• 2 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 1st, 2023

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  • Product launches are the vehicle for attaining promotions at Google, allegedly. Maintenance does not get similarly rewarded, nor does launching projects and having them live on to actually be successful.

    When the launcher got promoted and moved on, they have to figure out whether to keep the thing around, and the answer is generally going to be no since few things can really compete with the infinite money glitch that is search ads.





  • It’s true that it’s possible to ride all year, even in places with harsh winters.

    It’s going to be decidedly less fun, though.

    This was enough to tip the balance in favour of taking transit during the months of snow and slush here in Sweden, but I’m also spoiled for choice here. Now I’ve moved and have less of a ride to work, so I think I’m probably going to shoot for biking all year now.








  • I didn’t graduate from university.

    In order to get some more money, I decided to take a TA-position at the school.

    For context, I live in Sweden - university costs nothing to attend here, and you get access to a mix of governmental assistance and near-zero interest loans (at about 1/3 assistance 2/3 loans) to finance your living costs while attending university. To get this money you are required to get passing grades in a certain percentage of the courses you take, around 75% is required). If you do not meet these requirements, you lose your benefits, and quickly risk not being able to afford food and rent.

    This TA-position however took up more time than I thought it would, and as such, I didn’t manage to pass the courses I was taking. Since I no longer met the passing grades requirement, I could no longer get student loans and assistance, meaning that I had to keep working TA gigs to stay afloat. This finally became untenable, and I decided to drop out and move to another city and look for work.

    So far, it’s worked out extremely well. I’ve been ridiculously lucky.



  • Consider the following:

    One day we manage to reach the pinnacle of invention - we create the replicator from Star Trek. We can suddenly bring immense amounts of anything we want for everyone in the world, for very little energy (caveat: I don’t know enough about Star Trek lore to know this to be true).

    Now, this machine would certainly make a whole lot of business models redundant - farming, factory work, you name it - they would all no longer be able to make a living doing what they did before this invention existed.

    Now for the moral question - should the fact that this invention will harm certain groups’ way of life be considered enough of a motivation to prohibit the use of this invention? Despite the immense wealth we could bring upon the world?

    Take a pause to form an opinion on the subject.

    Now that you’ve formed an opinion on the replicator - consider that we already have replicators for all types of digital media. It can be infinitely replicated for trivial amounts of energy. Access to the library of all cataloged information in the world is merely a matter of bandwidth.

    Now, should the fact that groups relying on copyright protection for their way of life be considered reason enough to prohibit the use of the information replicator?

    To me, the answer is clear. The problem of artists, authors, actors, programmers and so on not being able to make money as easily without copyright protection does not warrant depriving the people of the world from access to the information replicator. What we should focus on is to find another model under which someone creating information can sustain themselves.