I just don't understand how people continue to believe that Bigfoot exists. The footage from the 1970s, once stabilized, looks embarrassingly like a man in a gorilla suit. Plus they admitted their faking it. The fact people still believe this makes me understand exactly how conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers believe what they do.
Maybe you should do some research before calling bullsh*t. Here’s part 1 of 6 of a 12 hour analysis of that film - https://overcast.fm/+DkjFY8nxA
The hosts go into it open minded, and come out believing it is real.
Along the way they speak to the surviving people who were actually there and involved, AND to a Hollywood film maker and creature FX person who was making high-end costumes in the 60s. He says the technology to make a costume that good at that time was not in existence. Furthermore, he says nobody has yet been able to produce a costume of similar quality.
Also, when you look into the proportions the human body, they don’t match those of the being in the film.
Also, there are many indications in the film itself that it was an impromptu shoot.
AND the guy who claimed to have been the man in the monkey suit had a beef (motive) with the man who shot the film, AND the costume he described wearing doesn’t match what appears on the film, AND the lengths of his limbs don’t match those of the creature in the film.
And the other guy who was present when the film was shot is known to be highly respected and full of integrity. A real straight shooter.
Lastly, check out BFRO.org to see the thousands of sightings that continue to occur every year across the USA. Sure, some are probably bears... but some are up close and personal, and involve police, forest rangers, military, etc.
Fascinating how we still have yet to find a single carcass of a massive land mammal that lives close enough to civilization for there to be regular sightings.
Also strange that the video evidence is so spectacularly subpar that the most convincing of it requires significant anomaly hunting to persuade anyone.
The one argument I've heard to that is: how many dead bears or cougars are often stumbled upon? Turns out not a lot. Animals tend to find hidden placed to die and then nature can dispose and disperse of them pretty quickly. You will find dead deer but there are so many of them and they are heavily hunted. They're also kind of dumb and will die by running into a tree and things like that. The other thing that gives me pause to believe it's possible they're out there is that there have been times in recent history where we've apparently discovered entire large(ish) populations of gorillas when we had believed their numbers were lower.
I don't know. Not arguing bigfoot exists but I like the idea that even in modern times there's still stuff we can miss even though it feels like it would be impossible.
Yes, really. They can do it with computer graphics, but not costumes. Computer graphics didn’t exist when the film was made. Spandex didn’t even exist yet.
It’s broken up into 6 parts because they dive so deep into every aspect of the film. The guys history. Feasibility of hoaxing. Etc. I’m not trying to convince you. I’m saying give it a listen and see what you think.
Plenty of people have cell phones with them. They are either too shocked to take a picture, or they use their digital zoom and the pic comes out fuzzy and people call it a hoax. Or they get a decent pic and people call it a hoax anyway.
It’s weird, just ten years ago some hoaxters[1] tried to get greater publicity by trying to imply a Stanford professor would be involved in examining a “carcass” as well as having a congressional candidate involved in the excursion.
Their plan for a news conference was foiled when the ice encasing their Bigfoot “carcass” melted too fast and exposed the frozen rubber suit.
It’s a weird feature of humanity. Once an idea (or meme in the original Dawkins sense) starts spreading, it’s very hard to make it disappear, no matter how ridiculous it is. See flat earth theories, various nutty religious theories (“Jesus crossed the ocean and lived the rest of his days in the USA”), etc.
I guess it’s a social thing? Humans have a fundamental need to bond and feel part of a bigger “us” and these things serve as a substrate for it.
Alien bacteria-like in their original planet: Nobody know, but yes. Some steps are easy, some steps are unknow. It's a little optimist to say a clear "yes", but "yes".
Intelligent Alien living happily in their original planet or nearby: Nobody know, but probably yes. There are more unknows unknows step here. I'm particularly worried abbot the prokaryote-eukaryote transition, but there are more steps and more unknow steps. So let's hope that the universe is big enough and say "probably yes".
Intelligent Alien visiting us in flying saucer: Nobody know, but probably no. The distances are too big. There is no hard evidence like a crash from time to time. We don't receive any electromagnetic weird signals, and electromagnetic communication is so efficient it would be weird that they use other means to communicate between starships. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but let's say "probably no".
It's the same with the loch ness monster, the famous 'surgeon's photo' has long since been admitted as a fake, yet people still believe it to be proof. Granted, as with bigfoot that's not the ONLY ever sighting, but it's the one that cements the story as believable to most people.
Honestly, when you're dealing with the scale of the Internet, ie. billions of people, do the disgusting comments of a few dozen, hundreds or even thousands of people matter? It's not something you encounter in the "real" world, but it feels like we need to change our scales logarthimically when talking about Internet comments.
Probably a million people read about that article and 99% didn't think those horrible thoughts, but maybe less than 1% did and commented on social media. Just by sheer numbers, you're going to get a lot of terrible comments, it seems like this is the "new normal" and growing thicker skin is something we all need to deal with, unfortunately. To a regular person, a few dozen shitty comments will be hard to take from real people, but when considering the scale of the Internet, it's probably not significant and it's something we all need to learn, unfortunately.
Even in person you'll probably get a considerable number of awful comments, there are simply a large amount of insensitive people out there. It doesn't help that they feel emboldened by anonymity.
Insensitivity, I think, can be a coping mechanism for some. I was a teenager during 9/11. I remember having a good cry about it and then spending the rest of the day looking at and sharing wildly inappropriate photos (that we now call memes).
I agree. Perhaps evidenced by yourself, the people who we call insensitive or trolls today, could be the pillars of society tomorrow. We should be very careful when trying to answer the question "what do we do with these people?".
I tried Impossible Meat last week and I was shocked at how tasty it was. There was a Better Meats option for hamburgers but I don't want to waste $8 in case it doesn't taste good. They would do so much better if they had a stand at Whole Foods, Costco, etc giving out free samples so that I could taste it without wasting food or money to see if I like it.
I just tried it at White Castle for $1.99. I liked it! It was better than the $0.99 White Castle burger. This is coming from an unrepentant carnivore, but I’d have thought it was meat if I didn’t know better.
So if you’d like to “sample” the Impossible Burger, White Castle might be the way to go, provided you have one locally. If not, Burger King might be your next best bet.
Google has become a big horrible disaster. I'm extremely disappointed in what is going on these days.
I am a heavy user of Nest (7 cameras, other accessories). I've fully bought into the ecosystem. I literally have no idea what's going on. It sounds to me who is only casually paying attention that they're killing off Nest and the Nest brand. Whether that may or may not be true, they need to understand the perception of their actions to their users. Do they really expect most people to say "Okay, I need to spend 10 minutes and read through exactly what this all means."
Now I'm left with the dreaded feeling that my Dropcams and Nestcams will no longer work in the near future.
Google has really damaged their brand because I no longer consider them reliable. If I buy a brand that is associated with Google, I expect that it will get changed in the next year or so into something that I can't comprehend or don't want, and it makes me want to search for alternatives.
I don't want to "merge" my accouns with Google Home. I want to keep my single account on Nest like I have for many years now, and I just want alerts and to be able to see my cameras. All this other nonsense that they're trying to pull me into is not what I want as a consumer, and it upsets me that Google is becoming this kind of company.
They are in many ways worse than Microsoft was at their worst. Before Microsoft used to be a monopoly on the desktop, but Google is now turning into a monopoly in my entire life.
Meanwhile, Nest has been dormant for most of its existence, releasing only a few features. But in terms of cameras it's the most reliable which is why I stick with it. But there are so many opportunities for them to improve this service and it feels abandoned. Instead of adding features, like animal detection or car detection, they are worried about how I log in or who my account is? That's just stupid.
I refuse to buy google hardware after the horrible mess they made with their tablets, My first Gen Nexus 7 died due to hardware failure and they refused to admit or fix it, then I bought a second gen and the last firmware update bricked it. Such Garbage
It's not just the first gen. My second gen nexus 7 bricked. And my 2 Nexus 5X died from fatal bootloops. And there are screen issues with Pixel, Pixel 2, and Pixel 3 (and slowdowns/lagging/battery issues from recent firmware with all three)...
Hardware is hard, I get it. But just the handling of the Nexus 5X was inexcusably bad--to ship firmware that crippled the entire deployed fleet, and then shrug. Shame on me for buying more of their hardware.
My Nexus 6P ia still sitting here with a bootloop. Apparently you could get compensated if you're in the US so I'm out of luck.
And the compensation didn't happen until a lawsuit.
At best, I'd consider Google hardware to be disposable. That's how I treat my Chromecast devices that I still use. I'm not buying anything new from them if it costs more than making them disposable.
How well is Android doing as far as revenue and profit compared to iOS? According to information that came out during the Oracle trial, Android has made Google less over 10 years than iOS makes Apple during a down quarter.
How well is G+ doing against FB?
Google hasn’t had but one successful revenue generating product - ads.
This comment is not without merit, and it's a good point. Everyone here is complaining about this, yet it's true: Google is still highly profitable. Would they be more profitable if they had a more seemingly-sensible management and weren't pissing people off with this behavior? It's impossible to say I think. Perhaps it eventually will bite them in the ass though, because it doesn't really seem like a good way to run a company long-term. But for now, it's definitely making the executives a lot of money, as well as many engineers.
I think all this does show how dysfunctional many human organizations are where chasing the new shiny is rewarded much more than keeping things stable and running correctly. Can you imagine if airplane manufacturers were run this way?
Right now I'm struggling with whether or not to leave. I'm currently at a well-known company, and I'm uncharacteristically happy because my WLB is the best it's been in my career.
However, I'm getting a bit bored and I also know I could make at least $50,000 a year more if I leave. Hell, even the new engineers joining my company at the same level are making more than I am.
But the culture and pay at my company is just good enough such that staying isn't a horrible decision. And I don't want to start studying dynamic programming again for my interviews (I've never used it except in interview environments, so I keep forgetting and losing the ability to quickly answer questions).
So yes, I could make a nice amount more (plus large sign on bonus) but WLB is good enough to keep me, at least for another year. I pick up my kids every day at school and I love it, it's worth the money for now.
What if you went to your manager, or whoever you feel is the right person, asked if you could speak one on one, and said...
"I really love working at this company. The work is interesting, I love the people, the culture, <one more legitimate pro goes here>. But I also know I could be making X if I went elsewhere. I love the work I'm doing, and I want to keep doing it here, but I also don't want to be leaving money on the table. What can we do?"
This phrasing, pretty much verbatim, has worked really well for me in the past.
I wish I worked at your firm. I once worked at a place and saved them millions in one year. At the yearly review, they said "well, that was some good work". That was the entire review. When I said "how about giving me an extra 1k a year (a bit less than others who had been there for a while were getting) I was told we had no extra cash. Well... wow, I just saved you like 1.5 million dollars. I am not asking for that, even spread out over 20 years I am asking for 20k.
I have been reading HN for years. I have no idea how you people have such nice jobs...
I think it's standard in this industry that you only advance by moving to another company. You can even move back after awhile and they'll suddenly be able to afford you at a much higher rate.
I think what's most telling is what you did after that meeting. Did you quit and go work elsewhere?
Don't get me wrong, I don't think companies should be so short sighted as to nickel and dime employees. But your one true source of leverage is to actually get up and leave.
There's a lot more leverage than that depending on the particulars of the story. It may have been OP that identified a saving that could be made and their leverage is a future unwillingness to identify such things. Maybe they'll stop questioning things and "code to spec" in future. Maybe they'll ignore those erroneous errors they notice throughout the day and wait for a bug report in production.
Companies that don't give raises can expect all of these behaviors.
None of this is leverage. You're wasting your own time at best and will have less achievements to talk about in your next job interview.
Same thing if your next advice is to stop working 60 hours a week and overtime. This was a huge mistake and you should never have done this in the first place.
It's immature to clock in, do exactly what you get paid for and clock out? If the company expected you to do more than that then they would compensate appropriately.
Yes, I did leave. The real problem is: the only method of pay increase is leaving. Well, so now I am the "new guy" every two to three years. I have no real investment in the company, and they have none in me. Right or wrong, is that the workforce that we want to cultivate? I have not been at any company more than a few years because of this (literally, not boasting, I do something great, they recognize wow this person is great, and I receive nothing so I leave)... the problem is that as one ages, this gets old (no pun intended). Job hopping as an old person in an IT/tech field is not pretty, and probably not fashionable.
My concern is, how do new, young(er) people get raises? I would use my time as a cautionary tale... job hopping seems to fine at the start, but as you progress it gets worse. My issue is that I am still underpaid by a long shot. If I stayed at the first company I would still be making 1/3 of what I am now, but I am also making 1/2 of what the "new guy" makes. Not sure where this is all going (on a large scale, not my story), or how this is helping the country/economy.
It's harder to get them to say yes, period, since that requires actual action on somebodies part.
So you might as well make the bigger ask, and then if negotiation ensues you can "settle" and still get more than you would have gotten by asking for a smaller amount initially.
"I have no idea how you people have such nice jobs..."
Crack one of the top 5 companies and you'll be set for life.
Most of them have offices around the world, although engineering tends to be focused in certain US and European cities. They might ask you to move there.
If you have the initiative and skill to identify a $1.5M cost-saving opportunity and execute it, you are probably good enough to work at Facebook (or wherever). Just practice interviewing for a couple weeks. Every class of question you could be asked is represented on Leetcode/Hackerrank/etc.
So I've been at places that literally wouldn't give me a title increase with no monetary benefit. I'd saved them boatloads of money and doing far more than my job description. Upper management had a bonus structure based on cutting costs. Not actually performing the job, just how much they could cut.
I left that place and immediately made nearly 20k more per year, then next job another 25k, then another 20k and I'm now in a job where I get to set my own hours, work from home and get paid stupid amounts of money getting raises and bonuses I haven't even asked for. To this day I have no idea how I've gotten so damned lucky.
Some general things that have helped me, and believe me I started from self taught tech skills, poor people skills, and massive introversion, so chances are you're smarter than I am and able to do just the same if you're willing to put in the work.
1. Luck - not much you can do to get lucky, but you can stack the deck in your favor by making sure you're ready when your opportunity does come.
2. Know what you're looking for in advance. That means the salary, type of work environment, and position you're working for. If you're comfortable where you are position wise figure out how you're going to improve your skill set through either diversification or specialization. Diversification makes you more useful at startups, specialization at mid to mature companies. Being comfortable means you're not growing which means you're losing value from an employee standpoint because you're probably forgetting something every day.
3. Know how much you're looking for. Don't value yourself low. one way I heard which seemed to help was to start saying amounts in a mirror. When you got to a point where you thought it was silly ask for slightly higher. Worst they can say is no and you've lost nothing.
4. Be willing to walk when opportunity comes. Nothing says you're serious like walking away. Let's be honest if you're unhappy enough that you're looking externally, it's probably a sign you're ready to go anyways.
5. Be able to sell yourself. Know your past achievements and be able to show how your past achievements will be able to help the company make more money. Know what the company desires to do, who their current customers are, and what they're excited about. Nothing impresses a new company more than a prospective employee who has done their homework. I've literally had people come into interviews being told they would be asked about the company and been unprepared, they didn't get the job. For your current company, show them how you want to grow into a role that can give them more for the money. Being excited about your company and what they do is genuinely hard to find. Some jobs make it nearly impossible to do so, especially mature or more often dying companies.
6. People skills, people skills, people skills. If you suck at talking to people, get better. Toastmasters is good for speeches, church meetings for general conversations, friends groups, networking events, etc. If you're looking for step by step instructions look into the classic "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie. It's old but it's a classic. Vanessa Van Edwards is younger but also provides really great information on learning to read people's body language, something which doesn't come naturally to me. Even if you're not in sales or management read books aimed at them. Chet Holmes is solid for sales information, James Collins for management. Knowing how your salespeople bring in clients and how your management thinks means you can often be the person who is solving their problems before they come up. Good salespeople and managers take care of people who make their lives easier, but they also lean on them more. Just never make the mistake of thinking that because they like you, compliment you, or take care of you that you're their friend. Unless a relationship exists outside of work it's a work relationship. Good salespeople and managers can make you feel great even when they are screwing you over.
7. Start doing good things for other people before they do them for you. If you know someone in your network is out of work and you're not looking but a recruiter sends you a job that you know they might fit, send it along. If someone left a job for different pastures, leave them a genuine recommendation or send them a personal message letting them know how much you appreciated them. People too often don't let others know how much they appreciate good people, and no one hates being genuinely appreciated.
I think I've blabbered on for long enough, but these are just a few of the guidelines I've worked through to get to have an amazing job. Hope you find yours. :)
Those are some great points. I am not going to boast, but I do know most of them, and I was a manager of an IT team at a great organization that gave us proper, informed training, so most of these points are very familiar (we thought about the employee perspective). My current location does not offer any "real" jobs like some previous posters were pointing out (e.g. the big 5 or 10 companies). Oddly, I think getting in now would be very difficult. I was a Sr IT worker, then a Manager of Sr. IT workers, in addition to an enterprise architect. But I am getting older, and I think they want younger.
Thanks, that's a perspective I never got. Shows how lucky I've been at the places I've worked. (Or perhaps, how underpaid I was at the time!)
I should also mention that before these conversations, I had also been interviewing with a few different companies and gotten offers, so I knew those numbers were real and I really, truly, was ready to leave if they said no. But I genuinely wanted to keep working there and be making the salary I knew I could get elsewhere, and it worked out.
Hey. I don’t know you so take this for what it’s worth. But you asked for less than 0.01% of what you saved the company. Every single one of the people who decided you don’t deserve an extra 1K earned more than that because of what you did, either through salary, bonuses, or stock price increases. It’s possible you signaled that you don’t think you’re worth much by asking for as little as you did. Whatever it is, they believe (right or wrong) that you’ll continue to earn them money even if they don’t give you an increase. Don’t let them believe that even if you have to leave to do it.
To add a third perspective where you're both wrong and unlucky.
People on HN do better jobs because many live in the major tech cities, where there are more and better jobs. In big part linked to the big companies and the high cost of living.
In most cases of raises, the employee could have got much better by moving to somewhere else. It's easier to give a few percent raise per year or one time than it is to match the 50-100% raise that high performer could get.
If you change jobs often enough, you will eventually end up in a good company with a good pay, where you can stay.
There is a very simple reason your employer doesn't give big raises to existing employees: they know that a year ago, you were happy with your salary. Why would you want a 30% raise today, no matter what the outside market says? You were fine last month, what changed between you and the employer? Nothing.
Of course, long term, if the market goes up a lot, people will be underpaid and eventually leave. If the market moves up, do use the parent's phrasing. Don't interview (too aggressive). Just state the fact that the market has moved and you want to stay.
A year ago I had 1 year of experience with the company's tech stack, product portfolio and clients. Now I have 2 years of experience. If that isn't worth an extra 30% in value to the company, I'd rather provide that value where it's appreciated.
Sure, after a couple years there are definitely diminishing returns, but the company (mistakenly, IMO) thinking they can get the same value from a fresh hire as from someone who's been there for a while already is what has set up this whole culture in the first place.
The WLB was awesome, good paycheck, good job, really good teammates. But that feeling of knowing you could do way more just by changing job is maddening.
But I had no recognition in my work which was really the worst part actually, for instance, over the course of a year, I increased the team efficiency by 2500%, working on the build/deploy time and feedback loop.
They just told me that they didn't care about tooling, so it couldn't play in my favor for a promotion.
I deserved a raise and a promotion, I complained, during one on one(s), like 10s of them, on the course of a full year. They just didn't care. Basically what they told me, over and over, is that they were already paying the most in the area.
I finally left, for a 40% raise and a job that is way more recognised and enjoyable.
Saying things like "I could make 50k more at blah" seems to be taken so lightly these days. I would party/panic/freak out like I won the lotto if you told me I could make 50k more somewhere else. 50k... do you have any idea what that does to your future earnings? Your 401k/retirement? Hell, even if you live the same as now, sticking 25K in the bank every year is worth a whole heaping spoonful of whatever hell they could possibly throw at you in the new position... but it seems almost daily I read about someone or hear about someone who says "eh, Ill pass on that 20/50/75/100k increase in salary, I'm not into "money"..."
I suppose all of those people already have their million in the bank for retirement... or are independently wealthy. Where do all of those people come from?
The Mexican fisherman story [1] is what it comes down to for me. You can work a little, play a little, and generally have a good time with life and get by (Mexican fisherman), or you can start a business, work long hours, build a fleet of boats that makes a ton of money, and then sell it all someday when you retire, at which point you can work a little, play a little, and generally have a good time. (American businessman).
For me, I make enough to get by and then some. Yes I could work harder, but life is pretty good this way.
The addendum is the Mexican fisherman doesn't have money in the bank if his boat gets destroyed in a freak storm, nor does he have enough to cover the insurance. He's also not taking care of his family or prepared if some oil company drilling in the Gulf of Mexico has a spill that completely destroys his livelihood. In fact the fleet of boats could effectively gain enough money to lobby the local government to set limits on fishing by private boats, setting the per boat fees more than the single fisherman could afford. None of what I've said has no legitimately happened to fishermen. I know it's analogy but the analogy fails on so many levels because it doesn't include preparing for external risks or things you can't control.
Or on the other side, the American businessman has ruined his health/personal relationships by overwork so that he can't enjoy the freedom he bought for himself. Or even more likely, can't bring himself to make the leap into the void and walk away from money, status and security and continues to burn away the little healthy youth he has left remaining working in the job he can't give up.
Not all job that pays more requires you to sacrifice your life. I would even argue the other ways that jobs that pay more usually require less from you, leaving you with more time to be with yourself and your family.
This has been my experience. The more money that I make, the more promotions that I see, even in face of the additional responsibilities, the more autonomy I enjoy.
You’re not living the same lifestyle. Take a few international trips every year or live in or near a tier 1 city, or pay for a nice private school for the kids. Dinner and drinks out at non-fancy places is easy $100/person in a big city, vacations are $2k+ per person, private schools are $20k+ easy.
I was in a very similar situation at the end of last year. Young kids and a work life balance that couldn't be beat. Had a couple expenses pop up that aggravated my irritation at being underpaid to the point that I looked for a different job. Calculated out how much I thought I'd need to offset the work-life balance bit, and went out and got an offer for that amount. Actually accepted the offer but my employer said they'd match that offer, which was a much better outcome for me given the work-life balance part. I figure if it doesn't end up working out, the worst case scenario is I'll feel comfortable asking a higher salary next time I am on the job hunt. For now I'm living in the best of both worlds.
I basically said, "Hey, I got this offer that is 50% more than what you're paying me, and I plan to take it." At that point I won whichever way things went down.
I really wish people could stop using so many acronyms in general. Even though it usually is possible to guess, or in worst case google, the meaning, it always slow me down. I didn’t immediately understand WLB and I don’t remember seeing ETA meaning anything else that Estimated Time of Arrival before.
It just doesn’t take that long to write out the whole words.
> Publishers are also concerned that they won’t have access to important data about the consumers — credit cards, email addresses and other subscriber information — as part of the deal.
Why are credit card numbers important information? All they would know is what the credit card is, but it's not like they can sell the credit card or use that number to get more purchases, etc, from that number, can they?
My kid is 6 years old and all he uses is an iPad. I think the next generation will be using iPads and tablets and think using laptops are for old people.
This isn't a good article to post. It's just one person complaining about a change he didn't know about.
It's really just a syntax change. I probably wouldn't have chosen that particular syntax using colons, or I would have forced another keyword like "set" in front of it, but it is what it is. He created a bug and he likely won't do it again, so problem solved.
Did you do something about these terrible interviewers? Your company is particularly famous for a terrible interview experience because of interviewers such as this. I've personally experienced them a few times myself, and if you know they are bad, hopefully you've taken them off the interview rotation and reeducated them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q60mSMmhTZU