Eventually, you realize life is just a fucked up series of events that, once in a while, have no meaning, are cruel, or don't happen in a logical or fair way!
For example, the people behind the Yo app spent a few hours on the weekend building it as a side project, reaped tons of press and attention, and eventually landed themselves a boatload of VC money.
Is that fair to the people out there like yourself and myself, who are slaving away to make Real Change happen in this world? No!
But, that's life. Life is cruel, it's weird, sometimes it doesn't make sense, and sometimes it just comes down to a little bit (or alot) of dumb luck. It's shitty and raw to think about, but it's reality.
My advice is to use your jealousy as a motivator, but don't allow it get to you. Seek your own happiness and your own success, according to your own benchmarks for both.
Keep pushing, keep hustling, and keep hoping that, one day, luck swings in your favor and you land that massive success and or payday, too. And, all the while, remember in the back of your head that you may die before that day ever comes.
No matter what though: retain your sanity and defend your own happiness... forget all else.
EDIT - Your perception of 'success' may also have little, or transient meaning. For example, lots of people think the current 'success' of the tech industry is a facade, and we're due for a bubble-like collapse (er, 'contraction'). If that happens, all of those successful acquaintances you currently look up to don't sound so successful now, do they?
I certainly hope you don't carry that attitude with you throughout life. Tip your bartenders and pizza delivery guys... they make nothing, anyway. (And, if you're in tech, chances are an extra $2 for a tip is NOT going to break your budget.)
I think tipping well is absolutely one of the best returns on investment available in life.
From a selfish perspective: a few extra dollars can make a huge difference in service, particularly services you use repeatedly.
From a humanity perspective: a few extra dollars can also make a big difference in the life of the person you're tipping...usually jobs with tips do not pay very well.
I'd imagine I'm pretty similar to grandparent post in this respect. If I find something interesting, I save it. Even if it's seemingly arbitrary or not immediately useful. With powerful search and tagging it's nice to run a query/update to a personal archive to refresh my memory, browse when bored, catalogue sources, wishfully think about future study, notice patterns in my interests over time, meta-analysis, etc.
More cynically, I've noticed that it's a relatively benign form of hoarding. i.e. I get the quick dopamine rush of "oh this is interesting, now I have it" without, say, crowding up my living space with trinkets. With an abundance of storage that is essentially invisible to me when I don't want to think about it, I can keep what I want, when I want; often while fully aware that I'll never look at most items individually again. I think of it as a kludgey form of external memory / internet butterfly collecting. The only downsides I've thought of are: time frittered revisiting archives, the (small) transaction cost of tagging and placing items into the archive, and the externalized costs of maintaining the hardware.
> The New Delhi rape case could have just as easily happened to Lyft.
No, not necessarily.
The key here is that each company is ultimately the responsible party for vetting the drivers that come to you.
Uber touts a rigorous background checking process but, as we've seen, time and time again, their background checking has been horrible/not actually existent.
My honest answer? I ended up dating someone who was constantly on my case about being forgetful, forgetting names, details, being scatter brained, blah blah blah.
Miraculously, that didn't drive them away and, now, just over a year of dating later, I've noticed I've developed new mental habits to train myself to remember details, in order to avoid the negative reinforcement of my S.O. nagging about my forgetfulness.
And, in practice, these days, I'm quite a bit more effective at identifying what details are relevant, reliably persisting them to memory if needed, and identifying/purging/ignoring irrelevant details, which actually end up getting in the way of storing the important ones (this, of itself, was a problem that, when solved, yielded lots of forward progress for this issue).
Sorry, I'm not sure if this is something you can very effectively optimize for (and maybe shouldn't!... 'seeking partner to help fight scatter brain'), but it's a true story, and one angle, at least. :)
This is actually a great answer. The same thing happened to me, and I think it was almost natural based on how our opposing personalities balanced. This balance has turned out to be greatly beneficial to the both of us—she helps keep me focused and improve my skills in the scatterbrain area, and I help her branch out and be more spontaneous and creative at times. Works great.
It doesn't have to be a romantic relationship that does this—I've worked with people whose personalities balanced out mine, and together we had a similar good thing going on. Creativity and ability for the mind to wander is a great thing for inspiration and discovery, and then bringing in the focus is great for making ideas real.
So, seek out other people who balance your personality. The fact that your mind works the way it does is not necessarily bad, and there are people all around you who can compliment you.
I suspect there is a pro-Uber force on HN that downvotes any anti-Uber sentiment on HN, based on my own past experiences posting anti-Uber commentary. Whether or not that pro-Uber force is controlled by Uber, themselves, is unclear.
If it helps, my first impression of that post was you highlighting individual actions to smear the governing body.
eg.
>Christianity causes people to murder and steal, because the perpetrator of a murder/theft was Christian.
Any large group will have a number of bad actors, that is not indicative of anything except the large group being large. Even "interfering with the normal course of competitor's business" was an action of one firm, though it's pretty clear Uber allowed such actions to continue.
and finally "price surges" and "price gouging during states of emergencies." are ethically on the fence. People with a capitalistic bent would not find these immoral. Whether you feel our monetary distribution system is fair is another matter... I would argue that if wealth was fairly distributed (operating on my definition of fair here) then that would be a perfectly moral thing.
All this is to say: You were REALLY trying hard to smear Uber. Just like this article is. Which is really weird, because Uber's done enough things to smear themselves. They don't need help.
Sometimes life is messy. Can't sweep everything under the rug.
If nothing else, this is a good reminder to never trust the press. Too bad the press is the only tool we have to keep an eye on the other people you should never trust (politicians, ceos, etc). Instead, you should trust the anonymous internet commenters ! Oh, shit...what just happened?
So, I just saw the comment and told why it may have "disappeared." I never read the OP, and don't intend to waste my time reading it. Apparently, many people don't like that I don't care about Uber. At all. Ironically, that just removed my flagging ability.
But the article we are talking about are about something which is actually damaging and appalling. As for the truth or source, well, that is sth we always have to go with the journalist's integrity and then rely on analysis and discussion which we contribute to.
Depends on the contract. Here's the contract I've been bound by when writing freelance for The Guardian:
You grant irrevocably and unconditionally to GNM the following rights ("the licence") to use, publish, transmit or
license the contribution throughout the world. Unless expressly identified otherwise, all rights granted in this
licence shall subsist for the full period of copyright in the contribution including all renewals, reversions,
extensions and revivals of such period and shall be exclusive.
With the exception of Spot Sales where royalties are payable as set out below, GNM pays freelances commission fees covering all of the following rights. The value of these rights is reviewed annually.
1 Right to use, publish or transmit the contribution in all editions of the relevant Licensed Publications anywhere in the world.
2 Non-exclusive right after use in the Licensed Publications to publish the contribution in Guardian Weekly and similar publications and in other collections of material published by GNM in paper form and on-line anywhere in the world.
3 Non-exclusive right to use, store, publish or transmit the contribution in internal archives and databases and External Archives and databases including but not limited to CD-ROMs and websites published by GNM and/or third party databases and/or archive publishers.
4 Right to authorise the Newspaper Licensing Agency ("NLA") to distribute or license the distribution of the contribution for the NLA's licensed acts and purposes as amended from time to time.
5 Right to Syndicate throughout the world after use in the Licensed Publications. For the avoidance of doubt such Syndication rights include the right to enter into contracts with third parties under which such third parties may reproduce content previously published by GNM.
6 Right to make Spot Sales throughout the world for a period of 3 months after use in the Licensed Publications and the non-exclusive right to make Spot Sales thereafter. Attributable revenue shall be split between you and GNM on a 50:50 basis and your share shall be remitted to you within 28
days of each sale.
It's better not to go on feel either way. In most cases, a freelance writer retains copyright and the publication that paid for the work (in this case FT) is given an implicit license to use it.
Since he's not an FT employee, it's likely this could fit under the category of work made for hire, but unless his contract explicitly specified this is case, I believe he would retain the copyright: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_Sta...
For example, the people behind the Yo app spent a few hours on the weekend building it as a side project, reaped tons of press and attention, and eventually landed themselves a boatload of VC money.
Is that fair to the people out there like yourself and myself, who are slaving away to make Real Change happen in this world? No!
But, that's life. Life is cruel, it's weird, sometimes it doesn't make sense, and sometimes it just comes down to a little bit (or alot) of dumb luck. It's shitty and raw to think about, but it's reality.
My advice is to use your jealousy as a motivator, but don't allow it get to you. Seek your own happiness and your own success, according to your own benchmarks for both.
Keep pushing, keep hustling, and keep hoping that, one day, luck swings in your favor and you land that massive success and or payday, too. And, all the while, remember in the back of your head that you may die before that day ever comes.
No matter what though: retain your sanity and defend your own happiness... forget all else.
EDIT - Your perception of 'success' may also have little, or transient meaning. For example, lots of people think the current 'success' of the tech industry is a facade, and we're due for a bubble-like collapse (er, 'contraction'). If that happens, all of those successful acquaintances you currently look up to don't sound so successful now, do they?