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This list is my notes on what I'd like to be able to pass on after my limited 10 years of parenting. That learning process has been primarily an exercise about where I, too, need to develop. You do your best even though it's not enough.

I'd also add that I struggled with the word 'teach' or 'guide' and settled on 'enable'. Different kids (and parents) have different intrinsic abilities or interest in each of these categories. Doing your best to make it at least possible for a child to see the value of them and possibly even make progress is already a great accomplishment.

Parents should focus on enabling their children to be:

Curious; Resourceful; Self-reliant (to feel they have agency in the world); Compassionate; Value personal integrity, themselves, their ideas / wishes, and time on the planet; Able to cooperate, communicate, and work as a team; Able to make sacrifices for the future versions of themselves ("I'm having a bad day today, what can I do to make tomorrow me have a better day?"); Able to enjoy life and find fulfillment (however small) even in bad times.

School subjects, economies, social constructs, technology, they all change. A human who's motivated to develop themselves on topics like the above will be the best person they can be whether they are a CEO or living in a cave underground after an apocalypse.

They may know very little about the content of your role. Because it's not their role to know content about your role :) Who defines that? HR (together with the organizaion)

An example from companies I've worked out is that they make a matrix of competencies and job functions to determine what knowledge (e.g. specific skills or specific business knowledge) is required for particular functions. This isn't there to veto hires because of a buzzword they miss - that would indeed be terrible HR and does happen; it's instead there to structure onboarding, trainings, etc.

Not everybody on the IT team needs to have deep understanding of the billing process, but some do, and the same goes for some support roles and other functions. That means for certain sized organizations somebody in billing needs to have a well-documented overview of how things work, and regularly present it. This seems obvious but for an org that grows from 30 to 100 people it's (somehow) not always so.

Similarly something as simple as saying "Who in the organization needs to be able to present things at a high degree of clarity?". I'd go so far as to say the org NEEDS them to have followed a 1 day training course on how to present properly for their function. It just saves everybody around them so much time and work. Does the receptionist need that? Every support engineer? Every Dev? Maybe, but probably not, but some do. HR defines those capabilities with the org and makes a plan to ensure it happens.

Bad HR definitely exists but it can be done right.

My guess is that you're in the US. Here in the Netherlands, while there's plenty to criticize or laugh about, HR is also responsible for pensions, benefits, workplace safety, reintegration from sickness, ensuring that staff is well trained for their role, etc.

At my org they also organize the Thursday evening drinks session :)

In this particular case (i believe) the user actively turned on the feature which saves your entire location history and journeys on Google's servers so that you can go back and review later. It was opt-in.

Google has since redesigned this feature so that the history lives on the phone itself, not on their servers (removing the possibility for police officers to request this information from google - search warrant or not).

Late reply.

I don't see any loopholes. There are immigration policies that guide state department employees through a process of deciding who gets a visa. Let's say, theoretically, that a particular visa was meant for one scenario... let's say allowing athletes to live and train in the US with no additional checks or limits based on country of origin. And then let's say that all the sudden this summer we saw the number of people receiving that visa go from 10k / year to 100k in a month.

That would be a scenario where you could say holy cow we need to put a pause on the visa application process because when we created this visa program or wrote the screening criteria we did not envision this at all. In this scenario you could, of course, just put a pause on this particular type of visa while you revisit the intent and criteria.

I was saying that I don't see any evidence for that at all. So any desire by the administration to change what kind of visas are given out, or what the criteria or thresholds should be for those visas, should be adjusted in the normal way of working and not via some huge pause on all visas.

It's pretty clear to be that governments shouldn't be able to 'subcontract' their way out of the limits placed on them via the constitution.

Thankfully the supreme court seems to agree here in two ways:

1) Just because a third party (Google in Chatrie case but Flock here) collects the data and the government requests it from them, doesn't mean that that isn't a 'search' which requires a warrant ("obtaining someone's cell-phone location history from Google constitutes a Fourth Amendment search.")

2) Delegating "searches" to a private party isn't permitted if they are acting as an "instrument or agent of the Government" (Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives’ Association (1989) - also cited in Chatrie).

In the Google case, users have a private relationship with Google where they elect to let Google track them and retain their information... but when the Police ask for that information it's a 'search' and requires a specific warrant.

In the Flock case the entire REASON the cameras are there is the the government (Police or local municipality) has contracted Flock to surveil the public. Asking flock for the whereabouts of a specific person seems like it should likewise require a warrant. That's inherently different than a crime being reported and then going to dig up a video from the area from Flock - which is different than seeing someone in that video and asking Flock to find every time they've been captured by any Flock camera anywhere... that would seem to be a 'search' and would require a warrant (which in this scenario would probably be easy to get).

I'm an American who's lived in Europe for the past 20ish years.

Comparatively, the US is extremely good at 'integrating' immigrants for whatever reason they come (asylum, work, family reunification, etc). There are a lot of factors, but I'd say the biggest one is that the "American" identity is one of immigration and is generally more flexible than say, the Dutch or Norwegian identity. I'd also say the general lack of a safety net compared to more socialist countries mean you pretty much have to hit the ground running and work, which usually means learning English quickly and all of the social components that come with work.

The idea that there is an urgent need to protect the US from a significant number of people abusing the system who come via legal immigration (as is the case in this context) is, to me, pretty laughable. I would assume that any abuse in the system or strategic priority shifts (which I may or may not agree with) could easily be picked up through a more normal policy/procedure/training structure within the state department.

There doesn't appear to be a specific, recent event where a significant number of people were discovered to have gotten through some state department filter or loophole that needs to be IMMEDIATELY closed in the context of some large risk to the US.

This is not a flip the switch tomorrow hypothetical. The fallout of such an action would be huge for everyone, including the US stock market.

Here in Europe, every government and major corporation have recently added their dependance on US platforms to their risk management taxonomy. For the (unlikely) scenario you mention, for the scenario that their company/government somehow runs afoul of the US goverment and this is used as leverage, for espionage reasons, and for other reasons that may have already been in their risk overview (data privacy, compliance, etc) but were seen as manageable but are no longer so.

For some anecdotes: My former employer just moved off of AWS to a EU provider and will likely also move away from Google Cloud for their internal needs, my current employer has started evaluating moving off of Azure at the request of our clients (though they dismissed the idea of moving off of Office 365 internally), and my partner's company (a large corporate) has started prioritizing a transition plan away from AWS.

I'm reminded of a beer I had with a friend who's involved at change management for some large corporates. He was saying that when a lot of organizations focus on process improvements (more 'agility') they tend to get bogged down in the formality of exactly what to report and how (OKRs etc) when these are just tools through which you have difficult conversations.

The conversations are the point.

This is also my understanding of why Twitter (and thus Grok) was acquired by SpaceX (which was already having an IPO). Less to do with GPUs in space, more to do with the first way to invest 'directly in AI companies without a proxy (e.g. nvidia).

I've been a cyclist in SF and in Amsterdam, both for many years.

In SF I used my bell much more aggressively. It was mainly for cars, if I'm in or entering their blind spot and my spidey sense tells me they are considering an action that places me in danger. For example, we all know when driving when the car in front of us is thinking about merging, even before they indicate (often I feel like I know before they do). I also used it for pedestrians stepping out into the street who are maybe looking past me for oncoming cars but somehow don't see me, or when approaching 'blind' situations like a sharp corner, a driver pulling out of a driveway but there is a tree between us, delivery drivers stepping out from their truck, etc. I can't say how many accidents have been prevented (the person may have eventually looked and seen me), but I can say that my bell has triggered people to look and see me earlier than they were going to had I not rang it.

In Amsterdam my bell is used much more sparingly. It's mostly for tourists stepping into (or considering stepping into) the bike lane. If they are already in the bike lane, I almost always prefer just to slow down a bit and dodge them, as ringing the bell often triggers a deer-caught-in-headlight moment or erratic behavior, which increases the chance of an accident or that I have to come to a full stop. The other situation is to express dissatisfaction at cars blocking bike lanes, cars/bikes not yielding, drivers blocking intersections, or other dangerous behavior. This isn't preventing an accident but I'd argue it is still important, as social control affects how often we make bad decisions. Outside the city I also use my bell to let other cyclists know I'm passing.

So yeah, I'd say bells prevent accidents, but obviously not as well as good biking infrastructure, where pedestrians, bikes, and cars have clear separate spaces, and visibility of cyclists to drivers is high.

I grew up in Fremont, CA, which pioneered the use of red-light cameras and terrible red-light camera practices (e.g. shortening yellow light times to increase revenue and giving a cut of the fines to the companies installing cameras). I hated cameras, the idea of speed cameras felt like big brother, and the basic principal of attributing a violation to a car and not a person (and thus requiring a person to rat out the driver) felt like a huge civil rights issue.

I then moved to Amsterdam and became the biggest fan of continuous, always-on ANPR speed cameras. On some freeways, your car is recorded at certain checkpoints and EVERYONE driving over the speed limit ALWAYS gets a fine.

Why? Because they are properly implemented (only high-risk areas), very well communicated (tons of signage), consistently applied (no crying your way out of a ticket, no racial profiling), purpose targeted (you get a speeding ticket, not a bunch of other fines at the whim of a cop), and correctly incentivized (ticket revenue does not immediately go to the local police or city).

This whole thing is Musk just trying to keep the hype train going. Musk has learned one neat trick from all of his (quite admirable) success with Tesla and SpaceX: hype is more profitable than actually doing stuff that generates value now.

Tesla's valuation has been nuts for a while. The music was going to stop playing at some point, so something something robotaxis, something something androids, something something AI. Keep the investors duped while you can move money around and leverage it to stay relevant.

Cars are out, social media as well (especially X), but Space is still in, and even more so AI. So let's move the cost center with world domination potential (AI) over to the one company that's making money and has a still has a cash-out potential via an IPO.

I'm just so tired of it all. I actually think 'boutique' businesses (companies that generate real value to real users and are profitable now) are the only thing that can save our economy medium-term, but investors and the government are having none of it. And the result is that these bait-and-switch scams will continue.

It isn't very complicated from a military law perspective. The chain of command (following orders) has a lot more weight on it than a given solder's interpretation of military, constitutional, or international law.

If you believe you are being a given an order that is illegal and refuse, you are essentially putting your head on the chopping block and hoping that a superior officer (who outranks the one giving you the order) later agrees with you. Recent events have involved the commander in chief issuing the orders directly, which means the 'appealing to a higher authority' exit is closed and barred shut for a solider refusing to follow orders.

That doesn't mean a soldier isn't morally obligated to refuse an unlawful / immoral order, just that they will also have to pay a price for keeping their conscience (maybe a future president will give them a pardon?). The inverse is also true, soliders who knowingly follow certain orders (war crimes) are likely to be punished if their side loses, they are captured, or the future decides their actions were indefensible.

A punishment for ignoring a command like "execute those POWs!" has a good chance of being overruled, but may not be. However an order to invade Canada from the President, even if there will be civilian casualties, must be followed. If the President's bosses (Congress/Judiciary) disagree with that order they have recourse.

Unfortunately the general trend which continues is for Congress to delegate their war making powers to the President without review, and for the Supreme Court to give extraordinary legal leeway when it comes to the legality of Presidential actions.

I like the idea that what makes someone a 'professional' instead of just an employee is the wherewithal, agency, and expectation to say no to a particular task or assignment.

An architect or engineer is expected to signal and object to an unsafe design, and is expected by their profession (peers, clients, future employers) to refuse said work even if it costs them their job. This applies even to professions without a formalized license board.

If you don't have the guts and ability to act ethically (and your field will let you get away with it), you're just a code monkey and not a professional software developer.

Are there any good robo-vacuum cleaners that will still clean your floor if the internet is down?

I've had my Miele vacuum cleaner for 15 years now, and I bought it second hand. I can still buy bags and filters for it, and when the floor roller piece broke (something heavy fell on it) I was able to buy a replacement one for cheap. I see no reason why it can't go another 10 years.

It feels like a very low probability that a robo-cleaner I buy now will come from a company that (in 10+ years) will a) exist and b) support 10+ year old vacuum cleaners.

This is the way. The current US administration is a 2 year old with ADHD and shiny distractions abound. Agree to deals and let him claim wins, and then bury it in bureaucracy and common sense.

This is, essentially, how the US government survived Trump 1.0, and is why Trump 2.0 has been so concerned with gutting bureaucracy and placing vapid yes-men in the cabinet, but they can't really do that in Europe.

It's one of the few times where EU bureaucracy is a huge advantage.

I definitely think that he thinks he's smarter than the market and sees bubbles everywhere, and I also definitely think that there's a gigantic AI bubble, or at least extreme 'frothiness' with all this circular investing to prop stock prices up.

Actually turning a bubble into money is another question entirely, however, especially since he himself popularized shouting the emperor has no clothes at every turn. When the market will believe someone is a different story.

Wow that's just excellent. German classes paying off already!

I can imagine that there could be a case of parallel construction to build a case to get a specific desired outcome. I also think that if you're right and this is an example of a 'mild' case of mismanaged assets it's still pretty egregious.

I find the even milder circular financing of deals like nVidia investing in OpenAI to be concerning.

At first I thought maybe the number of pedestrian journeys have gone up, but that appears to be declining (leading to even more concern as to why deaths have gone up).

This is exactly how we describe them internally: the smartest interns in the world. I think it's because the chat box way of interacting with them is also similar to how you would talk to someone who just joined a team.

"Hey it wasn't what you asked me to do but I went ahead and refactored this whole area over here while simultaneously screwing up the business logic because I have no comprehension of how users use the tool". "Um, ok but did you change the way notifications work like I asked". "Yes." "Notifications don't work anymore". "I'll get right on it".

I'm confused, why didn't you look up the definition in a book as it was your claim?

On the app side, what's the best (global) app for rain forecasting over the next few hours (paid or not)?

Here in the Netherlands everyone uses "buienradar" which is limited to the Netherlands, has very bad privacy, and is also not super great at predicting rainfall.

Yes.

Regarding the discussion of ger/yurt districts in cities, it's also important not to underestimate the cultural significance of the nomadic lifestyle and yurt culture.

Changing climate (desertification) and economic conditions have meant that a lot of people have given up their nomadic lifestyle and moved to cities or their outskirts (mostly Ulaanbaatar). They often are reluctant to do so, it's a big step, and they often hope it is a temporary one.

They set up their yurts not only because of housing shortages, but many are also hesitant to move into apartments or other permanent structures as it's seen as the last step in giving up this nomadic lifestyle. Often they are setting up their yurts next to permanent structures, either because they are living in the 'yard' of relatives or to expand their residences and stay connected to their culture.

You can see examples of this in the first images.

If anyone has any tips for the most cost effective way for expats to file, please share them here.

I'm doing it all by hand because I'm tired of going through the 'free' apps and entering in all my details, and when I get ready to file it end up being hundreds of dollars to file since the other forms (extra 1040 schedules, 2555, etc) are not included.

Advertising is ruining everything.

The TikTok-ification of advertising supported platforms is terrible, but makes sense to me. LinkedIn pivoted from making money on subscriptions and fees for job postings to ads, which mean the leading drivers are 'engagement' e.g. time you spend doom scrolling on their platform. This will end in disaster for the platform as a place to find jobs or employees.

Netflix I understand much less. They make money from subscriptions. If you perceive having a fantastic experience on the site by just going there, finding something you enjoy watching, and leaving... they win. Why they would foster a doom-scrolling experience I really can't really explain, other than imagining some dark pattern like they have to pay per view and want you to watch C grade movies? More time spent looking for something to watch means less time streaming?

I don't get it.