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I think it’s a little more nuanced than that. They are against things that would lessen the collective bargaining power of those in their union. This is the whole point of unions, to collectively bargain.

If those immigrants were forced to join the union upon entering the U.S. and entering that sector of work, I don’t see the union having a problem with that. The issue is that would lead to those immigrants and all other members of the union being paid more, which is a no-no for the billionaire class.

So they’re not anti-immigrant. They’re against billionaires abusing immigration to pay people less.


My experience with Pulumi is you can write bad pulumi code and good pulumi code and just like everything else, it's easy to end up in a codebase where one poor soul was tasked with writing it all and they didn't do the best job with it.

> but given their safety profile (terrible!)

I feel like there's kind of a cycle of unsafety with motorcycles on the social level in the U.S.

There's a societal understanding in the U.S. that motorcycles are unsafe, which results in an increased number of people purchasing motorcycles with the intention of showing off how unsafe (dangerous) they can be. And the cycle perpetuates.

Obviously, motorcycles are inherently less safe in certain ways, like your body is going to fly if you get into a high-speed collision, and that's pretty much unavoidable. But when I visit European countries, it seems motorcycle culture is _so_ much healthier. They are mostly seen as simple transportation tools, a far cry from what I regularly see in the U.S.


I suspect at least part of this has to do with the fact that, relative to four wheeled vehicles, you can buy "impressive" motorcycles for relatively little cash compared to say, buying a truly performant sports car. Combine this low cost with an unrelentingly social pressure to show off, mix in one part social media and two parts a belief that you are invincible and I believe you'll have your cocktail of poor outcomes on fast two-wheeled vehicles.

But also, car drivers have this unfortunate tendency "to not see" motorcycles. Technical means like headlight interrupters can improve noticeability but are prohibited in some jurisdictions.

Larry Ellison is also a very public supporter of Israel and the IDF, as recently as a few months ago speaking in support of Israel’s actions in Gaza.

He’s the largest individual donor to the IDF.

Wait...individuals can donate to a country's army?

No, you can't donate directly to the IDF, but turns out you can just make stuff up as long as it fits one's world views.

There's a lot of people making this stuff up on the internet then.

Yes you can donate (why did you add the word "directly"?). It just passes through intermediary organizations, such as the Friends of the IDF. There are even non profits that pay for "lone soldiers" -- international mercenaries -- to take part in the genocide in Gaza. Hundreds of thousands of "lone soldiers" took part, I believe something like 20,000 came from the US alone.

Sure! And in return Oracle gets sweet IDF contracts payed by the US gov.

So we just blatantly lie now because "Israel=bad"? You can't donate directly to the IDF. US funding isn’t paying Oracle through some back door. If you’ve got a real source, show it—otherwise it’s just nonsense.

Thank you for asking! I thought I was just making funny comment on political situation. After quick search it turns out its not funny… just predictible.

“Larry Ellison donates $16.6 million, says, ‘Since Israel’s founding, we have called on the brave men and women of the IDF to defend our home’”

Oh and i know FIDF - Friends of the IDF (nonprofit through which these donations are going) are just that. Just friends.


There is a huge war in europe (largest since WW2) and both sides rely on donations from individuals

Yes. I donated to the Ukrainian army and others can easily too

That’s misleading. You can’t directly donate to the IDF—people give to NGOs that support soldiers’ welfare, not combat operations or weapons. And while Ellison has given millions to FIDF, there’s no evidence he’s “the largest donor,” and no public ranking shows that. You can dislike Israel without inventing facts.

Why do you have such an issue with the donation to the IDF? I understand disputing that he's the largest donor, but I doubt he has ever written a big cheque directly to Trump (or in fact anyone except his family) either, is it also unclear whether he's a Trump donor?

Even if there were no mechanism for donating to the IDF available to the general public, do you believe someone like Ellison couldn't easily give money to whomever he wanted?


He financed facilities on an IDF base.

I think we can leave the pedantry for the ICC and just stop at him being a rather nasty genocide supporter regardless of the details.


What does this have to do with anything?

It’s something I recently learned and has informed the way I think about him and his family. Seems others have appreciated the knowledge too.

As a Jew myself, I think the actions of Israel over the past 2 years are clearly ethnic cleansing and I believe anyone who supports that effort should be exposed for doing so.


I remember when I was a kid having an old iPod touch that didn’t support Siri and having to jailbreak it, find some weird poorly documented package in Cydia, and download that suspect package on my device while entering some (in hindsight) equally suspect servers into some really hard to find text field in settings that somehow™ enabled that old iPod touch use Siri.

All of that to realize Siri was kind of boring. Funny thing is it’s been over a decade and it’s maybe 20% better than it was at launch. MAYBE.

I don’t want to blame this one guy for all of that, but part of me can’t help but point at the leader and ask “you couldn’t have done better than… that?”


As someone who leads meetings and sets agendas, I’ve basically accepted there is no perfect meeting for everyone. I regularly get oscillating feedback. One day I’ll hear “We spent too long on a couple of topics and didn’t get to enough topics” then if we try to start limiting topics to a certain amount of time I’ll hear “we never actually _solve_ anything, it’s all just too high level!”. The best I can do when I lead these is gauge the importance of each topic myself, which is not a perfect science, and allow time to run over for important topics.

Sometimes, things just work out super well. We touch on everything people want to touch on, we fly through it and everyone leaves the meeting happy. If I’m honest though, the biggest predictor of that outcome seems to be the mood of people coming into the meeting. Meetings after long weekends get above-average reviews.


Basically my experience too. I've gradually come to the view that meetings are best as a place to communicate decisions/rubber stamp. If I need a particular outcome I will pre meet with the key people to get their input / socialise the decision / etc. And then the meeting just serves as formal approval.

> if we try to start limiting topics to a certain amount of time I’ll hear “we never actually _solve_ anything, it’s all just too high level!”.

You shouldn't ever be solving things live in a meeting, unless it's a 5 second "flip the switch" fix.

99% of fixing from my experience comes from deep work by an IC or 1 on 1 pair collaboration calls by teammates who work great together.


> As someone who leads meetings and sets agendas, I’ve basically accepted there is no perfect meeting for everyone. I regularly get oscillating feedback. One day I’ll hear “We spent too long on a couple of topics and didn’t get to enough topics” then if we try to start limiting topics to a certain amount of time I’ll hear “we never actually _solve_ anything, it’s all just too high level!”.

Are you sure it's not that you're just bad at leading meetings?

I ask that tongue in cheek, but my thesis is the same. How are you measuring the positive criteria for a meeting? How would you know if some variable has a meaningful impact on said metrics? Are the metrics you're tracking the same metrics others are using, and if not how do you translate them?

Most meetings lack a clearly defined success criteria. Most attendees couldn't describe this criteria, even if pressed. Given my experience, that's the root problem.

People who are trying, often use "this meeting has an agenda" as criteria for if a meeting is likely to be useful. But this is a heuristic detached from what is actually important. Meetings are about, obtaining consensus, or uncovering some truth*. If your success criteria doesn't reflect either of these. It's much more accurately described as a waste of time, rather than a meeting.

Pretend meetings aren't a thing, you're requesting a significant amount of time from a number of people. Now, on top of that, add in the cost of context switching. You're proposing a completely novel approach to solving a specific problem. Define that problem.

Most of the meetings I've attended evaporate under that criteria.

Meetings without a doubt, solve real problems. But most meetings aren't solving any problems. They're checking boxes, because that's what people expect. Which results in the pattern you describe. it's either a waste of time, or a waste of time, in the other direction.

> The best I can do when I lead these is gauge the importance of each topic myself, which is not a perfect science, and allow time to run over for important topics.

It still sounds like to me, you're gauging the quality of a meeting, based mostly on the time cost. That shouldn't be considered*. Instead, assume you have infinite time. In this magical world, every sits in this room until you've arrived at [objective]. Pretend that amount of time might as well be infinite. Is the objective worth infinite time? Or can you still not describe the objective outside of the time cost?

> Sometimes, things just work out super well. We touch on everything people want to touch on, we fly through it and everyone leaves the meeting happy. If I’m honest though, the biggest predictor of that outcome seems to be the mood of people coming into the meeting. Meetings after long weekends get above-average reviews.

There's a nugget of truth, or more accurately reality behind this observation. Meetings that are rated positively, correlate strongly with context alignment. What concrete meaning have you taken from this critical observation?

If you have already have clear alignment, what impact should that have on the next meeting?

Imagine "next meeting" sounded like an absolutely ridiculous question, why would you ever consider having a "next meeting"? What a stupid question for some rando on the Internet to ask?!

Once you shift your thinking into being able to answer, why on earth, there would be a follow up meeting... You'll understand how to extract value from meetings.

Also, do note... sometimes meetings are just to hang out and shoot the shit. This might be more important than [average meeting] so don't undervalue the real benefits of spending time with coworkers! I've lost count of the number of difficult problems I've solved by casually ranting to a friend who asks smart questions. (which I take to mean, don't step on important conversations, for the sake of some bullshit agenda... try asking people if they felt like the conversations in a meeting were friendly and welcoming, see what that question does for your success criteria long term)


Just 100% on target, bravo, no notes.

I ran a team for an entire year with basically only shooting the shit meetings and occasional consensus building meetings and it was the most productive and happy the team had ever been.


Whitewashing isn’t limited to the context you think it is: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/whitewash


I’ve worked in an org where our CEO had the same sentiment. He preferred the term “work life satisfaction” . Worst thing was, if you really prodded him on it it became clear the definition was basically the same. He just didn’t like the negativity some people had when talking about work life balance.

We all had to quietly nod in agreement in those meetings and then literally everyone else openly talked about work life balance regularly. Being on the hiring team in that company quite, quite often the phrase comes up in interviews. Even our head of HR, thankfully, wouldn’t regurgitate the weird language around that to potential hires asking about work life balance.

Ultimately, executives are just humans. Humans have flaws and sometimes those flaws materialize in pedantic phraseology. People hope their execs are these perfect all-knowing individuals and that’s just never the case. It’s a combination of _some_ amount of competency and a whole lot of luck that put them there in all cases.


No. Execs are not "just humans." They are enormously privileged, often not due to skill but due to proximity / birth, and there is no excuse for this kind of behavior.

You want to make buckets loads of money and tell other people what to do? Then you need some empathy for workers who aren't stakeholders making peanuts compared to you. That is the most basic of basic requirement to be in such a position of privilege.

It isn't "just human" to be a slave driver. It is criminally inhumane. I can only hope these people will face some kind of karmic justice for their gross inhumane negligence.


Based

Same at Amazon. Bezos often talked about "work life harmony" which he liked to say instead of "balance." His reasoning was that balance implies a zero-sum tradeoff in which more dedication to one takes away from the other (a characterization he didn't like).

But simply calling it "harmony" doesn't magically make those tradeoffs go away.


My partner recently bought a newer Subaru. It’s great, and when we looked it up we saw it had remote start. Turns out it’s behind a subscription. When I found that out I essentially wrote off Subaru as a brand for my future car purchases. Catch me driving my 2017 civic into the ground before I pay a freaking subscription for basic vehicle functionality


There was an article not long ago about a Subaru vuln that allowed anyone to remote start, track, or unlock any new Subaru


Interpretation The First: One does not need to subscribe to enjoy this functionality.

Interpretation The Second: These vehicles are maintained by a corporation that is both greedy and incompetent.


I took my wife's 2020 Crosstrek in for service a couple of years ago.

The service writer told me (and documented) that the car needed rear pads when I came to pick it up.

That's a little weird, I thought.

I took it to a tire place for snows two weeks later. They inspect that shit for the upsell while the wheels are off anyway. Front and rear brakes: fine.

Checked 'em myself. Sure enough, barely worn.

That was the last time that car visited the dealer.

I still have to pull the dash apart to bypass the spy box they never mentioned when selling the car.

These dicks feel they aren't making enough money just making and selling cars they have to do shady shit.

Well fuck that, I won't buy a new one again.


Honda dealer told me I had an oil leak. Odd, never saw oil in my driveway. Said no thanks. A friend mechanic looked at it and said there was no evidence of an oil leak.

Never going to that dealer ever again.


I have this[0] in my cart waiting to pull the trigger. It's supposed to allow you to pull the power from the data communication model, while preserving the functioning of the microphone and front speakers, which are routed through the DCM.

[0]https://www.autoharnesshouse.com/69018.html


Wasn't it the other way round? Subaru was the only manufacturer that wasn't affected, I thought.



I completely forgot about that.

I was thinking of the exploit back from 2023 that effected Acura, Genesis, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Infiniti, Nissan, and Porsche. I remember it being discussed on HN at the time but I can't find the relevant thread. Here is an article covering it: https://www.securityweek.com/16-car-makers-and-their-vehicle..., at the time.


Remote start is basic vehicle functionality for you?

You and I understand the word "basic" differently.

I wish they'd offer a lifetime purchase option--but maybe they learned from the 2g remote start debacle not to rely on technology they don't control


In the age of push-to-start cars, yeah it does feel basic to me. If I can unlock my car with my key fob, why can’t I send a signal to start it?

My 2017 Honda civic has it without a subscription so I was pretty shocked to learn that Subaru decided its customers would be cool with it being behind a pay-wall.


Are you looking to remote start from the fob, or from an app? I agree that if it's done via the fob, that shouldn't require a subscription. But I understand that something requiring a cell signal will usually be paid, one way or another. I prefer it not be baked into the cost of the car, since some people (me) will not want that feature.


Even if it was from an app, why can't I use wifi/bluetooth? Even if it depends on a relay server, why can't I load my own sim and run my own relay?


This seems like a very HN-specific use case. It's not surprising that automakers don't have APIs that let customers host servers that they use to remotely start their vehicles. Security is obviously a huge issue, and almost no one cares about remote starting that much, and has the know-how to implement relay servers and such.

I'm not happy with how consumer choice is boxed in by automakers, but for sensitive systems like ignition, I don't think that their approach is unreasonable.


What do you mean HN-specific? I don't understand how cars got to require permanent cellular connections in the first place while Bluetooth would've been enough


I was referring to the fact that a very small sliver of the population would be interested in running their own relay server, or even figuring out what that means. They just want to press a button and have the car turn on.

Key fob-based has worked great for me in a variety of living configurations (apartments, single homes) in the past 7 years with my 2017 civic. It can connect surprisingly far distances, and it doesn’t need a direct line of site or anything. Just good old RF.

I get what you’re saying about app-based. My civic has that too and it’s for a cost. I’ve just never needed it since we have the free for life RF version.

At $110/yr for cell-based remote start via Honda link, I’ve saved $770 over the years. Over the life of the car for me I could be looking at doubling those savings. That’s the power of avoiding needless subscriptions.


My Toyota is charging a monthly fee for it as well.


I presume it needs a cellular subscription for this, which is not free nor basic functionality.

I’d understand a complaint for heated seats subscription, but not for remote start.


Bettet write off Toyota too then, and many others.


I agree with boycotting subscription looked down cars, but what is the point of remote start? Defrosting?


Most people in my area don’t have garages and we get well below freezing in the winter. Yes we use it for defrosting and getting the car a little warmed up prior to driving to work in the morning.


Or the opposite: cooling the interior to a survivable temperature.


It could be for both defrosting and cooling.


Gasing your neighbours and every living beign on a 100ft radius. I can't stand drivers that idle their cars while they're gone doing other stuff. Remote start should totally be a subscription feature, before it gets banned or regulated. Why? Because it's very annoying.


I’ve never heard of remote start being used as a way to idle your car while doing other stuff. It’s most commonly used to defrost a car in the winter without having to get into it and sit in the freezing car while you’re not moving anyway.

There’s a time limit on it on my car, I think about 10 minutes or something pretty sane. If you don’t get into your car by then it turns back off automatically.


I once spent two cold nights standing on my head putting an aftermarket remote start system into an old BMW.

And sometimes I did use it to keep the car running while doing other stuff. This function was a design intent of the device.

It would work like this: Drive to a destination not so far away on a cold wintry day and put transmission in park like usual. Then, push the start button on the remote and turn the ignition switch off.

After that: Remove key, get out, lock doors, go do whatever quick errand it was that had us out to begin with, and return to a car that was finally actually warm inside. The engine and accessories would continue running uninterrupted, like nothing ever happened.

After returning: Put key in, turn it to "on", select a gear, on to the next destination. Engine stays running the whole time.

When I read about this function, I figured I'd never use it. But it did work very well and my then-wife liked it quite a lot. Also if short, cold runs are bad for things like bearing wear and oil contamination, then keeping it running and letting it get up to operating temperature was perhaps a nicer way to treat that old engine than the alternative of never letting it really get warm might have been.

(It would time out and turn off after about 10 or 15 minutes. Otherwise, the engine would cease immediately upon touching the brake pedal if the ignition switch wasn't on.)


I have a hybrid. If I remote start it, generally the engine doesn't start - and even if it does, it's extremely quiet because it's an Atkinson-cycle model. I have to be within 10 feet of the car to hear it running in a quiet parking garage, let alone on the street.

Sure, it sucks when someone idles a diesel outside your house, but new cars are QUIET.


Do you live in an area where it snows frequently?


Sure. I start the engine and then proceed to get the snow off and defrost the windows using a broom and a scraper. Good way to adjust yourself to the cold. Remote start won't help much in anything more than 2" of snow because it would take half an hour to defreeze by itself. My wife prefers the garage, though. Still, we don't live in Alberta or Alaska for the car to freeze shut.

We had a hybrid replacement Yaris. It's nice but it still turns on the engine when it's cold. I wasn't complaining abut the noise, but the fumes. Diesels are the worst, regardless of CO2 rating, but gas engines produce a lot more CO even if they stink less. There are places where idling is regulated up to 5 minutes.

https://www.wandsworth.gov.uk/environment/pollution/air-qual...


Does it clear your driveway of snow? Otherwise I'm not sure why leaving a running vehicle unattended is useful. If the car is too cold when you get in, put a coat on. Too much ice on the windows? Scrape it off.


It warms the engine (and thus the interior) while I clear the driveway of snow, and it does this even if the doors are frozen shut because of a layer of ice.

By the time I get back to addressing the car itself, the snow and ice is easier to brush or scrape off and the doors might actually open without ripping the handle off (which is something that I've directly experienced twice so far in my days).

This all conspires to mean that it makes my life easier.

And it's OK if you don't like the feature and take a very dim view of it. It's also OK that some others may find merit in using it.

It's all OK.


If you have a driveway and no garage, my sympathies. If you have a garage, and your winters are as severe as you say, why not park in the garage? It's better for your car and tires and you won't spend any time or fuel scraping and warming.

It's not the feature I dislike. I find the practice of idling a car to warm it wasteful and polluting.


Sure.

Even better to move to a place where there isn't regularly any winter weather. Perhaps something below the 35th north parallel, and as close to sea level as can be mustered, would be good.

Let's all do this. It will be a Great New Beginning for so many people.

And thereafter, we'll burn our money polluting the world by running the aircon while we drive instead of burning it to help pre-emptively warm our cars on wintry days.


Air-conditioning uses less energy than heating. And places where you need air-conditioning also have abundant solar power.

If you park your car in your garage you'll burn less fuel and own less stuff (because you can't store it in your garage). I'm telling you an easy way to save time, money, and your own energy (scraping ice) and you're mocking me. That's nice.


Heat is free when we're out driving around. Internal combustion engines generate more heat than they know what to do with. I do like your idea of putting solar panels on a car to run the aircon, though: That sounds neat!

(I adore and embrace every opportunity for a stranger on the Internet to tell me how I should live.)


> I do like your idea of putting solar panels on a car to run the aircon

I thought you were talking about air conditioning in buildings. In warm climates, in a car, cooling is usually free: roll down your window and catch something called a "breeze". Works great unless you're on the freeway. But if everyone moved to a warm climate, as you, suggested we'd be living way more dense so you'd drive way less anyway. checkmate

There are also these things called "electric vehicles" that you can charge with solar power without requiring a panel on the vehicle.

> I adore and embrace every opportunity for a stranger on the Internet to tell me how I should live.

You're welcome! Normally I don't care what people do. But this idling cars affects everyone's air quality.


That's been a nice run through the arrogance of hypotheticals.

Over here in reality: It is that time of year again where the weather is shifting.

I think I'll stay where I am, park in whatever location it is that suits me, and start looking into remote starter kits for my Honda.

And I'm quite certain that I don't care at all what my neighbors may think of this.


> I think I'll stay where I am, park in whatever location it is that suits me, and start looking into remote starter kits for my Honda.

I mean that was pretty much the outcome I expected from this interaction.


In MY day we walked to school in the snow, uphill both ways! Turn that light off! Just put a coat on! Get off my lawn!


Add in the fact that insurance companies are legally allowed to (and would be stupid to not) heavily lobby the politicians that decide how much money they can make. They are allowed to donate essentially an unlimited amount of money to the campaigns of politicians running for office thanks to the Citizens United ruling.

Turns out unlimited money from bad actors flowing into the pockets of those that write the laws isn’t a great system!


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