nisse72

I thought this was normally done by requiring the guard to regularly scan special tags physically located around the premises being guarded (or previously, by keeping "watch clocks" wound).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guard_tour_patrol_system

Why would I choose to invest in something like this as opposed to (say) units in an property fund, ETF or similar?

It's not actually. Unlike strata, in a Swedish "Brf" you don't actually hold title to any real estate.

As the GP says, you own a share in a co-op that itself owns the real estate, and that gives you the right to use the apartment that corresponds to your share.

Something similar to strata title has been discussed for many years in Sweden: ägarlägenheter. I don't know whether anything has ever come of it, however.

Brilliant! Thank you!

I'm using tree style tabs, but now I have both tabs in a sidebar (where I want it) and conventional tabs along the top. WTF?

If anyone can see how to disable the tab bar at the top, please enlighten me!

At a previous job, we used to do a short phone screen, and then send the candidate a small homework assignment they could do on their own time.

The assignment was to build a simple client-server (in C) that solved a particular task, and the short spec (4-5 sentences) was intentionally non-specific about a number of things (that we did not care too much about anyway) but quite specific about some others. The task was similar to a small component of our embedded product, so it was relevant for the role.

The candidate would then spend half an evening or a weekend or whatever time they needed, and send us their hopefully working code. It normally took about 2 hours for someone familiar with this sort of thing, maybe 4 or 5 if they had no idea. We didn't impose any deadline, but most got back to us within a few days or after the following weekend. On a couple of occasions we never heard back.

We would then verify that the requirements were met, and we would take note of some of the design decisions where there was flexibility and things didn't matter so much. If they had at least made a good attempt we then had lots to discuss at the technical interview.

We had them walk us through the code, describing the flow and their design decisions along the way, so we could tell who actually understood what they had done. This was particularly interesting for certain sections where there were 2-3 potential ways to solve a problem, we would ask what the others were and how they had chosen to solve in this particular way, e.g. what tradeoffs they had considered. We would ask how much testing they had done (most said "thorough"), and whether they felt it met all parts of the specification (it didn't always, despite the "thorough" testing).

In all, most candidates told us they thought it was a good task without being daunting or time consuming, and we felt that we got some good insight into our candidates before we made a hiring decision. No puzzles, no grammar nazi questions!

I stand corrected, it doesn't seem to be the case anymore.

I can find old rpms and deb files with rm aliased in /etc/skel/.bashrc or /etc/skel/profile/aliases.sh, but the most recent I found is in a bash 3.2 package, so this practice seems to have stopped quite a few years ago.

This alias seems to be set by default in many linux distributions these days (and has been that way for many years now).

The problem is that you get used to this crutch and rely on it, until one day you're logged in someplace without the alias and end up deleting something you shouldn't.

I'm not a fan and normally disable it. Instead, I prefer to be very careful and deliberate when using rm, especially with any wildcards, making sure I'm in the right directory and that the pattern matches what I expect it to.

So does New Zealand. I don't see how it's an issue that they expect skilled migrants to speak the language.

But Australia has had (and possibly still has) bigger issues with discrimination and xenophobia. Consider that the official immigration policy was called "White Australia" until the mid 1960s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Australia_policy

Kiwis also say "greezy", how does that fit your theory?

The case in question was 10 years ago in Romania, which was only just becoming an EU member that year. I have no idea what sort of laws applied at that time in that country.

But generally, employment in most european countries is not as tenuous as you suggest. You need valid reasons to get rid of someone, and usually you need to give the employee fair warning and a reasonable opportunity to improve or correct the issue that led to the warning. Nobody gets fired for sending a single email even if it's in violation of a clear company policy.

Many european apartment houses have stairway lighting that is on around dawn and dusk, but at other times you push a button for about 10 minutes of light. The timing of these things is not static but follows the sun, and older such equipment was mechanical and used what I imagine was simply a sinusoidally shaped gear.

I used to manage a small apartment block in Stockholm and remember setting latitude and day-of-year into ours to get the timing to agree with the sun, and to stay there. Here's a photo of a similar device:

http://www.aew-electrical.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/e...

Many (most?) countries have working holiday visas. The rules and availability depend on your own nationality and the country offering the visa, but generally they are for under 30's for up to a year. Some have a higher age limit, some are longer (as you point out), and some can be renewed for a second year if conditions are met.

If I'd known about this when I was young enough, I would have spent year in each of a dozen countries.

Napping aside, when (or where) did "leaving your desk for lunch" become taboo? Is this an American thing?

In most places I've worked it would be unusual to stay at your desk for lunch, and in many places it would be discouraged. People really need to use their lunch time, however long or short, to actually take a break, not just from work but also from sitting in front of the computer, and maybe get a few minutes of fresh air and natural sunlight.

In Sweden, if you accumulate points while travelling on business but use them for personal flights, the tax department wants you to pay tax on the value of the benefit (likely: how much you would have paid without points). How they can know about it is another matter.

I think at least the larger employers will ask that you keep separate work and private frequent flyer accounts for that purpose, and use your work points only for work flights.

Oh how I miss the Swedish tax system...

I agree - you don't need to outrun the bear, you just need to outrun your friend.

I would imagine that an angle grinder works equally well with all locks regardless of brand.

IP4 address space comes to mind.

And I think it isn't uncommon to have to add digits to the front of telephone numbers as regions grow (or telephones become more common) and the number space isn't large enough.

Did the rink have rounded corners?

Why not simply encode the expiry date itself into the qr codes, then just decode that using software on the device. Even better, stamp a human readable date on the package like every other grocery product. Oh but then they couldn't track your usage and juicing habits! And you'd have to be able to read or something.

Why does anyone feel it's necessary to explain why they have the phone they have? There are plenty of people who use cheap phones, and not just as decoys. Why would they exist otherwise?

"No, it's a new one I've just bought for this trip". So what?

I do my normal shopping at a large and busy grocery store near the centre of Auckland. There are no turnstiles or even those flappy "gates" that let you pass in just one direction; the entrance is completely open. Quite often I walk in before realising I need to get a basket from outside, so I go back and get one. On several occasions I've changed my mind and left before venturing too far into the store. Nobody cares.

That said, if I had spent any significant time in the store without getting anything, I'd probably leave by the self serve checkouts.

Even more to your point: 26 years!

If you have any accrued benefits you can lose them this way, they may not need to take any action.

For example, in New Zealand many employment contracts have an abandonment clause that basically says if you don't show up for 3 days, the contract is terminated and you've forfeited any accrued leave or other benefits they might have owed you otherwise.

Tangentally related, I find it interesting that we often call people lucky when something very bad happened to them, but they somehow managed to survive the situation or land on their feet. We aren't as keen to describe people as lucky who avoided danger entirely.

Lone survivor in a plane crash? Lucky. Took a cruise instead? Meh.

Personally I think it's preferable to not be in the crash, than to have survived it.

I am also 'a little slow'.

But the other side of that coin is that my code generally works correctly, and rarely (I wish I could say never) needs fixing later. My managers and customers know that my code will work 'as advertised'. My colleagues tell me they enjoy working in code I've written, because it isn't a mess and it feels logical and well organised.

But hey, I'm a little slow. And in ~ 25 years of writing software for pay, only one manager I've worked for has ever had an issue with that.

How do you even define fake news? Or will also fiction be banned?

Is this somehow better than chroot?

I flew gliders many years ago (briefly) and it seemed that IT was extremely overrepresented in the club. Also at my previous job I had 3 glider pilot colleagues in a team of about 18 developers. Climbing and cycling are fairly common among people in general it seems, but to my knowledge I've never even met anyone who plays ultimate frisbee.