From what I am seeing, no one is feeling coy simply because of the cost savings that management is able to show the higher-ups and shareholders. At that level, there's very little understanding of anything technical and outages or bugs will simply get a "we've asked our technical resources to work on it". But every one understands that spending $50 when you were spending $100 is a great achievement. That's if you stop and not think about any downsides. Said management will then take the bonuses and disappear before the explosions start with their resume glowing about all the cost savings and team leadership achievements. I've experienced this first hand very recently.
Of all the looming tipping points whereby humans could destroy the fabric of their existence, this one has to be the stupidest. And therefore the most likely.
There really ought to be a class of professionals like forensic accountants who can show up in a corrupted organization and do a post mortem on their management of technical debt
As someone who's been commissioned many times before to work on or salvage "rescue projects" with huge amounts of tech debt, I welcome that day. Still not there yet though I am starting to feel the vibes shifting.
This isn't anything new of course. Previously it was with projects built by looking for the cheapest bidder and letting them loose on an ill-defined problem. And you can just imagine what kind of code that produced. Except the scale is much larger.
My favorite example of this was a project that simply stopped working due to the amount of bugs generated from layers upon layers of bad code that was never addressed. That took around 2 years of work to undo. Roughly 6 months to un-break all the functionality and 6 more months to clean up the core and then start building on top.
Are you not worried that the sibling comment is right and the solution to this will be "more AI" in the future? So instead of hiring a team of human experts to cleanup, management might just dump more money into some specialized AI refactoring platform or hire a single AI coordinator... Or maybe they skip to rebuild using AI faster, because AI is good at greenfield. Then they only need a specialized migration AI to automate the regular switchovers.
I used to be unconcerned, but I admit to be a little frightened of the future now.
Well, in general worrying about the future is not useful. Regardless of what you think, it is always uncertain. I specifically stay away from taking part in such speculative threads here on HN.
What's interesting to me though is that very similar promises were being made about AI in the 80s. Then came the "AI Winter" after the hype cycle and promises got very far from reality. Generative AI is the current cycle and who knows, maybe it can fulfill all the promises and hype. Or maybe not.
There's a lot of irrationality currently and until that settles down, it is difficult to see what is real and useful and what is smoke and mirrors.
I'm aware of that particular chapter of history, my master's thesis was on conversational interfaces. I don't think the potential of the algorithms (and hardware) back then was in any way comparable to what's currently going on. There is definitely a hype cycle going on right now, but I'm nearly convinced it will actually leave many things changed even after it plays out.
Funny thing is that meanwhile (today) I've actually been on an emergency consulting project where a PO/PM kind of guy vibecoded some app that made it into production. The thing works, but a cursory audit laid open the expected flaws (like logic duplication, dead code, missing branches). So that's another point for our profession still being required in the near future.
I would encourage you to write about it as well. It seems interesting and unconventional.
I used to tinker a lot with my systems but as I gotten older and my time became more limited, I've abandoned a lot of it and now favor "getting things done". Though I still tinker a lot with my systems and have my workflow and system setup, it is no longer at the level of re-compiling the kernel with my specific optimization sort of thing, if that makes sense. I am now paid to "tinker" with my clients' systems but I stay away from the unconventional there, if I can.
I did reach a point where describing systems is useful at least as a way of documenting them. I keep on circling around nixos but haven't taken the plunge yet. It feels like containerfiles are an easier approach but they(at least docker does) sort of feel designed around describing application environments as opposed to full system environments. So your approach is intriguing.
> It feels like containerfiles are an easier approach but they(at least docker does) sort of feel designed around describing application environments as opposed to full system environments.
They absolutely are! I actually originally just wanted a base container image for running services on my hosts that a.) I could produce a full source code listing for and b.) have full visibility over the BoM, and realized I could just ‘FROM scratch’ & pull in gentoo’s stage3 to basically achieve that. That also happens to be the first thing you do in a new gentoo chroot, and I realized that pretty much every step in the gentoo install media that you run after (installing software, building the kernel, setting up users, etc) could also be run in the container. What are containers if not “portable executable chroots” after all? My first version of this build system was literally to then copy / on the container to a mounted disk I manually formatted. Writing to disk is actually the most unnatural part of this whole setup since no one really has a good solution for doing this without using the kernel; I used to format and mount devices directly in a privileged container but now I just boot a qemu VM in an unprivileged container and do it in an initramfs since I was already building those manually too. I found while iterating on this that all of the advantages you get from Containerfiles (portability, repeatability, caching, minimal host runtime, etc) naturally translated over to the OS builder project, and since I like deploying services as containers anyways there’s a high degree of reuse going on vs needing separate tools and paradigms everywhere.
I’ll definitely write it up and post it to HN at some point, trying to compact the whole project in just that blurb felt painful.
I recently had to pay the "Microsoft tax" to Lenovo. Which felt more like an unfair punishment rather than a tax since your taxes are meant to fund public services. I kept on thinking that this feels like it should be illegal. I don't use Windows for my work. My servers all run Linux, my clients servers all run Linux and I have no need for it so why am I being forced to pay?
I keep a Windows virtual machine for software that doesn't run on Linux but my use of that over the years has declined dramatically.
To me, the earlier versions of Windows 10 were somewhat OK when they're stripped down. But Windows 11 is bloated beyond belief. And shoving AI functionality in it is going to make things worse.
Not the person you're replying to but I am confused by your comment. What would you do? You'd try and meditate. If that doesn't work, you distract yourself with something else. The mind whirling keeping you up at night is rarely a productive thing, speaking from experience.
I hope my comment doesn't come off as dismissive but learning to meditate is practicing to "let it go". It isn't a switch. You're teaching your mind not to get "too attached" to anything you consider unwholesome.
No, your tone is fine, and thanks for that. A whirling mind is not often productive but it can make great leaps forward. It can also be paranoid, dangerous and self-destructive.
I was trying to make the point that self- help easy fixes are not always successful. I spent decades actively learning to sleep. It works most of the time. It is good to learn. I use a mindfulness sleep meditation most nights. I also learnt from sleep hygiene that going to bed early is normally a big mistake for me, precluding much of the 'go to bed earlier, get up and exercise' advice.
I have also hit periods in my life where I simply couldn't mediate for weeks on end despite regular practice over a decade. I was mentally ill. No routine or hacks was going to get me to exercise. I needed therapy (EMDR) and rest, and when I got really self-destructive I needed sleep medication (useful only for a very short time). The 'hack' people just made me feel bad about myself for being unable to get a grip.
That is what I want people to see, exercise is only useful if you are well enough to do it. If you are not well enough to shave, then don't beat yourself up for not getting exercise. Put a pin in it, and do it later.
My latest illness was (psycho-somatically) interfering with my cortisol levels, and it made any exercise crippling. I couldn't recover. I didn't get the boost. I beat myself up about not being able, and it made me worse.
Exercise and therapy rather than exercise or therapy might be better advice.
There are community-contributed relay servers that you can use. Check out the syncthing website, they explain how all of this works. It's a very good piece of software.
Interesting to read. It would be more interesting to know if lowering those levels had a positive effect on their cardiac event outcomes over a few years. I thought it was unclear that lowering those levels makes a difference.
Interesting and unsurprising. Until there are some meaningful consequences and fines for companies that treat data security so lightly then nothing will improve and customers will have to deal with the effects.
I once received notice from a business letting me know that my medical data has been stolen. The letter was quite evasive and carefully worded but I understood that someone walked in and grabbed an external hard drive that had all the medical data on it, unencrypted. This is one of the larger medical businesses in Victoria by the way. Included with my medical information is my identity information that can be used maliciously. This is happening frequently here with big names being reported but many smaller names going unnoticed.
The problem is the amount of information that organisations are asking for and are lax in protecting. Making the so-called "identity theft" a big risk.
I can also share that I've been in meetings with clients where security and privacy advice wasn't welcome and brushed off as being unimportant. There's been some welcome moves by the federal government somewhat recently to get businesses to treat this issue seriously but so far it's only in the form of advice and I can tell you the advice wasn't the thing that was lacking.
edit: Oh and the notice that my data was stolen came a few months after it happened, from memory.
That's a huge topic but I would say implement a hobby project and learn by doing. Pick something you're interested in and start writing code to exercise the theoretical concepts.
A small piece of advice is to make sure you're motivated before diving in. Debugging a race condition, just as an example, can be quite involved and consume a lot of your time and energy to even reproduce.
I started by writing a user interface that handled they keyboard events in a thread and communicated to the main thread using a message queue.
IMO that's a good easy first step :)
Oh yes. Quite bad and I don't know if things are getting slightly better than "bad" or the media is tired of reporting about it.
Up until a year or so ago, an appointment at a GP would take weeks of waiting. Specialist appointments were 1+ years waiting time. This is somewhat better now with the establishment of critical-care clinics operating after hours. This is from personal experience.
The emergency rooms often had waiting time of 12+ hours(or more). I know someone who has been waiting on a procedure at the public hospital for 6+ years. Another has a child waiting for an appointment with an estimated wait time of 3+ years. All non-urgent but a wait list in the years is no longer a wait list to me, it's a system that is not fit for purpose.
Initially all of this was attributed to the pandemic and the harsh lockdowns in Victoria. But a few years out, it seems difficult to still do that. When asked, our government just re-states that they've invested in this and that and then deflect. Recently, due to the horrible state finances, the healthcare system was being downsized with services cut and the bloodshed continues. This is without talking about the systemic issues and incompetence I've seen.
The funny thing is that outsiders think that public health care means free. It's really not. We pay for it on top of our income tax(1-2% on top, more if you're above a certain threshold) and it is not cheap. It wouldn't be so bad if it was working like you'd expect but paying for a non-functional system is....I don't know what to say.
This isn’t an inherent flaw of public health care. A lot of the health care problems in this country (Australia) stem from a continued disinvestment in the public system after a decade (prior to the current government) of conservative mismanagement. Most state funding here comes from the federal governments standard sales tax. They intentionally gimped our public system to fund a private system that isn’t financially viable. Reversing that is going to take time. The problem exists it’s just important to attribute it to the correct sources. Medicare (our public insurer) is an incredible privilege that we should protect and hold our leaders accountable for managing.
I don't understand where you got that I am saying public health care systems are flawed. Both systems have pros and cons. And I have seen the "going to take time" phrase for quite a long time now and so don't think it holds any value anymore.
In terms of affordability which you also referenced in a separate comment, I disagree. Compared to some prices I've seen in the US, it is cheaper. Compared to other countries I've experienced, it is more expensive. Comparing private and public systems is not straight forward and I don't think this adds any value to the discussion.
In terms of attributing failure to correct sources, Victoria hasn't had a "they"(who you're claiming gimped our public system) for many years now but I am not interested in a discussion about politics.
I think it is mostly just a problem with Victoria - and they are are hardly conservative.
Hospitals and ambulance service is a state issue and other states fair much better.
That's not nearly true, at least for Melbourne as a metro area. I never heard of weeks waiting for GP appointment, and I never waited for more that 2-3 days for GP both in east and west suburbs. Usually you have at least 3-5 GP medical centres in 5 km radius, and in half of them appointments are avaliable same day or next day. That's the case now, and was the case 5 and 10 years ago, with only obvious exception during COVID.
6+ years wait could occur, but it would be ~1% of elective surgeries. Basically, elective surgeries are covered by private healthcare, that's the unofficial limitation of Medicare. I got an elective surgery twice, wait was 4-6 months. Just to stress, that's an elective surgery fo non-life threating condition that just affect your quality of life, so it's reasonable to expect people paying up private insurance/hospitals for getting this done quickly.
Emergency 12+ hours wait is not an ordinary situation - could be when there is a combination of very busy night (like Friday during long holidays) and lowest triage category. Every time I attended emergency I was almost immediately triaged and when things were serious, was admitted in minutes. When it was just a cut with bleeding stopped, I was advised after triage that I can wait for 4+ hours or just come back in the morning. All my friends had the similar experience with Melbourne's public hospital ERs.
2% medicare levy is cheap compared to taxes in other countries with free healthcare.
I'm actually very surprised that someone has such negative impression about Melbourne's medical system. There was a short period several years ago, related to COVID, when ambos ramping time could be hours, but that's not not typical for Melbourne, and was resolved pretty quickly.
That's incorrect. I'll choose a couple of points to correct.
For the "elective" surgery, it's false to state that they are covered by private healthcare. There was also a push to move away from the term "elective" to something like "non-critical" if memory serves. Simply because a knee or hip replacement, as an example, isn't really something you can choose to do or not do when you're unable to walk. You can wait for a few months perhaps but since it affects your quality of life, including your ability to earn an income, then it's not a choice.
For the 1% claim, that's unlikely considering all the "operating blitzes" that had to be done in Victoria to decrease the huge list(the numbers were reported by the media if you're interested).
The pandemic lockdowns wasn't "several" years ago and the effects were felt long after, definitely not a "short period". You're forgetting to mention the ambulances writing on their vehicles where they're coming from and how long were their shifts just last year. Ramping is also still a problem but I am reading less about it in Victoria since the beginning of this year. Again not sure if it is better or just less reporting on it.
I'll grant you that some people don't get to experience this side of the system and some are lucky that they don't need it at all. Hopefully the more people talk about their negative experiences, as opposed to being surprised, the more accountability and improvements can be introduced. It can be a very good system if it was better maintained.
I'll refrain from commenting any further on this topic and thank you for your contribution.
Wow. I didn’t know that things are this way. I am a recent immigrant living close to the city and always seem to be able to see a GP on the same day. Is that because I have private insurance and I pay out of pocket anyways? If I were a citizen, I wouldn’t be able to go to those places (at least for “free healthcare”), and will have the same wait times? Or is it geography dependent with rural Victoria having issues and Melbourne city being well covered?
It depends on the location and it depends on what services you're after. If you have private healthcare insurance, you get to skip the wait times at hospitals and get a choice of public or private hospitals. For clinics, it's a different story and can get quite detailed. The private insurance can help you with the payment there but not wait times.
For some regional and rural locations, the wait times can be better or can be worse than metro depending on the service.
By the way, I also pay out of pocket on top of the medicare rebate so my experience is not with bulk billing clinics. When you get access to medicare, you'd probably still need to pay out of pocket on top of the rebate as bulk billing clinics have all but disappeared. Recent government incentives aim to bring them back but with cost of living increases I doubt that'll work.
> The private insurance can help you with the payment there but not wait times.
That must be a great deal for the insurance company. If it takes multiple years to get an appointment, they must pay out significantly less claims as well.
With seeing a doctor we have two main systems that you can use and each will have a different waiting time. Bulk-billing and the fully public option has longer waiting times because there aren’t enough clinics/specialists or doctors, The reasons for this are complex but they stem from an unwillingness from prior governments to raise the amount the government pays for each service to adequately to support this system meaning less doctors and practices being willing to support it.
You’ve then got practices/specialists etc… that charge copays and they tend to have less waiting times because less people are willing to pay copays. A lot of these practices will also do outright private billing which is what you’re experiencing.
Got it. In India, I am used to the concept of Government hospitals vs Private hospitals. Things are pretty clear on how they work. Insurance was introduced a couple of decades or so back in my home state, which allows people to use private hospitals at govt expenses (premiums paid by govt), but it’s still heavily govt (free) vs private (paid). Here it seems like there are no “govt hospitals” if I understand correctly. So things are a little more complicated.
I pay ~500 US/mo for health insurance. Just for me, no dependents. Not an exotic low-deductible health insurance plan. 2% on top of income tax sounds like a dream.
It's actually anywhere between 1%-5% depending on your income but I didn't want to get too detailed in my comment. And you'd still have the absurdly long wait times. And the out of pocket expenses. Again, not a problem if you can actually make use of what you're paying for.
I do have to state though that the US healthcare system, minus the fact that most healthcare research/advancements happens there, is crazy.
I am not confident enough to say that someone in Australia does or doesn't pay the 5%. I can ask the ATO but otherwise can't know. I am stating the range of how much it is.
It can be less/more than 2 percent too dependent on income. But yes we are extremely blessed in this country with a healthcare system that isn’t perfect but is extremely affordable.
