xchaotic

I really appreciate any development / inroads that further improves remote working. I also used to HTC Vive. I think VR for meetings /standups is as disruptive to typical programmer 'flow' as a regular meeting, at least until your coding is also done in VR. So I applaud the development, but I frankly hope it won't widely adopted in this form.

I am an unfortunate victim of that situation (banks would lend in local currency but would lend in CHF). It turns out banks didn't actually go and buy CHF to give you, it's just the way the loan was written as what ended up in developers bank account was local currency anyway.

So in that specific situation it was entirely possible for a gov to intervene without resorting to buying foreign currency. In my country they still didn't, in Hungary they did.

you've 'wasted' time/money when you had it - at a later stage not at an early stage when every penny is critical. SO IMO you've proven that it was the right choice/sequence

The only thing that's new is that the debt keeps getting higher during growth stage. Previously the idea was we loosen the policy and borrow some money when the economy is slow and we tighten when things are moving better again. But there is no proof that the austerity actually is a good thing for the country or the economy - after a sovereign debt, especially in the case of US which is still denominated in USD is a bit of a fictional concept - an act of law could abolish it, for example. Also the interest rates are still so low that it kind of does make sense to keep expanding the balance sheet further as it's easy to service such low rated debt.

Basically everyone is desperate to invest money somewhere.

Bonds are one of the safest instruments and often pension funds are legally obligated to invest at least a proportion of funds in safe, not risky instruments.

This will not end well IMO.

The cases you see at Bloomberg are well evidence, lack of tech is not a problem here.

It's a bit like CCTV - the crimes were recorded Blockchain or not.

But they were not prevented, and Blockchain isn't going to help with that.

That formula is for old British Pounds which are not even decimal. If go back earlier than that, there's records of whole villages being bought for a pound or two.

as a consumer PayPal works well for me - it has extra layer of insurance that I never used but that certainly gives me 'feel good' thing. I can pay for things in one currency with a credit card in another. Yes the exchange rate is not ideal, but much better than a flat fee for every overseas transaction on my otherwise cost-free credit card.

my current job, I was found (via LinkedIN?)by my current manager. I think LinkedIn is misleading as it wasn't just 'cold call' I was probably referred by by another colleague who I used to work with before. In other words 'word of mouth' - a referral for god work ethic etc I've had many jobs before this one, where I'd gone with sending CVs and going via recruiter etc, but this current one is a really good 'culture' fit. If you can work with people who think in a similar way to you, that's really the best - you're spending a large chunk of your day working so the quality is really important, have 9 or 10 interviews if need be, but make sure you're a good fit. 10 hours interviewing might seem like a lot, but you'll spend more than that in the first two days of your work - the upfront cost of interviewing is to ensure you'll enjoy the rest of the ride.

It's the other extreme, but Sweden is the same. If more of the world was like that, we wouldn't have subprime crisis

It is this way for large projects. You write your function, the interface is tested, but the whole project becomes a big bloated mess.

I don't think there's any better way to write large projects.

Instead consider loosely coupled smaller projects.

Perhaps this only moves the complexity elsewhere and you have a dependency hell, but arguably the same can be said for versioning parts of code.

I am all in favour of equality, but the inequality we have now and the one we've had in the past produces these great and bizzare artifacts that people still value after centuries if not wins. We still go to see the sphinx in Egypt - a true homage to slavery and I suspect archeologist in the future would prefer to uncover such a piano as opposed to 1000 more old cars or TVs

after having seen a few shows, at one point I was sold on the idea of driving around in a restored, older car. But the truth is, my new, tiny run of the mill car has bluetooth, AC, 10 airbags, great fuel economy and is much more quiet and turns off when idle. Oh and starts reliably - I haven't had a single day of downtime in the 5 years that I own it. So much nicer for daily driving.

Please don't take that as my personal opinion, just a point for a good argument. If you have a nice family, raised and supported kids well into their adulthood, that is all very nice on a personal level, but globally what have you done? I by no means expect everyone to be the next Henry Ford or Edison, but if you're just living your life, you're just consuming planet's limited resources. Animals have lived like that for millions of years, sustainably, in a self balancing act. But I feel that humans are savvy enough to strive for more than just the daily grind and consumption, so that the world they leave behind is a better place, not worse.

The various media outlets seem to be overlooking the fact that he was retaliating for his own injury and near death experience?

Worth mentioning that given the current cheap money, a lot of the investment is leveraged, on credit or timed. So you don't have to have 2m sitting idle in a bank to lead a round.

as others are saying - you are correct - CAN is a shared bus so inherently insecure and physical access becomes a lot easier.

I'd argue that at this point you can still hire the self motivated people that you only need to lead not manage. 'Managing' programmers in general is hard enough, managing remote team in nigh iimpossible so don't do it, just remove the obvious roadblock, be aware of what everyone is up to (roughly) and don't interrupt, if not needed. I dare say the daily standups are not needed - just read the commits to see what's already happened and send an email or a wiki page to edit plan for next week, no need for a meeting involving everyone's full hour. Embrace async and don't manage things that you don't need to.

A related example is Zuckeberg charity - they simply moved some of their wealth to a charity but retain full control on how it's spent, it's just tax free now. http://fortune.com/2015/12/02/zuckerberg-charity/

The biggest concern I have with this is that it promotes what's already popular to the top.

This means Blockchain and crypto are there and I doubt that's the most valuable thing you can learn this year.

Well one arrives at such silly average because some have 0 commute and others have very long ones. Ever since we settled as a species, there was no commute to speak of - farming, merchants, blacksmiths all pretty much lived where they worked. Commuting to an office is recent invention and was perhaps necessary before internet, but in my view it feels a bit archaic now, and a waste of time. There is social aspect of course, so if you want social interactions, I'd say they should be deliberate and not some chance side effect of driving to a crowded city centre.

Is it normal that I don't have close friends and that I'm solitary?

Who cares what's normal, but your situation is quite common.

However I'd advise that you force your self to work on the social aspect and have relationships - friends, colleagues, enemies is all good as long as you invest some time in that. One good outcome is in high school you can have sex with your peers - other young people, something that is illegal in the USA to do when you become older.

In most cases that setup does not absolve you from tax obligations where you live. I can see a benefit in setting up a business or branch in EU in general, if you have customers in EU. Otherwise why Estonia specifically?

how is writing reliably to a queue any different from writing to a database? I'd say same principles should apply - journals and two stage commits as a way to verify writes?

said no programmer ever ;)

I can only work remote, for a variety of reasons - what are they? With a visa or some other arrangements you could work non remotely first, which would equip you better to working remotely later in your career. I am 100% remote now, but I believe the first few years non remote taught me a few thing about corporate culture and politics which are hard to guess from far away. If you gel with company culture well, that really helps, remote work or not.

If you start remote first, I don't think you have a good chance of picking up those subtle, soft things

I've found out about it mid-December from social media contacts looking for hints.

I did the first few then life and work got in the way and I am finally catching up to it.

I also find that Python is an excellent choice for such ad hoc data explorations

While I agree with you, especially with the benefit of the hindsight, I used to spend many CPU cycles on SETI, looking for freaking aliens.

It's pretty hard to objectively judge what's a waste of energy.

My biggest concern is that a lot of crypto mining was and still is coal powered. I'd probably care less if it was all solar powered.

The current gold price is a combination of industrial usage value (price higher than coal as it's more rare) and perceived value, but the difference is not that huge compared to other metals, so I would say the goldbugs are not completely wrong.

Well if they don't like the new job, they may be posting again.

Clearly not an ideal marketplace - I see lots of companies like GitLab doing repeat posts in who's hiring and this thread shows that there is a lot of waste in the system