I am an Afrikaner. I, and most Afrikaners, think this enire refugee thing is redicilous and embarassing. Worse; it is deeply hurting my relationship with my fellow countrymen.
Watching the original ad was so painful I literally (I use the word _literally_) could not watch to the end. The reverse ad was beautiful.
I share the sentiments expressed in the post 100%; not only the visceral reaction against the wastage to produce the footage, but also the objection to the assumption that the virtual can replace the physical.
Our old cat passed away two years ago. Ever since, I've had to suppress the involuntary thoughts of I-should-get-a-kitten-I-need-to-get-a-kitten-I-SO-have-to-get.a.kitten!
Now I want to have kittens. Plural. Three of them.
This is rather appropriate, since I work as platform/backoffice programmer for a groceries delivery app. We have done restaurant deliveries for years (ie Uber Eats competitor) and rolled out our grocery extention last year October, partnering with one of our major groceries retailers.
So all these issues you mention - items marked out of stock that are actualy in stock, alternative item picking and how to handle the complexities on the price differences, etc - these are the bread & butter (ha ha) of my work day.
These are not simple issues to get right. Regarding out of stock items, for instance. Stores really don't want to annoy their walk-in customers by having all the stock gobbled up by the delivery customers.
They also don't want pickers, rushing to make their very tight deadlines (guaranteed delivery in 60 mins) to be running up and down the aisles pushing grandma out of the way to grab that last bag of tomatoes.
So they reserve rather wide margins by marking items as out of stock in the app even while there is stock available, so the physical shelves don't run empty.
As for the altermantive item pricing. In our case we charge the customer upfront for the most expensive of the main/alternative item. Should the less expensive one ultimately be picked, we automatically refund the difference into a credit wallet. This credit is applied automatically at the next purchace. Should the customer wish, we can pay it out into a credit card account.
Major fight amongs the developers: is it 'grocery' or 'groceries'?
There is an argument to be made, that in a democracy there is no such thing as an 'innocent civilian'. If a democracy puts into power a government that goes to war, the electorate can not wash their hands in innocence. They have to take responsibility for what is done by their elected representatives.
Yes there is a huge difference between an open hand slap and a fisty thump; the one is insult, the other is violence (of course assuming two parties of comparable physical strength)
Yeah, currently the vaxxes can't keep up with the mutation rate of the virus. But I'm quite sure that the processes will catch up and we'll have a seasonal vax just like we have for the usual flu
For that to become reality sooner, we need to drop the covid mutation rate so we don't get new strains every 3/4 months, but rather every 12 months. Best way to do that is wide scale vaccination. Because although we know that the vaxxed can still spread omicron (and we assume all derivatives to follow) we also know that they do spread it a significantly lower rate.
And we really don't want the thing to mutate to infect like omicron but kill like delta.
Natural immunity is also only really effective against the same covid strain.
I'd way rather get a modified vax for each new strain than have covid every time. Not only are the side effects of the vaxxed vastly better than that of actually getting covid, but you can't spread the disease to others.
Note the last sentence: "We must equitably vaccinate the world as such." Without good vaccination cover across the entire world population, we will not escape these cycles.
On Sunday afternoon going to an old friend to watch District Nine at his place. We're dragging our early teenage sons along - intention is both to show them a great movie and work on their social skills as guests in adult company.
Said friend is the only unvaxxed in our entire group of friends and family, but we're all zapped (including the 13 YO) and our infection numbers are really really low at the moment so we feel ok with the risk. Friend works remotely, lives alone, doesn't have a really active social life. Am resolved to bite on my tongue to avoid the topic, though. Old friendships are hard to come by, after all.
Looking forward to re-watch the movie after 12 years (?) and also to see the boys' reaction to it.
Right tool for the right environment, I'd say. The few times that I had to do Windows GUI programming with buttons and windows and drop down lists etc Visual Studio was great.
But for most of my work over the years was developing backoffice processes running on Linux. I had a Windows laptop/desktop, but my C++ had to compile on the Linux build server. To work in a Windows IDE (JetBrains, CLion, or whatever) was annoying; for any compilation fix you had to scp or rsync your code over - some devs even had the horrible workflow of using git as sync so you actually had to push origin and pull on the remote for every missing semi colon. In comparison, logging in to the terminal and using vi or emacs was just much, much simpler.
You just want to check something in your source? grep it from the commandline! or less it! No need to wait 5 minutes for JetBrains to start up, download the latest versions of its plugins only to show you a simple text file. Since the compiled code wasn't available, until recently the IDEs couldn't even do the syntax checking and code completion that is the most useful feature of the IDEs.
So yeah, quite fluent in both emacs and vi (I've been emailing my .emacs file to myself on each employment change, which has not been all that frequent) and the finger combinations just come naturally, no brain overhead at all. Then you switch job and you get issued a macbook and everything just goes seriously pear shaped.
As for tech I miss? New job has everything running in the cloud. I feel miles away from my work, I can't touch anything; it's all so... cloudy?
Infection by one strain provides only partial protection to another. One can see that from the aggregated data, as well as from medical aid claims for the treatment of repeat infections by different strains.
Only people that fall sick can spread covid. So if those without vaccination are magnitudes more likely to get sick, it follows that those without vaccination will spread covid more easily by the same order of magnitude.
In addition, we've agreed that when the vaccinated do get infected, they get less sick than the unvaccinated. It is also well known that the more sick you are, the more people you infect (because you cough, and sneeze, and snot all over, etc) - so it follows logically that when two people, one vaxxed and one unvaxxed, get covid chances are the vaxxed will infect fewer people.
What I'm trying to show with the South African data is that wide spread infection with the original strain provided society with virtually no protection against the Beta version of the virus, and wide spread infection of both the original and Beta didn't help much for Delta.
So how many more of these experiments do we want to run? How many more such waves should we we coping with?
Do we want to wait until it mutates and starts killing our children the way it kills our parents before we start to sit up straight and just spend the 2 hours of our time and suffer a sore arm to get a free shot that saves us all this pain?
I uttered “I can’t believe we’re still debating this” in exasperation. And then continued by providing good faith responses to each of the points.
Burn patients may not be turned away right now, but they were turned away during previous peaks. And they will be turned away again when the next wave its - if enough people aren't vaccinated.
Because without large scale vaccination it is 'when' the next wave hits, and not 'if'.
When I check the hospitalisation rates for a country with low vaccination but high accumulated infection rates (in some ares it's speculated to be close to 70% by now) - https://covid-19dashboard.news24.com/ - I do not see previous infection playing any role in dampening the waves.
Covid also has a much worse survival rate than 99%. Not only is the death rate much higher, it would be even higher still if people don't have access to treatment because hospitals are at capacity. Anycase just looking at survival rates is not good enough. My aunt miraculously survived covid. She will be on an oxygen machine for the rest of her life. Good thing she had the money to pay for one, otherwise she probably would have died a month or two after 'recovering' from covid and be part of the survival rates stats.
And again - even were the 99% stats be true - the strain on the health care system has a tremendous knock-on effect that causes excess non-covid deaths. But this is also a well-known fact that has been put out there for ages.
I feel very serious about bodily integrity, and would not support mandatory vaccination. But in a country with at-will employment people get fired daily for acts much less irresponsible that putting the health of their co-workers, patients, clients and entire medical system at risk.
The only person ever, I'm sure, to have visited San Francisco and found nothing there interesting enough to chat about afterwards. (I'm not saying one should like the place, just that I can't imagine the city could leave anyone without anything to comment about.)
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Open Mic for the Week of 5/12/2025”
I am an Afrikaner. I, and most Afrikaners, think this enire refugee thing is redicilous and embarassing. Worse; it is deeply hurting my relationship with my fellow countrymen.
On “Apple Ad Misses the Mark”
Watching the original ad was so painful I literally (I use the word _literally_) could not watch to the end. The reverse ad was beautiful.
I share the sentiments expressed in the post 100%; not only the visceral reaction against the wastage to produce the footage, but also the objection to the assumption that the virtual can replace the physical.
On “Weekend Plans Post: Learning to Tell Them Apart”
Our old cat passed away two years ago. Ever since, I've had to suppress the involuntary thoughts of I-should-get-a-kitten-I-need-to-get-a-kitten-I-SO-have-to-get.a.kitten!
Now I want to have kittens. Plural. Three of them.
On “Shopping In The Year 2023”
This is rather appropriate, since I work as platform/backoffice programmer for a groceries delivery app. We have done restaurant deliveries for years (ie Uber Eats competitor) and rolled out our grocery extention last year October, partnering with one of our major groceries retailers.
So all these issues you mention - items marked out of stock that are actualy in stock, alternative item picking and how to handle the complexities on the price differences, etc - these are the bread & butter (ha ha) of my work day.
These are not simple issues to get right. Regarding out of stock items, for instance. Stores really don't want to annoy their walk-in customers by having all the stock gobbled up by the delivery customers.
They also don't want pickers, rushing to make their very tight deadlines (guaranteed delivery in 60 mins) to be running up and down the aisles pushing grandma out of the way to grab that last bag of tomatoes.
So they reserve rather wide margins by marking items as out of stock in the app even while there is stock available, so the physical shelves don't run empty.
As for the altermantive item pricing. In our case we charge the customer upfront for the most expensive of the main/alternative item. Should the less expensive one ultimately be picked, we automatically refund the difference into a credit wallet. This credit is applied automatically at the next purchace. Should the customer wish, we can pay it out into a credit card account.
Major fight amongs the developers: is it 'grocery' or 'groceries'?
On “Anxiety and Hardships”
Wish there was a simple 'upvote' here
On “Wine Tasting Through”
This is such a joyful piece. Enjoying a glass of 2019 Backsberg Cab as I'm reading this, at 23:06 at night, listening to Mozart on youtube.
In the middle of pandemics and wars and shootings, it is good to be reminded that humans also bring much beauty to the world.
On “Bucha: Russian Retreat Reveals Putin War Crimes”
There is an argument to be made, that in a democracy there is no such thing as an 'innocent civilian'. If a democracy puts into power a government that goes to war, the electorate can not wash their hands in innocence. They have to take responsibility for what is done by their elected representatives.
On “Sticks and Stones and Hair Loss”
Yes there is a huge difference between an open hand slap and a fisty thump; the one is insult, the other is violence (of course assuming two parties of comparable physical strength)
On “Nicholas Kristof, We Hardly Got To Know Ye”
Oh, touche
On “Video: OT’s Michael Siegel and Andrew Donaldson Talk Natural Immunity & COVID-19”
Yeah, currently the vaxxes can't keep up with the mutation rate of the virus. But I'm quite sure that the processes will catch up and we'll have a seasonal vax just like we have for the usual flu
For that to become reality sooner, we need to drop the covid mutation rate so we don't get new strains every 3/4 months, but rather every 12 months. Best way to do that is wide scale vaccination. Because although we know that the vaxxed can still spread omicron (and we assume all derivatives to follow) we also know that they do spread it a significantly lower rate.
And we really don't want the thing to mutate to infect like omicron but kill like delta.
"
Natural immunity is also only really effective against the same covid strain.
I'd way rather get a modified vax for each new strain than have covid every time. Not only are the side effects of the vaxxed vastly better than that of actually getting covid, but you can't spread the disease to others.
On “Where Have You Gone, Franklin Delano: The End of The 2021 Legislative Circus & FDR Comparisons”
What would he have to do (or stop doing) to be less Trump?
On “Sunday Morning: “Come and See” (1985)”
I have, in principle, not watched war any war movies in two decades. I just can't do it.
On “Mini-Throughput: Omicron Edition”
Note the last sentence: "We must equitably vaccinate the world as such." Without good vaccination cover across the entire world population, we will not escape these cycles.
On “Weekend Plans Post: Extrovert Overload”
On Sunday afternoon going to an old friend to watch District Nine at his place. We're dragging our early teenage sons along - intention is both to show them a great movie and work on their social skills as guests in adult company.
Said friend is the only unvaxxed in our entire group of friends and family, but we're all zapped (including the 13 YO) and our infection numbers are really really low at the moment so we feel ok with the risk. Friend works remotely, lives alone, doesn't have a really active social life. Am resolved to bite on my tongue to avoid the topic, though. Old friendships are hard to come by, after all.
Looking forward to re-watch the movie after 12 years (?) and also to see the boys' reaction to it.
On “Tech Career Nostalgia”
Right tool for the right environment, I'd say. The few times that I had to do Windows GUI programming with buttons and windows and drop down lists etc Visual Studio was great.
But for most of my work over the years was developing backoffice processes running on Linux. I had a Windows laptop/desktop, but my C++ had to compile on the Linux build server. To work in a Windows IDE (JetBrains, CLion, or whatever) was annoying; for any compilation fix you had to scp or rsync your code over - some devs even had the horrible workflow of using git as sync so you actually had to push origin and pull on the remote for every missing semi colon. In comparison, logging in to the terminal and using vi or emacs was just much, much simpler.
You just want to check something in your source? grep it from the commandline! or less it! No need to wait 5 minutes for JetBrains to start up, download the latest versions of its plugins only to show you a simple text file. Since the compiled code wasn't available, until recently the IDEs couldn't even do the syntax checking and code completion that is the most useful feature of the IDEs.
So yeah, quite fluent in both emacs and vi (I've been emailing my .emacs file to myself on each employment change, which has not been all that frequent) and the finger combinations just come naturally, no brain overhead at all. Then you switch job and you get issued a macbook and everything just goes seriously pear shaped.
As for tech I miss? New job has everything running in the cloud. I feel miles away from my work, I can't touch anything; it's all so... cloudy?
I feel old.
On “You Can Ignore Anti-Vaccine Arguments”
Infection by one strain provides only partial protection to another. One can see that from the aggregated data, as well as from medical aid claims for the treatment of repeat infections by different strains.
"
Only people that fall sick can spread covid. So if those without vaccination are magnitudes more likely to get sick, it follows that those without vaccination will spread covid more easily by the same order of magnitude.
In addition, we've agreed that when the vaccinated do get infected, they get less sick than the unvaccinated. It is also well known that the more sick you are, the more people you infect (because you cough, and sneeze, and snot all over, etc) - so it follows logically that when two people, one vaxxed and one unvaxxed, get covid chances are the vaxxed will infect fewer people.
What I'm trying to show with the South African data is that wide spread infection with the original strain provided society with virtually no protection against the Beta version of the virus, and wide spread infection of both the original and Beta didn't help much for Delta.
So how many more of these experiments do we want to run? How many more such waves should we we coping with?
Do we want to wait until it mutates and starts killing our children the way it kills our parents before we start to sit up straight and just spend the 2 hours of our time and suffer a sore arm to get a free shot that saves us all this pain?
"
I uttered “I can’t believe we’re still debating this” in exasperation. And then continued by providing good faith responses to each of the points.
Burn patients may not be turned away right now, but they were turned away during previous peaks. And they will be turned away again when the next wave its - if enough people aren't vaccinated.
Because without large scale vaccination it is 'when' the next wave hits, and not 'if'.
When I check the hospitalisation rates for a country with low vaccination but high accumulated infection rates (in some ares it's speculated to be close to 70% by now) - https://covid-19dashboard.news24.com/ - I do not see previous infection playing any role in dampening the waves.
Covid also has a much worse survival rate than 99%. Not only is the death rate much higher, it would be even higher still if people don't have access to treatment because hospitals are at capacity. Anycase just looking at survival rates is not good enough. My aunt miraculously survived covid. She will be on an oxygen machine for the rest of her life. Good thing she had the money to pay for one, otherwise she probably would have died a month or two after 'recovering' from covid and be part of the survival rates stats.
And again - even were the 99% stats be true - the strain on the health care system has a tremendous knock-on effect that causes excess non-covid deaths. But this is also a well-known fact that has been put out there for ages.
I feel very serious about bodily integrity, and would not support mandatory vaccination. But in a country with at-will employment people get fired daily for acts much less irresponsible that putting the health of their co-workers, patients, clients and entire medical system at risk.
On “Considering The Entire Life of Colin Powell”
"Don’t let adverse facts stand in the way of a good decision."
Well this one explains a lot.
On “Facebook And Related Sites Go Down, Chaos Ensues”
I'm coding in Python now. You're making me nostalgic...
On “Heavenly! (Mystery Symphony)”
heavenly, indeed. Thanks.
On “Hayek III: Free Will and Freedom to Choose”
This comment is very very VERY funny
On “Wednesday Writs: A Case of This, A Case of That Edition”
Amen, brother
On “The Malcontent Vacationer”
I currently work with this man.
The only person ever, I'm sure, to have visited San Francisco and found nothing there interesting enough to chat about afterwards. (I'm not saying one should like the place, just that I can't imagine the city could leave anyone without anything to comment about.)
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.