samfoo

5 ms·

1.
by samfoo 11y ago
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 con
2.
by samfoo 11y ago
That's the one!
3.
by samfoo 11y ago
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 s
4.
by samfoo 12y ago
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 playi
5.
by samfoo 13y ago
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 w
6.
by samfoo 14y ago
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 on
7.
by samfoo 14y ago
Yes, if only more people knew "their place".
8.
by samfoo 14y ago
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.
9.
by samfoo 14y ago
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 th
10.
by samfoo 14y ago
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
11.
by samfoo 14y ago
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, typi
12.
by samfoo 14y ago
> 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. "America
13.
by samfoo 14y ago
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.
14.
by samfoo 14y ago
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
15.
by samfoo 14y ago
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 U
16.
by samfoo 14y ago
Which we are by way of building codes and regulations...
17.
by samfoo 15y ago
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 so
18.
by samfoo 15y ago
(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 th
19.
by samfoo 15y ago
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
20.
by samfoo 15y ago
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
21.
by samfoo 15y ago
"Would of", "could of", "should of" are certainly errors when conjugating , but "on accident"? Either preposition "by" or "on" seems correct to me and the correct choice seems arbitrary -- though I find myself preferring "on". From what I c
22.
by samfoo 15y ago
I don't know how to configure eclipse to build this, but I spent a few minutes and made an ant script. Save [it]( https://gist.github.com/1dd9bd89748f489f67c9 ) as `build.xml` in root directory of the project and run `$ ant jar`. This will
23.
by samfoo 15y ago
I'm fairly certain that ICBM's use inertial guidance with predefined/computed coordinates ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_guidance ). There's no software involved, its all physical. Detonation is (probably) trigged by a combination
24.
by samfoo 15y ago
Just because you're not doing TDD doesn't mean you're not testing your code. I don't need to be forced to think about modular code, because I (try to) think that way voluntarily. One of the most frustrating things (to me) about BDD/TDD is t
25.
by samfoo 15y ago
If you only barely make the cut, you'll only be paying barely more in taxes. Only your income above the cut is taxed at the higher rate. It's not like if you make $239,999 and you get one more dollar in income you lose money. Only that doll
26.
by samfoo 15y ago
I'll accept that victims of violent crime are also more likely to be the perpetrators. I just don't see how that matters: They're still part of the demographic of "men" and still contributing sociological disadvantage to the population (viz
27.
by samfoo 15y ago
I don't understand your point: How is a woman being more likely to be raped not equivalent to a man being more likely to be the victim of a violent crime? When men are victimized it's their own fault, but when women are it's men's fault?
28.
by samfoo 15y ago
You're cherry picking statistics: Do you think women are more likely to be homeless? Drug addicts? Do you think women are more likely to be the victims of a violent crime? More likely to be in prison? I doubt the numbers will bear out in yo
29.
by samfoo 15y ago
My guess would be that it's a flash app. Flash is (or at least used to be) horrible at internationalization issues like this.
30.
by samfoo 15y ago
I'm only speculating, but these are my thoughts: 1. Harder to expand quickly because of legal barriers. 2. Network effect/expansion is harder. Say you start hitting a network effect in Germany with some new social app... You can't necessari

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