HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

theboulevardier

31 karma · joined August 13, 2019

submissionscomments
theboulevardier··on Discovering the brain’s nightly “rinse cycle”
I agree, I have about 4 - 5 "good hours" a day. But I'm expected to deliver 6 - 6.5 billable hours a day in my job (exluding admin work). It's frustrating as I know that a billable hour before 10am and after 4pm is worth far less than a billable hour between 10am and 3pm. It's especially frustrating when I'm expected to work on something that involves a high cognitive load all day long due to tight deadlines. Account managers, project managers and sales people seem to think that all work is the same and you can work at max capacity all the time, regardless of the complexity of the task.
theboulevardier··on Google indexing DDG search results
If you look at the cached Google page, you will see that Google is only indexing the knowledge panel, not the results themselves. E.g https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:t8Z5T9...
theboulevardier··on Most first-time visitors to Japan are struck by how clean the country is
In the UK, we generally tip for a great service. If I buy a meal and the food and service is just fine, then no tip. Though if the food and service are great, I will generally tip 10 - 20% depending on how generous I'm feeling at the time. Tips generally aren't expected, and you won't be shamed if you don't tip.

I would clean up after myself somewhere like McDonalds or Burger King, though in a cafe or restaurant I wouldn't. In a restaurant I usually put the plates together to make it easier for the waiter or waitress to clear the table and try not to be too messy.

theboulevardier··on Everything Is Getting Louder
I'm in a similar situation, the parking garage for my block of apartments is rigght under my bedroom. It's not too bad, except for one neighbour's motorcycle, where he is obviously using a modified exhaust to be louder. In the winter he likes to leave the engine to warm up for about 5 minutes every morning at 7am...
theboulevardier··on Everything Is Getting Louder
They are the best earplugs! I have tried loads of other brands and none compare.
theboulevardier··on Chrome 77 Breaking Drag and Drop Events
I use DuckDuckGo as my default search engine and it has never reverted back to Google. Perhaps it only happens on certain major updates??
theboulevardier··on Lethal memory fail: Why drivers see, and then forget motorcyclists
Well, if it is illegal that is another thing entirely. But where I live, it is legal and basically every motorcyclist does it.
theboulevardier··on Lethal memory fail: Why drivers see, and then forget motorcyclists
Lane splitting is generally quite safe if: a) Other motorists are expecting it and paying attention and b) The motorcyclist isn't going much faster than other traffic (if I remember correctly, where I live the law is that you shouldn't go more than 15mph above the speed of the traffic).

I used to lane split when I had a motorcycle as the highway traffic was terrible for my morning commute and it was generally fine, though you would occasionally get an idiot doing that thing some drivers do where they indicated a lane change as they were doing it and without checking mirrors so you have to be very careful.

theboulevardier··on A brief history of government efforts to stop people from wearing masks
The UK police have been able to do this for a while. I haven't been involved in activism for years now, but if I remember correctly they used to be able to make people remove face masks within a particular area during demonstrations.
theboulevardier··on Show HN: Scale Heaven – Browse and play any scale/chord, chord progression
Thanks, that looks awesome!
theboulevardier··on Show HN: Scale Heaven – Browse and play any scale/chord, chord progression
Looks cool! Any chance of mapping the scales to a guitar fretboard? My favourite way to learn scales is just jamming along to a backing track with the scale on a fretboard in front of me. Like this: http://www.all-guitar-chords.com/guitar_scales.php?scch=E&sc...
theboulevardier··on Google to stop showing news snippets for French users
Google has also started classifying non-news sites as being news sites and no removing snippets from them. I have already had to manually change the designation in the Google Search Console on a couple of sites that I look after this week after Google flagged them. I'd recommend that site owners check in the search console to see if they are affected.
theboulevardier··on Facebook announces Horizon, a VR massive-multiplayer world
Does anyone else find those avatars really creepy? They look like the characters in those weird CGI kids cartoons.
theboulevardier··on Thomas Cook collapses, stranding 150k UK holidaymakers
If you go with Google's suggestions when you setup an Adwords campaign, they will absolutely rinse your budget with minimal return. Google has a churn and burn mentality when it comes their Adwords customers as most new businesses fail within 12 months.
theboulevardier··on Weighted blankets might ease insomnia and anxiety
We have done something similar at home. We live in an apartment with a small shared central courtyard, which is lit up (though not extremely bright) when someone walks through it. Our bedroom has those crappy Ikea Venetian blinds, which are terrible at blocking light and it's a rental so we can't change them. Instead we cover the blinds with a dark bedsheet and that does a great job of keeping the light out.
theboulevardier··on The Browser Monopoly
Google pays Apple $12 billion a year to be the default search in Safari unfortunately, so Apple are making a lot of money from keeping Google happy.
theboulevardier··on The Browser Monopoly
It runs fine on my Mac, the only time it seems to spin up the fans is for Youtube videos. It wouldn't suprise me if Google has done something to make Firefox not work as well on Youtube as they have done before.
theboulevardier··on The Browser Monopoly
I have recently returned to Firefox for my personal browsing after using Chrome since about 2014 and it works great. However...

In work I'm stuck using Chrome due to the amount of time I spend in Google Apps (Docs, Sheets, Google Analytics, Search Console & Data Studio) as they break certain functionality on Firefox, which makes me less productive.

Google has too much power. I work in Search Engine Marketing and it wasn't so long ago that we optimised sites for different search engines, now no-one cares about any search engine other than Google.

theboulevardier··on The Impact of Meditating Every Day
Many people find that meditation reduces their need to sleep. A few months ago when I was meditating for around 1.5 hours per day (a mixture of walking and formal sitting meditation) I felt well rested on 5.5 to 6.5 hours of sleep, when my normal needs are 7.5 - 8 hours
theboulevardier··on The Horror of Microsoft Teams
I had so much fun with that back in school. Our machines were running Win NT 4.0 and and the computers were labelled with a the network name. So I would check the names of the machines my friends were on, or the whole class if I was feeling bold and then create a batch file to send them hundreds of messages.