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goatforce5

2,654 karma · joined January 22, 2009

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goatforce5··on Marmalade: A Very British Obsession
His team also took Kendal Mint Cake up Everest:

> Sir Edmund Hillary and his team carried Romney's Kendal Mint Cake with them on the first successful ascent of Mount Everest in 1953. The packaging currently includes the following: “'We sat on the snow and looked at the country far below us … we nibbled Kendal Mint Cake.' A member of the successful Everest expedition wrote – 'It was easily the most popular item on our high altitude ration – our only criticism was that we did not have enough of it.'”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kendal_Mint_Cake

Imagine a Peppermint Pattie, but intensified by an order of magnitude.

goatforce5··on Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence
> and Indians are the most diverse group in the world

What metric(s) are you using to measure that diversity?

I live in Toronto, Canada, and approximately 50% of residents here were born overseas. Toronto likes to boast it is one of the most diverse cities in the world (based on that metric, at least).

goatforce5··on Tesla gave workers permission to stay home, then sent termination notices
> Costco requires a mask to shop in their stores (at least where I am.)

We went to a Costco in Toronto, Canada a couple of days ago. If you didn't have a mask on, they pointed you at a table off to the side where they had free masks, hand sanitizer, etc. Some people would accept the free mask, but others went in maskless. A staffer at the front door appeared to be keeping tally of people without masks using a sheet of paper (as opposed to the standard front door person who counts everyone going in with a little clicker thing).

I'd say about 15-20% of people in the store weren't wearing masks.

goatforce5··on The Dyson Battery Electric Vehicle
I think the UK press would compare anything like that to the Sinclair C5, thus forming public opinion, and thus leaving the whole project dead in the water in the UK:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_C5

goatforce5··on IKEA's shopping malls arm plans U.S. entry in major play
It seems as though their model is to have malls with Ikeas attached. Some with really large Ikeas, others with smaller Ikea pick-up points or whatever.

Ikea generates a ton of foot traffic. Using that as the anchor will probably guarantee a lot of traffic to the other stores in the mall (when many malls are losing their long standing anchors).

It seems like a pretty smart idea to me.

goatforce5··on Farm in SE Australia is growing native grains for flour and bread
And, for the non-Australians in here, the lack of agriculture is essentially one of the boxes you have to tick before you can invoke the concept of Terra Nullius, which is what the English relied on to claim Australia.
goatforce5··on Scraping Recipe Websites
I've had good luck with recipes from https://www.taste.com.au/ and https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/

Alternatively, if you want super barebones, go buy a copy of Escoffier's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_guide_culinaire (or an English translation thereof). It's arguably the definitive cookbook and the recipes are extremely terse, some just a couple of lines long. (e.g. "Take recipe A and recipe B, substituting X for Y.")

"Escoffier's introduction to the first edition explains his intention that Le Guide culinaire be used toward the education of the younger generation of cooks. This usage of the book still holds today; many culinary schools still use it as their culinary textbook. Its style is to give recipes as brief descriptions and to assume that the reader either knows or can look up the keywords in the description."

goatforce5··on New Zealand relied on science and empathy
And yet the article i've linked to has researchers saying different areas (which are as well, if not, far better connected than NZ) have predominant strains with differing characteristics.
goatforce5··on New Zealand relied on science and empathy
From the above article:

> The deadliest mutations in the Zhejiang patients had also been found in most patients across Europe, while the milder strains were the predominant varieties found in parts of the United States, such as Washington State, according to their paper.

> A separate study had found that New York strains had been imported from Europe. The death rate in New York was similar to that in many European countries, if not worse.

It's no so much that a particular area only has one strain, but that the predominant strain that takes hold may have more favourable outcomes.

goatforce5··on New Zealand relied on science and empathy
Apparently there are different strains of Covid-19 floating around. There has been speculation that NZ (and Australia) may have largely been hit by a less aggressive version of the virus than, say, Europe.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&obj...

goatforce5··on Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online
Last year I tried setting up a subscription for some pet food from a mid-sized pet store chain.

The first order went through fine.

3.5 weeks later I get an email saying my next order is about to be processed, now is the last chance for cancellations, etc. I ignore it, as I want the order to be processed.

A few days later I get an email saying they're out of stock and they'll retry again later. I get these emails every day for 2 weeks, and then my order is automatically cancelled.

This happens for 2 or 3 months before I get fed up and cancel the subscription.

If I put in an order effectively a month in advance you'd think they could make sure they had enough stock for that upcoming order.

(And it wasn't a complicated order, just multiple boxes of a single SKU.)

goatforce5··on Layoffs.fyi Coronavirus Tracker
The town I grew up in would flood regularly (pro-tip: don't build your on town on marshy ground where two rivers converge).

Having one or more floods a year was a fact of life and the local store owners would design their stores to deal with that. The best example was a newsagent (remember those?) that had their magazine/greeting card shelves on jacks. Fully loaded racks of magazines would be jacked up 6ft or more, the water would come through the store, they'd hose out the tiled floor, and be back up and running within two or three days.

And then the town built a levee that would deal with everything except 1-in-100 year floods. So the town didn't flood for 10 years or more. People became complacent, and new store owners had no experience (nor plans) for how to empty their stores should the levee be overtopped.

The first time the levee was overtopped, the old timer shop keepers started to prepare their stores for the flood waters (emptying stock, removing electronics, etc.). A surprising number of newer shops literally did nothing, even when the government was telling people the levee wasn't going to prevent a flood. And, predictably enough, a lot of the newer stores literally never came back.

Moral of the story (if there is one)? It can be hard to prepare for bad times if you've only ever known the good times.

goatforce5··on Iran lawmaker says 50 dead from coronavirus in city of Qom
> Before implying that Canada has the final answer to health care

I provided details on a single instance of an interaction with the health system. Hence 'ancedata'. I made no claim that every interaction will have the same outcome.

> waiting times for medically necessary treatment have increased since last year

Do you have the data for wait times for other countries? And, I suppose, wait times of those in the US with and without private insurance?

goatforce5··on Iran lawmaker says 50 dead from coronavirus in city of Qom
Epiglottitis. Oops.

And it's a he.

goatforce5··on Iran lawmaker says 50 dead from coronavirus in city of Qom
Unrequested anecdata: my partner got a bad case of the flu (and epiglottis) a couple of years ago, and ended up spending 10 days in hospital - 7 in ICU, 3 on a normal ward. Total cost: $0.

Thanks Canada!

(Having said that, if you're visiting Canada you'll need to check your health coverage. Medical coverage is provided to Canadian residents, not just anyone who happens to be in Canada at the time.)

goatforce5··on Ontario's new license plates have a problem: you can't read them
Apparently speed cameras in Toronto can't read them during the day:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-licence-plate...

goatforce5··on Thinking About Recursion
Try starting here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22292086
goatforce5··on Storm Ciara helps plane beat transatlantic flight record
I once took a Boston -> London flight that arrived significantly early thanks to the arctic jet stream. But that meant we arrived before the landing curfew ended at 6am so the aircraft was put in a holding pattern above central London for 30 mins or so, and I flew more or less over my home in East London a few times (I could see it out the window as we flew overhead).

We landed a few minutes after 6am, and by the time I got through immigration and customs and rode home during the morning rush hour on the tube it would have been 8 or 8:30am.

Super frustrating that the last mile took 3 hours to complete!

goatforce5··on I Just Took the World's First 20-Hour Flight
For anyone doing US <-> Australia flights, and assuming you have a few extra days up your sleeve, look in to doing a stop over in Honolulu.

On four separate occasions i've stopped in HNL for 2 or 3 nights for little (less than $150) to no additional cost to the airfare (you have to sort out your own hotel and food, obviously), and what there's no better place to spend a few days killing time and smoothing out the jet lag.

goatforce5··on I Just Took the World's First 20-Hour Flight
By playing around with the ETOPS options on Great Circle Mapper you can see the 787 can fly over any part of the Pacific. Aircraft with lower ETOPS ratings would have had to fly non-direct routes to ensure they didn't stray too far from a usable airport.

http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=jfk-syd&MS=wls&DU=mi&E=330

Try dropping the ETOPS to 60 minutes and you'll be able to clearly see where the airports are.

goatforce5··on What Does a Coder Do If They Can't Type?
I worked with a guy in 1999 who had severe RSI. He had spent a ton of time training whatever the highest pro version of Dragon Dictate was at the time, and then even more time setting up a bunch of macros to do complicated/repetitive tasks. It was impressive how fast he could 'type' (that is to say, it was really, really fast - faster than a keyboard) for the things he had trained it for. But, 20 years ago, none of the non-RSI people were tempted to follow his lead having seen how much work it took to get it set up.

But, fast forwarding 20 years, I can totally imagine that a product such as yours that is designed from the ground up for programmer types could be significantly faster for text input, but hopefully without all of that burdensome training and setup before you can be productive.

goatforce5··on China Targets Apple with Push into Advanced Smartphone Screens
Which smartphone would you recommend purchasing?
goatforce5··on Stripe Atlas is nothing but a bad marriage
I worked for a high-risk merchant, and a 44% chargeback rate is utterly insane. IIRC, internal alarms would go off and the processors would be breathing down our necks if the chargeback rate started to approach 2%.
goatforce5··on StreetLend.com shuts down, citing GDPR regulations
Isn't it pretty standard for website T&Cs to say something along the lines of "by uploading content to this website you are providing [website owner] with a license to reproduce the content"? Sometimes those T&Cs will be quite broad - non-revokable, across all media (including forms not yet imagined).

> The inability to revoke access is a failing of the tool or the product, not the law.

Does the law need to change? Or (in the case of email) is it fine as is because the reasonable person realizes that once you hit 'send', the content is out of your control?

goatforce5··on StreetLend.com shuts down, citing GDPR regulations
> If I share a photo, it’s still my photo

This is where it becomes murky for me.

If you send me that photo via email, should you subsequently be able to revoke my access to that photo. If so, by what means?

If you used a closed messaging system (say Facebook's messaging system, or Apple's Messages), should you be able to revoke access?

If you follow the argument a hop, skip and a jump away, what happens if I submit a photo to a publication and they run it on their website? Can I revoke access? What if that publication has published that photo in a physical form?

ie, where is the line where a reasonable person should expect that the data they have willingly shared/published has slipped beyond their control?

goatforce5··on First field report of iPhone X
From what I understand (from a 'The Talk Show'/John Gruber podcast, IIRC), the default view for fullscreen landscape video has black bars on the left and right. It's only when you double tap to go to full screen (and thus cropping the top/bottom) that the notch interferes with the video. He made the point that Apple showing the notch covering video was them kinda going out of their way to highlight that the notch was there.
goatforce5··on Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs to turn 800 acres of Toronto into an “internet city”
Waterfront Toronto, the agency that Alphabet is partnering with, is also responsible for the redevelopment of the Canary District (which is immediately to the north of the area that Google has just got involved with).

When they launched they put out some press releases about how the Canary District was going to have free neighbourhood wifi and other fancy things. As far as I can tell, that never happened, yet they won an award for it being an "intelligent community".

> Even as the network is being built out, it’s already winning accolades. Last year it helped the City of Toronto earn the title of the world’s No. 1 Intelligent Community of the Year as chosen by the Intelligent Community Forum in New York.

Anyone have details?

http://nationalpost.com/life/homes/full-speed-ahead-torontos...

goatforce5··on Apple does right by users and advertisers are displeased
2012 wasn't that long ago, and it's not clear if any ground breaking products have really captured the imagination of the public in the last 5 years.
goatforce5··on Ex-lottery worker who rigged winnings gets 25 years in prison
Why not both?
goatforce5··on The New Copycats: How Facebook Squashes Competition From Startups
App Annie's service is "VPN Defender", apparently:

https://techcrunch.com/2014/10/31/app-annie-fills-the-void-l...

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