gstipi

Every five years, up to 60,000 Estonians meet for Laulupidu to sing songs together.

The next iteration will take in July 2025 (https://2023.laulupidu.ee/en/registraton-to-song-celebration...)

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTdOiCa0-4o for a beautiful excerpt of the 2019 event.

The concept of qualia, which refers to the subjective experiences and qualities of consciousness, is usually discussed in the context of human perception, so I was just idly wondering: what would an artifical intelligence look like to which the concept of qualia made sense?

Your best case scenario is actually a worst case scenario.

From Düsseldorf to Frankfurt, using regional trains, you have to change once in Koblenz (RE 5 to RE 2). This is a connection which takes 3 hours and 50 minutes and runs every 2 hours (with numerous other options in between).

Technically, every tax payer does pay, irrespective of whether they are using the ticket or not: the EUR 49/month ticket is heavily subsidised, to the tune of EUR 3 billion/year, and this is covered by the tax payer.

The usage of physical currency in Germany has dropped over the last three years.

During the pandemic, paying by debit card was encouraged, and this has stuck around.

I have used cash in a single instance in the last month (at a restaurant where the card reader was out of order).

However, it turns out that most people still prefer cash, so I might be living in a bubble, see https://www.bundesbank.de/en/press/press-releases/payment-be...

This is from 2006 and should be marked as such in the title.

Do you maybe mistake Österreich (Austria) for Ostdeutschland (Eastern Germany)?

And Germans have plenty of money (and vacation days) to travel across Europe, in fact you will encounter them pretty much everywhere.

The quality of care in German daycare centers is still not great despite recent improvements, I'll give you that.

From the article:

Example #5: In order to discourage drug diversion in a neonatal care unit, and in the days before computerized fingerprint recognition, our nurses were required to do the following when retrieving medications from the Pyxis medication cart: The nurse fetching the medication would enter their password on the computer, remove the medicine from the Pyxis drawer, draw the correct amount, and administer it to the patient. If any medicine remained in the vial—which happened frequently, because newborns often require smaller doses—the nurse was supposed to call a second nurse to the Pyxis, who would enter their password. The second entry was supposed to indicate that the second nurse observed the first nurse discarding the left-over medicine. However, because the nurses resented having to bother one another, especially when they were extremely busy with patient care measures, they simply shared their passwords with one another and entered them when they returned to the Pyxis. Not only was this an easy shortcut, but it compensated for the nurses’ taking offense that administration would think them to be drug diverters. Of course, it categorically defeated the purpose of the regulation.

Some useful advice!

Big fan of skip-level meetings: I schedule those in an ad-hoc fashion.

I let new joiners know to expect those occasional meetings, so they don't get worried if they're invited.

I use them for relationship building, showing appreciation, and also inviting colleagues to provide feedback on improvements to our organisation, tools, and processes, particularly if the skip-level was recently blocked by inefficiences outside of their immediate control.

Several good points, but mostly a rehash of Roubini's most well-known and pretty mainstream arguments.

We certainly live in times where many of his most pessimistic predictions seem to have a decent change of coming true, which is somewhat depressing.

The Queen is dead.

I've dreaded writing these words for quite some time now, because to me, she's become the prototype of someone who hasn't been quite alive for some time now, but still embodied the spirit of a nation - a nation arguably in perceived decline, but still somehow held together by the almost poetic and optimistic belief that as long as the Queen is alive, the nation will prosper or, at the very least, persevere.

At the same time, I feel relief that even the Queen may die, and life still goes on. May she rest in peace.

The Queen is dead.

Original articles (in German): https://www.mdr.de/nachrichten/sachsen-anhalt/magdeburg/magd... https://www.mdr.de/nachrichten/sachsen-anhalt/magdeburg/magd...

HN is the only place where I feel truly comfortable and at home. Through divorce, addiction, and desperation of all kinds. Thank you and to another 15 years.

Oh the memories, I also learned C (using Power C http://mixsoftware.com/product/powerc.htm) to hack on DikuMUD in the mid 90s.

I briefly ran a PK-focused MUD (hosted on Wolfpaw) and remember being amazed at having 15 players online simultaneously. I was ultimately forced to shut down the MUD by my parents, because working on it started negatively impacting my preparations for final exams.

Whatever applies to engineering applies to the business end of tech as well - I've enjoyed considerable longevity in sales (management) by staying humble initially but displaying very forceful convictions once I've figured out the lay of the land upon joining new roles.

It really pays off to listen and stay open minded before you start enforcing best practices you've picked up from previous experience and assignments.

Give yourself the opportunity to actually feel like an impostor deliberately (if only for a brief period of time)! Really dig into the reasons why things are run a certain way before you propose changes: this will set you up for success and will attract a lot of goodwill.

I know this sounds trivial, but humility is an extremely underrated trait in tech, especially if paired with experience and the power to pull off change for the better.

I found this bit particularly revealing: "Amazon’s most effective union-busting tactic was requiring employees to attend so-called captive audience meetings. The presentations were a study in psychological projection. Amazon, a publicly traded for-profit corporation that maximizes shareholder value and refers to its employees as “associates,” was presented as a “family.” Meanwhile, unions—nonprofit organizations whose members call each other “brother” and “sister” and who elect their own leaders—were framed as businesses run by “bosses.” The workers were told that the union, being a business, had come to Bessemer only to squeeze a profit out of them, whereas Amazon, being a family, had arrived to aid a struggling community."

That's potentially very exciting - does anyone have any insights on Volkswagen's Rust usage?

I assume they were referring to Jane Street and Hudson River Trading - wishing you every success with your next career move!

Has anyone seen successful RPA projects in the wild?

Power C! I grew up in Germany and after the inevitable BASIC, C was the second language I learned, using Power C as a compiler, which I ordered by mail and which arrived from the States several weeks later, including the hard copy reference manual you mention. I also remember it came with a rudimentary graphics library I used to create screen savers for friends. Good times.

Check this out for a trip down memory lane: http://www.mixsoftware.com/product/powerc.htm

Another great one is "The Manager's Path" by Camille Fournier - https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/the-managers-path/97814...

A third option would be F# - which I enjoy a lot.

What are your favourite learning resources for F#? I've recently started reading https://www.manning.com/books/get-programming-with-f-sharp and do like it - any other recommendations I should check out?

This recent blog post has more details on the new features in F# 5 - https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/f-5-update-for-august/

Thank you, friend, writing this felt very liberating.

Thank you, I would love to read your perspective if you feel like sharing!

I love life. I'm 37.

Being alive in itself is truly remarkable. I've made great friends. I've met people who ended up disappointing me greatly. I've married a smart, beautiful, ambitious woman twelve years ago. We've went through exhilarating ups and soulcrushing downs.

I've worked for a startup, which almost went under several times. I've worked for a corporate thresher which sucked life right out of me.

I've worked on niche projects in my spare time, which so far have amounted to nothing.

I've had panic attacks. I've experienced months of mania and perceived greatness.

Life is a present which keeps on giving. I'm grateful. Accomplishments are a matter of perception, experience in itself is utterly exhilarating to me.

I love life. I'm 37.

> And Go people's common refusal to look much further, and especially not into academia..

I don't think that's a fair statement, given Phil Wadler's formal work on generics in Go - "Featherweight Go" (https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.11710) - which is acknowledged here: https://blog.golang.org/generics-next-step

If you enjoyed this article, there's an entire collection of Haruki Murakami's writing on running titled "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running" - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2195464.What_I_Talk_Abou...