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Dannymetconan

213 karma · joined March 2, 2017

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Dannymetconan··on Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's
| After adjusting for age, sex, race, ethnicity and education, roughly 1 in 100 taxi and ambulance drivers died of Alzheimer’s, compared with 1 in 60 people overall.

They claim to control for these factors in the 5th paragraph of the article here. Which is a standard thing to do in these kind of studies.

So you're point is either not relevant or that they didn't control for age correctly?

Dannymetconan··on Write code like a human will maintain it
I've found the only thing that will actually work for cases like this is a programmatic hook to block Claude from the action.

Non-deterministic behavior via code.

Dannymetconan··on Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
I personally find it hard to read my own handwriting sometimes and I really have tried to improve for years. In an exam situation though its extra pressure to write quickly so its very hard to make it legible.
Dannymetconan··on How I write software with LLMs
It's "easy". You just spend a couple of years reviewing PRs and working in a professional environment getting feedback from your peers and experience the consequences of code.

There is no shortcut unfortunately.

Dannymetconan··on Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)
Demand has gone up largely because of data centers. Supply has not increased enough so expensive options are the marginal supplier. Grids costs are also build into tariffs.

What is your point?

Dannymetconan··on Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)
They are the same side of the coin but one has a much larger effect then the other depending on where your are. Energy has always been expensive in Ireland and home insulation poor (though there have been lots of grants)

| NIMBY-ism.

True but it effects are much worse due to poor planning laws

Dannymetconan··on Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)
It's actually fine in theory but it's nearly impossible to build anything in Ireland due to the way the planning laws work.

In an ideal situation we would be seeing a ramp up in production of all types to take advantage of the costs.

Dannymetconan··on Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)
Agreed. As I said in another comment it is a policy decision to rely on market forces while making little effort to reform the planning process. We should be a world leader in wind energy but the planning process holds us back hugely.
Dannymetconan··on Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)
21% of all energy is now being consumed by data centers with not enough investment in new forms of energy generation.

This is a policy decision by the government. More realistically it is a decision to not proactively do anything and instead rely on market prices to encourage new entrants to the market.

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-dcmec/dat...

Dannymetconan··on Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)
| more and more cost-of-living protests

They must have been real quiet. Most the protests are related to how expensive it has become to rent / buy in this country.

Ireland has encouraged and allowed a huge number of data centers to be setup here and been very slow to implement legislation for other green forms of energy generation. We don't need dirty forms of energy production here like coal and peat just to make energy cheap. Relying on Oil and Gas leaves us hugely at the whims of the international markets.

| now importing most of our energy

14.0% of its electricity in 2024 according to https://www.seai.ie/data-and-insights/seai-statistics/key-pu...

Dannymetconan··on Show HN: I quit coding years ago. AI brought me back
The graph on the BMI calculator is incorrect. While it is a pretty minor bug how many other "minor" bugs are in these tools.

It's great to produce something for free but if it wouldn't have been more then a couple of hours work to verify each of these tools, write tests etc. Even better would have been to produce a open source library

Dannymetconan··on Dishonesty will ruin remote work for all of us
They work based on what someone is prepared to enforce and the laws of the country they try to enforce it in. Having it written and signed isn't some magic catch all.

I'm sure they can fire you but it seems to be "at will" employment in most of the US anyway.

In Ireland and Canada such a clause would likely fall under being "unreasonable" for low paid employees. Similar to how a "non-compete" is not worth the paper it's written on (excluding when direct financial compensation is paid. Eg gardening leave).

Dannymetconan··on Dishonesty will ruin remote work for all of us
I understand the difference. Most jobs would like to own your 24/7 for minimum wage. They can also have clauses about discussing pay or other gray / illegal points. Just because you've signed it doesn't mean much to me.

If you're meeting their expectations it's none of their business in my opinion.

Dannymetconan··on Dishonesty will ruin remote work for all of us
This is what a probation period should be for. Even with all of the above you normally still have to pass probation. I've seen numerous people in the EU get let go in their 6 months for not meeting expectations.

I think that is a risk with hiring regardless. Both sides have an information gap.

I joined a place and within a week realized it was a disaster and I didn't want to work there. If the company had informed me half the teams had quit / was in the process of quiting I would not have joined. It's not like I could go back and get my old job

Dannymetconan··on Dishonesty will ruin remote work for all of us
I think it is. Employers love to include whatever they can in a contract.

Non competes in Canada and the EU are generally not enforceable but you see them regularly. Why should this line be any different.

Edit: which -> why

Dannymetconan··on Oru Kayak’s reckless and irresponsible advertising
Its is about as misleading as saying "X% of them are not wearing a seatbelt" the helmet comparison is not fair here.

In every US state (as far as I can tell) you are required to wear a seatbelt while operating a car.

Similarly in nearly every US state you are also required to wear a PFD while operating a personal watercraft. Enforcement seems a lot more lax on this though.

The legal status of the requirement makes this a valid comparison though it is implicit. This isn't an extra safety device. Though like helmets on motorbikes it is still one an individual may choose to forgo.

https://www.boatsafe.com/pfd-requirements-state-boating-regu...

Dannymetconan··on What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
If you want to go further back in time you can check out IBM DOORS. Though it does have some great features you see shoehorned into Jira these days.
Dannymetconan··on Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?
The EU also has charge backs as well. I would have assumed all credit cards would have this as a feature.
Dannymetconan··on I couldn't debug the code because of my name
The best one I have every seen is O\apostropheRourke for a car rental in France. I have no idea how they thought that was a good idea!
Dannymetconan··on I couldn't debug the code because of my name
Well in this case they were explicitly allowed it just caused problems down the line when other system attempted to consume them.

String come up again and again as a hard issue to deal with especially once your start looking at Unicode. I think it would be very reasonable to assume only ASCII works and even then it doesn't always work!

Dannymetconan··on I couldn't debug the code because of my name
Totally agree with the sentiment. It has gotten a lot better in the last 10 years. Very frustrating to have your name blacklisted by that. It does seem most system have a very US focused design.

I still find it funny that even in my home country you can't use a lot of local special characters in names. Also most airlines won't accept it so technically I'm not giving them my true name!

Dannymetconan··on I couldn't debug the code because of my name
I can very much relate to this but also have very little sympathy here.

I have a special character in my name, an apostrophe, and it causes trouble regularly online and with tooling. A number of years ago I decided just to never use it when it came to anything to do with technical work be it email, logins or usernames.

Unicode characters are a pain to deal with and I have suffered from it first hand trying to handle it. At the end of the day it is much easier just to not use the special characters and move on with your life rather then be battling the constant frustration.

I'm sure these tools have lots of issues opening and you would be surprised at the amount of time, effort and testing it would be required to provide fully Unicode support. Most people would see it as a very small positive and not worth the effort. I find it hard to disagree.

Dannymetconan··on How to write a resume that converts
After having to read through about 50 resumes today, so we could interview a max of 4 people for 1 position it's really hard to tell who's is good / bad.

I found the easiest thing to look for was some portfolio of work to try and differenciate the candidates

Dannymetconan··on We throw away our power as engineers working for other people
Totally agree and your chances of actually make the 100s must be minutely small
Dannymetconan··on We throw away our power as engineers working for other people
In a lot of places though you can have a good life, work 9-5, be well paid and not have to worry about all the headache that occurs from running a business.

You might not end up a millionaire but you'll generally be better paid then a lot of people in your age / social bracket.

A lot of people just don't want to make the sacrifices to run their own business!

Dannymetconan··on Ask HN: What is your favorite motto?
"Sure it'll be grand"

Because to be fair it normally will be so no point stressing about it.

Dannymetconan··on Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
I think it is more of a problem of inflation.

If you get 50 application is easy just to automatically remove the X that don't have a college degree.

Similarly to the way you might have a GPA cut off of some amount but they don't actually care what your degree was in.

In Ireland there are a lot of people who go on to do a Masters because when a large number of people have degrees it makes you more competitive. Anecdotal most my friends will tell you they use neither their undergrad nor masters in work life

Dannymetconan··on Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
Universities in Europe are generally high quality and low cost. It does have it's problems but it is not one or the other.

You do not need a degree 30 years ago to do lots of jobs that now require one. Higher education for a lot of organizations is just an easy way to cut the application stack down

Dannymetconan··on Show HN: Own your Kubernetes: installation, addons, best practices – as code
In theory its the same as just running a data center on-prem and then running the Kubernetes cluster on top of it.

I think you would generally have the same issues as running a general data center on-prem. I have not seen any resources yet for running one specifically for k8s. I managed a beowulf cluster for a while for running one. It was a complete pain.

Dannymetconan··on How to negotiate salary in the software development market of 2019
I'm really sorry to hear that. I imagine you are looking for your first job out of college?

Even as a quality candidate there might be a lot of way that you are going wrong. I would advise you try and get your CV looked at. This can make a big difference. I'm sure there is lots of advice out there. What market are you looking in?

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