NAFV_P

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2930277/Eleve...

Yesterday I finished a job in Cheltenham, England. The post was 50 weeks long. The commute to and back from work came to around two and a half to three hours. Often I would feel physically sick on the bus due to insufficient rest. I would go to work even though I felt unwell. This includes dealing with a trapped ulnar nerve which means my arm and shoulder ache all day, and is aggravated by using a laptop.

I pushed myself too hard, but this can occur when you are expected to work till you drop dead from exhaustion. This is what my first supervisor expected of me, because she thought I was a low life piece of shit. I had hardly any experience in insurance, especially claims which a lot of people in the building considered to be the sharp end of the business. Administration on a new claim was estimated on average to take around 90 minutes, it took me a day and a half. I was furnished with written procedure notes (about 40 pages worth), a laptop with no mouse and told to get on with it. I didn't consider this to be unfair, because this is the attitude I have experienced in most of my jobs. I had been in my new role for two days when I was given this task. All the thanks I got was a casual remark from my supervisor "Well, that's our Christmas bonus gone isn't it."

I was often shouted at in the office. Being an open plan space this behaviour was witnessed by about 80 other people. If my queries were not understood at first, the response I would get is "WHAT?!". When the day ended and the office was mostly empty, my supervisor's behaviour became very hostile.

The experience was incredibly stressful. My ulnar nerve issue worsened, so now it feels like I have a knife stuck in my little finger. Also I became so nervous about making a mistake (because my mistakes were over emphasised) that I worked at a rate about 4 times slower than my colleagues. Trust in my proof reading ability was lost, so I would check every single lexicon in a letter of correspondence and rereading my work nearly a dozen times. Some people would recognise this as OCD. I was considered incapable of performing my role, a bit offensive I might add.

I have a suspicion that I was treated like this partially because I am genetically male. My hope is to get a new job in the company's call center, and occasionally I would dress as a woman (or most of the time). I would like to see how I am treated by my ex supervisor/torturer while wearing a skirt, and how someone who is quite religious reacts to someone slowly coming out as transgender. I recently referred to her as a "fucking bitch" in a conversation with one of my other work colleagues. I regret that a lot, because (s)he isn't a real woman, and I'm more of a woman than she'll ever be.

Be very careful what you ask the gods, you might run into:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epimenides_paradox

Anyone remember this? ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Robot_(1995_The_Outer_Limits...

Hackers think of themselves as dangerous.

The other day a work colleague of mine described me as "so meek and mild", and I couldn't agree more.

Wow, bananas are really scary:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose

This could be an extreme version of "Where's Wally".

But c? c is basically portable assembler.

I wouldn't call myself an expert, but I avoid calling C portable assembler. I tend to think of C as having low level data manipulation and high level flow.

A the lowest-level, you have doctors who're just assholes.

I was physically assaulted by a doctor around six years ago, I would use a much harsher term than asshole.

The excerpt from "The School of Venus" in the article > Coufin, I confefs my ignorance

"Confefs" ? The old and the new in one word.

What Minecraft could really use would be a scripting capability of some sort.

Minetest [0] has some scripting ability, utilising Lua.

[0] http://minetest.net/

I usually rely on LibreOffice, but I was tempted to get OpenOffice back on my machine just to try out the bug.

Anyway, thank you for the link.

That has sated my curiosity, thank you.

Cheers for the reply. I went to Github to look for <a programming language> koans, and they exist for a lot of languages - oddly I couldn't find one for C.

Anyway, recently I decided I should try to be more multilingual, Javascript with Eloquent Javascript.

My experience: C has a spartan standard library compared to other languages like Python. Even something like getting a scheme going for decent memory management can take a lot of work. I found it to be a good way to get my head round using pointers, now I don't find them so scary.

Just curious, is there a particular language you were thinking of learning?

Linked article: [0]

I'm guessing the pieces were original works used just for the study, the article doesn't state what was used.

[0] http://news.stanford.edu/news/2006/may31/brainwave-053106.ht...

Does anyone else find it sorta ironically odd that one of the masterminds behind this great stuff is now a .... gasp Facebook ... employee??

Would you be referring to the business morals or technical requirements of Facebook? You need a lot of good hacks to deal with large bulks of data. For example: https://github.com/facebook/warp

I heard Goooogle developed Go partially because they were fed up with the time taken up compiling massive C programs.

I wasn't aware of that, cheers.

EDIT: This indicates that the original comment [0] is quite opaque.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8160323

I'm going to post a recent Onion article. It shares some of my thoughts on the subject matter far more eloquently than my own words ever could.

Eloquent or not, I thought that the supplied article was irresponsible and lacked substance.

I sincerely hope that the given name "Travis Benton", is a pseudonym (and that photograph is not of him). If a potential employer has perused this article, it could effect his chances of gaining more suitable or substantial employment.

The article has possibly put "Mr. Benton" at a serious disadvantage in life. If a similar article was published about me I would call up the editor and shoot hell-fire down the phone.

Even the terrible stuff can inform language models for understanding the good stuff.

The terrible stuff may be used for cutting and scratching. If you scratch the vinyl, it adds character.

It sold more than 6m copies and launched an entire aesthetic: cyberpunk.

The cyberpunk aesthetic was already in existence, like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_(manga)

I enjoyed reading this article, with a nicely brewed cup of Earl Grey.

The alternative Lady Grey tea [0] has lower concentrations of oil of bergamot.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Grey_(tea)

HN readers like yourself are a big plus, it lends the site diversity. There is also a fairly big age range.

I would definitely agree with point A.

The odd gem, like [0].

Advice or pointers from other HN readers.

I do not work in the software industry, but I would call myself a hacker.

The term "hacker" can be interpreted in imaginative ways, I wouldn't be surprised to find hackers in your area of work.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7388576

Anyone got something more technical?

Well I found this little sound-byte from a link in the original article. I didn't find it particularly original.

From [0] > “Programs” are written using special blueprints called corelets. Each corelet specifies the basic functioning of a network of neurosynaptic cores. Individual corelets can be linked into more and more complex structures—nested, Modha says, “like Russian dolls.”

The term 'Russian doll' evoked recursion (and distant memories of my late grandfather), very common even 50 odd years ago.

[0] http://www.technologyreview.com/news/517876/ibm-scientists-s...

I have noticed that some genuinely funny comments or puns based on the discussion get downvoted, which I disagree with. It may not add to the intellectual value, but I enjoy a good laugh as much as I enjoy learning.

I used to constantly crack jokes to one of my work colleagues, yet she hardly ever laughed at them. One day I uttered a joke which she merely scorned at, a few minutes later another colleague uttered exactly the same joke and she started giggling. At that I moment I realised that she was deeply prejudiced towards me. It would explain why she would often shout at me, insult me and even threaten me with violence.

My humour served a very serious purpose, it exposed someone as being an emotional sadist.

A compound Easter Egg [0], goooooogle 'tilt' || 'askew', then search 'dogengineer'. Wow.

[0] https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=askew&oq=askew&aqs=chrome....

To add to the logistical difficulties, ancient Greece was covered in thick forest.

I found one posted on HN a few years ago of Middle Earth:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1681505

EDIT: and another https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4972756

The growth curve here is more than exponential 2^n, it's 2^2^n.

I am a bit confused as to what you mean. 2^2^n is still classified as an exponential function.

The article still leaves the reader in the dark as to how the image was made public in the first place.

From the article> Wikimedia's editors are split on the legal issues. One user, Saffron Blaze, said in a comment section associated with the photo: "I am not sure I am convinced by the no copyright argument. In this case the outcome was very disrespectful of the photographer who created the conditions that allowed these photos to be created. There are some jurisdictions where even the monkey could be imbued with the copyright as its creator."

Original source [0].

As an old art student, I can readily sympathise with this. Spontaneity is often considered to be an important component of great art.

[0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Featured_picture_...