1,466 karma · joined March 2, 2016
This isn't about censoring content, it's about preventing ByteDance from collecting personal data from 170M Americans that Chinese law requires them to hand over to their government.
I have a 42" 4k LG OLED. With a pure black background and just a taskbar visible (5% of screen), the TV draws ~40W because OLED pixels use no power when displaying black.
Opening Chrome to Google's homepage in light mode pulls ~150W since each pixel's RGB components need power to produce white across most of the screen.
Video content causes continuous power fluctuation as each frame is rendered. Dark frames use less power (more pixels off/dim), bright frames use more (more pixels on/bright).
Modern OLEDs use Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) for brightness control - pixels switch rapidly between fully on and off states. Lower brightness means pixels spend more time in their off state during each cycle.
The QN800A's local dimming helps reduce power in dark scenes by dimming zones of the LED backlight array, though power consumption still varies significantly with content brightness. It's similar to OLED but the backlight zones are not specific to each pixel.
Dark mode UIs and lower brightness settings will reduce power draw on both QLED and OLED displays.
Traditional LCDs without local dimming work quite differently - their constant backlight means only brightness settings affect power, not the content being displayed.
This explains those power fluctuations in the QN800A measurements. Peak power (429W) likely occurs during bright, high-contrast scenes - think NFL games during a sunny day game, or HDR content with bright highlights. For gaming, power draw is largely influenced by the content being displayed - so a game like Factorio, with its darker UI and industrial scenes, would typically draw less power than games with bright, sunny environments.
This is really a key point. Inkjet printers are great for printing photos and will work great if you do so frequently. But if you don't, they have issues.
Unless you print something in "full color" (and even if you do), you rarely use the inks evenly. One cartridge will always run out or dry out faster than another. Also, ink can dry out in the jets - causing clogs and resulting in streaks. Also, if a cartridge dries out, the printer thinks it is empty and almost always requires you to replace it before printing even if you don't need it.
They're great for photos (especially Canons), but a simple BW laser is a better investment if all you print is documents. If you need color (for documents), a color laser is also more ideal. It is much more expensive up front, but also a good long-term investment. Toner you use less frequently (like cyan) won't dry out. It'll just sit there until the odd day that you need it. Prints-per-cartridge are usually higher since the cartridges are typically larger, physically. Streaking in the conventional sense isn't even possible with how the tech works. Price-per-print is typically much lower. Especially if you consider less trips to the store, and less replacing of wasted cartridges.
A $600 color laser (more like $400 now) can be an expensive upfront investment, but for printing color docs, it's almost always cheaper in the long run.
Source: I worked retail in college and sold printers and had this conversation literally thousands of times.
For someone who isn't familiar with standing up cloud resources the diagram can look overwhelming but once you play around with AWS for a bit, most of the resources you see are fairly boilerplate.
VPC is essentially just setting up a virtual LAN for your resources. S3 is being used as an API mediator to NOAA. CloudFront is a CDN for your API Gateway. Lambdas run your logic. API Gateway triages api requests to lambdas, and a couple other services act as mediators.
There is some vender lock-in in that everything here is built on AWS, but all the major cloud providers have similar/equivalent services. If you decided to move to GCP or Azure you could probably move the entire stack in a few days (maybe more depending on how much your lambdas use AWS specific internal APIs).
If vendor lock-in is a really big concern for you, you can run everything on an EC2 instance running Ubuntu instead. That way you can just spin up your service on another Ubuntu instance in another datacenter, or locally, or whatever.
Soooo, yes. There is some vendor lock-in here, but not much.
To answer your cost question. I run a very similar setup for personal projects and I rarely exceed AWS's free tier for most services. On a high-usage month it's around $85. It isn't super optimized. I could make it cheaper and nearly free if I put in the work.
That said, cost for a service like this scales very proportionally to usage. For example, AWS API Gateway can process 1 million requests for free before they start asking you for money. If the service becomes super popular we'd likely see the "Buy me a coffee" button promoted a little more and eventually you may see a paid tier as an option, but as it is, it's probably pretty affordable to run.
It can definitely be expensive depending on where you stay, but there are some things that help me justify the cost in some situations. The freedom to come and go at any time - no lease/contract/mortgage, etc. Usually hotels are nicer than an apartment or house that I would stay in anyway - cleaner more up to date rooms, a pool, housekeeping, etc. Breakfast and coffee are complementary in most places. Free wifi in a lot of places that is usually pretty reliable (but make sure to double check ahead of time. Some places have terrible internet).
Some places can be as low as $70/night which is less than what I paid for rent the last time I had an apartment. Also, if you stay with certain hotel chains enough times in a year, you'll start to get complementary upgrades, the occasional free night, and some other little perks that do actually make it seem worth while.
Asking about "longer" term stay (multiple weeks, to a month) pricing has actually resulted in a decent discount a few times as well.
That said, it's not for everyone. You can certainly find cheaper places to rent in a lot of places, and it's definitely not something I'd recommend unless you are single and do not have any dependents (dogs, children, a goldfish, etc).
The most burnt out I've felt was when I needed to be in an office from about 9-5 every day. I lived in a town I didn't really like where there wasn't much to do besides checkout yet another new brewery and I worked on a product that sounded kind of interesting for the first five minutes, but I quickly realized I couldn't care less about.
Now I work remotely. My hours are flexible and deadlines are relaxed. Most of my coworkers work remote and at different times. Most conversations are asynchronous, removing a lot of that fake urgency that comes from feeling like you need to respond immediately to someone's message. The product is more interesting and something that I can see adding value to peoples' lives.
The biggest thing for me personally though: I travel while I work. Not for work, but while I work.
I've always liked exploring and being able to spend a week working in a new town "just because" has been huge for me.
Because I don't work set hours, I can sleep in when I need to and work later that day. Or I can decide to go exploring around a new town for a couple of hours before I start work. I run errands anytime I need to - which is great for avoiding busy times and traffic.
Working remotely with flexible hours has removed a lot of small, but substantial, stressors in my life. I wouldn't say this is a panacea for burnout though because it really depends on the person and the company, but it has worked well for me.
"Work ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Life" balance is more balanced.
When you start asking questions like "What's a sign of burnout?", that's usually a sign of burnout.
Other obvious signs:
- experiencing less and less enthusiasm about work, making it difficult to want to go to work at all
- difficulty focusing on tasks at work because you can't muster up any "care" at all to actually think about what work wants you to do (Task: Change the font size on the About page. Internal response: "Why? Who cares...")
- taking longer breaks and finding any excuse to drag your feet when you are heading back to your desk
- taking sick days when you don't feel "sick" but really feel like you need a day off (I would argue that the way you feel is a valid reason for taking a "sick" day - which is why we call them "personal days" at my company. Sick, tired, hungover. We don't care. You need a day off, you take the day off)
- asking questions about when's the soonest you can take a vacation even if you have no vacation planned (feeling like you need to escape)
- becoming more disagreeable with your coworkers, tasks, friends, family, responsibilities, etc (related to the above "not caring". You start to not see the value in a lot of "trivial" things, and become disagreeable on their basic merits)
- eating and/or drinking more than usual (or other substance use)
The list goes on, but I would say that a lot of "burnout symptoms" are akin to those with depression.
Essentially, your energy, enthusiasm, and general give-a-shit slowly starts to fade.
Unfortunately, humans are rarely rational creatures. Even armed with this information, it can take quite a bit more "drudging along" before a person will hit their actual breaking point.
My personal recommendation when you start to feel this way, if you can, is to walk away....
It feels like a huge change to just quit your job, but looking back, I believe that the damage that burnout has caused would have been less if I had taken the financial hit and just quit the moment I started feeling it.
Edit:
In response to the poster's edit question "When is it time to change change jobs because of it?"
Asap.
The longer you stay, the more you will feel burnt out, and it will result in diminishing returns
I'd rather just walk in the rain.
If, on average, users perceive more value from Google, they use Google more, and Google earns more ad rev. Even if this lowers value substantially for the "relative few".
It's basic utilitarianism, and it sucks to be in the "relative few"...
I too, wish that quotes were respected, and Google would stop giving results for what it thinks I meant to search for like it knows what I meant better than I do - even if that is the case...sometimes.
"Active, as in logs in regularly? Wait, what is 'regularly'? Once a week? Once a month? Every day? Does 'active user' mean, online right now?"
Etc, etc...
Their definition of "active user" is relative, not inaccurate.
Wait...these are rights now?
Who do I sue for not having any of these?
Make margaritas. Put some on your steak. Throw the rest back in the ocean if you want.
We're talking, maybe a couple pounds of salt per person per day. It's not an unmanageable amount.
You're not going to hurt the ocean by adding back a little salt - salt that you took out of it...
Yes, you will most likely affect cultures within the immediate vicinity of a salt dump site but they will regrow elsewhere. It's peanuts compared to the amount of dilution being caused all the time by normal freshwater runoff and ice cap melts.
The ocean is very large.
You can build a simple desalinator (aka, a solar still) with a couple bins, some glass/plexiglass, and access to sunlight. Preferably in an enclosed system to better contain heat and prevent water vapor from escaping.
No filters to replace, and it will run for as long as you feed it water.
Best link I could find to explain the process: https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/61215
Occasionally I add social media sites (including HN) to the block list.
It's very easy to bypass when I really want/need to, but it does cut down the more unconscious "CMD + T - news/redd/face - enter" moments that happen when I'm bored.
Prevents the occasional unnecessary mindless scroll by creating a couple extra steps.
- Salt water is poured into a reservoir that is exposed to the sun.
- The salt water evaporates due to the heat from the sun.
- Leaving the salt behind (and most other impurities), the water vapor rises until it lands on the glass and condenses into water droplets.
- After enough builds up on the glass, gravity pulls the water droplets down the glass until they drop into a separate reservoir - not exposed to the sun. This water is desalinated and drinkable
It's efficient, cheap, slow, space consuming, simple and works well.
This also allows discrimination based on "race, gender, and other things" since "long track record" is completely open to interpretation and if the interviewers are already operating in bad faith, they can find any BS reason to try and undermine an interviewee.
"$100-$150k DOE" is exactly the same, if not clearer, than "$100k (+$50k if XYZ)"
For those operating in good faith, it gives an honest comp range depending on experience.
For those who aren't, a format change on job postings isn't going to do anything.
Instead of offering to pay you less, company suggests you apply for a less valuable role (or demotes you), and then pays you less.
Instead of offering to pay you more, company suggests you apply for a more valuable role (or promotes you), and then pays you more.
If a company is trying to lowball or discriminate, they'll just do it by title and wage, instead of just wage.
If a company is trying negotiate in good faith, it's made the process needlessly complex.
I don't see what problem this solves.
In many cases hiring is an organic process where a company weighs options based on what candidates are available to them at the time, their budget, timeframe, and goals.
A 2 year junior dev may be able to accomplish the same goal as the 12 year one, but much slower due to lack of experience, and you don't know if you'll find either until you start interviewing.
This is why many job postings fairly say "Comp: DOE" or provide a salary range.
More transparent comp is great for avoiding lowballing and discrimination (which both suck), but sometimes one employee actually is a more valuable contributor than another even if they have the same title. This is why I personally find the idea of a "salary range" completely fair, but also welcome to be ignored during the offer phase.
If John Carmack and a junior dev both apply to the role of "Software Engineer", I see zero reason why a company shouldn't be allowed to offer him a substantially higher comp due to his experience. He'll likely accomplish the same goals more quickly, more efficiently, with better code practices in mind.
Having to put it under the guise of "a different position" is just befuddling to the process. It's the kind of unnecessary legislation that pushes companies to find shady ways of solving problems.
If we are going so far as to rigidly include "sea level" in the definition of "a second", it would probably help if we say that that we mean mean sea level.
Know what I mean?
Asking someone what they made at a previous employer seems like a cheap way to try and pay someone as little as possible. A fun snarky response feels justified.
Best case, they laugh and offer you a fair salary. Other best case, you move on to interview at a better company.
A history lesson on "we used to do things this way, but then we made a law that says we can't anymore" isn't an analysis. It just tells me that people got fed up with being overworked and lobbied for a law against it. Not that their employers were making informed decisions.
It's akin to the broken "butts-in-seats" culture that has been slowly dying. Many employers are realizing that more hours at a desk isn't always a net gain in the long term.
OP suggested that I had "noticed" their perspective and I shared my opposing experience.
I've noticed the opposite. Even when I worked retail jobs (minimum wage) in high-school and college, those employers considered morale the be an important aspect of a productive work environment.
We'd have company BBQs, random pizza days, birthday recognition (sometimes with cake), etc. They gave us the proper tools to do our jobs, including gloves/box cutters/shirts/etc. Typically if you told a manger you needed something (work related), they would get it for you. Things chugged along fairly well.
Reducing turnover was an active goal because it cost them time and money to hire and retrain new people, even for basic tasks.
Such a strange situation, where a company has to walk away from letting people work for them because they can't verify their working conditions are good enough. I suppose these are the tricky side-effects of being an international corporation though.
If I am wrong, I'm sure your history lessons should be able to provide good examples how I am incorrect, and I would be happy to hear if that's the case, but I can't see just saying "you're wrong, read history" as productive conversation.
My money is on better work conditions being a better investment long term. It'd reduce turnover. Less time hiring/training new employees, and the employees you keep are happier, stick around longer, and become more efficient at their job through experience.