stevesimmons

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by stevesimmons 8y ago
Visa actually does that from time to time, though not to the degree you suggest :). Here is one example from Australia, where 15 years ago I worked on credit card pricing and product design... When Platinum cards were introduced to Australi
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by stevesimmons 8y ago
> Is plastic waste that much of a problem in first world countries? Yes is the answer... A lot of the plastic waste from first world countries gets shipped to Asia (very cheap; the container ships are much emptier going back...). China r
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by stevesimmons 8y ago
> Most Buddhists AFAIK do not supplement their Buddhism with terrorism. FYI, Buddhism is associated with significant political and ethnic violence in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, etc. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki&#x2F
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by stevesimmons 8y ago
If people don't give precise feedback why they are leaving, nothing will change. Start by asking the staff to turn down the music. Then ask the manager. When it is still too loud, tell the manager why on the way out. And then leave neg
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by stevesimmons 8y ago
Truth, fair play, acknowledging real constraints, getting the right result for the right reasons... Those aspects matter to sensible people. Calling it "sour grapes" is a lazy mischaracterization. I voted Remain. I would have relu
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by stevesimmons 8y ago
The Shipping Forecast and other BBC radio shows can be listened to on BBC Radio 4 using the BBC IPlayer Radio app, for Android and iPhone. The BBC's radio shows are not geoblocked (at least not the news programmes I listen to when trav
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by stevesimmons 8y ago
FYI, BBC Radio 4 is available on the BBC IPlayer Radio app. That might be more convenient than longwave. The BBC doesn't geoblock its radio shows, unlike the TV programmes, which can only be viewed from a UK IP address.
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by stevesimmons 8y ago
The parent comment was not about the LATimes. Rather that HN would better serve its global audience by linking to stories from other sources that all HN readers can access.
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by stevesimmons 8y ago
My company has a 50m LOC Python codebase in a monorepo. It works really well, given the rate of change of thousands of developers globally. That is only possible because of the significant investment in devtools, testing and the deployment
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by stevesimmons 8y ago
Ben Recht also gave a 2 hour tutorial on "Optimization Perspectives on Learning to Control" at ICML on 10 July. It was a great talk, loosely based on his blog posts, and very popular, with every seat filled. His slides, references
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by stevesimmons 8y ago
I bought the new Dell XPS15 with 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, and Nvidia GPU the week it was released, and straightaway installed Ubuntu 18.04. It is powerful enough to last me three years and the price was good. I am mostly happy with it - superfast
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by stevesimmons 8y ago
I agree. I came to Python in 2000, after Perl (1996-1998), PHP (1999), Matlab (1992-1996), C++ (1990), Fortran (1989), C (1988), Pascal (1988), Assembly (1984-86) and Basic (1981-83). After all those, I found Python, as the saying goes, rea
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by stevesimmons 8y ago
There's productivity at the level of an individual developer, and productivity at the level of an enterprise. Just because an individual or a small team can be highly productive in say, Haskell, doesn't mean it makes sense for the
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by stevesimmons 8y ago
This discussion from 39 days ago has some good links plus whether there is a Linux equivalent: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17277067
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by stevesimmons 8y ago
> The only thing holding me back from experimenting with org-mode is its tight coupling with emacs. As a non-emacs user, my successful route to orgmode was with Spacemacs and evil for Vim keybindings. After several false starts, what wor
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by stevesimmons 8y ago
I bought a Sonos One for my partner and regret it. One of our use cases is playing audio from videos of dance classes. But it can't do this, because the WiFi streaming protocols are set up for linear streaming, using long buffers. That
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by stevesimmons 8y ago
> If you want to attack CO2 costs, the primary costs are in the last mile. If you want to attack CO2 costs, 90% of lamb's CO2 production occurs on the farm. Only 10% is from processing, distribution, retail, cooking, and waste dispo
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by stevesimmons 8y ago
"specie" is money in the form of coins. Nothing badass about it!
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by stevesimmons 8y ago
The Northwinds sample database predates SQL Server. I remember using it with Microsoft Access 1.0 back in 1993...
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by stevesimmons 8y ago
(ex-Melbournian living in London/Amsterdam with a sister who owned cafes in Melbourne ...) In Melbourne there are two kinds of cafes (to overgeneralize): - Those in areas with nightlife are open at least 07:00-22:30 (e.g. The Fitz, Mar
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by stevesimmons 8y ago
An additional factor is employment laws give strong protection to full time workers. As the economy recovered after the 2008 financial crisis, employers found it cheaper and less risky to use more flexworkers. Flexworkers come in two main c
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by stevesimmons 8y ago
A sensible response is for national regulators to cap credit card interchange rate. Banks are free to offer more generous rewards, just they can't fund it via the retailer. The EU's cap is 0.3%, Australia's was 0.55%. By comp
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by stevesimmons 8y ago
Here are some "anecdata" from my 6 years working in the Netherlands: * 4 day weeks are very common: I worked for a Dutch Bank for 3 years. Virtually all the Dutch "full time" staff worked 4 day weeks. The deal was work 1
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by stevesimmons 8y ago
... follow a public-health driven harm minimization strategy, such as the Netherlands. To give one example, Amsterdam used to have a huge heroin addiction problem, with associated crime and high death rates amongst addicts. It is now treate
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by stevesimmons 8y ago
In the Netherlands this is solved by periodically tagging bikes locked up outside stations. Any bikes still with tags a week or two later are presumed abandoned and removed.
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by stevesimmons 8y ago
Having lived in both Melbourne and Amsterdam, the two crucial differences are in the Netherlands: 1) almost all Dutch drivers are also cyclists. They know how bikes behave, how it feels to be a cyclist around cars, and are therefore far mor
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by stevesimmons 8y ago
Helmets are for those who take livability seriously! I grew up in Melbourne. I've worn bike helmets since I was a kid. They have been compulsory since 1990. It's not a big deal. Everyone knows it is just common sense, just like we
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by stevesimmons 8y ago
I grew up in Australia calling them capsicum. Now I live in the UK and the Netherlands, it is pepper/paprika respectively. Some other differences in Australian and UK usage are zucchini vs courgette and eggplant vs aubergine. Not much
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by stevesimmons 8y ago
Once you cook regularly, "figuring out what to cook and then searching for ingredients at various sections of the store" takes next to no time. Most of what you buy are the regular weekly standards. Just spent two minutes writing
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by stevesimmons 8y ago
... because the people doing the emitting are different from the people doing the capturing?

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