> HN works very hard to avoid becoming politicized and not discouraging minority views is a large part of that.
> For example, I now seldom bother to write anything that I expect to rub the left coast folks the wrong way: I don't care about karma, but downvoted posts are effectively hidden. There is little point of writing things that few will see.
These two statements don't seem to agree with each other.
HN policies and algorithms slow the slide, and keep it better than reddit, but the set of topics that allow one to take a minority opinion without downvoting keeps shrinking. At least compared to the time 10-15 years ago.
This comment is not cool, and is not welcome on HN.
You had a history of guidelines-breaking comments and moderator warnings up until a few years ago, and we've not seen any comments from you until the past month or so, and now you're back into those bad old patterns. You are of course welcome to participate here. But this is only a place where people want to participate because we have clear guidelines, and most people take care to observe them. Please do your part to raise standards here rather than dragging them downward.
It doesn’t have to be “grotesque” to be in breach of the guidelines. The guidelines ask us to be kind, to avoid swipes and sneers, and to converse curiously.
If it was a one off we’d be content to leave it flagged and move on but we’re talking about a pattern from years ago that seems to be resuming, and we need you to end that pattern now, thanks.
The only list is your list of past comments which is there for anyone to see. There’s no need to evoke spooky atmospherics when you can just observe the guidelines that apply equally to everyone. It’s not hard to be a positive contributor here.
Articulating thoughts is the backbone of communication. Replacing that with some kind of emotionless groupthink does actually destroy human-to-human communication.
I would wager that the amount of “very significant thing that have happened over the history of humanity” come down to a few emotional responses.
Scoping it to a local maxima, the only thing worse than git is github. In an alternate universe hg won the clone wars and we are all better off for it.
My spouse and I dealt with this on our honeymoon. We were both working 50-80 hour weeks for months leading up to our trip. The first day we got to this all-inclusive resort we spent the whole time trying to min/max and be as efficient and calculated as possible. It was a stressful, miserable day.
Day two we looked at each other, had an adult beverage with breakfast, and relaxed for the rest of the trip.
Growing up in a quaint rural town where high-powered people from NYC liked to "get away", this is very common situation, and the inability to disconnect and adopt a slower attitude was, IMO, the primary cause of friction between the weekenders and the locals. They would physically get away from the city, but were unable to mentally release the blend of Type-A competitive neuroses that helped them get ahead in the city but just made them come off as obnoxious in this slower, quieter place.
I've found myself in this mode before, too. A couple of years ago I was preparing for weeklong wilderness backpacking trip with some friends. I'd recently quit my high-stress job to take some time off, and I had a few new pieces of gear I wanted to test before relying on them on a longer trip. When I looked at the calendar, though, every weekend before we were to leave was already spoken for.
I was worrying about it to my wife, trying to decide whether I'd just have to use the old worn out gear or risk it with the new stuff, when she stopped me: "why don't you just... go on Monday?" It took me a second to even get what she was saying—I was still so much in work-all-the-time-mode that my brain didn't even consider whatsoever the possibility that I could just... go off and go camping on a weekday. I was really baffled for a moment, and I've reflected on that a bit since, it's funny how you can be trapped in your own default operating mode and not even realize it.
I've settled in a city 60% smaller than the one I grew up in. It's still a full-blown city, but there's way fewer of those competitive types - they all moved to where I came from.
I'm not really a resort person. But I do subscribe to some travel feeds mostly in the vein of maybe finding some places/attractions/restaurants/etc. that I'm not familiar with. The number of hyper-scheduled spreadsheets I see is amazing. Doesn't mean I don't often have some itinerary and even book some particular, popular attractions/venues. But the 30-minute block scheduling is something I do for work (if that).
ADDED: I'll just add that I created a loose spreadsheet for a ~week-long NYC trip with (I think) just one timed admission for a recently reopened museum and no times otherwise. I think I ended up dynamically scrawling over the printout with changes for most of the trip.
If it works out for more that's great but it's not expected or necessary.
I've traveled with some people who seem focused on just getting pictures in front of as many things as possible which seems a poor way to really take in a place.
I think that's a good plan. I do tend to book hotels, planes, and usually longer trains. But, especially for a longer city trip, I loosely map out--even if just mentally--things I want to see and do but, for example, one museum a day is mostly enough unless another convenient one is small.
I was like this but maybe not as stressful as you described. Still, I wanted to do stuff and see stuff during vacation.
After having kids, my habit changed. Now we enjoy going to local parks and walking around with no goals during vacation. This wonderful attraction? Nah we don't need to see it. If we can walk there, then maybe.
When we were planning a trip to Hawaii the first thing I researched was where all the local parks with playgrounds were. That way if we were driving and my son was getting bored or we needed to stretch our legs we knew where something was. There's usually a town, village, or city park nearby no matter where I've been. Even driving to Crater Lake through rural Oregon there were some great parks in the towns we drove through. Same with the drive out to Yosemite. This was the case up until we got within an hour or two of the park itself.
Some of the most enjoyable parts of those trips were hanging out with my family in a local park.
I tend to default to a midrange place as I'm not much interested in spending a lot of time by the pool. And when traveling on business, if meals weren't being covered, I didn't actually much care for resorts when I felt like a bit of of a prisoner in terms of meals etc.
Why did you bounce around faangs if you don’t mind me asking? Reading this site it seems… not uncommon, but I don’t understand why. Finding and starting a new job stinks haha.
I bounced from Amazon to Microsoft to Amazon to Microsoft to Facebook. Why? Because the grass is always greener on the other side. Amazon didn't pay enough, Microsoft was too boring, Amazon was too chaotic, and then Facebook paid much more. All bad decisions, but I only know that in hindsight. I'm not very smart.
Oh gosh, I didn’t mean to imply it was poor decision making, I was just curious. You’re a better person than me for putting up with the interview process. I absolutely refuse to grind leetcode problems. My TC at the moment is probably a lot less than what you’ve made though. Always tradeoffs.
No worries, I didn't sense any criticism. I've just become more critical of my own decisions, now that I have some perspective and it seems to me that most of what I did was poorly considered.
Getting through the interview process used to be so easy back then. I probably applied to 2-3 jobs to get an offer. That has changed drastically since 2023.
I did stay at Microsoft for a total of 15 years, but in retrospect it's the least interesting place to work. 5% coding, 95% overhead.
Of the places I've worked, none of them had anything where I can now say "I should have stayed there for longer." Amazon and Meta have obnoxious aggressive culture. Microsoft is a place where you can chill out and collect a paycheck and good health insurance. But very boring.
I also worked at some much smaller companies, but not for long. Maybe those are more interesting, but also less stable.
My guess would be that if the benefitting legal party didn't need to declare they also benefitted from this (because they legally can't be caught, etc.) they wouldn't.
I know and am friends with a lot of lawyers. They're pretty ruthless when it comes to this kind of thing.
Legally, I would think both parties get copies of everything. I don't know if that was the case here.
> The other challenge is that in the modern era the houses, papers, and effects of most people have been partially signed off to corporate entities who are more than happy to consent away their access into our effects.
Do you mean those who rent their homes?
I rented for a long time. I bought a house. None of my house, papers, or effects are owned by anyone but myself. I guess a credit union owns the mortgage, but they haven't and won't sell it.
To those who will jump to disagree with me about the credit union selling my mortgage: they won't. They don't engage in that market, never have.
> None of my house, papers, or effects are owned by anyone but myself.
Do you self host your own email? No? Those are "papers" that your email hosting provider can consent to providing law enforcement access to without a warrant.
Do you use search engines? Your search history is in the same boat with the search engine company.
Don't use a VPN? All of your internet traffic is in the same boat with your ISP
You use a VPN? All your internet traffic is in the same boat with the VPN.
The list goes on and on. It is almost certainly true that some company has private information about you that they can turn over without a warrant.
You forgot to respond to anything except the "houses" part of this.
It's obvious what GP and others are saying - that the concept of things like "papers" and "effects" are no longer as concrete as they used to be. What used to be physical letters stored in one's home are now emails stored on any number of servers.
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize.
Renters are one (large) category. No wasn't referring to mortgaged houses, iiuc those belong to the owner, the lender merely maintains certain rights to reposses in the case of a default.
I was more referring to the average US resident or American who agrees to broad terms and conditions with, their ISP, Microsoft 1 drive, Roomba of the year, microphoned smart TV, email provider, cell service provider, etc. Many of which are essential for navigating modern society.
I think he meant things like his personal notes and files stored in an app like Evernote, which law enforcement can request copies of. I don't like the idea of someone reading my private notes...
If we all acknowledge that the internet is a beautiful disaster that shan’t be trusted, which it always has been and always will be, we can all collectively get over ourselves about privacy on the internet. “Hey world I went overseas for vacation/holiday! I cooked this amazing dinner! I’m cheating on my SO using an online chat app!”
Maybe stop doing all 3 of those things. I can’t tell you how liberating it’s been since I got off all social media in ~2008. It’s super easy to be very private if you so choose. Having any kind of internet presence is a voluntary sacrifice of privacy.
> For example, I now seldom bother to write anything that I expect to rub the left coast folks the wrong way: I don't care about karma, but downvoted posts are effectively hidden. There is little point of writing things that few will see.
These two statements don't seem to agree with each other.
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