Viewing profile — samfoo

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, thoug…

That's the one!

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…

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 s…

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.…

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 immeasu…

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

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 t…

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 Melb…

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 …

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 y…

> 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: I…

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…

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 cont…

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 or…

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

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 infrastruct…

(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 de…

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 …

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 lin…

"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 arbi…

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 r…

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 …

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. O…

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 …