flexie

45 ms·

361.
by flexie 9y ago
The violence part is a disgrace and likely extremely counterproductive. But there is not much democracy in the catalan referendum. It's unconstitutional, and there is little guarantee it's fair to the castellano half of the catala
362.
by flexie 9y ago
Yes, that's one. A good one :-)
363.
by flexie 9y ago
HTML was based on the ideas of a British national, Tim Berners-Lee. He spoke English. So did Linus Thorvalds, and the founders of Skype and Transferwise. ARM and Nokia are/were not mainly software companies, but producers of chips and
364.
by flexie 9y ago
There are many great Russian and Chinese developers but little Russian or Chinese software has spread outside those countries. Except viruses, maybe
365.
by flexie 9y ago
I can only think of Coral. But then again Prolog is French :-)
366.
by flexie 9y ago
Still doesn't explain why I can't name a hugely popular programming language, library or framework created by a French programmer but several by Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, and Dutch, all small countries but where English is a very
367.
by flexie 9y ago
Other Scandinavian countries are also doing quite well, way beyond what their size would suggest. But also well beyond other countries with developed welfare systems, such as France. I think these discussions always miss one key factor: Lan
368.
by flexie 9y ago
It most certainly isn't, not in Spain, nor in the US or most other democracies. Separation of powers: - Legislative (parliament, congress, senate, house of ..., many names - in Spain I think they call it Cortes Generales and it consist
369.
by flexie 9y ago
Great poem. And what I like about HN is that the first dozens of comments on the poem are about technicalities like how it is displayed in the browser, the mathmatics of it etc., not its interpretation :-)
370.
by flexie 9y ago
How would a week's mandatory training be prohibitive? My profession (as a lawyer) required 5 years of mandatory university education and 3 years of practical training and supplementary courses and exams. Other professions require even
371.
by flexie 9y ago
> Google still provides immense value. Absolutely. But so does Baidu. And while doing so, Baidu provides jobs and tax revenue in China with little national security risk for China. And at the same time Baidu creates thousands of extremel
372.
by flexie 9y ago
I think censorship is only part of the reason. Protectionism and national security probably plays a role aswell. Look at the list of websites they block: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Websites_blocked_in_mainland...
373.
by flexie 9y ago
Nobody is doing Oppression Olympics. There is zero oppression of smokers, as in absolutely none.
374.
by flexie 9y ago
Smokers have not experienced persecution. Please use this word more carefully or we dilute its meaning. The shaming of smokers has little in common with what Jews, homosexuals etc have had to endure. Smoking has not been made illegal, smoke
375.
by flexie 9y ago
I am not sure what was stolen exactly. If no source code was stolen, no users, no trademark, no trade secret. Only some ideas that were copied. Seems like Zuckerberg was inspired by this guy's site but grew facebook more shrewdly and w
376.
by flexie 9y ago
In Europe, I would say the opposite is happening. AirBnB is being pushed out of or held down in many cities by local authorities. In the last two years I have stayed 50 nights or so in rooms booked through Bookings.com or Hotels.com and onl
377.
by flexie 9y ago
Both, and when I bill by the hour I only bill the hours I work. Billing for my breaks would quickly lead to a loss of clients when they saw how much time I spent (and if discovered, I could be disbarred). But if I had made sure to explain t
378.
by flexie 9y ago
I don't have to justify that to anyone, except maybe my family. I work for myself.
379.
by flexie 9y ago
I think I read a couple of hours of news etc. at work. Here I am on HN. It's very individual, but I would not be surprised if it's true for most office workers that they work efficiently for 3-4 hours a day. And for a lot of peopl
380.
by flexie 9y ago
I agree that 1.1B isn't that much given the potential size of the market (and given the size of Google's profits, it's a surprisingly small bet they've made). But how do you arrive at the conclusion that Google is way ah
381.
by flexie 9y ago
Both true, Amazon was one of the first web stores, Netflix was one of the first movie portals. And similarly, the ipod and iphones weren't the first music players or smart phones but the first ones that worked really well. Remember how
382.
by flexie 9y ago
- Facebook wasn't the first social network. People were connected, shared pictures, and had friends before. - Amazon wasn't the first online store. - AirBnB wasn't the first short term rental website - Netflix wasn't the
383.
by flexie 9y ago
That is just tax defeatism :-) The rich do pay some tax so it's not impossible to get them to pay and rich people in different countries pay different percentages of their overall wealth. So it's by no means impossible to make the
384.
by flexie 9y ago
I don't suggest that. I think it would be silly not to cover those items through taxes. My post is an answer to the guy above who suggests that healthcare shouldn't be paid by taxes because that's not voluntary. Then I point
385.
by flexie 9y ago
Thank you. It beats me that Americans when looking for alternatives to their current system(s) or the lack of systems in third world countries overlook the European models where "socialized medicine" in various forms works well an
386.
by flexie 9y ago
Money is taken from citizens against their consent to pay for - military - roads - primary education - secondary education - criminal justice system - research Each and every one of those could in theory run entirely on a voluntary basis an
387.
by flexie 9y ago
And that is why the burden of proof will soon be on the company, not the user, cf the data protection regulation
388.
by flexie 9y ago
As long as Google does business in Europe, Google's license is subject to law: http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/files/factsheets... While it's not a complete deletion, it's a step in
389.
by flexie 9y ago
One ad driven website making a business out of trying to get you off another. Wonder what the internet would be like if there was an easier way to make money than ads.
390.
by flexie 9y ago
These are tools used by thousands of devs, but not hundreds of millions of users.

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