111–120 of 181 posts
The fact that so many people on HN dislike this proves hacker culture died in programming..
I don’t even understand what there is to dislike. This person lives in misery
I used to be similarly lost in the drama of my own life, hanging on to things that I felt made me special. It's an ego trap in my opinion, as there are millions of people around us who have extrodinary lives that we never hear about. The word "sonder" applies: Sonder is defined as the profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passing by on the street, has a life as complex and vivid as your own…
There's something gross about people trying to force this sonder neologism through but I can't put my finger on it I'm hardly a prescriptivist either
Part five of this book is about Litost, a kind of misery-induced torment only known to the Czech people. You could see it is a Slavic thing.
https://fictionbeast.com/milan-kundera-the-unbearable-ligthn...
Something akin to how I felt trapped in my own drama
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t even understand what there is to dislike. This person lives in misery
There is a great deal to dislike. Primarily he is clearly from an affluent family and all his misery could be solved with a phone call.
I used to be similarly lost in the drama of my own life, hanging on to things that I felt made me special. It's an ego trap in my opinion, as there are millions of people around us who have extrodinary lives that we never hear about. The word "sonder" applies: Sonder is defined as the profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passing by on the street, has a life as complex and vivid as your own…
I used to be similarly lost in the drama of my own life, hanging on to things that I felt made me special. It's an ego trap in my opinion, as there are millions of people around us who have extrodinary lives that we never hear about. The word "sonder" applies: Sonder is defined as the profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passing by on the street, has a life as complex and vivid as your own…
Counterpoint to that would be that no matter how interesting other people's lives may be, mine is still special because it's the only viewpoint I can actually have (before you hippies come at me I've done enough LSD and meditation and no I still only have my viewpoint). My dramas and problems are more important than everyone elses to me since I'm the one who has to deal with them. They're not more important in an obj…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t think hacker culture is dead. Rather, computing entered its Eternal September; a career in software engineering, especially in the United States, now carries a similar cachet to being a doctor or lawyer, and the startup world has attracted those who want to make a fortune. The geeks, nerds, scholars, artists, and other varied misfits who once dominated the field have been outnumbered by those looking for mone…
It’s not just money they made so much money they actually dislodged and eliminated the conditions and opportunities that created hacker culture in the first place
Unfortunately what I’ve found in the past decade of working in the field is that we are no longer in the exploration era of computing. There is still much to explore, but the problem is that the metaphorical frontier has been largely bought up by large corporations and funding agencies, and thus exploration has been restricted. The days of unfettered research at places like Xerox PARC and Bell Labs are long-gone; it’s all about quickly delivering results in areas that promise to have a direct, immediate impact on the bottom line. Academia is no better with its “publish-or-perish” demands. Even working as a software engineer has less exploration today than it did in the past. The developed world is jeopardizing its future by relentlessly pursuing short-term gains at the expense of the long term.
It’s disappointing to see computing “colonized” by business interests who have no love for computing and who don’t understand that research and software engineering are creative endeavors that cannot be treated like an assembly line, but I’ve come to terms with this recently and started rethinking my career. I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to separate my passion for computing with making a living; trying to make money from research leads to pressure from funders. I need to pursue my true research callings the way an artist pursues art.
But a thought just occurred to me when typing all of this. In a way, though, hackers and artists are back to the days of the Homebrew Computer Club of the 1970s, where hobbyists pursued their craft and showed off their work without any expectation of monetary reward. These hackers were distinct from the stereotypical IBMer. The rise of Apple and Microsoft changed this, but something interesting happened in the past decade; working for Apple, Microsoft, and other Big Tech companies today is akin to working for IBM in 1974. What was once the counterculture has become “the man.”
It’s not a perfect analogy; AT&T and Xerox were definitely “the man” 50 years ago, yet they ran research labs that offer levels of freedom that cannot be found today. But I believe that us hacker/artist types should take inspiration from the hobbyist communities of old. I’m unqualified to take on modern capitalism and its effects on research and the software industry, but if I could make a lasting contribution to society by doing great “artistic” computing, then I could die satisfied.
The fact that so many people on HN dislike this proves hacker culture died in programming..
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a black man, I'd appreciate the lawsuit-opener over my reality, which is just people seeing my alma mater and name and pretending I don't exist.
Is it that they don’t think you’re qualified to have gotten in there or it’s an HBCU so they denigrate it?
> I fly Spirit to Chicago, where all my friends are too busy buying property or accepting professorships to try the ketamine a guy gave me for letting him suck my dick.
> At the end of the shoot, I’m $40k in debt and severely constipated.
> There’s the explanation: Blaze broke Hollywood’s dick off, and now he’s dead.
> My therapist suggests I take a trip to see friends because I keep calling myself an incel. I have a feeling she’s sick of watching a grown man cry about how hard it is to poop and wants new material.
> I tell them God will use the bone to create a third gender.
> Even if it doesn’t work out between this new being and me, I’m able to autofellate. I now have half an hourglass figure and, naturally, am starting an OnlyFans.
I feel like I know so many people with 1/10th the spunk/pizzazz/personality/attitude of this author. How did one person luck out and get such a "concentration" of unique-ness?