Just got back from a 3 day trip to Brussels, we loved it. Plus, Smurfs (Les Schtroumpfs) everywhere. We did take a day trip to Bruges though, that was even better than Brussels IMHO. Especially since I could walk around saying to my wife “If I grew up on a farm, and was retarded, Bruges might impress me but I didn’t, so it doesn’t.”.

Not with that attitude

Kirby said that he has seen the IDF ‘take actions - sometimes actions that even I’m not sure our own military would take - in terms of informing civilian populations ahead of operations, where to go or not to go. They have taken steps.’

How is this controversial? The daily mail is an awful source.

The 2017 tax bill that the Republicans rammed through had a time bomb in it for software developers. Starting in 2022, companies could no longer expense R&D costs, and instead had to amortize them over 5 years. This has led to massive tax bills in 2023 for companies. I have no doubt that this is another major factor in the recent tech layoffs.

Take an imaginary bootstrapped software business called “Acme Corp.” This company generates $1,000,000 of revenue per year running a SaaS service. It employs five engineers, and pays each $200,000. That is $1,000,000 paid in labor costs. For simplicity, we omit other costs like servers and hosting, even though those costs can also fall under the new R&D rules, and have to be amortized. So, how much taxable profit does this company make?

In 2021, the answer would be zero profit. In 2022, the answer was $900,000 in profits(!!)

https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-pulse-will-us-companies-hire

Assume positive intent. Amazing how much lower stress your stress levels will be if you don’t feel attacked (on the road, on social media, in conversations, etc).

Oh yeah, and buy a bidet. Your bum will thank you.

A large part of this is being driven by illegal trafficking operations that recruit desperate families looking to give their families a safer life. Republicans have chosen to demonize both the families as well as the traffickers. It must suck living a life incapable of empathy for others less fortunate.

Anyways, this is actually a pretty good read on it, despite it coming from CNN:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/20/us/migrant-surge-travel-agencies-smugglers/index.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4heE4Nu_Yik

Classic: A Christmas Carol, the 1951 version with Alastair Sim. Sim’s giddy portrayal of Scrooge on Christmas morning is one of my favorite performances of any actor.

Modern: A Christmas Story, and Elf.

If you like the fruity Costa Rican beans, I can also recommend a roaster that I buy from (they’re local to me, so I can just grab bags at a farmers market). Gigawatt Costa Rican Tarrazu

I haven’t seen The Always Sunny podcast mentioned yet. If you like IASIP, this is a must listen.

Visa, for example, spent $10 in the 12 weeks to October 6, compared to $77,500 during the same period last year, according to Sensor Tower’s data.

I’m no business genius like musk, but I’m gonna take a guess that wouldn’t even pay the bills for the ridiculous X sign he put on the roof and then had to take down.

What does Atwater make?

What do you mean, like, how much money does the company make?

Oh, no, I mean what do we make?

I don’t follow. We make money.

No, I know we make money. I mean, what do we create?

We create wealth.

No, no, I mean, what do we build, what do we design, you know? Because I have some ideas that could really help the company.

Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, we don’t build anything.

“War isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them - little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.” – MAS*H

Yup. Anyone who received this non-public information and then traded based on that information is guilty of insider trading. I would also think that reddit has some liability here, as they shared this information to non-employees.

Here’s a verification of a video showing some of the aftermath of the attacks by The Washington Post. Since WaPo sometimes changes links on breaking stories, a copy is below.

A graphic video verified by The Washington Post showed the aftermath of a deadly strike along Gaza’s main highway Friday, part of a wave of Israeli attacks that killed dozens and injured more than 200 people fleeing northern Gaza, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza.

The video, recorded along Salah Al-Deen road, shows bodies,- including several young children- strewn along the road as black smoke rises from vehicles engulfed in flames. On the north-facing side of the road, bodies are laid out amid personal belongings, including a bicycle, on flatbed trailers attached to a truck.

The video was first geolocated by open-source researchers Chris Osieck and Gabòr Friesen and confirmed by The Post.

Late Thursday, Israel ordered the evacuation of northern Gaza’s 1.1 million residents within 24 hours, the United Nations said. On Friday, the Israeli military dropped leaflets over Gaza City telling residents to “evacuate your homes immediately and go to the south.”

Hamas’s surprise incursion on Oct. 7 killed at least 1,300 people in Israel, authorities said. Palestinian officials said the subsequent Israeli strikes have killed more than 1,799 people in Gaza.

The Israel Defense Forces did not have an immediate response.

I think it varies by seniority. We had layoffs, and all of our lead and principal engineers were able to land a new position in 4-6 weeks. But the junior, mid, and even some senior level engineers had a far rougher time. And managers/directors are having a really difficult go of it right now.

This paper describes the paradigm in detail, they’re called Orthodox File Managers.

I learned Norton Commander way back in the 90s, then moved to Midnight Commander, and it’s still a key part of my toolset. Using the keyboard in a hybrid shell / tree view mode is still the single most efficient way I’ve found to manage files. Need to find files under a subdirectory? Press F7. Need to move an entire directory somewhere else? cd to it, then press F6. Want to move all the pdf files under a subdirectory somewhere? Use the find dialog, then move the search results. No mouse/trackpad needed, everything is at your fingertips.

Somewhat related, at least on Linux and OSX, GNU Stow is a great way to manage dotfiles.

I guess it depends what one calls “the media”. Something like IEEE Spectrum is top notch for tech news. Reuters and AP generally are pretty good for normal news. Past that, maybe something like The Conversation?

For a lot of these you need to study/practice on sites like HackerRank for a while first. Some companies go overboard and expect you to build some crazy recursive dynamic programming implementation in 15 mins without an IDE, others are more realistic and just want to see if you know things like algorithm complexity, can pick appropriate data structures, and write logical and clean code. And yes, very little of it applies to what most of us do day to day. Anyways, HackerRank is great for interview practice, you can Google for pretty much any solution to their questions.