>> Here is the hard thing to swallow: Some people are worth more than others.
I would add a qualifier here - "in some situations".
As human beings per se we all are "worth" the same.
When acting in a specific capacity, however, your ability to perform in that capacity determines your objective worth in that role. And of course it's pretty obvious that some occupations are better suited for ppl with different abilities. Master programmer will (most likely)be a worthless pro running back and (most likely)vice versa.
The thing is - ppl are very accepting of the physical differences between individuals but contrary to what the article is saying - intellectual differences are way more of a taboo.
how far of a distance before the line is drawn? by that logic chimps are also " a group of humans that genetically differ to an unexpected degree from modern humans."
>> We don’t describe speeders as “illegal drivers.”
that's not apples to apples. "illegal driver" would be someone who is breaking the law by the very fact of them driving - ppl with no DLs for example. same with illegal immigrants - they are breaking the law by the very fact of being present in the country they are not permitted to be in.
>> Conservative media does a very good job at keeping at least 50% of the country comically uninformed...
goes both ways depending on your "camp". it's funny though how this contradicts your point about US being "divided" since clearly this statement is as partisan as it gets.
>> The "American Dream" gives people the impression that working hard solves everything and that their country is the best in the world period
>>working hard solves everything and that their country is the best in the world period
>what's wrong with that exactly?
I think I can answer this.
The Puritan work ethic is great. Working hard actually does solve many, many problems.
So, why is there an issue? When it is assumed that working hard fixes all problems, then it is also assumed that if there are problems then the reason must be that someone didn't work hard enough to solve that problem. This causes people to dismiss problems as if they know the root cause when they really don't. This is a huge problem.
As for the 'best in the world, period' issue? Well, when you're convinced you are already the best, why work to improve? If there are problems showing, then it must be a fundamental characteristic of life or the situation we find ourselves in (the 'we have a very heterogeneous society so other nation's solutions couldn't possibly work here' argument comes to mind), not that we could possibly need to improve. We're already the best!
not only is there an ODFI-clearing house - RDFI delay caused by the actual "clearing" process - the whole flow starting from the merchant->payment processor step is a sequence of nightly batches with cutoff times factored in to boot.
from the merchant perspective, however, ACH payment is cheaper to process than a credit card payment and is way less likely to end up in a chargeback.
No. ACH is the digital equivalent of depositing a paper check. The debit networks are what you use to withdraw money from an ATM, and require entering a PIN, but most debit cards nowadays can also operate through credit card networks.
debit cards(not to be confused with bank cards) are closer to credit cards than ACH. in some cases - for example "signature debit" vs "pin debit" - just about identical from the flow perspective.
which is why you can use debit cards in most situations where you would use a credit card where instant check of funds availability and hold is required - e.g. hotel incidentals etc.
not really. it's a "...peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online
payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a
financial institution..." according to Satoshi himself.
depends on your definition of "career".
there's nothing preventing you from getting to a senior architect/staff engineer/senior consultant etc type level working from home.
if your goal is to be an actual manager (not to be confused with a PM) then yea wfh can impact that prospect. most companies I've dealt with (not all though) explicitly required anyone who had direct reports under them to either be in the office every day or at least be located within a reasonable distance from the office and come in couple of days a week.
Speaking of backups :)
We had a very large mission-critical system that we developed and hosted for a fortune 50 client.
Long story short - prod DB with tons of records took a crap, proper RCA was never done I suspected HW failure of some sort.
The kicker was - the client grudgingly OKd the restore understanding that they will loose few hours worth of data. BUT. When a DBA attempted to restore - the backup was corrupt lol. They went back day by day - all of the recent backups were corrupt, the "freshest" working backup was about a month old. Some heads rolled as a result.
From my personal experience (which probably has to do with working in industries where incoming data has a wide array of clients who need it ASAP) - the biggest challenge with any distributed DB system is the problem of "reading your own writes" and how the system approaches it. Not to be confused with tx isolation levels.
It's a balancing act between two extremes - locking everything down and ensuring the tx has been committed on all nodes/propagated to all consumers on one hand and sending an "ack" back to the client with a loose promise of eventual consistency on the other.
I would add a qualifier here - "in some situations". As human beings per se we all are "worth" the same.
When acting in a specific capacity, however, your ability to perform in that capacity determines your objective worth in that role. And of course it's pretty obvious that some occupations are better suited for ppl with different abilities. Master programmer will (most likely)be a worthless pro running back and (most likely)vice versa.
The thing is - ppl are very accepting of the physical differences between individuals but contrary to what the article is saying - intellectual differences are way more of a taboo.