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Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

david.newgas.net

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Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#341

Post by Der_Einzige »

rayiner wrote: post #164
qsera wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boring is not good if you are interested in something that is not boring! More fun always come with more risk. Everyone has their own threshold. So it is pointless to say that "Boring is good". It might be good for you, but not for everyone.

Fun fact: America got rich by being boring. America never went through periods of rapid GDP per capita growth like you see with China. Instead, it’s rich because it has grown at a consistent 2% almost continuously for 200 years, minus a couple of blips before/after the civil war and great depression: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/theres-one-thing-we-can-alway... Boring, high trust societies are conducive to risk tak…

I just showed above that "high trust societies are conductive to risk taking" is extremely wrong. Every high trust society on earth right now does the exact opposite. It's a lack of risk taking keeping Europe and even Singapore in a slump/relative slump. It's doubly that for Japan and Korea got lucky as hell with its control of the HBM memory industry but without that it'd also be fked for the same reason.

You need LOW trust for risk taking.

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#342

Post by redwall_hp »

arkh wrote: post #217
orochimaaru wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have y'all hit the "can genai do his job?" phase yet... Early on I used to try to explain that things don't work as advertised. There are a lot of advantages but you need a human reviewing and directing. These days I don't even bother. Call it being desensitized to the bullshit, but I'm waiting for some fancy AI agent to take out stuff in a way that no one can do anything. Past that I don't see a way for C suite to w…

Just got my morning coffee and read "genai" like some elusive Japanese person's name. So, can Genai san do his job?

That's a pet peeve of mine with improper capitalization surrounding this. AI = Artificial Intelligence. Ai = a Japanese name. ai = "love" in Japanese.

Also, "jenai" (which sounds like an uncapitalized "genai") means "not."

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#343

Post by Der_Einzige »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #152
qsera wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boring is not good if you are interested in something that is not boring! More fun always come with more risk. Everyone has their own threshold. So it is pointless to say that "Boring is good". It might be good for you, but not for everyone.

There's no fundamental mechanism (at least that I'm aware) that stops a high trust system from awarding funds to a risky venture. If that's not happening it's a systemic problem (or feature as the case might be) as opposed to some fundamental mechanism dictating covariance. I think in practice the conditions that lead to high trust societies forming also tend to lead to culturally valuing predictability which transla…

Just like tyranny isn't an "inherent" part of communism. Right.

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#344

Post by stronglikedan »

talon8635 wrote: post #36
comrade1234 wrote: post #4

I was on a government project where I found out I was being fraudulently billed on my hours. It was towards the end of the year and my manager was trying to use up the budget of the client. Although this is normal in the private sector I told him from the beginning that you can't do this on a government project. The project was $1M+ which was enough for prison time. He had gone into our billing software and edited my…

Okay… do you not feel culpable at some point? Do you feel no obligation to expose these various individuals fleecing the tax payers? Your boss, the academics, and everyone else who participated or knows and remains silent. Obviously, you are now in the later group. Yes I know it’s not all that rare, BECAUSE people can’t be bothered to blow the whistle.

hell no! CYA and See'ya! You should try to avoid anything to do with government investigations.

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#345

Post by rayiner »

cogman10 wrote: post #318
fidotron wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The money doesn't go to the start ups - it all goes to large tech companies like IBM, etc, because, obviously, IBM knows about innovation. And the big accounting firms. It's incredible how efficiently they divert all activity and attention from the core task, and then wonder why things don't take off.

This is the crux of why neoliberal policies don't work. Public-private partnerships are a breeding ground for corruption. The government either needs to own what it owns or completely give up and leave it to a well regulated private market. That's not to say one off contacts need to be eliminated. But when it comes to things like building and maintain roads, these private contacts end up being huge sinkholes for publ…

Public-private partnerships work very well in Asia. But the government has more oversight over the private entity and a heavier hand with policing results.

A big problem in the Anglosphere in particular is that the government is too focused on politics and catering to internal stakeholders and not enough on measurable results.

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#346

Post by francisofascii »

wavemode wrote: post #305
patkai wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Behind many, but I sincerely hope not "every". A trivial counterexample is Warren Buffet: he simply saved and invested. Or consider inventors with patents.

Might as well save your breath. You're not going to convince HackerNews commenters that there is any human being on Earth with net worth over a certain threshold who is not evil. It's just too comfortable of a worldview for people to let go of.

I like Warren Buffett, but he can't be the best example. Who is someone the created significant positive value, themselves?

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#347

Post by consensus1 »

nekusar wrote: post #298
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People want more government control, but when governments take more control the press tells the people that it's bad and the people acquiesce. In local forums, so often you see (paraphrasing a pattern) "why are the government interfering with landlords, they should stop so many barbers opening instead". That is, why are the gov interfering in property markets, instead they should interfere in property markets AND pla…

Properly planning the economy, ala the Chinese tier system, is a good thing. They have 3 tiers. Its called 新基建 - *Xīn Jījiàn Top tier is for essentials like food, electricity, internet/comms, water, sewer. Heavily controlled, usually state owned companies. Middle tier is stuff that's integrated into essential tier. Lower tier is forefront of tech, and not at all critical for life. And a reminder that even fucks like…

This is not that dissimilar to the US. The government either controls directly or is very heavily involved in all those things you listed in the top tier.

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#349

Post by consensus1 »

pjc50 wrote: post #269
throwaway2037 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most large corporations treat these categories of employment as different budget line items with different rules and limitations: (1) full-time employees, (2) individual contractors, and (3) large contractor "body-shops" or outsourcing providers. Many times in my career, I have seen layoff a few from (1) then way over spend on (2) or (3). The mid-level manager who makes the decision gets to "claim" that expenses were…

Related to this, the massive advantage of AWS is that it allows staff to buy infrastructure without having to raise purchase orders. If you ask permission for spending, it's a very onerous and frustrating process. If you just deploy stuff and get billed for it, it's much easier! Even if that's more expensive than having your own cloud. Worse, if you have on-prem, you have to have staff . They might even be permanent.…

There are only a handful of companies in the world that AWS would be more expensive than having your own cloud. Just the baseline costs of having 24/7 availability requires minimum 5 full time engineers (3 shifts + cover for sick / vacation). So that's $1 million a year right there, and we're already well over the cloud spend of the vast majority of companies. If you want multi region that's now $2 million. And we're still just covering the cost of the people who have to be on call to deal with hardware issues. Now how much is it going to cost to develop the software tooling required to manage the whole thing from your office?

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#350

Post by xhkkffbf »

rayiner wrote: post #345
cogman10 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the crux of why neoliberal policies don't work. Public-private partnerships are a breeding ground for corruption. The government either needs to own what it owns or completely give up and leave it to a well regulated private market. That's not to say one off contacts need to be eliminated. But when it comes to things like building and maintain roads, these private contacts end up being huge sinkholes for publ…

Public-private partnerships work very well in Asia. But the government has more oversight over the private entity and a heavier hand with policing results. A big problem in the Anglosphere in particular is that the government is too focused on politics and catering to internal stakeholders and not enough on measurable results.

I've heard horror stories about some parts of Asia. There are huge cities built because some bureaucrat wanted to build it, not because anyone wanted to live there. And the buildings are largely empty. Those are the most visible examples.

That being said, there are some good examples too. And even a few good examples might be better than the partnerships in Canada.

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