There is no excuse for corruption. However, everyone in all countries should ask themselves whether or not most of the representatives in their congress/parliament would, if investigated, be found guilty of the same sort of corruption. Power corrupts.
If you read up on this story, you'd find out it's not run off the mill corruption. Sarkozy actually conspired with a foreign state – in particular with someone who directed a terror attack that killed 50 french citizens (!) – to fund his campaign.
Relatively few politicians get their campaigns funded by hostile states, although it increasingly becomes more common. And while corruption is multifaceted this is clearly one of the graver violations. Let's hope all of them end up prosecuted. People were shot for less.
From the tone of your post, you might be suffering from a bit of burnout. If that's the case, then I would recommend taking any extremely low paying and low stress retail job for the rest of this year. Perhaps, when January rolls around, having had a chance to mentally decompress, you might once again consider a position in the startup world. In this job market, given your situation, you're going to have a really tough time applying for jobs at large companies while hoping to beat out all the other job applicants for that $150K+ position. If you're willing to consider taking a lower salary, I would recommend that you focus on applying for jobs at tiny startups where money is tight and the base salary they are offering is $100K or less. A lower salary means that there will be fewer job applicants that you have to beat out for the position. Right now, it might sting to take a lower salary, but, the job market might pick up in a year or two, and then it might be a lot easier to land a high paying position.
I will agree that you could say that, at $5, he's ripping people off by taking advantage of people who are desperate for even one minute of human interaction. If he priced it at $1, would he still be unethical and exploitative? Does everything have to be free? At even that price, is it still a ripoff? For me, the answer would be determined by the value of his feedback to people.
They probably did post that link, but HN helpfully rewrote it to point to old Reddit, which is usually better than new Reddit, but also doesn't get updated with new functionality like this.
It's amazing to watch absurdly futuristic tech from 1960's TV become reality. I'm used to seeing that from Star Trek, but this one is from "The Prisoner".
It is because you are looking for remote work. Drop that, and you'll quickly succeed. Linked In reports that remote jobs get double the number of applicants. I'd say most people have no idea how much harder it is to land a remote job.
I understand that remote is a problem. But I am settled in India and I do not have much options at the moment. Unless I decide to leave my family and go somewhere else for the job. That is something that is eating me...
> But I am settled in India and I do not have much options at the moment.
Anecdotally, my last engineering manager (in a mid-sized North American company) was also from India. He was recruited by another Indian colleague in that company, who flew him over for a 3-month or so trial period I think. Once he was official, he was then able to move his entire family over and now they all live with him in Canada. Presumably he gets paid better than he did in India too, though costs of living are also higher here.
Just in case that's something you might be willing to consider? It would probably suck for your family to get uprooted like that though :(
There have been plenty of moments in history where if a country doesn't resort to conscription then it won't continue to exist. If a country exists in a rough neighborhood, then its people must, unfortunately, expect to be enslaved for a few years of their life. In some ways, humanity has made little progress in the last hundred years. It's a shame that some large countries continue to have leaders that are so determined to expand the size of their country no matter the cost. It's also a shame that so many countries continue to trade with such tyrants.
This is why it's so important to have a nuclear deterrent. If Russia were to invade the UK, and there was no hope of a volunteer military defending us, I strongly hope our politicians would have the courage to use our entire nuclear arsenal. Regardless of death toll, this is morally superior to enslaving people.
I understand this, to some extent, but I would rather learn Russian and get along with a new set of completely uncaring oligarchs, not that dissimilar to the ones we have now, than end all life on earth.
It wouldn't even end all life in the involved countries. Submitting to military aggression is also morally wrong. Nuclear retaliation is a heroic sacrifice that does good to the rest of the world by discouraging future wars.
Furthermore, it's no longer medieval times, where the citizens are personally loyal to a king who is expected to be replaced by another king some time. The invention of nationalism guarantees civilian resistance, so the only way to safely rule a subjugated country in modern times is with a brutal North Korean-style regime.
Ukraine seems to be trying to find a middle ground here. Until recently, they only drafted men over the age of 27 (last month it was lowered to 25). Of course, even that age is still going to wreck your demographics. On the other hand, I'm not sure that retired old people have enough stamina to last long on the battlefield. Many of Ukraine's units have been fighting for over a year with no R&R.
All Soviet countries fell into sharp demographic/fertility collapse in the 90s when the USSR collapsed, and most never entirely pulled out of it, including Ukraine. So most have severe demographic issues in the ~20-30 year old range. Conscripting this group is reckless for these nations, because not only are there not many of them, but they're who should be creating the next generations. Here is Ukraine's population pyramid [1]. For contrast this is what an extremely healthy population pyramid looks like. [2]
