skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Employer will not allow remote work, what options do I have?
I am a software engineer in Texas in the house-building industry.

My employer is considered to be in a critical/essential industry and is allowed normal operations during the shelter-in-place order.

We (the software engineering team) have full technical capability of working remotely.

However, our CEO has a deep distrust of employees working remotely and will not allow us to do so for free.

We have only 10 remote work days allowed per year, to work remotely at this time, we must use up those days. Since this global corona virus situation is going to last more than 10 business days, I'm between a rock and a hard place.

Even though the recommendation from the government is that everyone who can work remotely should do so, my employer won't permit it in the strictest sense.

What are my options? Is it time to start looking for a new job?
Be careful with that, you have a grace period to start paying for COBRA but it's only a couple of months. (the exact date will be on the letter you get from your employer when you're terminated)
I disagree with storing your state on the DOM. Querying the DOM can be pretty slow, but also now you're state is going to be stringy-typed which will involve parsers and a whole mess of reasons you don't want that. If you want to keep the logic simple, a view should be a function from a state/model to some 'visual' representation (be it DOM, canvas, Qt, ASCII, a quilt pattern, etc).
Coronavirus puts moral systems to the test
Oh thanks, didn't kow they launched their blog.

Sadly they have apparently no RSS link.
This was my impression after reading the NVC book. It doesn't aim at resolving conflict. It aims at being able to talk about a conflict without joining into it. Most conflicts have a rhetorical side to them, and when you try to talk through them, you almost inevitably fall into the trap of fighting the conflict on the rhetorical level. Even an intermediator trying to be neutral will end up reciting one side's attack line followed by the other side's attack line. NVC is the art of avoiding this, usually at the price of not really speaking about the nominal content of the conflict. This can actually help if the ill will generated by talking about the conflict is a big factor in inflaming it and keeping it going. Other than that, it doesn't do anything to bring you closer to a resolution.
The Gamasutra web article on this is not as pretty. But, it includes the RSP microcode.

http://web.archive.org/web/20081221184231/http://www.gamasut... (edit, link fixed, thanks!)

If you like this kind of stuff, check out https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOfGames/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/videogamescience/ I often post games-related stuff I find here to there. But, this might be the first time I’ve seen something posted to HN because it was first posted there :)
Argonne Taps Supercomputing Network to Study How Coronavirus Spreads
If the only parenthetical language you know is Clojure, and you think that is what Lisp is about, you seriously have the wrong idea. That is the reason why you think that the gap between Lisp and Pyhon/JS/Ruby is so vast. But in fact those are Lisp-inspired languages that take their basic paradigm from Lisp.
I'm sorry for your cyber truck loss
The Zero Trust Learning Curve: Deploying Zero Trust One Step at a Time
I'm not sure that the retail sector will be hit as hard as some expect. We have had home delivery of good taking off in the last decade and it's allowed a lot of commerce that otherwise wouldn't occur to continue for the most part.

For example, I can't go to my mechanic to swap off my winter wheels and tires so I bought so new equipment to do it myself
Eh, the poll is "net support" of 55%, whatever that means. The Republican share is negative percentage points. It's a real shitty way to force a poll to tell the story you want it to tell.
I'm not dismissing the overall security point, but this seems like a pretty weak attack vector. If your company is routinely not deactivating accounts associated with your domain as part of your offboarding, being able to see e-mails and pictures of your employees is not your biggest problem.
It's not pedantic, a lot of people will die because people were saying, "It's just a flu" and not properly preparing or isolating.
For point 11, checking the bbox can be unreliable. JS got an Intersection Observer API a while back - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Intersectio...
> Little implies some

I did not suggest using React and Jquery at the same time, and I don't really encourage that. I do not agree that it's a slippery slope and people will just start using JQuery with React. It's possible that something is already starting to go wrong if you're trying to manipulate the DOM using both React and DOM manipulation. The very point of React is to avoid direct DOM manipulation.
Off topic, but it would be nice to mention Zoom in the title, it's pretty ambiguous otherwise
I actually thought long ago of a platform that gave vendors a place to pay people to demo software. Like "$10 gift card for 15 minutes of your time." Problem is that most companies strictly prohibit their workers receiving outside compensation. Many companies would gladly pay prospects to engage.
Wait, I thought the argument from the anti-copyright people was supposed to be that piracy doesn't hurt sales, not that piracy takes away livelihoods?
There are a lot of goldbugs/bitbugs/Austrians here for some reason.
Don’t all these products need to do this if one of the participants is using a regular phone? It’s just impossible to support phone dial in otherwise.
They claim to do end to end encryption if there are no phones on the call.
Huh. The first thing I opened was Aharanov-Bohm which immediately describes an experimental setup.
Excellent. Reminds me of You Might Not Need jQuery [1] from awhile back.

[1]: http://youmightnotneedjquery.com/
I didn't use the page title because Bloomberg's original was clickbait that didn't really reflect the article. instead I used text from the end of the article summary.
Yes, you can "float" for 60 days without signing up for and paying for COBRA and wait until you are in need of healthcare. After the need you can sign up but you will have to "back"pay the coverage too. So waiting to the last day will mean you owe the two previous months of premiums.
> What possible solutions are safe and fun for engineering, and give the sales director more independence and support?

Not sure how realistic an example it was meant to be but if e.g. an app needs a new feature like a billing system that isn't fun for the engineer to implement, how are you meant to resolve this? I can't imagine many cases where an important engineering dilemma gets resolved this way. A lot of the time people are being paid more because the work they're doing has parts that aren't fun and because there's bad consequences when mistakes are made.
> This approach isn't recommended because we can only attach one handler for each event.

Except when you do want that behavior. E.g., you only want to set one listener and have a stream of data coming in that can trigger various attachments/detachments to the same element(s) over and over.

With the ancient "on" methods you get a single method that you can replace at will. Unbinding happens automatically. For example, you can keep assigning to an anonymous function till your heart's content and there will only ever be one callback in that slot attached as the author states.

With the new, "recommended" methods you must manually track the state and unbind old callbacks. For example, you would have leaky behavior if you kept assigning anonymous functions with addEventListener. And you can't easily hack your way out of the state problem because the DOM doesn't give you a way to fetch the current number of listeners, reset them to default or really know anything about them.

So the recommended behavior does not include in its design the ability to achieve the useful old behavior.

But at least DOM does have a convenience method to toggle class that will save a good 10 seconds per year of dev time.
I was thinking the government could simply pay the hospital bills for every Covid-19 patient.

Maybe the most obvious and direct way to help those affected. If that was the intent.

Giving cash directly to everyone, sick or poor, is a very different thing. "Expanding Medicare" might help a few.
Desktop docking support for AOSP is hardware dependent. If it works on a Samsung stock build, it should work on the same device when flashed w/ official LineageOS.
This. So much this.

You need to be extremely good at it to fake compassion and empathy. And if you don't need to fake it, you don't need a lot of frameworks.

I've had one client that suddenly changed his behavior in this way and it felt like somebody who clenches their teeth and does a weird smile while he says in a robotic voice "I mean you no harm". I know him fairly well, so I asked him about it and he explained that he had read some book and "be friendly, show interest and people will work harder for you" was one of the lessons he took from it.
>I believe a service which as gone on for 24 years knows what it is doing.

Huh. What's your opinion on the current financial crises where companies that are over decades old don't have more than a week in emergency funds before they have to go bankrupt, lay off most of their employees, can't afford mortgage payments, etc? Did they all know what they were doing?
Nikon School Online – Free Online Courses for April
I had an Oric-1 in those days and cut my teeth porting the games in this book to the Oric. The cassette tape with my work is long since perished, but I do still have the drawings from those books burned in my brain, like a searing brand. ;)

If I recall, the same artist also illustrated a kids "Spy" book, which was also another favourite .. although in hindsight, a bit spookier now than it should be.
Problem with that plan is (was, as we discovered) you can't get medications filled at the discount price, and you can't get 90 day scripts filled at all in case you need to hide from the world. Given the spread of the pandemic we decided to take the hit and get the coverage ahead of potentially needing it.
Beyond what is obvious (airlines, restaurants, hotels, retail etc are not contributing to the economy at the moment) I don’t think there will be a broader recession.

The bailout packages may lead to higher interest rates due to government borrowing but inflation is probably in check due to low demand.
I wish we knew more about how much the virus is spread by asymptomatic workers in those settings. Otherwise it seems like closing the barn door after the horses have fled.

EDIT FOR CLARITY: I'm referring to the conditions specific to these Amazon fulfillment centers. Not only specific to the screening regime that Amazon is using, but also to the airflow patterns, specific surface materials, cleaning schedule, etc.

Last I checked, it was generally accepted that covid19 can be spread while people are still asymptomatic, even if they practice 2-meter spacing and are wearing masks.

Because even with those measures in place, persons can still contaminate their hands with fluids mucus / saliva / tears, and then go on to touch objects or surface that will subsequently be touched by others.

Therefore, while prohibiting employees with fevers or other signs of covid19 infection are undoubtedly a good idea, there's still some risk of person-to-person transmission even with those who pass that screening.

It's the probability of that kind of transmission that interests me. Because if it's non-zero, there are a few questions worth asking:

- Should Amazon take additional measures to prevent person-to-person transmission? E.g., run most products through an anti-microbial UV lamp? Tweak their AI camera monitors to also look for people touching their faces?

- If that can compare the transmission probabilities of (a) the employees who pass that screening system vs. (b) those who would not, and the probabilities are very close, is the world better off by allowing people in group (b) to continue working?
You said it yourself "critical/essential" business.

If you believe you may be an asymptomatic carrier of COVID-19 it would be immoral to infect your co-workers. Especially if they are unable or unprepared to work from home themselves. I would say that based on what we know you have 14-21 days of WFH that are possible based on the facts of the incubation time.
Magnus Carlsen to stage richest online chess tournament in history
That's not how switches work: a switch can (and will) trigger lots of cases if you don't either `break` (highly unintuitive to new programmers, who like you believe switch is "do one of these") or `return`, either of which cuts cuts the switch short.
Yes, but the desktop interface of AOSP is far behind Samsung's as far as I know.
Even if they hadn't done buybacks, it would be very unprofitable to keep paying people not to work for the duration of this crisis. Corporations should generally try to do profitable things, so making staff redundant would probably be a good idea no matter their cash situation. Air travel is not going to return to its previous level for months or even years. It's not efficient to pay staff to be idle for that whole time.

That doesn't take away from the fact that income maintenance is a good thing in a crisis like this. However, this type of public benefit is best provided by the government, not private corporations.
I think this is yet another place where there's a fundamental lack of leadership. The Federal government should be looking for ways to allow businesses to suspend operations and make whole landlords and banks where possible. No business should be shut down permanently because of this but unfortunately, we have a massive lack of vision at the Federal level at this point.
Yeah, well, I unnecessarily asked my question in the indirect way. What I meant is: what do we expect to see? Wars and famines, or just little hardship? Or something in between?

I've done some preparations over a month ago, but these were preparations for a short-term supply chain disruption. Not for what increasingly seems like a global economic meltdown.
Covid-19 and the Question Concerning Technology
When has React's approach to state management changed?

The only change I know of is the introduction of the useState hook, but you don't have to use it.

The React team has done stellar job of maintaining a stable API with very minimal breaking changes. The only major breaking changes I can think of is the move of React.createClass to react-create-class and replacing the lifecycle methods through a slow and steady push over multiple major versions. I'm sure there were some smaller ones, but nothing that required any significant amount of time to fix.

As far as build systems and tooling, that's only as complex as you want it to be and doesn't have to change with the seasons. I've been using the same Webpack/Babel/React setup on one of my projects for about 7 years now with minimal work on my end (the only major upgrade was Babel 6 > 7, and Webpack 2 to 3, which took about maybe half a day to complete both).
you mean two if statements. The last case is a default return.
Seems like it requires a Google or Microsoft account (or corporate SAML). No thanks!
A lack of buybacks wouldn't have made much difference, Matt Levine goes into more detail on this.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-03-17/the-go...
Nothing is preventing them, that is why there are several large scale trials taking place in the United States right now... (mostly in New York, as well as at least one in Washington).
> Some of those articles are just a modern Tantra

Would you care to provide concrete examples?

> Generalisations aside (however valid and useful) most of this theoretical physics is nothing but a socially constructed models, agreed upon.

Well, of course. Theories are formal systems that we construct to be a "looking glass" of the results of observations and experiments.
I find the whole ganging up against Zoom disgusting. Mac-fanbois-cum-security-experts blaming Zoom for the deficiencies of a) their platform not having a working native teleconferencing solution and b) their platforms arbitrary installer policies.

Then there's the issue that Zoom is now suddenly responsible for the complete lack of security awareness of teachers and middle managers who have never before held online classes, and are publicly posting meeting credentials so that everyone can join.

All, of course, while the while world is free loading (yes, "you are the product, hurr durr"; great contribution).
Borrowing money at cheap interest rates to build things that keep us competitive for the next century isn't a horrible idea but glad that you're completely dismissing it.
I doubt that would be possible in that time frame. But I would need to see evidence of basic herd immunity or a massive chunk of herd immunity (50% population including representative percentage of the elderly) with low death rates, including in areas where medical systems were overwhelmed. Otherwise an effective preventative quarantine will always on face value look like an exaggeration, since the goal is to avoid something before it happens. But looking at New York and Milan, etc, I think that option is fast becoming a fantasy if it is not one already.

Solidarity and group effort are important parts of what it means to be human.
Our local grocery store chain (Wegmans) finally let workers wear masks last night, as well.
With if you can also indicate "it's one of these things" by throwing an error at the end:

if (cellA > cellB) return 1;
if (cellA < cellB) return -1;
if (cellA === cellB) return 0;
throw new Error();
In case anyone else didn't know what "swoosh-shaped" is supposed to mean: it seems to indicate a sharp drop, followed by a long, but steady, recovery.

"The virus won’t last forever, the global economy will recover,” said Donough Kilmurray, Chief Investment Officer at the Dublin-based firm’s wealth management business. “A V-shaped recovery feels too optimistic, but an L-shaped view is probably too pessimistic.”
This is very good for learning and I agree with the other comment that it's worth it for the experience.

But for production usage, just no. That is a machine you'll need to maintain, monitor and keep secure against attacks - if it gets compromised your entire digital identity is compromised (most passwords can be reset with access to your e-mail).
Fair points all. But what if you dont know what you are looking for? What if you dont know that the way you are doing things now can be done significantly faster, better, or with less cost?

I used to work for a large managed WordPress provider in their early days. The vast majority of people we talked to said "I had no idea this was available. For $x dollars you are saving me Y hours of time each month, Y hours that I'm doing work that I absolutely hate and probably am not good at."
I wouldn't even think twice about it. Why should you show loyalty to someone that shows no loyalty to you.
I want to share my solution for remote collaboration and teaching: https://github.com/amkhlv/mathpump3

Professor uses Wacom and Inkscape to draw a picture, which is incrementally transmitted to students' computers. Students, those who have Wacom, may interact. Or just watch. Transmission happens every time the svg file is saved. Transmission requires a RabbitMQ server, which can be easily set up. Basically, a class needs one person who knows Linux, to set up the server.

It is intended for scientific collaboration or teaching in small groups of people. I am now using it for teaching my QFT class, although it only has 5 students. In principle, it should scale, but I have not tried it for large groups...

Drawing with Wacom in Inkscape is a pleasure, once you get used to it. In some sense, it is more convenient than using a physical blackboard. Although, some training is needed...
Its not that the companies should have kept the cash, though. Buybacks are not inherently bad. But the US, many buybacks were a direct result of the reduction in corporate tax rate in 2017. Instead of using their greater cash flow to reinvest, raise wages, etc, they bought back stock primarily held by wealthy and institutions. Effectively a transfer from the US Treasury to the wealthy class, leaving the US with fewer options to weather the current storm for its citizens as a whole.
If that's the case, that's what should have been made clear. OP clearly doesn't think that's what happened.
"If workers are not interested in actually resuming work for the time being, they would apply jobs for which they would not qualify for, preferably ones that won’t even contact them back."

It's not cynical - it's real.
They don’t know they’re being insulted, and they lack the tools to address the issue.

But more importantly, you don’t get sass for being a bad boss from a bunch of kids who have never had a real boss before.
Even without the buybacks and a mountain of cash they'd still likely be suspended. Airlines are in a world of uncertainty right now and cutting costs is key. Essentially no one is flying for an indeterminate period of time. You don't keep paying workers to manage a store with no customers, regardless of business or ability to do so.
Fullstack Web Applications Deployment Workflow
Hi,

We're a team of 4 working on a new Open Source project to build and deploy FullStack web applications to the Cloud and/or on-premise.

As we truly believe that JavaScript is the future. Our ambition is to build a complete development and deployment solution around JS frameworks and tools as popular as WordPress is with PHP (easy installation, configuration, development, maintenance,...)

You can see an overall view of the solution we have in mind to help developers build better and faster web applications here :
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1vXyo61yrgHgPb5ndPW-msqAxmy_NJwjJ3xzu4CIMNY4/edit?usp=sharing

At this point we're looking for partners, essentially early customers/testers who would help us build the solution around their problematics. We are also open for co-founders (business/marketing/tech) or companies willing to participate to this open source project.

Wassim
From that link

Virgin Atlantic, however, continues to press, and has written to MPs pointing out that it provides the only British-flagged competition to British Airways on many key routes from Heathrow.

Virgin is owned by Americans (Delta), Air France and a shady billionaire who pays no tax in the UK. Why would the British taxpayer be on the hook here?

Also why isn’t BA asking the Spanish government for a bailout? Since it is owned by Iberia...
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agreed, I'm the same except i have no FB account.

I can't help but feel this sudden Zoom "panic" is coming from large (and incompetent) tech companies who are not happy with an upstart.