All the responses here just highlight how unreasonable technologists can be. Business and work is about trade-offs and so many on hacker news seem to be absolutists. Congrats on hitting your deadline and putting yourself out there; these are the sorts of decisions that I wish more hackers would have to actually make to realise the reality of the world.
Yes, that's exactly the point - it seems to be sarcasm that suggests the writer believes it's immoral to say the person who tragically died did anything wrong in this situation. The poster above thus wonders whether an electrician who tragically dies after making a mistake in their job should also be held entirely blameless.
I know I'm spending too long on HN when I start panicking about every day normal things to consume or do incase it poisons me, causes cancer, gives me alzheimer's or something else that makes top page posts. The health-nut side of HN is what lets it down and makes it a depressing place to hang out in.
Just eat a balanced diet and exercise. Don’t smoke, drink, or do drugs (if you do then do them sparingly). Everything else won’t move the needle and should be mostly ignored - someone is selling you something or gaining a click.
Luckily for the American health care industry people ignore that advice and do their very level best to oppose it at every turn.
I've never seen a particularly good definition for "balanced diet", and many communities that are super healthy have diets that don't look balanced at all.
the problem is these submissions are incentivized to scare the shit out of you, but not to be honest about “how worried you should be about it”. this heavily applies to MSM stories as well.
once i understood that, i got more aggressive about hiding this kind of content, or taking it with a huge grain of salt.
I worked in construction prior to tech and yes, the General Contractor or Foreman may not know the latest in framing or concrete technology, or even be good at specific tasks like drywall. But they understand the job, can do it if need be, but most importantly can judge the quality.
That's specifically software--which is his background. However, while I have no doubt he had and has some high-level familiarity with finance, marketing, and other functions that reported to him as CEO, he probably didn't have the level of deep operational knowledge of those areas that the people hired specifically for those roles did.
I have no doubt he could learn them. He's a smart guy. But the idea that he could drop into any job at Microsoft and excel on Day One is silly.
> Well, as a thought experiment; should the CEO of the company know how to do every function he or she hires for within their business?
No, but they should at least know how to do the job of their SVPs or VPs in their absence. In fact, many times when the SVP departs, their reports are expected to report to the CEO directly.
But if the job of the SVP and VP includes being able to do the job of the people that report to them then doesn’t this require the CEO to ultimately know how to do everything?
There is a depth first and a breadth first traversal aspect to it. Which is why a skilled CEO, presents themselves as a backstop, but simultaneously starts the hunt for a new SVP or an interim SVP.
But even appointing someone new for that role will require the CEO to understand that role very well. They truly can't appoint someone competent in that role without being competent themselves.
A DFS and a BFS both visit every (connected) node, haha.
I don’t think the original comment was saying that it is crucial for somebody to fill in for their reports (that might be true, but it is a different aspect). Rather, they were saying that the manager’s skill set must include the skill-set of the person being managed, in order to evaluate the latter.
I think there’s some truth to this, but there’s also obviously got to be some attenuation factor going on, otherwise we get this “visit every node” problem.
The suggestion of firing every manager that can’t run the test suite seems like it ignores this attenuation factor. It might be a set of command line scripts with funky in-house flags. But they should be able to draw some some of useful conclusions from the output IMO.
No, the CEO needs to know how to clone the repo, read and write E2E test code (basically usage examples), and run the “make test” or whatever to check their (the managers’) E2E tests are running and which properties pass or fail. Otherwise, the “non technical” manager is unwilling (not incapable…just too lazy) to understand the definition of “done” so they’ll be clueless about if the thing is working or not, they’ll be forced to play telephone to add a simple test expectation and then they need to have a meeting to beg someone else to write a function. That’s a leech, not a leader!
As a male, I can relate to living simply, but as a male living with my gf, there's no way I'd be in a relationship too long without some investment in modern luxuries!
no partner, but if I had one she'd be more like me rather than a conumerist princess, I also don't really feel the desire and the time to be in a relationship
I spent 6 years trying everything to solve reflux. I am a relatively fit 35 year old. I tried antacids, PPIs, H2 blockers and these just exacerbated the issue over time.
Eventually after much reading I read that without enough stomach acid, food backs up and causes reflux. It also causes the LES to not close properly. So I started taking Betain HCL and Digestive Enzymes (Solgar ones) before I eat and I can't tell you what a difference it's made. It's so amazing. I get 0 symptoms and I also feel so much better generally.
I honestly encourage you to try this. The medication for this stuff just has it the totally wrong way around. I can't believe this stuff is given out as one of the most commonly prescribed drugs in the UK at least.
I have a vague recollection that I was tested well over a decade ago and the result was that I have really mild stomach acid and/or not enough of it.
Basically if I eat stuff that digests slowly (fats and red meat), it takes my stomach a LONG time to actually break it down and move it forward. If I shove more stuff in there before it's done -> bad time.
I lost over 10kg during the worst episodes in about 9 months, I lived pretty much on rooibos tea (even green tea irritated my reflux), white rice and mildly flavored chicken.
Sounds really awful. Sorry to hear that! I wonder if this would have happened many years ago before modern agriculture and all the awful stuff that is present in our foods. I wonder if our environments are causing this lack of stomach acid / enzymes in people. This can’t surely have been happening when we were hunter / gatherers!
There are theories about how our modern wheat for example is vastly different from what it was 50+ years ago, something in the structure has changed so that there's "more" wheat, but it's just fluff - all the good stuff has been modified out to get the maximum weight of wheat at the cost of quality.
That implies might be a genetic disposition which would also imply anyone suffering today maybe shouldn’t be here if that mutation died out. I dunno, I’m a software engineer not a geneticist but I just enjoy the thought experiment
Not GP but I also have severe reflux - I've had it years. It's been really bad lately.
In related information I've found that fortified yogurt helps not only my reflux but also improves my mood. But it never seemed to be enough to actually solve the reflux problem.
Just ordered the supplements. Truly hope this solves the problem.
Whoa I just realized that I have a hiatal hernia too. I didn't realize that's what that was. I hope this is a day of solutions!
I know this sounds like a hack, but did you ever try taking some apple cider vinegar in water after eating? It's a lifesaver for me, near-instant cure for lack of stomach acid. Has to be the ACV "with mother", the cloudy stuff in it. Maybe no longer relevant if you're already taking Betain HCL (I thought that was a medication at first lol), but I definitely have to mention it in case you may have a natural medication-free alternative available that you may not have tried. Don't take my word for it or anything though, def read up on it if you're interested about it!
Yeah it’s the same mechanism ! The ACC stimulates the stomach to produce loads of acid and enzymes which it is lacking. The supplements I use are basically the same except the enzymes themselves are provided in the form of the digestive enzyme tablets and the Betail HCL with Pepsin is what stimulates the acid production!
I use apple cider vinegar whenever I get acid reflux. It works but often only for about an hour. Perhaps I should start doing it proactively whenever I eat. How much water do you mix it with? I just take a tablespoon of concentrated vinegar.
I had symptoms of low stomach acid for a while also.
Six months into COVID I hadn't experienced anything at all on what would have been 1-2 monthly flare ups. Once I had the realization I put it all together.
When COVID hit I had restarted taking a multivitamin and some extra iodine (which is involved in stomach acid production, as it turns out). I had thought my diet was pretty healthy, but as it turns out there was something I wasn't getting enough of. I still don't know what. But I keep up with it and I don't have symptoms.
I'll have to try this! I have reflux or heartburn daily if I don't do things right. A few things help me.
1) Don't have an empty stomach. My stomach goes crazy.
2) Don't overeat. Large portions cause it nearly every time.
3) Don't eat anything within 2 hours of bed time.
So, basically, if I eat small meals often I am usually fine. And then there are trigger foods like too much coffee and alcohol and red sauces, and garlic and other things that cause indigestion.
I promise you, I had all this. If you try these supplements I mentioned you will never think about it again. The downside is you end up putting on some weight whilst you get over the fun of being able to eat whatever you want again :)
That's very interesting that you ramp up the personal marketing via your website when searching but bring it down again afterwards. I think that's a really good approach. My instinct is that this would reduce the chances that people would see your website and come to you with potentially more interesting or aligned work but in my 15 years with my website up and running I think this has happened to me so little that it's not worth worrying about.
These species level threat things like this and climate change could be solved overnight if you just removed the concept of money. It’s mad how we hold our economic system above these sorts of possibilities. I don’t have a utopian answer to how to balance things in the right way but it’s just interesting to me that we have the material capability to do this stuff, but because of a monetary system that isn’t physically real (but is in reality) we can’t.
Coordinating how we expend resources, and on what, is always the biggest problem, by far, and that would be true under any system I can think of. Money is a very imperfect solution to the problem, but that doesn’t mean money is the the problem.
A lot of people’s thinking about these issues essentially starts with “assume a benevolent dictator.” That’s a big assumption!
Fewer gripes about capitalism; more grooming of the global bug tree.
The nice thing about money driving human behavior is we have a functioning society while still maintaining most personal freedoms.
Money sucks but it is an effective way to trick our self-interested brains into creating value for society. It leverages our own greed to make us hard-workers. It is a way better lever than fear or compassion.
> Money sucks but it is an effective way to trick our self-interested brains into creating value for society.
The only reason why I'm not creating more value for society (I have some social side-projects that never get my entire attention) is money. My NGO self-funded projects cannot compete with my salary working for a shit startup producing no value for society whatsoever but burning through VC money.
Ok let’s just ignore the money aspect then. In this case we are talking about radiation shielding, which is made from metals that have to be mined at great environmental cost and then smelted with lots of energy input. That environmental impact is not worth mitigating such an unlikely risk.
For one thing, if you try to get rid of money, you'll quickly end up inventing it again just to manage complicated distributions of resources. You might not call it money, but it will acquire all the same connotations.
For another: Consider what happens if you try to get rid of money, then run a major grid-hardening project. Who builds/works in the factories you need? Why do they do that instead of writing poetry or going fishing? How do they eat? Someone has to grow the food, right? Apply the same questions recursively.
We've had one big shot at trying to solve those problems without a market. It was called Communism. Didn't work so well. And they still had money.
>We've had one big shot at trying to solve those problems without a market. It was called Communism. Didn't work so well. And they still had money.
That wasn't communism, they they tried to call it that. That was "authoritarian socialism", an authoritarian single-party system with central planning. It had money just like any other economy; the big difference is that central government planners decided how the market would run, what would be made by factories, etc. It failed largely because central planning doesn't work very well. In theory, maybe if some smart AI were doing the central planning with plenty of feedback, it could work really well, but the way the Soviets tried it, it was a big failure.
Still, your point stands: the system still needs money. As long as individuals can make their own individual choices about things, they need money as an exchange of value and way to limit resource consumption. Otherwise, what's to stop a few mentally ill people from grabbing everything off the store shelves for themselves? Or to keep a large fraction of people from taking too much. leaving nothing for everyone else?
I don’t disagree at all. I was mindful to say that I definitely don’t have a utopian solution. I just meant that if the world really needed to do something we had the capability to do, but not the money or be wiped out, I would like to think we did it instead of just saying bye to the planet because we don’t have enough overdraft :’)
You seem to think the money supply is fixed. It's not. We saw this just recently with Covid: governments simply printed more money to give out as assistance payments. That's exactly what would happen in your doomsday scenario: the government orders stuff to be built/done, then prints up the money to pay people to do it, then worries about inflation later after the crisis is over.
In fact there are about 750,000,000 people alive today with no access to electricity. That's not to say they could all live off the land if society falls apart, but someone's going to survive.
