cue_the_strings

I've had a very detailed memory of the surroundings of my childhood home, which changed when I was 3-4 (major construction in the neighborhood, rerouting a street).

We never had any family pics showing any of the stuff that I remembered, or remembered remembering... Well, some time ago I went searching for other people's pics and videos of the area from those years, and I actually found a couple, and they were exactly what I remembered.

But it all feels to me like I'm remembering reminiscing about these things at age 7-10, not really direct memories, a retelling. Surprisingly good one, too.

> There's also the phenomenon of having a memory of a memory. At age 10, I had a very solid recollection of my life at ages 5 to 6 (not so much of age 4). Now all I remember is that I used to remember a lot more than I do know.

I have exactly the same thing. It can get very detailed, too, but it really feels like remembering reminiscing about those memories at like 7-10.

It is a damn shame bordering conspiracy that metamizole (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamizole, known as Analgin in eastern Europe and the Balkans, apparently also India) is not more widely available in the west. It's literally a wonder drug, the only non-narcotic (hence non-addictive) that actually relieves serious pain (including post-op) pain in my experience.

Since I've had a fair share of it in my life so far (more than 1kg of it so far, in total), and I investigated the disparaging studies and they are definitely not convincing at all; more recent ones somewhat absolve it (check the Wikipedia page).

I've never had any side effects from it, and I don't know anyone who did, unlike for any other painkiller (diclofenac, ketoprofen, ibuprofen, acetaminophen / paracetamol).

It is a medicine where I'm almost 100% sure the studies against it are intentional sabotage by pharma companies, and the vigor and persistence this is done with is really telling (lots of doctors and pharmacists in my extended family, including in regulatory bodies). The campaign against it never ends.

All of these studies are always performed by Finns (or SE / DK / NO + maybe Russia).

I'd love to see this (and other sauna studies) replicated by someone somewhere to the south or hotter climates in general (southern Europe, Africa, hotter parts of Asia and the Americas).

It's inverted, 100 == 0, 75 == 25

Yeah, a way where they hand you all their personal info for profiling, cyberbullying and threats?

I've worked in the automotive industry, as an embedded dev, some years ago.

The software used by the automotive industry, mostly German-written, is absolutely terrible.

Funnily enough, I've worked with some Chinese mobility startups, and I'd say it's exactly the same. Not worse, not better either.

I was not expecting it to be this ugly.

You're missing the preparation for WW3.

Probably war.

Don't attribute to ideals what is simple self-preservation.

No sane person wants to become a legitimate military target. They want to sleep in their own beds, at home, without risking their families lives. Just like the rest of us.

Only Matrix.

As I've said before, Matrix really is the only viable open source solution for in-company communication.

Every other solution (Zulip / Mattermost / whatever) is too risky, they could easily bait-and-switch you like Gitlab did, by moving important features to different tiers, or engage in other shenanigans afforded by the open core model.

Matrix has a bad reputation because it used to be downright terrible (first time I tried it, in like 2018-2019), but is a lot better now.

This cannot be overstated. It used to be a pile of trash, now it's quite decent (but with lots of room for improvement).

Yeah, a lot of people who went to the US illegaly now own businesses. A highschool buddy went to drive trucks in like 2014, now has his own trucking company, several trucks, bunch of employees (Montenegrin and otherwise).

When I say semi-legally, there are people who do kind of get the green card through marriage, but it's fake marriages. A lot of truckers do it and it seems to be tolerated.

BTW apparently (I searched online) now people from Serbia also go to the US to work illegaly, but it's a recent trend, in Montenegro it was commonplace since at least 2010 and in Albania since the 90s.

I think it's strictly for financial reasons. A different profile of people from Serbia comes to the US.

I'm from Montenegro, but also lived in Serbia for a sizeable portion of my life and have family there.

Many people from said countries work in the US illegaly. I can speak for Montenegro, but the exact same pattern plays out in Bosnia and Albania.

Sure, there are some people who go to the US to study for a bit, and there are short-term seasonal work arrangements for students like "Work and Travel", but those are short.

I know 20+ people from Montenegro who went to work in the US in the last decade, illegaly or semi-legally. Two things come to mind first: driving trucks and picking marijuana. Usually they go there for a seasonal job or simply as tourists and overstay their visa.

My schoolmate even has a company that facilitates such schemes and sends people to the US as seasonal workers, who then overstay their visas and do shitty jobs. He's a millionare now, not that you'd know. Of course, it's also the diaspora in the US who actually facilitate this scheme and exploit the workers. I've heard the same thing from Albanians.

Every person I know who went to work in the US from Serbia (10+ people) is either a (good) dev, or an expert of some other kind, engineer, maybe a doctor (even though that's a tough path), PhD or something similar. All the best serbian devs and PhDs are overwhelmingly in the US.

There are several reasons for that, main ones being that it seems to be somewhat harder for people from Serbia to go to US to work illegaly, so the US mostly gets the best ones who are a net benefit to the society and pay a surplus of taxes.

Because it's harder to get to the US from Serbia, fo less qualified workers it's much easier to go to Israel and Saudi Arabia (both hugely popular nowadays) and the Emirates. Western Europe used to be popular, but it barely pays off nowadays, you can go there to live an average life, not to make big bucks and come back to flex on your neighbors.

Serbia is also quite a desperate place, but still has enough people to produce a sizeable chunk of professionals and academics, who don't want to put up with the kleptocracy and leave.

This has certainly happened to someone if not the OP.

I did wait in a single spot for almost 10h, my 5-6h journey became a 15h one, in Serbia in the late 2000s. IIRC, a large part of the railway was down that day, couple hundred km, electricity issue or something. Some people walked off the train, which was in between cities but near the road. I was a student, didn't have an alternative, so I didn't. They didn't organize a replacement bus.

This kind of thing was (maybe not to that extent) common, like once every year or two. They rarely reported on it in media if the cause wasn't notable.

IME it "just works" on Android:

https://docs.element.io/latest/element-server-suite-classic/...

I thoroughly investigated every open-source (mostly open-core) self-hostable Slack alternative, and the conclusion was clear: only a self-hosted Matrix is a viable option.

There are no arbitrary limits for 'community editions', no risk of relicensing, no risk of being held hostage for features (like Gitlab did at some point).

You can work around all the missing features easily with self-built webhooks and other tools.

Starting with Mattermost or Zulip or similar is just way too risky.

There's a very common line of thinking that goes like this:

From the end of WWII until the fall of communism, the public in the West (as opposed to the elites) enjoyed much better treatment, and prospered more than ever before or since. This would include both fiscal gains, and the public's opinion being truly taken into consideration. This is mainly because the elites were afraid of people turning socialist / communist, so they gave them a reason to actually be invested in the system. Once that threat of communism evaporated, the elites could proceed to gut the majority as in the previous centuries with no fear whatsoever.

My comments:

I'm not sure I agree with that, though, too simplistic. On the other hand, I also think that people have a rose-tinted view of what "democracy" always was - with enough money / media control and a bit of time, you can convince the majority of anything, anywhere. Letting people prosper does make it easier. Maybe it did play a bit of a role. A counter argument is that (independent) media coverage made the Vietnam war unpopular, and then the US pulled out because of that, a miracle of democracy which never really came close to happening again ever after.

But I think the USSR itself murdered any real chances of communism's further spread in 1968, when they invaded Czechoslovakia. (The Hungarian thing in 1956 isn't nearly as important because of country's undeniable previous Axis affiliation; few had sympathy for that back then). The US and west in general couldn't get rid of their Woody Guthries, and their Klaus Fuchses, until USSR did it for them through sheer idiocy. But after that, was communism really a threat?

But I do think that the 1950s policies were affected by the war (+ Korean war) even more than communism itself. All these traumatized vets, desensitized to violence, were now back home, and the elites were truly afraid. But that doesn't seem like it brought democracy in today's sense of the word? There's a reason why feminism regressed in the 50s - letting men be little despots in their own (cheaply bought) homes was the least the government could do. But that seems to have lasted only until the mid 60s, then the Vietnam thing happened, ... Let's not go further.

Is there a device you can recommend for printing (sticky) labels occasionally? I have a little Brother printer for those narrow little labels, one with a rubber keyboard, but would love something with sticky labels AND Linux connectivity. Something I could script when organizing my workspace, parts, ... to print the appropriate label.

I agree.

But on the other hand, let's not kid ourselves, array out of bounds, use after free, resource leaks and bad type system, all of this isn't even close to an exhaustive list of C downsides. Beyond its direct limitations, C inspires an approach that is vastly inferior even if you follow all the best practices. Even compared to (modern) C++ it's much worse. I say this and I kind of like C.

If the approaches described in the article save us 30% of the effort of translating C codebases to Rust, it's still worth trying; we're unfortunately not very close to complete automation, but that's something worthy of pursuit.

When you hear him saying it, it's funny.

When you hear this reiterated by employees, who actually believe it, then it's sad. Obviously not in this situation, but I've actually heard this from people. Some of them were even pros. "There is no fool like an educated fool."

Woodworers make 70% - 200% of dev wages in Slovenia, especially if you're decent at it.

It's of course quite dull, kitchens, cabinets, ... Mostly tailored to living spaces of upper middle class and rich people of varying taste, so you'll be doing a bunch of tacky stuff no doubt.

That and carports.

I'd say "suitable for treating post-surgery pain for US patients", because the rest of us get metamizole for that a lot of the time.

I always wondered is it her direct influence, or is it just that those characteristics naturally "go together".

I feel like I'm witnessing something that Adam Curtis would cover in the last part of The Century of Self, in real time.

When I was a kid in the 90s and early 00s in Serbia, later Montenegro, I knew 2-3 kids that had leukemia at some point, and if my memory serves me well, all of them survived. One neighbor kid had it really rough (was in therapy for years, looked like hell), but still survived. Even then, the treatments were so available that surviving it was the expected outcome.

Just years before it was quite common for children to die from it - I know 2 couples who lost kids to it in the 80s and early 90s.

Another thing was that a couple of kids had congenital heart conditions. Those didn't fare that well. My classmate from elementary survived that with a pacemaker, but a neighbor suddenly died in her mid-20s, that was really sad.

"ziherica" or "zihernaldla" from german sicherheitsnadel. We also have a direct translation of 'safety pin'.

Nope. For a lot of them I'm assuming I was intoxicated, I was like that. I kind of hated high school overall, some parts (that I do remember) were alright.