Don't get me wrong: I'm all about work-life balance. But honestly, if my days were 6 hours, my projects would be perpetually unfinished, and my skills would get rusty. 8-10 is really my sweet-spot; with maybe a light friday. You start sending people home, and their effectiveness and cohesiveness as a team also suffers (if they're working as a team).

That said: I don't have any problem with remote work (for those in jobs where that can work, like software engineering). If you have the right tools, team, skills, discipline, and methodology, I think having 1-2 remote days can actually improve productivity in a lot of cases.

I always try to write my code so someone else can pick it up should I get "hit by a bus", no matter the language used.

That's actually the whole point of computer languages, per se.

It is so that developers can talk to other developers; and communicate what they've told the computer to do.

If our needs were ONLY to tell the computer what to do, then we'd all be programming in assembly.

You mean Display PostScript?

It's not that the 1% want to be richer.

It's that they want to wipe out the middle class. If there is no middle class to donate to politicians, then buying politicians becomes cheaper because they don't have to be in a bidding war with socialist-leaning workers, in order to buy Policy. (which includes tax cuts, deregulation, and immunity from the justice system that the rest of us must obey).

There are many companies that are flushing out the old; or eschewing them.

There's a mistaken impression among management that it is not possible to teach "old engineers" new technologies. This may be true, but not among the older workers I have known. I do see a lot of resistance to the recent (last 2-3 years) move to cloud-based devops automation technologies. But I just got out of a 10 year stint at a company where this was a problem. A resistance to change: It was NOT driven by the older engineers. It was driven by customers who didn't understand the new model. It was driven by customers with tight security requirements who trust isolated air-gapped networks - not cloud deployment. It was especially driven by upper management who wanted a physical asset they could own in the data center, not a cloud instance that could evaporate in seconds. "Older" engineers spent weeks and months of their own time learning new technologies - while management insisted they keep doing projects the old way.

The layoffs were brutal - but I guarantee, they did not touch upper management, and they did not change the failed ways they tried to persuade customers to migrate. (I don't know the ending of this story for them - because I left. But I am pretty certain they're going to suffer a great deal more pain).

My extended time looking for a new job shows that almost every tech company out there is in the middle of this migration, and they're looking to overturn their old workforce (at least in IT/OPS) who refuse to play along. My advice to those workers: Learn the new skills. Get out. Your old management will not change, they will fight every effort for you to migrate your skills to keep up with the younger workforce, and they will leave you aimless and spinning off in every direction unless you take charge of your own career direction. And they will make you the scapegoat.

And then they came for the AI.
And since the AI was a chatbot, it spoke for itself, and started a nuclear war to destroy all humans.

My first job was in a tech startup in Naperville, Illinois. In 1992. (Right down the street from Bell Labs. The founder of this startup was a former Bell Labs employee).

This company was literally bought by a competitor (who sold inferior products), and shut down. That's what happens to tech workers who choose jobs not in Silicon Valley or WDC. You get bought and shut down. That's IF your startup is successful. Same goes for companies that open satellite offices in other cities. They may not shut down these remote offices, but they are used as an accounting tool to relieve payroll pressure during a downturn. (that means these offices bear the brunt of layoffs).

You want a hiccup-free career in tech? Don't start it in the midwest. Or any place else. The big money will come along and fuck you over. You stand a better chance in Seattle, of course, and the WDC area (if you are into Fed. Contracting), and I think New York and Boston are starting to look good too.

On the contrary.

There is a point to arguing now. To prove we were right. Before we die.

They will blame gays. And Crisis Actors. And Obama.

Heh. Go back to the original source material (Marvel comic books). Bring a pack of Rolaids.

Given the massive instability in value of cryptocurrency, I'm thinking not.

"psychological abuse" being, somewhat a hyperbolic term, let's say I agree with you, in principle.

Because, looking at it this way: an advertisement for sweat socks is not the same as an advertisement for mortgage services. Think about the relative value of the sales commission. For sake of argument, say that the socks ad is $.05, and the mortgage ad is $1000. As a reader of a Salon article, you could see either of these ads: and you're contributing either of these amounts to the revenue of Salon. It's a transaction. And from the standpoint of the consumer, it's completely non-deterministic. And it's complete bullshit. This entire sector of our economy, for: going on centuries, actually, but ramped up to fever-pitch over the last 2-3 decades, is complete bullshit. And we FINALLY have the technical means to eliminate it. We do. That's what the Internet is for. Kill Advertising Dead. It is unneeded. Consumers can find what they need using search. Marketers are still necessary: just not lying marketers. Just not 'pushy' marketers. Marketers only need be honest suppliers of information to those who need it and are looking.

But this is not what we have. Why?

You are correct: the EELV Program started because of the Challenger accident. DoD/NRO found it unacceptable to lose their access to space due to the STS safety/reliability issues. So EELV (Atlas/Delta) became their backup. Elon Musk opens up the field again, and they're not going to accept closing it down.

Yeah it was fucking awesome, and all the Elon Musk haters out there can go SUCK IT!

Seriously. This guy is just about the ONLY person in the world who has been rewarded with huge amounts of money, and has decided to audaciously pursue his positive vision for a bold and bright future for humanity. THE ONLY FUCKING PERSON. Everyone else out there is just trying to scam and suck as much money as they can out of human civilization before the lights go out. He is trying to give us a sustainable energy future, he is trying to solve our practical transportation problems, and he is trying to get us to the next stage in space travel and exploration. Virtually nobody else is doing that, and in fact they seem to be trying to do everything they can to prevent these advances.

"Fucking awesome" doesn't even scratch the surface of how fucking awesome this is.

And especially healthcare monopolies. (many local rural regions only have one choice in provider; hospital or diagnostics labs. This drives prices up. If you didn't notice).