merc

merc, 27 days ago

@pluralistic No discussion of non-competes would be complete without mentioning Garden Leave.

Most Formula 1 teams are based in the UK, which isn't friendly to non-compete clauses. But, some engineers on the racing teams truly have secret information about their race cars. So, how do the teams handle that? Garden Leave (a.k.a. Gardening Leave).

If Red Bull Racing thinks the information in your head is so critical that you can't be allowed to go join McLaren's F1 team right away, they use Garden Leave. Instead of coming to work every day, Red Bull pays you your full salary and benefits to stay home and so nothing (or do some gardening) for a few months. Then, you're free to switch teams.

This puts the onus on the employer, not the employee. If McDonalds fry cooks have such critical information in their heads, let McDonalds pay for a Garden Leave for employees who want to switch to Wendy's instead of using a non-compete.

merc, 1 month ago

@evacide @pluralistic Why not? You have nothing Toulouse.

merc, 1 month ago

@pluralistic Commit a crime on Catalina Island by scribbling your name next to the plaque.

merc, 1 month ago

@pluralistic le petit ploutocrate

merc, 1 month ago

@pluralistic What an ugly dystopian surveillance box grafted to an ornamental street light.

merc, 2 months ago

@mattblaze @rbreich @pluralistic Theoretically, the workers would be working less hard during the rush.

Surge pricing is all about raising the price when demand is high. Higher prices means fewer customers (but more profit per customer). Fewer customers means a less busy restaurant, so less work.

OTOH, surge pricing can also mean lowering the price when demand is low, in order to stimulate demand. So, the late night shifts where there was a lot of down time might get a bit busier.

merc, 2 months ago

@mattblaze @rbreich @pluralistic Exactly, so the price would go up, driving demand down.

At worst, during a surge the workers would be just as busy as they are now. But, they wouldn't ever be more busy if surge pricing increased prices. Having said that, they might have to deal with more unhappy customers.

merc, 3 months ago

@massivelyop This idea that "you are the main character" ruins immersion.

In World of Warcraft's Legion expansion, I saw people walking around with "Archdruid" titles for months. Then, I finished that quest line, and the NPCs told me that I was the one and only leader of the druids, the Archdruid, and gave me access to the title.

Shadowlands was even worse. I was the maw walker, the only mortal able to enter the maw and come back. Except it's an MMO and the maw was crowded with other players.

merc, 3 months ago

@pluralistic

"the last holdout from the alphabetsoupification of corporate identity"

It's funny how the accounting firms are just "guys' names", and now just their initials:

Deloitte (formally Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited) named for William Welch Deloitte.

EY: Alwin Ernst and Arthur Young

PwC: Samuel Lowell Price, Edwin Waterhouse, William Cooper(+s for his 3 brothers) ((Poor Mr. Waterhouse had his initial downcased))

KPMG: (Piet Klijnveld, William Barclay Peat, Frank Wilber Main, Reinhard Goerdeler).

The history of every big accounting firm seems to consist of mergers where firms consisting of last names get combined and half the names get dropped. KPMG was founded by 2 Ks, 1 P, 4 Ms and 1 G.

merc, 3 months ago

@JessTheUnstill @PurpleBooth Suit jackets are also an immensely weird item of clothing that people don't think about because they're used to it.

The jacket doesn't close properly. It's open to the belly in front. It has these huge lapels which, flipped over, could almost close it properly, but the buttons stop at the belly and the lapels are just decorative, nobody actually flips them over. While most men's clothing is designed around function, the suit jacket is very non-functional.

The gap in the jacket exists as a window to show off a shirt and tie. The tie is this weird standardized fabric that coils around the neck and hides the buttons of the shirt underneath.

For some reason, men have worn the same weird suits for more than 100 years. If we weren't so used to it, we'd see it as this strange anachronism like the wigs still worn by barristers in the UK.

merc, 3 months ago

@pluralistic That's a lot, but for Mr. Beast, that amount means Musk's sideshow wouldn't even cover his costs:

https://www.sportskeeda.com/esports/how-much-does-mrbeast-spend-in-a-video

merc, 4 months ago

@cstross @pluralistic Real self-destruct might exist, but only in the most secret of vehicles.

The U-2 had a self-destruct, but only for its camera. However, that could have been because a full self-destruct would have been too heavy.

USS Parche, used as a spy submarine, carried scuttling charges. But, probably not in place and wired up at all times.

https://jalopnik.com/are-self-destruct-systems-real-1845906479

Are there even more secret vehicles that had full self-destruct that we don't know about because they were secret? Maybe? But, to Corey's point, probably not on a ship meant for exploration and diplomacy, and certainly not with voice activation.

Buuut.. if Starfleet's prime directive was really an inviolable prime directive...

merc, 4 months ago

@cstross @pluralistic Vichy France also scuttled most of its remaining navy in WWII to prevent the Germans from using it. This, while Vichy France was nominally independent but mostly under Germany's thumb:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuttling_of_the_French_fleet_at_Toulon

merc, 4 months ago

@oliversampson @pluralistic When I was in high school, there was one time when I got a test back with one particular answer marked as wrong. That was the one answer that I was sure was right because I'd spent over half the test time on it, then I had to rush through the rest.

I took it home and showed my dad and he agreed with my reasoning. The teacher had tried applying a general rule which didn't work in that particular case. When I tried to get my mark changed, the teacher handled it extremely poorly, but eventually it was fixed.

Realizing that I understood this stuff better than the teacher was a life-changing moment for me, and gave me the confidence to take the hardest math courses. Eventually I went into a math-heavy university program.

If kids don't get to review their tests, a kid who catches a mistake in the test will lose confidence. So, the smartest kids will shy away from the subjects they're best at.

merc, 6 months ago

@b0rk I can use vi/vim, I'm comfortable with it. I can do decently advanced things. I just don't like it.

I mostly use Emacs. Its general approach (no command mode, no focus on line-oriented things, etc.) makes me more productive.

It seems to me like some people think that you can't be a competent vi/vim user and not like it. So, if you don't like it, the solution is to spend more time learning it, then you'll like it. I think there's a reason why most editors are more emacs-like than vi-like, and it's because that's the more natural and user-friendly approach.

merc, 6 months ago

@molly0xfff Speaking of the background, not the foreground, did you watch the London live show yet? If not, you're in for a treat.

merc, 6 months ago

@molly0xfff Well, I hope you have some critter friends you can chat with once you've watched it. The energy of a 12k live crowd made for a great show.

merc, 6 months ago

@codinghorror I would bet that among many fundamentalist religious people, their ideal world is a theocracy with men in positions of power. Men wouldn't want to live the way women in those societies have to live, but they'd still think it's right. Similarly, fundamentalist women might want to make a few tweaks, but they'd also think that's the right way to live,

In fact, I bet it goes beyond religion. I'd bet many of the ultra wealthy would want the ultra wealthy on top. They're under the delusion they are where they deserve to be on merit, and if they lost the birth lottery, they'd somehow find their way to the top.

merc, 8 months ago

@cstross Batman presumably owns DC comics using a shell company.

Think about it. They can't hide how Gotham is a hellscape with massive wealth inequality and crumbling infrastructure. But they frame it as a rich heroic vigilante fighting a one-man war. The villains are almost never the ultra rich (other than Penguin, who is more of a poseur). Instead the criminals are frequently doctors, lawyers, scientists, etc.

Most of his opponents keep escaping from Gotham Asylum. But, instead of raising taxes to improve its security and improving the effectiveness of treatments, DC comics frames it so we're supposed to cheer for the vigilante who roughs up the escaped mentally ill people then returns them to the same underfunded asylum over and over.

merc, 8 months ago

@molly0xfff

It has had automation for years now, it must have been a while since you played.

You might enjoy Francis John's channel. He builds some amazing devices in ONI and does a great job of explaining what's happening. His Irish accent is excellent too.

https://youtube.com/@FrancisJohnYT

merc, 9 months ago

@b0rk Just speculating, but have you ever tried a second post that says something like "and if you have used a command line for decades and have an interesting story, tell it here"?

I imagine that there are a lot of people who really want to participate. If there's a place where they're allowed to do that, maybe they'll be less likely to talk in the space you set aside for other people.

merc, 10 months ago

@lauren If it was an int, not a uint, what happens when he surpasses 127? What exactly does -128 indictments look like?

merc, 10 months ago

@evacide It's extremely irritating to try to create a password for a site only to be effectively told "your password is too secure, remove any symbols other than XYZ and shorten it".

merc, 10 months ago

@evacide Only letting you know rules after you enter a password, or just silently failing and leaving you to guess what it found objectionable about the password. A classic.

Years ago I found out one site silently converted all letters in my password to upper case before storing them. (I found out when they emailed me my password, naturally).

Oh well, it's mild trauma like this that makes The Password Game fun:

https://neal.fun/password-game/