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Planet money episode Waste Land (https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/912150085/waste-land) was also quite informative: plastic recycling was never a possibility. It was simply a marketing tool for the industry to sell more of it


I guess your comment is provocative intentionally. There are many countries in the world where - thankfully- certain public schools/universities are more prestigious than private ones (it comes to mind Germany, Switzerland, Spain, France). About B) and C) I sort of agree though


What is so bad about just going out and doing sports with people and having real contact?

I guess that everyone is different. In my case I really enjoy participating in HIT workouts with people; the group competition drives me to push myself.

That's one of the reasons for having better results in a marathon than during training: group competitiveness

The second benefit is also obvious to me: socializing. Just the fact of doing sports together gives you a sense of bonding, of going through similar pain and succeeding.

One can argue you can achieve the same with VR meanwhile for me is just a poor replacement.


> What is so bad about just going out and doing sports with people

Inflexible, time intensive, lacks variety, intimidating to those with lower fitness, dealing with annoying people, competition limited to whoever you work out with rather than matching your level, affected by weather, injuries, expense ....


Agree with all the benefits you listed about in-person sport. Main issue is the time commitment with team sports.

VR is in and out in 30-40 mins and the sports venue is your living room or garage (no travelling required)

IME - VR can be more fun than the gym.

VR can be social and competitive. Many online e-sports are.

Horses for courses etc..


Did you forget about the ongoing pandemic?


Outdoor group sports wasn't really forbidden in many countries, or just for a small period of time.

It wasn't my goal to alienate anybody. On the contrary I was trying to highlight the advantages of group sports.


If you haven't been vaccinated or received a booster I strongly encourage you to do so.


Coming from Scala and Kotlin I don't find working with Ruby extremely productive.

The IDEs have partial autocompletion but obviously not as good as with compiled languages. Same for finding where a method is used or how to refactor code without breaking the world. Those are all IDEs features that made me more productive, made my codebase more robust and helped me refactoring often fearlessly.

Sorbet is a good attempt to fix some of that, but it then adds a lot of verbosity and it is difficult to use in practice since is not adopted by all the ecosystem and when relying on third parties you'll find yourself doing a lot of T.cast, T.unfase, T.must

That said I can see a lot of value in Ruby: concise code, powerful iterators, very expressive and very flexible. Perhaps so flexible that it gives you many ways to shoot yourself


We are too often caught up in the inertia of our life, telling ourselves lies like 'the future will be better', 'just a little more', 'what are they gonna think about me if...', 'this salary raise is very important'.

Once you step out and remind yourself your time in this world is limited, a list of priorities will start to take shape, based on the following questions:

1. which cause is worth it for you to spend your effort and money?

2. which activities bring you pleasure and joy?

3. which are the reasonable sacrifices to fullfill 1 and 2?

There is no universal answer to those questions but everything starts with slowing down, gaining perspective and diving in


I can also say by having lived there that it is the same for Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Italy. There will always be an exception to the norm, but it is clear that Whatsapp is the number one tool for instant messaging/calling.


I live in germany and whatsapp is dominant in all social circles i have been in.


As far as I understand, you can convert Markdeep to static HTML using rasterizer: https://github.com/romainguy/markdeep-rasterizer


In my previous job in Germany I could work remotely as much as I wanted. I would usually work from Spain, since is where I come from.

It was close to ideal: having lunch in 30min and spending the other 30min at the pool or going for a short break to the beach (just 5min away).

However I discovered that when I spent more than 1 or 2 weeks working remotely in a row I would start feeling detached from my job. It became increasingly difficult to be motivated and concentrated in certain tasks.

In my current job employees can work remotely 1 day a week by default with possibility to extend it occasionally. I find this to work better for me personally. It allows me to be flexible and productive while working remotely and at the same time it keeps me engaged and connected with the challenges and goals at work.


May I ask hod did you find remote work in Germany? I noticed in my time there German companies were highly conservative and didn't want to hear about their employees not being present in the office.


I was working for a small startup. Since they did not have many developers, each of us were quite key to their product.

Knowing that, I could convince them to work remotely every now and then.


I work remotely from Germany but I have only worked for US based companies for this reason. There a handful of German companies being remote though, Giant Swarm for example.


How did the detachment manifest, if you don't mind sharing?

Did you try to find an effective way to combat the lack of motivation, or was it just a matter of returning back to the office?


It manifested by having difficulties to work without interruptions. I got easily distracted with anything and found myself procrastinating more often.

That's rare on me, since I usually can work in a flow mode for long periods of time.

As it was discussed previously, procrastination seems like a way to manage emotions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17878716


Interesting; the article resonates well. Thanks for taking the time to share.


Blue Brain Project (EPFL) | Scala Software Engineer | Geneva, Switzerland | ONSITE | Full-Time | https://portal.bluebrain.epfl.ch/

You would join a young and multidisciplinary team to build an Open Source data management platform that enables neuroscientists to organise and leverage scientific data for the purpose of modelling and simulating the rodent brain.

Several technologies you would be using: - Triple Stores - Linked Data - Event Sourcing - RDF / JSON-LD

The Open Source technology you would be building & extending: http://bluebrainnexus.io

Github projects: https://github.com/BlueBrain?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=&type=&languag...

Apply here: https://recruiting.epfl.ch/Vacancies/724/Description/2


Are you open to remote work? I am a scala senior data engineering that has built several similar projects (namley analytics based on transactional graph systems) and am currently working on side projects in the space of neuro simulation applied to AGI, but am located in the United States and am not interested in relocation to Europe currently.


Do you offer visa sponsorships for US applicants?


There are some US citizens working at BBP. In fact, inside our section we have two people who were previously working in the US.

Even though the process to bring somebody to work in Switzerland is more tedious than for EU citizens, it is duable.

I would still fully recommend to apply if you are willing to relocate, without worrying about the administrative factor.


Yes they do. It makes the process more complex and lengthier though, so they'll most likely focus on Swiss/EU/EEA candidates.


Got it. Thanks!


Do you assist in relocating?


Visa sponsorship is provided and related administration work with the Swiss administration is facilitated.

The acquisition of an accommodation has to be done by the applicant, even though we can offer some guidance.


Our mind likes plausible stories. It helps to make sense of the past and to have the -incorrect- perception that one can predict the future.

That's why fictions are so powerful. We easily get caught by them.

If people beliefs were purely rational, they would be able to weight the facts against the fictions. However, our subjective confidence in a story (fact or fiction) depends on many factors: - We tend to believe stories that appear to be based on cause-effect and that express continuity. - We tend to believe in things that people that we trust and love believe in.


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