Ask HN: What interesting stuff are you browsing? My online activity seems to be in a loop comprise of hackernews, email check, and google news recently. It seems all these sites are updating very slowly; or am I checking too frequently? What interesting stuff are you browsing recently? |
https://www.poundsterlinglive.com/data/currencies/gbp-pairs/...
1 min, 30 min, 1 day, candles, kagi, baseline, heikin ashi, zoom in, zoom out, both axes.
It's a site for collaborative fiction through writing prompts, if you like reading or writing: https://www.storylocks.com
Stuff like: https://helpatmyhome.com/best-kettlebells/
It’s good to be as well informed as possible on what’s going on in the world but there’s diminishing returns after a hour or so of news in a day.
Right now it's Middlemarch.
Your unit tests are running too slowly, otherwise you wouldn't be checking so frequently.
Oh, wait. That's me.
Didn't even know it existed a month ago. It's a fascinating window into a very popular hobby.
There's some crossover with HN, but plenty that you won't have seen.
Less obligatory plug for gwern's subreddit, which is great: https://www.reddit.com/r/gwern/
It would also obviate the need to ask a question like this. We could just search through user histories and discover new things that way.
Tv from the 90s.
Also Arts And Letters Daily
Naked Capitalism daily linkdumps (morning + water cooler at 2pm) have plenty of auxiliary reading material in them
Slate Star Codex comment section is always popping off, some discussions are more interesting than others depending on what you're into
Similar to HN but contains non-tech stuff.
For instance, there's a common and oft-repeated notion that food delivery apps are screwing over drivers, not just restaurants. So I've been reading the Couriersofreddit sub to get the story from the horses' mouths:
https://www.reddit.com/r/couriersofreddit/
It turns you can make quite a bit driving for GH/UE (well in some geographies), so much so that a $15/hr job with benefits is unattractive.
https://www.reddit.com/r/couriersofreddit/comments/gkmuc4/wo...
I want to work towards a just world, but I believe the first step is to really understand the system of incentives and what is actually happening on the ground, as opposed to simply taking in oversimplified media narratives.
Subreddits are watering holes for folks in the field. I think their unvarnished perspectives are interesting data points (albeit skewed towards a Reddit-centric demographic).
That said, I have been reading this sub daily for the past 2 months now and yes there's variability but in general, most agree the work is paying (check out the sub's history in the last 2 months).
It sounds like customers are tipping better, traffic is reduced so trips are shorter, gas is cheaper, parking is more abundant, and order volumes are up. These conditions are temporary and are not sustainable in the long term of course, but it's worth seeing the situation for what it is right now. It sounds like it is possible to do well in these times.
The sub is a window into what folks (admittedly a biased sample) are actually experiencing, as opposed to theoretical conjecture based on our (sometimes disconnected to reality or outdated) priors, etc.
In my line of work, I often overhear stuff from field service people, and it's always fascinating to me how different reality is from what say, software engineers are thinking. The discrepancy between "systems as found" and "systems as imagined" is interesting to me is all.
That's just one subreddit. There are other watering holes.
Maybe some enterprising person on here could make a slick web app to help people estimate depreciation and maintenance costs, with a user interface that people with a high school diploma could understand.
- Tips had very little to do with it, and I reported all my tips as taxable income, even cash tips. It was not unheard of to go a week or so without receiving any tips. When asked (e.g. by a friend who used the service) whether people should be tipping the drivers, I always said, "Don't." Having said that, tips were welcome and rarely refused—only on a few occasions when some wanted me to "hang on a sec" so they could get me something, where the running calculus suggested that it would be better for me to leave instead so I could move on ASAP.
- The gigging companies have always insisted that drivers are contractors and not employees, and I made out by embracing that. Every delivery was treated as a job offer to be decided based on estimated cost and return. I made judicious use of my ability to not accept orders, keep blacklists of businesses when they or their customers were known to be high cost/low reward, and even walking out of many businesses empty handed after having accepted an order and arriving only to find that they didn't have their act together, usually in regard to having the food ready in a reasonable about of time; eating the sunk costs was usually the favorable option compared to holding out for an answer to see if this program halts.
- My rating was usually around 97% at any given time, but sometimes it would go as low as 94% (92%?). Bending myself out of shape just to make sure the last few percent don't slip away and trying to satisfy everyone wasn't worth it (and likely futile). I told businesses and customers on more than one occasion to go fuck themselves while letting them know that the deal is off. I should have done it more.
- I got a fair bit of free food, but not as much an ordinary pizza delivery driver would. Someone once butt-dialed a $150 to $200 order from a (so-so) Mediterranean restaurant while stoned, and when I showed up with their order they said they'd already contacted the service/restaurant and requested that it be sent back and the order be canceled. I ate leftover Mediterranean takeout for the next week. When people don't show up or answer the door to receive their order, it's yours to dispose of after 5 to 10 minutes (depending on whatever the service's A/B testing says they should set the timer to, I guess). Generally, I didn't feel that it was worth it and would have preferred to make the delivery as quickly as possible.
As with everything, details matter. I can't claim that any given person would be able to repeat my success. Sturgeon's Law applies. 90% of the labor efforts of working adults seems to be not very good. That ratio at least jibes with what I've observed of rideshare drivers when I've been in the backseat. When I've talked to my rideshare drivers, I thought it was strange that almost no one was also doing deliveries or interested in it in the least. People, generally, aren't very good or thoughtful and wouldn't do well, and nobody really wants to work hard.
I worked hard. Everything that I did while I was online was focused on maximizing my returns. I know my city well and how to get around it. I know which areas to hang out in so I can get the offers from the good businesses. I know when to call it a night instead of holding out "until I make X hundred dollars" or "put in X hours", as I've heard some of my rideshare drivers explain. I know what the mind of a developer working in an environment rooted on a the SV startup mindset and how analytics might be used against me.
It's okay to be skeptical if you find it hard to believe, but this is all really just another case of "selling onions on the internet".
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19728132
Caveats are that I always worked nights, usually 7 nights a week, and the total hours were less than a full work week you'd get from scheduled shifts at the office. A typical week involved 7 days of me waking up sometime between 6:00 to 9:00 AM, putting in 30 to 50 hours sitting behind my desk at home working on personal projects or reading HN or papers or something else that I found intellectually gratifying, stopping mid-day for lunch with no definite bounds, jumping in the shower around 6:00 to 6:30 PM (right after or during my period of highest productivity for the day that popped up around 5:00 PM for some reason), and then shooting to be out the door around 6:45 or 7:15 PM. There was no commute. Work was the commute. I'd stop for groceries most days while out before wrapping up deliveries and come home 9:30 PM to 1:00 AM and have half a bottle of wine and dinner and cookies and watch a movie or two, and then knock off and go to bed. Having no family and a car that I owned and that I did all the maintenance on and was a reliable workhorse are a big part of what made it possible.
Restaurant delivery driving is a less than minimum wage endeavor in my city the last time I tried it. A lot of that has to do with growing pains: the restaurants don't have the order ready in time, and you usually have to drive across the city to do a pickup because volume is low. Regular Uber was also like this in the early days until volume picked up.
Of course, with COVID, both Uber and Uber Eats is barely worth doing. I hear grocery delivery is where it's at now.
I also tried to deliver food in Palo Alto, but most of the orders were coming from Stanford Shopping Center were it was hard to find parking, and then it was hard to find the restaurant, and on top of that the restaurants were pretty slow to prepare the orders.
The factors that may contribute to higher income through delivery apps during COVID-19:
- without regular visitors, restaurants are probably faster to prepare food for delivery
- with more customers there are more chances for delivery app to batch orders
- with less traffic and cheaper gas, the expenses per delivery are lower
It's absolutely bonkers, and even smart people join in on this fallacy. A consumer complaining about Uber not paying their drivers well is usually the same one that's choosing their ride based on what's cheapest.
That's the thing about service based income. You can't institute any protections in place, because the answer to everything is 'it depends'.
Instituting a minimum wage requirement for waiters shouldn't be stopped because some waiters make a whole lot more than minimum wage.
Same applies to delivery services. The culture, frequency and bills of each locality vary massively.
Congratulations, friend. You have arrived at a kind of limbo that in all likelihood you will end up at again in the future. I congratulate you, because you have arrived at the point where you have "synced" -- that is to say, you have processed material from your desired channels from the post to the present moment such that this feeling you are experiencing, an almost emptiness or that of negative space, encapsulates and closes in upon the definition of "present moment".
Give it a day, and new content will arrive in your familiar channels. You'll consume it, and return to this familiar, interstitial area.
Perhaps now is as good a time as any to consider directionality. Is it a good time to go back on material you've previously processed and re-process it for refinement? It will only deepen your intuition and the firmness of your intellectual grip. Is it time for you to seek out a new channel, as you're doing here? That too, is a new adventure. Is it maybe time to begin forming your own channel? So too could that be a new adventure.
And if none of those sound appealing? Well, perhaps that is even more appealing. Perhaps you, like many other folks, have finally come to that point where you ask "what's next?" to a deafeningly loud internal silence. This is good. This is where the interesting stuff happens.
If I can give you a word of advice -- don't feel so inclined to have to come up with an answer immediately. It's possible that you may need to keep your internal eyes and ears open for when the answer finds /you/.
And to answer your question in a more literal manner -- take a look at what you've liked, commented on, and favorited on Hacker News. You can probably identify some areas that you tend to enjoy exploring. Try and find folks/communal spaces on Twitter and Reddit (maybe YouTube too, if possible) that also explore those areas. From there, you can branch out, whether it's talking directly with those folks to get a sense of what they think is interesting that you might not know about (this is the best way, IMO) or following new paths out further.
But, I will stress: try and soak in the feeling and fully absorb it. To run away from it could be to waste it, and it's something that you may one day look back upon as more rare and valuable than it originally felt.
https://www.permaculture.co.uk/articles/many-benefits-hugelk...
The English wikipedia article has some PIE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%BCgelkultur
Unlike ö (pretty much the i in girl) and ä (pretty much any English a), it’s hard to find an example of the ü sound in English. I guess it’s somewhere on the gradient between the “ee” and “oo” in “new”.
Usually the most familiar ü-word English speakers are familiar with is “über” (over, about, above, also fig. in the sense of superior). I believe this is the fault of “Übermensch”…
This configuration doesn’t exist in normal English, but it’s not too far away! Once you know what it’s supposed to sound like, the next trick is combining it with consonants.
It all starts by taking the time to examine the content you consume & why you enjoy consuming it.
Twitter bot: http://twitter.com/randomwikibotch/ Source code if anyone is interested at creating their own: https://github.com/chirag64/Random-Wiki-Page-Twitter-Bot
GTC 2020 Part 2 was pretty good https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeScfkCm3b4
Mostly I'm in a rut as well
[1] https://community.mix.com/blog/2019/2/27/introducing-the-mix...
- number systems. Base 12 would be nice.
- systems of measurement. Adjusting the SI base unit to be even powers of Plank Units seems ideal.
- calendar systems. 12 month years, 5 week months, 6 day weeks (with an extra 5 or 6 day week at the end of the year) seems nice.
- time system. A new time system based off 12. Sub-units are 2 hours, 10 minutes, 50 seconds, 4.16 seconds, and .3472 seconds. Time can be a normal number then like A63.B8
- languages. Lojban seems awesome!
- coding. Replacing C and C++ with D and Rust, and Python/R/Matlab with Julia.
- taxes. Land value taxes really do seem awesome.
Probably over half this has been via Wikipedia.
Obviously 12 is nice for divisibility (easy quarters and halves), but are there any other key reasons?
I don't know why I'm surprised, but this brightened by day!
Do we know Planck Units accurately enough to work with such units in the many-orders-of-magnitude-different world of people-sized things?
After that and Hacker News, I suggest setting up a decentralized media account such as Scuttlebutt, Beaker Browser, or Mastodon.
Can be self hosted, but I’m too lazy; price is acceptable and Sam Clay just makes this laziness feel justified :)
Trying to keep it funny, edgy, and informative.
If anyone knows of a place to find interesting articles on High frequency and algorithmic trading, let me know!
It's a platform for longform online discussions between two or more people. You can read other people's or make your own.
Also, historically how drugs went through clinical trials, experimentation, production etc. The anti-HIV drug AZT is well documented, and there's a great article here [2] by TIME if you're interested.
[1] - https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2020-gilead-remdesivir-co...
So, for me, it is;
- (Desktop): HackerNews, Twitter, Email mostly
- (Mobile): Photography / Videography. Text mostly. Phones calls are rare.
If you want to fill in, try starting a reading habit or even better, writing. I've 2 stickies right in front of me on the wall just above the monitor that says "Read anything today?" and "Wrote anything today?" I'm failing on the writing part and struggling to make it happen.
No commenting, but kinda like a HNs for the Arts:
I don't think they've ever posted anything that puts computers and modern tech in a good light.
It definitely feels like that more and more for me recently. Sometimes it feels like "I've watched these videos before" on YouTube or I find the memes on Reddit repetitive or unfunny. It gets to the point where I don't mind rewatching videos..
I feel more joy and direct benefit through improving interacting with the physical environment like cleaning the house, learning the science of baking and cooking and giving the results to friends and family.
It feels more like I'm living real life than having my life disappear into the ether of the web.
To go further, when you've browsed so much the website you're reading is giving you a recaptcha prompt....you've hit a Buddhist like Nirvana.
https://www.racv.com.au/on-the-road/buying-a-car/car-running...
I'm not sure why you you're saying bonuses are a bad thing? People get paid extra to fulfill metrics?
Over the years, the bonus system was implemented. Now, if they drive for 8-9 hours their take home is like half of X/2. Instead they have to drive 12 hours a day and do at least Y rides in the week, to be eligible for roughly a X/2 bonus so their total take home is X.
So, I meet so many drivers who seem super stressed and tired. When asked they say, it is the end of the week for them and they need to complete another 3 rides for the bonus, but they have already been driving for 15 hours, and only have 2 hours to complete the remaining 3 rides.
Its exploitation at its finest.
Sounds like supply and demand working as it should to me.
If you want a job where you can work when you want, this is what happens. You don't have a "off" switch. This is not unique to Uber.