Hacker News: freemint

New comment by freemint in "Ask HN: American friends life is falling apart badly. What can I do to help?"

freemint — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 09:53:20 +0000

I've read your email. Thanky you very much for the offer. I relayed it. I would like to make sure it actually works when it arrives at her place. I heard the keyboards of those laptops are fine which would be a huge plus over her programming on her phone.

New comment by freemint in "Ask HN: American friends life is falling apart badly. What can I do to help?"

freemint — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 02:41:55 +0000

Because it is relevant in a bunch of ways.

- It obviously increases the burn rate due to increased medical expenses which makes certain income thresholds to qualify for help harder to reach.

- It together with a comment suggesting parental abuse means she can't rely on family support

- There is discrimination against trans people. If xy% of people despise you because of your existince is a challange to their god and on those people decides how many hours you get that obviously has an impact.

I must congratulate you. Your cynical engagement both claiming this to maybe being a scam, acting worried for me and yet being very motivated to argue political points might have gotten this post removed from the top of AskHN where it was some time before you posted. I hope when i wake up that my genuine ask for help and advice got a few more eyeballs.

New comment by freemint in "Ask HN: American friends life is falling apart badly. What can I do to help?"

freemint — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 02:04:54 +0000

Both i and her have an effective social network reach of 0. I had considered asking for help but i have no idea where even to start. If you have any suggestion please email me. You seem to have a good grasp of her situation. Any lead would be helpful.

If you haven't seen i wrote about some code i was she had on her GitHub and we discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35672617

New comment by freemint in "Ask HN: American friends life is falling apart badly. What can I do to help?"

freemint — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 02:00:27 +0000

Thank you for being concerned. No she is not asking for money. I came into contact with her when i discussed a project of mine in a Discord server. She approached me to join that project, did good work, showed geniune interest and had good ideas she was working on. I was looking forward to collaborate more with her. Her hours were cut after she helped the workplace find an issue in their IT infrastructure (which she reported proprely and professionally). It became obvious she didn't deal well with that. She was very overwhelmed with that situation and i offered her which help she accepted.

New comment by freemint in "Ask HN: American friends life is falling apart badly. What can I do to help?"

freemint — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 01:52:13 +0000

I had not looked into that. There actually is a hackerspace however the rates for membership are $60 per month[1]. The discounted rates don't seem to apply to her situation. [2] It is not obvious whether that space even would be trans friendly. I can see if i can reach someone from there to get a vibe or an idea.

> If the have tech skills I would think they could get a basic job easily.

One would think so naively. I am working towards trying to help her find a job. I have not been at it for long. If you have some insight where i might help her find a basic job making use of her embedded/backend C, C++ skills developing cross platform {Linux, Windows} x {ARM, x86_64} emulator writing tools which work as library and as application with integrated LUA interpreters i would be thankful. It doesn't have to be that specific but that might give people an idea what flame she is cooking with.

[1] https://wiki.chattlab.org/joining_steps [2] https://wiki.chattlab.org/membership

New comment by freemint in "Ask HN: American friends life is falling apart badly. What can I do to help?"

freemint — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 01:32:37 +0000

I encourage you look into reports from amnesty international, they document such stuff well. They are usually a year behind on stuff, the German report about 2022 reads

> Darüber hinaus wurden in verschiedenen Bundesstaaten Dutzende von Gesetzentwürfen eingebracht, die darauf abzielten, den Zugang zu gender-bestätigender Gesundheitsversorgung ("gender-affirming healthcare") für trans Jugendliche einzuschränken. [1]

Which i would loosely translate: Different states introduced dozens of law proposals which aim to reduce access to gender-affirming health care for trans teenagers.

In 2023 a lot more stuff has happened [2] and might be in preperation.

Gender-affirming care is as far as the data suggests the best way to treat ICD-10 F64.0 and sub categories. Denying people those treatments to a legitimate and internationally recognized diagnosis is depriving them health care. Health care is a human right [3].

[1] https://www.amnesty.de/informieren/amnesty-report/usa-2022#s...

[2] https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/diversity-inclu...

[3] https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Publicat...

New comment by freemint in "Ask HN: American friends life is falling apart badly. What can I do to help?"

freemint — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 01:14:38 +0000

You are right. This kind of justified anxiety fets stacked on top. But she is currently not in a position to move. I have already done the equivalent of a FIOA to German immigration office[1] to get their current evaluation of the trans situation in the US and whether they qualify for asylum status.

They don't take it as serious as they should. However atleast the orders how to deal with trans peoples seem respectful of their status and some of the complications.

[1] https://fragdenstaat.de/anfrage/bewertung-der-menschenrechts...

New comment by freemint in "Ask HN: American friends life is falling apart badly. What can I do to help?"

freemint — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 00:58:12 +0000

It's getting late here in Germany. Thank you for your input so far. I probably should have put the city name (Chattanooga) in the post. Let me hit on the two aspects so far.

My impression is that the US goverment can't really be relied on to help people dig themselves out of such holes. Those social programs are designed to prevent people from starving not put people in a position where they are able to efficiently be able to contribute to society.

I am not aware of substance abuse issues. There is psychological baggage though related to parental abuse and being trans.

Edit: Yeah i should really sleep now.

New comment by freemint in "Ask HN: American friends life is falling apart badly. What can I do to help?"

freemint — Sat, 22 Apr 2023 23:42:09 +0000

This sounds useful. Does that apply to faux "independent contractors" too?

In Germany we have a word "Scheinselbständigkeit". People are formally self-employed/independent contractor which are actually totally dependent and this is used to circumvent social security protections.

I think something like that might be going on here.

New comment by freemint in "Ask HN: American friends life is falling apart badly. What can I do to help?"

freemint — Sat, 22 Apr 2023 23:12:17 +0000

She is accessing PCs at work and when she is over with friends. Web technology is great for making stuff accessible. That the local library has a reservation system for public "workstations" makes me dubious one could productively programm there. That the computers in many locations are not available on the weekend makes this harder.

> Public computers and WiFi are available at all five branches of the Chattanooga Public Library. Access to the computers is limited to 2 hours per day if other patrons are waiting. Reservations can be made for the next available computer by phone or in person.

New comment by freemint in "Ask HN: American friends life is falling apart badly. What can I do to help?"

freemint — Sat, 22 Apr 2023 23:05:24 +0000

As far as i can see that food bank is totally overrun according to local news https://www.local3news.com/local-news/chattanooga-area-food-... . I will relay the other links but since she doesn't have children I am not sure in how far the /for-families/ links will be useful. She has been applying for SNAP.

Ask HN: American friends life is falling apart badly. What can I do to help?

freemint — Sat, 22 Apr 2023 22:05:33 +0000

I am a German university student. Through a hobby project of mine i got to talk to a trans women from Tennessee. She seemed genuinely interested in my project and made valueable contributions. However her capability to contribute has plummeted so i asked her what's up. From what i gathered she works as an independent contractor and was barely making ends meet, then her hours were cut by 10 hours per week and she is in the red and her savings were non existent. I was shocked she has been contributing from an linux environment on her mobile phone!

She can't afford getting enough to eat (!!!), her only phone has a broken touch screen, barely works, her car is slowly dying and dangerous to drive. She has been building and rebuilding a computer at home from discraded parts and it keeps failing.

I am honestly at a loss. She seems smart, really interested, has projects which i find promising and interesting on her GitHub. She has an technical understanding of things and is able to find root causes for strange problems not in her area of expertise. Due to homeschooling and religious upbringing i think she has been denied a formal education. She seems to deeply care about how things work, isn't afraid to learn obscure skills (which is how we met) and cares about building tools which make resources observable and accessable. I have been trying to help her put a resume together by "pair programming" her resume on my PC and me sharing the screen over discord.

Do you have any resources, know any resources, ... anything i could do to help her?

A working laptop, a used phone, an interview for a remote junior position, damn even a big box of hygene products and food would help her. I as a university student am not in a position to support her financially and i am not local enough to meaningfully help. As far as i can tell this fate is through no fault of her own.

I can be reached at johann-tobias(at)xn--schg-noa.de .

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35671326

Points: 33

# Comments: 43

Ash HN: What's the new “your data fits in RAM” for a new 8-socket Xeon Scalable?

freemint — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 00:10:58 +0000

Intels new Xeon Scalable 4th gen server processors (code name Saphire Rapid) support up to 8 CPUs in one system. These processors can have upto 8 channels per CPU and 2 DiMMs per channel.

Am i understanding it correctly that a single server can have upto 48 Terrabyte of main memory doubling the current maximum on https://yourdatafitsinram.net/ ?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35176451

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by freemint in "Ask HN: Is 8gb RAM enough for a Linux dev laptop?"

freemint — Fri, 20 Jan 2023 13:46:57 +0000

It depends. If you only develop native command line programs it will more than be enough. But every Slack, Discord, Teams, webmail client, ... you got to have open will cut more into your RAM than you think. If the documentation you work with is not js ridden websites but man pages, txts or pdfs, your workflow allows you to occasionally close all tabs, and you do need to run software with big ram use on an ongoing basis you should be fine. However if those circumstances change you might need to upgrade: - by putting more RAM in the machine - moving parts of your workflow to a different machine and use laptop as "thin-client" - switch machines

At the moment my memory use with 16 GB looks like this:

      total   used    free   shared  buff/cache   available

Mem: 16167816 13526588 1017224 805552 1624004 1420060

Swap: 24838136 10326200 14511936

and i have not found a good way to account for where my memory goes.

New comment by freemint in "UK pensions hit with margin calls as gilts and sterling slide"

freemint — Fri, 30 Sep 2022 00:46:40 +0000

> Have you considered that you have the causality flipped, and that people are generally rich because they're good at making money under adverse conditions?

They might have. However any look at generational wealth dynamics quickly dispels that idea. Any above market performance rich people have are simply able to have better managers because managing bigger pools pays more and maybe an education which focuses on maintaining and building wealth. This education could be widely available but it is not made widely available. I am not going to imply a conspiracy here or appeal to class interests for explanation and just leave it as a statement of fact.

New comment by freemint in "Intel Arc Graphics A770 Launching 12 October for $329 USD"

freemint — Wed, 28 Sep 2022 09:19:26 +0000

Some things got better. Intel was very responsive to issues brought up by the press. Not sure if Intel fixed all the issues but the issues Gamer Nexus brought up are all in Intels internal bug tracker.

New comment by freemint in "Posits, a New Kind of Number, Improves the Math of AI"

freemint — Wed, 28 Sep 2022 09:13:06 +0000

I kinda wish Gustafson would focus on something more productive but he is still trying to boil the ocean.

New comment by freemint in "An Introduction to Binary Decision Diagrams [pdf]"

freemint — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 13:49:21 +0000

There are also sat solvers which do (approximate) solution counting. It is just that all these pointers seems so cache unfriendly ... But thank you for your insight

New comment by freemint in "Ask HN: What's the best “higher level Rust” these days?"

freemint — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 13:05:28 +0000

I would recommend taking a look at Julia. What it can't do is "get nullability right at compile time" however you can define Integer values which can't be zero and have that changed at run time with more and more of these checks moving to compile time but still raising errors at run time, "force you to look at values" but you can throw arbitrary stuff which is nice. Julia has the rest you wish for though. Julia has nice macros, has multiple dispatch instead of inheritance, a vibrant and growing community. It is mostly used in numerical work however use it on other domains has also shown a lot of promise, at the moment producing standalone binaries is still complicated, it pays compile time every time a function is called with new types.

New comment by freemint in "Zen4's AVX512 Teardown"

freemint — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 12:50:06 +0000

Competitive with what? GPUs? Only for networks that fit in a cache and even then only in latency not in throughput. Still valuable but not competitive in the majority of use cases.