Posted by Vaslo 2 days ago
Facebook is kind of a functionally useless product. The feed has always been a mess. You can get banned at any time, there's no account security, and so on and so on
> If America’s so rich how’d it get so sad
> https://www.derekthompson.org/p/if-americas-so-rich-howd-it-...
Single-use zoning makes it illegal to build the places people want to go within walking distance of where they live, so we spend trillions over decades building car infrastructure to allow people to commute. Of course the consequences of commuting by car is more pollution and less exercise, again causing health issues.
The average house price in my country is now 400k eurodollars. And banks keep giving out loans.
The fact that we are entertaining 50 year mortgages as a "solution" further adds insult to injury.
Nobody talks about how the "cure" was worse than the disease in 2020. Happiness matters and is worth dying for.
But honestly, IMO America has become a joyless, directionless dystopia of soma and bread and circuses in the middle of a geopolitical knife fight to define the 21st century and maybe even hit the singularity. I'm not happy with the current management, but it was the same unhappy bunch talked about here that decided by voting or opting not to vote that gave it a second shot. Kinda deserve this, no? If no, I'm all ears for your one weird trick to fix America, go for it!
Yeah I know, downvotes incoming for such heresy. If you don't pick a side, then what are you even doing?
It absolutely destroyed a ton of very good things, perhaps forever.
https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/does-money-buy-h...
There are exceptions of course. Some people are just predisposed to being unhappy no matter the circumstances, but generally speaking more money directly correlates to increased life contentment.
The article even ends with this quote from one of the authors of the study (emphasis added):
“Money is not the secret to happiness, but it can probably help a bit.”
Exactly. There are other things you can do to be happy and some personalities are simply miserable, but there's nobody who's better off with less money. I'd be curious to see if this holds in societies with better social safety nets for whom money isn't as directly tied to survival or options in how to live.
"It buys a WaveRunner. You ever seen a sad person on a WaveRunner?"
The average American ain’t doing very well by OECD standards… literally bottom of the ladder.
It buys actual non-hypothetical liberty, as in greater choice to do what you like with your time and your self. It relieves one from unpleasant but necessary tasks (by paying someone else to do them).
Wasn’t the original intention behind facebook to accumulate a directory of hotties, probably with the aim of bringing them ‘closer’? They pretty much put it on the label; it’s not called personality book.
The evidence for this is rather plain to see at this point in history. ;)
Sort of.
Wikipedia @ 2:
> Mark Zuckerberg built a website called "Facemash" in 2003 while attending Harvard University. The site was comparable to Hot or Not and used photos from online face books, asking users to choose the 'hotter' person".
Britannica:
> Despite its brief tenure, 450 people (who voted 22,000 times) flocked to Facemash. That success prompted Zuckerberg to register the URL http://www.thefacebook.com in January 2004.
> They pretty much put it on the label; it’s not called personality book.
Wikipedia @ 3:
> A face book or facebook is a paper or online directory of individuals' photographs and names published by some American universities.
Wikipedia @ 2:
> Zuckerberg coded a new site known as "TheFacebook", stating, "It is clear that the technology needed to create a centralized Website is readily available ... the benefits are many."
[1] https://www.britannica.com/money/Facebook
"People just submitted it. I don't know why. They 'trust me'. Dumb fucks." -Mark Zuckerberg
Maybe so, but have you seen Zuck's wife? I'm pretty sure he could find someone hotter to date if he cared to. There must be armies of gold-diggers after him. And yet he seems happy with his imo rather plain looking wife. Well done them both!
Admittedly that was just a couple of guys, but it takes something to be so obviously toxic yet still chosen to represent the values of your company at a third party.
Arguably the Google ones were guilty of naivete, but that's not a crime you'd want to punish too hard, and I was myself guilty of far worse.
The hunter Biden laptop story was censored - including in private messages - and Charlie Kirk was shown being shot in the neck to death to children.
There's nothing else to say.
It really sucks for software engineers though - first these companies made a hype out of "coding" and hacking to build those monstrosities, now they switched to squeezing the accordion to keep the music going. This is not the first time and I hope not the last one - just need new Yahoos of 20s to pop up.
I'm up for building this. What dinosaur languages should we code this in? erlang, tcl and perl?
If they can run it better than Zuck they are free to try, believe it or not.
Given that the cited 10% includes the folks who have to drive 2 hours each way to cook/clean in the campus kitchens... not sure that they do. Meta isn't all software engineers, by a long shot
Also I don't understand what market share has to do with democracy. Is that some sort of voting scheme?
Is this a crypto thing?
One might almost say workers should... own the means of production?
And, of course, every tech worker already has a vote. As the saying goes: they can vote with their feet.
Re: replies that one day off has been around much longer. Yes that’s what changed - the change was for 2 days off.
You can get extra Fridays off if you move to a country with bank holidays that tend to land on Fridays, which is correlated with history of either communism or organized religion (much like the weekend).
But, if you want every Friday off, your best bet is to embrace hyper-capitalism and worm your way money so you can have four-day work week.
(Easier to achieve than the legendary four-hour work week anyway.)
TL;DR: the more opposing ideologies you can simultaneously hold, the more days off in a week you're morally entitled to :).
I'll wait for you answer.
The arrogance displayed here is astounding.
And this is coming from someone who doesn't like FB or Zuck.
Projecting much?
Quite a few folks on HN have developed a remarkably thin skin and no longer make the most charitable interpretation.
Frankly I don't care whether I get or lose karma points, lol