Viewing profile — bxc

I was already working remotely, but I'd quit a job of several years because of a disagreement. Someone wanted to give me work, but they preferred to give me a job through a company…

One of the things that has repeatedly pushed me off WhatsApp has been their very aggressive stance on this: I've several times stopped using it because "you need to update your app…

Be happy disengaging from the game with non-competitive responses like "yeah probably no one will use it, but mostly I just want to have fun" or "Yeah it sounds like a waste, but I…

That's what an easy to edit personal website feels like.

The National Health Service in the UK has this as a strong stereotype; and it is true in some places. But the only two times I've used a UK hospital, I've been done within 24 hours…

Its a value added tax, so no, 13% doesn't get taxed every time money changes hands. Only the added value.

Symlinks don't work on all filesystems, so don't always work.

Now I don't really know how well it works in practice but the european model for VAT (the rough equivalent of sales tax) is basically this: if you're a small business, you don't ha…

I see they picked up on 'bi-weekly'. I'd never thought of it as an Americanism but it is ambiguous and should be banned for that reason.

Yesterday I accidentally browsed the terms and conditions of galois.com and discovered that I'm not authorised to view their website without a written licence (as I have a professi…

although there's more to the story, the headline itself sounds so 1990s. (soon you'll even be able to order pizza online!)

I actually use this as the primary authentication mechanism for sites I rarely/occasionally visit... password reset at every login!

if you're interested in ssh-like functionality and http, I just wired browserid into my shell server for in-browser logins: http://benctechnicalblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/browserid-…

I think the main rage people get here is when they get data on their phone and so can make a much more of a "like-for-like" comparison between various means of delivering 132 chara…

There's some talk of SMS over GPRS. I have no idea how widely that is deployed though.

If we're making inappropriate price comparisons, that 14mb is half a cent of hard-drive space. A whole 3 characters worth of SMS!

the EU doesn't have a single VAT, or a even a single VAT rate. Each country can choose its own. But if you sell from country A to a resident of country B, you have to charge your c…

its interesting (to me) that they avoid collecting sales taxes in various US states, but that (at least for AWS) they are compelled to collect VAT for all EU states because they ha…

real world analogue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatham_House_Rule

In NL? You're required by law to have health insurance and the insurance companies are required to give it to you. Assuming you're there legally.

yep, the broken-dutch vs clear-english appears to be my experience too - if I'm in the right mood, I'll tease dutch people by speaking full speed english around them when they don'…

now I've made two comments on this thread which make amsterdam sound kinda negative; so now I feel that I have to say that, no no amsterdam is a cool place to live ;)

well, NL is pretty expensive to live in if you're earning USD; the tax burden is high if you're used to the US (though there's some offset because that tax includes what would be p…

Even if you try to learn dutch, you won't easily find people who want to speak it too you, tbh. (at least that's my experience after a few years)

There are other ways of dealing with "fake real numbers" (which is what doubles are) One example is interval arithmetic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_arithmetic None of th…