netjiro

The Swedes also "almost" developed a small fast business jet from a military airplane. The SAAB 105 "SK 60" military trainer had a development branch for a five seat civilian model [1]. I recall hearing it got cut sometime around the oil crisis back then.

It is a quite good plane, and surprisingly silent.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_105

"Best Practices" strongly persists trailing 20y behind. About the time it takes to generationally change collective training and dogma.

You can buy heat exchangers with very high efficiency and good moisture reclamation or suppression for a slightly higher cost. The problem is usually that the customer does not look into the details and the construction company can increase profits by buying cheaper versions.

A good modern ventilation energy exchange unit for a 300m2 house can be <30dB, >90% efficiency, and return a lot of humidity.

Some guidelines for better, healthier, low energy, low cost house construction:

Understand basic physics.

Avoid the architecture-of-the-week construction trends.

Set your targets: Size vs cost? How long do you expect to live there? Price of energy vs better insulation? Maintenance: type, frequency, amount, cost? How important is it for you to reduce the environmental impact? Start small and expand later, or start big and later rent out part of the house?

Stay open minded about the solutions and designs. This makes a huge difference. The building codes and municipal restrictions are often the most limiting factors on how "good" a house you can build. Don't add _unnecessary_ restrictions on top of that. Look around at different solutions, not just what the local construction companies offer. Travel and see how things are solved in other countries.

Use simple construction methods and design. Reduce the number of construction tasks necessary, and make each task simple. A significant real world problem with normal passivhaus construction is that while designed well, they are often very complex to actually build, and small mistakes by the construction crew can have a large impact on the energy requirements as well as cause health hazards.

Well insulated windows, walls, floor and ceiling also drastically improve the comfort feeling of the house, not just the energy bill. When done right and coupled with properly designed ventilation they also improve the health aspects of the indoor environment.

Many low energy houses built today require that the indoor air is kept very dry when the temperature difference between inside and outside increases. This has a lot of negative health effects. By choosing different insulation and interior materials they can be made to allow high indoor humidity. Your lungs, throat, nose, eyes and skin will thank you. Internal humidity around 50-60% also reduces air transmission of many viruses.

Thermal mass is mentioned in some other posts here. Make sure to place it inside the insulation layer, not on the outside. Water and stone have similar high volumetric specific heat capacity. By using water circuits and storage, the mass can be moved out of the way, and often coupled to very efficient heating/cooling systems.

We have developed a construction toolbox for houses and industrial buildings with very low total life cycle CO2 footprint, suitable for climates down to around 0C annual average temperature (northern Scandinavia, around the polar circle). They are fast and cheap to build and provide superb internal environment. If you're interested in more info I'm happy to share. You can ping us at StoneWoodGreyBeard at gmail.

Concur. Once you get rid of annoying disruptions and bloat a modern magic tile is actually useful and can even be a net positive.

Disable all notifications. Don't publish your phone numbers. Be careful who you give out your contact information to.

Separate channels, e.g: dependants, friends, work1, work2. Mute as needed.

Teach your connections to stop and think before they ping you. Get them to limit it to important stuff. For me this has required several chats which can be uncomfortable to some, so keep it friendly.

Learn Discipline. Just because it sits in your backpack does not mean you have to look at it.

Anecdata: on a couple of projects our metrics have told us that do things differently will not get us to target, forcing hard choices to go do different things to get there. But it is usually an uncomfortable fight to get the boat turned around, especially if people have already invested a lot of money and ego in the earlier decision tree.

Variability and luck are huge factors. The hard _employment_ offers I've declined since early 2015 fall in the range kEUR[40,500] total effective annual gross, globally. >10x! Rising trend, but mostly scattershot.

The really interesting part is that during the initial chats I have not been able to guess the offer coming at the end. The strongest correlation seems to be with location, but it is much weaker than most people seem to think it is: The same tech region brought 300k and 40k with just a year apart. Just two different companies in similar fields and roles. Another noticeable difference come from whether I reach out to them or they to me, with the latter often offering above median.

I may be blind and stupid, but from what I see, employment salary is just bizarre. If you can, I recommend running your own most of the time, and accept employment only on the most interesting projects, if required.

The gp observation is anecdotal, right?

In 2019 Germans made more international tourism trips than americans, despite having only a quarter of the population.

But the observations depend on where you travel and see other travellers, right? Go to nw mexico and I expect most tourists are from the us? Whereas mallorca is practically the southernmost german bundesland? And cyprus presents plenty of russians?

And comparing geography: Germany is geographically much smaller than the US, and in a place like Liechtenstein it is easy to make an international trip just to go shopping, even if you take the bike.

I very rarely discuss this. People often get uncomfortable and angry, and I have effectively lost touch with friends that way.

My way:

1) calculate your footprint

2) find options to reduce it

3) find ways to offset the remainder

4) execute

Quite literally: if you are still carbon positive you are still part of (this) problem.

People often complain about difficulty of finding information, the lack of scientific consensus, trouble trusting government, non-profit, corporate bodies, issues with accuracy and precision in measurements and models, etc.

But wtf(!?). Do as best you can. It is not difficult to calculate an _estimate_ on your impact. It is not difficult to find ways to get rid of atmospheric or oceanic carbon. Then dedicate some time, effort, money to do it, to whatever level you feel comfortable with. Your conscience is the only thing that holds you to the effort. Set whatever margins to the calculations and actions as you feel ok with.

5) get yourself carbon neutral for now

6) pay off your carbon life debt

7) cross the line, go 100% climate positive instead of neutral ?

> Why is the Dreamliner acceptable and the MAX is not?

I remember [1?] hearing that Emirates threatened refusing 777s & 787s from one of Boeing's plants due to repeated quality control issues. Have not tracked the issue.

> 180 separate, independent regulators colluded to protect

Not necessarily. But if 180 _independent_ bodies were effectively independent, one of them would probably have found issues with the max. But they are not operating effectively independent.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/emirates-doubts-fi...

These umbrella sales / networking / socialising organisations are fun. I've tried a few. But 15-20% is highly inefficient.

My overhead for cold-finding new clients is <5% (against those projects), and I'm not a good salesman: I'm overly direct, opinionated, and have very low tolerance for nonsense. My overhead for recurring clients and referrals is <1% (against those projects), which is also the majority of my business.

Admin, billing, accounting, etc is also <1%, so it's a non issue.

These sales organisations have _much_ better salesmen than me, yet they need >3x the cost to do the job, and they produce worse results?

My guess is: if you actually tried to spend one day per week (20%) for sales and networking you will get a better result. But for many (including me) it is uninteresting / uncomfortable / annoying / etc and therefore many of us overestimate the difficulty of sales.

There is also very likely a notable difference in interest alignment between the sales partners/employees and you. They will make more money/h the faster they sell you and therefore have greatly reduced monetary interest in working significantly more for a higher quote or a more specialised project. They also do not have the deep domain knowledge you do in your areas, and you are much better at judging how well you will enjoy working with a prospective organisation and how interesting you will find any given project.

My experience: Yes they can sell you. They will get lower quotes than you will get yourself. They will find worse projects than you will find on your own. And they cost too much. Still, I had fun with all the groups I've tried, and I still recommend them as a social luxury. Fun, overpriced, business friends.

These days I've become a bit picky, with a couple of absolute deal breakers:

Today I run an older xps13 which is quite close. My next will probably be a framework (immediately) when they get a matte screen option.

!: matte screen, >350nit, >150dpi, >12", <1.66 aspect (want vertical space).

!: good keyboard. subjectively of course.

!: >10h, full day's work on battery.

!: good linux compatibility. I'll run my own and don't need the headache.

!: dead silent and cool. I run underclocked mostly, with fans off.

!: <1.4kg

Things I don't need:

-: very fast cpu. I mostly run seriously underclocked, have a small cluster to offload compiling and heavy work onto.

-: design. Just plain, simple, no flashy-flashy nor logos nor stickers.

-: touch screen.

What I would like:

:) >16h battery.

:) <1kg, ca A4 format, great if I can detach the screen to put it in portrait in front of me.

:) oled or similar, 300dpi. Best would of course be primarily reflective instead of transmittive. If we're already dreaming.

:) mouse nubbin thingy, or eye tracking (!)

:) good on board sound and a 3.5mm jack.

> holds a position that software developers should not be paid a lot more than other employees

I've seen this first hand. Was trying to help a Swedish company recruit for a new customer request. They would not budge their fixed mindset on salaries. Not even 10%. In the end they lost the contract, costing them on the order of SEK20M/y.

> best practices immunizes

I see this all the time when digging down into why. "It's ok to shut off my brain and just do X, regardless of whether it's situationally even useful." Just as bad as "Policy". It's ok to not think and find a good solution, as long as the bad solution looks "normal" enough.

Best practices are inherently decades old. It takes a long time for a good idea to spread and get people used to it. It's very likely there are better ways to solve the issue around, if you stop to think and read.

Many biocides have negative effects on amphibians that go far beyond food supply.

I generally enjoyed my time in both Konstanz and München, but not quite enough. It was quick and easy to find fun people. Great active social life.

München has horrendous housing shortage and traffic and is a bit too large for my taste. The alps are reasonably close but it is still quite a drive. The Konstanz region has the lake but is otherwise quite densely developed. It takes a bit to get away. Also, for Konstanz, Zürich is close enough to make Konstanz kind of pointless.

Germany has significantly heavier and more heavy handed bureaucracy than I want. Everyday life, all the small stuff, also costs more of my time there than in some other countries. This is an issue for me. I want the little necessities of my days to be as few, quick, small and frictionless as possible.

I visit these regions regularly, just don't have a good enough reason to move back there.

Meh. The Scandi-Nordics are functionally similar enough that the local region matters more than which country it sits in. The everyday life experience in the industrial tech centers are more similar across the countries than compared with more traditional cities just a couple of hours away in the same country.

Don't want to be incendiary here. Anecdote to illustrate that racism/anti-immigration can be individual and come with highly diverse flavour.

I was having a beer with friends in a bar in western Austria a while back. A middle aged local was loudly, but in a friendly tone, proclaiming the horrors of immigration to us. We were from Sweden, Ghana, China. I asked (in my broken german) why he thought we three would be a good audience for this monologue, considering our obvious non-Austrian-ness? He quickly countered that "you guys are not real immigrants. In his mind a real immigrant does not contribute to society, misbehave, and whatnot.

I think at least some racism have foundations stemming from other issues.

Just my opinions. Grew up in Sweden (Gothenburg). Started moving around on my own in my late teens for work, studies, research, love, etc. Have lived in quite a few places over the years.

Moving to a new place is not difficult. Just don't bring a lot of baggage, neither physical nor emotional. Don't pack lots of expectations and opinions. Adapt fast. Expend serious effort to make a lot of new friends immediately, there will be some uncomfortable moments, most people are genuinely nice.

These are the countries (regions) I generally recommend and would move back to:

Switzerland (Zürich-Zug-Liechtenstein), Norway (Oslo), Denmark (Copenhagen), Sweden (Gothenburg), Netherlands (Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Utrecht), Japan (Tokyo).

These are the countries (regions) I would need a strong reason to move back to:

USA (South East states), Germany (München, Frankfurt, Konstanz).

These are the countries I avoid, recommend against, and would need very strong reason to move back to:

France (Grenoble), Spain (Bilbao), Cyprus.

These are the areas I'm keeping an eye on for future possibilities. Just for fun, from my limited knowledge:

Auckland, Vancouver, Singapore.

Just my opinions, based on my values and what I want in life. I love nature and want easy access more or less daily. I want a clean environment wherever I go. I want functional society that does not drain my time with bullshit nonsense. I am ultraliberal and want to have an easy time to find many other well educated and active open minded people.

> Income taxes in most areas (at least in relatively wealthy countries) far exceed any VAT/sales/consumption taxes.

Don't be so sure about this. Link?

E.g: Sweden 2020, income taxes 31% vs VAT 22% of total tax revenue.

Nomads are great. They drop by in prime productive age, stay for a bit and generate tax revenue. Only stay as long as they have money, no social security costs. Have medical insurance.

? How do you calculate to get them to be net negative to your society ?

> And simply based on length of stay, a nomad is more likely to consume expensive services like medical care.

Unlikely. Age distribution of tourists is significantly older than nomads. Younger people require significantly less medical expenditure than older. Older people also take longer than average vacations.

Regardless, both nomads and tourists are generally covered by medical insurance.

answering myself:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19125540

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

? What is the site guideline on duplicate postings ?

Searching on the article link gives a thread less than a week old.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28684544

It has two posts and is still open for discussion.

Just curious.

It really does not. Conservative sketch: assume 10k ppl, avg cost $50k/y, process/procedure/policy overhead 30%, is 150M/y. For that to make sense you'd need 15x $10M fraudulent or single point stupidity errors per year. And that is assuming that the bullshit actually catches most errors.

In my experience the 30% is conservative, from my measurements of large orgs. High overhead does not reduce errors, instead it increases both frequency and severity. It also kills innovation, thinking, adaptability, etc.

Distractions and cultural mythologies cost us way more than what we can save by optimising the minute to minute task scheduling.

1) Get rid of tasks. A huge amount of "work" done today is nonsense. Common culprits are meetings, compliance, tickboxing, just following orders, etc.

2) Do one thing at a time and just get it done. Surprisingly few tasks actually requires a ton of people to get involved if you ignore whatever dogmatic process procedure policy culture imposed.

Planning and efficiency tools are net negative until they have improved your efficiency more than the time, distraction, and mental effort it costs to fiddle with them. That is something I rarely see when I test and measure how people work in reality. And there are more secondary costs, e.g: getting more rigid to follow an established plan even when reality changes, unrealistic synchronisation promises, etc.

You are noncompliant only when you have been sued and lost. Before that point you are improving your efficiency by just solving the problem and building value for your customers. Most people drastically overinterpret the regulations and overemphasise the risks. And you can almost always become compliant at a later stage, if the risk profile changes.

Sitting in meetings is very rarely effective work. Coordination by meeting is almost always highly inefficient compared to alternative structures. But for some reason there is a shared myth here that is very hard to kill. And it is insanely rare that anyone questions the dogma, or measures the effects. It is common that I see organisations with effective total management and coordination overhead above 60%. It is not difficult to stay below 10% without drastically increasing risk of errors, planning, etc.

Many "superimportant" tasks, features, etc turn out to be not needed in the end. By prioritising well and postponing/killing stuff you will drastically improve efficiency and save lots of work, money, and headache.

> when they die naturally.

For many (most?) animals, predation or starvation is the "natural" way to die before actual old age would be an issue. Many suffer horribly towards actual old age death.

I think this is a children's tale disney style myth we've grown up with.

I would argue that slaughter is more "humane" if done right.

But significantly better to not breed animals for food to begin with, if there is an alternative. Even if the alternative costs significantly more.

One benefit is reduced risk of extinction by the various nasty ways the grand cosmos might annihilate a local-only civilisation.

Let's consider extinction mitigation as a luxury? I posit that sooner or later, as technology improves, the relative cost of such projects will go down to a point where some group of people think it is a good idea.

The fact that this is constantly debated is sad. I've run numerous tests across various organisations. When measured it becomes evident that 10x is nothing strange.

Set some real world useful target. Give the task to individuals or small teams and let them go at it, with regular followup. Measure time, defects, maintainability, whatnot. Perhaps add some real world change of requirements mid stream? I've seen solutions ranging from hours to never.

What I see, and find very sad, is that most organisations have obstinately obtuse attitudes and handling of such simple analysis.

It doesn't matter if the variance stems from intelligence, creativity, work pattern, experience, clever tricks, tools, processes, etc, etc. If it's faster/better then find out why, and learn from it. Can it be taught to others? Change work processes? Hire differently? ???

Whatever works. But ffs: measure, analyse, learn, embrace.

I agree that 2012 is too old for solar and wind.

I've seen that summary. I'm sceptical:

Their references (2007,2016) do exclude some significant accidents and do not account well for total accumulated deaths.

I have not researched any better sources myself, however.

Nuclear is by far the safest energy source globally. E.g:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/rates-for-each-energy-so...

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-safest-source-energy...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...

Even the old, poorly maintained, shitshow reactor park we have been stuck with has evidently been safer than everything else.