Even if the engineers themselves are cooperative, their managers / business owners will resist close cooperation and enforce work at arm's length (e.g. 1x weekly calls).

Ask me how I know. I once spent £300k (fortunately not my money) on an outsourced team of developers, and they delivered nothing at the end. Most of the time it was simply about aligning the work! We (me and my partner, we together had some idea of what we actually wanted) tried repeatedly to make sync-s more frequent, to better align the efforts, but their managers kept resisting. It's the "consulting" business model!

For remote jobs, the incentives are reversed. You're literally a full-time employee, there's no management layers to impede communication, and (unless you're lazy or a fraud) you probably want to work on interesting problems and not be bored!

Didn't check the others...

What used to be easily searchable (e.g. "opencv orb") now brings up pages and pages of spam sites (basically "learn opencv here!" blogspam).

Literally the first result on "docs.opencv.org" is on page 4, and points to version 3.4 (9 years old!).

The page that I want https://docs.opencv.org/4.13.0/dc/dc3/tutorial_py_matcher.ht... is nowhere to be found.

(1) you can cast between any pointer types (no UB - assuming they're aligned), but accessing memory through a wrongly-typed pointer is UB

(2) the only exception is char*, which allows you a "byte view of memory"

(3) calling a function through a pointer requires the parameter pointer types to be compatible, and none of these are: int*, struct foo *, void*, char*

The OCR was complex enough (bad quality photos) that "simple" OCR models couldn't do it.

Fortunately, Claude obliged (as well as Mistral OCR was helpful!)

https://www.racunovodja.com/clanki.asp?clanek=232/kilometrin...

A few years ago (or last year? not sure) they were deregulated on the highways (i.e. to make tourists pay more) but then the government changed their mind (several times, IIRC).

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Voting

> The centralized server must be trusted not to violate ballot secrecy,[7] this limitation can be mitigated against by distributing trust amongst several stakeholders.

> The ballot auditing/reconstruction device must be trusted to ensure successful ballot auditing (also known as cast-as-intended verifiability),[7][16] this limitation can be mitigated against by distributing auditing checks amongst several devices, only one of which must be trusted.

So neither secure nor anonymous...

They still pay taxes, which fund the US government, which kills innocent human beings around the world...

I fundamentally disagree. I don't go around treating people respectfully (as opposed to, kicking them or shooting them) because I fear consequences, or I expect some future profit ("iterated game"), or because of God's vengeance, or anything transactional.

I do it because it's the right thing to do. It's inside of me, how I'm built and/or brought up. And if you want "moral" justifications (argued by extremely smart philosophers over literally millennia) you can start with Kant's moral/categorical imperative, Gold/Silver rules, Aristotle's virtue (from Nicomachean Ethics) to name a few.

If you asked it to simulate a pirate, it would simulate a pirate instead, and simulate a parrot sitting on its shoulder.

This is hard to discuss because it's so abstract. But imagine an embodied agent (robot), that can simulate pain if you kick it. There's no pain internally. There's just a simulation of it (because some human instructed it such). It's also wrong to assign any moral value to kicking (or not kicking) it (except as "destruction of property owned by another human" same as if you kick a car).

So were mannequins in clothing stores.

But that doesn't give them rights or moral consequences (except as human property that can be damaged / destroyed).

The agent has no "identity". There's no "you" or "I" or "discrimination".

It's just a piece of software designed to output probable text given some input text. There's no ghost, just an empty shell. It has no agency, it just follows human commands, like a hammer hitting a nail because you wield it.

I think it was wrong of the developer to even address it as a person, instead it should just be treated as spam (which it is).

Childcare in/around Zurich is (was 2 years ago) 2500 - 3000 CHF / month (lower prices after ~18 months). This is and isn't expensive. The list prices are high, but so are salaries (and taxes are low), and this is cheaper than rent (for 1 kid). Not subsidized.

In Slovenia, the full price is about 700 EUR / month, subsidised up to 77% by the government (i.e. by high-earners, effectively a double-progressive taxation with already high taxes).

What you get for that price in Zurich? A lot! Kindergarten starts at 3 months and can take care of kids for the whole work day (7am-18pm). Groups are tiny and lots of teachers - 3 adults per 12 kids. Groups are mixed age as well, which I think are preferable. You also get a lot of flexibility - e.g. half-days (cheaper) or only specific days per week (e.g. Mon-Thu). Jobs are equally adaptable, a lot of people work 80% (so Friday free, spend with kid(s)).

In Slovenia, the situation is much worse. 2 teachers per 12 or even 20 kids (after age 4), age-stratified groups, childcare finishes at 5pm (but start at 6am, if someone needs that...). Children are only welcome after 11 months of age. No flexibility at all. This is all for public childcare - we also looked at private, but generally you pay more (1000+ EUR) but get ... not much more. Maybe nicer building (not even), but groups are equally large (IMO biggest drawback).

So as far as childcare is concerned, Switzerland is IMO much better.

But where Switzerland fucks you, is elsewhere. As mentioned, tax is low, so that's a plus. But there's minimal maternity leave (hence kindergarten starts at 3 months). If women can, they take more time off work, but not everyone can. What I wrote above about "kindergarten" only applies until 4 years of age, after which "preschool" starts, which is government-funded and hence free. Well, "free". It ends at 12pm after which you need to move your kid back into private childcare if you have a job. After that, school starts, which has a lunch break around 12pm as well - children are supposed to eat lunch at home - which again isn't really compatible with 2 working parents.

I'm not in Switzerland any more so I don't know how people actually manage when kids start school...

That's insane. Don't live in Sweden if you have kids, I guess!

If the latter, I don't see why CloudFlare is complaining about "global" censorship. The US would simply seize the domains (which they have done so many times before), but I guess Italy doesn't have that power...