I ask this with sincere curiosity -
what does his current place of residence have to do with his message that programmers should avoid companies building infrastructure for the police state?
Readit Newsblandcoffee commented on PaulG on building the infrastructure of the police state twitter.com/paulg/status/... · Posted by u/pmcjones
blandcoffee commented on The average college student today hilariusbookbinder.substa... · Posted by u/Jyaif
You're not wrong, many students approach college as a vocational training facility. I'd say they do want to learn, but the focus is on "learning to get a job".
If you're lucky (and I was) at some point you understand that it's not about the material, it's about the process.
Research, assimilate, question, formulate, communicate.
These skills, and the understanding of how to use them, are the real goal -the material is just there to keep your interest.
Yes, obviously, if you are going into chemistry then learn chemistry and so on. But round out your course with other things. Oceanography can give you insight to computer science, literature can promote better communication.
Alas a large number of folks will leave college and never grasp the real value of why they were there. That's OK. The world needs workers.
But if you are at college now, or perhaps going soon, try and see beyond the next assignment. Try and see the process which underlies it.
Most of all college is there to teach you to think. So stop doing for just a moment and start thinking.
Once you see behind the curtain you can't unsee it. And ironically even if I tell you it's there, I can't make you look. Experience doesn't work like that.
Do you think this might be tied to a person’s financial situation?
Grow up with a safety net, you’ll enjoy the process.
Grow up poor and/or with people depending on you and you focus on the end state?
blandcoffee commented on Rippling sues Deel over spying twitter.com/parkerconrad/... · Posted by u/amacneil
Isn't this like the third lawsuit Rippling has put up against Deel. There was one for some church thing end of last year, and they made a big stink in 2023 when regulations on prop trading shops changed.
If the allegations are true, it's insane. But also feels a bit boy cried wolf.
Did you read the complaint?
If the honeypot description is accurate, the wolf is real. The below is from section 5 of their complaint [1]:
> Rippling’s General Counsel sent a legal letter to Deel’s senior leadership identifying a recently established Slack channel called “d-defectors,”
> In reality, the “d-defectors” channel was not used by Rippling employees and contained no discussions at all. It had never been searched for or accessed by the spy, would not have come up in any of the spy’s previous searches, and the spy had no legitimate reason to access the channel. Crucially, this legal letter was only sent to three recipients, all associated with Deel: Deel’s Chairman, Chief Financial Officer, and General Counsel (Philippe Bouaziz), Deel’s Head of U.S. Legal (Spiros Komis), and Deel’s outside counsel. Neither the letter nor the #d-defectors channel was known to anyone outside of Rippling’s investigative team and the Deel recipients. Yet, just hours after Rippling sent the letter to Deel’s executives and counsel, Deel’s spy searched for and accessed the #d-defectors channel
blandcoffee commented on The Strategic Crypto Swindle theatlantic.com/ideas/arc... · Posted by u/zfg
Gold is not just legacy.
Countries and banks (including central banks) are still buying gold as a hedge against dollar and other currencies.
For example, "from November 2022 to April 2024, China reported adding about 314 tons to its reserves, bringing the official total to 2,264 tons by mid-2024".
The logic for holding Bitcoin is the same as the logic for holding gold: a hedge against dollar and other currencies.
You may be right, but I think China specifically has learned something from Russia.
Before invading Ukraine, Russia held assets across the world and they were frozen (some of it USD).
Now imagine you are a large holder of US treasuries, would you take some off the table and purchase this other asset (gold) that can ensure you're less susceptible to your enemies sanctions?
blandcoffee commented on The Strategic Crypto Swindle theatlantic.com/ideas/arc... · Posted by u/zfg
If we have Fort Knox we might as well hold Bitcoin too. Whether or not it's Digital Gold is up for debate, but it's a self-fulfilling prophecy; the more countries that hold Bitcoin in reserve the more it becomes Digital Gold.
That said, let's limit it to BTC. ETH at least isn't so insider-owned. The inclusion of ripple, solana, and especially cardano though is especially stupid. Those are majority owned by the "foundations" and a pump in price enriches a select few.
I think perhaps you may have misread the article.
Here are some items that stuck out to me:
> As for American gold holdings, they’re essentially pointless: Fort Knox is a legacy of the days when the U.S. promised to exchange gold for dollars on demand.
> More to the point, bitcoin was created to be an alternative to the dollar, not a support for it. Far from strengthening the dollar, having the U.S. purchase billions of dollars of assets that were created to be alternatives to the dollar would at best be economically pointless and at worst would actually weaken confidence in the dollar.
so why other than fort knox, are you advocating for this position?
blandcoffee commented on Trump's 'Crypto Reserve' Is Such Brazen Corruption zeteo.com/p/trumps-crypto... · Posted by u/cratermoon
lol David Sacks sold all his crypto/divested before all this
In the article it says:
> Sacks said that he has sold his personal crypto holdings.
I went to his twitter account, that's exactly what he said, but that does not mean the same thing as divesting from companies that hold crypto.
blandcoffee commented on Canada proposes 100% tariffs on Tesla electrek.co/2025/03/04/ca... · Posted by u/zfg
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Dead Comment
blandcoffee commented on Elon Musk's CEO-Dictator Playbook thenerdreich.com/reboot-e... · Posted by u/sieste
> Finally, it is not sufficient to have an army of parachute ninjas large or smart to drop into all the agencies in the executive branch. Many institutions of power are outside the government proper. Ninjas will have to land on the roofs of these buildings too—mainly journalism, academia and social media.
The author is quoting Yarvin's substack here.
Say what you will about reducing the federal workforce - are people really ok with this line of thinking?
The idea of running the govt in 'founder mode' sounds reasonable on paper, until you realize there are established rules that outline the roles of each branch of govt in a democracy. We should be ok that these rules don't establish the most efficient govt, a worthy trade-off against the edge-cases.
blandcoffee commented on Should Canada ban X and Tesla? Why calls are growing globalnews.ca/news/109956... · Posted by u/taimurkazmi
> “We should treat Trump and members of his administration like Elon Musk as akin to Russian oligarchs,” Macfarlane wrote. “We need to impose meaningful costs on the U.S. for its economic aggression.”
The most meaningful cost you could impose in this situation is to establish a direction in which innovation within your borders rivals that of your aggressors, so you are not beholden to the government of their day.