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Sergey Brin's Unretirement

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221–230 of 499 posts

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#221
post #167

Do you think he can still spend time on his $450 million yacht or is he too busy writing prompts? Snark aside, good for him. Absolute non-news though, as is any extraordinary individual action during and contributing to a bubble. It'll be interesting to see what stays when, or if, the bubble ever pops.

You can very well write that prompt from the top deck or from one of the office cabins on said yacht (no, not speaking from experience). I'm not envious of anyone's big yacht, but I wouldn't waste my money that way (you can probably rent one for special occasions) - as long as there are still children hungry or without schooling.

I'm definitely envious of the yacht. Like, come on, how awesome is that! It's HUGE! I've been invited on tiny yachts with "only" a couple staff onboard and that was already fantastic to just be on for a day.

That said I don't think I could ever justify spending THAT kind of money on it.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#222
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was in your spot at some point I've heard. Nothing is impossible.

So was the last lottery winner. I can certainly improve my chances but there is a huge amount of luck involved.

And importantly, in this analogy - most people here aren't even able to play that lottery. He founded a company based on the research he did whilst studying for a government funded PhD. Most people are not in a position in their life where they could even spend time trying to do research that would result in this type of eventual wealth.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#223

Sergey's challenge looks like is not in retiring early or with non-work. We had a high performing co-worker who was scared witless after a lay-off episode and this was not because he was worried about lacking money or loss of prestige., but because he could not come to terms with the simple fact of facing the 9 am on a Monday morning with absolutely no expectations. It freaked so much to not feel the hustle and the a…

I don't get this. Just find a coworking space and work on a FOSS project.

I think it's difficult for a normal brain to live with the low impact of another project while you created Google. Also, the speed of a personal developer is nothing compared with the speed of a software engineering area or company. You can easily feel like a turtle even working on an interesting project.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#224

Sergey's challenge looks like is not in retiring early or with non-work. We had a high performing co-worker who was scared witless after a lay-off episode and this was not because he was worried about lacking money or loss of prestige., but because he could not come to terms with the simple fact of facing the 9 am on a Monday morning with absolutely no expectations. It freaked so much to not feel the hustle and the a…

I don't get this. Just find a coworking space and work on a FOSS project.

I left Google to build an open source project a long time ago. A big part of the appeal was being able to have something to work on that's truly mine. Sergey already has something that's his and it's called Google. So I think he belongs there.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#225
I look forward to the sweet kiss of death to solve the retirement funding issue, and forever declining health while working struggle. Working for "The man" takes everything someone has.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#226
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the point of the "I'm Marcus" part of your introduction? Reading your post I get the impression it has zero value, or at least you think so. > Hi, I'm Marcus > What do you do Marcus > I'm on a break now, but I used to be a director of IT Is this really difficult? Seems really easy, and I was never a director of anything. Maybe that's the problem.

For some people, their work/job is just such a big part of their identity, that for them this is a problem. That is I guess the point the person you were replying to was trying to make. It's also not really weird for a job to become such a big part of your identity, when people spend most of their time at work or at home thinking about their work.

A couple years ago a friend of mine mentioned that he had known another mutual friend of ours for many years, much longer than I would have guessed. I asked him "what does he do?" and he thought for a moment before saying "you know ... I have no idea, it has never come up".

Definitely one of his more interesting qualities.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#227
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brin wasn’t bothered to wield any of that power to try to arrest the decline in Google’s search quality. He wasn’t bothered to direct the Chrome team to support MathML, or to bring back Google Reader, or do anything about a hundred small insults like, say, the deletion of YouTube comments with URLs to keep the rubes inside the casino. But he was able and willing to come back and wield his clout because he was bored a…

Not just links, either Youtube comments are completely censored in real time with some sort of AI, it's horrible

The videos too. Geopolitical commentators cannot show e.g. an explosion in Ukraine caused by a drone, and they say "T" instead of "terrorist", and "kaboomed" instead of "killed", etc. Doing so may see the vid demonetized or even taken down.

OTOH deep fake gepolitical commentators are all over the place, and it is allowed (sometimes Youtube shows a label, sometimes the channel itself describes itself as a "fan channel" of the commentator, and not the real deal. Sometimes e.g. for Shorts you can see in the info whether things are AI generated).

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Maybe, but someone engaged with you and your response showed it was utterly unproductive to do so. COVID may have been mishandled but it does nothing to justify the administrations decisions regarding healthcare. If that's the reason you think positively of the man then you should evaluate the rest of what he's said and done. If you have the time, two podcasts from this doctor which I think kind of highlight what's g…

So if we're linking stuff (and please don't scream at me for Rumble, Youtube loves removing videos) here's one https://rumble.com/vt62y6-covid-19-a-second-opinion.html

I was initially trying to make a point that the ideological lines that people have drawn have made it so they automatically think RFK is anti-science and they as a consequence have a whole host of assumptions for which I don't even blame them if they haven't spent time reading up about it. I apologize for not countering every single point and going to covid but it's kind of worth pointing out that RFK a) raises some very substantive charges against Fauci for frankly war criminal like actions throughout his unfortunate history of practicing medicine and b) it wasn't "mismanagement". They did, seriously, the opposite of good practice (both accepted good practice and what was discovered in 2020 going forward) in just about every case

If you're not sympathetic to that then of course you're going to disagree and you might think that the only reason someone like Musk bought X (and please don't think this is me Musk fanning, I dislike him for several reasons) is just to have a joyride (which is still possible); they used to ban so many people and real doctors for information that they didn't like and it was a serious problem and if they could do that for covid then they also did it for other things

Edit: (see, I do know how to edit comments) here's it on Youtube which is the highlights https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jMONZMuS2U

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#229

It sounds similar to people living long-term on welfare in Denmark. They have food and housing, but their life is devoid of meaning.

Do you know a lot about the welfare situation/program in Denmark?

The welfare program (kontanthjælp) is difficult to join and you are ineligible if your net worth exceeds 15.500 DKK (~€2000).

From my point of view, you have to be very creative to live a fulfilling life in Denmark, with such limited finances.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve found asking “what do you like to do” vs “what do you do” to produce much more interesting conversation.

I really don't like getting asked what I do for a living. I exchange labour for money somewhere out of necessity, what's at all interesting about that? What I do in my free time is who I am, and that's much more interesting to talk about, to me.

I sometimes joke and say that I type for a living, not entirely untrue. But I've found that sometimes people are offended if I answer their question evasively
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