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orless··on OpenTable Fires Employee for Making Fake Reserve Bookings
Snowden.
orless··on OpenTable Fires Employee for Making Fake Reserve Bookings
It can be smelly/unlawful without being unethical. Even quite the opposite.
orless··on OpenSCHUFA – Reverse-engineering the algorithm of the German credit score agency
I cannot answer, I'm not affiliated with the project. Better ask @vavoida.
orless··on OpenSCHUFA – Reverse-engineering the algorithm of the German credit score agency
17 years living in Germany, never heard of Fair, Isaac. Creditreform and Arvato are much likely next targets.
orless··on OpenSCHUFA – Reverse-engineering the algorithm of the German credit score agency
I think this is properly disclosed. And definitely does not reduce the value of the effort.
orless··on OpenSCHUFA – Reverse-engineering the algorithm of the German credit score agency
I am not affiliated with OpenSCHUFA.
orless··on OpenSCHUFA – Reverse-engineering the algorithm of the German credit score agency
When applying for a loan, mobile phone contract, or even trying to rent an apartment in Germany, the Schufa score - Germany's credit rating - is decisive. If you have a few "points" too little, your application is refused. (Computer says "No" to your new smartphone or apartment.) However, the calculation of these credit scores - done by the private Schufa company - is fully intransparent. The formula is a trade secret, and as such not open to the public.

We want to change this intransparency with the project OpenSCHUFA. Open Knowledge Foundation together with AlgorithmWatch want to reconstruct the Schufa algorithm with "reverse engineering".

orless··on Show HN: Airmash – Multiplayer Missile Warfare HTML5 Game
I don't know if this is HN effect or what but I just dont't get to the game. All I see after log in is some terrain and, a few moments later "Destroyed by " someone. No units movement, nothing.
orless··on Singapore to Stop Adding Cars in February 2018
And definitely not with a child.
orless··on Singapore to Stop Adding Cars in February 2018
What suprizes me is that you ask "why is it necessary to have car if you have kids?" and when I answer why you switch to theoritizing about how the world should be.

So either we discuss the reality where the next available pediatrician is in the next city (1h with two busses, imagine this trip with a sick child on your hands).

Or we discuss the fantasy world of "everyone should be able to get everywhere they want to go easily". But then stop asking, what is it about children that you need a car.

orless··on Singapore to Stop Adding Cars in February 2018
I have replied to "What exactly is it about children under the age of 12 that requires a car?", I did not say it is unique to children. But children is a big factor. We did not really needed a car before we had children. Now we need two cars.

"Everyone should be able to get everywhere they want to go easily without owning a car so a personal automobile should be considered a luxury" is a nice thought, no objections.

So how about we'll talk about "owning a car ... should be considered a luxury" first when "everyone should be able to get everywhere they want to go easily" is implemented? Because it's pretty far from my reality.

orless··on Singapore to Stop Adding Cars in February 2018
The goverment could do all those things but the reality is, if you don't live in a city and/or have kids, you need a car, period.
orless··on Singapore to Stop Adding Cars in February 2018
That would be ca. 30 minutes cycling one direction, then another 20 minutes to the train station where I need to catch my train. 50% of the route on country roads where overtaking trucks are great funs. With a lot of rainy days from October till April and a few days of snow in winter months.

So no, I did not consider biking with a second seat. It is completely unrealistic.

orless··on Singapore to Stop Adding Cars in February 2018
Not every city is built for it. And not everybody lives in a city built for it. I live in a village 25km away from Frankfurt, there is no way you could get around here without a car.
orless··on Singapore to Stop Adding Cars in February 2018
My 5yo goes to a kindergarten which is 7km away. I'm sure he'll be delighted to walk that distance. Five days a week.
orless··on Singapore to Stop Adding Cars in February 2018
I'm a father of two boys (8 and 5 yo) and we live in a small village (Ober-Erlenbach) next to a sattelite city (Bad Homburg) close to a big city (Frankfurt). We could not get along without a car (actually we own two cars).

The younger child goes to a kindergarten on the opposite end of Bad Homburg. That's 40 minutes with the bus one direction. No, there was no option of a kindergarten closer to our house. There was no option at all, you just take it where you get place.

The younger child has an illness and we have to bring him to a therapy at least once a week. That's in a hospital in another sattelite city on the opposite end of Frankfurt. Two hours with bus one direction.

The older child has allergy treatment in another hospital in Frankfurt. One and a quater an hour with public transport.

And these are just a few examples.

Without a car my wife would probably have to stay home just to manage children.

To answer your question - children introduce spatial responsibilities we you can't typically efficiently manage without a car.

orless··on A therapist’s guide to staying productive when depressed or heartbroken
Get well soon.
orless··on Why did science fiction stop moving forward?
Anathem by Neal Stephenson. You need to get through the first 100 or so pages and then it clicks in. Blue Bacon Fat by Vladimir Sorokin.
orless··on Why did science fiction stop moving forward?
I actually think Seveneves might have pretty much been inspired by The Martian.
orless··on A Quick Introduction to Graphviz
For everyone interested in algorithms behind Graphviz, here's a paper so start with:

http://www.graphviz.org/Documentation/TSE93.pdf

This work is absolutely amazing. I've tried implementing it a few years ago (as an excervise when preparing for Google interview). So naive. I've found out that I have read each and every sentence extremely carefully to get things right. I got quite far but never finished the implementation. (And I did not get an offer from Google either.)

orless··on Post a boarding pass on Facebook, get your account stolen
If they'll do this for one case like QR codes on boarding passes, then the question and and expectation will arise, why don't they do it for every other possible case?

This is not their job and not their responsibility, period.

orless··on Post a boarding pass on Facebook, get your account stolen
If you booked the flight together then it is very probable that it's seen in the booking system that you travel together. So it was probably a little bit mor that just his "word". (I'm, however, not judging if it was correct action on the counter stuffs behalf.)

A friend of mine was once travelling to Bali and she posted pictures of the boarding pass on Twitter. It was a few weeks after the CCC talk by Karsten Nohl and Nemanja Nikodijevic (https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7964-where_in_the_world_is_carme...), so I warned her that it might be not the best idea to post these images. She was very self-assured and replied that she's almost in the plane so there's not much risk.

I've asked if it would be OK for me to test and she was fine with it. I could log in to her booking without problems (booking code and the name which I knew anyway were on the images). In the system I saw the other person she was travelling with., I could change seats and names of passengers. I think I could even change the date of the flight back (but I'm no longer sure about it).

But this is how I'm pretty sure that if you've booked together, this might habe been visible in the booking system.

orless··on Show HN: Bitcoin a Day – Buy €5 worth of Bitcoin a day with cloud-scheduled task
AWS Lambda appeared to be a nice method for task scheduling. In any case it is very cheap I only get billed for like 400ms per day. Other services like KMS came in quite handy as well - for instance to encrypt Bitstamp credentials in the configuration.

Right, 1.5% fee is ridiculous. Bitstamp charges 0.25%, that is ca. 2 cent for €5.

There are no guarantees that transaction will actually happen. But since the order goes to the last ask price, it is very probable that it will. I run this for a few days already, it always worked out so far. I also think that if the order is not executed for 24 our, Bitstamp will automatically cancel it (not quite sure, however).

orless··on Show HN: Bitcoin a Day – Buy €5 worth of Bitcoin a day with cloud-scheduled task
I was interested in trying out the "Dollar Cost Averaging" investment "strategy for Bitcoin. There were a couple implementations of that (for instance https://github.com/0x13a/bitcoin-trading-dca), but mostly based on CRON jobs.

I did not wanted to run this CRON job locally and I don't have free spare server, so I was looking for a cheap way to schedule this purchase task in the cloud.

My solution is an AWS Lambda which is triggered once a day via CloudWatch CRON rule and buys €X worth of Bitcoin on Bitstamp.

orless··on Alexandra Elbakyan Closed Sci-Hub for Russian Users
It's not just this text (which for a russian reader makes very troubling impression). There are many reports of further inadequate behaviour of Alexandra. This might be a result of online pressure, but in any case situation around Sci-Hub does not make a healthy impression at all.
orless··on Alexandra Elbakyan Closed Sci-Hub for Russian Users
I'm a completely uninvolved party, never even visited sci-hub.cc before.

The text which arguments the block (as read here: https://polit_satira.d3.ru/osnovatelnitsa-saita-sci-hub-alek...), makes an impression that the person who wrote it is mentally really not quite well. For instance, the text start "neutrally" describing situation around Alexandra, referring to her in third person and in the middle switches to first person, direct insults and invective. Signed by herself. The text is not healthy.

orless··on Rod Vagg's statement on the request to be removed from the Node.js CTC
Since it is so serious, I promise I will change the imaginary managery from the thought experiment.
orless··on Rod Vagg's statement on the request to be removed from the Node.js CTC
I'm missing "specific list of which actions violated which clauses in this Code of Conduct", not the Code of Conduct itself.
orless··on Rod Vagg's statement on the request to be removed from the Node.js CTC
For this apology to undermine CoC, the moderated contributor (to whom the apology was made) must have violated CoC with his contribution (or whatever it was). Nobody links to that discussion anymore (probably better so).

Somehow it is quite hard to make an informed opinion in this case.

orless··on Rod Vagg's statement on the request to be removed from the Node.js CTC
As a thought experiment imagine your manager asks you about the new node.js fork and whether you should switch to it. What would you say?
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