Hacker News: memetherapy

New comment by memetherapy in "Ask HN: Epics, Themes, Initiatives, Features, Stories. Clear Articulation Needed"

memetherapy — Wed, 20 Jan 2021 08:38:30 +0000

None of these things has anything to do with agile, they are all from scrum. Scrum is not agile as it is the very definition of prioritizing processes and tools over individuals and interactions. If you want to learn about scrum, you have asked the right questions, but if you want to learn about agile development read the agile software manifesto and run away screaming from scrum.

[1] https://agilemanifesto.org/

New comment by memetherapy in "Why do they still make car alarms? (2015)"

memetherapy — Wed, 20 Jan 2021 07:54:48 +0000

No, because beggars can't be choosers right? And the best thing to do to a person when they are at their absolute worst is to take away their last scrap of autonomy. I'm sorry, in future I will humbly accept the advice of the self righteous with a doff of my cap and a mumbled thank you.

New comment by memetherapy in "Why do they still make car alarms? (2015)"

memetherapy — Wed, 20 Jan 2021 07:47:43 +0000

Nope I'm from the UK but we have a system that is closer to the American then the Swiss. There are services out there but they're incredibly poorly funded.

New comment by memetherapy in "Why do they still make car alarms? (2015)"

memetherapy — Wed, 20 Jan 2021 07:19:14 +0000

As someone who's been homeless (and didn't have a drink or drug problem thanks) please fuck off. A night in a shelter costs money. Clothes which regularly get stolen cost money. Going to the bathroom costs money. Having a shower costs money. Travel to find jobs costs money. Medication costs money. Toothpaste costs money.

New comment by memetherapy in "Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features"

memetherapy — Sun, 17 Jan 2021 14:45:03 +0000

A "halo" market segment for mac books is video and photography professionals who make extremely heavy use of SD cards. Appealing to this group (who are also willing to pay a premium) has always been a feature of macs. Devs, not so much.

New comment by memetherapy in "How to join a team and learn a codebase (2020)"

memetherapy — Sat, 16 Jan 2021 12:10:11 +0000

Yeah, I find this a huge problem especially with junior devs (by which I mean those within the first five or so years of their career. When you have people calling themselves senior devs after six months the job title has become meaningless). Until you've been around long enough to understand how large code bases (in general, not the one you're working on!) evolve over time and why common trade offs are made you're not going to be able to grok the weaknesses of an existing code base quickly. Start off by being humble and asking why certain things have been implemented in the way they have, there is usually a reason. Sometimes it's even a good one!

New comment by memetherapy in "Ask HN: How do we build the new remote education system"

memetherapy — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 16:47:00 +0000

The open university in the UK was founded in 1969 and has been offering full distance learning degrees ever since in large numbers of subjects. It uses a mix of professionally produced video content (so usually not just a video of a lecturer standing in front of a blackboard), textbooks, in person or remote small group seminars (you used to phone in, now online video chat), forums, chat groups, personal support by email or post (in case you're in prison or living really remotely) and online libraries / inter library loans and occasional residential weekends / weeks.

Mastery is tested in the usual ways, essays, projects and tests, but also "in class" contributions during seminars, which is a good way of motivating people to actually attend and ask questions.

It works really well but it's taken fifty years of practice, experimentation and investment to get there and it involves a lot of contact between tutors and students and as a student you need to be more motivated than attending a bricks and mortar university (I've done both).

The fact of the matter is that most online learning created over the last year is pretty terrible because it's been created on the hoof by teachers with no experience of delivering learning in this way so they've mostly tried to reproduce the classroom but online, which doesn't work.

Most existing online material out there is intended to be supplemental to traditional bricks and mortar learning or used in a "flipped" classroom like Khan Academy where there is still pupil teacher contact, rather than replace it, or is aimed at professional / personal development rather than teaching academic subjects or the core curriculum.

Honestly if you want to improve your kids learning and can afford one get them a tutor who will work with them one to one or in small groups and can identify what the gaps in their knowledge are and ensure they are keeping pace of where they should be curriculum wise so when they do go back to school they won't be behind their peers. Don't expect a magic tech bullet.

New comment by memetherapy in "Teacher creates ingenious exam question to find cheaters and catches 14 students"

memetherapy — Sun, 10 Jan 2021 13:09:25 +0000

Yeah that was my experience at university in the UK (well you put it in your bag and got a ticket like at a cloakroom) and that was in 2008 so pre smartphones being common amongst students. If university's or schools are allowing kids to have access to phones during exams in 2021 they're idiots or silently encouraging their students to cheat in order to boost their rankings (not unheard of admittedly in the UK)

New comment by memetherapy in "Microprocessors Running on Air?"

memetherapy — Sat, 09 Jan 2021 08:51:12 +0000

I know there's lots of research papers out there talking about it but do you know if today's commercial microfluidics "lab on chip" devices use fluidics logic gates or is this still something that is still confined to academia?

New comment by memetherapy in "A physical breach is a nightmare scenario for Capitol IT"

memetherapy — Fri, 08 Jan 2021 08:26:59 +0000

Forget older employees, just employees. And I've seen enough poor security practices by 20 somethings at tech firms to have any faith in any user. Favourite example I've seen in several companies including one doing extremely sensitive work - senior devs with root access to the jewels of the kingdom doing pair programming on their own machines with interviewees / interns / new staff and leaving the computer unattended and unlocked to pop to the loo, grab a coffee, or let the junior work something out on their own.

New comment by memetherapy in "China: The Disappearing Millionaires (2019) [video]"

memetherapy — Mon, 04 Jan 2021 14:25:39 +0000

Well China is obviously a bigger threat than the USSR now because the USSR hasn't existed for about 30 years. And while China may threaten western, or rather US hegemony it isn't an existential threat to the USA or EU in that China is unlikely to try to invade and / or nuke Western Europe or USA in the same way the USSR did at various points. I'm not saying that China isn't a threat to the USA's position of hegemonic super power but that's a very different claim.

New comment by memetherapy in "China: The Disappearing Millionaires (2019) [video]"

memetherapy — Mon, 04 Jan 2021 12:55:23 +0000

Because there is little to no benefit to the EU or USA to challenging the CCP, be it because of their treatment of a few billionaires or millions of Uighers. Unlike the Soviet Union China doesn't represent an existential threat to the USA or EU, largely as a matter of geography. The promotion of human rights, liberal democracy, the rule of law etc. has always been fairly low on the priority list of most western states in actuality and has usually played second fiddle to national interests.

New comment by memetherapy in "We compress Pub/Sub messages and more, saving a load of money"

memetherapy — Sun, 03 Jan 2021 22:11:06 +0000

Thanks for the response, really interesting to see how this stuff is used.

New comment by memetherapy in "We compress Pub/Sub messages and more, saving a load of money"

memetherapy — Sun, 03 Jan 2021 18:16:29 +0000

Genuine question from someone from an entirely different world - why on earth do you have 10 billion log entries? What is in them and do you ever do anything with them that requires you to store so much data rather than just a representative subset?

New comment by memetherapy in "Brexit VAT rules: shipping notice on a Dutch ecommerce store"

memetherapy — Sat, 02 Jan 2021 12:57:56 +0000

This change is particularly insane. If you are an overseas business that sells goods that cost £135 or below (per consignment) you have to register for VAT in the UK. If you sell goods that cost more than £135 you don't however because the VAT will be collected as import VAT at the border. Basically this is all about shifting the administrative burden of collecting VAT from HMRC and customs and excise onto exporters. The only bright spot is that online marketplaces rather than sellers will be responsible for collecting VAT, so if you're selling on Etsy, eBay, Amazon etc. you don't have to worry. If you're selling directly though you do. [1]https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/changes-to-vat-tr...

New comment by memetherapy in "Brexit deal mentions Netscape browser and Mozilla Mail"

memetherapy — Tue, 29 Dec 2020 18:36:01 +0000

I'm afraid you have it backwards if you think the UK government were "desperate to negotiate everything in one go". "Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed" was a core principle of the EU negotiating guidelines[1] on the withdrawal agreement and was precisely what the UK were trying to avoid. The UK strategy was to try and cherry pick, or in the words of Boris, have our cake and eat it. This tendency was so strong among the British negotiators that "cakeism" is now a genuine term used across the continent to describe the tactics of an unreasonable negotiating partner who doesn't understand the need to make trade offs. I'd say it was amusing watching the Rupert's and their admirers screw up so badly and then pretend they've won a glorious victory except I actually have to live in this country.

[1]https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2017...

New comment by memetherapy in "Brexit deal mentions Netscape browser and Mozilla Mail"

memetherapy — Tue, 29 Dec 2020 17:57:36 +0000

The negotiators had 11 months not "years". The UK left the UK on 31st January 2020 and negotiations on this agreement didn't start (and couldn't legally begin) until then. The negotiations around the "withdrawal agreement" were a completely different thing and were solely about what the EU / UK relationship would be during the transition period which ends at midnight on 31st December this year. As part of that withdrawal agreement the UK government specifically negotiated a short transition period (off the top of my head the initial EU offer was five years), presumably because they thought that the increased time pressure on the EU would work to their advantage. Whether that has worked out as Boris and co hoped I'll leave as an exercise for the reader.

New comment by memetherapy in "Brexit deal mentions Netscape browser and Mozilla Mail"

memetherapy — Tue, 29 Dec 2020 17:23:15 +0000

What seems to be missing from this discussion is that this agreement was negotiated mind bogglingly quickly (9 months as opposed to the multi year / decade long process) and hasn't undergone the usual process of scrubbing which is where such technical and legal issues would normally be fixed. This process would itself normally take longer than the entire period in which this has been negotiated. Of course it's a mess and is full of copy-pasta errors. Luckily however law isn't code, especially not at the international agreement level, and it is implemented by humans, not computers (or software developers). The big problem with the Brexit deal is that it has essentially come straight from the hands of the politicians and civil servants who have negotiated it and is then being approved without proper scrutiny, at least from the UK parliament and the council of Europe. Let us hope that the only problems with it are a few embarrassing technical errors that in reality will be dealt with by secondary legislation and side agreements between the parties. If there are serious issues then they will likely be picked up before it is approved by the European Parliament (and it's not a shoe in that it will actually be approved by MEPs) and these will need to be dealt with, probably through a bunch of secondary legislation and agreements.

New comment by memetherapy in "Britain’s electricity since 2010: fossil fuel use nearly halves"

memetherapy — Mon, 28 Dec 2020 17:19:24 +0000

Not sure why this is being downvoted. The UK has been intentionally deindustrialising since the 1980s and has essentially lost most of its industrial capability already. What remains is essentially assembly and finishing (i.e. our car manufacturing industry should be more accurately termed as car assembly) This was done first because this was the easiest way for Thatcher to break the unions, and then because it turned out that focussing on services (now 80% of the UK economy and 40-50% of our exports) was more productive anyway for the UK (and locally produced a better environment as we essentially exported our pollution). Of course with Brexit we've reduced our ability to export services to our biggest market and so ironically may actually see a boost to manufacturing as it becomes relatively more profitable, especially since the Tories intend to reduce worker and environmental protections which is why they fought so hard against including none regression clauses in the Brexit deal.

New comment by memetherapy in "About those vector icons (2011)"

memetherapy — Thu, 24 Dec 2020 08:56:58 +0000

The problem with this is that you then have to drive that 8k, or multiple 8k, monitors which is a problem if you're doing anything visually complex. As someone who straddles the programming / visual arts world (I write plugins for 3D modelling software) I actually spend most of my time having to use "low resolution" (1080p or 1440p) because I'm dealing with complex polygon models with tens of millions of polys and scenes with sometimes thousands of objects in them. You get a similar problem with games or doing video editing. It also doesn't address the problem that there's a limit to people's visual acuity (especially as they get older as I'm rapidly discovering at 40) so you still have to make icons "bolder" and change details as the article addresses as they get smaller to make them more "readable".