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let's agree to disagree here. my ideal world is probably a lot messier than you'd be happy with considering.

more language diversity is more fun. common languages are boring. folks should learn more languages, rather than less. its good for your brain too. here's to another babel moment!

building matrix is really expensive i guess. i wish them luck, but so far i haven't been sold. probably wont be either.

i think spreadsheets could represent an interesting future programming paradigm, but excel is not the tool that'll do it.

i'm not anti-social at work. i'm friendly and it can be fun to shoot the shit, but i've rarely had workmates turn into real friends. i don't know why, but the people i tend to connect with don't often work in the same industry. i know how to keep work and home separate (i have a couple of ways of setting work context for myself so i have a way to leave when i'm done).

the only good thing about working at an office is the free food, but food isn't terribly expensive anyway. i could probably use transport savings to buy myself a nice food every week or two.

depending on how you capture that energy there will be waste of some kind that is created either in the manufacturing/growing process for the capture system or as a byproduct of converting solar energy to another form that is more easily stored. one of the advantages of diverse biological systems is that you can have cycles of organisms that process waste back into energy sources using solar energy + reactants as input. a self-sustaining silicon-based life-system would probably end up following a similar pattern to process waste back into useful resources, because waste products probably cannot be avoided.

generating electricity will also create waste products. i'm not sure that part can actually be avoided. biological systems can repair themselves (within limits) and make use of a wide range of energy sources. silicon based life certainly sounds interesting, but it would probably end up being a lot more biological than you're expecting.

there's also the whole racism thing. north american settlers basically wanted nothing to do with the natives, except to claim their territory. we have a folktale of the one time a white guy and a native girl got together and it was "a big disaster". latin america has its own racism problems, but there was way more race mixing which is probably a more important diver of assimilation than who controls the power.

> unclassified version of the report is expected to be released later this month

so has the report been released? i would like to read it rather than continuous speculation about its contents. also, i'd love to see a leak of a more classified version of the report (if one exists), just to see what they consider sensitive information and not. the more info the better really.

i didn't say "fully independent" i talked about a willingness to pursue independence. that's the difference that i care about. i value independence more than money. you do need a certain amount of money to be autonomous, but its about end goals. i don't agree with the end goal of "make the best business deals for the biggest amount of money". besides, long-term you make way more money if you are independent. i have respect for visa and i'd work there because they do value independence, but i wouldn't work for a subsidiary who couldn't hack it as a competitor.

to me this move indicates weakness. its a fine exit for the early employees and the executive team, but there's no reason to sell if you have a solid business plan and a realistic vision for future profitability. maybe the only vision for the future they want to pursue involves some expensive investment or the business was built on massive debt that can only be paid of in this way.

i want to be a part of building something that can survive as an independent entity. selling is an admission that this is either not a goal or not possible given the current position of the company. both of these are against my ethics. why should i stay at a company that has openly admitted that they are incapable or unwilling to pursue independence?

i always hope that new exciting companies will work towards a sustainable business model that can exist without a buyout from some mega. i understand that its difficult to start a business, much less a sustainable one, but its sad to see such promising companies grow into a pitch instead of a business.

maybe its a good thing i didn't get hired for their SLC office, because i would have quit over this.

i run a bunch of services for some online social clubs and foss projects that i'm involved in. i've floated between a bunch of different service providers (Digital Ocean, Scaleway, Hetzner, Joyent Public Cloud, Vultr, and Linode to name a few) and now i'm working on setting up some colo infrastructure. i'll probably keep some of the cloud stuff around for failover and maybe some edge cache type stuff, but you don't really need cloud unless you have extremely variable loads on your system.

i won't say cloud isn't nice, i've been able to learn a lot by playing around with cloud servers. just good to remember that cloud isn't the only option for a lot of workloads.

there are democratic companies (called cooperatives) if you think workplace democracy is important, you should join one.