Hacker News Reader

badcppdevon 25% of the 13 minute journey from Whitechapel to Paddington is spent not moving

Many commuters have weekly, monthly, or even yearly passes and therefore would only be slightly annoyed by the 'unfairness'.

But more importantly the wage negotiations are very complicated as 80% of the money ultimately comes from the government and therefore politicians needs to be motivated. Politicians are mostly motivated by annoyed voters (and campaign contributions obviously).

badcppdevon Airlines make more money from mileage programs than from flying planes

What's the reason? I assume this is a US thing?

badcppdevon Call to shut down Bristol schools’ use of app to ‘monitor’ pupils and families

You need to read up on your torts. Injury or harm done to a young person can result in a claim for compensation later in life. That's why paediatric insurance is so complicated.

badcppdevon Call to shut down Bristol schools’ use of app to ‘monitor’ pupils and families

It's the UK term for the person in any organisation that deals with vulnerable people (children, patients, disabled people, old people) that has the responsibility of taking any allegations, concerns, accusations and making sure they are dealt with properly. That means documenting, investigating, and escalating to the authorities.

badcppdevon Call to shut down Bristol schools’ use of app to ‘monitor’ pupils and families

Have you thought about the number of powers both large and small that are delegated so that society can operate.

badcppdevon What will LLM-powered software look like in the medium-term future?

When we can interact by talking to a 2D cartoon in a Zoom call then I guess we'll be X% towards your 2027 vision.

badcppdevon Can’t send email more than 500 miles (2002)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

Every September (in the 90s) a new cohort of University students would start and gain access to the internet, such as it was. Hence the reference to timing

badcppdevon YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

The rape allegations are from before he was on Youtube. Some allegations date back to 2003.

badcppdevon 64-bit bank balances ‘ought to be enough for anybody’?

I love how you're bringing the US dollar's reserve currency status into a hypothetical where the US Treasury is issuing million dollar denominations. We can assume that some other parts of the world's financial system will have required fixing first.

badcppdevon U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

'Given the argument for undoing Brexit is that the EU is "just a trade agreement"'

The mistake I see here is that you are saying "The argument" and "is" implying that there is a singular argument/factor/opinion in play. This kind of simplification is not the way forward.

badcppdevon U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

Roads only help people who are in that location. The EU-specific roads (or programs) only help people driving (or researching) in the EU (and affiliated countries).

badcppdevon 1k Met Police officers suspended or on restricted duties

This person is actually quite optimistic: "This is going to take one, two or more years to root out those who are corrupt," he said.

Also being an optimist I wish that everyone accepted that "bad apples" are going to appear in any organisation and that weeding them out is a required part of the governance.

Priests, Police, Teachers, Politicians, Lawyers, Priests, IT Developers, Managers, Doctors, Priests... clear, quick processes are needed in all of these areas to safeguard both victims and alleged miscreants.

badcppdevon Japan's Hometown Tax (2018)

All taxation is redistribution. This is a novel tweak to taxation.

I think all tax payers wherever should get some form of choice in where their tax money goes even if it's only a small proportion of the total.

badcppdevon Glazes induced degradation of tea catechins

I think you are totally correct but now I'm stuck trying to find if anyone really knows about the formation of scratch marks inside a mug. Is it really the metal from the spoon depositing on the mug?

badcppdevon Apple CEO Tim Cook on creating a clean energy future

That is such an interesting perspective. You're saying that buying this years model is an important part of buying 'new' for you. I get it but I've never seen it written down before.

I guess cars are the same. If you walked into a dealership and all the models had been released 2 years previous you might feel like you shouldn't be paying full price even though you are getting a brand new car.

badcppdevon Glazes induced degradation of tea catechins

Maybe the key takeaway for real life is to not stir your tea so vigorously that you scratch chunks off your mug. Never assume that other people do or do not do something that you might find odd.

badcppdevon Carrefour puts ‘shrinkflation’ price warnings on food to shame brands

And then I find myself checking the packaging of a frozen pizza (please don't judge me). There is a small plastic window on the front and I can tell that there is a pizza inside and from tipping it I can tell that the pizza is smaller than the box. The label says that the pizza is 500g (20 oz) which is totally useless to me because I can't remember if the box said 500, 550, or 600g when I bought it 3 months ago.

badcppdevon ‘Sea is constantly dumping bodies’: fears Libya flood death toll may hit 20k

The dead comment was from a HN user who, from their comment history, has trouble fitting in with the norms of participation in this forum. They were unhappy with the use of the word flood even though the example sentence for the word flood in the Oxford dictionary is: "the dam burst, flooding a small town"

badcppdevon Carrefour puts ‘shrinkflation’ price warnings on food to shame brands

This is such a good idea. I know that everyone in the Western World is told that they eat too much but people need to be able to buy food and eat it. And if the same packaging this week has 90% of what it had last week then then consumers are going to suffer.

In the UK many people rely on Food banks and parents skip meals to feed their children. Cutting the amount of food in a package in a manner that is not even visible without carefully examination is a morally dubious practice.

Corporate profits are high. This is one of the reasons why.

badcppdevon Why agencies get stuck at $50k MRR

So much wrong with your comment. Interns working for free and blatant racism.

A good sales person knows they need to be able to connect with their customers and not piss them off with stupid unnecessary comments.

badcppdevon Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte

I know. Why would someone create a throwaway account and then not mention the key bits of information??

badcppdevon Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte

I guess the trouble is that we don't have any self-admitted exploited workers. Everyone is a temporarily embarrassed Founder/CTO.

With thanks to Steinback - https://hellyesjohnsteinbeck.tumblr.com/post/23486952183/com...

badcppdevon UK Energy Bill 2023 and the Fusion of Technology and Law

Agreeing with you and expanding. The law gives a government department the ability to ban the sale of washing machines (or perhaps heat pumps) that don't have this remote control facility.

Although I'm quite sure that there will be a class of appliances available for people who don't perhaps want their heated pools to become cool.

badcppdevon How to raise a child with taste in eighteenth-century Britain

An "intentionally hurtful connotation" or an intentional condemnation.

The difference from my point of view is that the intent of using the word bigot is not to hurt but instead to judge and condemn.

badcppdevon An Internet of PHP

That's very interesting.

My experience in London/UK market is that offered salaries are based on market rates based on keywords including tech stack. And I know a decent number of competent developers who deliberately moved away from PHP because of the lower offered salaries. It might just be the local ecosystem which imo doesn't really value engineering roles in general

badcppdevon Retirement savings simulator

I think this is brilliant although obviously would need a lot of work to be actually useful.

My 'funny' observation is that the misery line stays at zero as long as you have money... that doesn't really match my knowledge of the ageing process. I think misery goes up at a gradual rate from age... 25?

badcppdevon An Internet of PHP

So are you saying that you didn't see a salary difference between PHP roles and C# or Java roles? I've said before that I think modern PHP + tools can be very productive but smart/good developers will find that CV/Salary pressures steers them away from PHP.

badcppdevon London Street Trees

You're absolutely right. I think this is of trees that need checking and maintenance to keep roads, cars, pedestrians safe. Hence the URL /street_trees/

Parks and woods would be maintained in a different process. Obviously it's acceptable and even desirable to have fallen down trees in woods and some parks.

badcppdevon Experimental archaeologist tested out Stone-Age living on the Thames

The Thames is 215 miles long and while there are portions that are 100% wrapped in civilisation I think there are areas in both the tidal and non-tidal sections that are totally wild.

Obviously experimental archaeologists have to try and ignore airplanes, plastic bag waste, and their own good health and shiny teeth but I think this kind of activity is amazing.

badcppdevon Australian MPs to lobby US to drop Julian Assange prosecution

Maybe if the Western governments stopped any activities which could be pointed to during the 'whatabout' game then China and Russia would stop... and many people in the Western world would be very happy too.

News story today about Germany refusing to extradite a criminal (alleged) to the UK because the conditions in UK prisons are so bad due to governmental neglect. Kind of hard for the UK to talk about human rights in other countries when it can't even run a prison.