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rmchugh

726 karma · joined July 23, 2013

Irish software developer working in Denmark. https://github.com/ronan-mch
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rmchugh··on Where have all the laid-off tech workers gone?
Also possible that they joined a "non-tech" company that needs technical roles.
rmchugh··on Ask HN: Working in tech for climate?
350.org
rmchugh··on Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?
I'd suggest leaving and taking a break until your health issues are under control. Serious stress takes some time to work through the system. Be well!
rmchugh··on Ask HN: My client want an agent on my laptop. Is this the new normal?
Talk to your union. This is nonsense. We are SOC2 compliant at my employer without any surveillance tools. There are plenty of other controls that are perfectly reasonable though.
rmchugh··on The First Soviet in Ireland
You have no idea what you're talking about.
rmchugh··on The First Soviet in Ireland
It's nonsensical in my opinion. There is no reference to relations between the "Soviet" and Soviet Russia. The only connection is the name.
rmchugh··on Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? (2019)
it's not about financial games, but rather externalities. There are significant external costs of our way of life that are borne by others. That new car emits CO2 that contributes to global heating. The steaks we eat come from cows that have been fed with soy beans from cleared rainforests. etc etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Negative

rmchugh··on Focus: Assign multiple engineers to the same task
This is the essence of Mob Programming as popularised by Woody Zuill. Can recommend.
rmchugh··on Production-Oriented Development
Definitely not an impossible situation. Could even be a regular situation given a flaky DNS provider and a sufficient volume of requests.
rmchugh··on Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)
I don't think I learnt any code from this book, but it's still my favourite programming book by far.
rmchugh··on Ask HN: What technologies did you learn in 2018?
Elasticsearch, Kafka, Kubernetes.
rmchugh··on Ask HN: How do I learn math/physics in my thirties?
I'm in a similar situation myself. My plan is to buy a high school textbook and work my way through it, chapter by chapter. I assume that the selection of topics in such a curriculum is reasonable and if the presentation is deficient I'll supplement with YouTube etc until I understand.
rmchugh··on Science’s Pirate Queen
Well, things are a bit different in the US where your universities are privately funded but in many countries the publishing industry publishes research from researchers employed by state funded institutions and sells the research back to libraries in state funded institutions. So, really they're being doubly financed by the state.
rmchugh··on With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit
I don't think that's a reasonable summation, there is a correlation between mobile phone use while there are other studies showing teens assigned to use less of Facebook are more happy. The author could not find movement in other variables that could account for this change, although of course that does not prove that they don't exist (she only mentions homework and economic growth). It's obviously not definitive and she acknowledges this, but it is striking nonetheless.
rmchugh··on Universities spend millions on accessing results of publicly funded research
Yeah, this thing about paying to publish papers in open access journals is really stupid. It seems to me like a compromise that governments have landed on with publishers in order to keep them in business. I would prefer a model whereby governments fund open access repositories and editorial workflows and simultaneously mandate publishing in open access repositories. The incumbent publishing corporations should not be a part of this new arrangement, their business model pulls in the opposite direction.
rmchugh··on Concertmaster – Classical music front-end for Spotify
I was able to install on Ubuntu with Software Center after downloading the deb. The UI is a big improvement for classical music.
rmchugh··on Concertmaster – Classical music front-end for Spotify
great idea, I was just thinking today that the Spotify interface is deficient for classical music. Will try it out asap. Thanks!
rmchugh··on Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the world copied it?
I only have a friend's word for this (who works with drug policy), so if you know more please share. Obviously the US drug policy is quite varied, with full legalisation of marijauna in some states. The federal response to the opioid epidemic seems to be harm-reduction based rather than purely punitive. That said, this is internal politics, so what the US says and does on the world stage is not necessarily going to be consistent with this.
rmchugh··on Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the world copied it?
In regards to why it hasn't been copied, I have heard that part of the problem is that the UN officially supports the War on Drugs. European countries are reluctant to break ranks with the UN in this matter, while progress at the UN itself is held up by conservative countries such as Iran.
rmchugh··on Huge Commercial Cave in the Ozarks for Sale
Quote from the root page:

"God is calling multitudes of CHRISTIAN PREPPERS to the Ozarks to prepare for this time of social, economic, and spiritual breakdown of American society... in these end-times. Learn spiritual lessons on why and how to prepare. The “where to prepare” is the Ozarks, and the “when to prepare” is now… last year!"

Wow.

rmchugh··on Using a logbook to improve your programming
Might as well auto generate a header for the file...

  function lb() {
    today=$(date '+%Y-%m-%d')
    fp="/home/you/logbook/${today}.md"
    if [ ! -f $fp ]; then
        echo "# ${today}" > $fp
    fi
    vim $fp
  }
rmchugh··on HP Enterprise let Russia scrutinize cyberdefense system used by Pentagon
"The U.S. military agency itself did not require a source code review before purchasing ArcSight and generally does not place such requirements on tech companies for off-the-shelf software like ArcSight, the Pentagon spokeswoman said. Instead, DISA evaluates the security standards used by the vendors, she said."

So the Russian government has higher security standards than the US?

rmchugh··on The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends”
While this might be true of the old series, the CGI series is almost anarchic by contrast. The Fat Controller is uniquely accident prone and regularly humiliated by his mother, his wife and his own mistakes. The Steam > Diesel caste system is less entrenched with very many sympathetic diesel engines (Mavis, Den & Dart, Salty) and the gender problems are also less evident with some good female engines (Caitlin, Emily, Mavis).

I don't think the author has seen much of the CGI series or the recent movies.

rmchugh··on GM is launching a $5K tiny electric car in China made for city commuters
As far as I understood the article the low price seems to be due to Chinese government subsidies which may not be applicable if sold to another market.
rmchugh··on Recutils – Tools and libraries to access plain text databases called Recfiles
It's turtles all the way down! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down
rmchugh··on Ask HN: What are the most epic startup fails you know?
Uber
rmchugh··on The Strange Disappearance of Cooperation in America (2013)
So you are proposing that high cooperation is dependent on low government intervention. This seems incorrect. In Denmark for example there is a far more interventionist state than in the US, while membership of associations and clubs is also very high.
rmchugh··on UX brutalism
Note also that the term brutalism comes from the french term for "raw", as it referred to the method of building with raw concrete, "béton brut" espoused by Le Corbusier. It does not mean purposely ugly, this is a misinterpretation.
rmchugh··on Dismantling a Million Tons of North Sea Oil Rigs
I've read that some environmental groups want to do something similar in the North Sea, seems like a good idea. Ocean fisheries need all the help they can get.
rmchugh··on Ask HN: How do you become productive in a new project as a senior developer?
regarding 1), isn't there a danger that you can end up being seen as an admin monkey by the rest of the team leading to them undervaluing your technical knowledge?

I'm sure that they appreciate it, but that's not necessarily the same thing as it's good for the team in the long run.

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