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hn_asker

73 karma · joined December 11, 2020

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hn_asker··on Self-compassion is not self-indulgence
I'm glad you cut back and realized that your health is more important. I haven't had a TV since I was in high school. I don't really play video games. It's the notion of "work" in western society that is a distraction from self-compassion. Some of it is fulfilling, some of it is soul-sucking.

I think to implement self-compassion more effectively, we need less of these soul-sucking jobs. Everyone is different though. To some, chopping wood may be fulfilling, to others not so much. So perhaps, we need more fulfilling notions of "work" and making a living.

hn_asker··on Self-compassion is not self-indulgence
Jobs are just one way of living. I feel like there are more efficient ways to implement prosperity. Or have less suffering keeping the level of prosperity the same.

What is a job? Is it really beneficial? This reminds me of David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs lecture. Too many people are suffering because of their trust in systemic inefficiency.

hn_asker··on Self-compassion is not self-indulgence
Reminds me of a documentary called "Medicating Normal". Try being self-compassionate when you have unholy side effects of benzos, anti-depressants, and anti-psychotics prescribed to you.

Normal by "western" standards is unhealthy. We need a renaissance of self-compassion but it has to be protected from the systems that be.

hn_asker··on Self-compassion is not self-indulgence
Feels like we live in a society where self-compassion is not tolerated. How can we be kind to ourselves if there are mechanisms in society that keep us distracted from ourselves?
hn_asker··on They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions
Keep Austin weird. If you don't like it, leave.
hn_asker··on Academic “ghost-writing”: the cheating scandal no one will discuss (2020)
Big Pharma uses this heavily to bias research in academia for their marketing purposes. It used to be that academic research was rigorous and objective. An academic title had prestige and respect. Now it's so watered down.
hn_asker··on Academic “ghost-writing”: the cheating scandal no one will discuss (2020)
This heavily biases in favor of lone wolves in college. I was one myself. I'd say we are rare. Most people are social and learn by collaborating with others. It's the more natural approach. Evolution has groomed us to be social after all.
hn_asker··on Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)
Yes, this is what backlog grooming and sprint planning are for.
hn_asker··on Senior Engineers Build Consensus (2019)
Agreed. How consensus is achieved varies. As an engineer, I am biased towards numbers because numbers are easy to compare. Use data to guide you on what the desired state is and getting to it.
hn_asker··on Ask HN: How to build empathy?
State the basics about the person. It can often help to give context about who they are in the time they're in.
hn_asker··on gRPC Is Easy to Misconfigure
gRPC docs do need some tlc. Cloud providers providing support for gRPC also need to do better documenting their support for gRPC.

AWS Application Load Balancer is advertised to work with gRPC but we've been seeing sporadic errors. Keepalive isn't the issue, we set the IdleTimeout to the max (4000 seconds) and use server side keepalive to gc old connections.

hn_asker··on Ask HN: Do you think Agile/Scrum is beneficial for software delivery?
Before you judge it, I implore you to ask whether your organization is actually doing Agile/Scrum correctly. I doubt most orgs are and I suspect most negative opinions come from doing it incorrectly/ineffectively. I think the core principles of agile are well-intended. It's the desired state we want to achieve. However, most of us are still trying to reconcile with our current state.

There are many pitfalls. For example, giving product owner and even manager roles to the lead engineer or architect, daily standups devolving into telling people what ticket number they have in progress as opposed to blockers they are seeing or actually working on, product owners not showing up to backlog grooming sessions leaving engineering to make their own priorities, product managers being the engineering manager and leading retrospectives making everyone biased to say what went well but not things to improve on, agile release trains having teams that don't really interact with each other leaving engineering teams tuned out during system level PI planning and demos. The list goes on.

The current state of an org implementing agile/scrum can easily lead to what David Graeber calls Bull*hit jobs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kikzjTfos0s. The onus is on the organization's leaders to take everyone to the desired state. However, all too often the actual leaders of an organization are the engineers themselves and would much rather get work done than to micromanage.

hn_asker··on Myths about how the brain works
Yet somehow Pharma can prescribe drugs that affect the brain's functions. How do they get away with that knowing so little about the brain?
hn_asker··on Ask HN: As a software engineer, how do I best learn basic network engineering?
The obligatory Beej's suggestion: https://beej.us/guide/bgnet/html/.
hn_asker··on Show HN: Call a Dev – Pay Stack Overflow users $1/min for live programming help
To be fair, it is sometimes not our fault we are "condescending assholes". It's the environment we are in. It could be from management and/or HR not hiring for the right skillset, to underspecified design details from even more condescending assholes called architects, to leadership not leading but just delegating important decisions (and thus covering their own asses) to engineering teams.
hn_asker··on Show HN: Call a Dev – Pay Stack Overflow users $1/min for live programming help
I wonder how well this idea translates to other engineering disciplines and if there is something about software that makes this idea easier.

What kind of liability is there for engineers asking for help and working in FinTech for example? The attack surface here for social engineering gets bigger.

hn_asker··on Ask HN: What are some red flags at work that make you want to leave?
> Devs constantly hammered as not doing things quickly enough by the same people who don’t do actual work other than above checklists.

I can relate to this. There's no one qualified to lead engineering teams where I work. Each team has to somehow dig for internal requirements that aren't socialized across engineering.

hn_asker··on California bill would decriminalize psychedelics
The decriminalization wave helped me find minds like Paul Stamets, Hamilton Morris, and Will Hall. Then I started asking more questions and found writers like Johan Harri, Michael Pollan, and Robert Whitaker. Following Whitaker's work after reading his Anatomy of an Epidemic, I also suggest watching the "Medicating Normal" movie.
hn_asker··on Ask HN: What is your advice to someone who is starting out in software industry?
A bird learning to fly flaps it's wings even though it can't fly. We don't call them imposters. Just keep learning.
hn_asker··on If all of current free Google services required a fee to use, would you pay?
Nope
hn_asker··on America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%
So this must be why Bitcoin has no inflation.
hn_asker··on What's the role of Go in a universe where Rust exists?
Go is much easier to learn and get up and running compared to Rust in my experience. It's great for writing servers and multi-threaded applications. Rust can be used to optimize but you'll probably get a lot of mileage out of golang before having to switch.
hn_asker··on Ecstasy and psilocybin are shaking up psychiatry
There's a growing industry of therapy clinics that are happy to continue charging patients for endless sessions. Some offer anti-depressants and anti-psychotics. However, repeated treatment isn't quite as effective as the wrong mix of drugs are prescribed, the therapy re-enforces the trauma, and it is quite costly for patients to afford.
hn_asker··on Ecstasy and psilocybin are shaking up psychiatry
strict medical supervision is sometimes a terrifying experience. Set and setting matter but so does any drugs they are currently on. I would say that your experience is atypical.
hn_asker··on MDMA Solo (2020) [pdf]
The anti-authoritarian tone is typical with this subject matter during the Nixon era. The manual ultimately advocates for self-reliance. It uses MDMA as a tool. The current model for healing is still one of dependency in our society. I wonder if this model has done more bad than good. Most of the people we are supposed to trust don't really have the ethical responsibility needed to do their job if they're just looking out for themselves.
hn_asker··on Google reportedly scraps thousands of negative Robinhood reviews
We're all in the Cuckoo's Nest. If those reviews weren't legitimate (i.e bots) then fine. But if legitimate users want to express their reviews they should - even when they are misinformed. Google should at most put an asterisk letting people know of possible misinformation before submitting their review.
hn_asker··on Hobbyists beat professional designers in creating novel board games
An expert is an expert whatever their title claims.
hn_asker··on We Are Preparing a Class Action Lawsuit Against Robinhood
You mean their investors?
hn_asker··on High-flying Reddit stocks whipsaw as platforms like Robinhood curb trading
> The best-performing stocks this week are brands familiar to anyone who used to hang out in malls as a kid in the mid-2000s.

Ah nostalgia for Spencers, KB Toys, Toys R Us, Hot Topic...

hn_asker··on Three Mathematicians We Lost in 2020
I saw Graham walking around UCSD. I didn't recognize him but my friend pointed him out. I wanted to meet him.
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