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Cryptonic

134 karma · joined September 20, 2021

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Cryptonic··on Ask HN: How do you start a startup in your 30s when you have wife/kids/mortgage?
Well eventually you don't. It will hurt everybody involved if you have a day job and start something. Either your kids or your relationship until your wife leaves with the kids.

With some luck eventually you work out something at night times if you have the energy.

Skip TV. As soon as the kids are in bed go for it 2-4 hours, then watch a movie with your wife or have sex. Never forget: Happy wife happy life.

Cryptonic··on You can fire 80% of software engineers and the company will survive
Just about one aspect of your post: You must see the income in relation to living cost and benefits in high paying areas in the US.

As SDE employee in Germany you might earn 60k-120k. Where the end of the range is more often found in larger companies with about 10y+ of experience.

But you have health care that never puts you in a position where you have to decide between ruin or death of a family member, what can be done will be done even e.g. if you need brain cancer be burned out with a particle accelerator (no joke). You will never be in a position where you instantly are ruined when you loose your job (1y at 70% income and at least social care later). You are forced to have an extend of retirement solution/insurance, which costs, but at least you cannot mess it up or loose in when you are insolvent.

So this stuff I call the true freedom, not gun ownership or freedom of speech that goes to far. Being free of crushing fear about your family health and future risks, this is freedom in Germany and other European countries. - This freedom also reduces violence and crime you are confronted with a lot, because the motivation or psychic conditions for it are much less common.

So for me Germany is the perfect place for raising a family imo. But maybe yes there might be a reduced chance to become really rich here as a SDE

Cryptonic··on Elon Musk summons Twitter engineers to headquarters amid mass resignations
> Musk wrote on Twitter late on Thursday that he was not worried about resignations as “the best people are staying”.

"The best" by his definition are obviously the most obedient employees that are afraid of loosing a lousy long hour job with a tyrant boss and zero flexibility. Employees that are in fear about feeding their family.

Showing his real face, looks like this is how Musk wants his slaves - in fear. Once I thought this guy would save mankind's future, but a future saved by him might be a very ugly distopia, non that I wish for my children.

Cryptonic··on EU agrees to climate damage fund, energizing bogged-down COP27 talks
This means that tax payers will have to pay even more to mitigate destruction done for the gains of responsible industries...
Cryptonic··on Europe is seriously considering a major investment in space-based solar power
These thing will turn off their beam is the aim is off just a centimeter.
Cryptonic··on [dead]
How cares? As long as these elites and politicians attended it's a good thing. It would be laughtable if they all travel there with a bicycle just to make a point or to gain authority. The "only Jesus can tell me about climate" attitude sucks and is stupid.

I have a car, I buy clothes, I have a warm house in the winter, I travel on streets and so on. Even my morning toast is responsible for CO2 emissions. Still I want a future for my children and we need to decarbonize transport, heavy industry, the agrar sector, energy production, cooling and warming and so on.

Cryptonic··on The truth is paywalled but the lies are free (2020)
This article was free... Just saying.
Cryptonic··on Elon Twitter Texts
There is a difference between free speech and lying to the masses with carefully constructed fake evidence or based on reputation.

Stuff like Russia Today or troll/disinformation armies and bots at work are not amusing. It has nothing to do with free speech, it's just dangerous for democracy, freedom and our children.

Cryptonic··on Qatar intelligence operation against FIFA officials
And now tell me again we should not get rid of the fossil fuel industry - or at least weaken them significantly by not buying their black dirt and having alternatives.

If they do things like this for soccer fun because they are bored in their desert... Imagine what they do and try on politicans, scientists and other individuals for their other interests. Imagine what they are willing to do regarding the spread of well designed FUD and FLICC disinformation about climate science. Imagine how much money that you pay for fuel or energy is pumped into influencing the masses. Imagine the effect on the life of your children and grand children.

Cryptonic··on Common misconceptions about Germany's energy transition
Great debunking. I'm from Germany and I have never experienced a blackout since the early 90s.

The facts about the energy transition are true too. But also to mention is that due to strong fossil industry lobbying and some conservative and/or neo-liberal politicians it was slowed down a lot. Mostly these get their legitimation and votes with the same kind of misinformation as mentioned in the article. FUD and FLICC often work on people that are not willing to make their homework; and sadly not many are. Even academics are not immune.

Cryptonic··on In conservative states, people die younger
Well I think with live better he means, go to church on Sunday, say aweful things about homosexual and people of color afterwards. Then after a bit of gun polishing, they drink a beer with a friend and discuss how some politician is a Nazi because he/she wants to preserve nature for future generations. After that they write an email to the local school, to take the evil Harry Potter books out of the library once and for all. A perfect day.
Cryptonic··on What do longtermists want?
Well my life, the life time of my children and their's. Also my friends and other family. To preserve living conditions for this would be long term for me.

This time span is much more important that quarterly reports or political elections.

Of course if we do not fuck up as a species (climate, war, etc.) and fail in this century, more humans will be born over the next few centuries than ever existed. These unborns have no voice. They inherit what we do with this planet and our society. Ethically I would say, to preserve their living conditions is the far long term and should also be considered.

Cryptonic··on Ask HN: Where would you feel proud to work?
Health Care Tech, like Siemens Health or Philips
Cryptonic··on The rise of working remotely and the need for skill guilds
Discord? Reddit?
Cryptonic··on Feedback Needed on a Mobile App Idea
Sounds like a good idea if it really does it's job. But also be aware it's not a money making app. I could imagine my younger self to use it but not if it costs money.

Also be aware it sounds like an aweful lot of work to get info on all majors in all universities and also find a way to categorize them for better searching. Even harder it will be to keep it up to date.

So if an app like this is your hearts desire and you want to invest a lot of time in service for the community, go for it.

Another question I must ask, why should it be an app? Sounds like a great idea for a blog where you do blog posts one week after another, focusing on advertising one major and where it could be studied each time.

Cryptonic··on German coalition divided over sale of port terminal stake to China’s Cosco
German here. It feels like our politicans are just selling our future for "access to markets". Gas pipelines, this terminal, strategic companies, IP and knowhow. Everything for access to markets.

Fine as long as these deals are not made with people who never hold their promises.

I will never understand this.

Cryptonic··on Why are there so few dead bugs on windshields these days?
I think it might be the same disinformation scheme as the climate science "The individual must/can fix it" - No policy must force industries to find other ways to make a profit with agriculture. There are natural ways to deal with insects and unwanted plants.
Cryptonic··on Why are there so few dead bugs on windshields these days?
I think it's a fantasy of the elites. There is no planet B. Not in the time frame we talk about. By far.
Cryptonic··on Why are there so few dead bugs on windshields these days?
Fun fact. In Germany this decline is measured in nature reserves.

The petrochemical pesticides play a big roll.

Just forbid them.

Cryptonic··on Remote employees are working less, sleeping and playing more, Fed study finds
Lol clickbait a bit. I assumed the article is about me actually working less, but it isn't. It's actually pro remote work.
Cryptonic··on Google censors autocomplete. Try it out yourself
I thought it's disinformation for the many who don't try out, but it's true.

On bing autocomplete works there's are a lot of hits for selensky panama papers.

If it's censored I would not know why. It's nothing unusual. Every celebrity, politician or simply rich guy is in the panama papers. Avoiding tax is a sport for rich people and huge companies. Almost nobody went to jail. Actually it's kind of legal. Taxes are for middle class to pay to be honest.

Cryptonic··on Ask HN: What does your typical Saturday look like?
1. Pack my equipment and drive to the park

2. Fencing (HEMA) in the park with my friends

3. Going to the zoo (or similar) with my family in the afternoon

4. Play with the kids while Mommy is cooking

5. Bring kids to bed (Mommy with baby currently)

6. Finally time to do more daddy stuff, practicing guitar, programming or play D&D online

7. Like to a Scifi audio book in the bed

8. Sleep

Cryptonic··on Why Mastering Language Is So Difficult for AI
Oh yes and it can be annoying. Especially bad it is for any other Language than English. Every evening me and my children have problems like this: "Alexa spiele Paw Patrol Folge 67 auf Spotify" "OK Paw patrol Folge 122 auf Spotify wird abgespielt..." "ALEXA STOP!!1"

I have no accent or such, plain standard German,same for my wife and Kids - Alexa drives us crazy with wrong understood episodes and sometimes titles.

Cryptonic··on Want to learn Linux but scared to damage system
Work on it in a VM. And if you manage to damage it either use a backup copy of your system image or learn to repair it.
Cryptonic··on Luxury Media
And still I don't waste paper and come to HN every day instead.
Cryptonic··on Ask HN: Inherited the worst code and tech team I have ever seen. How to fix it?
To be honest. I would run off. This is the kind of hell where nobody wants to work. Where only "experts" know how things work and how to expand or fix things. It will secure their job but will make yours hell.

You personally will gain no knowledge there, just that your codebase is hell.

You cat try to convince the management of creating a new gen implementation. Not a rewrite. New software, that can fulfill customer needs better. Compete better, is safer and better to extend to do all this in the future.

One thing you can do though is to immediately set up modern practices. SCM, Code Review, CI, Tests (most of the code might not be unit testable in this state, but some tests at least) - This way you can see what others do when they add if fix something and learn better (SCM, Reviews), make changes and know that you did not break the whole thing (Tests) and have CI to at least ensure the tests run and everything works and it will glue all together.

Good luck

Cryptonic··on What it takes to make a game by yourself
Great advice, wish I knew that earlier in my life. I mean the start small and finish experience. I have so many ambitious abandoned projects, I even lost track xD
Cryptonic··on Notes: Fast note-taking app, open-source, without Electron, built in Qt C++
It's not much effort, a few days and it runs if you start from 0. I usually do all my Qt hobby projects for Win, Mac, Linux and Android (have no iPhone so I don't try). Just make sure you leverage QML's power for your GUI.

But eventually you have to rethink the user interaction and also deal a bit with layout changes for portray/landscape, manifest, permissions and stuff and stuff. Depends on your app how much work is here.

If mobile stuff gets complicated and you need to do a lot of custom things with device hardware maybe Felgo is worth looking at. It's a Framework for mobile development build on top of Qt/QML

Cryptonic··on Ask HN: Have tech salaries been stagnant for the past decade?
Yes I also though about a move from Germany to the Netherlands but looks like Software is nothing they see worth of paying more than 60-70k€. Here in Germany I earn 110k€, but this is close to the max you can expect as Software Developer. Maybe 120-140k€ if you are a high value asset that bunkers critical knowledge (My company calls it subject matter expert - basically somebody who wrote critical, but unmaintainable code for a decade or more).
Cryptonic··on The Ethereum merge is done
Potentially after the chip and supply chain crisis
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