pmkiwi · HackerTrans

4 lata temudiscuss

Some of the central beaches are sometimes crowded, but many beaches are just empty. Went for a swim today and water was fresh (16 degrees) but refreshing !

Where are you based ?

pmkiwi

4 lata temudiscuss

NZ is not cheap indeed and Auckland is insanely expensive (managed to buy despite the crazy housing market), but nice beaches and awesome for sailing !

pmkiwi

4 lata temudiscuss

creativenolo: former child :)

pmkiwi

4 lata temudiscuss

So Auckland dropped 33 places just because of few Covid cases ? It is true that we had a peak of Covid cases this year, but it was never really massive by international standards.

At the same time, Auckland is pretty dead for a while now, especially the CBD. Traffic is not that bad, but we haven't recovered at all from Covid. We will see in the next few months if cruise ships and tourists are back or not.

pmkiwi

4 lata temudiscuss

To be totally fair, the capital should be Nelson which is the true geographic center of NZ!

pmkiwi

5 lat temudiscuss

Not only you do not have much time for yourself but it is often not really "quality" time. It rarely comes in uninterrupted blocks of say 90' or 2h. It is going to be 20 minutes there, 40 minutes there, and maybe 30 minutes over there.

I strongly agree with your point about bias. When I was not a father, I spent a lot of time studying (and passing) AWS certs and reached the point I got all of them. Now? I am happy when I read few blog posts each week and, very often, it takes several attempts to be able to fully watch a single re:Invent session.

"Yes, but you are reading and replying to comments on HN!"

Indeed, with my baby in my arms haha!

pmkiwi

5 lat temudiscuss

Recently applied to a DevOps Engineer position and after multiple interviews (took ages to plan them...), I finally reached the take-home challenge stage. I have been tasked to work on something absolutely not related to the job, with a framework I have never heard of, and which has never been evoked during the interviews... what a trap!

I obviously failed miserably and they did not even follow up on the challenge even if they said they will... nice!

It is not healthy to set up the candidates to fail - at especially such a late stage - because you just waste everyone's time (especially your own employees'!). I do understand that the companies are trying to protect themselves against false positives, but it sometimes reaches some ridiculous proportions!

Since then, I have something else so happy end (at least for me because they still haven't filled their position...).

pmkiwi

5 lat temudiscuss

This reminds me a colleague creating a Python class like this

import os

class Bla(): def __init__(self):

        self.var1 = os.env["VARIABLE1"]

        self.var2 = os.env["VARIABLE2"]

        # ...

        self.varN = os.env["VARIABLEN"]

    def get_variables(self):
        return self.var1, self.var2, ..., self.varN

They took 2 months to write an insanely complcated code to just copy few objects from an S3 bucket to another... And because the Lambda was timing out, they set the timeout to 15 minutes, leading to our Lambda costs skyrocketing because the function was failing/retrying all the time for some objects.

I was allowed to fix the timeout issue to save cost but I was forbidden to fix the code itself because our manager said "Well, it works so let's move on".

6 months later, on a Tuesday morning, bored, I decided it was enough so I rewrote this bloody Lambda in ~90 lines with a proper handler, retries, logging statements, etc ... in a couple of hours.

What did my manager say? "Good work but you should have taught them rather than doing it yourself".

pmkiwi

5 lat temudiscuss

Yeap agreed! I discovered a lot of tools just reading them. Thanks everyone !!

pmkiwi

5 lat temudiscuss

It is possible indeed that the Pfizer vaccine is not particularly efficient against Delta but, at the same time, Israel is only one country among a growing list of countries facing a new wave of Covid and what we can see over there does not show up (yet?) in other countries such as the UK or France.

Even if Dr Haviv is correct and the protection offered by the Pfizer vaccine is only valid for 7/8 months, many lives have still been saved in the meantime (Israel got almost no cases and deaths in Q2 2021 for example).

I guess more data is required to see how it goes but it is ackowledged that not all the vaccines have lifetime effects and some only work against specific variant (like the flu one).

To finish, I would like to reiterate that the Delta variant is a game changer so a quote from February needs to be taken with a grain of salt because the situation has changed completely since then.

pmkiwi

5 lat temudiscuss

My understanding is that the vaccines are mainly here to avoid you to die or to require severe ventilation and, based on the available studies, they are doing the job.

The hospitalisation rates are way lower than any previous wave but the law of big numbers still apply at some point... And the Delta variant is clearly a game change here.

Finally, Israel is in a peculiar position because they have vaccinated - relatively speaking - quite a while ago so protection migh be indeed waning and the overall % is not that high (pretty surprised tbh).

pmkiwi

5 lat temudiscuss

SF is located on fault, with mega wildfires and mega drought for decades to come... At least the photo of the empty reservoir will be taken with a cheap Chinese-made smartphone, good stuff!

Some peoples value other things than money so it is a bit silly to just talk about $$$. What about housing costs, commute, healthcare, quality of life, etc of the _general_ population (and not only developers)?

pmkiwi

5 lat temudiscuss

If they go through MIQ first, all good!

pmkiwi

5 lat temudiscuss

Fiji overtook Australia at the top of rankings for Oceania so it is not particularly a great period for them either :/.

French Polynesia is on the rise as well but NZ is holding so far!

pmkiwi

5 lat temudiscuss

Recruiters are like realtor/real estate agents, they work for themselves (to close deals) and that's it. They never give you the appropriate level of information about the opportunity before you commit to a phone/Zoom call (yes sure, I am going to spend 30' talking to you rather than directly to the client...).

If you are not interested, their habit of asking you to help them doing their job is really annoying. The "if you know someone which might be interested by the opportunity, please let me know." is maybe the worse response ever.

I try to always reply by asking the name of the company, the job description, and salary ranges. And they almost never share these info but "we can discuss it over the phone because it is confidential". And my next reply is always "You know, an email is confidential too..." and that's generally ends the discussion until the next ping on LinkedIn. At least, they are rarely rancorous :)

pmkiwi

5 lat temudiscuss

Many drivers of SUV are not aware of the body of their vehicle because these are so large and high.

How many a large car is turning, say right (via a dedicated lane), but 10-20% of the vehicle is still in the other lane? Hundred times every week probably... This is just driving me crazy because they are not a bus or a very large delivery truck! They are just an Audi, Volvo, BMW, Mercedes, etc ...

pmkiwi

5 lat temudiscuss

In the US, you bring your own car for your driving exam... And this is barely a joke !!

pmkiwi

5 lat temudiscuss

Sounds awesome! Time to move to Sweden haha :)

pmkiwi

5 lat temudiscuss

Respect man!

pmkiwi

5 lat temudiscuss

Yeah same story in NZ. You can take a decent parental but the payout is limited ($500 NZD/pw). Of course, you need a cap but you might end up leaving quite a lot on the table.

And on top of that, your value of your annual also depreciates ("You work only half a year full salary, so your annual leave is now 1/2 its origina value")...