Well, consider the Simpsons' comic book guy: high-IQ but essentially unproductive. He represents that smart-weirdo stereotype.

In terms of envy and anti-intellectualism, it's convenient to lump most tech people, including productive ones, into the smart-weirdo stereotype.

Furthermore, someone is also a "weirdo" if they have a lifestyle that differs significantly from an acceptable "normal" range of allowed configurations.

Occam's razor. Inventing conspiracy theories isn't helpful.

I ditched Linode years ago because it just wasn't that great. AWS if I need ephemeral boxes (I used to be an enterprise on-prem AWS consultant), but I run most everything on a home 96 EPYC core, 512 GB, SSD, HDD (ZFS) box running KVM, Docker, and open vswitch. It just isn't worth it to rent slow, expensive servers when I need lots of them and to be fast. I don't have any problems remoting into them with ddns and wireguard.

My first Supermicro just turned 9 and it's still running strong, with a fresh install of Ubuntu 20.04 & k3s over the holidays. The second Supermicro turned 5, and has been running FreeBSD all this time like a champ. They are both loft guardians.

A bunch of bare metal hosts run on Scaleway / Online, and different VMs & managed services run in Digital Ocean, Linode, AWS & GCP. I sometimes spin the odd bare metal instance on Equinix Metal (former Packet).

A diverse fleet means that there's always something new to learn and try out. A single large host would make me anxious, as no internet provider or power grid is 100% reliable and available. Also, software upgrades sometimes fail, and things get messed up all the time, which is when I find it most efficient to just start from scratch. A single host makes that less convenient.

Every approach has its pros and cons, which is why my main workstation is a 20 Xeon W with 64GB RAM & 1TB NVME : ). Yes, there is a backup workstation which doubles up as a mobile one meaning that it can work without power or hard internet for almost a day. Options are good ; )

Virgin, if they get investment, strategy, and ambition. In Heathrow, they said more than "hello" to and knew so many vendors and regular workers, and even showed me how to find flights across carriers on their terminal. They were so phreak'n cool.

Btw, an aircraft that may revolutionize the viability of regional and charter flights because of its low capex and opex costs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Celera_500L

Mentour Pilot's assessment: https://youtu.be/CN4EKZHYVaE

Another story source (2007):

https://www.damninteresting.com/spies-on-the-roof-of-the-wor...

TB raised a huge red flag when they said "[I] received one of the highest scores on the quiz they ever saw."

I immediately thought: they tell this to everyone, this is some sort of deceptive tactic, and I cannot trust them.

I never followed-up because I wanted nothing else to do with people who were patronizing and lying to me.

I found their quiz very easy except for a couple of questions, which I think I answered correctly anyways. I got the same message. You have probably hit the max score as well.

Yes, it was basic. And self-esteem head-pats don't do much for me except arouse a feeling of being patronized and raise suspicions.

All-in-all, this doesn't seem to do the clients justice if they don't throughly test to see what prospective candidates are made of by pushing their real-world problem-solving abilities, intuition, knowledge, and expertise.

My conclusion is to dissuade the use of TB as a candidate or as a hiring manager.

If you mean the online quiz, that is a screening funnel for the video interview, which (as of some years ago, don't know about now) was fairly involved.

The online quiz itself wasn't difficult if you knew what you were doing, but it seemed well designed to discern clueful candidates from those who needed to brush up. I know people who took it and didn't pass.

Well, he's my close friend and reblogged that post, but the post is mine. I wrote a follow-up to it, at madeofmetaphors.com, though haven't written in eons...

Thanks for clarifying. I was very confused because I follow Tynan and this did not at all seem to correspond with his background. :-) Edit--Oh, I see you listed as the author at the top. Just unususal that it doesn't say "guest post" or the like.

I found it at https://madeofmetaphors.com/shapes but blog seems a bit broken (cdn.sett.com issues I guess)

Ugh he migrated sett a while back and I bet I was doing some bad hardcoding somewhere. Hmm, maybe I'll make some time to try and fix it up. Thanks for letting me know!

Thank you for the posts. Do you write / post anywhere else publicly at all now? These were interesting perspectives.

Yeah, almost 20 years ago.

The problem is nearly all white-collar people in the SF Bay Area are stingy and blind to the plights of anyone else besides themselves. If this weren't the case, there wouldn't be so many homeless people living on freeway on-ramp embankments.

Case in point: I remember a hackerspace had a large winter food donation barrel that was sitting out for weeks returned with 1 can in it. 1. One. That says "F U" to hungry people.

Also consider how many churches in the SF Bay Area don't do meaningful community outreach and just show up on Sundays.

I just hope none of the comfortable and privileged ever end up poor and hungry, because they'd be in for a shock.

I call BS on this. You can read just the home page of the Second Harvest Silicon Valley homepage that demand has doubled and people have stepped up to fill the gap.

https://www.shfb.org/

SF spends something like 40k per homeless person per year: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Bu...

It's a hard problem to solve.

Example (not necessarily the valley) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-charity/ameri...

In conclusion you can find ample evidence that no one cares or you can find a way to make some tiny impact and attempt to influence others to do the same.

The problem is nearly all white-collar people in the SF Bay Area are stingy and blind to the plights of anyone else besides themselves.

Perhaps people should voluntarily give to charity. But let's not be quick to call them stingy if they don't.

Take a $200,000 Bay Area salary, and the taxes paid on it. All numbers crude, my point remains w/o exact amounts:

    8% social security/medicare
    9% state income tax
   25% federal income tax
   ---
   42% that's just in direct taxes

and further:

   8% sales tax
   direct property tax if own house
   indirect property tax if renting
   gas tax
   income tax on stock options

The list is almost endless.

A better question is: where the fuck does all the money already being paid go to?

Well, the military budget seems to be doing just fine.

The car driver doesn't fall far from the factory.