nemesisj

The name rhymes with "frighten".

Source: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/pronunciation/english/crich...

Also a Source: Name is Scottish origin, I live in Scotland.

Lots of (positive) changes:

1. Calendar management is now almost fully automated.

2. Built a trip visualization and planning tool we call TripMap to track vacations and work trips.

3. GREMLIN screwed up! Mistakes were made...(personal) money was, uh lost...

4. Plenty of other lessons learned and improvements!

I tried signing up with google and the long random subdomain that ended in .supabase in the permissions granted modal was pretty off putting. I said yes bc I know this is a new service but if I was a random signup that would cause me concern and I’d not continue signing up. Hope this helps!

I follow the referenced instagram account and I actually find it depressing.

I've probably visited Beirut 20+ times over the last 7 years. Last visit was summer of 2019, so haven't been since COVID. My company has an office there.

It's one of my favorite cities in the world. It's also one of the most heartbreaking situations in economic and humanitarian terms. The country has experienced one of the worst currency crises in history, did not wether COVID well, and then had one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history go off right in the city center. Two years later, nobody has been prosecuted.

The country is in complete deadlock politically - all of the warlords from the civil war just became politicians and then systematically looted the country. There isn't much optimism that the situation will turn around, and almost everyone I know who lived there has left, accelerating an already problematic brain drain.

Beirut and Lebanon has to be one of the largest missed opportunities or what-could-have-been situations of the last 100 years.

Administrate | Senior Software Engineers | Edinburgh, UK| US| Beirut, Lebanon| Remote | https://www.getadministrate.com

Administrate’s vision is to be the platform for education. We provide an EdTech solution that helps training departments and training companies manage their entire operation and plug into the rest of their corporate tech stack. We’re looking for smart engineers who get things done with Javascript, React, Python, and our GraphQL API.

We’re one of the UK’s fastest growing B2B SaaS companies. We work a 4 Day, 32 hour workweek but you get paid for 5 days. You can read more about that here: https://techcrunch.com/2015/12/21/four-day-week/

Check out our positions here: https://www.getadministrate.com/careers/

My guess is that fire prevention is only part of the problem. Wouldn't burying the lines mean that their infrastructure is also not destroyed by wild fires? Things just burn above, and everything keeps on working?

I am working on a LEGO sorter project, and getting access to labeled data to train my neural network is a real pain. Would love to see if your dataset could be of use!

I wish this comment was the top comment.

Not to be too critical, but this blog post is a (in my opinion, poor) rehash of Steve Yegge's infamous Google+ post which he accidentally posted online. It's entertaining and one of the most influential memos I've read in the last twenty years.

His followup memo was great as well.

I moved to Europe (Scotland) about 10 years ago, and prior to that lived most of my life in China and the USA. One thing that struck me is that in both China and the USA, the idea of a war close to home is not a thing. Nobody considers it to be a remote possibility, and it isn't. There is simply no entity who can project enough power to mess with either of those countries for a sustained period of time on their home turf.

It's different in Europe - the UK seems to be the least conscious of the possibility of war but the farther east you go, the more it's on people's minds.

I've been to Poland a few times now, and each visit through chatting with randoms in a bar or pub (and through chatting with a number of Polish friends here in the UK) I had a similar experience: there would be a point where someone would casually remark that they're just spending time concentrating on keeping fit (aerobic and weight lifting) because "the next war is coming."

Poland of course has particularly horrible geographical luck and an extremely war-torn past to reckon with, but I was really struck with this idea that anecdotally many folks seemed to be living under the perception that the next war is coming, and we all need to be prepared. I've had similar but less extreme and consistent conversations with folks in Romania, for example.

I'm not really sure what there is to learn here, apart from the fact that the EU has been a phenomenal success in its real purpose - keeping the peace in Europe. Just look at this list of wars in Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe

Is the world getting safer? I think so. Is the risk of large scale war like France is planning for decreasing? I hope so. But we are on very new footing in terms of this being the new normal, despite what it might feel like, and this perception certainly differs based on how close to perceived threats you might live.

Administrate | Senior Software Engineers | Edinburgh, UK| US| Beirut, Lebanon| Remote | https://www.getadministrate.com

Administrate’s vision is to be the platform for education. We provide an EdTech solution that helps training departments and training companies manage their entire operation and plug into the rest of their corporate tech stack. We’re looking for smart engineers who get things done with Javascript, React, Python, and our GraphQL API.

We’re one of the UK’s fastest growing B2B SaaS companies.

We 4 Day, 32 hour workweek but you get paid for 5 days. You can read more about that here: https://techcrunch.com/2015/12/21/four-day-week/

Check out our positions here: https://www.getadministrate.com/careers/

Administrate | Senior Software Engineers | Edinburgh, UK| US| Beirut, Lebanon| Remote | https://www.getadministrate.com

Administrate’s vision is to be the platform for education. We provide an EdTech solution that helps training departments and training companies manage their entire operation and plug into the rest of their corporate tech stack. We’re looking for smart engineers who get things done with Javascript, React, Python, and our GraphQL API.

We’re one of the UK’s fastest growing B2B SaaS companies.

We 4 Day, 32 hour workweek but you get paid for 5 days. You can read more about that here: https://techcrunch.com/2015/12/21/four-day-week/

Check out our positions here: https://www.getadministrate.com/careers/

Yes! I feel the same way re: ROI of that talk. I consistently say it was worth the entire price of admission. There were some other really good speakers that year, but she was incredible.

I was lucky enough to hear Kathy Sierra speak in what I believe is one of her last public appearances. I had never heard of her before. It remains one of the best talks I’ve ever heard, not only because of the content, which was excellent, but her delivery was incredible. She had something like 150 slides that she bulldozed through flawlessly and she was really funny. After that I learned about the harassment and I find it so disappointing That people can be so cruel and that we have missed out on more contributions from her. I really hope one day she’ll return but I completely understand if she doesn’t.

Administrate | Senior Software Engineer(s), Software Engineer(s) | Edinburgh, UK OR Beirut, Lebanon OR Remote | https://www.getadministrate.com

Administrate's vision is to be the platform for education. We provide an EdTech solution that helps training departments and training companies manage their entire operation and plug into the rest of their corporate tech stack. We're looking for smart engineers who get things done with Javascript, React, Python, and our GraphQL API. Our engineers normally work from our offices in Edinburgh, Beirut, or remotely across Europe.

We're one of the UK's fastest growing B2B SaaS companies.

We 4 Day, 32 hour workweek but you get paid for 5 days. You can read more about that here: https://techcrunch.com/2015/12/21/four-day-week/

Check out our positions here: https://www.getadministrate.com/careers/

Great idea, and seems to be solving a problem. Not to be a jerk though, this is not a $10k MRR business, it's a business with $10k of Monthly Revenue. Unless I'm completely misunderstanding what's going on, there is no subscription, and therefore nothing recurring about the revenue.

This is one of those comments that is just so...American. I’m also an American, living in the UK, and the friction inherent in the USA banking system contributes to reverse culture shock. In pretty much any EU country I’ve been to you can pay anyone in seconds from any bank account, any amount, for free, just by knowing their account number and sort code. In the USA instead, banks spend millions trying to handle small pieces of paper (checks) with zero interest in modernising. Oh well.

I have lived in the U.K. for more than 8 years. I receive spam calls daily from a combination of London and blocked numbers. Everyone I know here also receives them frequently. I’m on the U.K. do not call list. It’s endless PPI, “your recent accident”, and just normal phishing attempts. When I’m in the Middle East it’s endless spam texts. I guess Germany has it figured out but by no means is this an American only problem, or a solved problem in the Western world.

We try to keep it to 32 but the problem with good people who are high performers is they love to work! We try to emphasise that sure, at times you may need to burst a bit, and we do, but overtime is generally a failure of management. Either the managing team or managing ones workload. A lot of times when our managers notice overtime or more than 32 they look into the whys behind it.

Our CEO (me) does take phone calls and work a bit on the 5th day. I’m not the best example, but I don’t go into the office, and I try to limit it to important stuff that literally can’t wait. My travel schedule means I burn weekend days quite a bit but I do enjoy being on long haul flights where my phone doesn’t work. I’m a recovering workaholic and I do feel like it’s helped me personally put the brakes on a bit.

The funny thing is, when I’m off on my 5th day and enjoying a hobby or something I often get very creative ideas about the business popping into my thoughts. And I think that shouldn’t be surprising bc that’s how our minds work - we can’t be slaves to a hustle porn mentality and do our best work.

Anyway. We and myself aren’t perfect, but we do try to adhere to the spirit of the idea as best we can.

Actually Lebanon is not a Muslim majority country (demographically it now is but politically no - power is shared between Christians and Muslims ) and they work a standard M-F week, unlike the gulf. We based in Lebanon for our Middle East operation because we liked Beirut better than Dubai, it’s cheaper, the talent is great, and we had some founding customers there (a bit strange but go figure). It’s been a great decision for us and we hope we’re helping throw off the stigma of Beirut being a war torn city just s little bit.

Good questions!

1. We started by doing some research, actually - I spent some time finding studies that supported my thesis that productivity would go up (thus making sure our output would stay the same, more or less). Then I discussed with our management team, who thought I was nuts, but was supportive. Then I presented it to our board, who was also supportive. We applied it to everyone at the start, but some teams took a bit longer to get it implemented, as one of our criteria was he had to maintain 5 day coverage for our customers (ie, some have Mondays off, some have Fridays, etc.). To this day we leave the coverage patterns and rotations up to each team/department to decide.

2. In our contracts, we are paying you for 40 hours of work, 5 days a week, but we give you one of them back. Moonlighting meaning working for another company "on the side".

We work a 4 Day, 32 hour week, and have done so since 2015. During that time, our team grew from a small office of ~20 in Edinburgh to where we are today (3 offices in Edinburgh Scotland, Bozeman USA, and Beirut Lebanon) with about 80 people.

We have consistently been one of the fastest growing tech companies in Scotland (and in the UK). When we implemented the 4 day policy, we didn’t change our financial targets, or our team metrics. Instead, we explained it was an experiment that we wanted to run, and we believed that by being more efficient and more intentional about how we worked, we could still achieve our goals.

Turned out that was true.

Our motivation was primarily work/life balance, but also the realisation that most startups take 10-15 years to get to where they want to go, and we have a long journey ahead of us! It’s a marathon, not a sprint. We still pay a 5 day wage, and we actually “buy” all 5 days, because we wanted to make sure that team members weren’t tempted to moonlight on the 5th day.

Overall I think it’s been a really great thing for our team, and perhaps most importantly, I think we’ve proved that ambitious goals, hard work, and a strong drive to succeed is not at odds with a 4 day week. Over the last few years we’ve spent probably hundreds of hours talking with various organisations and the media about the benefits of the 4 day week, and I’m hopeful it’ll continue to catch on more and more.

This is a problem that a startup I’m involved with (www.snap40.com) is tangentially aiming to solve. The prime goal isn’t really to help patients sleep better, but to help healthcare professionals monitor them better and be proactively alerted when things are deteriorating. It’s an iPhone sized (but lighter) device that’s worn on the upper arm and once you’re wearing it, you forget about it. Instead of reading vital signs the patient can sleep, and we’ve caught instances where patients were in trouble before the normal rounds would have. Also applicable for home use as patients can be sent home earlier or safely monitored. It is up for approval by the FDA so it is a regulated medical device, and in most cases it does better than the gold standard ICU machines. Better sleep, more safety, and a faster return to home are just some of the benefits, and I’m really optimistic they can make a huge difference for healthcare.

This has been a feature of the pharmaceutical industry since the 90s. Ironically, pharmacy is one of the very few areas of healthcare where the dataset is fairly pristine - prescriptions are always entered into a computer, adjudicated electronically via a PBM (Pharmacy Benefits Manager) and eligibility and pricing is then transmitted back to the pharmacy. However, instead of this data being used for the benefit of the customer, it was used to essentially insert a middleman (the PBMs) into the path between the pharmacy and the insurer, and these grew to be large players over time.

The contracting process between pharmacy->PBM and PBM->insurer allows for significant margins to be made by super chains like Walgreens and CVS (and their associated and owned PBMs), and at the end of the day, the customer gets hosed (via their insurance, or via paying cash on predatory "cash pricing" schemes which are massively profitable to the pharmacy itself). Independent pharmacies, unless they are in a particularly great location or have some other specialty, are more or less toast on their prescription business, and instead rely on front of house revenue.

But even this is nothing when you dig into the hospital side of things, and some of the pricing programs that are available there. There are even specific drug pricing programs (like the 340B program) that are specifically designed to allow hospitals to save money on their pharmaceutical spend for certain classes of patients, but these programs can also be extended outwith the actual hospital's environment to the retail pharmacy.

None of the anecdotes I just shared are Medicare/Medicaid related (more or less), and much of it (like 340B) are bandaids designed to try to help disproportionate share hospitals that act as a safety net for care for uninsured or indigent populations around the USA.

My point is this - this is just the pharmacy side. The USA healthcare system is so complex, and involves so many layers, all of which are skimming profit in a nontransparent way, that it is no surprise that American healthcare is the most expensive in the world. Even diehard free market capitalists would be absolutely amazed if they truly knew what was happening under the hood, and whatever waste that exists in state run, single payer systems like the UK's NHS (or hell, even Medicare in the USA) pales in comparison to the profits being raked out of the system.

This is one of those misconceptions that’s constantly stated by Americans which couldn’t be further from the truth. I know, because I am an American and used to think that. Having lived in the UK for the last 7 years, yes for noncritical issues or elective procedures, you may have to wait a couple of weeks for an appointment (acute care is excellent by the way), but you always have a choice. You can pay for your own private insurance which is extremely affordable compared to the USA and go nuts if you want, or you can wait for the free care. It’s a better system, full stop. America is literally nuts with regards to healthcare.

This type of negative opinion on China is shared all too often on HN, and it's really irritating.

It's also untrue.

For example, lets go to the WTO itself and see the list of current disputes, which is helpfully grouped by country: https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/dispu_by_countr...

- China is currently responding to 39 complaints.

- The USA is responding to 132. Which is more than the entire EU (84) and more than any other country.

It's really tiring to see the "China is a protectionist market" narrative trotted out again and again, unchallenged, and is probably second only to the "China is encroaching on the South China sea" narrative in terms of how hypocritical both views are, especially when espoused by Americans.

Administrate (https://www.getadministrate.com) - Edinburgh, United Kingdom

We're one of the fastest growing tech companies in Scotland, looking for engineers and people in sales.

We provide an EdTech solution that helps training departments and training companies manage their operations. We have beautiful office views of the castle from our city centre location, and we work a 4 Day, 32 hour workweek. You can read more about that here: https://techcrunch.com/2015/12/21/four-day-week/

Looking for: * Software Engineers * Designers * Testers * Smart people who get things done