Architects vs developers.

This is what being addicted to ever-growing profit looks like. They could still make mountains of profit with the new minimum wage, but they can’t make as much profit as they did before.

Similar for me - I’ve been writing scripts since I was young. I write scripts and programs for myself whenever I need them, and I feel like it’s a great skill to have in your toolkit if you’re a computer power user.

On a side note, I’ve never thought of a good response for this question when someone looks at my career and my salary and they’re like “I wanna do what you do”, because I’ve been doing this as long as I can remember. I don’t know how realistic it is to tell someone who’s never been interested in computers that they can be a programmer if they really try.

One of the more realistic answers that isn’t a get-rich-quick-scheme is to invest your capital and retire early, aka “financial independence”. If you’re young and don’t have a super low salary, you can invest as much as you’re able into index funds every year and still retire way before 65 (even with a salary of e.g. 50k). It takes commitment and a little bit of frugality though. On a semi-related note, “LeanFIRE” describes an even earlier retirement where you retire with just enough to live off of, and probably make some concessions in return for retiring sooner.

Not a very “immediate” answer, but if the thought of working yourself to death your entire life is the primary concern, then this is an early way out.

My biggest one is robust modding support. I understand it’s something that potentially needs a lot of extra effort to implement from the developers, but when I look at my collection of games that I love, almost all of them let me mod like crazy. Let me download 90 bugfixes and 40 QoL tweaks for a game from 2003.

You can withdraw from 401ks early if you use e.g. a Roth Ladder. If nothing else, withdrawing with a penalty is still a viable option if you’ve been investing properly and have an excess of money.

As for betting against the earth, if you’re that blackpilled you can make flexible investments by putting money into a Roth IRA, whose principal (not growth) can be withdrawn at any time without penalty. You can’t put the money back into the Roth IRA later, however. If your company offers a 401k match you should always always always invest the minimum amount to get the full match, idc how depressed you are.

Grats on Arch Linux install, S-tier distro for what it attempts to accomplish.

It feels like there needs to be a category in between conservative and paranoid. I’m probably 90% of the way over to tech paranoid but using Tor Browser and Tails is a little much.