mdip · HackerLangs

2 months agodiscuss

This is all an interesting read from where I sit -- I worked for a global multi-national telecom that spun off from the 1996 deregulated local carrier, was bought up by a dot-com bust company, promptly went bankrupt and was sold off various times.

So ... I understand bad morale and 10% layoffs. We went from 25,000 employees (1998-1999) at peek to under 3,000 (2004ish?). I did 17 years of (at least) 10% cuts company-wide, often larger in IT, every 6-12 months.

They're going to have a problem hiring, that's certain. They seem very unconcerned with that both with the drumbeat of layoffs and the forced spyware nonsense.

I remember when things were at the worst at my company, HR did a company-wide "engagement" survey. Being in IT at the time, we worked closely with them to ensure as close to complete participation as possible. The theory behind it was that each employee (anonymous) would receive a ranking, bubbled up to segments within the company (less anonymous) and specific managers.

The reason for the rush to get this out was fraud fears. I guess that number goes low enough to represent something near "an employee who feels morally obligated to destroy the organization", but the number of employees who fit in the range of "so disengaged from the company that they are probably engaging in fraud/theft" in the trial phase was an order of magnitude higher than the team had estimated.

When things get that bad, it's tough to recover. In certain locations we had an impossible time hiring most positions -- we had a toxic reputation in a high-tech location with a lot of job openings; we were often the last choice of the worst candidates no matter what the position was.

mdip

2 months agodiscuss

You make a good point.

I'm "neurodivergent" but when it comes to empathy/sympathy, I tend toward the over-sensitive side rather than oblivious (as does my son, who is diagnosed with ASD Type 1).

I don't take any issue with that being used in this context, though. I mean, I wouldn't really in any context as long as the person writing it isn't intending malice -- they're just words, people can misuse/abuse them -- but specifically this context. "Neurodivergent" covers a lot of ground, but in reference to Mr. Zuckerberg, nearly all of us[0] pictured one of two things: Data (Star Trek) or Data with Borg accessories attached. Which you chose largely depended on your opinion of him, but both had an android character who has no ability to feel emotions or understand the emotions that others feel.

... and since good communication largely rests on people's understanding of your message, I think OP's word choice was largely sound. :)

[0] As in those of you who, like me, have never been in the same city at the same time as the guy so we know "him" based on what we read about him.

mdip

3 months agodiscuss

It's kind of always been a wild time to be alive in this industry.

You covered people washing out of CS degrees and people getting degrees and then not, ultimately, doing something in the CS field.

But what you see in our field that you don't see as often, elsewhere (or -- at all, depending on regulations) is people who ... (1) washed out of the degree because it was competing with their lucrative career as a software developer (or -- more rarely, successful entrepreneur), (2) got a degree in textual biblical studies and had a long career in software development[0] or, you know, other unrelated degree, (3) none of the above, even sometimes incomplete High School education (also[0]).

I've been hiring developers for almost 30 years, now, at a variety of employers -- one global multi-national telecom, one "we make a lot of the products other companies pass off as their own work" IoT/small shop, and a couple of video conference/remote-enabling service shops. There are far more degrees out there, today, than there were 30 years ago. My experience, however, is that the necessity of a degree at the companies I've been employed at has gone down. I suspect that's because I worked for "the giant multinational", first, and all of the rest have been startup or smaller/younger shops (typically 5-10 devs, but no more than ~20 at peek). The giant multi-national, though, during my 17 years, changed (early on) to "or equivalent experience" while rarely hiring someone without a degree for most IT positions to routinely interviewing and hiring people without regard for their degree (and focusing on "code you've written" over "whiteboard exercises", too) while still generally favoring candidates with them. At the best shop I've worked for, it was an even mix of "none", "some", "unrelated", "+bootcamp", "CS degrees" and filled with extremely competent, well-paid, developers.

It's a whole lot harder to get the experience required to have "equivalent experience" without university/internships/the like, but getting the degree without any relevant work experience along the way isn't a good way to go, either.

Around the late 90s (until the bust) and then again a few years later, everyone was pushing kids into CS degrees and the most "interesting" aspect to many of those kids was the starting/long-term earnings against the cost of the 4-year degree. And while, personally, I think "anyone can do it", not "everyone will find it enjoyable to do" like I do.

I'm starting to believe that last part is far more rare than I think it is with my 18-year-old son mostly disliking his introductory computer programming class in High School[1]. I don't push "what I do" on them, just like my Dad didn't, but I expose them to it whenever I can (like my Dad -- kind of -- didn't). And I'll never forget when their Mom looked over at my screen and said "So ... is that what you do all day?", and I beamed "Yes" because it really is the most interesting thing in the world to me, and she said "Wow ... I think I'd kill myself."

[0] Ok, so that's a specific example of someone I know.

[1] Ultimately coming around at the end when his assignment was "make something you want to make."

mdip

7 months agodiscuss

Wow, yeah, I picked up one of these a few months before the new generation came out for $350. Everything shot up after that.

My son is using that card, today, and I'm amazed at everything that card can still power. I had a 5080 and just comparing a few games, I found if he used the SuperResolution correctly, he can set the other game settings at the same as mine and his frame-rate isn't far off (things like Fortnite, not Cyberpunk 2077)

There are many caveats there, of course. AMD's biggest problem is in the drivers/implementation for that card. Unlike NVidia's similar technology, it requires setting the game at a lower resolution which it then "fixes" and it tends to produce artifacts depending on the game/how high those settings go. It's a lot harder to juggle the settings between the driver and the game than it should be.

mdip

7 months agodiscuss

I feel deep gratitude to you for this, and the timing of your post. Thank you!

Seriously. I also feel like you're owed an apology for having had to write this in the first place.

I'm coming at "figuring out the Kitchen" for what is almost the first time in my life in I-wish-I-were-in-my-mid-40s[0] and I'm thinking "The Internet in the Early 00s was pretty good for that." And then I fire up a browser on desktop while making a grocery list and once you filter for "things that are obviously AI Hallucinations representing partial recipes", I'm met with one or all of the following: (1) Pages and pages and pages of obviously made-up nonsense anecdotes about the discovery of this magical, uh, air fryer grilled chicken marinade, (2) a pretty haphazard set of instructions that don't bother to include ingredients separated with pleasant units and conversions, but hide them throughout with quantities like "a few tomatoes" here, "an onion" there, (3) which doesn't seem to impact the 4.8 stars after hundreds of "user ratings.". (4) And rather than help these miserable imprecise, ingredient-less recipes with pictures of what "until moist and brown" might appear, you're going to show me a bunch of chopped ingredients in separated bowls that I don't have and then a picture of it finished, delicately decorated in whatever-or-another sauce, and "HEY, here's some lady who's cooking something unrelated to the recipe in this neat little video window I popped up for you! Let's watch the top of her head and this bowl of something on mute for a little while!"

Good God, man, it's like they've optimized the design to break people with ADHD. Some sites were so bad, it felt like "the actual recipe I was looking for" was obfuscated on the page like sketchy sites will hide the "actual Download button" somewhere unexpected and give you a big green "Download" button that leads to revenue. And that's not even getting into the weird bad on some of these AI-churn sites. I end up opening a notepad on the side and refactoring the things that seem like they might work from time to time, but I popped a few recipes in there, including a Chili recipe that "barely had any problems other than layout and annoying cooking lady videos" and just turned it into the perfect representation of that recipe.

I don't know what the original feedback was, but beyond how clear and organized laid out the recipe, here's what I saw as really useful little touches (I'm half wondering if some were even intended): (1) Besides my affinity for circled numbers, I lose my spot when referring to recipes so I like to print out the ones I really like, laminate them, and mark 'em up with the whiteboard markers I have for fridge notes as I go, you gave me a wonderful spot for that -- I'm so prone to re-read/second-guess where I'm at when I need to "put a bunch of things together at the last moment", that was the first thing I noticed, (2) Your highlighting did the same thing for making my grocery list (I DoorDashed it, today) -- it's so much more readable and "easy to find my spot" the way it appears on my desktop compared to any other site, (3) Because of your choice positioning, I can scroll down slightly and see the ingredients and all of the instructions without having to touch this thing, again, while I'm cooking if I use the tablet in the kitchen.

Oh, and thank you for making it just work in the browser. I hate using my phone for this kind of thing and I'm not even crazy about using my tablet for it.

[0] The backstory being unexpected, but very much desired, custody change led to me cooking for my children all of the time, including one who struggles with weight. I was blessed without that struggle, I eat "whatever" atrociously (not picky), and about what I burn, I'm under-weight and my blood work is perfect. One of my kids is identical, just not the one that sounds exactly like me :).

mdip

8 months agodiscuss

   > As a parent/carer you probably are much more motivated

No question. No teacher cares more about my child's education than I do.

Really, though, the biggest factor is just being their parent. When they're young, the vast majority of the time you can basically read their mind. When you're teaching your child, you almost instinctively know how well they're understanding things. I was never deliberate about it, I didn't look for things, I never had to. I was able to pace my delivery very tightly with their ability to consume and it was the most natural thing imaginable.

That, and having a class size of two, meant Home Schooling was "30-45 minutes Monday-Friday September to mid-April with generous vacations." And that's not "30-45 minutes but we also went to a museum, the library, co-ops (we did, briefly), and all kinds of other learning activities" (I'm sure I lied and said I did those things), that was 30-45 minutes, do some chores (we don't live on a farm, it's the same stuff most kids do), and play video games.

Parenting-wise, the only elements we were more strict with was we limited "watching a TV show or video content" to an hour (two, on occasion, for movies) a day ... and we were quite rigorous with that. But they could play pretty much any video game they wanted (within reason, but probably far less restrictive than most parents outside of Hacker News). And they didn't get mobile devices until 13 and 15. There was no reason. They had/have computers.

My goal was simply "to teach them at home better than they could get at school and to make them self-learners along the way." I wasn't looking for genius spelling bee winners.

They've been in Public School (since the start of HS for my son, 7th grade for my daughter) for four years. Those 30-45 minute sessions that -- not once -- involved taking a test resulted in them being straight-A students. The first test they took, a placement test, resulted in them landing in advanced classes.

They finish their home work at school (my son works way ahead because he's bored). They study for nothing outside of midterms and finals (and they only do that out of paranoia, it's not really needed).

The majority of the time they were Home Schooled, Mom and I were divorced (and it wasn't "amicable" for the majority of that, it was ... ugly). And while that was hard, actually home schooling the children was not. It was awesome. I'd have been a lot less stressed in the earlier years if I'd have known how easy it was.

It was "get good curriculum, follow it, don't move on until they understand it to what a teacher would grade an 'A'". You do the latter because you have to; anything else is debt and the only one who pays that debt is the you. Your kids will just sob through it. Outside of budgeting because you're likely down to one income, the rest was all upside.

mdip

8 months agodiscuss

   > It says something about a system dedicated to teaching children wen parents think they can do as well or better.

I home schooled my children up to High School (and they are very, very successful students). That statement, right there, was the reason, but there was no ambiguity involved. I absolutely knew I could have happier children who were natural self-learners who wouldn't struggle in school when that time came if I did it myself.

It took a lot of research on my end to get to that conclusion but I would have been just as good ignoring it and listening to the experience of a friend I made who home schooled all seven of her children, or talking to her kids. I did both; research led me to talk to her and her husband, talking to them confirmed I was making the right choice.

Though I am Christian, it had absolutely nothing to do with religion (we taught the same science everyone else received; no "the Earth is 15,000 years old" or whatever nonsense). I even think there's reasonable evangelical arguments to be made that Christians should put their children in traditional schools, so this wasn't a faith choice for me. I loved High School and I went to a large High School. So "bullying" and the like had nothing to do with it.

Had I not attended Public School, I probably wouldn't be doing what I love for a living and it was a couple of amazing teachers that went to bat for me, creating classes that didn't exist and letting me take HS classes while I was in Middle School, so when I say "I know I can do better" that's doesn't come with "because the public school system and the teachers are garbage." There's problems, there, for sure -- but my kids live in the #4 district and attend the #1 public High School in that district. It's a pretty fantastic school, the kids are friendly and I'm fine with it all around. I didn't think they'd do poorly regardless of how they were schooled, I just knew I could do better.

That's not arrogance; I think the vast majority of parents could do better.

It's because, as a parent, when they're young you can basically read their mind. That's an advantage a teacher doesn't get. You don't even have to "notice" that they're struggling or that they "know it cold and are bored", you just pace things on instinct and you deliver knowledge very close to the actual rate they can easily ingest it.

The other advantage that would be hard to replicate is class size. I had a class of two. Two different grades, but all that meant was my daughter got a preview of (and often just ended up learning completely) whatever she had to do and whatever her brother was learning and her brother got a review every day.

You can pretty much take out every other advantage of Home Schooling. Just those two result in a 6-7 hour whiteboard directed lesson and busy work time down to 45 minutes/child (really ... 30 most of the time). That also gave us a September to mid-April school year with generous vacations (otherwise we'd finish in February).

It wasn't my goal to make genius, spelling-bee winners, or to put them years ahead of public school students. The latter absolutely happened, but we were only ever doing a single grade per year in every subject with pretty formal home school curriculum. There was just a lot of extra time to screw around exploring things beyond the books.

I wanted them to learn better than they would in school and I wanted them to be able to be self-directed in learning. They are successful beyond my expectations in both areas.

They've been in Public School, now, for four years. My son hasn't taken work home from school in ... really ... four years. Homework is assigned, he just finishes it. My daughter is the same way. Outside of midterms and finals (out of fear/paranoia, not necessity), they do not touch schoolwork at home.

Despite not having taken a "real test" in their lives until enrollment, they placed in advanced classes. Despite them never receiving an independently graded assignment (or even one that had a grade written on it[0]), they both have a 4.0 GPA. My daughter had perfect scores in half of her classes last year.

They are happy kids who aren't stressed out at school (because those 45 minute daily sessions, apparently, covered a lot of ground -- my son still talks about things "he did in, like, 7th Grade, Dad!"

Really, though, forget all of the other reasons. It's worth doing it just for the relationship you form with your kids and that they form with their siblings. My teenagers don't act like teenagers. They act like happy young adults (because they are).

It wasn't hard. I did the majority of it with my ex- wife (through a high-conflict divorce and high-conflict early years ... that was hard ... worth it, though).

[0] You don't let your kids rack up debt by learning something less than very proficiently because you're the one that has to pay that debt when the later lesson comes that builds on that part, so yeah, they "got all As" in Home School ... because I don't like misery.

mdip

8 months agodiscuss

I appreciate you sharing -- specifically because my kids were Home Schooled until High School and attend Public High School, now.

I feel the same way about the value of early-years Home School and mainstream High School. Mom and I had agreed that we'd let them pick once they hit High School. That coincided with the end of the COVID lockdowns, so being lonely like everyone else, they picked Public School. Prior to COVID, I'd have put money on them remaining Home Schooled.

I did exactly the same things with my kids with regard to advanced math/science topics. Actual "sit down and learn time" was spent 80% on Math/Science and 20% on everything else. And I've found some things benefit being introduced way younger. Things like the theory of relativity are "accepted as fact" more easily when they don't stand in the face of 15-years of observation. It can be understood with cartoons and when the topic is studied -- in depth -- later, they're not having to start from "how, on Earth, does that make any sense?!"

mdip

8 months agodiscuss

I Homeschooled both of my children from birth to 7th and 9th grade, respectively. The state I live in had, at the time (might still), zero regulation around Home Schooling. I have met hundreds of home schooling families and children (as well as hired one), all wonderful people. A lot of them chose to do so for one or two common reasons (religion and learning disability seem, unscientifically, to be the most common).

I'm a bit of a unique case in that "it really should have been an unbelievable mess": this was done, almost entirely, while divorced from Mom. And we were not "amicable" through much of it. It was a decision we had both committed to before the kids were born and stuck with after the divorce. I have two children, not 4+ (maybe that's just my experience, but the first family I talked to about this had 7). I didn't do it for religious reasons, bullying reasons, "I hate teachers or public schools" reasons or because I wanted my children to win a bunch of spelling bees. I did it after researching options and concluding that I could educate my two children better than any other option available to them and I could do so without them spending all day in books. I believed I was taught arithmetic in a manner that made it harder for me to understand Algebra[0], and I didn't feel I was ever encouraged or otherwise directed "to learn skills and subjects on my own." The top two, though, were "I wanted self-learners" and I, my son and my daughter are diagnosed ASD (type 1); Mom probably is, too, but getting a diagnosis as an adult is combinations of difficult/pointless.

After the early years (probably 4th grade on, earlier for my youngest), the average Home School day became 45 minutes of book/traditional learning work (often less) from Home School curriculum, usually another 45 minutes of self-directed study and for the most part the rest of the day was for themselves to direct (with restrictions; video games were limited to creative and some other specific titles but our children had far more freedom than most). We did weekday only (with a lot of vacation) and September-April. There was simply no way to make the materials go any longer.

They did not take tests (at least, not in the way they're taken at school) until they took their first test in 7th and 9th grade. We, like most Home School parents, started off trying to "replicate school approaches" at home and discovered most of them exist because of schools. My favorite is "grades." If someone asked, "4.0". And they'd assume it's "because I'm Dad" and assume I'm grading lax. I'm not grading at all. We work on the material until it is learned above proficiently. And as a parent Home Schooling, that is the only path to success that doesn't involve misery because if you let them have a mulligan on something, it'll be built upon later and you and they will drown. You need grades in mainstream school, you need "pass/fail" with an "A" being the bar for passing in Home Schools.

I didn't admit most of this in the past, especially not the "45 minute" bit. I straight up lied about it to anyone who wasn't a Home School parent. I had family and friends actively discouraging me every single year that I did this. I admit it, now, because they're top students in their mainstream school and have been since day 1.

My children, like everyone else's, got lonely after the COVID lockdowns and we'd always told them they can decide what to do when my oldest reaches High School. It was sad, suddenly every kid is home but nobody's allowed to play together and even if they could, all of their peers were spending the whole day trying to replicate a classroom via video-calls. My kids were lonely, bored, and unhappy. The day-time Home School activities (that most people are completely unaware of) had been tried up for two years and didn't seem to be coming back. So we put them in Public Schools and lucked out that Mom was located the #4 district and the #1 High School in that district. It's been four years; my son is a Senior.

That first test taking experience landed them in accelerated courses. They started with and have continued to have a 4.0 GPA. They get the homework done at school. They might study for mid-terms and finals. My daughter, last year, I think had half of her classes with every single point earned. They've bested me in every imaginable way (I had a rocking 2.5 GPA in High School). They take school very seriously, but every year they've had a portion of the class that's been review from things we did in Home School.

If it seems unbelievable that I'd get these results on so little time, have a conversation with other Home School parents (assuming their children have some external validation to their education, otherwise we all lie). Consider that I have two children, not 20. You can basically read your own child's mind up until they reach their teens (much longer if they spend most of their time around you instead of peers at school). Being able to read your student's mind is an incredibly unfair advantage. It's not even that "you notice more quickly when you're going to slow or they're not understanding" it's that you anticipate it. I knew what parts of math I would have to slow down with for my son, they were different for my daughter (long division was daily fits with tears and all for a few weeks). Most of the time, with learning, there's a lot of burst/buffer/stall cycles and the sending and receiving end take a long time to figure out when one is in a sub-optimal state. We didn't do rigorous lesson plans (that's for keeping a class full of kids on the same page), we let them dictate how fast or slow we moved based on how much or little they struggle.

I hesitate to say "Just because we only spent 45 minutes in the books doesn't mean we didn't spend the rest of the day learning in other ways" but if you saw how a day was conducted, you'd conclude we didn't. My kids were enrolled in extra-curricular activities, but probably fewer than most mainstream school kids. They had weekly random activities that would be considered "field trips" in school. We were probably more strict than most parents with some things, because we could be: my kids received their first mobile phones at, I think, 13 and 15. We allowed no more than two hours per day of "watching a video, television show or movie." But (outside of inappropriate content) they were mostly unrestricted with which video games they could play and they played plenty (my daughter can slaughter me in just about everything, but I stopped playing for a decade while they were young). My daughter has taught herself to read music, guitar tabs and play Guitar, Bass, Piano and she sings. I played piano for 15 years and she's learned in a year what it took me five with formal lessons. She's taught herself to paint. My son is mini-me, computers, 3D printers, CNC, programming and any other electronic toy.

The reason I didn't do it for, though, turned out to be the reason I'm most thankful that I accepted the minor sacrifice: I wouldn't have had the arrogance to pray for the closeness and kind of relationship I have with my kids, today. I know my parents dreaded going to parent-teacher conferences. Those are my favorite!

[0] And, unintentionally favored an approach that ended up becoming Common Core math in my state, which is just loathed by parents ... which is too bad, because it worked very well for my own kids.

mdip

9 months agodiscuss

I believe this has a lot to do with the problem in my area. We have a bunch of disconnected sidewalks almost everywhere. They've started connecting them. There's more pedestrian traffic at some lights at some times of the day but it's nowhere near consistent.

Driving, especially during commute, becomes an exercise of muscle memory for most of us. We are used to what we see. All year long I might encounter a pedestrian at my most commonly encountered intersections once a year. Most drivers are on auto-pilot, they're used to looking for cars, if people aren't abundantly obvious, they're missed.

They've started connecting sidewalks around me. Foot traffic has tripled as a result. Still, that means I encounter a pedestrian three times a year? That's not going to improve exposure enough to make anyone specifically look any more frequently. It's going to just create more opportunities for people to get hit. And that's what's happened.

mdip

2 years agodiscuss

Anyone keeping current with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed got a update...downgrade. Prior to `zypper dup --no-allow-vendor-change` I had 5.6.0, now I'm at 5.4.6.

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