Movieclips
5 HN mentions · mentioned in 4 months, 2021–2023
3:38 · 1.9M views · Jan 15, 2014
A Margin Call clip in which Will Emerson tries to persuade Eric Dale to return to the firm, and Dale recounts calculating the lifetimes saved by a bridge he helped build.
HN cites the scene when discussing small efficiency gains multiplied across many users, such as faster boot or load times.
5 comments from Hacker News
1. Mental exhaustion and burnout Depending on how deep it gets the way to dealing with it changes. I recall when I started my current job that initially I had to do tasks vey similar to what I've had to do before and that made me very nervous initially as the last time I had to do these things I ended up completely bricking myself. This time, the complete exhaustion was so far in the rear-view mirror that I could do these things almost effortlessly. Even though they were so comparatively easy this time, I will acknowledge that I still felt some form of exhaustion nowadays. Perma-exhausted. However, it is not as dire as it once was. In the past, I needed extended sick-leave and even a sabbatical where I went back to school for a semester to study an unrelated field but nowadays when I end up in that headspace I try to guide my thoughts, ideas, and values surrounding productivity to change into something that doesn't dig me into a deeper hole. Personally, I have to focus deeply on the concepts of rise and tide, and accepting that cyclic shifts is all around me in nature so why wouldn't it be inside me as well. While a nature-focused approached is what I have now that might not vibe with your sensibilities so I'll share the original concept that I reappropriated to suit me: it's called "Blast and Dust" and comes from a guy called Dave Tate. I've come across a few interviews and podcasts where he mentions it but this article does an okay enough job of framing the concept: [LINK]
Reminds me of the bridge story in Margin Call [1]. Or if you'd rather read it, here's the script [2], just search for "Did you know I built a bridge once?". Or condensed: "It went from Dilles Bottom, Ohio to Moundsville, West Virginia. It spanned nine hundred and 12 feet above the Ohio River. 12,000 people used this thing a day. And it cut out 35 miles of driving each way between Wheeling and New Martinsville. That's a combined 847,000 miles of driving a day. Or 25,410,000 miles a month. And 304,920,000 miles a year. Saved. Now I completed that project in 1986, that's twenty-two years ago. So over the life of that one bridge, that's 6,708,240,000 miles that haven't had to be driven. At, what, let's say fifty miles an hour. So that's, what, 134,165,800 hours, or 559,020 days. So that one little bridge has saved the people of those communities a combined 1,531 years of their lives not wasted in a fucking car. One thousand five hundred and thirty-one years." [1]: this video [2]: [LINK]
I'd say the answer is because they don't measure success in terms of who becomes competent in the language, but in how many users they have. typical neoliberal "number go up" mentality, rejecting ideological definitions of "genuine" value this video
There's a similar calculation (in a slightly different context) in a good scene in the movie Margin Call , about all the miles and hours saved by one bridge: this video
Reminds me of this scene with Stanley Tucci talking about building a bridge in the movie Margin Call: this video