g5095's comments

g5095 | 2 years ago | on: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

stigmatize the working class as boring while promoting alternative lifestyles as more attractive/worthy .. then tax their parents into the ground through run-away inflation.. strip them of any potential for home ownership or a stable life and then wonder why kids don't see any value in traditional education?

g5095 | 2 years ago | on: Ask HN: How much of unlimited PTO do you use?

Hey this might piss you off as Americans, but every US company I've worked for has respected my Australian minimum working conditions (2 weeks sick, 4 weeks holiday, etc etc) .. They will do what they can get away with, vote in someone with the balls to change your system.

g5095 | 3 years ago | on: Watashiato

For many years I've been trying to find a word for the sorrow one feels when on reaching for a cup, we realise we finished our tea/coffee some time ago and the cup is indeed now empty. @dictionaryofobscuresorrows please help me.

g5095 | 3 years ago | on: Ctrl-C

"More often than not I find myself having to kill the running process from an external app, such as the shell, after first figuring out what the process ID is."

Short cut here, ctrl-z to background the process, then kill -9 %1 to kill the first job (type jobs for the numbers)

g5095 | 3 years ago | on: The Crime That Killed Shinzo Abe

"Why the Japanese media has refused to identify the 'religious group' that formed the motive for the killing must remain as speculation at this juncture, though it reflects very poorly on Japan’s status as a democratic nation."

I'm struggling to understand the author's bias here (there clearly is one), are they claiming that the poor reflection on Japan as a democracy is:

- that the media has not reported an unsubstantiated 'speculation'? (sounds like good journalism?)

- that that politicians have religious beliefs? (separation of religion and state shouldn't forbid religious people holding office, just from mandating it)

- that the murderer was anti-religiously motivated? (sign of a hate crime)

g5095 | 3 years ago | on: The Elves Leave Middle Earth – Sodas Are No Longer Free (2009)

2008 GFC, startup of 25 (15 dev), everyone drops to 4 days a week, the newly hired 'CEO' drops 5k on a top of the line laptop for himself to basically run Outlook and Solitaire after telling everyone they were cancelling 'birthday cakes' (which the staff mostly pitched in for anyway). RIP entire company.

g5095 | 3 years ago | on: Not My Job

Some years ago I was one of the first 5 engineers at what became a semi-unicorn, in 5 years we spent close to 1bn before a sale to tencent.

In the first 12 months I built a dozen microservices, each which eventually had a team supporting them. As the team grew I and one other guy were the 'glue' that kept much of the platform working, we knew how things went together, and by the time the Eng team hit 200+ staff we were indispensable.

After year 2 however, as several of our peers from the beginning moved into team management roles (something I prefer not to do), we noticed we were 'too important' to promote, or to allow to move, or to take off 2nd lvl on-call (at all).

What started with us being the architects of the system turned into us being the 'glue' that kept a massive multi-country eng team operating, which eventually turned into being boxed into a shitty support role rather than promoted, watching people vastly less qualified get moved ahead of us.

Eventually I just quit and moved into a tech lead role at a startup for something different. I feel like this is a trap for IC roles, don't be so helpful as glue that you 'set' into an indispensable position.

g5095 | 3 years ago | on: Edward Snowden in Hindsight

The OP writes with the implicit assumption that patriotism is a moral good and that America also is something to defend in and of itself (moreso than any other country).

Some people (myself included) would argue that nationality should (ideally) be of little importance and patriotism misguided affection. We might suggest that mercy and liberty for any individual, no matter their nationality, is at the crux of it of more value than feelings of nationalism.

The story of Nathan Hale gives us a glimpse of exactly why this sort of patriotism is problematic when we read about the British officer tearing up the letters he wrote before his execution, why do this to a fellow man sentenced to death if not misguided nationalism over common humanity.

The problem with the kind of patriotism America seems to demand is that it allows for mercy & kindness to it's own, at the expense of others.

From the point of view of a global humanitarian rather than a blind American patriot, Snowden's leaks make a lot of sense. It's the lens you have grown up with, OP, which colours everything you've said here. As someone from (not America), many of us appreciate that the cover was pulled back, it made us all look to our own democratic governments and ask the hard questions.

g5095 | 3 years ago | on: Ask HN: Have you used SQLite as a primary database?

back in 2010-ish I ran a bootstrap/startup that was a community based writing platform for indie authors. Our writing app was entirely web-based, offline with CRDTs between browser storage and backend, where everyone's book was it's own sqlite DB. The forums ran on sqlite as did the auth system.. it worked really well for us (although we had to build a bit of logic around lazy updating schemas). I think it's well suited to user-partitioned data.
page 1