Hacker News Reader

GFischeron Someone is pretending to be me

That's actually one of my jobs, I'm a liaison-PM between a Canadian company and developers situated in Nepal, Egypt, etc.

I'm in Uruguay so my timezone works out for all involved.

GFischeron Jean-Luc Godard has died

I've seen plenty of ads for a "classics" streaming service, not what I'm interested in, but they seem to be out there.

GFischeron What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?

I'm in Uruguay, South America, and we're on the East Coast timezone and IP laws are friendly, and if you hire as a contractor, there's no labor law issues.

Of course, people realized that and there's 0 unemployment in IT, however, there's still a long way to go before we get to the Bay Area salaries - 6 figure salaries are only for the top 1% devs and only working for the USA and usually short term contracts, but a decent developer makes north of 50.000 dollars a year which is a pretty good salary here.

GFischeron How Hong Kong became a police state

I've seen how local media manipulates things here in Latin America, so I'm not surprised from the inside it looked good, looking from the outside it seems like the democracy was eroded / destroyed, with Cuban-style elections where the candidates are appointed by the Chinese government.

GFischeron Ask HN: Trillions of new Dollars and Euros have been printed – where are they?

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/081415/under...

Basically, banks are the ones that get the money.

The Federal Reserve buys Treasuries or other financial papers with the "new" money.

Banks can then turn around and loan that money.

So, institutions and individuals in good terms with banks are then which benefit from the "new" money (if you get easy loans, you can get real estate, buy stocks, etc...)

GFischeron We will never have enough software developers (2020)

In some countries, like mine (Uruguay), it's illegal to call yourself an engineer unless you are one, but the local university does hand software engineer titles.

I call myself a senior software developer (I'm not an engineer, I did went to university but didn't graduate from that career, switched to an Information Systems degree instead).

GFischeron We will never have enough software developers (2020)

My brother is a doctor, while he works insane hours, it seems there's a LOT of downtime between jobs, where he's technically "on the clock" but reads ebooks or watches series or socializes.

I technically work 12 hours as well as a developer, but actual work might be 6 hours or less, and it's way less stressful than a doctor.

GFischeron We will never have enough software developers (2020)

My brother in law lived in Austria, he was paid similarly to any other job there, there was an impassable ceiling, so he moved to San Francisco and makes 10x.

I looked for software development jobs in Spain, and they pay even less than in my native Uruguay.

And forget about six figures unless you're in the US, England, Switzerland or Australia or a top company in Europe.

GFischeron Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

What do you mean "for a while", Argentina has currency controls TODAY.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-25/argentina...

GFischeron Another stablecoin loses peg – DEI team working to restore the peg

In Argentina and Uruguay, all the time, not a corner case.

"Corralito" is unfortunately a common use word.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corralito

GFischeron Not a single car was sold in Shanghai last month

Chinese vaccines are slightly less effective, but they do work, you can check the numbers in my country, Uruguay.

Pfizer has outperformed Sinovac, but it still provided protection.

GFischeron Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments

You're blaming Capitalism, it isn't great, but the problem is that in the United States healthcare system you have Capitalism without Free Market, you have "crony"/rent-seeking/regulatory-capture Capitalism.

You can get a rheumatologist TODAY if you're willing to pay (quite a bit) more (at least here in Uruguay). THAT is free-market capitalism.

If you don't have money, you'll have to wait 2-3 months (quite a lot less than what you're saying), and you'll have it for free (here). That's socialism.

In crony capitalism, you have the worst of both worlds...

GFischeron Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

I have coworkers in Dallas, and they bought for relatively cheap (about 1/3 of what is being mentioned for other places in the USA in this thread).

So I guess it works.

GFischeron How Putin’s Oligarchs Bought London

If you're from Venezuela or Argentina you buy real estate in Uruguay.

Check Punta del Este.

GFischeron Spotify, Discord Are Down as Outages Disrupt Service

I wonder if it's related to the Azure outage.

GFischeron Britain to start approval process for Rolls-Royce mini nuclear reactor

Maybe in the US. Here in Uruguay it would definitely power a million homes. I suspect it'll power a million homes in Europe as well (most are "energy-efficient apartments").

According to an article, an US citizen consumes twice as much electricity as a German, 3 times a Spaniard and 7 times a Uruguayan...

https://www.elobservador.com.uy/nota/-cuanta-energia-electri...

GFischeron Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4

People realized it. It was companies that were resisting it. I remember looking for remote work pre-pandemic and it was WAY harder, now it's more a default.

I'm in Uruguay, South America, so the pandemic has been an incredible boon to me. I even got a remote team management position !

GFischeron Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4

I have a corner cubicle with a view, I don't want to go back to the office anyways.

GFischeron Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

VRBO made 2 billion in bookings, which is impressive but still less than one fourth of AirBnb.

GFischeron Ask HN: Best hosted alternative to Google Workspace for email?

I've been using Zoho for several years and I've been very happy. Only had 1 major outage (which was a bummer, to be honest) and I think they've improved their redundancy and reliability since.

GFischeron Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

I think forming connections is very important... but it should be encouraged independently from working at the office or remotely.

I work remotely for a U.S. company with coworkers from Ethiopia and other countries.

Pre-pandemic, they flew me to the U.S. and I met the U.S. and Indian coworkers, and we went to a conference together. It was a HUGE help - but I think it's something that can be done a few times a year or even once a year, doesn't need to be an everyday thing.

GFischeron Yes, I can connect to a DB in CSS

Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie.

Their book, "The C Programming Language" was a must read bible decades ago.

GFischeron Google Drive flags file only containing “1” for copyright infringement

Yep, I've been in a position to choose cloud providers before, and I wouldn't touch Google with a ten foot pole (it's basically AWS or Azure in my mind).

I'm already unhappy with the level of control they already have on my life (Gmail and Android).

GFischeron Ask HN: Gmail account security

The YouTube thing is false as of a few years ago. If you have noticed, they've crammed it full of ads.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/27/22596592/google-q2-2021-r...

I think it's projected to earn 20 billion this year.

GFischeron Tell HN: The disparity between employees and international contractors

You're making a lot of money... if it's Uruguay, it's unfortunate but yeah, most coverage excludes oncological drugs and public healthcare is also very backed up.

Not sure if you'd have a better outcome in the US, if anything you'd be WAY poorer.

A friend whose wife had cancer ended up going to a Sao Paulo clinic.

GFischeron Ask HN: Dealing with wrist pain / tendonitis as a developer

Yep, that should help after it subsides. I was hoping for some more immediate tips.

GFischeron Ask HN: Dealing with wrist pain / tendonitis as a developer

I will, and more general exercises (the usual New Year's resolution haha)

GFischeron Ask HN: Dealing with wrist pain / tendonitis as a developer

It's more tendons than the wrist. But I definitely have to do something to have better posture.

GFischeron Remote work will break the US monopoly on global talent

Argentina did that, their brain drain was INSANE, we had thousands immigrate to Uruguay.

The holdovers jump through all kind of hoops, many involving crypto.

GFischeron Remote work will break the US monopoly on global talent

The salary gap does decrease, here in Uruguay companies are paying what would have been thought of as insane just a few years ago (still 50% below US rates, but way way higher any other job), and we're getting thousands of people immigrating from all over Latin America and even Spain.

It does make providing to local companies much less desirable.