It's still extremely corrupt, and done to benefit a very small group of people. Dismissing the criticism like this is directly against the rules and spirit of hackernews to assume good faith
I mean, it's both. PC OEM laptops have sucked for 6+ years that Apple silicon has been out. Apple makes the best laptops on the market.
I'm glad the PC industry is hopefully waking up, finally. I'd like to see some good hardware with Linux support. That's all I've wanted, a macbook pro experience on Linux.
I love Werner’s rant on how dumb chickens are. Although when I owned chickens, I was surprised to find there seemed to be a lot more to them than he suggested.
People in tech, especially from US, are so accustomed to spending $5,000/mo just to survive, that they cannot fathom one is able to live without having a tech job in San Francisco. It's a pretty sad state of affairs.
I live in a first-world European country where the average salary is about €25,000 per year. My mortgage estimate is less than €300/mo. I'm not that afraid of having to supplement my income if I need to. The world will still need cheap and experienced software engineers for a while.
> People in tech, especially from US, are so accustomed to spending $5,000/mo just to survive, that they cannot fathom one is able to live without having a tech job in San Francisco. It's a pretty sad state of affairs.
Quality of life in suburban America is incredibly high relative to a "first world" country with such a low average income. From what I have seen, most families in the "European periphery" still live in small Soviet-era apartment buildings, own one small car or no car at all, and are far from enjoying many other things taken for granted in America.
European here. Yes, houses are smaller, apartments can be comparatively tiny. Street parking can be a challenge.
However: I got stores, cinemas, cafes, restaurants within walking distance. My kids can roam around in the neighbourhood without someone calling social service on me. I can walk anywhere in the city at any hour day or night without someone robbing me. I can cheaply purchase free range eggs and organic vegetables. Tap water is fine, actually excellent. 30hour commute is considered too long. Coast is mere 3h away, people come from all over the planet to enjoy it, I spend 5 weeks a year there, just chillin and enjoying life. I get fast, cheap internet, and order groceries, do my taxes and doctors appointment online.
Tell me again how I’m suffering without poorly insulated detached houses, HSA, spam calls, an SUV to drive myself to the bakery, school shooting drills, healthcare bills, homeless people rejected by society, and that circus you have for a government right now?
Agree with you. Americans have been brainwashed in thinking they absolutely need a 3000 sqft house, 2 SUVs and pay for the absolute best private schools for kids. It's the ultimate rat race.
As someone that has lived in both Europe and America, the quality of life you get in America for the amount of money you spend is hilariously bad. It is easy to make money though.
In Europe the quality of life you get for cheap is by default excellent. It is so difficult to make money though,
> In Europe the quality of life you get for cheap is by default excellent.
I am been to Europe on many occasions and homes (actual homes, not cramped apartments) are not cheap at all relative to incomes. I am sure the peace of mind provided by universal healthcare and generous welfare programs is nice, but that's not how you build a strong economy. Incentives are distorted when you don't need a (good) job to live well enough. You get mediocrity, lacluster growth, poor customer service, and the other things Europe is known for. That's why you see people from all over the world come to America to build their businesses.
Living in a cookie-cutter suburb full of parking lots and strip malls is not, in fact, a higher standard of life than living in a small town in Europe. The fact that we've somehow convinced ourselves that it is says absolutely nothing good about American postwar culture.
First time I heard Northern Italy compared to Soviet Russia, but my fault for discussing this stuff with Americans, trying to pass people as poor because they only have one car.
Did you know that life expectancy in US is 5-7 years lower than Western Europe? But sure, do go on about "first world" countries.
plenty of people in Prague living on that income without car, I would really like to see how is suburban America quality of life incredibly higher than Prague LOL
enjoy your museums, hospitals, free schools and playgrounds in walking distance, almost free public transport, tons of supermarkets in walking distance, etc. in suburban America
I am happy that I do not need to own a car (in a London UK suburb).
I am happy that I do not need to heat or maintain a large building.
Our outgoings are low. One child is already at university and the other will be soon.
My perception of a common US notion of a 'good' life only intersects somewhat with mine, and I have spent a reasonable amount of time in various US locations from SF to NYC via the midwest, etc.
It's quite simple really. In a place where $5,000+ monthly incomes are common, people can afford more things, and this generally means a higher quality of life. Granted, many necessities like housing are also more expensive in high income areas, but keep in mind that American homes are generally much larger than in Europe. And things like AC and clothes dryers are taken for granted.
> And things like AC and clothes dryers are taken for granted.
Not sure where you get your impression of Europe, but if you feel amenities like these are not standard, it’s a few decades out of date.
North Europeans traditionally didn’t need AC, but everywhere where it gets hot - which is everywhere now - they got them installed. Very few buildings with integrated HVAC systems for the entire buildings tho, mostly independent units.
yeah it's funny, actually in poor Bulgaria pretty much every apartment has AC, so AC is certainly not anything to brag about, even the poorest people have it
clothes dryers are just plain stupid waste of space, consume lot of energy/money, I've had washing machine with dryer, pretty much never used dryer after seeing how long it takes to dry the clothes while wasting electricity, new washing machine I bought without dryer
got it - for you quality of life = house full of useless things
for other people it's usually - lots of green, clean air, museums, cultural events, activities, accessible healthcare, accessible education, playgrounds/supermarkets/schools in walking distance, great public transport, no need to drive everywhere in empty metal box, etc.
I wonder why European cities are winning always charts of best places to live and not some generic US suburb??
Of course you felt amazing living off US$1k/mo in Brazil - the average per capita household income in Brazil is less than US$450/mo and a salary of $700/mo puts you in the top 10% [0].
Basically, you enjoyed feeling rich in a country where the vast majority are getting screwed.
And this is what I as well as my SO's family (middle and working class Vietnamese in VN) hate about digital nomads - y'all don't realize that you end up perpetuating the same inequality you try to run away from, and feels deeply colonial in nature as the countries y'all end up in had histories of being colonized and stratified.
You get to travel everywhere because you have a strong passport. They don't because their passport is weak and their salaries are low.
You will always be promoted to the top of the social pecking order thanks to your passport. They will always be relegated to the bottom and attacked by politicans as "stealing jobs" or "changing demographics" thanks to their passport.
oh please, get over it. I supported a local old lady who airbnb'd out her guest house. I shopped at the local grocery store. and I left.
you would drop that buzzword 'colonial', as though Brazil isn't a former European colony, just like the US. And they... gasp... used slaves for much longer.
I was in the southern cone of the country, first world lifestyles there. Brazilians are proud, they'd be insulted by your savior attitude.
Even in São Paulo the average household income is around $550/mo [0]. That said, I assume you live in Florianopolis but even then the average household income is around $520/mo [1].
> you would drop that buzzword 'colonial', as though Brazil isn't a former European colony, just like the US. And they... gasp... used slaves for much longer
I know. And clearly you're a bit thick in the head if you don't realize the ongoing political and social fissures in Brazil as a result of this.
There's a reason Lula retains such a cult following.
> I supported a local old lady who airbnb'd out her guest house
To even own a house that is Airbnb-able in a digital nomad hub in the south cone means they were better off socially and economically during the dictatorship and the messy transition back to democracy.
Nothing wrong with that, but assuming you are living a normal life there and not recognizing that your lifestyle is much better off than most people is douchey.
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Alternatively, don't complain [2] when it's people like us or our parents who left, succeeded in the West, and are blamed for making life expensive for your types in America or Germany ;)
Being anti-immigrant yet being on an immigrant visa yourself (yes, a digital nomad is an immigrant), and while Brazilians are barred from getting a visa to the US.
It's been documented [0] for [1] decades [2] how tourism induces a form of Dutch Disease [3].
Tourism dollars are inherently extractive, as that is foreign capital that is not redeployed into capacity building and also leads to premature inflation which prices out less extractive industries. Additonally, most tourist led economies lead to additonal economic stratification, as most countries tourism industries are deeply regulated and tend to be captured by pre-existing economic players (eg. Thailand, Brazil) which only exacerbates social stratification and economic inequality.
A great example of this is Thailand versus Malaysia and Vietnam - overtourism in Thailand led to an inflation in low skill services jobs associated with the tourism industry at the expense of manufacturing, which left for fellow ASEAN members Malaysia and Vietnam, both of which limited tourism and strategically targeted foreign capital to manufacturing and high value services (BPO, Software) despite Thailand historically being a peer and significantly more developed than Malaysia and Vietnam respectively.
No developing country has made the leap to becoming developed due to a tourism-led industrial policy, and the developed states that did adopt such a policy (eg. Puerto Rico, Portugal, Greece, Italy) only did so after their industrial growth spurts in the 1970s-2000s ended.
Jeff Bezos loves space exploration. He loves O'Neil's vision of orbital colonies, and he firmly believes that moving heavy industry to orbit will leave Earth better off. That's not a vanity project.
The Washington Post, on the other hand, he purchased as a trophy. That's the vanity project.
I disagree. The poet Gary Snyder thought space travel was unimaginative - that living life as things are on earth was more interesting and challenging. Owning the Washington Post gives him control over a high visibility U.S. news operation. Nothing vanity about that.
Oh you know, probably his clearly stated intentions of driving industry off-earth and into orbit.
Is SpaceX also a vanity project? No, Musk actually wants to expand human civilization beyond one planetary sphere.
Just because they're billionaires doesn't mean they're full of shit. In fact, in both of their cases, it means they're extremely driven by... real ambitions.
There is clear evidence Musk's original goal with SpaceX was just to encourage more investment into NASA. Remember it was started before Tesla existed and before Musk was a billionaire.
I'm allegedly a fullstack dev, often working on fullstack features, but I haven't had to think deeply about much on the frontend all year. 90% of my thought/work goes into backend work. The AIs just handle the FE stuff easily based on our existing patterns. Not saying it's perfect or can't be improved, but it pretty much always "just works" perfectly well enough.
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