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bmunro

576 karma · joined November 3, 2008

benjamin.munro@gmail.com
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bmunro··on The Facebook Comment That Ruined a Life
He's not in prison, he's in jail, and there's a big difference.

What?! Jail and prison are synonyms. There is no real difference.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/prison - A building to which people are legally committed as a punishment for a crime or while awaiting trial.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/jail - A place for the confinement of people accused or convicted of a crime.

Both refer to being detained both before and after conviction.

bmunro··on Why does Apple continue killing bitcoin apps?
I parsed it as follows:

Like it or not, Bitcoin - like Tor - (and this will continue to increase over time) is associated closely by the public with drugs, money laundering, gun running and so forth.

bmunro··on An immutable operating system
There's a long-winded description in the first blog post:

http://www.urbit.org/2013/09/24/urbit-intro.html

bmunro··on My Friends and I Bought an Island
Widowmaker was also the name used for the hammer drills used in the Australian goldfields. The dust from the drilled rock got into the miners lungs and killed them prematurely.
bmunro··on Malibu homeowners foiled by $30K Kickstarter campaign
The homes of the people living (or the rock wall) there are probably the cause of the lack of beach.

Beaches are dynamic things, they get eroded during storms and are built up at other times. They can recede inland hundreds of metres over the years. Conversely, large amounts of sand can be deposited, extending the land well out into what used to be water.

Humans putting houses, sea walls, groynes, bridges and other structures along the coast conflicts with the natural movements of the coast. In this case, if the houses were located further back from the beach, there would still be a beach there.

bmunro··on New iOS designs
The keyboard looks like the stock Android keyboard, but with black keys instead of the grey that Android has.
bmunro··on Here is today
If the period of time that humans have been around was drawn to scale, it wouldn't really be visible.

If we assume that the width of the bar for the life of the earth is 1500 pixels (the width changes depending on the window size), then the period we have been around will be around 0.06 pixels wide (1500/23000 = 0.065). Much closer to zero pixels than one pixel.

bmunro··on Comet to Make Close Flyby of Mars in October 2014
The estimated closest distance is 110,000 km. As a comparison, that's about a third of the distance from the earth to the moon. That's pretty close.
bmunro··on Using SimCity to diagnose my home town's traffic problem
I usually play Sim City by finding the unlimited money cheat and getting a large amount of money before I start. I can then build whatever I want. I enjoy the city design part of the game, not the economic part.

I doubt that this way of playing will be possible in the new Sim City.

bmunro··on The Atlantic posts sponsored Scientology story, moderates comments
They have removed the article:

"We have temporarily suspended this advertising campaign pending a review of our policies that govern sponsor content and subsequent comment threads."

bmunro··on Only An Idiot Would Rob a Bank: How Inflation Deflated the Stick-Up
It is probably referring to the fact that income for the bottom 50% of US earners has remained largely stagnant since the 1970s (after accounting for inflation)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/07/31/w...

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2011/09/po...

bmunro··on Android Overtakes Apple in Australia
The US$199 would be with a two year contract with a mobile carrier.

The A$799 is without a contract.

bmunro··on Poll: Do you select text while reading?
I repeatedly click and drag, click and drag. I have no idea why I do it.
bmunro··on Lenticular.js - tilt-controlled images
I think of lens-shaped objects, particularly lenticular clouds.

Until now I did not know what the name of those moving images were.

(I'm not the original poster)

bmunro··on Lenticular.js - tilt-controlled images
This works fine on my Galaxy Nexus. I'm using Chrome.

The only suggestion that I have is to do some smoothing of the values you get from the accelerometer. The movement can be a bit jerky.

bmunro··on Samsung Plugs Remote Wipe Flaw, Urges Galaxy SIII Owners To Update
My Galaxy Nexus fails the test at http://dylanreeve.com/phone.php

Apparently the bug is fixed in 4.1 (I'm still on 4.0.4). I installed a temporary fix - TelStop. It just handles telephone Intents so that you get a popup asking you to choose an application.

bmunro··on Why American Phone, Cable and Internet Bills are so High
It makes sense to compare US prices with western/northern Europe, as they are similarly rich/developed.

But to compare prices in the USA with those in eastern Europe doesn't seem right. In nominal terms, the GDP per capita of the USA is 6 times that of Romania, and 4 times by purchasing power parity.

bmunro··on iPhone 5 Teardown
Not quite, they went to Australia.
bmunro··on Samsung Galaxy S4 due in February
5 inches seems to be pushing it a bit. I think that the S3 is already at the upper limit for a phone. The 5.3 inches of the galaxy note is way too big for an ordinary phone in my opinion. My 4.65" Galaxy Nexus is a nice size, but I don't want it any bigger.

Perhaps they can reduce the size of the bezel to counteract the greater distance you will need to reach.

bmunro··on Android can be beautiful
There is a size selector on the left. S M L XL

The XL is the actual size (pixel-wise) that you would see on a phone such as the Galaxy Nexus.

bmunro··on How Long Will You Need to Save to Buy a Home In Your City?
But if you compare figures for both cities from the same site: http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?coun...

You'll see that prices for just about everything are higher in Sydney. Except apples, oranges and tennis court hire.

Salaries are slightly higher in Sydney (according to that site), but not enough to make up for the increase in costs.

bmunro··on How RESTful is Your API?
Off topic, but the right side of the paragraph is cut off on Android.
bmunro··on Curiosity rover: Martian solar day 2
The article you linked to describes the angle of plane of the orbit - the circle it makes around the sun. These vary by only a small amount.

The axial tilt is different. It is basically how far the axis through the poles of a planet is tilted compared to the plane of its orbit. This is what you were thinking of initially - it can very a lot.

bmunro··on Facebook has more than 83 million 'fake' users
I have a 'fake' account.

It's used purely for logging into Spotify, as there is no other way to get a Spotify account.

bmunro··on Google Fiber
Well, governments fund roads, schools, etc, and they don't expect to make financial returns on those.

However, the national broadband network is funded through government loans, but expects to make a profit on the returns from it.

So there is quite a difference in terms of the Government budget. The former are a cost to the budget, with ongoing expense and no expectation of any monetary returns. The latter is forecast to take nothing out of the government budget.

bmunro··on Is Australia the next upcoming tech startup hotspot to watch?
Original page on Quora: http://www.quora.com/Is-Australia-becoming-a-hot-place-to-do...
bmunro··on Microsoft.com New Design Preview
It loads in half a second here in Sydney
bmunro··on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean is now available
The Galaxy S2 is a phone. I think that you are thinking of the Galaxy Tab 2, a tablet.
bmunro··on Orbitz shows costlier hotel options to Mac users
Paste the article title ("On Orbitz, Mac Users Steered to Pricier Hotels") into Google.

The Wall Street Journal article should be the first result. Click on it.

You should be able to see the whole article. The WSJ appear to give you the full text when the referrer is google.

bmunro··on List of Unexplained Sounds
Something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seiche ?
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