Yes, and it seems Ukraine actually did attack a base within Crimea later, the specifically forbidden thing, without any nuclear response. I can imagine it's a difficult call for Musk to make, as nobody wants to be responsible for nuclear war, and hindsight is 20/20, but it's yet another bluff in a long string of bluffs as you say.
Couldn't one say the same of any brick and mortar store? If a shoe store is going to open in my neighborhood, for example, how much data do they need for it to be optimally located? I guess they could seek out the online browsing history of all the friends of all the people living within 1 mile from the shoe store and analyze it.
I don't doubt that billboards are placed with some careful thought, but tracking is certainly not "required" - some aggregate stats about an area should work, especially as there isn't much feedback on who saw the billboard and bought a product etc.
> "On any topic I’m informed about, the vast majority of comments are pretty clearly wrong. Most of the time, there are zero comments from people who know anything about the topic and the top comment is reasonable sounding but totally incorrect."
This "zero comments" part doesn't line up with my experience. Maybe what was meant was "on any niche topic that very few people understand that I happen to be an expert in". I consider myself informed about a number of topics, and also constantly learn things from HN within those topics, from people who are much more informed than I am. (But, I'm not really a top 1% kind of expert on anything)
Interesting that some people can turn it around. I believe the benefits of sun are maybe poorly understood for now, and I maybe spent too many decades hiding from the sun entirely, as a fair-skinned person, tracking the UV index a little too closely.
That said, I've also read that heat can make MS symptoms worse. I anecdotally get a bit weird in the heat. So, I thought maybe I'd stick to colder, cloudier places. But maybe that's wrong, and I should get a sunny, not-so-hot place. Maybe that only leaves California, or I can stop wearing coats in winter to get some rays at a low temperature :)
Could this deficiency be caught by some kind of blood test, though? Do regular checkups screen for this? Is there some reason you'd be "super low on it in brain tissues" and not in other parts of the body?
No, unfortunately, the serum level of B1 is not a good indicator of deficiency in tissues. There are some proxy tests like measuring transketolase or pyruvate but only a few labs in the world do them and one typically needs high-performance liquid chromatography etc.
That's why I think people should just try megadosing B1 for a while as it is not toxic and to get a datapoint if their troubles can be related to a deficiency somewhere. Many people get instant relief of their problems just after a single dose but the effect might get weaker as the supplementation continues. However, it's a good hint for their physician where to look at.
I found out this year that I have RIS or perhaps mild/early MS. (Most RIS cases proceed to an MS diagnosis within a few years, but there is some possibility it was some "random" one-time damage). Just a surprising result of a random MRI for something else, although I had also suspected MS before, and brought it up with doctors over a few years (always told it was just stress). Since it's rare, I guess most people who suspect MS are wrong about it, but I feel vindicated by the imaging at least. I'm not struggling much at this point in terms of function, but I've dealt with the mental struggle of thinking "that feeling just now, that was weird, was it a not-so-abnormal sensation that's part of aging? Or am I slipping a bit?". I spent a few months fretting my future. But you may take my points with a grain of salt.
This thread is heavy on health advice, which is great, and I'm seeing some good tips here. I trust this forum more than many general health forums! But I'm curious if you could elaborate more on your work struggles. I worry that , as a programmer, my brain is everything, and if that goes, I'm done. Do you think your employer has noticed a drop in your performance? Have you been objectively failing at necessary projects? Have you had to take a pay cut after being laid off elsewhere? Have you had to take time off of work? This is not (entirely) me challenging your sense of worry, but also wondering how bad the symptoms can get.
I have also felt a "lobotomy" or "mild dementia" state at times, but given my very early stage, I think it was partially burnout or mid-life crisis. Working a job for 5 years, staring at a screen in the same room every day, realizing your life isn't as moldable as when you were younger, it can make you feel weird! That is, there are many causes for a drop in attention and focus, and it's probably a combo of MS and other things. You said in a reply that 3 years ago, your "brain was working great", because of low stress, good finances etc. So, even if your MS is objectively getting worse, make sure to keep those other factors in mind, or you might think the MS is worsening faster than it is.
I have found it difficult to read about MS because the symptoms aren't quantified like "X% of people feel this Y years after onset", it's usually just said that Y CAN happen. I've maybe seen stats about complete mobility loss. But for mental impairment it's hard to measure and report. Maybe there's degradation in memory, but how much can I expect?
People tell me "oh, those things, that's just getting older", but sometimes it feels too fast. One thing that seems more objective is how often I just use a completely different word than the one I intended. This can obviously break my code, but because they're so random, it tends to break loudly and early, and I hope maybe linters/tests/compilation can save me from these simple mistakes.
I think forgetfulness would be the biggest hindrance to coding. Forgetting to check inputs, forgetting to unwind a temporary hack, forgetting to warn people about things. But, one can take copious notes, keep checklists, write lots of to-do/revisit-this comments in code. And of course some tools provide more safety nets than others. So, we can try and "engineer" our way out of some things, and it's a good thing even the sharpest airplane pilots don't solely rely on their brains.
I've also started independent consulting recently, spreading work between multiple clients, and maybe that format could be useful to others. While it's less stable in a way, I fret less about the drama/consequences of temporarily scaling back my hours if things get too stressful. A shorter engagement doesn't trigger stigma of inability to focus, and some time off probably won't trigger questions about resume gaps. By having clearer expectations up front about me not looking to lead teams or be some keystone member, I don't worry as much about possibly letting people down. It may also let me experiment more with companies/setups that work for me. Being in the USA, I'm also feeling good about having bought my own health insurance. Yes, it costs money, but people expect you to charge more for it, and now I don't find myself listing "health insurance would be a mess to deal with" as a reason not to leave a job. I'll be less eager to jump at a job that's not a good fit for me, just because I want insurance.
Lastly, and this is for whoever, having some portion of remote work could be good. It's good for when you need to rest, but it's also good for diagnosing yourself a bit. If you're anxious about contentious face-to-face meetings, or office social pressures, it can be hard to know what is causing certain feelings. I could more easily confirm that something was off about me once I removed the stress of the office. I could say "I feel good, I feel calm, with low stress, and I still feel weird". In the office, a sudden strange feeling, noticed at the wrong time, could be interpreted by me as some kind of panic state, which feeds on itself. Now that I understand my body a bit more, I'd feel more comfortable going back into the office, because I can just ignore some feelings as routine. Getting back in the office may be a useful distraction/exercise for people who otherwise are feeling dull or dwelling on their state at home.
I also have some thoughts about how I'll keep perspective, but I'll DM you with those, as that's more touchy, and my post is already quite long. But overall, I think even a programmer with some mental degradation can offer a lot to society and business. There must be so many projects in the world that would be grateful for a bit of your attention and skill, even if they're less popular or less lucrative projects.
Well, life doesn’t always give many chances to play a game. You can only work at so many failed startups, or have so many failed long-term romantic relationships before you’ve used your best years! Someone else already made the point about the risk of walking away empty handed, but I’m just pointing out that some domains allow for many retries and some don’t.
This represents the trap of over-rationalisation which is so prevalent in the Western world. You cannot devise universal rational guidelines suitable for every situation and every subjective experience. There is a multitude of various different factors involved in every particular situation. The lean and precise rational model breaks badly simply because it doesn’t (and can’t) account for all the factors.
> Well, life doesn’t always give many chances to play a game.
Disagree. Sure - you don't get many games involving millions of dollars, but you do get many for smaller amounts.
I could put all my extra money into paying off a low interest mortgage (guaranteed return), or I could put it in an index fund (higher average return, with no guarantees, and a potential for a loss).
And working at startups: Not sure the expected value is high there. May be higher than working at a FAANG. I doubt it.
I assume you agree that some kinds of opportunities are limited. Not trying new foods because you're afraid of wasting your money would be silly, or not saying hi to your neighbor because they might ignore you would be silly, but some things are very complicated. I'm thinking of: surgeries, mate selection, college degrees, white-collar crime, etc. I'm just saying that utility and loss aversion come into play, and "life is long" can't always save the day.
On startups, I think there are people who have been in situations where they have an expected value greater than something like a FAANG $300k/year over 3 years scenario (e.g. they own a large stake in a close-to-IPO company). And they should maybe still walk away, if the 50% chance of a tiny IPO payout would destroy their self esteem and make them feel even further behind their high-salary peers. (Also keep in mind that not everyone lands jobs at FAANG companies, so it shouldn't be super hard to find people who lucked into a startup where their EV is higher than their market salary over a few years). In other words: even if a startup somehow has higher EV, you may want to ignore the EV.
Also, the two types of generalists aren't quite the same. Being a generalist in a 10k person company feels different from having to do everything alone at a 5 person company.
I think some heuristic like "earn double a FAANG income" isn't going to go over well with companies that are getting off the ground. Are the companies stupid for not paying that? Maybe sometimes. But there are definitely way more companies willing to hire someone at $200/hr than at $500/hr.
The calculations are just different for the companies. An operation spending $1B gains a lot by shaving off 1% (and small improvements are not strictly in the domain of specialists). But a new venture with $0 in revenue may have a very real risk of running out of cash one day, even if their product idea is great and well-built. "Hire the best people in the world" seems more prudent for a company who is certain it will pay off.
But to be fair, I guess one should occasionally try asking for high amounts anyways. I think jaquesm had recommended aiming to have 50% of your clients turn you down on the basis of price, to find the sweet spot for a rate.
But wouldn’t any host running the malicious package be vulnerable to having creds stolen from that host? Maybe I don’t know which “ACL” tech you’re referencing. You can limit where credentials are used from, and not just something like where an S3 bucket is read from? (For example)
You can set a permission that says “these credentials can only be used on an aws instance owned by this account”
Even if the creds are stolen they’d need access to an instance in your account to use them. Also you can be alerted if someone attempts to use them anywhere else.
There are very few situations where it even makes sense to have static credentials on an AWS instance any more. "Ambient" short-lived credentials from the instance profile and assumed roles are much safer.
In the article they claim the package is literally stealing the IAM role credentials from the EC2’s metadata URL. So it’s presumed that the code is already running on your EC2.
Of course, just because it takes the credentials doesn’t mean it does anything else with them, but it could have done anything.
