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xlevus

97 karma · joined December 18, 2010

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xlevus··on NZ court rules Megaupload warrant legal, dealing blow to Dotcom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand%27s_nuclear-free_z...

Yep, it's the law. Much to the chagrin of the US.

Their Military has no Nuclear weapons, and the population is pretty strongly opposed to anything nuclear, instead favouring 'green' technology.

I'd go as far to say, as it's now so entrenched in NZ's identity, if any government that tried to repeal it, it would be an act of political suicide.

xlevus··on Amazon, the time has come to give you a key
While not possible for everybody, a dropbox is what you want:

http://www.amazon.com/Architectural-Mailboxes-6900RZ-Elephan...

Effectively, your own deposit-only lockbox that any mail service can use.

xlevus··on How Do You Teach Kids the Value of Money? (2006)
I'm curious? Why force them to give their money away?

It sounds counter-intuitive to me. Teach them the value of money, but then completely negate any value by forcing them to give it away?

xlevus··on Pngquant – Lossy PNG compressor
Some examples would be nice.
xlevus··on Amazon to Begin Sunday Deliveries, With Post Office's Help
Meanwhile, in the UK, Amazon appear to have opted to not use existing services like the Post Office (who are capable enough to deliver packages) and gone with their own "Amazon Logistics" (who don't seem to be able to deliver a package).
xlevus··on Europe drafts law to ban mobile roaming charges
Interestingly, Hutchinson/Three has started to remove global roaming fees from their own network.

http://www.three.co.uk/Discover/Phones/Feel_At_Home?id=1229

xlevus··on New Zealand bans some software patents
Flipside: GCSB bill.
xlevus··on Bot wars - The arms race of restaurant reservations in SF
Do restaurant's scale?

Find a bigger venue. Open another store.

Maybe they should just deploy to Heroku or Appengine and have them scale to meet their table needs.

xlevus··on Google Maps for Android lose offline Maps - seriously?
I suspect this might be down to the 'dynamically generated' maps feature in the current maps.google.com preview.

Either way, unless Google has somehow managed to bypass extortionate data roaming charges, spotty local coverage, and absurd latency It's pretty much made maps useless for me.

At least before, when my phone has decided to not connect to the network, or latency has spiked up to 30s I could still look at the map and get places.

xlevus··on Who Makes Below Minimum Wage in the Mechanical Turk Sweatshop?
Mturk can be used as a source for automation training.

If you start writing bots to do the tasks, you're now the mostly-blind leading the blind.

xlevus··on How the NSA taps fiber at the bottom of the oceans
I'd wager it's even simpler than that.

At some point the signal must

a) be converted from electrical to optical

b) be boosted down the wire

c) be converted from optical to electrical

Easiest solution? Tap in at A, B or C.

Who's going to notice that your repeater at the bottom of the ocean actually has a NSA listener plugged into its debug socket?

xlevus··on Estimated Cost to Store All US Phone Calls Made in a Year
I doubt it's changed much.

Where would the traffic go?

It's hard enough replacing products & services from the 'big companies' (google, facebook apple, etc) with smaller ones operating inside the US. Let alone replacing them with services outside the US.

Where does the traffic come from?

Do the majority of users really care that they're being spied on. "If you have nothing to hide..." seems to be a reasonably common way of thinking.

xlevus··on The secret button at pedestrian crossings
Depends where you are, and how old the crossing is.

(from memory)

The older type has a small needle on the bottom that vibrates/jabs you.

But the newer crossing have the larger larger buttons. Which have an electrical(?) panel on the direction arrow. like: http://www.sunlive.co.nz/assets/images/site/110520-crossing-...

xlevus··on Kim Dotcom to Google, Twitter, Facebook: I Own Security Patent, Work With Me
It's Kim DotCom. He's both figuratively and literally larger than life.
xlevus··on Google Compute Engine available for everyone, App Engine adds PHP
Have you tried mb_string?
xlevus··on Manchester City Council
What's with the last image in the carousel? It seems to take strong cues from soviet propaganda.

The red flag, workers holding their tools, ready to fight. Did Manchester become the Soviet Republic of Manchester?

http://img0083.popscreencdn.com/101036667_amazoncom-chinese-...

xlevus··on Duplicate your House Keys with your Phone
Does this really solve a problem? The only time I've needed to get keys cut was when I've either lost a key or moved house and needed a copy immediately.

Why would I risk my security and have to wait for the mailman? I can get a key cut at one of 10 shops near my house, door to door in 15 minutes.

And in the case of a lost key, I'd replace the barrel of the lock too.

xlevus··on Dumped by Google
The problem with self-hosting is the setup and maintenance, and risks that goes with it.

I'm quite happy paying for a service because when it breaks, I can reasonably expect the problem to resolve itself.

If I host my own mail, when it breaks I'm up shits creek until I fix it. Which depending on my schedule, could take a week.

xlevus··on Preview of bootstrap 3
I don't know if I goofed up, or chrome went mental, or something else. But I tried to use their bootstrap theme(?) and Chrome started churning through CPU and memory, stopped rendering things, and generally stopped working.

Removed the flatui bootstrap theme, and everything went back to normal.

xlevus··on Preview of bootstrap 3
I do hope so. I think it looks a lot tidier.
xlevus··on How chronic pain has made me happier
For me, The pain isn't necessarily painful. It's closer to a dull ache that's always there.

There are times where it gets worse, and it's like somebody's kicked you, and times when its really bad like when somebody's stabbed you.

But generally, I feel the pain, and then any extra pain on top. And it's not like an actual injury where it hurts more when you move, its just there, like background noise of your nervous system.

xlevus··on The Ultimate Guide to Dropshipping
I'm not entirely sure if it's still classified as dropshipping.

But I've been told that some postal services (e.g. NZ Post) are able to provide dropshipping like logistics for you.

e.g. You manufacture your product in China. The postal service will then manage logistics for you from factory to your customers.

xlevus··on Google Reader shutting down
It's a move that makes sense sure.

But it irks me that a service I've been using for however long just one day decides to cut my quota by 80%.

It doesn't exactly spur me to start paying.

xlevus··on Google Reader shutting down
When did you lower the number of enabled feeds to 12?
xlevus··on Show HN: QR Codify, The Most Useful Snippet I've Ever Written
What would make this perfect, is a "QR Keyboard" that reads from the QR code and dumps it into any other input field.
xlevus··on Show HN: QR Codify, The Most Useful Snippet I've Ever Written
The best place I've seen QR codes is on the tube.

Because hey, I'mma scan this QR code, and then remember about it when I'm topside.

xlevus··on SkiFree in the Browser
If you crash when the yeti is chasing you, the yeti disappears.
xlevus··on Squash
The only thing that instantly tells me what squash actually is is in the <title> tag. Which chrome truncates to ~30 characters.

Is it a pest control system that doesn't send me emails?

xlevus··on Low-cost Solution to Clearing Afghan Landmines
iirc, The British did this in India but with snakes.

It wasn't long until the locals just farmed snakes to sell to the British.

Plus, retrieving landmines would be a pointlessly dangerous task, when all you really need to do is blow them up when nobody is around.

xlevus··on Kim Dotcom loses new domain in preemptive strike by Gabon government
The Department of FCFL (Future Crimes, Future Laws) has determined that this comment will breach future legislation.

Please report to your closest incarceration facility immediately.

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