mbenjaminsmith

20 ms·

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by mbenjaminsmith 13y ago
I've lived and built two companies in Thailand over the last 14 years. Before your pop your Macbook Air in a backpack, read my points. 1. Bangkok is not cheap. If you want to have a life that resembles anything you're used to comi
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by mbenjaminsmith 13y ago
Around 300 baht for a meal (presumably for two or more people) is hardly out of reach for anybody but the poorest in Bangkok. I don't think anyone would call it a luxury food either. If you're (poor and) going to splurge on someth
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by mbenjaminsmith 13y ago
Sorry if this is OT but I love Conan's video game reviews. Best of luck on your candidate search.
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by mbenjaminsmith 13y ago
I'm not sure I agree with Cringely here either, but I think you're missing some important points: 1. iPhones do support multi-tasking, but the interface for it is poor. This could remedied, especially if iPhone would detect a larg
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by mbenjaminsmith 13y ago
When I was a kid my brother (much older, getting his ME undergrad) built me a 1/5 or 1/6 scale biplane out of plywood and other lumber. It had working control surfaces and the wooden propeller (which he had "carved" by h
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Ask HN: Who Needs a Remote Worker/Freelancer?
4 points by mbenjaminsmith 13y ago|1 comments
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by mbenjaminsmith 13y ago
Hope no one minds me sharing this here: http://lattejed.com/first-five-and-a-half-minutes-on-a-serve... I'm not surprised most of the comments are positive. Ansible is a great tool. I recently started using it and woul
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by mbenjaminsmith 13y ago
> Software in East Asia would export better if it grew in a more meritocratic environment. That sounds about as antiquated as "Asians can't innovate, they just copy". I actually heard that line out of an American kid who h
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by mbenjaminsmith 13y ago
When you think about it it's actually pretty elegant -- if your purpose is to write something that appears to work but will do the worst possible thing when crawled.
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by mbenjaminsmith 13y ago
SEEKING WORK - Remote Programmer: desktop, mobile and full stack web development. - Web: JavaScript, CoffeeScript, Python, Django, Node.js, Meteor.js, MongoDB - Desktop & mobile: Objective-C - Other: Lua, C#, C++, Haskell, Ansible, nume
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by mbenjaminsmith 13y ago
> the tendency for girls there to treat you as an ATM card with no pin number just wore me down. Here's some advice: Choose your girlfriends more wisely. I've lived in Thailand for 14 years. I don't have the issues you men
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by mbenjaminsmith 13y ago
Question: How can algorithms with an adjustable work factor be better or worse than each other? Answer: They can't be. They each provide an arbitrary amount of work (or entropy if you want to look at it that way) to a non-ideal key (e.
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by mbenjaminsmith 13y ago
That's supposedly how the internet grew as rapidly as it did, yes. I don't buy it for sexy robots though. In order for a robot to be sexier than a blow-up doll they would likely need a level of sophistication that would make them
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by mbenjaminsmith 13y ago
One of my college roommates grew up close to Salinger. Many years ago (he told me the story in the mid-90s) he had heard from a local firefighter that after a fire at Salinger's house, it had become apparent that there was a large safe
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by mbenjaminsmith 13y ago
> Basically they told Snowden they'd stall for him (docs are missing page 4 - please resubmit) but he'd better hit the road fast. Do you mind citing your source(s)?
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by mbenjaminsmith 13y ago
Wikipedia: "Ellsberg also shared the documents with New York Times correspondent Neil Sheehan under a pledge of confidentiality. Sheehan broke his promise to Ellsberg, and built a scoop around what he'd received both directly from
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by mbenjaminsmith 13y ago
> For the past 10 days we have been hearing non-stop reports of the infamous extradition process that will drag on for 10-15 years in HK Have we? I didn't read those. I also didn't expect HK to grant asylum and I don't thi
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by mbenjaminsmith 13y ago
Agreed.
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by mbenjaminsmith 13y ago
My opinion of the HK SAR, which has always been quite high, just went up a couple of notches. I hope Snowden finds asylum and can live a reasonably comfortable life. He's a patriot. I'm a US citizen and I'm pro-US but this bu
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by mbenjaminsmith 13y ago
Take a look at the paper I referenced above. Their tests show the ability to disable braking while manual override isn't possible. While that doesn't address this specific car, it shows that it's possible on at least one type
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by mbenjaminsmith 13y ago
Brakes in most modern cars are under computer control. They are in mine. I know that because I can disable that control if I want to drive more aggressively. Before you say something's impossible, you might want to do some research. h
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by mbenjaminsmith 13y ago
Thank you. Maybe a mod can swap the link. I don't think it matters under the circumstances though, this story is going to go under a microscope.
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by mbenjaminsmith 13y ago
Here's the same story via the LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-hastings-crash-e... Also, the local station KTLA broke the story.
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by mbenjaminsmith 13y ago
That doesn't account for the recycling of the aluminum which by itself is quite efficient. I just pulled up a number of around $1/kg for scrap aluminum. That's 55% of your cost. I'm sure that's wildly optimistic but
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by mbenjaminsmith 13y ago
> and has low power density Wikipedia: "They have one of the highest energy densities of all batteries ... an electric vehicle with aluminium batteries has the potential for up to eight times the range of a lithium-ion battery with
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by mbenjaminsmith 13y ago
> Tesla's filed eight patents for metal-air batteries. > Can't imagine a 30k Tesla with this technology. Sounds like Musk can imagine it. Don't know about anybody else but I'll side with Musk vs anonymous HN post
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by mbenjaminsmith 13y ago
If we're going to be swapping things at charging stations, why not use a technology like this: http://www.phinergy.com/ Takes a refill of plain water every ~200 miles and a swapping of aluminum at larger intervals. Alu
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by mbenjaminsmith 13y ago
Thanks for joining the discussion. Qualified it is still bad advice. The last thing the software industry needs is a hazing period for unscrupulous companies to take advantage of. If you're really lacking in any demonstrable experience then
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by mbenjaminsmith 13y ago
I would go one step further and say that the mechanism you describe would also keep the train off the floor (and would possibly be handled by the train, not the tunnel). It seems to me that using electromagnets for propulsion only and not f
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by mbenjaminsmith 13y ago
Looks like it's preventing most exceptions of that type from being logged. That would make sense if it's the type of exception likely to repeat itself constantly (until addressed). Using a random number as a gate is easier than measuring/th

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