3,139 karma · joined November 28, 2020
Sure, we'd all like to think that the goal was an idealistic "startup does things for bettering humankind".
But let's face it: A large amount of startups are literally founded as an "easier" alternative of building a "more agile" sub-organization within an established and more process driven org and then just get bought out by some of those larger orgs.
Whether or not those large orgs are then actually successful in integration and actually properly leveraging what they bought vs. just "crushing competition", is not necessarily the concern of the founders, depending on how ruthless vs. idealistic they are.
But "the market" (i.e. consumers) did not "do it by itself". Regulations had to force car makers to care about fuel economy. And while once Tesla came around (or a bit earlier a Prius) some consumers did buy those vehicles, they were premium vehicles. Prius owners were laughed at not imitated by the general public to an extent where both Toyota and every other car maker suddenly only made Hybrids or started making EVs. Thus my apprehension for my parent's "the market did it!" ;)
Like, let's go back to what made me reply from my parent:
Imagine if car makers didn't bother with fuel efficiency because buyers had almost no choice and any car is better than nothing
Guess why in Europe smaller cars and cars with better fuel economy were and are more popular? Because gas is more expensive through regulation. "Regulation" there takes multiple forms. The earliest being simply taxes on gas, which are much higher in Europe. But also previously mentioned by me EV mandate, which is a Tesla+ era regulation. And before that the CO2 emission kind of regulations, which made me mention the "skirting". As in, manufacturer are skirting the CO2 emission rules, e.g. because some of those regulations only apply to a manufacturer entire assortment of offers. How is it the poor manufacturer's fault that people only buy their high emission models, when they have a "SMART" type choice on offer too? Essentially the market didn't work (again especially in the US with too cheap gas) with people buying SUVs and F150 type trucks over a Fiat Panda or SMART.
Which traditional car maker actually cared about EVs before Tesla came along?
(Even Toyota, which was sorta "caring about it" did not believe in going "all in" and for a very very long time would only do Hybrid and nothing more).
Every other established car maker did not invest in this until "forced" by Tesla so to speak. And then spurred on by things like the EU regulations to no longer allow any non-EV new car registrations by ... was it 2035? Which I hear they're now thinking about undoing.
Was I meant though were actual problems / bugs in the area of the product that your ticket is about. But that weren't caused by your ticket / have nothing to do with that ticket directly.
Like to make an example, say you're adding a new field to your user onboarding that asks them what their role is so that you can show a better tailored version of your onboarding flows, focusing on functionality that is likely to be useful for you in your role. While testing that, the QA person notices a bug in one of the actual pieces of functionality that's part of said onboarding flow.
A good QA understands and can distinguish what is a pre-existing bug and what isn't and report it separately, making the overall product better, while not wasting time on the ticket at hand.
What many QAs can't do / for me separates the good and the not so good ones, is that they actually understand when they're not related and just report them as separate bugs to be tackled independently instead of starting long discussions on the current ticket at hand.
Funny you mention cost. This year our town actually did not contract out the snow clearing of the roadways to a contractor like they've done for decades past, because it became too expensive (or rather the percentage increase I believe was the trigger). So instead the city is now doing the snow clearing themselves! I would call this very good stewardship of our property tax payments, which is what pays for that. Just now instead of going to greedy contractors (let's face it, most of that money isn't going to the people actually doing the snow clearing) and instead it will go towards paying the salaries of actual city employees (not sure how many temporary) and I guess equipment cost.
Most people here also get a local contractor or in our case it's usually one of the farms around the area, that offer snow clearing of your driveway. Both the actual driveway, which around here can be quite large, and for clearing the large amounts of snow and ice left across your driveway by the city plows clearing the roads. Essentially tractors with snow blower attachments on the back PTO. Like this: https://www.deere.ca/assets/images/region-4/products/attachm...
Works elsewhere, why not in Germany, where taxes should actually be even better able to cover it? [yes I know people in Germany, even specifically in Berlin and no this is not a Berlin specific thing]
Like where I live, the city also says not to use salt whenever you can and use alternatives and they themselves do not salt the roads in our town either, except for the major in and out ones. This is Canada btw. so we do get a load of snow and ice. They use grit and in spring the city sends through a grit cleaning crew (for reuse next winter). Except for the parts that make it onto lawns from snow plows pushing it onto your property. There it's your job i.e. some people put down mats in fall or they use brushes to get it out of the lawn and back onto the street where it can be picked up. Just yesterday, it was above freezing and the city snow plows went and used the warmer weather to scrape lots of ice off the road!
The point was essentially what you're showing here: People focusing on all the differences instead of shared history, languages influencing each other and how we're all not that different in the end.
If you want to, even within what are nowadays countries and what outsiders would say is "one language" and "one ethnicity", you can start focusing on differences and make people dislike each other.
Also: in German Dosis is the word for dose.
Die Dosis macht das Gift
Vergiftet would be past tense.
Funny that in English gift is a word but entirely different meaning.
Languages are fun, especially in Europe where they're all different but all so related but everyone does not want to admit it.
It's awesome. I've never had a better cruise control button setup than in my Subarus. They're usually slightly different by model/year but we're consistently good and easy to use without looking.
I have never accidentally while driving found any settings menu getting in the way there. Yes there buttons there that do that. But only in the same way as my 25 year ago cars did: basic settings you set once and never again and that are in those menus probably for historic reasons as they were there pre-screen being standard in the car and they just left them.
The first info about what's not covered for example is concerning diabetes. There's a limit to the number of test strips for example. I'm no diabetic, so I don't know if these numbers are "enough" or not but there is an actual limit. It also then states:
Syringes, lancets, glucometers and other diabetic supplies are not covered by the ODB program.
A single person aged 65 years or older with a yearly income above $25,000 after deductions pays:
the first $100 of total prescription costs each program year (August 1 to July 31 the following year)
this is called the deductible and is paid down when you fill your prescriptions
after paying the deductible, up to $6.11 for each prescription, filled or refilled
this amount is called the co-payment
I'll stop here but I'm sure this is both similar in other provinces and/or other limits may apply in specific cases.
Just to be clear: I'm not saying the OHIP / other Canadian insurance programs aren't great overall in comparison to the US. But neither they nor I suppose Germany's "full coverage" actually are in all real world cases.
Private insurance also can cover a higher percentage, i.e. provincial plans do not always cover 100% of everything. Also, Health Care Spending accounts are in many cases part of private insurances and can be used to cover things that provincial plans do not cover at all (unapproved drugs et. al.)
I asked from an employee and cost perspective. So whether or not to count the employer portion depends on whether we're comparing one or the other. If you buy on the marketplace in the US, compare with the full cost in the example I gave for Germany. If you get insurance through your work the US/CA, compare with the employee only portion (as the employer pays part of the insurance there as well).
Theoretically it's even more complicated as at least in Germany private insurance also exists and is cheaper if you're a healthy single youth and more expensive if you're an older family ;)
But again, like you say, it is totally valid to also compare outcomes / wait times per dollar spent of course.
An example of a country with "good healthcare" and such a system would be Germany. Extra insurance does exist there as well nowadays from what I understand but health insurance isn't tied entirely to employment and the extras are things like a 20 EUR per month to cover the co-pay on large and expensive procedures. While private insurance exists there too, I want to compare to the often touted "free healthcare" i.e. public system. There are still different providers even under the one public system.
So from a quick search, Germany has insurance rates from ~14-16% of gross salary, half of which the employee pays from their gross salary. But most insurances have an extra percentage they charge on top. I found one as an example that charges 17.29% total, which if you're self-employed, you have to cover yourself (to be comparable to your marketplace bronze plan being entirely self-paid).
Now the question becomes: Are you paying more or less as a percentage of your salary and by how much?
(and side question for your parent I guess: how does that compare to the $10k the employer pays, which would be 8.645% in this example)
It wasn't about the labour part and whether that is exportable in the off-shoring sense.
It's about the product being exportable (in the sense of being able to sell it for money outside of your country) vs. just having people within your own economy doing "left pocket <-> right pocket".
And even with that, you can sell a waiter's service to other countries. You just have to first make them come - it's called tourism and comes with a whole lot of other jobs / supply chain(s) as well. Some of which can themselves be off-shored!
It's pretty obvious where the doors are (middle), which have windows. My point, replying to my parent, was that they said Amtrak platforms are at 110cm height. The lowest part of those doors are not at 110cm height, but much lower, almost as if the platform was much much lower than my parent claimed ;)
And yes, trains do exist, which either have doors at two different heights (these don't seem to) or that either automatically fold away so you can get out at ground level via the stairs that are revealed/created by the mechanism or that simply stay up for platform height entry/exit. Used both types. Now, whether or not Amtrak has those in specific parts of the US I can't say.
So in my book (pun intended :P), allowing and actually encouraging a "cheat sheet" is a good thing. Open book is worse, as it's usually way too large and badly indexed. And who's gonna use an actual book in their actual job anyway?
Since we don't know "the other side of the story", we can't really tell. All people here see is the "I got kidnapped". If the story was written from the control room person's perspective, they might write a fascinating story about how they single-handedly avoided 17 trains being late by sending one train on a detour.
Would be awesome if there was someone on HN that knows if DB actually has the capacity to run a scheduling algorithm for their network within a few minutes, repeatedly, for many different trains at a moments notice. What kind of infra do they have for that, what do they use? With a large, interconnected, network that's tightly scheduled already that can't be easy.
OP was also unlucky in that he was on a regional train. They prioritize long distance trains usually as a regional train can more easily wait on a lower speed limit track somewhere than a fast long distance train on a potentially shared single track bottleneck.
https://media.amtrak.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Autumn-1...
If I or someone else bases something off anything but master that's on them to rebased and keep up to date.
Claude does have this specific interface for asking questions now. I've only had it choose to ask me questions on its own a very few times though. But I did have it ask clarifying questions before that interface was even a thing, when I specifically asked it to ask me clarifying questions.
Again, like a junior dev. And like a junior dev, it can also help to ask it to ask / check what its doing "mid-way", i.e. watch what it's doing and stop it, when it's running down some rabbit hole you know is not gonna yield results.
Now, I use it as well to review, just like you mention it pulls it via gh, has all the source to reference and then tells me what it thinks. But it can't be left alone.
Similarly people have been trying to pass root cause analyses off as true and they sound confident but have holes like a good Swiss cheese.