skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It definitely depends on the product. I had an early version of the MALMO bed that was absolute trash. It broke within a year of normal use.

Things like tables I've generally felt to be of decent quality. Their kitchen fittings tend to be good enough quality to make it through their 10 year warranty.

Actually, speaking of warranties, I was just in an Ikea store in The Netherlands after moving here from the USA, and there was a large sign on the wall in the couch section proclaiming the 10 year warranty on all of their couches. So it seems they are trying to make some key products last.

I also bought some cheap plastic shelves with wheels for my new tiny Dutch bathroom. I don't expect the wheels to still roll in a year. I bought what I think it supposed to be a wire mesh "filing cabinet" (it's tiny!) to use as shoe storage in the entry way and I expect it to start rusting next year. But it was €20 and I just made an international move and money is tight atm.

You get what you pay for I think. $40 bookshelves? Not making it through a move. This model[0] however, will likely hold up fine. It looked sturdy when I saw it in the store last week.

0: https://www.ikea.com/nl/en/p/hemnes-bookcase-red-stained-lig...
Did Bill Gates need a coach? Did Steve Jobs? No, they just got on with it, and learned through a trial by fire. That's the best way - don't be scammed by people who offer the secrets of success, because there aren't any. Just try and try again until you win.
Article missed to mention that the glue is assumed to be along the top edge in both cases.
Last of the Cockney Criminals
As humans we do our best, and try to learn from our mistakes.
Good for Denmark !
Dubai has its issues with using cheap labor from low-income countries. But I wouldn't go as far as saying "antithesis of what it means to be a good human being".

The walkability and public transit point are not as good as in most European cities. But some areas, such as Dubai Marina and Downtown, are not far off. If we compare it to the US, it is much better. Considering that you can't go anywhere without a car in most US cities.

Public transit is actually pretty good. Metro is surprisingly cheap, fast, clean and safe. At the same time, the taxi system is very straightforward, standardized and reasonably priced.
And changing jobs means you now no longer have the vast amount of protection you used to and have to build them back up.

For the majority of countries, your entire point rests on the premise individuals are choosing to largely be immobile. Tenure length isn't that different from the US, all things concerned. Significant, especially given some countries, but not nearly as dramatic as "impossible to fire".

The moment you introduce mobility, most of the safety is gone for a large portion of time. What we are seeing, is that younger people are hit disproportionately since job hopping tends to be the far better choice, and younger people do not start at incomes that get them comfortable. It is primarily the elderly that benefit from the current structure.
You enjoy brick-and-mortar shopping, and that’s fine. Not everyone does. I want to spend as little time as possible with my limited time in this world buying house goods. And I, too, have kids. We just don’t spend time together shopping at IKEA.
Because it's not an irreversible decision. Most countries allow a probation period where you can let an employee go if they don't work out. These are typically anywhere between 2 weeks and 6 months (depending on the training time expected).
What would "recession in full swing" look like exactly, from the perspective of changing your firm's behavior?
Whats the problem with letting it run for a weeks on 5$ vps

You better have your crypto _primitives_ rock solid
What do these permanent and temporary contracts stipulate? Presumably they are quite different than the standard US employment contracts that basically just confirm at-will employment, etc.
I am surprised by this statement. I have used IKEA stuff for over 20 years, hardly anything is abysmal. Which region/country are you talking about? When you buy a mattress/bed, do you buy the lowest end? IKEA has good quality stuff if you are willing to pay a bit more (but not outrageous prices).
I think the OP’s sentiment is being a better human and in an ideal world, I like and agree on the thought. I try to practice it in my management duties as well.

But I’ll be the devil’s advocate and present the harsh reality:

How is firing, in the USA, not the actual normal to begin with?

As a late Gen X / early millennial, I’ve experienced these economic downturns three times: the fallout of 2001 dotcom bubble, 2008 Great Financial Crisis (GFC), and this Covid shock era. The lessons learned each time, is the corporations try to survive at all costs, and casting many individuals out to fend for themselves is the base case.

As a college senior in Computer Science in 2002-2003, my many classmates had jobs lined up in Oct 2002, ready for graduation and work summer 2003. The tech company stocks were flying high, but all of a sudden, in a month, all those companies had cut entire departments. Hearing the news, a lot of friends that thought they had “secured” a job, called those companies and almost all of them were in limbo - those cut departments didn’t even return the calls to say “sorry, entire dept. was cut, start looking again”.

My parents generation was used to the “gold watch retirement philosophy”, stick w/one company for 50 years and they will take care of you. That reality shattered for them during the 2008 GFC. They had worked for 20 years at the same company, but faced with layoffs and cuts, they no longer really knew how to interview and learn new skills. As a result, my dad “retired” at 55, always looking but never finding that next job. Luckily, they were in early tech (AT&T), and mom found contracting roles to service the legacy tech they worked on during full employment. The lesson here was that - don’t let those skills and interview skills rot. Being at one place for 20years and specializing can seem like “security”, but actually was a curse after the shock.

And here we are now, after ~14 years of relative stability, time to flex those survival instincts, don’t rest on the past comforts.
> There are no living beings of the same intellectual capacity as us other than ourselves.

How can we know?
Sure, https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/two-us-carriers-e....

Your turn now - can you quote the law which threatens Taiwan?
Interesting read. I had never realized how much thought goes into the placement of items in Costco, but it makes so much sense. Usually when I go to Costco it's for meats, but I always end up getting a lot more stuff than just meat. Will definitely have to try this $5 chicken sometime.

"Costco’s ex-CEO, Jim Sinegal, was so impassioned about the $1.50 hot dog combo that he once famously told a colleague: 'If you raise [the price of the] effing hot dog, I will kill you.'"

I love this quote. Costco is a great company. In an era of scams, shrinkflation, and degrading quality across the board, it makes me happy to know that at least one company still fights for consumers. I will be a Costco member for years to come.
Could not agree more. My grandfather retired 5 years early because if he didn’t, he would lose his pension due to a GE merger. Just lose the whole pension — versus a 401k where his accrued benefits would now be under his own control. Arguably, his pension terms were probably better, but pensions seem like pretty thin ice with no control or flexibility to my perspective.

I’m not super well informed on what his options were; I’m sure he had different retirement benefits via staying with GE post-merger, but if anyone is interested I could get more details.

EDIT: Based on memory and what kind of work he did, I’m almost certain it was this item in the “General Electric timeline” Wikipedia page: “GE Aerospace Division sold to Martin Marietta, now Lockheed Martin”
"I am responsible for their families" might be trivialising the employee's role in ensuring an income and planning for eventualities.

(That doesn't mean I support layoffs in the slightest, just that I'm bothered by that line)
It depends.

If your employer is a company that values good software development practices, then they wouldn't judge you based on the LOCs you produce, but on the overall value you provide to the team, product and company.

If they're not, then most of what we're discussing here is not very relevant, since they likely don't follow other good practices either.

If you're in that situation, then you have a few options: if you value the product and company, promote these best practices so that the company can attract and keep good developers, which ultimately benefits the product. If you don't, or they won't listen, or you don't have the authority to change things, then you can probably forget about following good practices, and just keep working based on the metrics they do value. Or, I'd strongly suggest, just find a better working environment. :)
It is brain dead but this is old code from what I recall. We do not have e-voting at this time although the Post which outsourced this first nightmare of a version is still trying to push for it.

I highly doubt we will see e-voting here until there is a verifiable proof that it is verifiable. There was a lot of bad press about this and people don't trust this crap.

They tried a similar thing for E-ID which was supposed to be built by some private cooperation and run on some centralized servers. The people voted against it and now the government has done the right thing and is building an E-ID system that is decentralized and government run. It still has some quirks but it's going in the right direction.

The sad thing is for the governments first version (outsource to private industry) their claim at the poles was that it would take many years for an E-ID if we don't do it this way. Now only 1 year later we have a very good proposal. There is too much corporate interest pushing around pawns in Government at this time even in a direct democracy like Switzerland.
Turin indeed is worth a visit.
...the adhesive has everything to do with this. If the adhesive was stronger, the curling would not have enough force to lift it off the wall. Post-its only exist because of their weak adhesive...and it's because their adhesive is weak that curling is an issue for them.

edit: by which I mean...if the adhesive was stronger, the post-its could curl and still stick to the wall. Post-its' soft adhesive lets them easily peel from each other, but also lets the minor force of a curled post-it unstick it from the wall.
> then interviews would be insane.

I'm glad tech companies have very simple interview procedures at the moment.
My God this.

> In many cases the interviewers were new to management and were lost at what to do with somebody with 20+ years experience in both code and management.

I'm not at 20 years but that one hit really close to home.
I like IKEA, but I still agree with the metaphor.

The layout is fine for a mooch, if you go for 1 specific thing, it's terrible.
That's probably a bit absurd, and would probably cause a lot of changes since it would also mean that all the oceans are practically covered with panels.

Here's a reference to a study about large-scale panel installations:

https://www.science.org/content/article/solar-panel-shade-wo....

They suggest that there would be an impact, but far less than the impact of greenhouse gases they could replace.
Affordable is a relative term. I agree absolutely on the returns of the investment. I had once 3 coaches during 1.5 months preparing me for a big interview. It was exhausting but it really brought me to the next level. One coach was for interview preparation in the language of the employer. The second was an insider colleague preparing me with feedback on my slides etc. The third was a generic coach using my mother tongue --- unrelated to my profession --- and we were working on communication, values etc. The third one gave me the impression coaches have a recipe of 5 or 6 sessions that they more or less apply to everyone.
Well I would guess some people think that living in society means you are always, as a new generation, building on top of what the previous one did. So it is fair that when they can't work anymore we use part of the surplus of productivity that comes precisely from that long-term investment in productivity made by older generations to help them out.

To think of that as "stealing" seems pretty individualistic and short-sighted to me. What benefits would the current generation have to give future generations a future if everything that matters is how much you save and do in the now? This line of thinking leads to financial decisions that value the present much more than they do the future and it's in big part a reason why we are in deep waters when it comes to climate change.

Of course, I agree that it is important to reward people personally as well. But I think it's much more important that we are building sustainable societies capable of taking care of people all through out their life cycles and that improvements on productivity impact us all because, after all, we all live together. But I guess that's just my personal vision of what a good society should be; for others, as you say, they would rather live in a dog-eat-dog world because they know they would be top dogs.
This. I think that people too often overemphasize one factor when it is many that can contribute to mental illness. The gut is definitely an integral part of mental health as has recently been popularized. Being in long-term social isolation or damaging relationships can also lead to mental illness. Having chronic stress (noise/chemical pollution/lack of good sleep/etc) can also lead to mental illness. All of these factors can be combined or work completely on their own.
That's good. It was a terrible model to begin with. Profits and growth should come from providing value to customers not biding time until you can "exit" or whatever they call it.
True, but that's a whole other story. If you're homeless, you're no longer worrying about rent - you're worrying about having a place to sleep.
Thanks! Will definitely have a look!
> since 19 is a prime number, if I am not mistaken.

That is one modest reviewer!
In general, you want to work with & for the first sort of person (objectively recognizing contributions). Not the second (which suggests an immature worldview and narrow tribalism).
The alternative to normalized firing is normalized career employment like that which turned Japan into a noncompetitive economy.
Hiring processes in American companies are still as arduous and drawn out as European hiring processes though. You're still looking at a 4-16 week process, you don't just snap someone up in a week if they're on the market.
Do not forget that being a programmer, you already have the ability to create electronic products people will pay for. Consider learning Swift/Kotlin and making a paid, subscription-based mobile app. Consider learning Go/Rust/TypeScript and making a paid, subscription-based SaaS. (Those are tough markets right now, so you will need good "find-a-customer-pain-point" product design knowledge, first.)

Consider learning a niche programming language such as Scala or Haskell or consider a career as a programming educator or a technical writer; those lower-paid niches are way less competitive than the higher-paid programming mainstream.

You are a programmer. You do have and will continue to have options, until you're over 70 years old.
S3 Backups and Other Strategies Against Ransomware Attacks (2021)
Opening a company is not just the paperwork. We should praise companies falling down as they can create the path for new ones to get up

People do not need to be treated, they're not little babies
It is easier to take risks when your parents have a lot of money or connections.
I dunno. “Only ever break one law at a time” is pretty universally good advice.

But yeah. Call a lawyer… Preferably well before you need one in a hurry.
Every time someone's loses their job they experience some hardship, or at least disappointment, no question about that, though when it comes to tech workers it's hard to feel bad for them (us) because the other side of the equation is the ability to easily get jobs that are very well paid.

When laying off people isn't normalized what you get is an inefficient labour market, where companies can't adjust to market conditions and hiring people is too costly. That leads to stunted growth, and everyone loses.
> where there is no social security

This is the root cause problem. The fact that a set of cumulative hiring and firing decisions by employers and potential employers can render someone and their family destitute, is the biggest flaw in the system most of us live in.

Not just in the countries mentioned either - we have a global failure of resource allocation.
> In Europe where firing is almost impossible, hiring is a very tedious process.

Sure you need to vet your candidates more carefully, because you cannot fire them right away without reason (although these law vary within the 27 nations of the EU). But:

1. there are limited contacts. So if you don't wanna have the risk, you are free to make shorter contacts and pay people more so the good people are willing to take those. This has the downside that they are free to go to your competitor as well at the end of the contract. Everything comes with it's downsides.

2. Hiring random people and firing them a month later does not make it easier for the employers. If employers vet their potential employees more carefully, everybody wins. Sure, finding and selecting the right person is hard. But even if you could hire and fire villy nilly, that would waste your companies time. Every person you hire will take the company into a new direction, one bad person can poison the social climate, hurt your company etc. So hiring carefree is not a good idea in any case.

3. In hiring not just the employer takes a risk, the employee takes risks too. They might have to move, they might have to buy a bicycle, a car, a public transport ticket to commute, they plan their lives on the promised employment and wage. It is only fair that they get the time to reorganise if you let them go.
Simply put: There are reactions for every action! The most optimal outcome is not easily legislated.
Imagine my disappointment after working on a fixed-allocation HTTP server stack to discover that even `esp_log.h` does several malloc() calls [1] per log output line... thankfully that was only on the ESP8266_RTOS_SDK, and esp-idf isn't quite as bad.

[1] https://github.com/espressif/ESP8266_RTOS_SDK/blob/89a3f254b...
SS is split with a partner.
Maybe we rely on science here : it is genes + environment + head
Yep! (It's annoyingly nontrivial to do with gpu acceleration, but we'll have a guide out as soon as we figure it out)

(I work at drifting in space)
My thoughts too. I think the hardest thing is finding a therapist who will actually be giving you good data/challenging the things you're stuck on versus a therapist who just agrees with you
So, the AI has copied its interpretations about the text from other sources instead of figuring them out from reading it? I'm shocked
Survivorship bias. You know about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, but not the hundreds of others who tried the same thing and failed.
That example looks good and virtuous. Until you realize that the new boss might perfectly think: “this firm has been giving so much to all those families… maybe they should return something more than just their jobs. I am going to suggest X to introduce his beautiful daughter to my son.”

A job is a job. A business is not a family. A boss is not a father. It is great to be virtuous but it is not great to mix contexts.
He is very good at sounding reasonable. But he very strongly believes in might makes right, and that rich people deserve all they have, and that whatever they want, everyone should want for them.

In an interview, he explains that he hates that people root for the underdog. In his view, whoever is on top is there because that is where they belong. Period.

He is far from alone in this, but is much better than most at dressing it up for public consumption.
Specifically a bug in that constant sp, which should have a 1 in bit 19 like it does for the other primes ≤ 23.

This is step 1 of the algorithm they're using: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baillie%E2%80%93PSW_primality_...
Didn't bun/oven recently get into hot water for explicitly recruiting for employees willing to work unpaid overtime and invest founder-level passion into the project without anywhere near comparable compensation/ownership and then making a big stink when former employees of similar bootstrapped tech startups called them out for it?

I was pretty excited when I saw the initial release but that entire ordeal torpedoed my interest. If you're a startup and looking for someone to dedicate their life to you, you're looking for a co-founder, not a salaried employee. We've seen what happens to infrastructure startups with zealous employees with npm Inc, we don't need a repeat of that.

EDIT: I was trying to find the original tweets by the company but it looks like there are only quote-retweets talking about it left as the originals have been deleted.
Because Equifax pays for it.
Github is amazing. Wanna get expensive licensed fonts for free? Just search for $FONTNAME.otf github and you will find at least a few projects using it.

People don't think a lot about what they put on there it seems. Or maybe font foundaries haven't sued enough at this point.
Correct and exactly how it is supposed to work. What do you expect a business owner to do when the job of a worker is not profitable / necessary any more? Pay him forever out of their own pocket, taking a loss?
If you've ever hired qualified personnel, you know how hard it is to find good people. No good business owner would fire a good employee for a whim. They'd keep them as long as possible (even when temporarily there's no work)

Other thing is if it's easy to re-hire when there is profitable work again. This happens where there's much more offer (of workers) than demand. For example jobs with low cualification.

So, get rid of manipulating the money supply and economy and the rest will sort itself out.
Which extensions are you using for that?
In NL, you generally start with a fixed term of a year. After the year, the contract ends. Depending on relationships, supply/demand, field of expertise etc., the employer will either offer another fixed term or a permanent contract.

Permanent contract means the employer does not have the exit condition of "wait it out" to get rid of an employee. Additionally, permanent contracts tend to have bigger benefits attached to them, both legally and infrastructurally (e.g. getting a mortgage on a fixed term contract is nigh on impossible for most individuals).

Legally, employers can only offer so many fixed term contracts before they are forced to hire permanently or cut off the employee. In practice, you will see more exploitative companies look for ways to extend this (alternative legal structures), whereas fields with more balance in power (like IT) tend to present permanent contracts after a single temporary contract.
Had to fire people in the past. Not an easy thing to do.

However, it lifts a lof the weight from your shoulders if you know social security is going to take care of them.

Plus, if you reverse the roles here: If you as an employer would prolong their jobs by paying them from your savings until your company/you yourself go bankrupt, none of your employees would return that favor. I've seen it many times.