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catkin

139 karma · joined May 9, 2013

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catkin··on Lyft and Uber Won’t Be Happy Until They’re Your One-Stop Transit Guide
I'm not disagreeing with you there, the term "accessible" has a wide range. But it would be inappropriate for a building to have some units with e.g. steps and some without. I'm not sure what you been by wheelchair bars, but if you mean handle bars my building accommodates those through a reasonable accommodation request although I have lived in buildings before which had them in every unit.
catkin··on Lyft and Uber Won’t Be Happy Until They’re Your One-Stop Transit Guide
I've tried to request WAVs in various cities around the world (SF, NYC, LA, London, Portland, Paris etc) on both Lyft and Uber and the results are depressing. Overwhelmingly, if there are any WAVs available, they are only in cities where local ordinance requires them, and even then there are usually only a handful in the city. Wait times can be long at times.

I think the only place in the US where the experience was remotely good was New York, but even then wait times were closer to 20 minutes instead of 2 minutes as they would be for able-bodied people.

The only other thing I can say about this is that Uber/Lyft drivers are required to store a foldable wheelchair upon request. And unlike taxi drivers, they can't just drive by you when they see your chair. In that respect, the experience is better. But there are too many situations when a foldable wheelchair is not possible/desirable, and a true WAV is required.

catkin··on Lyft and Uber Won’t Be Happy Until They’re Your One-Stop Transit Guide
Many people with disabilities who actually rely on protections afforded under the ADA would disagree with you. The ADA actually requires employers and other public places to make reasonable accommodations: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/free-books/employee-...

Regarding your condo building: separate is never equal. Requiring people with disabilities to only live on certain floors is discriminatory. Disability is perhaps the only minority that anyone can enter into at any time, through no action of their own. You can't say that you don't need to worry about accessibility of floors where there are no wheelchair users, because you can't predict who could need one in the future, when or why they will need one.

catkin··on The Nightmare of Replacing a Battery on a Mac Laptop
Except that they don't. The base 13 inch MBP costs $1299 in the US and £999 in the UK, which converts to $1531.52 at the time I wrote this comment, for a difference of ~$230. The mid-level costs $1499 in the US and £1199 in the UK, which converts to $1838, a difference of $339.
catkin··on Superfish's webpage is now dead
Isn't all software potentially unwanted?
catkin··on A scheme to lower engineers’ wages
Not true. Once a H1-b recipient has a receipt number, they can effectively transfer the H1-b to any company willing to sponsor.

Source: I hold a H1-b.

catkin··on Signs that you're a bad programmer (2012)
> instead of the standard library, you get your algorithms from PDF's you have to pay a journal access fee for

A sign of a good programmer, but not a good engineer IMO.

catkin··on Creative Scala: A New Introduction to Scala
This is exactly what I was looking for! I started looking at Scala over the weekend and found the existing beginner-oriented documentation to be pretty lacking. I also signed up for the course.
catkin··on Why Rosyna Can't Take a Movie Screenshot
I always get forced to watch Google Play movies in SD and I have a late 2013 MacBook Pro. It's the main reason I use iTunes more than Google Play.
catkin··on IE Web Development Support Moving to Stack Overflow
True, but Jeff Atwood left SO quite some time ago now.
catkin··on Walkway.js
Works fine for me with the same setup (Safari 8 on Yosemite).
catkin··on Fabric – Mobile developer platform by Twitter
I think a lot of people are in the same boat. Would I use this after seeing how Twitter have treated people using their API in the past? No way.
catkin··on Hope – A Python JIT for astrophysical computations
Full results are in the paper: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.4345v1.pdf
catkin··on Malaysia B772 has crashed near Donetsk
I think that's the point - nobody has any idea what happened to these two Malaysia Airlines flights and /that's/ why they should be shut down.

EDIT: to clarify, I don't believe Malaysia Airlines should be shut down, just trying to clarify OPs comment.

catkin··on Basics of Machine Learning
I didn't take it myself, but my (now former) classmates that took PMR told me it was one of the hardest courses they ever did.
catkin··on Is CSS Turing Complete?
This is called a Turing tarpit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_tar_pit): where a system is technically Turing-complete, but in reality is too awkward to do anything useful with.
catkin··on Exec($_GET
Not actually so surprising considering `$_GET` is a PHP superglobal.
catkin··on Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion
That's not what was said. OP said it's not about fundamental science, which is somewhat true. Nuclear weapons research isn't fundamental, although it does require some fundamental research.
catkin··on Want a job in Silicon Valley?
This is actually remarkably similar to the Silicon Valley Internship Programme (http://www.siliconvalleyinternship.com) except that SVIP targets itself towards British CS/SE grads specifically.