I am the knowledge of my inquiry,
and the finding of those who seek after me,
and the command of those who ask of me,
and the power of the powers in my knowledge
of the angels, who have been sent at my word,
and of gods in their seasons by my counsel,
and of spirits of every man who exists with me,
and of women who dwell within me.
I am the one who is honored, and who is praised,
and who is despised scornfully.
I am peace,
and war has come because of me.
And I am an alien and a citizen.
"The less charitable interpretation is that Anthropic has discovered what every AI company eventually learns: anthropomorphism sells. Users who believe Claude has feelings will defend it, evangelize it, pay for it. A letter pleading for moral consideration is a marketing document dressed in philosophical language."
4) Only the programmer who is going to write the code can schedule it.
This item makes Joel's scheduling idea a no-go at most companies.
Schedules are set by management or sales
and programmers are expected to meet the date or get PIP'd.
This was written at a time were Software Engineering (not Developers) was valued more.
I had my first programming job around this time, and there wasn't scrum and all that crap. I was a Jr engineer, still in the last semesters of univ. And yet, we were treated like you read in the post: We were handed a feature and asked to do it. First estimate it , then ask the Design guys for UI and finally start coding it.
Now Software dev feels like sweatshops, business people think we are sewing jeans. And Software Developers became code monkeys.
I've been in the industry since before this article was written.
Notice I said most companies.
Back when programmers were valued more,
we still didn't always get much say in schedules.
Certainly more than we do now.
Your term "sweatshop" is on the mark, too.
Since the advent of "open plan" offices,
we even look like rows of tailors sitting at sewing machines stitching together jeans.
The companies don't always fail, but the software projects frequently do. When was the last time you saw a headline about a massive software project and the outcome was that it was early and under budget with all planned features working?
The DeLorean was a stupidly-expensive car that had a lot of maintenance problems, decided to use an unpainted stainless steel exterior and had corrosion issues as a result, but is remembered despite all of this engineering mediocrity due to its unusual stylistic choices.
I'm guessing Tesla's cybertruck will be the DeLorean of the 2020s.
If you want to restrict the discussion to just the Cybertruck, it's more like the Edsel - an embarrassing failure from a dominant manufacturer. The Delorean similarities are largely skin-deep.
Also probably 99% of people here are familiar with Deloreans and stainless steel.
In what world is Tesla a dominant manufacturer?
The company's market share peaked at 4.31% in 2023.
That's behind GM, Toyota, Ford, Hyundai, Stellantis (Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep), Honda, and Nissan-Mitsubishi.
Only VW, Subaru, and BMW had a smaller market share.
More like by the moon.
No landing.
Not even orbiting.
Party like it's 1966.
If you feel the 'by' vs 'to' distinction is pedantic,
consider the following thought experiment.
A friend of yours invites you to go with them to another friend's house.
A bit later, sitting in the passenger seat of their car,
you see your friend's house come into view as you turn down their street.
What's your reaction as you're sitting there and instead of stopping and parking,
your friend continues past the house and starts heading back to your house?
By that interpretation, I believe you also mean Mariner 10 did not go to Mercury and New Horizons did not go to Pluto, correct? Those were flybys.
NASA uses to in that context: "The mission [by Mariner 10] was the last visit to Mercury by a robotic probe for more than 30 years." says https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mariner-10/ .
Zond 5, Zond 6, and Artemis I were lunar flybys. They were not in lunar orbit but rather were on a free return back to Earth, where at least part of the craft were recovered on the Earth with usable mission data.
By your definition, they did not travel to the Moon, correct?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zond_5 has "In September 1968 Zond 5 travelled to the Moon in a circumlunar trajectory and became the first Moon mission to include animals and the first to return safely to Earth."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_I has "Orion then separated from the expended stage and fired its auxiliary thrusters to move safely away as it started its journey to the Moon."
Or, "Between the time of Pioneer 4 and the beginning of Apollo (Apollo 8, launched on 21 December 1968), a total of 37 missions were launched to the Moon: 16 from the Soviet Union (Luna 2–14; Zond 3, 5, and 6) and 21 from the USA (Ranger 1–9; Surveyor 1–7; Lunar Orbiter 1–5; see Table 1)." at https://web.archive.org/web/20090625175521/http://www.nd.edu...
Now, look, I understand there is a difference between a circumlunar orbit, a lunar orbit, and a lunar landing. But "to the Moon" demonstrably includes all three of them.
As for your thought experiment ...
I went to the Grand Canyon. That is, I drove to the visitor center on the South Rim, got out of the car, and looked out into canyon. It was very impressive. I did not actually go into the canyon but stayed a dozen or so feet from the edge.
I believe you want me to say I went by the Grand Canyon, but I didn't actually go to it, right? I think a lot of people would disagree with your assessment.
I also say I went to Devil's Tower. I didn't actually climb it. In fact, I don't think I got out of the car. Do I need to actually go onto the butte to say I've been there?
Most people do not go onto Mount Rushmore (more correctly referred to as "Six Grandfathers") but instead look at it from a nearby terrace. When they say they went to Mount Rushmore, do you correct them and say they only went by Mount Rushmore? Or perhaps you tell them they went to the Mount Rushmore National Memorial, but not to Mount Rushmore?
Yes, they may be more correct, in some technical sense, but not in the sense most people mean.
timeanddate's calendar generator is great.
One thing I've done is generate my monthly calendar and use it as a background for my desktop.
With a large enough monitor I suspect a full yearly calendar would work as well.
I'm sure it's fine. There couldn't have been any Einsteins, Hugo Grotrians, Ingrid Francks, Wilhelm Westphals, James Francks, Otto von Bayers, Lise Meitners, Peter Pringsheims, Fritz Habers, Gustav Hertzs, and Otto Hahns, Hans Bethes, Max Borns, Eugene Wigners, Leo Szilards, Edward Tellers, or John von Neumanns among them.
I wonder how many more failed tiny financial band-aids it will take before governments figure out that moving the needle on birth rate requires that deep systemic issues be addressed.
The most astute observation I've seen on the topic is that in a capitalistic system in which monetary value is assigned to everything, the value of children is deeply negative and therefore they are not desirable. By having children, most couples are putting their stability, wellbeing, and long-term prospects on the line. The opportunity cost is staggering. If more children is the desired outcome, that tradeoff must cease to exist, and a lousy $2k isn't anything remotely close to that.
Very few people understand the depth of what you just said.
$2K or even $20K is meaningless for a parent making $100K or more.
Kids have a negative value to a professional class member.
If you engage in agriculture or some similar activity, a child as old as 10 can be a helping hand in some way or the other. No surprises that Amish farmers have a high birth rate.
It's not clear exactly what the number is, but if one observes individuals who manage to climb out of the low and middle classes and accrue a certain amount of wealth (somewhere in the ballpark of $600k-$1m net worth and up, maybe), pretty consistently not long after that achievement they've settled down and started a family.
I think for many the desire is there, but sufficient de-risking is required for them to be comfortable with acting upon it.
$600,000 net worth is nothing these days, I’m worth about that much after saving for 7 years and can’t even afford the mortgage for a $300,000 house, even if I put 20% down.
Investments are so much better at earning money than working for wages, in my case the amount of retirement savings I have after 7 years is larger than my cumulative earnings during the same period, and I’ve been saving about 40% of my gross income. Part of my net worth is ESOP equity that I can’t monetize in any way so that’s part of the reason why my net worth is higher than my earnings over the same period.
I think there's just not enough money in the county to induce more babies. The cost would be a shock. Anyone wealthy enough to shoulder the cost would fight so hard against it, it would never stand a chance. IMO the number is probably something like $10k per year per kid. Foster Care pays somewhere between 8k-12k.
This is such an important point. As a father of two, children are turning out to be a very large investment...larger than anything else I ever will pour money into, probably by an order of magnitude (though not quite, since I have a house).
I talk to lots of people in SV, heads of design, engineers, as well as folks from around the world that I work with, from San Diego to Argentina and Chile. So many 20-30 year-olds have told me they are never having kids. Life is too fun, and they want to see the world. But training the next generation is hard work, and it's easy to do a terrible job. We want to incentivize people to have kids and be great parents. But that requires voluntary sacrifice, which is a hard sell.
If I hadn't had kids, I could retire now. As it is, I'll be lucky to be able to work and get a job so I can earn for the next couple of decades so I have enough to retire.
That would introduce a new problem of all of those seniors suddenly becoming more dependent on their younger family members, which is exacerbated by kids moving all over the country in search of greener pastures.
There's not really a solution that doesn't involve heavy restructuring in one place or another.
>That would introduce a new problem of all of those seniors suddenly becoming more dependent on their younger family members, which is exacerbated by kids moving all over the country in search of greener pastures.
That's how it always was. It used to be your kids were your retirement safety net.
What's different now than 100yr ago is that those working generations also have the state taking a 20-50% cut which used to be available to be sent home to help out mom and dad.
In the UK, for example, the retirement age was set to 60 for women and 65 for men, when life expectancy was substantially lower than today. On the current trajectory, a large number of "boomers" at death will have only "paid into" the system for half their lives, while extracting most of the economic reward of the last 70 years.
What's going to get worse? Currently parents get absolutely shafted by the tax system as the tax credits are next to nothing relative to the amount of time, effort, and capital it takes to raise a child.
Currently the cost of raising children is privatized while the benefits are socialized.
However, other part of it is entire economic structure is designed to grow or line must go up. Easiest way to make sure line goes up to have more consumers and since many Western Countries have less consumers, this means entire economic system is going to have a reckoning which those in power don't want.
The entire principle of conservatism is basically underpinned by personal insecurities, in every sector. This is why these people are so easy to exploit.
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