift to another afterlif…
how did they explain the caveman surviving the centuries between first death and the body being found?
I see it in another way, a bit nihilistic though. Sure, there are plenty of exits. But we will all have to make the final exit at some point. Either now or 10 years or 50 years. We will all have to go. And statistically, the chance that you would be someone who is remembered 100 years from now is kind of slim. And 100 years is, in the grand scheme of things, a blink of an eye. Even 1000 years would be inconsequential…
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We spent a lot of time finding historical data from across the world and building our family tree back a few hundred years. But records didn’t keep as well back then. Now everyone is posting everything everywhere all at once. Do you think there’s a greater chance someone 20 generations from now will be able to look at TikTok and Threads archives and understand and get to know their forebears from 1,000 years ago? I t…
I feel I'll outlive TikTok and Threads, and that paper in records offices will ultimately turn out to be the most durable of current record formats in 20 generations. I have already outlived many of the websites where I posted information in my teens, and in recent days we've heard about even big sites like Twitter losing some historical data. Not to mention all the users of sites like Orkut, Google+, Friendfeed, Beb…
Twitter/X is evidently seriously bitrotting [0]. Evidently, links to all pre-2014 pics & vids are now dead. Supposedly still on the servers, but whether this is just failing infra or Musk considering destroying all the old data, or putting it behind a paywall is unclear. Either way, all this data is very ephemeral.
[0] https://twitter.com/tomcoates/status/1692922211416334597
For everything you do, there is a last time you do it:
ride a bike, make a new friend, visit Italy, hike a mountain, write code, see the sea, watch Shakespeare, see your mother, post to HN, play tennis, hug your grandchild, eat tiramisu, listen to Miles, have sex, walk without pain, remember your first love, drink a beer, take a breath.
Some are already in your past, you may not know which ones.
The rest are in your future of unknown duration.
They will each pass without fanfare, mostly without you noticing. Like crossing the event horizon of a large black hole: there is no going back, but you may not know it at the time.
I suspect, for me, the last two on my list will be quite close together.
I want to take the granularity down a notch. For everything you do, there is a last time you do it: ride a bike, make a new friend, visit Italy, hike a mountain, write code, see the sea, watch Shakespeare, see your mother, post to HN, play tennis, hug your grandchild, eat tiramisu, listen to Miles, have sex, walk without pain, remember your first love, drink a beer, take a breath. Some are already in your past, you m…
> Upon your exit, your contributions, actions, decisions, opinions and presence most likely will have affected the trajectories of the people and the world around you, in obvious and less obvious ways. Oh I wouldn't be too sure. The company that had acquired us some years earlier for millions of dollars then proceeded to can our entire division, sunset our product, and laid, more or less, everyone involved off. I can…
Most businesses fail. Most acquisitions get shitcanned, because statistically most of them are acquisitions of failing businesses. Then there’s the possibility they bought that company and killed it to stomp out completion and suppress the IP. Or it could have been because they needed to get funds moved, and that company was used to empty the bank, so they could ask VCs for another round, with the added bonus of that…
At their own expense, then, since they lacked a competing product. (And still do, and AFAICT, forever will, since I think this company has declared publicly they're out of that market.)
> other reasons
Yeah, sorry, none of these apply or make sense. Occam's Razor applies: it was a bad 9 figure mistake, that's all there is to it.
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Most businesses fail. Most acquisitions get shitcanned, because statistically most of them are acquisitions of failing businesses. Then there’s the possibility they bought that company and killed it to stomp out completion and suppress the IP. Or it could have been because they needed to get funds moved, and that company was used to empty the bank, so they could ask VCs for another round, with the added bonus of that…
> Then there’s the possibility they bought that company and killed it to stomp out completion and suppress the IP. At their own expense, then, since they lacked a competing product. (And still do, and AFAICT, forever will, since I think this company has declared publicly they're out of that market.) > other reasons Yeah, sorry, none of these apply or make sense. Occam's Razor applies: it was a bad 9 figure mistake, t…