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philf

832 karma · joined March 29, 2008

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philf··on EU to recommend that member states abolish daylight saving time
Depending on where in the EU you are, it's already off.
philf··on Continuing frequency deviation in the Continental European Power System
Here's an IC used in some alarm clocks that uses the power grid's frequency, along with a list of products that use it: https://www.radiomuseum.org/tubes/tube_lm8560.html
philf··on What if AI is a failed dream?
We do revive the (recently) dead using electricity.
philf··on Ghost: $411k Annual Revenue with a team of 6
I am European. I'm not doubting the number the op stated regarding Berlin, I was just curious where other people look up salary information.
philf··on Ghost: $411k Annual Revenue with a team of 6
Out of curiosity, what's your source for that?
philf··on Minimalist Living: When a Lot Less Is More
I get your point but I think a lot of people overestimate the amount of special gear they need to pursue certain activities. Sure, if you're going to be in the wilderness for days, hiking boots and outdoor clothing are a good idea. A few hours walking through the forest, you're fine wearing whatever.
philf··on Ask HN: Are you updating to OS X Yosemite this weekend?
Maybe it's this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8469478
philf··on Homebrew Cray-1A
previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4561787
philf··on Redecentralize: Quietly, some geeks are decentralizing the net again
I don't know a Github competitor, but Fossil is a DVCS that also stores issue and a wiki in the repository.
philf··on Hangouts Feature Emerges as a Bright Spot for Google+
Unfortunately I installed Hangout on my phone this morning and basically destroyed most of the utility GTalk had. None of my Google Talk contacts can send messages to my mobile, I can't see them in my contact list (not even people with Google accounts that don't use G+) and for the remaining ones with G+ accounts there's no presence information I can recognize.
philf··on The Rich See a Different Internet Than the Poor -- Scientific American
Exactly, in fact I haven't seen any ads since I installed AdBlock 6 years ago.
philf··on Why We Still Believe in Working Remotely
I have a daily commute time of 1h each direction but I travel by train. I've been doing this for 2 years now and intent to keep it this way because I find it a lot easier to focus on reading than when I am at home. When I don't feel like reading I listen to podcasts or reflect my work.
philf··on Notch trying jsFiddle
For me, the difference is only visible using Firefox. Chromium even renders the inefficient original version smoothly.
philf··on This white powder will kill me one day
First I thought that, too, but he mentions explicitly that tea alone doesn't work for him. So I tend to agree with what someone else on this thread said, that he might need to simply up his intake of nutrients in his diet. Especially protein and fat which produce more stable energy levels.
philf··on Doctorow & Stross's "The Rapture of the Nerds" creative commons edition released
It's available for the Kindle or as a hardcover in the German Amazon store if that helps.
philf··on June 30th 2012 will be 1 second longer: 23:59:60
What's the point of this adjustment? Currently there is an offset of -34 seconds between TAI and UTC and aftwards it will be -35. Seems pretty random to me...
philf··on The trouble with Checked Exceptions (C# architect)
You can work with it or route around it when it doesn't make sense for you or the particular context i.e. it gives you choice. Additionally, I regard checked exceptions as automatic documentation.
philf··on The trouble with Checked Exceptions (C# architect)
> You end up having to declare 40 exceptions that you might throw. And once you aggregate that with another subsystem you've got 80 exceptions in your throws clause. It just balloons out of control.

What he completely ignores is the possibility to wrap exceptions to either aggregate them or to convert them into unchecked exceptions.

philf··on The Samsung Galaxy S III: The First Smartphone Designed Entirely By Lawyers
Calling them imbecile is a bit drastic but I've also seen ordinary people call any kind of smartphone an iPhone because they have no clue about this stuff. Same for MP3 players, which they call iPods. May be like calling any kind of vacuum cleaner a hoover.
philf··on Damn Cool Algorithms: Quadtrees and Hilbert Curves
The Wikipedia description of Geohashes is a bit odd in that its base32 decoding uses the alphabet with some letters (a, i...) left out instead of simply using [0-9a-v]. Anyone know why that would make sense?
philf··on Good Creative People are Never Bored
There's another interesting article in the same spirit: http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2006/11/how_to_be_... HN discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3279190
philf··on How to nap
I packaged this stuff into a small shell script: https://gist.github.com/1594482
philf··on Apple’s Latest Patent Victory: In-Call Multitasking
You can't oppose a patent application unless you work in the patent office.
philf··on Eclipse launches new language to cut down Java boilerplate - Extend
Talking about cargo cult, they added "def" to function definitions making it more verbose actually.
philf··on Nginx, Inc. announces its Series A funding
I think the company was founded in July. So it's a relatively recent development.
philf··on What's new in Firefox 7
I guess his point was that 3.6 was only released 1.5 years ago.
philf··on Kicksend (YC S11) Launches To Make Sharing Big Files A Breeze
If I drag&drop a directory into the browser window, the file size is NaN and clicking on Send will seemingly start the process but never finishes.
philf··on Google's Biggest Mistake
The patent lawsuit isn't about the language but about the runtime.
philf··on 50% of iPhones Brought to Genius Bar Have Never Been Synced
Another reason why people might not sync their photos might be that there is no iPhone with more than 32GB of storage.
philf··on Google search volume by language (WebGL)
I would've at least expected more traffic from South Africa.
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