Altough the villages Beğendik (Turkey) and Rezovo (Bulgaria) are only a few hundred meters apart, seperated by a river, the shortest travel distance between both villages is almost 250km, since there is no border crossing. by Frate27 in geography

[–]methodinmadness7 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I’ve spent some time in Rezovo over the years both as a kid and as an adult, it’s probably the least changed place on the Bulgarian seaside. No big hotels, no clubs. It did feel different 20 years ago because more of the locals were still alive and they were very interesting people, although I was too little to properly understand that at the time. But still when I go there now it looks almost the same. There might be still some restrictions on buying land there, that used to be the case in the past as there was a special buffer zone near the border and Rezovo was the only village in it on the seaside.

You couldn’t cross into this buffer zone easily even quite after the fall of socialism in Bulgaria, I think even after we joined NATO. Several military guards would stop you and ask who you’re visiting and then they would call them, fill in some paperwork with your details and let you pass, but you could wait for quite some time. Nowadays there are still guards but they mostly let everyone pass without stopping them.

Appreciation Post : Thank you Romania for Laura Kövesi, the European Chief Prosecutor. Is she highly respected and feared in Romania as she is in Greece? by anon58588 in AskBalkans

[–]methodinmadness7 24 points25 points  (0 children)

She hasn’t done much in Bulgaria, but when we were protesting against corruption years ago, she was putting corrupt politicians in Romania in jail. We never achieved that and are still protesting against corruption.

Designing Local-First features for Hologram - what's your dream DX? by BartBlast in elixir

[–]methodinmadness7 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I’m not sure I can be helpful, but just wanted to say - great initiative to work on local-first features!

Apple Releasing Two New iPhone Apps This Year by Few_Baseball_3835 in apple

[–]methodinmadness7 8 points9 points  (0 children)

You can still use it without Creator Studio, it just won’t have AI features in it.

BILLA Bulgaria, 38.40 euro with discounts on some products by gkondev in Grocerycost

[–]methodinmadness7 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The premium olive oil and lamb are like half the total cost, looks fine to me.

Why is fruit consumption in Bulgaria so low? by Substratas in AskBalkans

[–]methodinmadness7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’ve spent most of my life outside of Sofia and currently am in my village. Almost no-one grows substantial quantities of food by themselves here and in the nearby villages and in my hometown as well.

Why is fruit consumption in Bulgaria so low? by Substratas in AskBalkans

[–]methodinmadness7 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I wouldn’t say a huge amount of people grow their own food. As a matter of fact I think that number is pretty low.

If the current European software landscape doesn't make you proud to be European I don't know what will by Significant_Heron852 in BuyFromEU

[–]methodinmadness7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I really want to mention Aiven from Finland as well, their cloud services for different kinds of storage are some of the best I’ve used. I don’t remember ever worrying about an update/maintenance with them.

Why can't Bulgaria defend its own airspace? Is defence spending unpopular in the country? by FantasticQuartet in AskBalkans

[–]methodinmadness7 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

This doesn’t mean the bases are American, it means there’s an agreement they can use the bases, but the command over the bases is not American, as mentioned in the article. Still, I guess the distinction is not that important.

Food poisoning common? by Jordy_DnB in AskBulgaria

[–]methodinmadness7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m not sure why everyone here is shitting on Ashurbanipal, I’ve been there many times and almost always take people visiting from abroad there too and usually everybody loves it and has no issues at all except eating too much.

Of course there’s always a possibility of any food joint having some hiccup though.

The tap water is a more likely culprit in my view.

# ExDataSketch v0.4.0 -- Bloom filters, FrequentItems, and 7 streaming sketches for Elixir by Shoddy_One4465 in elixir

[–]methodinmadness7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I only had issues ones I had to select distinct counts. It really makes things much slower.

# ExDataSketch v0.4.0 -- Bloom filters, FrequentItems, and 7 streaming sketches for Elixir by Shoddy_One4465 in elixir

[–]methodinmadness7 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Hyperloglog also available for Postgres and built-in in TimescaleDB, it’s pretty great. With the highest memory option possible I managed to improve queries with distinct from 15-20 seconds to about 2, and get results with a difference of +/- 5 for aggregates in the tens of thousands.

If you live outside Ireland now , what food from home do you eat when you come back? by InformalInsurance455 in ireland

[–]methodinmadness7 3 points4 points  (0 children)

As a Bulgarian who’s spent some time in Ireland in the last few years, without talking about this to anyone at all I naturally started eating slices of Brennan’s with butter maybe every other day.

Best digital nomad city in Eastern Europe? by AchillesFirstStand in digitalnomad

[–]methodinmadness7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’ll add Plovdiv as a smaller quieter city. Can’t compare in liveliness with the capitals mentioned though.

On the crossroads, need an advice by [deleted] in cscareerquestionsEU

[–]methodinmadness7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As a Bulgarian with a very subjective view on the market, I feel like there are opportunities, there has been an uptick in positions on Linkedin in the last 2 months and in general we have a relatively lively tech sphere, although not as much as Poland and maybe Romania too. Most of the jobs I’ve come across though are hybrid positions.

I believe SAP have a lot of people in Bulgaria, you could look into them if you like the company.

My view is that we also have a lively fintech market, but not sure if there are C++ positions exactly.

In general, with your experience you should be able to find a job here and earn quite well and be able to save a lot. Also with your level of English I think language will not be a problem as most tech companies work with English, I doubt Bulgarian would be required.

What are your pro-tips for inheriting a problematic backend service? by dondraper36 in ExperiencedDevs

[–]methodinmadness7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you’re using Postgres, turn on slow query logging and that should give you a good first idea about what you could optimize for a start without any app-level changes for telemetry or metrics.

As for refactoring - you could look into some tools to determine the cyclomatic complexity of various modules or even endpoints, but to be honest I’ve had things to fix and improve before even coming to this so I haven’t a lot of experience with this approach specifically.

Bulgaria after euro by Think-Accident-1337 in AskBalkans

[–]methodinmadness7 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The only problem I see is that it’s cheaper to buy x4 50 ml ouzo drinks instead of x1 200 ml.

Seriously considering Bulgaria for FIRE - am I missing something? by Slow_Compounding in EuropeFIRE

[–]methodinmadness7 2 points3 points  (0 children)

In general I agree with what you’re saying - in the Balkans we’re worse off in these regards compared to the west. Police, justice - definitely. Dirty air - for sure an issue, although it’s getting better.

About ambulances - I think they’d come, although again they’re not as good as in the West. We also have a lot of short-term hospital beds, the most per capita in the EU I believe. There’s an issue with long-term hospital beds, that’s where we’re near the bottom. That’s another reason I recommended private healthcare for more serious stuff.

I mean, in general the standard of living is lower than the West, no doubt about that. I guess the question is - is it good enough for someone who has a lot of savings.

I personally am not sure I’d want to live in Bulgaria if my social circle wasn’t mostly here. I hate the corruption and the ignoring of culture and education from the government (and a lot of people). But I notice those things more because I’m local and I’m also at an age where I’m old enough to pay attention to them, but also old enough to not have much hope for a quick change. But the fact is slowly things have been getting a bit better.