I wrote a command line screenshot tool that did exactly that years ago...
1,825 karma · joined July 9, 2022
Unsure if its actually impacting Pi manufacturing specifically, but its hit some other products I want.
Sure, you could get a splinter from the wood if its not maintained, or have a fall and get scraped up, but the risks are low, the benefits (learning to not be a fucking muppet, learning to cope with falls) are high.
Which until recently, was relatively unshaken.
As an employer, MS also has tended to be much more understanding of personal circumstances and the likes - I know people there who took long career breaks, or had mental issues/breakdowns (sometimes quite public) that would elsewhere have been a resume generating event.
Locally Apple are also regarded as an extremely stable employer, especially at the lower levels (support, etc).
I've friends working fucking customer support jobs at apple because its stable and comfortable, when they could be making twice as much elsewhere given their skills.
I considered taking such a job a couple of years ago, after becoming thoroughly burned out of consulting/contracting and wanting some stability.
Funny thing about Apple though is the IP clauses in their contracts.
Even the guys working phone support for customers have to go through a whole paperwork process if they want to publish code they wrote in their own time online, just to ensure there's no Apple IP in it.
I have no issue with radical ideas "outside the window" personally, but often find that EA groups tend to go right for barely workable "grand plans" and often don't listen to the people with boots on the ground, actually doing the work.
I'd give specific examples, but it would be doxing myself as many of them are extremely specific.
I redid it today, and now have 85 points.
Amusingly, I just did some back of the envelope maths and worked out I could probably bump that to over 120 points in 2 years if I set my mind to it.
As for "easiest", no.
I've moved a lot, there's many countries that are far easier :)
Japan? Enough red tape to mummify yourself.
It wasn't good at all.
I suspect they will have to have a strong rethink of their immigration policies in the next 10-20 years.
Never has anything even remotely untoward happen.
Just sit, have a beer, wait for confirmations to happen, and be on your way.
Its cheaper to buy a helmet online, but it is generally better to pay the extra 10-15% and try the fucking thing on in a shop, ensure it fits, etc.
Some manufacturers (Mammut, for example) only really offer one or two sizes, others offer a variety.
Unfortunately the context went missing as soon as the "rule" started making it around hacker/maker internet.
I've seen so many people show up at climbing walls with cheap carabiners from amazon/etc that aren't rated for climbing, but when you view the listing all the images show climbing.
The idea of that rule is so new makers can work out what tools they actually are using, so they don't waste a shitload of money.
In practice? Some tools are just worth spending the money on upfront, inferior tools will often lead to frustration and failure early on.
The problem is people think Adams rule just applies everywhere, because he is famous etc.
I actually have a draft blog post on this exact topic that I'm not finished, with examples from my own experiences.
The whole point of the Chubbyemu ones is broad appeal.
Around 2010 in Ireland the motors became virtually unobtainable - there were a handful of shops importing them, and one day they stopped as customs had seized their stock.
Apparently what was a growing hobby with puff pieces in national media was now gone because someone decided to classify the motors as fireworks (illegal, under the same laws that ban importing your own Semtex).
There was a national rocketry club that managed to import motors for a few more years for club launches, but that seems to have fizzled out a few years back with the loss of their launch site.
So many good memories of trying to build my own rocket bodies, trying to get fins cut from balsa wood aligned, doing math, painting the things, etc. Estes have a whole guide on building em yourself. Then going down to some field and launching it, seeing if it worked, etc...
I get to see a lot of peoples code in my job. Most of it is ridiculous levels of over engineering
There's a few small projects I have been procrastinating for ages that just will require a lot of "tedious but trivial" hand jamming of 90% boilerplate that may be well suited to LLM generated code.
It explains some basic concepts beautifully, far better than I can.
You take a theory exam (which you actually do have to study a bit for) on the rules of driving.
This gets you a learning permission, that allows you to drive but only with a fully licences driver in the car supervising.
You then have to take a minimum of 12 driving lessons with an approved instructor, recorded in a log book, before you can take the driving practical exam.
You then take the driving practical exam, which involves driving in the approved fashion around a public area. This has a surprisingly high failure rate - "wrong hand position" on wheel, not looking around enough, looking around too much, etc all will get you a fail.
Assuming you pass, you are then a "novice" driver (have to display "N" plates) for two years and pay an incredibly high insurance premium.
Despite all this "barriers to entry", most people here are terrible drivers lol
I also forgot briefly what a complete fucking nightmare instrumenting/debugging PHP (on say, a LAMP stack) can be - which is the inevitable result when PHP decides to behave in "interesting" ways.
Most of them are maintaining existing codebases (not a fun job), and some are "help port this legacy codebase to not perl".
I'd not discount Perl. Its incredibly fast to develop services in, stable as fuck, runs anywhere, performant (relatively), flexible, and if you were a startup looking to get a product out the door, just offer decent TC to a couple of old hands you can ship something viable fast.
A lot of them are senior or principal product engineers at companies you will have heard of.
Whereas with C, its extremely necessary to get into the weeds - otherwise your code just crashes or suffers some memory corruption issue, race condition, etc etc.
I've gone from hating PHP for most of my career, to now having a grudging appreciation for it. Its a clusterfuck, but it works really well, and deployment barely gets simpler than "untar into webroot, done".
In my day job, there's been various attempts to use GPT to speed up some work, which has generally resulted in me having to fix "confidently incorrect" code. The outputs usually about half right when its usable.
Using an LLM to basically auto complete trivial bits of code that are "just typing" but usually require a referral to the docs is probably the optimal middle ground for productivity - so time can be spent creatively solving the actual problems.
I'll have to experiment with it further - have it emit all the boilerplate for something, do the fun parts myself, then check for correctness might well be the workflow best suited to GPT.
Not sure about where you are, but in the countries in EU/UK I've lived, OTC can mean either "behind the counter" (where you must speak with the pharmacist), or "in front of the counter" (you just pick it up and buy it).
Depending on country, different drugs are sold differently.
In Germany and Ireland, to buy normal antihistamines or pretty much any good OTC painkiller, I have to request it and usually get asked some questions, depending on the drug, whereas in the UK I can buy the same medications in Tesco.
I'm also of the view that a lot more drugs should simply be available via the model of informed consent or just "available by asking for them".
Waiting weeks and paying 60 euros for a GP to toss a coin on if they are going to agree with you about a medicine is a nightmare.
Though that may be due to the broken health system here making me wait 4 weeks for a GP appointment so I could get a fucking salbutamol inhaler after my asthma came back, among other things.
Interesting aside, the "mental" addiction can be harder to kick than the physical. Some former opiate and gabapentin users I know have mentioned this - psychological cravings for even years after stopping. Anyone who has ever tried quit nicotine will also know this.
In another comment I went into a bit more detail around ways of dealing with the issue, using Finland's homeless housing policy as part of it.
Its a complex issue that certainly isn't going to be resolved through the criminal system.
Tying success to "progress on their addiction" is also puritan brainworms, sorry.
A lot of US stuff seems to rely on punitive monitoring and "you relapsed, back to square one" nonsense, like a game of snakes and ladders. But with a body count.
Some people will never recover. Some will. Some will take fucking ages.
Being an addict and being a mostly functional, productive member of society are not mutually exclusive.
The actual ways to start fixing this problem are unfortunately, rather unpalatable to voters despite being cheaper in the long run.
Here's the thing. Heroin is dirt cheap to make at a controlled quality - its used in hospitals as diamorphine for end of life care, and some other uses.
State supply of heroin to heroin addicts is a policy that has been tested in the UK, Switzerland, Netherlands, and elsewhere at various points and it fucking works.
Decriminalization of possession with referral to addiction services is a policy that has worked phenomenally in Portugal.
Housing-first policies have worked out fantastically in Finland.
Putting supervised/safe injection rooms and needle exchanges in areas where addicts actually are (as opposed to where they are not) also works to reduce issues like people nodding off on the street, smoking up on buses, needles being discarded everywhere, etc.
Another point to note: the vast majority of addicts don't want to be addicts.
Those who do get off the drugs often relapse.
A vanishingly small minority don't want to get off the stuff.
Safe consumption spaces with state supply, clean needles/pipes/works, etc can effectively act as onboarding for users to engage with further services and progress along their journey to reintegration into society.
Get people into those spaces. Get them into supported housing.
Become their drug supplier, so they are no longer engaging in criminality or at risk of contaminated supply.
Don't make "being sober" a requirement for progression.
Aim to get them into "own door" independent housing with engagement with social services.
Help them find paid jobs and start supporting themselves, reintegrating into society.
Offer rehab/treatment, suboxone, etc.
Basically, TL;DR - offer them dignity and agency, and you will see far greater success.
End rant.
Low cost, or even just free if you register as an addict.
Same for naloxone/narcan/whatever "overdose stopper" autoinjectors. Which, I'm reliably told, are the opposite of a good time.
Suboxone is not a drug you can really abuse in any fun way, and a lot of folks won't engage "formally" with addiction services due to stigma, paranoia, worries about their medical records being tainted forever, etc.
The addicts you see on the streets are just the tip of the iceberg. Much like alcoholism, the vast majority of users are "hidden".
There are multiples more users who are still functioning within society, holding down jobs, etc.