halper

My favourite feature was using TTS to learn how to read very very long numbers …

Can it not just be that what happens in stuffy meeting rooms is boring? Opening the windows changes the temperature, the noise levels, perhaps the light levels ≈ adds some novelty, which makes you feel a bit more awake.

Yes, you are correct. As the SI brochure states: "Compound prefix symbols, i.e. prefix symbols formed by the juxtaposition of two or more prefix symbols, are not permitted."

Unfortunately, almost no one uses SI units and/or prefixes correctly.

Last time I resigned, I got to keep the laptop and got to promise I had deleted everything work-related.

Is it not just the same as when people suddenly started having "an ask"? It is some kind of in-group speak that it is important that you adopt just to show that you are with the times.

It is a good point and I also struggled with that bit somewhat. It is different in so many ways, have different symptoms, does not respond (as well) to the same medication, and affect different parts of the brain. The jump from there to "subtype" was not too logical for me ...

Sometimes I have been in situations in life where I think I must be insane, because everyone else sees something I do not. I got a bit of that feeling reading this article.

During the most expensive month in recent years, the price has (on average) been <150 öre/kWh.

Like prices of dinosaur soup at the pump, the majority of the cost for an individual end consumer is not the electricity itself. On top of the market price, you pay fixed two fixed fees, transfer tariffs, surcharges, sales tax (moms), energy tax and other things I have forgotten.

I am also quite interested in psychology, but at least in my realm it would take something like 5–7 years of studies etc to become a licensed psychologist, if you want to work directly with humans. That is quite the investment and I am not sure that I have a long enough personal runway for that.

Through luck and happenstance, I have rarely needed to look for a job before; I have always come across new opportunities through my network. Usually it has been a recommendation/referral + one or two interviews and then I have received an offer. This has worked for 20 years, but after a relocation I have been searching for my next thing recently, the traditional way. I am now in the situation where I am someone "off the street" instead of someone warmly recommended by a current or former employee. At least where I am looking, the market is definitely not great, and even getting a first reply at all is rare.

During my professional life I have interviewed hundreds of people. Among other things, I have built teams from the ground up, I have managed people remotely across three continents and I sometimes meet up with people I "managed" 15+ years ago who claim that that team was one of the best they ever worked in. But when I sit on the OTHER side of the table, it is evident I am really, really, REALLY rusty: it happens at least a couple of times per interview that my mind basically blanks when I get a question that I should be able to answer. Naturally, as soon as I step out of the interview, my helpful brain provides me with the answers.

I was just thinking, on my morning walk today, that I should be looking for someone who may want to inflict a couple of mock interviews upon me...

I cannot be alone in feeling that titles (within "tech" in particular) are almost completely arbitrary? What constitutes a "senior", "lead", "principal" and "staff" X, respectively, has so much overlap that it really depends on the organisation. I myself have been called all of those things, but have honestly not been able to tell the difference: in some cases, I have had much more responsibility as a "senior backend developer" than a "staff engineer". I have recently interviewed for a number of roles with titles like CTO, engineering manager, tech lead etc and there is so much overlap that they seem to be one and the same. Have worked at companies on three continents, in organisations ranging from 6 people to 10k+, so have seen a few titles.

Wonderfully written. If I have had too much caffeine I also look forward to the time when it burns off: "finally the tension on the harp strings eases, and one returns to the relaxed, meandering, simple-minded and cryptogamous life of the retired bourgeoisie."

It is probably even a hyphen-minus, so called because on most early keyboards one character had to do to represent both a hyphen and a minus. In Unicode, there is a separate code point for an unambiguous hyphen. There is also a non-breaking hyphen as well as the various dashes discussed here.

And "--" is absolutely just two hyphen-minuses, not an em-dash (—).

Vodka that expires must be the epitome of enshittification!

I always thought it was because it is more obvious how to pronounce "postgres" than "PostgreSQL".

Well, methamphetamine is very rarely (never?) prescribed for ADHD. Ritalin is methylphenidate.

It is a proper noun, in contrast to the other internets. If there is a guy called Guy you would not call him guy.

I am not so sure that the schools necessarily should make it their problem. Sure, compulsory primary schools should try pretty damn hard to drag pupils along. However, once one gets to the tertiary level of education, one should (1) have the academic credentials/prerequisites needed for the chosen program of study (otherwise the admission process has failed or the grades have been inflated/made up) and (2) desire to learn.

Of course, be a good human and reach out a helping hand to those that seem to struggle but, if you have students who truly do nothing, want nothing and try nothing then just move on? If they fail in their first semester then they are not there the second.

Is that not because there is not much to do, and therefore people use .unwrap() — because crashing is actually quite sane?

Correctness trumps ergonomics, and the default should definitely be poisoning/panicking unless handled. There could definitely be an optional poison-eating mutex, but I argue the current Mutex does the right thing.

If we are talking about BNW, which was written in 1931, then that book predates benzodiazepines by 25 years or so. Perhaps you are thinking about barbiturates?

I travelled on that train for a bit somewhat later, in 2018. The immigration officials remained, but very few of the refugees.

Between phases, it is 400 V; between phase and neutral, 230 V. There are five "lines": three phases, one neutral and one ground.

Ah, sweet memories. Grumpy German border guards boarding to loudly demand papers, but if you were slow to pull the ID card out they just kept walking. Semi-open border policy ;)

Have been sketching on what sounds like some of your concepts: recipes as trees with actions done to ingredients with timing and so on. I will sign up as a beta tester! :)

How is that hard? They put 90% of their estimated revenue as net revenue (post-McK tax) in the budget? Seems about as hard as the underlying problem, which is guessing ("forecasting") the revenue.

I liked how you phrased that: "promises of future … you can't compete with". That happens so often, and strangely the argument that those promises have never become real the previous 26 times never works. The glorious future sure is amazing!

SEEKING WORK | Europe ‣ Sweden ‣ Stockholm | flexible time and place

Founding engineer, team lead, technical consultant, manager ────────────────────────────────────

Relocation: no, but some travel

Tech + skills: software/architecture design/development; performance-critical code, distributed systems; Rust, Node.JS, RoR, Python, Java etc; custom data structures, algorithms.

With a background as a founding engineer, team lead and manager, I bring the expertise and experience you need to go from concept to production. While I have worked in organisations ranging from tiny through huge, my forte is working in smaller teams with meaningful technical challenges, where I specialise in delivering robust high-performance minimal-dependency solutions that operate unattended for months and years. I have built teams from the ground up, creating productive and inviting teams with clear goals and well-functioning processes.

In short, my experience can be summarised as:

   ◆ 20 years as a programmer, developer and architect;

   ◆ 10 years in roles leading and mentoring teams and individuals; and

   ◆ 5+ years in 100% remote mode.

I am open to discussing part-time contracts and/or non-standard arrangements.

My CV is available on request.

comics-nitrate3w@icloud.com

I can relate to that, having not always been in such fortunate circumstances as I am now. I hope that your situation improves!

I wonder what it says about me or my life that my first thought was that it sounded absolutely wonderful. I had a good stretch of time between jobs (fortunately voluntarily) a while back and ever since I have had a completely different outlook on life that is, sadly, not quite compatible with modern life.

During my time unemployed my pace of life was more like it is when you are on a camping/hiking trip with a group of scouts: a lot of the time spent on routine things like fetching water, lighting fires and prepping food. I would spend hours each day on prepping the dinner from scratch (beginning with walking to fetch the relevant supplies). Now when I am back to work, I have to choose if I want to spend time with my family or going with the gym, because there is not time to do both.

I do not want to be homeless or get rid of my family, but it sure would be amazing to "be able to" (of course I have a choice: I can just resign) just spend time spending time.

We lived in Sydney until our oldest child was three, and never owned a car. Your statement is reasonable: for driving around small kids, car is essential. We instead took ferries, buses, trains and so on. From the hospital we took a taxi (or the modern equivalent), by the way.