Typically, the workers fly out from a capital city to work/live at a remote mine site for several weeks, then they fly back for a couple of weeks rest, repeat.
In Australia, to keep receiving unemployment benefits, you have to apply for 20 jobs a fortnight (or something like that). So you get a lot of unemployed people shot gunning their resume around to fulfil that requirement ().
Requiring a cover letter becomes a neat shorthand way to filter those legitimately applying and those that aren't. Those seeking to fulfil their 20 applications/fortnight quota don't submit cover letters - they still met their requirement, and I don't waste my time reviewing their CV.
() Even people legitimately seeking jobs would do this. They would spam out their resume to 12-15 jobs, and then with the time saved, they would use that to 'properly' apply for the handful of jobs they were seriously considering.
> 2. The reviews are heavily biased. Hosts will pester you to leave positive review, if you leave even a 4 star, they get really mad at you. I left a 4 star review and the host gave me a 1 star that almost got me banned.
I've always felt that reviews should be not be visible until both parties had 'blindly' submitted their reviews. Or if only one party submits a review, then after a set period of time, it is published and the other party does not have an ability to rate the other party anymore to prevent retaliation reviews.
This would ensure more honest reviews and stop revenge reviews.
Haven’t used Airbnb in a while but I could swear that’s how it worked. Which is why I’m confused reading all these experiences about retaliatory negative reviews.
That whole Thai situation was when my opinion of Elon cratered. The pedo insult and subsequent lawsuits really gave insight into Elon's (lack of) character - the fact he would use that as an insult, the person he insulted, and the fact he wouldn't apologise and let it get to the stage of a lawsuit.
Whilst the 'submarine solution' he proposed shattered my belief that he was some engineering genius. It was plainly obvious to even a non-technical person that a cave system was not going to be suitable for a submarine - yet here was the 'genius' designing a solution without even checking the requirements. It was so fundamentally stupid that it's made me really believe that Tesla/SpaceX are a (technical) success in spite of Elon, not because.
Maybe the whole submarine thing was purely a marketing/publicity plot ... but trying to gain PR points off a live tragedy? Well that goes back to my point about his character.
I've been playing around with OBS and Zoom lately as well. Prior to a meeting, I pre-recorded a couple of minutes of me watching the screen. I used OBS to switch to this looped pre-recording whenever I wanted to eat/drink or get out of my chair to stretch etc during the meeting.
It was mostly just to satisfy my curiousity on how difficult it is to do (it's easy) and whether anyone noticed the looping (no one did). But what I did find interesting was that I found it immensely 'freeing' to be able to participate in the meeting without being observed - there is something about knowing I'm on camera that I find taxing that I don't get in a face to face meeting.
If the meeting is big enough that you can get up without missing anything or your absence being noticed (an all hands), you can probably just turn the video off.
If it's small enough that people will notice/care that your video is off but not that you're not interacting (and you won't miss anything valuable by being absent), then your company really needs to re-evaluate its approach to meetings.
The "because I can" argument is perfectly reasonable, though.
If I remember my uni engineering/calculus maths class correctly, the third derivative of position is used in planning these sort of curves.
The first derivative of postion (with respect to time) is velocity. The second derivative is acceleration (ie rate of change of velocity). And the third derivative is jerk (rate of change of acceleration).
And 'jerk' has to be kept below a certain threshold for humans to find movement comfortable.
A very similar thing is done in the creation of reflective surfaces on car bodies (typically in CAD software).
They call these constraints by G and a number.
G1 would be a positional constraint: the two surfaces meet each other at the same point
G2 tangential: same as G1, but the surfaces are tangential
G3: same as G2, but the curvature (radius^-1) of the surfaces is the same at the point where the two meet. This essentially means the curvature combs of the surfaces shall meet at the same position (G1)
G4: same as G3, only now the meeting curvature combs have to be tangential as well
G5: same as G4, only now the curvature combs of the curvature combs have to meet at the same position
And so on. The goal is to create smooth transitions between two separate mathematical surfaces that cannot be seen in the reflections in the sheet metal. E.g. if you think about the connection of straight sheet of metal (curvature: 0) and a cylindrical surface (curvature: 1/radius) the curvature will go from zero to some different value immidiately on the transation you will definitly see this as a hard corner on the reflection or when light falls onto the surface.
Also seen in the planning of curves in roads (where jerk corresponds to the rate at which a steering wheel must be turned) and railways.
And this is also why the passengers jerk of a vehicle jerk backwards after it comes to a complete stop. Their muscles statically counter the relative forwards acceleration of their torsos during braking and require time to react to the acceleration suddenly going away. This effect can be prevented by gradually letting off the brake before reapplying it fully upon stopping, but few drivers and rapid transit systems seem to be aware.
> but few drivers or rapid transit systems seem to be aware
I find that amazing. What the heck are drivers ed instructors doing? It's not just hard on the passengers, it's hard on the machinery.
It's the same with the clutch. I've driven with enough people who fancy themselves as great shifters, but they jerk the hell out of the clutch every time, never attempting to match the shaft speed with the engine speed. If I comment on it, they always deny doing that :-/
If I'm on my game, I can shift smoother than an automatic. The bonus is the clutch will last a very long time.
This effect can be prevented by gradually letting off the brake before reapplying it fully upon stopping, but few drivers and rapid transit systems are aware.
This is surprising to read. Everyone whose car I've ridden in knows to do that, and it's only in extremely urgent and unexpected stops where it's neglected. Also, when fully stopped, only minimal pressure should be necessary to keep the car still.
There's definitely confirmation bias causing me to not notice stops where there isn't a jerk. And perhaps by the Baader-Meinhof effect you'll begin to notice them more frequently, too. But stops without any perceptible jerk are rare enough that when they happen I get an odd feeling of floating forwards like when the train beside your own at a station departs—perhaps it's because my subconscious, still anticipating the jerk, believes that I'm still in motion.
In some cars there's hysteresis in the brake pedal (perhaps caused by the booster or self-energizing system) that makes it hard to smoothly release the brake even when the driver tries to. But metros seem to increase their braking force—visible in standing passengers leaning progressively more—as speed decreases. Is there some physical cause to that?
> only minimal pressure should be necessary
I gathered that it was best practice to fully brake when stopped in case someone hits you, especially at a light where you might be rear-ended and roll into the intersection.
If rear-ended with your brakes engaged more of the impact energy will go into crumbling your car than if it's allowed to transfer into forward speed.
If you see it coming, let go of the brake, and then step on it after impact. That's the advise I got.
It depends on if you're trying to minimize damage to your car, or the passengers. For a light impact where you aren't going to sustain any injuries it might be optimal to let off the brake. But if the accelerations are going to cause injury, then you would want to apply the brakes to minimize the acceleration of the car.
Strategy sounds legit but my concern would be that the (previously distracted) incoming driver attempts to dodge at the last second. Their car will hit your car with torque that could send it into oncoming traffic. But that angled impact also means less push in your car's forward direction, so maybe this concern is overblown.
> Everyone whose car I've ridden in knows to do that
I also do that, and don't know anyone who doesn't. I vaguely remember that I learned it in driving school, most likely because my driving instructor didn't want to be jerked around on the passenger seat for an hour every week.
Train/tram drivers here also usually do that in stations, except when they try to make up for delays, or when they have wrongly estimated the breaking distance.
Re train/tram drivers: Especially with more modern(ish) rolling stock that can also depend on how well the manufacturer has set up the braking system.
For one instance multiple units (especially electrically powered ones) commonly have computerised braking controls, often transition from dynamic to friction braking shortly before coming to a standstill, and might possibly have some sort of automatically applied parking brake.
If the manufacturer didn't properly adjust this whole system, the friction brake as it takes over for the last few kph might be applied with too much of a "bite" and therefore cause a jerky stop which even a skilled driver might not be able to fully prevent.
More pressure won't do any harm, it's just not necessary if you only want to keep the car still (on a flat road, in neutral, with nobody trying to tow you, etc.).
It's a little more complicated than that in a passenger car. The deceleration compresses the front springs. When the car comes to a stop, the springs decompress and the front of the car pops up and the body of the car moves slightly backwards even though the wheels are now stationary.
1) lots of comments are attributing the jerk felt by occupants to the vehicle suspension. But that isn't the case! The occupants visibly move backwards relative to the car body, but the backwards motion of the car itself should rather have the opposite effect.
2) a commenter contradicts what several commenters here have noticed:
> I wager this has to do with the driver; most drivers I've noticed don't ease up off the breaks when slowing down, and so the 'slowing force' feels like it ramps up along the deceleration profile, up until the point when the car comes to a complete start and there's a 'jerk'.
> The occupants visibly move backwards relative to the car body
The only video linked to in that thread has been removed so I wasn't able to see this, but I will point out that the timing is critical to interpreting this observation. During deceleration, the occupants will move forward relative to the car body so that the car can apply a decelerating force to their bodies (via seat belts or friction against the seats and floor of the car). At some point after the car has stopped, they will necessarily move back to their neutral position. This will have nothing to do with the transient motion of the car when acceleration drops to zero.
I will also note that it is not that difficult to come to a complete stop with no perceivable transient if you ease off the brakes as the car comes to a halt. It's actually a useful skill to cultivate IMHO.
This was particularly noticeable to me riding San Francisco light rail to work. When trains run underground they start and stop under computer control. Nice, smooth acceleration and deceleration.
On the surface (or when the computer control system was borked) the starts and stops were a lot less pleasant.
This is fun to try in cars. The drivetrain can have a bit of twist under deceleration, and you can feel it spring back after the wheels stop. For best comfort you need to gradually reduce the braking force not just for human comfort but also to relieve that twist.
OT: that reminds me of an interesting physics problem.
If you have a ball sitting on the floor in the aisle of a stationary bus and the bus starts accelerating forward the ball rolls toward the back of the bus. If you have a bus moving at a constant velocity and it start decelerating the ball rolls toward the front of the bus.
Suppose you also have a helium balloon floating in the bus. Does it also move toward the back of the bus when the bus accelerates and toward the front when the bus decelerates? Or does it stay where it is? Or does it move toward the front when the bus accelerates and toward the back when the bus decelerates?
The balloon would probably move toward the front when accelerating and toward the back when the bus slows, if it moved at all.
It helps (me) to imagine an air bubble in a sealed, nearly-full fish tank on that same accelerating bus. The heavier water gets "flung" harder away from the direction of acceleration, and the bubble gets pushed out of the way in the opposite direction. Same principle.
Given that train drivers have cameras pointing at passengers, I'd argue that they are indeed aware of the effect, but don't always roll the stop due to delays on the line and/or personal reasons.
> This effect can be prevented by gradually letting off the brake before reapplying it fully upon stopping, but few drivers and rapid transit systems seem to be aware.
Is this why it seems to be mostly Americans that are into the idea of self-driving cars, because the standard of driving is so low?
I saw a shirt the other day that said there’s no place like G28 0 0 0. I think for now that wins my nerdshirt championship (I still like my “velociraptor = distraptor / timeraptor” short though, even if it fails dimensional analysis. =)
And 'jerk' has to be kept below a certain threshold for humans to find movement comfortable.
It's not strictly a matter of threshold -- people might tolerate a higher jerk if it's for a much shorter duration, for example. In practice it doesn't much matter which metric you minimize; you'll end up with similar results. The simplest option is to minimize the mean absolute jerk, which has the side benefit of utterly confusing any non-physics-literate people listening in. (You want to do what to whom?)
Note that 'mean absolute jerk' can also be described as 'total variation of acceleration over time'. That implies it does not depend on how fast the acceleration changes, only about the difference between minimum and maximum (as long as the acceleration increases/decreases monotonically to/from the maximum). This may or may not be what you want.
It feels wrong to me that pop comes after crackle. Crackle seems like the ultimate high-frequency effect. In fact, "pop" seems like it should come before "snap". But I guess it is somewhat arbitrary.
I did that - my IM client was on permanent 'away' status. I was tired of being 'green' and people would send multiple messages if I didn't respond instantly to their IMs.
Being permanently 'away' meant people could still contact me and I could respond when convenient without disrupting my work.
I very much subscribe to the convention that proximity should determine how much communication should interrupt what you are doing. Face to Face > Phone/video Call > IM > Email
How do you manage this expectation when working in an environment where part of the office is in the physical building and part is fully remote? When we were all in the office (pre-covid), anybody could walk to your desk to have a face to face conversations.
My manager warned us not to deprioritize IM/calls or it could be used to justify reducing remote privileges (since there isn't a good face to face walk-up equivalent when remote).
I personally hated when people walked up to my desk without messaging me first, and I view unsolicited video calls the same way.
I went through a period of life in my late 30s where I felt I was getting stupider. I was struggling to pickup new concepts and get a handle on new situations quickly like I used to. I was made redundant during a 'restructure' and I strongly believe it was due to these issues I was dealing with.
Several months after being made redundant I got my hearing checked - I had moderate hearing loss in the higher frequencies (where speech occurs). After getting hearing aids, it changed my life.
HA made me realise I had been relying on lip reading and context to understand what was being said. When I encountered new technology/concepts, I didn't have pre-existing base knowledge or context to 'fill in the gaps' of my hearing.
HA reversed all of the issues I had previously been experiencing.
Wow, this is a superb post. Have you blogged about this experience? I am sure many on HN would be interested to learn more! I have lost hearing from dance clubs. I am always the first person in a moderately noisy setting to say "Huh / What / Can you say again?" When I dine out, I try to sit side-by-side. It is so much better for me than across a table!
> but the battery lasts for several weeks if not months; i
In my experience, this is exactly why it's an issue.
All my less tech savvy family who use this mouse forget to charge it because "it never needs charging" ... and then it runs out of juice whilst they are in the midst of something and now they can't use the mouse.
macOS literally nags for days on end - easily an entire week - when the battery is running low before it actually runs out. It starts notifying when the battery level is 10%.
As someone who moonlights in the theatre industry (as a theatre photographer), I'm vaguely familiar with the economics of putting on shows - the article is very interesting and tallies with my experience.
However, I do question one line in the article:
> The average income of Broadwaygoers in 2018-19 was $261k — roughly 4x the median household income in the US.
$261k?!? the average income of attendees?!? That's can't be right can it?
if there's a number of ultra-high net worth people there, it would push the average up, by a lot probably. Median income is a more representative number than average, when there would be outliers like that.
Oh of course. I forgot about the difference between median and average!
For the purpose of the point the article was making in that section (about how the efforts to 'make Broadway more affordable and more democratic come up short.', the 'average' income seems particularly useless as a metric to gauge success.
As you point out, the median is a much better metric.
I think we need a law that all data needs to be presented in deciles, or at least quintiles.
It is incredibly annoying to know that someone had the data and chose to not show its distribution, when it costs them almost nothing to do so. I assume any use of the word “average” without specifying mean or median, or really any use of mean average, to be clickbait because there is no reason to use it when you know the underlying distribution is skewed.
How many Broadway tickets have you bought recently? Not many regular people can afford to go regularly. I'm not broke, but spending 400+ on a pair of tickets, plus other costs ... That is not something I would do every month.
As others have said, median is more interesting, but also remember that there's a selection bias: these are people traveling to or living in one of the country's most expensive cities.
I don't know the stats in the UK, but anecdotally, everyone I know who regularly goes to the theatre (as opposed to occasionally e.g. once every year or two) isn't far off financial independence.
Typically, the workers fly out from a capital city to work/live at a remote mine site for several weeks, then they fly back for a couple of weeks rest, repeat.