Live data from Hacker News

The absolute worst scenario happened

reddit.com

441–450 of 566 posts

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is pure slander It's libel (written) not slander (oral); "defamation" is the generic noun.

Does libel magically turn into slander if a blind person uses a screen reader? Asking for a friend. ;-)

Your comment made me curious and I checked - it is not the physical channel that matters, it is whether the media is _transient_ or not.

It seems that paying to skywrite (you know, small plane making artificial clouds) could be slander but not libel

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider food security a national security issue. Produce is one of the few areas where I would consider a tarif justified. Every country should be able to feed it's citizens with the food grown there, or they risk hunger when cut off by war or natural disaster.

And countries do that, but for a few strategic ones, not everything. Canada produces lots of wheat and dairy and maple syrup. It even has a strategic maple syrup reserve. But it does not produce a lot of citrus fruits or pistachios or dates. It may be possible for US to produce everything within the country—it is a gigantic country and has just about every climate there is. But it would be an ecological disaster if c…

Oh! One of my favorite ag articles talked about the challenges of growing oranges in russia!

https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/04/fruit-trenches-culti...

You're absolutely right that perhaps not everything should be grown everywhere, but I strongly believe that a country should have a local source of all the calories and vitamins / minerals they need. In Canada, for example, maybe they encourage farmers to grow greens, brocolli or potatoes instead of citrus for vitamin c, but they absolutely need a source.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is pure slander It's libel (written) not slander (oral); "defamation" is the generic noun.

Does libel magically turn into slander if a blind person uses a screen reader? Asking for a friend. ;-)

What about the other way, subtitles.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my EU-centric worldview, the US system of at-will employment, and of two-week notices as the standard courtesy, is crazy. Oh, I agree. But 3 months seems crazy to me. If I have an open position and it isn't filled in ~4-6 weeks, it often gets given to some other team (on the basis that if I really needed that position filled, I'd do so). I can't plan hiring over that timeframe. And when hiring employees in India,…

> Oh, I agree. But 3 months seems crazy to me. If I have an open position and it isn't filled in ~4-6 weeks, it often gets given to some other team (on the basis that if I really needed that position filled, I'd do so). I can't plan hiring over that timeframe. If you're in a culture (locality + industry) where a position can be filled in 4 weeks, that's one thing. If you're in a culture where every experienced person…

Assuming that you’re talking about senior people, who are all employed, I don’t see how this helps. Realistically employee X resigns, and we find a replacement; that replacement is working and needs to resign. Their end dates are still serialized.

We have a bunch of employees in Europe and everyone involved except the very marginal employees sees this situation as strongly negative (and, in fact, an argument to not hire in Europe at all).

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#445
post #194
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farming is low margin. Farmers don’t get to set the price of their products, and they aren’t handed billions in capital to burn through or 1000x multiples on their profit in the public markets. When most businesses say they can’t hire someone and the reason is because they don’t pay enough, the underlying cause of their low pay is usually because that’s what the company can afford. Sure, farmers could pay $10/hr, but…

...yes? The alternative to farmers is not harvesting their crops at all, since with the borders closed foreign labor is not available. If nobody wants to buy $10 doritos, that means the product can't exist in a market without cheap labor.

Doritos aren't going to get more expensive, because like all the real staple crops, corn is completely mechanized, and you have one guy driving an air-conditioned tractor or combine, following GPS-plotted courses.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#446
post #88

I actually don't see any issue that isn't simply a matter of money. Everything they list that's an issue seems to revolve around the fact that the employees with domain knowledge for the system have left the company. Reach out to them and hire them on as contractors. If they left under bad terms because the business was a bunch of dicks, expect to pay 10x market rate. If this is truly "fix this or the business is out…

Throwaway purely so that I can comment. I've had this happen before. Years ago I left a rather awful company - I left on great terms with my boss, though I hated the company. I was the last person who knew how to release X product. While I documented everything, after I left, the wiki lost its mind, backups apparently weren't a thing, and the director of IT moved to Bermuda. Fast forward 6 months.. a contractual obli…

Absolute chad badassery

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#447
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

European here. Having 3 months written in your contract (and in many countries by law, like France) is pretty common. You can still quit if both parties agree. I've done it before. The clause is there to avoid this type of scenario where a key employee just says fuck it and leave. It works both ways. So a company can say fuck it and fire you just because they want to. It's a fantastic system. It can be exploited, but…

> The clause is there to avoid this type of scenario where a key employee just says fuck it and leave. If they are at the "fuck it" point, what's going to force them to be useful and productive during the forced 3 month notice period?

The countries in Western Europe specifically are much much smaller pools in the tech space than anything an American could conceive. The reputational damage of getting to the “fuck it” point and becoming a pain in the ass has a lot more blow back when the pools of both workers and employers are tiny even compared to a second or third tier US geo.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there another industry where a few employees with "domain knowledge" can sink a company? Asking because, while, yes, throwing money at the problem might be a solution, I think the obvious bigger issue is how does one allow themselves to get into this situation? Or rather, how does one avoid getting into this situation. Because it seems to me that the software industry of late has become so mired in esoteric layers…

There are a LOT of industries with this problem. Specialist stuff like military shipbuilding is an example, but also things like precision ball bearings. Knowledge gets lost all the time and old timers have to be brought back in after the fact. Or the technology is just lost and a replacement has to be reinvented (famously, the production of tamper material for the US thermonuclear nuclear weapons).

The precision ball bearings thing reminded me of a news item from a few years ago: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/01/18...

The relevant part of the article:

> To anyone outside of the ballpoint pen manufacturing world, it might seem hard to understand what, exactly, is so surprising about this development. China already produces 38 billion ballpoint pens a year, according to China Daily, which is about 80 percent of all ballpoint pens in the world. That's a lot of pens, but there was a catch: China had long been unable to produce a high-quality version of the most important part of the pen, its tip.

> The tip of a ballpoint pen is what makes it a ballpoint pen. At the tip, a freely rotating ball is held in a small socket which connects it to an ink reservoir that allows the pen to write or draw lines. Manufacturing a ballpoint pen tip that can write comfortably for a long period of time requires high-precision machinery and precisely thin steel, but for years China was unable to match those crafted by foreign companies.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#449
post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does libel magically turn into slander if a blind person uses a screen reader? Asking for a friend. ;-)

Your comment made me curious and I checked - it is not the physical channel that matters, it is whether the media is _transient_ or not. It seems that paying to skywrite (you know, small plane making artificial clouds) could be slander but not libel

> whether the media is _transient_ or not

Citation? By that light, a DVD containing defamatory speech would be libelous, but that's generally not how courts see it.

From the (highly-influential) U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, summarizing New York law (which is quite typical): "Defamation, consisting of the twin torts of libel and slander, is the invasion of the interest in a reputation and good name. Generally, spoken defamatory words are slander; written defamatory words are libel. Libel is a method of defamation expressed in writing or print." [0]

https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=601727562995661...

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can fix this with import duties. If the country you are importing from doesn't have good labor laws, you charge them 100% extra.

People get really pissed off when food gets more expensive. Politicians realize that and will therefore never pass legislation that would cause such drastic price increases on food.

If they enforced the laws already on the books, they'd have to pass new laws to fix things. I see that as a net positive. If you selectively enforce against illegal immigrants, well, that's very much a 'rules for thee, not for me' situation isn't it?
Post reply on HN