mmsimanga

This. I live in Africa where I estimate we have at a minimum a few decades to go to catch up with the world when it comes to everyone having a decent house to live in. Trouble is in the towns some of the modern construction rules have slowed things down considerably. No I am not advocating for having no rules but I contend that when the more advanced countries started building hundreds of years ago they didn't have to contend with modern building laws we are having to contend with.

What is interesting is that there are no building codes to conform to in the village. So you can build as you please.

Sometimes people just aren't ready for new knowledge or they don't know enough to understand it. I see this when new person enters an industry, healthcare in my case. It takes about a year to understand the nuances between healthcare providers, funders and administrators. I am guessing people read what Leonardo wrote but they just didn't understand the significance.

I feel like I have carried over some bad habits from programming to my woodworking hobby. This is a hobby that hasn't taken off because I seem to enjoy finding new ways of organising my tools. The result is I have yet to make anything of significance. It feels like I am trying to find the perfect development stack.

So Uber much like Tesla forced incumbent companies to innovate and you as a consumer have benefited, yes?

I confess I know nothing of Uber's running costs but in my layman's understanding I think GP point is still valid. Driver buys the fuel and services the car. How does having more rides cost Uber more?

Not only am I a black male I also live and work in Africa. That might explain my dig at diversity because we are mostly black people also changing logos for seemingly silly reasons.

It isn't just the logos that change the same companies have diversity officers as if this will change the tast of the orange juice. As is customary I have to add I am a black male least I am accused of being insensitive.

I actually now append the word reddit to Google searches. I never did do the Reddit front page for some reason so I have never understood why Reddit is classed with other social media. I always used Reddit for the subreddits. Apart from HN and Stackoverflow and one or two other sites like instructables.com I don't think there is many other sites with better curated useful information on specific subjects.

This. With companies getting ever security conscious installing any software is a long and tiresome exercise.

I would like to sincerely thank you for giving me yet another site I can waste time on.

I confess I didn't read the article but I found your article interesting. You didn't mention age in your comment. Anecdotally looks seem to matter less once you are in your mid thirties and above.

I totally agree with you and would like to add another angle. I have a CS degree but have spent my career largely writing SQL. Given time I can figure out most technical things. Therein lies the issue, time!

I got taken by the HN hype over SSGs and moved my site from Drupal (I didn't want to move to Drupal 8) to Hugo. I spent a glorious three weeks porting my site and getting to grips with Hugo hosting my site on Gitlab. As is the case with me I then didn't touch my site for over four months and when I wanted to post a new post I had to learn a few things again. I have a work device and home PC. Posting meant I had to be at home because that's where my pipeline was setup. In the end I just moved to WordPress. I am not a web developer. There are probably smarter ways to setup and post to Hugo but given limited time at my disposal and limited functionality of my site, WordPress just easier for me.

Speaking of pushing boundaries. Parents in the generation had to get a physical box with a padlock in which the phone was placed. You could still pick up the handle to answer a call but you couldn't reach the dial. Some figured out how to tap dial but I never did.

Ah man. I am in Africa and don't work for an IT company. So I presume those two factors given the cost of hardware here probably results in many people running on machines with 4GB of RAM. My anecdotal observation is that there is that price of hardware practically doubles from a machine with 4GB or RAM to one with 8GB of RAM. Thereafter increase isn't as jarring but I think it is enough to deter companies from buying 16GB machines.

The 8G or RAM I have is more than the standard 4G of RAM for none developers. All these are company issued laptops. So an i7 with 16GB RAM is a powerful machine in my world.

This is interesting I have seen Gephi before but never used it. Do you have any links or posts explaining how you use it to visualise connections in MySQL? I would like to do something similar with Oracle.

> How do you think government policy should have changed in relation to natural immunity?

This is my own opinion based on my observations in South Africa. Yes it is unfortunate we could not get access to the vaccine at the quantities and time we would have liked to but the lesson is we need to improve our ability to manufacture vaccines. There are some promising initiatives in this regard. I digress though. South Africa keeps an eye on weekly deaths[1] and can then work out excess deaths. The excess deaths during the recent Omicron wave which peaked at the end of December were significantly lower than the deaths during previous waves. Government continues to encourage vaccination but the restrictions to reduce spread Covid are at the lowest we have had. Even during the peak of the Omicron variant over New Years restrictions were being lifted [2]. So without coming out and saying it, it looks to me that SA government acknowledges that natural immunity seems to be helping keep hospitalisations and deaths low. This is because most of the research in SA anyway tends to place less emphasis on natural immunity but focuses on the vaccine. So all communication from government continues to stress need to vaccinate yet restrictions continue to fall. It could be that I have not read enough but government's attitude has been welcomed.

[1]https://www.samrc.ac.za/reports/report-weekly-deaths-south-a... [2]https://www.capetalk.co.za/articles/435601/government-lifts-...

I am in South Africa. We initially struggled to get the vaccine and first phase was literally a clinical trial for health workers. We eventually did get stock but it seems by then a significant number of the population got Covid. Omicron variant doesn't seem to have affected us as much and surveys have shown that up to 80% South Africans have natural immunity from having had Covid. Yes there are some papers on the topic but government policy does not feature anything related to natural immunity. It wasn't a case of get intentionally infected rather it was a case of getting vaccines later than other nations.

With current Covid pandemic. I could be wrong but it seems most studies are looking at effectiveness of vaccines and little to nothing on effectiveness of natural immunity. I say this as someone who was one of the first to get vaccinated. Not that I am saying the pharmaceutical companies sponsored the studies. So to answer your question sometimes it is what is not funded that is probably more telling.

Specifically with Covid it's a timing issue. During initial stages of Covid before most people had it, it made absolute sense to push vaccines. over time though the number of people who had Covid and survived increased. Moreso with new Omicron variant which spread quickly. In South Africa as much as 80% of the population is estimated to have had Covid. So now that the population who has survived covid is significant guidelines on Covid seem to largely ignore this significant population.

Sybase IQ allows you to use the column alias anywhere else in the query.

Interesting book. Thanks for sharing I will be sure to read it. My dad chaired the local history society for our tribe for a long time. I have been to some of these historical sites dating back about 100 years. I have always had an interest in the topic.

I specifically restricted my theory to sub Saharan Africa. Egypt and North Africa do indeed have history of technology and innovation. In sub Saharan African I don't even think the wheel was a thing before the colonisers arrived. I could be wrong but from all the history I have read and from speaking to old people we did have some iron works to make spears and arrows. No wheels, no bridges and no roads.

As an African I have always wondered how Sub Saharan Africa got left so far behind in terms of technology. One of my lay mans theories based on listening to older folk and the new maps showing just how big Africa is compared to other continents[1]. You can fit the US, Asia and most of Europe into Africa. Listening to older folk there were lots of migrations. If you had dispute with someone you just took your people and went off to find another spot to live. I theorize that we largely avoided wars therefore there was no need to innovate. Off course there are other things at play but I agree with you when you have to fight to survive in wars you put aside your differences as a country and you get to see true innovation. Its my theory.

[1]https://www.visualcapitalist.com/map-true-size-of-africa/

Yes you are right. Figures of as many as 80%[1] of the population probably has had Covid have the quoted for a while now. So guess the question the SA government has to ask themselves is do they go ahead with the booster shots. For now Covid restrictions are at their lowest since the initial lock down in 2020. I suppose we will know in another month or two when there is enough data.

[1]https://www.moneyweb.co.za/news-fast-news/deaths-data-shows-...

Maybe the problem is the need to have feedback at the stand up. This assumes writing code is linear and is something that can be routinely managed through a stand up.

Just to add far less people have been vaccinated in South Africa. I have heard figures between 25% and 40% at the most optimistic. Booster shots only recently approved. Omicron impact seems way less severe than in the first 3 waves we had. Government hasn't instituted any new restrictions. We still ware masks everywhere but that's about it. It is still early days but some anecdotal articles from front-line care workers indicate it is milder [0].

[0]https://www.moneyweb.co.za/news/companies-and-deals/omicron-...

What you describe is the ideal PM. Someone who understands the business and customers and some of the technology. There are two kinds of PMs that are good. The one you describe who understands the business and the former developer who has been with a company many years and has made transition to PM role. However in a lot of companies this is not always the case.

I am guessing down votes are not for expressing your opinion but rather for not providing context. Why is Windows better option for you?

It really is a great achievement. As an African I hope our leaders are taking inspiration from the Cubans. If we put our minds to it we should also be able to produce our own vaccine.