I just moved to the Bay Area and visited Big Basin for the first time two weekends ago. I had never seen trees that large in my life.
I'm grateful that I took the opportunity to go and see it when I did. It's crazy to think that less than two weeks later there is so much destruction there.
There's a big difference between saying Trump didn't conspire with the Russians (what Greenwald said" and saying the Russians didn't attempt to interfere. It's astonishing how people conflate these two things
I mean, Greenwald has a lot of followers online and tons of liberal leaders supported him against this charge when they could have ignored it. I think some of the most vocal people are the most deluded... and the upper class Dem establishment incentivizes focus away from them and punishes focus on them. So you get a magnified effect
I'm always shocked by the lack of integration among Google's various products. The amount of time my Google Home replies to a simple question with "I'm not sure how to help with that" is mind-boggling. Some variation of "I don't have a great answer, but I've sent some Google search results to your phone to review!" seems like an infinitely better (and obvious) alternative for the global leader in search, but they've for some reason ignored this for years.
It kind of gives me some comfort that even Google can't get cross team collaboration right. Makes me feel less bad about the dysfunctions at the places I've worked at...
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This is a cool idea, but I imagine this isn't legal, right? Creating an actual business out of this would have to require buy-in from the content creators
I think it’s funny how everyone is surprised that Silicon Valley hackathon-goers don’t understand or care about copyright. Maybe they’re just “disrupting”!
1000x the current mining power is 10% of global energy consumption. So they'd be spending 10% of global energy consumption for a year. This is infeasible unless done by a consortium of world governments, and to what end?
It's doubtful that they would diverge significantly, unless the currency controls are so onerous that Bitcoin mining is the only solution to get money out of the base currency. Why would anybody choose to mine at a significant loss? Certainly not at the level the article is implying, with costs of mining approaching $1MM and Bitcoin (presumably) priced far lower.
A bit off topic, but I'm curious - how did you get started in contracting and how do you go about finding clients? Is it through people you've worked with in the past, or do you somehow advertise yourself? This is something I've considered moving toward but I don't know where to begin. Thanks!
its pretty hard. alot of reaching out. contracts dry up for a wide variety of reasons. so you have to keep the pipe full.
body shops will reach out to you - thats usually suboptimal for alot of reasons, but its work
sadly, alot of my contracts come from interviews for full time positions where the customer is hiring for some special skill, but its clear there isn't a long term role for me there. that can lead to work
old contacts are the best way, but you have to stay on people's radar.
sofar I've found gig sites to be pretty useless. the site wants to constrain communication so that you cant have the normal design discussion up front - they just say 'microcontroller work <$250', bid yes or no
my impression is that the mvp webapp space is still pretty easy to make money in. not really in systems - decent employers know that its hard to make a contract work well and would rather have you as a resource ongoing. and everyone is just doing staple jobs these days, so 'kernel' and 'test' and 'embedded', and all the old specialties dont get you anywhere.
i would try to leverage someone you've worked with before who is now in a position to influence a contract decision. someone with whom you have a level of mutual respect. once you have something ongoing, always spend time trying to open up new opportunities.
the thing that i find hard is that as a hired gun, you can present your opinion for consideration - once. its not your role to pursue and agenda, you're there to provide hourly services at the discretion of the customer and you need to demonstrate concrete value.
to circle around, its this carefully negotiated per-task relationship that both removes the pain of trying to work around useless colleagues and eliminates any reward you might feel for shaping a product. this is not your party, you're just serving canapes.
> this is not your party, you're just serving canapes
Nailed it. This is the key difference, and matters a lot psychologically: you're not just acting as a waiter during the show, once the party is over you can't stick around you have to let go and move on to serve at the next party.
Comparatively, letting go on an ongoing product in a burnout inducing situation feels like you've given up while sticking to your guns feels like fighting windmills, either of which is just soul destroying in its own perverted way.
There is also, if you're lucky, an increased sense of agency ie, direct feedback between your work and the value your customer places on it. Large corp can put you many layers away from that feedback loop and that can increase your sense of powerlessness.
Thanks for the detailed response. You point out some interesting challenges that I hadn't fully considered. Overall, do you still prefer to contracting process and role to a traditional position?
for me personally i dont really have a choice...to continue the analogy, its nice to have friends and go to parties. but instead of throwing hysterics when married lisa makes a drunken pass at married brad...i get to chide the bartender for overserving and wait until midnight.
Specialisation helps. Look at what the market wants, is paying well for, and is underserved by. Then you can just look for advertised contract gigs. It's also nice to have one or two contacts who funnel you work, but not essential, if you have an in-demand specialty.
I'm grateful that I took the opportunity to go and see it when I did. It's crazy to think that less than two weeks later there is so much destruction there.