jhrozek

For what it's worth this is quite similar to my experience here in Sweden except:

- you speak to a nurse on the phone, not a non-medical receptionist (frankly, that sounds insane)

- the Vårdcentral (equivalent to surgery) prioritizes children in my experience

- your Vårdcentral is not allocated, but you can choose one. Some have better capacity, some have worse.

- there is another layer between Vårdcentral and Akuten in a hospital called Närakuten where you can go to get checked out. The waiting times are anywhere between 30 minutes and a couple of hours.

I would even guess that the British situation is not unique but the medical system is overloaded everywhere in Europe.. Most people I know, including myself pay for private care.

Even if people who took the low mortgage counted with a rate hike like yours they probably didn’t count with the energy prices hiking so much AND the food prices hiking so much AND all of this happening within ~9 months.

It is truly bad for a lot of people right now.

That sounds great, thanks I subscribed to it! Do you listen to any other similar podcasts you could recommend?

This argument does not take into account the fact that the majority of Swedish population lives in cities. The Stockholm metro area has about 2M people out of 10M in Sweden. Then there’s Malmö and Göteborg..

Or if you turn it around, if Germany bought Siberia and their population density went down, would they see the an improvement in the situation?

not OP, but yes, I backup both our Mac machines (TimeMachine) and my Linux machine (restic) to a Synology NAS that is in turn backed up to a cloud. I ended up using the Synology cloud because the setup was easy and they have a datacenter in the EU.

I’m from CZ but live in Sweden. I don’t think there is any magic (no gene difference as someone here suggested..)

Here’s the things I noticed that were clearly different between the two countries:

1. The rules were clear from the start and didn’t change much. FHM said from the beginning that the virus is here to stay and set the rules so that they are sustainable (most importantly: schools were never closed). There was no screw-unscrew-screw-… loop

2. Many more people worked from home here than in CZ. I don’t know what to attribute this to, it can be because Swedes are generally better acquainted with technology or that there are more jobs that can be done from home in Sweden.

3. People actually follow the rules (for the most part..there still were student parties and such). This can be an effect of people trusting their politicians and the government agencies but maybe just a different mentality. I still remember that during my visit to Prague people at the Billa supermarket at the Prague train station were absolutely not keeping distance and were touching bagels (rohlíky :-)) without any gloves. Masks and lockdowns won’t save you then…

4. People are generally much fitter here. You won’t see the typical Czech beer belly, in general everyone keeps themselves in shape and eats quite well.

Contrary to what many might think the level of healthcare is about the same in my experience.

I’m really no Tegnell fanboy, many things about him irk me a lot (his constant picking on other countries the most) and I wish the Swedish government took a more active role sooner rather than let FHM steer everything for about 9 months, but in general I think the Swedish strategy was good.

Sweden is producing its own domestic fighter jets to this day (Saab Gripen). It’s latest generation was unveiled in 2017. So they have the experience but my assumption is that developing a next gen fighter is just too expensive and wasteful for such a small country.

I think it’s Finland. I’m in Sweden and I’m almost sure that my compensation is not public. What you can do IIRC is to request a credit check on someone which would contain the income and the tax paid but then the person is notified who requested the data. Typically this is done when you apply for a mortgage.

The factors you mention definitely don’t help but you’d be surprised how much of HBP is just genetics. I’m slim, run at least three times a week and ran a marathon two years ago, don’t eat much meat, rarely drink, non smoker and yet I have HBP and had to start taking pills recently. In my case it doesn’t help that both parents suffer from the condition.

But saying that you have HBP == you live an unhealthy lifestyle is just not true.

But isn’t it very common to account for the white coat syndrome?

I was recently diagnosed with HBP and the process went like this: - doctor took the measurement, was very high

- asked me to measure at home, call if it was still high (it was, but much lower)

- invited me over, I got a blood pressure monitor for 24h. That showed a borderline 130/85) higher BP. For comparison, he was reading 160/100 at his office..

This is just to illustrate that doctors should know about the white coat syndrome and shouldn’t diagnose you based on readings in their office only.

What's a hiring day? A quick search found nothing.. Is it a LI initiative?

Off topic but which Eastern European cheese did you find that you like? The only ones I even saw sold outside its are of origin were usually underwhelming. I’m originally from central/Eastern Europe and know very small and local producers but I’m really interested in what you found you can buy in your area.

Even worse: Unless you pay private insurance yourself, the quality of the free insurance (at your nearest vårdcentralen) is absolutely laughable.

My family of 4 pays about 1800 SEK/month for private insurance to actually have a chance to see a competent doctor.

Not necessarily.

I occasionally pair with someone, though it's not enforced or even suggested in any way, just a result of discussing a problem for long enough that one of us says "wanna pair on this?".

We use either tmate (a fork of tmux specifically for pairing) or a VSCode plugin, depending on whether what we're pairing on.

I can very much recommend tmate.

Genuinely curious: What do you think would be the outcome of this reply?

In my previous team, it would have been "yeah I'm sorry, but there is a fire, this customer is paying us XYZ and threating to take their bussiness elsewhere, ...". Saying "no" would at best give you some additional resources.

(Note that I did say "previous" team and the reason this kept happening is precisely why that team is no longer my current one)

Your comment reads as you don’t need a realtor as a buyer — and I agree to an extent. I always thought that the service was provided for the seller

Things our agent did I would not have done or not done properly on top of the paperwork and legal advice:

- got us in touch with home stylist and a photographer who were great

- had a phone book of prospective customers looking for a place like ours

- followed up with people who were interested and arranged a second showing

About the commissions, either it is very regional or we were lucky but we agreed on a flat fee plus some percent if and only if the price goes above some target.

I am Czech but I’ve been living in Sweden for the past 6 or so years. The biggest difference I see is consistency and trust between population and the agencies and government.

Sweden did this: - we now have to do XYZ, this is the new normal. The things we ask you to do are designed to be sustainable in the long term (the fact they didn’t close schools is a perfect example. Closing schools is absolutely not sustainable long term)

Cz did this: - cases are up, close everything - when cases are down, open up everything. Chest beating ensued as you wrote. We won, why should we help Italians who didn’t manage as well as we did etc.. - when cases are up close everything - repeat with confusing variations on what is allowed or banned this time

This eroded the (already weak) trust between people and the government IMO and nobody gives a shit about following even the regulations that make sense. Listening to my family describing what is going on in CZ gives a very Kafkaesque feeling.

Regarding 2. — are you sure the people with disposable income would buy a gaming console of all things? I mean it requires time to enjoy which is something a middle aged person trying to dance between family and work doesn’t have.. Also those younger people that are being targeted have middle aged parents with money:)

Of course it’s entirely possible that you’re right and I’m just bitter that I can’t spend more time gaming :)

I think as usual when it comes to complex issues involving many people the truth will be somewhere in the middle. At the very least COVID has forced managers to get acquainted with managing remote teams — even if the team won’t be 100% remote a year from now, I can very well imagine a 3/2 or even 4/1 split between on site or WFH.

(Disclaimer: I work for Red Hat)

Please pay attention to the previous submission about RH from this platform. The author seems to have an agenda and likes to stir controversy.

Nothing in his post matches my experience.

Yeah sorry if it sounded too entitled (otoh there is not much “entitlement” I paid for all this with my taxes several times over). I’m happy that you have he the chance to be with your kid more I just read your post as “it’s impossible for fathers who work to enjoy kids prior to the pandemic”.

I also got back to fiction reading lately and I’m immensely enjoying it. But..do you really read two books A DAY?

Congratulations! It’s funny to see your comment downvoted while just above a comment that says “dog” is not and gets a bunch of enthusiastic replies. HN demographics I guess?

I’ll become a working western father soon and my paternity leave will be ~6 months regardless of pandemic. So I don’t buy the “no other time” argument.

Nice list, that's pretty much what I've been doing.

Especially limiting "news" (I would also emphasize their "quality" with quotes..) and social media. I feel so much better since I quit twitter, for some reason it feels just like a giant pit of awfulness.

The only two things I'd add or say differently is that a) this helps (or at least helped me) not to be more productive, but just in general happier. Being happier brought more energy which in turn means just doing more things, or just other things. The other thing (b) is, with the exception of social media which I outright quit, I'm not strict with limiting or rather going over limit with some of the negative things on your list. Do I feel like eating cake after lunch and having my third coffee after dinner? OK, as long as it doesn't become an everyday habit, I just do it..

But even if it's bad planning, as long as it's acknowledged and fixed, I get over it. The worst thing is IMO if the extra hours are required often and not reimbursed in some way.

My previous team would consistently burn through people after setting irrational deadlines, promise to be better with planning next quarter except it would be just the same as the previous. I left. I've heard they're doing better now but it took pretty much everyone to leave (except some super senior people who are probably paid their weight in gold every month) for management to see it as a problem. And worse, it wasn't the team managers who saw it as a problem but the HR who were concerned about bad retention in this team.

In my current team, I've also had crunches and I worked until 1AM on some ocassions, but after the crunch my manager or team lead would just reach out and say 'take it easy now for a couple of days and no need to file PTO' and they'd actually try to amend the planning next time. What a difference it makes.

According to a quick search, Thailand is #5 in road deaths per capita. So I don't think they fare very well.

But your anecdote reminded me of what the instructors in my driving school used to tell us (20 years ago..I'm old..) - whenever you sit into the driver's seat, your left buttcheek is actually sitting in jail and your right buttcheek is laying in a morgue. Drive accordingly. - everyone else on the road is a psychopath that's out there to kill you. Drive accordingly.

That was of course mostly meant to calm down a bunch of 18 year olds who were eager to drive, but I think the basic premise of "don't even forget that driving is really, really dangerous" is correct.

Yeah, that's a really good point and I would actually love for my old stuff to be reused by /anyone/.

I think your reply shows that you are already very skilled.

Other comments mentioned replacing a diode -- I know what a diode is conceptually, but I have no idea how does it look in the appliance, where would I buy a new one or how to replace it.

Being as clueless as I am, my only option is to call a proffessional. Sometimes it is worth it -- I had a fan on my MacBook replaced for ~700 SEK which is a fraction of the price, but sometimes it's not. Our 1 y/o kitchen oven bought from IKEA started malfunctioning, so we called one of the repair centers they subcontract repairs to. They sent us an invoice by accident even though the oven was covered by a warranty and I couldn't believe my eyes. The cost of the new oven was IIRC ~5000 SEK (~500 USD), but the repair was over 4500 SEK, 3k for the replacement part (!?!) and 1500 for the repairman to come and do their job. I didn't know the cost upfront and I guess they wouldn't have told me an estimate without looking at the oven, at which point I would have to pay the labour cost anyway..

So sadly, given the cost, I would have probably opted for just buying a new item if the faulty one is out of warranty..