Hacker News Reader

Melchizedekon Remains of the murdered Romanovs 'authentic'

Lenin's brother was tried and executed after trying to assassinate the Tsar. Comparing that to butchering children in secret is pretty rich.

Melchizedekon Ask HN: How do you focus at work?

Open plan offices for any kind of knowledge work should be made illegal since they are a health hazard. Private offices should be the norm.

This would benefit everyone as open plans destroy productivity. The "free market" (oligopoly) has obviously failed here so the state needs to step in.

Melchizedekon Remains of the murdered Romanovs 'authentic'

Nicholas II, his German-born wife and their five children were shot by Bolsheviks as a consequence of the October Revolution

They were not "shot as a consequence of". They were deliberately murdered under direct orders from Lenin, Dzerzhinsky, et al.

They were all brought together in a room and were shot and stabbed in a process that took about 20 minutes. Their bodies were then desecrated and disposed of.

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

Melchizedekon The impact of the ‘open’ workspace on human collaboration

I never claimed that everybody but software engineers are useless, I wrote that managers are mostly useless, as in you could reduce their number by perhaps 2/3 and you would get the same results (probably better).

Melchizedekon The impact of the ‘open’ workspace on human collaboration

Even worse for the managers, WFH would reveal how mostly unnecessary they are.

Melchizedekon Blocked by JSConf.eu Twitter account

It's the nature of these things that they are not done in the open so there is mostly lived experience and anecdotes, but if you think people like this https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/at-work/internal-emails... won't affect your career if you are not 100% Red Guard-level down with extreme PC-ism, then I think you are quite confused.

Melchizedekon Blocked by JSConf.eu Twitter account

Perhaps he shouldn't care about a conference but when the deranged people start affecting employment, then they have crossed a line. Then it's all out war.

They should be ostracized, shamed, fired and barred from employment. We should prevent hiring anybody who shows any sign of belonging to the PC-brigade. (Make no mistake - they are already doing this to their perceived "enemies", and not just based on opinions but even sex and ethnicity.)

We should make companies understand the incredible damage these people can cause.

Melchizedekon Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America

It's not just the welfare state that makes this possible, it's maybe more so the fact that (as far as I understand) Germany has a functioning housing market, and Berlin especially is very cheap for such a big city.

In many parts of Europe housing costs would have killed you.

Melchizedekon The state of type hints in Python

The most appropriate languages for ML should really be functional first, statically typed languages like OCaml or F# or maybe Scala.

The problem might be that many people doing ML don't really know how to program beyond a basic level, and at first glance a language like Python seems "easier". But they get by anyway since the difficult part of ML is often not really the programming as such, and if your program is just a 100 line script calling Tensorflow then any language can work, however annoying it may be.

Melchizedekon The state of type hints in Python

If you want the type to be more specific than float, you can create a more specific type.

Melchizedekon The Machine Fired Me

Also read the Unabomber Manifesto (Industrial Society and its Future). Technology enslaves us.

But it can also liberate us, and we should seek to maximize the liberating force of technology and try to disrupt the enslaving tendency.

Melchizedekon Railway-Oriented Programming (2015)

I would recommend this library https://github.com/louthy/language-ext for functional style programming in C#.

Melchizedekon CoreRT – A .NET Runtime for AOT

For coding for fun I use F# in VS Code with Ionide. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/fsharp/get-started/g...

If you can't use F# at work I really like this https://github.com/louthy/language-ext for a more functional flavor of C#.

Melchizedekon Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

"Review" sounds official and somehow based on a methodology, but in reality it's just the subjective feelings of some dude. A dude that often has to pretend that he/she understands the technology, what is difficult or not, and who is doing good work.

As you have noticed, you can output the same quality of work and it can be seen as very good or not so good at different times, or with different people, because feelings.

Melchizedekon Scrum disempowers developers

Pffft. We're talking crud apps here. Has any innovative software ever been developed in "sprints" using "user stories" and "story points" with a "product owner" and a "scrum master"? I doubt it.

Melchizedekon Flipping the Metabolic Switch: Applying the Health Benefits of Fasting

The Muslim way of fasting is likely not healthy (or at least not optimally healthy). Food intake should fit the body's circadian rhythm: eat during light hours, fast when it's dark. This is pretty well established.

Melchizedekon Visualizing Two Centuries of U.S. Immigration

From what I've seen, the truth is the exact opposite (living in Sweden, visiting the US). Sweden is only good if you live on welfare or have a "bad" job (where the salary is inflated due to unions, plus you might get welfare).

Upper middle class people in the US are so much better off - there is really no comparison. If average Swedes only knew how poor they really are...

Melchizedekon Show HN: Whiteboardfree – Developer Jobs at Companies That Don't Whiteboard

True, but there are also brain-teaser type problems that don't require memorization of obscure algorithms, and those could actually be disguised intelligence tests. (But I suppose if you really wanted to you could memorize most of the brain-teaser problems in existence.)

Melchizedekon Show HN: Whiteboardfree – Developer Jobs at Companies That Don't Whiteboard

At least in Scandinavia I'd say it's fairly common to have a real office. It seems the cubicle thing never really caught on here, but now there's a trend toward open plan offices, unfortunately. Software companies seem to be among the worst in this regard.

I have a real, quiet office with lots of daylight. That's actually one of the reasons I'm staying at this job. That, and the fact that I'm not subjected to low-status micromanagement techniques like Scrum. In short, I have working conditions befitting a qualified adult.

Melchizedekon Ask HN: What public tech companies have the least internal politics?

Perhaps it's a good sign if a company allows/encourages remote work. Since politics is often 'personal', a more impersonal setting would reduce the opportunities of people who like to play politics instead of working. It also makes it harder to hide incompetence, and since the politics players are often at least semi-incompetent in my experience, that would also work against them.

Melchizedekon The Last Slave Ship Survivor Gave an Interview in the 1930s

And others ended it much later. Saudi Arabia abolished slavery in 1962 (but in practice it still continued after that).

Melchizedekon Here are the Russian-made Facebook ads that tried to shake American politics

As if the US isn't running psy-ops all over the world, including Russia.

Actually the US doesn't limit itself to such operations, it uses military force to overthrow governments of other countries.

Melchizedekon YouTube employees say violent threats from creators have been going on for years

>You can't be politically neutral

No, but it's pretty easy not to be censorship happy, far left SJW activists.

Melchizedekon Sweden’s violent reality is undoing a peaceful self-image

I am Swedish. Everything in this story is true.

What "experience"? Sweden is segregated -- I'm pretty sure you didn't spend a lot of time in the no-go zones at night.

So you think Paulina Neuding, a well known Swedish journalist, writing for a respected publication, simply likes to spread FUD for no apparent reason? That's your theory?

Melchizedekon How Laissez-Faire Made Sweden Rich (2013)

While it is true that Sweden was economically liberal when it grew rich, liberalism is not enough -- you also need stability, an educated high-IQ population and high trust/low corruption.

The mass immigration (and the word 'mass' is really an understatement) of people with much less education and non-Western culture/values is destroying those other factors, not to mention the fact that they overwhelmingly vote socialist to increase welfare payments.

While Sweden's economy has seen some growth (but really not that much per capita) due to limited liberalization, a floating currency and most of all a huge increase in household debt to pay for soaring house prices caused by population growth (also due to immigration) and extremely low interest rates, the chickens will eventually come home to roost.

Sweden really has no future.

Melchizedekon Algorithmic decision making and the cost of fairness (2017)

>The sun goes up in the morning.

Citation needed

It's would be difficult to have a discussion if you had to provide citations for every single well known fact.

Melchizedekon A link between polygamy and war

In a way we reverted to this situation after women's sexual liberation. Before the time comes to have children, the most attractive men acquire most of the sex. And this is during the time in which women's attractiveness is at its highest.

It is not until it is time to have children that most women settle down with a man of equal attractiveness (and sometimes not even then since the state will step in to provide resources to single mothers).

Melchizedekon Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

True, but what then can stop this evil entity called Apple and all the rest of them?

Only children and the very slow still believe in "democracy", which is obviously just another name for the rule of those who own the media and/or are rich enough to bribe politicians.

What other recourse is left but the threat of violence to the physical individuals that in reality control the imaginary legal persons called corporations?

Too bad what passes for the "left" these days is busy fawning over Tim Cook's homosexuality while the sick become homeless and the globalists vacuum the earth for profits. It almost makes me long for the days when the left was Marxist and we had the Red Army Faction and the Red Brigades, instead of blue hair lesbians and postmodern identity politics.

Melchizedekon Why Do We Still Commute?

Because needy extroverts want to socialize instead of working. Also, it's easier to leech off the people who are actually productive when you're in an office.

And managers are afraid they'll appear superfluous when they can't walk around disturbing people all day.

Melchizedekon An Open Letter to Patreon

Hatreon is an alternative that has no speech policing.