More life responsibilities isn't a bad thing. Life is (or should be) made of intentional decisions by the user (you). And the culmination of these intentional decisions can fill your life with meaning, purpose, and fulfillment.
You don't have to take Responsibility A if you don't want to, but you have to live with the consequences of your decision (good or bad). It's a trade off. I want a house. I make that decision for that responsibility. I now own that responsibility knowing the duties that come with home ownership will take a portion of my time and therefore will reduce the availability of time once given to a different responsibility.
Of course, mistakes will be made, but the best part is you can most often correct mistakes in healthy and meaningful ways.
For a little bit of flavor. After I saw this post (I don't follow D&D or Wizards or Hasbro news) I thought immediately of BFRPG. Found this post in Basic Fantasy's forum, so this move by WotC is definitely going to have an impact.
I have enjoyed reading "The Songs of Distant Earth" by Arthur C. Clarke which talks about seed ships and the culture rise from that. It's an interesting read.
Wonderfully written, but for my shame I expected a different storyline and put it down a year or so ago after only reading 60 pages or so and haven't gone back to it. I keep packing it one times away, but... .
One day I might learn how to have a kid AND read books :/
I started reading the Foundation trilogy out loud to my infant. One gets through the books a lot more slowly but it works! I must admit that even if he falls asleep I'll cheat and finish the chapter (still reading vocally).
Bonus: it lets me practice voices for DM'ing DnD games
haha, I should try that perhaps - particularly as I happen to have been carrying Foundation around in my bag and barely managing to read about two pages on my commute :) I never was good at reading when there's interesting Life to gawp at out the window.
I’m imagining a spaceship landing at a deserted planet millions of years in the future and then just sitting there, generating pictures of cities in the sky and Mona Lisa on a surfboard.
Kind of a fun hybrid where AI is clearly dominant in an established solar system, but it ends up being impossible to miniaturize the enormous supply chain necessary to fabricate microprocessors, so to colonize a new solar system it actually ends up being necessary to send self-replicating carbon-based humans who will then bootstrap the industrial supply chain necessary for AGI.
(repeat ad infinitum for the rest of the galaxy, humans live only on the frontier)
I think we'll figure out how to give your brain access to something like an AMD Ryzen long before we figure how to make a processor into an AI or make one that's concious.
It's all fun and games until you think about the practicalities of building a self-repairing machine that can keep running for hundreds/thousands/millions of years with no significant software or hardware errors.
It seems that there's a very pessimistic trend with regards to estimating the feasibility of engineering human biology for inhabiting outer space. Everyone just wants to let AI do it. I think this is because the progress of biotech has been so glacial. This is largely due to regulation. China will probably change the rules around at some point to allow for more flexibility here, with lots of moral outrage and handwringing in the west, and speed off into the future.
Well, I think that's really just an implementation detail. The point is that we will engineer our successor beings, whether than engineering is computery or mad sciencey or both.
For me (my 2 cents), I think it's more than nostalgia. It's about community. It's about face to face interaction. I recently listened to a piece on NPR about lunches and working in France and why it's important. https://www.npr.org/2022/06/07/1103566695/lunching-work-when...
The part I took away was how everyone sat together for lunch and you might find yourself at a table with a stranger who is not in your field but you just talk and you create community.
And face to face is different than online. I do both and for me the face to face interaction is what makes life enjoyable.
That, in a nutshell, is what is valuable about going into a Blockbuster (or any store, restaurant, etc ) meeting people and building relationships.
Take this comment for instance; if I were to have this conversation face to face, it would be a completely different experience. The other party could hear the tone of my voice, see the expression on my face. We could shake hands, slap each other on the shoulder, and share a drink together.
I can’t overstate the value of the lunch hour in France, it’s by far the best part of my day and has made my PhD bearable, enjoyable even despite the difficult pandemic environment.
It’s allowed me to learn from colleagues, make friends and create a sense of belonging, my lab isn’t just an abstract organization but a group of interesting people.
I agree with you, I miss it. And some of this is pandemic-inspired too, really missed human contact then, and in the USA I worry some of it is never coming back.
And yet, my city DOES have an independent/artsy local video rental store, that I'm sure has all sorts of things I'd like watching. I don't go to it. I don't even have a DVD player or VCR. I stream.
Don't get me wrong. I stream too. I think technology is great. I'm only a Luddite when my code won't compile. I do a lot of things on line. At least 8 hours of my day is developing software from my home, so my only interaction with my coworkers is through software. And I enjoy forums like Hacker News. And it's really convenient to instantly get a video.
But I also love going to the book store with my kids and thumbing through the books and videos and music. Picking them up, smelling them (helpless romantic I guess), talking about them.
The other day, a random person came up to me and shared a memory of her child because of something she overheard me say to my child and it was a great interaction. I felt connected in a way I maybe didn't realize I missed. And it wouldn't have happened (not the same way at least) online.
With "big" companies coming in on the Crypto bandwagon is Crypto really worth anything? I don't understand (and maybe someone can explain it to me) how Crypto is for "the little guy" when those who started out at the beginning have "all" the crypto already. There is no way I am going to be able to "mine" more crypto than those who started years before me or those who have more "traditional" money than me currently to buy crypto. It's still money. It's still a bond, a promissory note; it's not real and is only worth what the big guys (whether traditional or crytpo big guys) say it is worth. But I am no economist or financial expert. So why should I use crypto? I'm still at the bottom in that game.
So the difference is that there is no central authority that can just print more crypto. It's decentralised which means you don't need a bank, bank card or ATMs, you can store your crypto on a piece of paper. So the big guys can own a lot of crypto or a lot of dollars, with crypto there are no banks for them to control and no government to print out new notes.
Is there anything preventing large players like exchanges or payment processors from adopting fractional reserves? That's effectively printing more crypto by centralized authorities.
But looking at this paypal payment, you cannot use your own crypto from your own stick, but have to first sell that crypto to USD, transfer that USD to paypal, then purchase crypto back in paypal, in order to spend it.
It allows you to be your own bank - you aren't depending on any central authority to allow you access to your "cash". This might be one of those things that is Not For You if you can't think of a use for it, and that is Okay.
>There is no way I am going to be able to "mine" more crypto than those who started years before me or those who have more "traditional" money than me currently to buy crypto
I have the same problem with US dollars, that some people have more than I do, but I still use dollars often.
I just thought Crypto would level the playing field. that seems to be a misconception on my part. Sounds like it's more that I can have access to my money all the time because of a centralized system. Although I am finding in research that there are centralized Crypto exchanges. So I need to figure out how that is different.
That's the nature of my understanding of crypto and why I asked the question. I don't know if Big Companies can dilute the effectiveness of crytpo. It's why I asked. Maybe off topic for this HN post. I don't know. Cryto intrigues me with the thought of a decentralized currency, but does it level the playing field? I don't know.
I really don't know which pitch you are latching on to.
Crypto does not address the reality that people who have a lot of resources can simply buy a lot of crypto. It doesn't attempt to. There have been time periods, including now, where people with a lot of resources are ignoring crypto because the world is comfortable enough for them, and you can buy before they or their heirs do. The entire decade has been that way and it has been completely accurate, and it is also accurate that this makes a lot of people uncomfortable about the sustainability of the exchange rates.
Crypto addresses other playing fields. There are many intermediary liquid systems (cryptocurerncies) that you can use to send unlimited amounts to people anywhere in the world, and they can cash out in their own local currency. All the other systems had limits because governments controlled the financial institution running the system. This has nothing to do with you deciding to own a lot more crypto than you need at that point in time, it is also accurate that a lot of people do keep excess holdings because they realize that they never have to go back to the local currency, and realize that others will come to that same conclusion too.
There are many other areas that crypto does okay at, and is working to get better at.
I appreciate the information. This is the kind of thing I am needing to understand it better. I have a lot of misconceptions about crypto, which is why I am asking the questions. I do the same thing in other areas as well (COVID/Vaccines, etc). So again, thanks for the info.
>"Clients–the good ones, at least–don’t CARE how many hours you’re spending to do X and Y, as long as you’re doing a damn good job at X and Y and adding significant value to their company."
this resonates with me; In software we so often think in "hours" as value when we should be thinking in "what value does the product I am creating bring to my client"
We shouldn't be charging by hours, we should be charging by value; Product X is very useful and brings value to your company.
However, there is also the question of quality. If you charge the market rate of a product and the quality of the delivered product is poor, I suppose the customer can return it.
"We shouldn't be charging by hours, we should be charging by value; Product X is very useful and brings value to your company"
It's usually really hard for most people to be able to assign value to discrete pieces of work from a vendor.
For those who can do it, they're usually... sharp enough to drive a harder bargain.
I had a client project a few years back, and after working there for a bit, I discovered an area of their operations that was very ... bad. They knew it. Fixing and streamlining it would be worth at least $50k per year in reduced losses. When we got to the point about discussing that area of the business, I'd brought up attacking this. When we finally got to the point about pricing, I'd offered a couple options, but they quickly realized they'd be able to get someone to do the work for half of what I was proposing. For example (made up numbers), my 'cost' would have been, say, $25k over a few months, to net them an ongoing minimum $50k positive benefit. Once they realized the extent of the problem, they knew it needed to be addressed, but also knew they could get it done for half of my proposal terms. They knew the 'value' all too well.
You may have lost that one, but I've picked up enough contracts where I had to clean up a cheaper developer's half-finished project. Eventually, companies who go searching for cheaper labor will get what they pay for. There are exceptions, but that's the norm.
You don't have to take Responsibility A if you don't want to, but you have to live with the consequences of your decision (good or bad). It's a trade off. I want a house. I make that decision for that responsibility. I now own that responsibility knowing the duties that come with home ownership will take a portion of my time and therefore will reduce the availability of time once given to a different responsibility.
Of course, mistakes will be made, but the best part is you can most often correct mistakes in healthy and meaningful ways.