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catchmilk

197 karma · joined August 21, 2019

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catchmilk··on Tell HN: A Demo Day without the investors
Is the plan to do this in regular intervals? If so, would be great if we could get a recurring entry for the calendar.
catchmilk··on Citigroup plans to hire 4k tech staff
OP didn't specify whether that includes bonus or not. Regardless, for 2 YoE, this has to be a huge outlier. I'm inclined to think that this more an exception to the rule - I have a bunch of friends working in London finance tech, none of them making even close to that figure.
catchmilk··on Finland will seek NATO membership immediately
This is an old article (22/2). Ever since, he has several times refused to back the EU on sanctions and instead adopted a very selfish/nationalist stance. He went as far as to declare Zelensky an opponent after winning the election[0].

Hungary is on the wrong side of the conflict at this point in history.

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60977917

catchmilk··on Ask HN: Engineering Job Market in Switzerland?
Thanks!

Are there any 'tech-specific' areas in Switzerland, or is it mostly just the big cities like Geneva & Zurich that have most of the tech jobs?

catchmilk··on Ask HN: Engineering Job Market in Switzerland?
If one has an EU passport, do you even need a work visa?
catchmilk··on Ask HN: Engineering Job Market in Switzerland?
I've actually heard this the case for most immigrants, regardless of race. Would you say it's the case in the entire country, or more so the rural areas?
catchmilk··on Ask HN: Engineering Job Market in Switzerland?
Very helpful, thanks. In London, health insurance is normally provided by the company that you work for (at least all the companies I've worked for). And I can sign up my partner for an additional monthly fee as well.

Is this not the case in Switzerland?

catchmilk··on Ask HN: Engineering Job Market in Switzerland?
Apologies, should have mentioned - software.
catchmilk··on Tell HN: My Microstartups make $500/day while I'm sleeping
There has been a few posts recently on HN where people tell us about their success with side projects/small products that actually make them a decent living. It's inspiring to say the least.

What's most attractive to me is the claim that the creators now spend little to no time on maintaining or fixing the products, and it just sits there and makes money. Is this actually a realistic representation? If I just think about the projects that I maintain(ed), there's almost always something to do, something to fix, some library or tech that's been deprecated/patched etc etc. The idea of just creating a product (let alone a few) that just "works" nowadays and requires minimum attention is pretty mind-blowing.

Does anyone have any advice/books/resources on creating such products?

catchmilk··on Secret Military Telephone Buttons
Assuming OP's story is 100% true - how is buying something off of Ebay illegitimate?
catchmilk··on Rugby: Head impact study shows cognitive decline after just one season
Boxing training starts at a very young age, especially because parents/kids know the kind of money and fame a professional boxer can achieve. That being said, I take your point on it being part of the high school programs. Begs the question on whether parents should be allowed to put their children into sports with long-term effects at all. As other threads mention, this would be hugely unpopular.
catchmilk··on Rugby: Head impact study shows cognitive decline after just one season
It's interesting to see that this issue is rather controversial within the Rugby/NFL world, whereas other sports it's almost a given?

Boxing, for example, has pretty damaging long-term side-effects with notable legends dying prematurely. But nobody is really making Hollywood movies about it (like Concussions starring Will Smith). I wonder whether Rugby/NFL is just headed towards the direction of these sort of consequences becoming accepted as being 'part of the sport'.

catchmilk··on First-Time Buyer Lorenz Curves (2020)
The worst part about the UK (specifically London, not 100% sure about the rest), is that even when you buy a property (assuming it's a leasehold), then you're again at the mercy of the freeholder. Depending on your lease - you'll still be paying rent (ground rent) in addition to service charge and building insurance. Technically, you're only 'renting' the property for the lifetime of the lease. All from probably someone who was merely lucky enough to have been born into an aristocratic family, or a money-hungry company.

It's an embarrassingly archaic and unfair system. God forbid working families want to own their own home/land in this country (city).

catchmilk··on Young Goldman Sachs bankers ask for 80-hour week cap
Throughout my professional career, I've worked as an engineer for the buy-side (arguably better work-life balance compared to sell-side, i.e. banks). More often than not, I was working under a manager/team lead that made it abundantly clear to the team that one "will not progress in the company if they think they can leave everyday at 5pm". I've also had a manager who was speechless to find out that we did not, in fact, sign waivers that meant we give up regular working hours and can therefore be forced to work long hours every day or on the weekends.

Funnily enough, I can't count the number of times I had an interview and the interviewer described the company as the 'Google of Finance', with an emphasis on work-life balance. It couldn't be further away from the truth in my experience. Management in the financial industry is unfortunately still plagued with people who think that more working hours is perfectly correlated with more productivity.

catchmilk··on Under Pressure: Why Athletes Choke
Also recommend the book Mindfulness: Finding Peace in a Frantic World by Mark Williams (same author as the guardian article).

It's more geared towards the Average Joe and coping with daily stress. One line that stuck with me is: "your mind has a mind of its own", as he tries to emphasise that your thoughts are just that - mere thougths, and not reality. With practice, one can learn how to distinguish between thoughts and reality and become more grounded in life.

catchmilk··on Ask HN: Who's looking for a co-founder?
Hey there, where can one contact you to discuss this further?
catchmilk··on Getting Started in Robotics
Reminded me of 'Stuff Made Here' on Youtube.

I always thought that companies in that industry had specialized teams (software team, hardware team, mechanics team etc etc.) and that it's impossible for a person to possess all skills. But Stuff Made Here has shown me that I was wrong. It's awe-inspiring to say the least.

catchmilk··on Types of Dark Patterns
Personally, I'd like to see regulation being imposed on this.

I'm an engineer with an IT background, and I can confidently say that most (if not all) of my friends who do not come from the same background have no idea what dark patterns are. Some might have that natural skepticism that when they see a dark pattern, they recognize it without even knowing. But I would argue that most people still don't, especially the older generations.

False advertising is already a crime. We should also extend this to dark patterns. It would (i) clean up UIs from the incredibly annoying popups and 'urgency-invoking' messages, (ii) protect consumers from making irrational decisions and, (iii) force companies to put resources into growing the business legitimately and organically, rather than putting resources into shady practices

catchmilk··on Palantir lands £23m NHS data deal
So then the question is justified - how is it that if I go to gov.uk, the first popup I get is whether I accept cookies for data privacy. Yet they will seemingly get to send sensitive NHS data without consulting the respective owners of that information?

I'm certainly not pretending to be nowhere near knowledgeable about the topic, and it would be great to hear from someone that does, but it seems to me that the public has legal GDPR grounds on which to protest this data transfer? I, for one, certainly don't want Palantir holding my data.

catchmilk··on Palantir lands £23m NHS data deal
> "it could involve an ‘unprecedented’ transfer of citizens’ private health information to controversial private firms like Palantir"

Probably a dumb question, but - if every other entity in the EU has to comply with GDPR rules, why don't they have to? How is it that the government can pass the data so freely to Palantir? I know that GDPR won't apply anymore after the 1st of Jan, but it still applied during the transition period?

catchmilk··on Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows
Sort of a side note v2: Would like to see a similar article/resource for Mac too.
catchmilk··on Ask HN: Where does one search development advice these days?
Engineering/Development on the internet most certainly suffers from information overload. On Medium alone you'll find multiple articles on one topic with completely opposing thoughts.

I don't necessarily see this as a negative thing, however. It's bad in the sense that sometimes I can't find a quick answer when I just want to copy paste a solution. On the other hand, I found that it has forced me to read multiple different solutions/opinions (often including source code), which deepens my knowledge on the topic and puts me in a better position to make an educated decision.

Sure, it'd be nice to have the perfect answer just slapped in your face. But nothing beats the feeling of finally getting something to work, but also understanding why exactly it works in the first place.

catchmilk··on The complexity of building a lie-down workstation
> In no way is this a comparison to the Altwork Station, which has ten years of development, five generations of prototypes, and three generations of production hardware, all adding up to 80,000 hours of design and engineering. The creations themselves are apples and oranges...

Off-topic: Am I being overly sensitive today or could Altwork have responded better to this?

Don't get me wrong, I love the write-up going through the different prototypes, it was very insightful. But the above paragraph seems very defensive. Paul in no way attacked Altwork, merely stated that their products are beyond his budget at the moment. Instead of saying that Paul's DIY project is "in no way a comparison" to Altwork's products, they could have commended Paul on taking this project on in the first place, highlighting the difficulties it comes with and how their product solves them. Just seemed unnecessarily defensive.

catchmilk··on De-Googling: My Progress
I really tried giving DDG a chance but I always found myself having to go back to Google to find the right information. This would especially pertain to technical matters. The 'average-joe-browsing' (e.g. amazon, movies, songs etc.) worked fine, but when it came down to research papers or solving software problems, I was too often left disappointed.

A couple of weeks back I switched to Qwant[1]. Privacy focused, technical-matters-friendly, and most importantly, haven't had to look at Google once. Really enjoying it so far.

[1] https://about.qwant.com/

catchmilk··on Coronavirus Country Comparator
Much appreciated. Any D3 learning resources you would personally recommend?
catchmilk··on Coronavirus Country Comparator
UI is gorgeous. Anyone happen to know if they're using a charting library?
catchmilk··on For people with an abusive partner, lockdown means captivity
Stockholm syndrome is a very real thing, unfortunately. I'm a 6+ foot man that's been emotionally abused, and despite all the pressure from my close circle to break it off, I wasn't able to do it for a long time.

If 'just leaving' was so easy, we'd have a lot less domestic abuse out there. This is not about throwing shade, this is about giving victims the support they need.

catchmilk··on Instagram is deleting the accounts of hundreds of porn stars
Just for the sake of being the devil's advocate - I think this is highly debatable.

One, you have the not-so-uncommon addiction to porn. Because of the wide and free availability of porn content today, it's very easy for a person that's susceptible to addiction to fall into a vicious hole.

Secondly, it can lead to spreading aggressive, potentially dangerous fetishes. I might be wrong about this, but I think a lot of the dangerous fetishes wouldn't necessarily exist (or at least wouldn't be so popular) if it wasn't for them being so readily available on the internet.

Sex workers would be an entire discussion topic on its own - but I think it's safe to say that the information available on the dark net crosses all lines - from legal to human rights.

I'm not suggesting we should shun it or disallow it completely - but I think celebrating would also be an extreme that's not worth the consequences.

catchmilk··on A Study of Meditation Under the Influence of Psilocybin
Can someone enlighten me here? What possible 'revelations' can you have from a psychedelic that you wouldn't get from a sober state of mind?
catchmilk··on Depression, anxiety rising among U.S. college students
So where do you source your daily news from generally?