_huayra_

Pretty much anything related to personal growth (however you define it) takes time to click, but it took a while to understand two things at a deep enough level to begin to make change:

* everyone has a set of habits that served them well during childhood, but may be maladaptive as an adult (e.g. getting angry is almost universal a sign of this maladaptive childhood habit rearing up). Book recommendation [0]

* the fear of hope is a key thing to understand when it comes to why people (myself included) hold themselves back. Taking the first step can feel terrifying because it demonstrates that one is responsible for creating one's own life. Book recommendation [1]

The only way out of this is to deliberately design your days so that you get the most out of them, even if it is fumbling at the start. Add in some times to relax here and there, but if you have a plan, it's much easier than staring at a blank Saturday with the vague goal of "I MUST learn JS/Rust/Go/Scala or my career will be over!!!" and then getting nothing done.

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23129659-adult-children-...

[1] https://www.harpercollins.com/products/how-we-change-ross-el...

> How mortgage repayments change over time as you pay off some of it (YMMV)

This is a big one people buying houses recently due to FOMO don't understand: you're really not building equity the first few years because almost all of your monthly payment is going to interest. The "irrecoverable cost" of owning a home can often be higher than renting in some HCOL areas now, although I understand that people buy for more emotional reasons (e.g. not wanting to yank their family around to a new place each year to avoid being at the mercy of a bad landlord on each lease renewal).

From what I've seen on youtube / auto magazines, towing with an EV takes a massive hit to its range, way more than a diesel truck. If it's only an occasional thing (e.g. take the boat to the lake on the weekends, now with an extra hour sitting at a charger), then it's probably a good tradeoff. If hauling is your job, it might not be there yet :(

I was pleased at first when I tried to use ChatGPT as a search engine. I asked something like "give me the top 5 blog posts to learn about C++ metaprogramming" and it actually spit out extremely plausible titles from top people (e.g. Dave Abrahams, Eric Niebler, Herb Sutter, etc), but when I said "no please give me the actual URLs", they were all 404.

If Microsoft somehow is able to implement the information synthesis (e.g. "give me an example of C++ metaprogramming, using Boost Hana") with actual indexed links from sources, that would probably be the one thing I'd see in the near-ish term that could upset the search engine balance of power.

It is easier to make the "j" said for "rejex". The "g" sound is more effortful (it is "made" more in the back of the mouth, compared to "j"). Laziness wins the day again on pronunciation xD

fwiw I have never met a native English speaker who says "num-pee". Although -py = "pee" for most English words, this random made-up proper noun is yet again another weird English exception...

This is almost certainly true, and if the strike isn't allowed the only recourse they have that is not punishable is just quitting (iirc). Things like wildcat strikes and work slowdowns would probably lead to fines or worse.

I'm always reminded that the first aerial ordinance dropped on US soil was the US army bombing striking railroad workers [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain

Railroad workers are covered by the Railway Labor Act, while almost every other job is covered by the National Labor Relations Act. The RLA makes it harder to strike, but the tactics that strikers may use once a strike is declared are much broader than under the NLRA. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Labor_Act#Bargaining_a...

A few other folks have mentioned exercise, but I will throw in my 2 cents:

* rock climbing is great (for myriad reasons), but it really forces you to use pretty much every muscle in your body. This is especially true for the muscles you use to actuate key presses, which are the primary gripping muscles in climbing

* use an erg (indoor rowing) machine. After long bouts on it (which is a fantastic low-impact cardio sport too), your grip / grasping muscles on the handle will strengthen a lot

* balance this out with some flexion motions, which one can do with yoga (e.g. think your hands during downward dog). If you don't have time for yoga, you can "habit hack" it into your life in easy ways: yin yoga is basically "holding yoga positions for a long time", and once you learn the basic positions it is easy to do them during a meeting (remote, via Zoom or whatever) or when you're watching something for leisure

oh lol yes you're right. I meant to return the list.

I should not try to HN comment while running out the door to catch my bus...

Is there a language where you get everything? (i.e. there's nothing you don't get)

Based on the people who have amount of "C++ experts" I've interviewed over the years who don't know much about template metaprogramming or weird rules about initialization and class layout, yet have shipped meaningful code while avoiding most of the weird parts of the language.

Even languages like Python can get weird, such as default arg initialization:

  def add_item_to_list(item, list_to_add=[]):
    list_to_add.append(item)
    return item

  a = add_item_to_list(1)
  a.append(3)
  b = add_item_to_list(2)
  

What do `a` and `b` print?

This is my go-to Python 1st-round question, and many prolific Python coders don't get through this.

From what little I've learned of Haskell so far, it seems like one can eschew the weird PL-heavy parts of the language and just be productive (with the tradeoffs the language contains, e.g. GC).

It's been a long time since I played trumpet, but aren't those incorrect?

On a regular Bb trumpet, this is the D (major) scale, so D should be 1-3 unless it's in the second octave (in which case this sequence is still wrong).

Looks like ChatBot ain't gonna take our musical jerbs anytime soon!

>This is identical to how employers share salary information.

Friendly reminder to all: you can opt out of most of this.

Most employers subscribe to The Work Number, but you can opt out of your data being shared here: https://employees.theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze

Note you will still see your current employer submitting data if you log in, but it's not visible to other employers who participate.

Thanks for doing this! Nix has been one of those tools that looks so cool, yet the instruction manuals are akin to the "...draw the rest of the fuckin' owl" meme whenever I look into it. This gives me hope to give it another go!

> and revitalized suburban neighborhoods (e.g. more walkable areas)

Without other changes, this would not happen (in the US at least). The default would be every more cookie-cutter suburban sprawl, with the cul-de-sac-y construction of these neighborhoods creating a more labrynthian, difficult-to-walk place to live.

Until there is more mixed-use zoning in the US, with high enough density to justify frequent public transit arrival times, WFH would only save the car and infra wear-and-tear (and pollution level) from commuting, but it would not necessarily create a "third place" automatically.

Not PP, but how often do you find yourself tracking down lazy-evaluation / GC-related performance issues?

I've heard some horror stories and I honestly don't have the mental model yet to track these things down. Even learning Rust, it still has the same "stack + heap + eager eval" sort of thing as C++.

I'm not sure how much of this is done in practice, or if the folks who've had it happen to them are just prolific at internet complaints.

There is a very opinionated and batteries-included "Vim-y" Emacs called Doom [0]. A decent way to approach this if you don't want to start writing elisp outta the gate to have fancy editor features is to learn enough of the Doom config to tweak it to your liking, then add some elisp customization in as needed. I personally use this approach, usually cribbing config and elisp tweaks from the top contributors' configs.

The Evil layer that Doom and most everyone seems to use for Vim modes works really well, and has a lot of ways to tweak things (e.g. changing `j` to `gj` for going through line breaks in normal mode; I forgot what that setting is called...).

There is something to be said by bootstrapping your config entirely from scratch instead of using a "config framework" like Doom, but that can be too daunting and end up preventing one from trying things out.

[0] https://github.com/doomemacs/doomemacs

Well if you want to return to Emacs, I can attest as a former long-time vim user that the emulation layers for vim modes in Emacs are fantastic! They're really the only good part of vim, as the configuration language was always a bit less desirable than elisp, imo.

Santa Cruz, CA, has only one billboard iirc, coming over hwy 17 from the Bay Area. I never appreciated how this muted the pace of advertising exposure until I spent time in other parts of the US where such things are less regulated.

Did they control for all of the comorbidities associated with non-drinkers?

A lot of people who don't drink are not abstaining for some health augmentation or lifestyle choice, but because drinking any amount of alcohol would send them into a very early grave.

It seems like these hidden confounding factors are more plausible of an explanation that the "0 drinks per day" group has higher morbidity, compared to "alcohol is healthy in moderate amounts" explanation for the bottom of the J curve.

> A gang of extremist pacifists

That is: a Jain gang [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism

Yes, I would rather pay usurious rates with a commensurately low price. Even though it would be terrible basically having the vast majority of my monthly payment going purely to interest for a long time, it's possible to:

- refi at a lower rate in the future

- sell the house without having to take a huge loss compared to low-% bagholders

This is another thing people don't consider: housing is priced at the margin. One house has to sell in the neighborhood because of divorce / death / etc, and boom you have the one comp that everything else is tied to.

Even if they stay in their home, people over-levered on their fake housing equity through HELOCs are in trouble.

Make good decisions when you're feeling well that make bad decisions when you're feeling impulsive harder. Example: buy only good food / no alcohol / etc when you shop; when those emotions well up that typically trigger going towards the bad thing to consume, it just doesn't exist. It's amazing how NOT hungry one actually is when you actually would have to do so much as microwave something!

Show up daily, even in a small way. BJ Fogg's Tiny Habits stuff goes over this exhaustively, but basically it's better to go to the gym to do 1 minute of exercise than to not go at all, as it's more about building your identity than doing the actual thing effectively.

You should consider changing your relationship with your regret, so you can use it as this "pointy stick to motivate yourself" instead of this dull, directionless pain that pervades your life. This book is great [0].

Ask yourself "would I regret NOT doing this?" often. Would you regret not looking at this Orange Website, even if you feel the urge? Keep looking at your life through this lens to understand what you'll regret, and steer your ship accordingly.

[0] https://www.danpink.com/the-power-of-regret/

Not strawman, but this guy just has Burgerbrain: the only choices he can conceive of are those in the US. Anyone who has been to any suburb in Europe or Japan knows that you can easily build housing that is well between "high rise hellscape" and the extremely large parcels in most US suburbs. It's mostly about allowing those options to be built, which most zoning currently precludes. Any non-SFH-only residential area is so expensive and rare in North America that only high-rises make sense to justify the land cost. Meanwhile, everyone in the burbs will fight tooth and nail against allowing multiplex construction because they think it will lower land value somehow (and is often code for "we don't want the poors moving in here").

Santa Cruz voted down turning the disused railroad branch line connecting Watsonville to the old cement factory in Davenport into a rail trail [0], by an enormous margin. If this trail were implemented, it would basically create a scenic, flat mixed-use trail going through all of the major areas for hardly any cost. It would've created an easy ride to actually get between places people want to go, both for work and tourist destinations.

It was shocking how short-sighted people were about this. So many pro-rail people showed up thinking "we'll turn this into a commuter or tourist thing", with so many people overlooking the fact that a huge amount of capex would have taken to make this safe for trains again (e.g. some of the more decrepit trestles and bridges need to be replaced, fine for bikes, irresponsibly risky for trains).

I love train commuting just as much as anyone, but this train simping was infuriating when we could've had a fantastic easy bike path, like the one that goes along Hwy 90 in Seattle towards the mountains.

It really seems like we deserve the stroady fate we're hurtling towards in California. NIMBYs and ridiculous zoning will rule the day, until everything is just broken :(

[0] https://ballotpedia.org/Santa_Cruz_County,_California,_Measu...

Ben Thompson cohosts a podcast [0] that comes out very irregularly, but is a true gem. He says "stra-tech-ery" there, so you are correct :)

[0] https://exponent.fm/

Yes, this pattern is far better than attaching passport_scan.pdf over email! I used to send links to a fileshare that is password protected (hooray pcloud!), but it seems like most companies have really locked down that avenue of sharing (understandably so).

Just for clarity and equanimity about this stuff:

- If you sign up to see your TWN data (which is just the usual KYC-type sign-up), you can generate a report and will likely see that no employer has pulled your data in the past 24 months (the most they give). Most people who work in tech don't seem to have any inquiries registered for TWN when they check their report after hiring (from the handful of anecdata I have at hand).

- You don't have to mail anything in. They have some hokey secure email thing that is basically a link to a webform upload. Is it a weird process? Yeah, but it'll work just give it time.

- Opting out won't prevent partners that "subscribe" to TWN from sharing your data with them; it will only prevent partners from having access to your data until you unfreeze it. My current employer has been dutifully reporting my comp every month despite it having been frozen.

In the US at least, you have the right to freeze your credit report at any time. I've done it for the big 3 at least (Transunion, Equifax, Experian). It's all free (finally! it used to cost) and you can temporarily suspend the freeze to let someone run a check (e.g. applying for a new credit card).