samfoo · HackerTrans

vor 11 Jahrendiscuss

Of the top twenty most developed countries in the world (ranked by HDI), over half (13) have some form of proportional representation. They aren't all Scandinavian countries, though predictably many are. Which of them would you not consider a stable government?

    Y    Norway 
    Y    Australia 
    Y    Switzerland 
    Y    Netherlands 
         United States
    Y    Germany 
    Y    New Zealand 
         Canada 
         Singapore 
    Y    Denmark 
    Y    Ireland 
    Y    Sweden 
    Y    Iceland 
         United Kingdom
    Y    Hong Kong 
         South Korea 
         Japan 
    Y    Liechtenstein
    Y    Israel 
         France

samfoo

vor 11 Jahrendiscuss

That's the one!

samfoo

vor 11 Jahrendiscuss

Awesome to see the Rising Star Expedition on HN! I was working in Johannesburg while the expedition was active and my partner managed, through a serious of very fortunate events to become a caver on the expedition. Here she is carrying up some of the first bones they extracted - https://i.imgur.com/IfT4PQz.jpg.

For those of you interested, the expedition was sponsored by National Geographic, and there was/is a fairly extensive blog (http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/blog/rising-star-expedi...) covering most of the details. When they first started pulling up the fossils, the excitement was palpable - http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2013/11/11/video-first-....

The expedition occurred nearly two years ago, and there were so many bones still left in the catchment that they left many behind.

Incidentally, though the article says it was scientists who discovered the fossils - they were actually discovered by amateur cavers. The Cradle of Humankind (so named because there are so many similar catchments in the surrounding area) has a massive system of caves and some of the most hardcore amateur cavers in the world.

samfoo

vor 11 Jahrendiscuss

Really amazing achievement, kudos to duke-nh!

For those of you who are looking to get into nethack, or play it all the time... (shameless plug) I've been working on a project for some years that helps ease some of the monotony of playing.

https://github.com/samfoo/noobhack

For example, it keeps track of where you see shops, so you can come back, maps out levels and what you've seen on them, and auto-price identifies things you pick up.

There's a rudimentary plugin system so you can write your own extensions (more coming soon).

samfoo

vor 13 Jahrendiscuss

Delta used to have an awesome frontend for Timatic (the system that all of the airlines use for determining their own liability in visa requirement issues) that I used exclusively. Sadly, it seems they've removed it from their new site.

I was able to find a similar offering[1] for free on Gulf Air's site, though.

A nice frontend to Timatic would be awesome, but I suspect that the licensing is too pricey...

[1] http://www.gulfair.com/English/info/prepare/Pages/VisaInform...

samfoo

vor 14 Jahrendiscuss

This has clearly been infringed on for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain; vis-a-vis, employment.

Amazon's monetary losses over this offense must be immeasurable. Jail time or crippling life-time debt could be the only satisfactory retribution.

/s

samfoo

vor 14 Jahrendiscuss

Yes, if only more people knew "their place".

samfoo

vor 14 Jahrendiscuss

By "Take control of..." you mean "act with the permissions of the app", I assume? I can't see how Angry Birds the app would ever have full control over my Facebook account unless there's a catastrophic vuln. in the Facebook API.

samfoo

vor 14 Jahrendiscuss

As an American living in Sydney: I've found it to be exactly the opposite. Sure there's a ton of coffee places, but mostly they're the same crappy $4.00 burnt roast. I suspect Melbourne is probably better, but I haven't had enough coffee there to confirm.

My speculation is that this is due to a general lack of hip/divy/young "artisan" cafes/restaurants in Australia (yes, yes, I know there are some, I'm talking purely about prevalence) compared with "hip" American cities. This is particularly true outside of the hip parts of town (Surrey Hills, mostly).

US coffee quality depends greatly on which city you're in, and the barista being a cool job is true in many places as well. The Pacific Northwest (Portland, Seattle -- despite the Starbucks black mark) has really amazing coffee shops, and they're everywhere. If you're ever in Portland, I highly suggest Barista -- http://baristapdx.com/ -- it will change your life.

samfoo

vor 14 Jahrendiscuss

Without exploring/understanding a problem space, how would you propose the formation of solutions occur?

Moreover, you're ignoring that to get corrective action against entrenched financial/economic incentives requires overwhelming proof of a problem and public sympathy.

samfoo

vor 14 Jahrendiscuss

I see your point, re-reading your original post. The phrase "young culture", to me, carries a heavy emphasis of literal age.

Ultimately -- and semantic quibbling aside -- I think you're right that American culture is (and by extension, typical Americans are) particularly energetic and optimistic.

I'm not sure I agree with unsophisticated, unless you mean "less formal".

samfoo

vor 14 Jahrendiscuss

> Americans have the optimism and energy of youth, but they're also comparatively unsophisticated.

Aside from the obvious ambiguities of what defines sophistication of a culture: It feels like you're begging the question to me. "Americans are unsophisticated because they're a young culture so they're unsophisticated..."

Moreover I think suggesting that an entire culture is full of optimism and youth because it's only 300 some-odd years old strikes me quite sweeping. The modern nation state is barely as old, and it's not as if Americans don't have some cultural heritage that goes back much further than that.

samfoo

vor 14 Jahrendiscuss

There does seem to be some evidence that this isn't just snake oil:

http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/dreaming/Lucidity%20Institut...

I remain skeptical, but it's certainly plausible. More than most ACM flim flam.

samfoo

vor 14 Jahrendiscuss

And because you won the genetic lottery, you get to exclude access to a country that spent billions and maybe trillions of dollars building its infrastructure?

Doing off-shore contracting work while traveling can only ever be a net positive for a country. Money is repatriated from overseas and pumped into the local economy and no jobs are expatriated.

samfoo

vor 14 Jahrendiscuss

The (claimed) risk isn't that Iran would use nuclear weapons against the US in any official capacity. The risk is that Iran will simply leak nuclear weapons to a proxy terrorist organization (i.e. Hezbollah, Hamas, etc.) If you accept the US government's claims that Iran has used state sponsored terrorism as a political and social tool, then it follows that a nuclear armed Iran is a large risk to the United States.

samfoo

vor 14 Jahrendiscuss

Which we are by way of building codes and regulations...

samfoo

vor 14 Jahrendiscuss

You're making the same mistake that many awful managers make; namely "If the problem seems like it should be easy, it must be easy".

You aren't familiar with Facebook's infrastructure and comparing working on small websites to working on something that scales to roughly 1/12 of the entire population of the planet is laughably naive.

Saying you use a "modul[ar]" approach is nothing but handwaving. You think that facebook doesn't use modules? Or doesn't have a service oriented architecture to some degree? They friggin' developed their own RPC transport!

samfoo

vor 14 Jahrendiscuss

(I should stress that this might be different for other Americans -- it's a big place with lots of regions)

When interacting with authority figures I am generally polite without deference.

I find that people generally use honorifics when they're being quite rude and would like to soften the impact (e.g. the perennial "Good day, sir"), or while insipidly attempting to endear oneself to another (e.g. perceiving someone as wealthy or powerful). I don't know if it's my own egalitarian nature, or cultural, but I find both more rude than the omission of "sir" or "madam".

samfoo

vor 14 Jahrendiscuss

What you mean "calling everyone guys"?

e.g. "Hey, guy! Don't step on the wet floor"?

I don't think, generally speaking, that honorifics are required, even with individuals working in an official capacity (I would never say "sir" to a cop or a ICE agent, for example). That might just be a west coast habit, though. Back east, things might be different.

samfoo

vor 15 Jahrendiscuss

I'm not making an argument ad populum and even if I were, I don't see how it holds any more weight than your argument from antiquity.

Language and grammar evolves and as far as linguistic changes go, the use of one preposition over another is pretty benign. Prepositional choice is already essentially arbitrary and varies from region to region.

English is a moving target. The current generation forming its own vernacular doesn't make in any more or less correct than when the previous generation did it. It's not as if English has its own académie française, and the flexibility of English is one of its most charming properties.

Leaving aside the condescending quip about toddlers, I don't see how over-regularization of prepositions is a bad thing. They're already confusing enough as it is and I personally would prefer a language with more consistent rules than not.

EDIT: A quick addendum: I didn't actually know this was a mistake and I appreciate having learned it anyway.

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