ud_0

Hi, well it's probably not a good rate when you're just starting out. But I'm in my forties now, and it's basically an ongoing auction for my time that's driving up the price gradually. I have no opinion on whether or not it's "worth" it, it's merely what I can get.

Since I'm also working on my own projects, I don't usually work a full time equivalent or anything like that. Pricing might be different if I had to fill all my time with work.

Let's say I can fill 10 days per month with freelancing, that's 50% occupancy. After taxes and costs that boils down to about 3k per month of income - roughly equivalent to a mid-tier job in Germany. Again, if you're just starting out, your calculation might look very different.

But if there is one piece of advice I can give: gravitate towards higher-paying clients, even if the work is not as interesting or more demanding. Higher-paying clients in general tend to be more appreciative and more competent, on top of the immediate advantages for your wallet. Only take on jobs where all parties can feel satisfied afterwards.

SEEKING WORK - Remote, based in Germany

I am an all-rounder programmer with decades of experience in many areas, available for freelance work. I'm up for:

  - game development 
    (I would love to help out with weird custom engines and games)
  - server-side code
  - scientific applications
  - core languages: C, C++, PHP, Javascript, some C# and Lua
  - experience with: OpenGL/WebGL/HLSL, Cuda, SIMD
  - performance optimization of existing code
  - working in custom codebases
  - researching solutions to algorithmic challenges
  - web stuff: Websocket brokers, server-side rendering, vanilla JavaScript web apps, Three.js, Pixi.js

https://ud0.io/

If you make a game for a given platform, it makes sense to target the most common configuration, which in this case was 512k (not 512M btw). Even though RAM expansions eventually became popular, I guess publishers would be hesitant to put a "requires 1M+" sticker on their boxes. But man, 512k seemed like a blessing in those early days, too...

I admit I failed that question, and I understand the impulse to then challenge the way the question was constructed. In school, it's something I did regularly, partly because some of the questions were indeed weakly constructed, but also partly because I was reluctant to admit I actually misunderstood.

In this case, it's not a trick question per se, but it certainly does something to trick the mind into not enumerating the possibilities. It would be interesting to see how the majority of programmers respond to it, as compared to say the majority of mathematicians. I suspect the question tricks people into abstracting too early: 'one variable in this system is undefined, hence I can't say!'

Say you're getting mugged and the mugger opens with "If we accept that you don't have any right to your possessions, don't you agree that I'm justified in taking all your stuff?"

It is not an intellectual or rhetorical shortcoming to then answer with "No, I agree neither with your premise nor with your conclusion."

On the other hand, if you do D-Decouple and agree, then the mugger will either proceed to rob you immediately, or if an audience is present, they will first read aloud a well-prepared statement that 'proves' how you indeed don't have any right to your possessions - before inevitably proceeding to rob you. Not robbing you was never in the cards, they just made it seem that way by phrasing the question to provide an illusion of openness to discussion.

People who accept D-Decoupling during a debate get steamrolled by bad-faith counterparts, and the audience on average will never remember that there was an "if" hypothetical in front of the question to begin with.

In practice, the "If we accept X, then we must do Y" maneuver is seldom performed in good faith. It's merely a vehicle to move on to the Y part without concerning yourself with X, and it's mostly performed for the benefit of an audience who will only remember the Y part, or those who already agree with X. A side effect is also the gradual normalization of X through repetition.

People who already agree with the premise will see nothing wrong with this, and that's not necessarily unethical. It only becomes unethical if the proposition has negative consequences and the "hypothetical" becomes a deniable position that allows the speaker to retreat behind if challenged.

In other words, I do think the implications of the hypothetical part matter. Not all "If we accept X, then Y" have X's or Y's worthy of consideration. I would also argue that it's probably valid to look at the Y part in isolation. If Y is unethical or nonsensical, I believe there is no intellectual duty to consider any part of the argument.

This is wrong on so many levels. I've been writing code commercially for more than 30 years.

This is also what Software Engineering has become: you memorize, regurgitate and participate in agile the masquerade. Creativity is shunned. Tried architectures/patterns are what is expected.

Not necessarily. If it feels like this, you may be in the wrong bubble. And that bubble is going away, too, because these tasks are the first that will be replaced by AI-assisted code generation. In the meantime, you can always Google an algorithm if you know what to look for.

There is almost zero usefulness in an ability to regurgitate boilerplate patterns, but there is tremendous usefulness in executing good judgement, creative problem solving, and a solid understanding of fundamentals.

Programming is about solving problems that are interesting to you personally, in a way that satisfies you (and ideally your customers). The hard part is finding that niche.

I used to think this job was a creative one, since writing frameworks and libraries for further use, documenting code and extreme programming made me think that I was building something new and useful.

You had it right the first time. If you enjoyed making these tools, that means there is still an internal drive in you to solve those kinds of problems. Even if those tools happen to be terrible, apply lessons learned and repeat! Spoiler alert, everyone else's tools also make trade-offs at the wrong points, even successful ones. Don't be fooled into thinking that the big things are already solved.

In the end it's about finding gainful employment doing something you enjoy. The good thing about programming is that you get to choose your environment and the nature of your work from a very broad spectrum.

I wish I had practiced law for the past 7ish years instead, because at least all of my skills would still be relevant.

If you chased framework specifics and arcane patterns for the last few years, then yes, some of that work is not relevant anymore. Learn from that, stop chasing ephemera. You may be better served by doing deep work on a specific thing for a long time, as opposed to perpetually playing catch-up with JavaScript frameworks to impress the next fickle startup that thinks it'll change the world by selling ads.

I would advise anyone who doesn't absolutely need it for an interview to stop spending time on LeetCode and such sites. Instead, invest that time in a project that is relevant to you, and learn everything about a specific domain as deeply as you can. Pushing up a score counter on LeetCode doesn't compare to actually making something competently in the real world. ADHD can trick you into believing that solving artificially parceled-up and pre-defined problems for points in a few minutes at a time is progress, but it's not. Work on something meaningful that doesn't leave you with an empty feeling.

SEEKING WORK - Remote, based in Germany

I recently went from my full time programming job - doing mostly business and scientific software - to a freelance setup. I'm up for:

  - game development
    I would love to help out with custom engines and games!
  - server-side code
  - scientific applications
  - core languages: C, C++, PHP, Javascript, some C# and Lua
  - experience with: OpenGL/WebGL/HLSL, Cuda, SIMD
  - performance optimization of existing code
  - working in custom codebases
  - researching solutions to algorithmic challenges
  - web stuff: Websocket brokers, server-side rendering, vanilla JavaScript web apps, Three.js, Pixi.js

Contact me at: udo@udven.com

Could you elaborate a bit on what you mean by "as bitter as this"? Reading the story with no context, it seems almost reverential to Christianity:

We're in the far future and space-faring humans still worship the old religion(s). A supernova that occurred roughly during the time of a key event in the religion's history turned out to have killed off another distant civilization. There is an observation that bad things can happen to good civilizations and how that doesn't square with a benevolent creator deity.

Do you perceive one of these as harsh criticism or was there some other issue in the text that I missed?

I know they're distinct things, I just wonder about the way visualization is described.

From the way non-aphantasia is characterized here one could assume that the difference is just how much control people have over the content of the image, as opposed to the degree of realism.

A hallucinating person may have an experience that feels indistinguishable from reality, but they can't control what the experience entails. From this test, I gather that a non-aphantasiac person has an equally-as-realistic image in front of them, but they are completely in command of what is shown.

The problem with this test is I have nothing to compare it to, and the answer spectrum provided is not helpful because it seems concerned with things like how vivid the colors of mental images are.

If I don't actually "see" the object but I know exactly what it looks like to the point of having a clear but abstracted version of it in my head, do I still put the slider all the way to the left, or to the center, or what?

I would say that me "visualising" an object kind of feels like watching a GAN paint an image, only the image is never as explicitly shown as if it was on my retinas. Does that count?

When I close my eyes and I think of an object there is never a danger of me not realizing that my eyes are currently closed. Am I an aphantasiac because of that? Was I supposed to literally hallucinate scenes all the time?

SEEKING WORK - Remote, based in Germany

I'm transitioning from my full time programming job to a freelance setup over the next few months. I'm up for:

  - game development 
    (I would love to help out with weird custom engines and games)
  - server-side code
  - scientific applications
  - core languages: C, C++, PHP, Javascript, some C# and Lua
  - experience with: OpenGL/WebGL/HLSL, Cuda, SIMD
  - performance optimization of existing code
  - working in custom codebases
  - researching solutions to algorithmic challenges
  - web stuff: Websocket brokers, server-side rendering, vanilla JavaScript web apps, Three.js, Pixi.js

The ASKAP scans at 888MHz. From the paper, which luckily is publicly available:

It exhibited a high degree (∼ 25%) of circular polarization when it was visible. We monitored the source with the MeerKAT telescope from 2020 November to 2021 February on a 2–4 week cadence. The source was not detected with MeerKAT before 2021 February 07 when it appeared and reached a peak flux density of 5.6 mJy. The source was still highly circularly polarized, but also showed up to 80% linear polarization, and then faded rapidly with a timescale of one day. The rotation measure of the source varied significantly, from −11.8±0.8 rad m−2 to −64.0±1.5 rad m−2 , over three days. No X-ray counterpart was found in follow-up Swift or Chandra observations about a week after the first MeerKAT detection, with upper limits of ∼ 5.0 × 1031 erg s−1 (0.3–8 keV, assuming a distance ∼ 10 kpc). No counterpart is seen in new or archival near-infrared observations down to J = 20.8 mag.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2109.00652.pdf

Wahlomat was a great starting point for me as someone who is not up-to-date on current party agendas. However, its weakness is that it breaks down answers into yes/no options. For me there were lots of items that required more than that (for example: I was looking for parties who reject the premise of a given question - I would have loved a graphical indicator for those cases). But I have to say, drilling down to get that information was not only possible with the website but was easier than hunting for a given stance on a party's website.

The structural problem (or feature) in Germany is that voting for a party who is not expected to pass 5% in total votes is basically the same as not voting at all. For me as a holder of niche opinions, this is inconvenient. Of course, everybody knows this feature exists to prevent the recurrence of a Weimar Republic-style desaster.

I do wish we (Western-style democracies in general) would make more use of direct democratic measures. Barring that, I would absolutely love to give my mandate to several parties in different areas (for example, give my mandate to the Pirate Party on IP matters, but give it to someone else on social policy).

But the authentic ones are willing to do it for free.

The only scientists who can afford to work for free would have to be independently wealthy, that's not very common. I don't think there is anything wrong with charging money for work, even if you do enjoy that work. Like any kind of work, research science has its share of 9-to-5ers who don't really care, but those people have their uses, too.

It's the ones who are always whining about how they need constant boatloads of public funding (which is supposed to be spent on public services)

The core problem is really that often public money spent on science leads to results that are privately monetized and closed off from the public who funded it. That's why I believe SciHub is such an important institution, because it makes research results accessible to the public who funded them in the first place. However, funding for space-based data gathering (such as telescopes) has generally led to publicly-available data - the same cannot be said for, say, biomedical research.

I would argue that research is a public service, as long as it doesn't get immediately spun off into patent-encumbered "university-adjacent" enterprise (which I would argue is nothing less than legalized corruption). Of course the issue becomes: how do you prioritize science funding and how do you balance it against other public services?

But this specific endeavor is about protecting our orbital infrastructure, it has nothing to do with curiosity. We depend on satellites. Yes, the byproduct will be that orbital cleanup also protects science equipment and access to space in general, but that's not the main purpose.

What do you think falls under "the curiosity of nerds"? Isn't that all of science? Or just cosmology? Or space-based platforms?

There is enough garbage on the surface of the earth to worry about.

Every single time there is anything happening with space flight, there is at least one comment saying "We should literally solve every single problem here on Earth first before even thinking about anything related to space". This seems like a pretty shallow code for space flight should not happen, ever.

I've been wondering about the people who make these comments for a while, and your seems to follow a similar blueprint. I have some questions, maybe you can answer them.

What motivates this? Are you worried about Earth getting deprioritized? Is the perception that we must decide between tackling social problems/climate change and gratuitous space adventures? Are these comments a way of saying that humans should never venture beyond Earth or that we're just not ready yet? Even if you believe actual humans should never go to space, do you still believe we should have infrastructure there to support Earth?

The only reason why so many companies are openly in support of LGBTQ+ is that right now it costs them almost nothing and effortlessly paints the illusion of a human face onto their public image.

I don't expect that to last. There are many influential countries that are increasingly intolerant of LGBTQ+ at a government level. If one of them just so much as mumbles something about "moral values", expect all of these over-eager LGBTQ-supporting companies to quietly delete all references that they ever supported this.

Hang on, the 15 minute interval requires constant human action, it's not enough that the phone itself is reachable? How does that even work? If that's true (which is sincerely hope it's not) being woken up every 15 minutes during the night for two weeks constitutes torture under most definitions.

Forgive me if I misunderstood your intent, but this feels a little like moving the goal posts on me. In my comment, I was addressing the specific claim that we know little enough about neuronal complexity so the number of atoms in a cell could be seen as a reasonable upper bound on the complexity of the neuron. When you say I "need to consider" the complexities of response modulation and the combinatorics of the entire neuron population acting together, I disagree (purely in the context of the original claim, because that was specifically about the capabilities of a single neuron).

There's no rule that says it couldn't potentially use a large fraction of those atoms for its functionality

There is no question that a neuron uses a large fraction of its atoms for its functionality, as is every other cell. What I think you're postulating is that these atoms form a functionally uber-complex network with mind-boggling combinatorics - but that position does not align well with current science. Single neurons are not that smart. For starters, they don't have the I/O address space or bandwidth to be, nor do they have the energy budget to behave like a block of Computronium.

Neurons have not been opaque black boxes to us for a long time now. We understand a lot of the biochemical processes going on in there. We may not have a complete picture in many areas regarding many neuron types, but there is not enough unexplored space in there to allow for a cell-sized quantum supercomputer or anything like that.

The upper bound on a neuron's computational complexity is dictated by the intricacies of its protein machinery, which is many many orders of magnitude lower than the number of atoms making up the whole.

Would that be oppressive?

To be ascribed one authoritative meaning and purpose from outside is probably the definition of totalitarian oppression, yes. You may argue that it's oppression in a delightful state of bliss, or that you much prefer a life on rails. That's hard to argue against, because it's a matter of personal preference. But if you would prefer there to be an external authority who imbues meaning, what in turn then gives meaning to that authority?

While I agree that we give things meaning, it's all rather arbitrary and empty to think about it that way.

Again, only if you feel it's empty. Then: yes, it is. To me it doesn't feel that way, so to me it isn't. It feels vast and full of possibilities. And also sad that we're such primitive creatures with such short and hard lives. I'd rather I was born in a few hundred years to better take advantage of the opportunities of existence.

Like what's even the point of all this, of life, of us, if in the end nothing matters, everything decays into nothingness.

I don't understand this reasoning. If the universe had a different end state, or if it collapsed in on itself only to erupt again, would that make any difference to the meaning of your life or that of our civilization? Probably not, because things still end.

It seems to me that you'd arrive at this conclusion of meaninglessness in any case. The thing is, while the universe may not care, there are many things we as humans do care about. They have meaning because we give them meaning. Isn't that liberating?

SEEKING WORK - Remote, based in Germany, generalist programmer

I'm transitioning from my full time programming job to a freelance setup over the next few months, so initially I can take small projects only.

Things I can do:

  - game development 
    (I would love to help out with weird custom engines and games)
  - server-side code
  - scientific applications
  - core languages: C, C++, PHP, Javascript, some C# and Lua
  - performance optimization
  - working in custom codebases
  - researching solutions

Contact me at: udo@udven.com

In Germany, I was pleasantly surprised that some parties up for election have (regionally) expressed the will to abolish relgion-based studies in public schools. It makes me a bit hopeful, especially since I recently got the impression that young people are skewing more religious again. I have also seen some proposals to abolish the laws currently prohibiting singing and dancing during certain religious holidays.

Freya Holmer made a very nice visualization of bezier curves by showing the "helper" lines here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVwxzDHniEw

Worth a watch for a quick introduction/recap on how these curves work in the first place (with a focus on gamedev applications).

I think there is a potential issue with the overall concept and dichotomy between "owning" a device to "own" your data, and using external services that must be rented to make that happen. But it sounds like a fixable marketing/communication issue. To elaborate:

Considering R&D and manufacture, it looks to me like you're offering the box itself at cost or even below. Your obvious competitor is Synology, and they have an extensible storage space concept.

So I agree with you that the meat is probably in the Apps. You're offering an email solution as the killer subscription service using somewhat questionable marketing text. But again, that can be fixed. If you were to say "okay, we're planning on offering a range of subscription apps where the core concept is to provide a public-internet service endpoint and the resulting data gets funneled directly into your home box" then you're much clearer about the value you provide and customers would have an expectation that a) their app still works if the subscription expires (it just doesn't get any new data) and b) what they're paying for in the first place. Throw in an info graph that shows the data flow!

Of course, you might have to contend with open source implementations that offer the same endpoint services as a self-hosted option BUT you could even embrace that and make the protocols open because I suspect that the convenience of your all-in-one services would trump the complexity of self hosting in most cases.

Other services/apps you could offer along the same lines could be: federated social media, video downloading and conversion, video and audio chat, collaboration and office tools, home automation, and of course cloud backup (not the paltry 128GB currently folded into the subscription package, but a separate pay-as-you-go solution with "unlimited" storage).

Why is there a extremely pervasive belief in the HN crowd that there is The Right Way and every country must immediately adopt it (and if they do not, they are making a mistake)?

I can't speak for the others, but for me it's because I'm a humanist and I strongly believe governments must be, as well. I'm arguing from a perspective of minimizing human suffering and (ideally) optimizing progress and development towards a future that is pleasant, prosperous, and scientifically literate.

On the more contentious side I would also argue the implementation of a state in such a society must be entirely secular, even if there is a majority religion, because the humanist goals laid out above are fundamentally incompatible with a state religion. But as I said, that particular bias is mostly my personal opinion and could be considered outdated (maybe a side effect of my age).

That is not to say there is a single ideal country I can point at and declare that they're currently fulfilling this ambition completely. But it's easy to identify a government, power structure, or ideology where the core agendas actively move society further away from it. I understand why these kinds of value judgements don't sit right with you, but I'm not arguing for the superiority of Western culture per se.

Edit: About your point of "immediately" adopting democracy, there is no moderate time span. Fundamentalist regimes with popular support, especially when they're religion-based, are usually incredibly stable because of the way consent is continually built and dissent is harshly squashed. If a country slides politically over time, it's usually not towards a secular democracy. Chances are the Taliban will rule Afghanistan for many generations.

It just seems like Afghanistanis are self-determining to support Taliban anywhere outside of Kabul.

There is no question that the Taliban gobbling up the country is an expression of public will. I do think it's regrettable, and I strongly believe "we" should offer assistance to the few people who actually make it out. But other than that, there is really little to do but watch. It's been a long time coming.

Desktop Linux in no way compares to iOS market share, and even if it did, it'd require a different type of attack. Apple is vulnerable precisely because it is the one single vendor in complete control of anything related to the iPhone.

Personally I do think it's likely we'll see a successful anti-Linux smear campaign and/or laws in the next few years, but I have to admit that's a pretty pessimistic take.

They know they can essentially wait out the public outcry, plus they can even buffer things a little bit by calling their critics "confused" and introduce measures that don't address anything but sound reasonable to lay persons in an effort to distort the conversation.

The platform is not in danger. But if it were, then yes, I think they'd still risk it. It's either that or getting shut out of markets gradually by law enforcement and governments.

There is no meaningful dissent under this system. Resistance fighters are also not going to happen in the near future, because these need broad population support, at least regionally. I would argue that the Taliban grabbing control of the country is the people of Afghanistan fighting their own wars, as revolting as it is.

I wonder though if what has been posted in another thread here had happened: if we either hadn't have gone in at all, or retreated immediately after. Maybe the passage of time would have softened up the Taliban government structure by now and there would be meaningful change brewing from within. In that sense, fighting their own wars could have helped the country. I've seen good cases being made for the theory that the people of Afghanistan would almost certainly be better off by now. As it stands today, they are reset to the very beginning of any possible road to democracy and human rights. Then again, there is no guarantee they'll ever choose that. I sort of see the point of those who argue that "we" need to be fine with that, too.

However, this piece of news is more immediate and the suggestion made here relates to immediate relief for people in trouble. And in such cases, I can't ethically be in favor of letting anyone fight their own wars.