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mindfulgeek

671 karma · joined October 20, 2014

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mindfulgeek··on Ask HN: Is working as a developer on technical route until retirement feasible?
My aunt was a coder her career and retired a few years ago. She lives comfortably, travels and has plenty of retirement funds. I could never imagine her a manager, and I never heard her ever say she'[d] choose another path.

edit: typo

mindfulgeek··on Ask HN: Am I the longest-serving programmer – 57 years and counting?
https://www.infoq.com/presentations/developer-aging/
mindfulgeek··on Restaurants rebel against delivery apps as cities crack down on fees
Many restaurants do this already. However, its a lot of overhead to synchronize menus between a restaurant and the marketplace apps. Raising prices to make up for commissions means making prices higher on every item and choice. Then there are the customers who do not like to see different prices in different places — pre-covid this would not have gone down well. All these news articles at least raises awareness to help mitigate the customer backlash. That being said, a customer won’t want to pay a 30% up charge plus delivery and service fees. Maybe 10% which can be ok for restaurants that have more than 20% profit margin, but that’s not where many establishments are.
mindfulgeek··on Breathing habits are related to physical and mental health
I've been practicing with the breath since I recovered from cancer about a decade ago. I credit it with saving my life in many ways.
mindfulgeek··on Daily standups should be async
I think about it like this — if I ask a question, someone needs to be interrupted to make that happen. Even if they were on slack anyway, or between tasks, if it’s not something they are otherwise working on, it may take them off their task. If my thing is critical or blocking others, I raise a flag. If it can wait, I wait too. Disruptions are probably one of the most costly time investments of our trade.
mindfulgeek··on Ask HN: How can I restore my concentration when reading?
Another ADDer here. I have two modes of operation: hyper focused or not. Things that require focus, like deep reading mean I need to switch operating modes. I have oodles of ways to address this issue so I only chose a few. Maybe one helps.

Ways I do that: 1. Be really interested in the content — not sure if this works with a non add brain, but it really doesn’t matter where I am, if it’s interesting I’ll jump right down that rabbit hole. Not sure that helps you but maybe can create some parameters for experimentation (like is there a pattern with your interest level and if so how can you mitigate that) 2. Meditation - specifically working with the breath. It takes 30s-3min for me to reboot my brain between tasks. Not much of an investment and in my experience it works. 3. Printing stuff out — i find it much easier to read deep if I have it on paper 4. Copying into an editor and editing — this is my goto for boring reads because it uses a different part of my brain that reading alone 5. At the end of each paragraph I ask myself “what was the point of that?” This is a habit that takes time to develop. At first you may get through an entire article without asking but eventually you can catch yourself sooner.

mindfulgeek··on School districts take unplanned plunge into online learning
My kids district is doing well all things considering. I look forward to things settling in and becoming more consistent. For the most part it is google classroom assignments. No lessons or zoom sessions. No one on ones with teachers to connect with each kid to check in. Several emails a day from various teachers with directions that sometimes are for me, sometimes for my kid and sometimes for both. It’s a lot to process, especially working full time with more than one kid. We’re getting by though and overall it’s pretty amazing how technology is pretty miraculous in giving us all opportunities from home. Hopefully some of the tricks the teachers and schools learn during this time will yield creative New teaching practices.
mindfulgeek··on The state of the restaurant industry
Hubby and I own a coffee shop. We closed up on Monday. We have cash reserves to pay our staff and rent for a month (As if they are still working). Praying we’ll be able to increase online bean sales to cover payroll before then.
mindfulgeek··on DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use
I switched over to DDG + brave about 6 months ago. Haven’t looked back.
mindfulgeek··on Mastercard investing in technology to identify commuters by gait, heartbeat
I have no visual memory. I’ve spent a bit of time thinking about how I remember people and how they move is a big part of it. I know a man who is very still. Like abnormally still. He was married to a dear friend who passed away and use to regularly visit a place I use to work. I never remembered him. I knew I was supposed to know him but got it wrong every time, until u realized he was really still and when I saw someone who was still, I knew it was him. Not just walk, but breath. I thought it was pretty neat the first time I read about identifying people by their gait.
mindfulgeek··on Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU
From what I read, the coronavirus reduces lymphocytes and that is what ultimately causes the serious symptoms. For people who can keep their white counts up, they don’t get so sick.

Edit: my thought is that maybe they could use blood counts to separate it from the flu

mindfulgeek··on Miscarriage can lead to 'long-term post-traumatic stress'
ive tried several times and cannot seem to comment. I think that speaks more to the impact of miscarriage than my words could. I’ve had 5. They’ve all been different. You are a mother the moment you are pregnant regardless of how long. There is an unspeakable, unbreakable connection between a mother and her children. That connections dies slowly over time, not the moment of loss. For me, every miscarriage is something I still process and heal from. They are all my children though they’ve never had names nor did I ever meet them. I felt them and hosted them and would have given anything for them as I do my other children.
mindfulgeek··on Thank HN: You helped me get a new job
This is awesome! Thank you for sharing your story and congratulations!
mindfulgeek··on My Business Card Runs Linux
What fun! Nice work!
mindfulgeek··on People who tend to be optimistic are likelier to live to 85 or more: study
Some of the most positive people I’ve met have lived in the worst of circumstances. The mind decides what it wants about the situation. Optimism is a powerful tool, even if only the person using it can feel the difference.
mindfulgeek··on Judge dismisses Wikimedia case against NSA over Upstream surveillance
Why can’t there be an independent party with top secret clearance do a code inspection and see if the hypothetical theory holds water? It seems like there should be a way to testify about it without compromising secrets.
mindfulgeek··on Calm Technology
I so got hustled this morning. Not by tech, but by a human. Thank you for giving a word to the experience.
mindfulgeek··on My experience hosting a static Jekyll blog with Azure
The beauty of static sites. How long does that monthly credit last?
mindfulgeek··on My experience hosting a static Jekyll blog with Azure
I really love Azure, but not so much for hobby projects. If you want ssl on an app service, you’ll need at least the basic tier which starts at about $50/month. How does that make sense?
mindfulgeek··on Google under investigation for ‘Thanksgiving Four’ firings, discouraging unions
This. Developers are a very powerful party, but completely unorganized. Everything relies on software and not everyone can build it. We make things that make the world better, but we also make things that make the world a lot worse. If we could group together and have some kind of “do no harm” oath and protections around that, the world would be a better place.
mindfulgeek··on Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction
Thanks for sharing that link. What he’s saying here is very relevant today.
mindfulgeek··on Ask HN: What has made you a better problem solver in software engineering?
Focusing on minimizing risk without sacrificing value. This is about balancing engineering costs to both build and maintain and ideal business outcomes. The hardest problem is not so much the how to build something but what is the least amount of work you can put forward to get the job done (with quality and maintainability).
mindfulgeek··on CDC Unpublished Data Comparing Vaccinated vs. Unvaccinated Obtained via FOIA [pdf]
The slides that state they were unpublished and obtained via FOIA. The first slide is one example and there are more as you scroll.
mindfulgeek··on New, slippery toilet coating provides cleaner flushing, saves water
Survivor of sinus cancer here. Not a fun experience but it worked. May you find NED and remain that way. Godspeed.
mindfulgeek··on How Anti-Vaccine Sentiment Took Hold in the United States
What qualifies a sentiment as “anti-vaccine?”

Not sure why this is downvoted. I’m genuinely curious. The perspective that having a sentiment puts someone into a group is one I haven’t considered and I would like to understand it more.

mindfulgeek··on How Anti-Vaccine Sentiment Took Hold in the United States
Who are you referring to when you say “them?”
mindfulgeek··on Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)
Starting law school next week!
mindfulgeek··on Anyone who looks at this code instantly becomes insane
One of the best refactoring tools is naming. Arlo Banshee wrote and interesting article about the subject some time ago (http://arlobelshee.com/good-naming-is-a-process-not-a-single...). This is a really long post, but the overall theme is iterate over code until everything has a name. To apply this to your question, the first thing you would do is take those lines, put it in a function with a bad name like “doesSomething” then keep iterating until someone can actually read the code and it makes sense.

In the beginning of learning to program it’s easy to get stuck on the “clever” side of programming, but a lot of the time it can remove readability. The earlier you learn this, the more your future coworkers will appreciate you.

Good luck!

mindfulgeek··on IRS sends warning letters to more than 10k cryptocurrency holders
There is some discussion of changing cryptocurrency to be treated like currency instead of property. When that happens, it will behave like you are describing. https://www.wsj.com/articles/lawmakers-push-for-new-bitcoin-...
mindfulgeek··on Square’s Growth Framework for Engineers and Engineering Managers
I hope your friends have had better outcomes since. A good thing to protect yourself as a worker is to get a timeline or plan of action or growth as soon as new responsibilities creep in — if the company had the intention to promote, they will appreciate a clear path, of not, they will push back.
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