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deadmansshoes

265 karma · joined May 13, 2010

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deadmansshoes··on On leaving Mapbox after 12 years
Shapely was around long before Mapbox, and Rasterio too. Both are based on stalwarts of the open source geospatial world - GEOS and GDAL.

Vector tiles, Mapbox GL, and Mapbox styling, and numerous other libraries however did grow out of Mapbox - the amount of geospatial developer talent they hoovered up must have made it pretty amazing to work at for a time.

deadmansshoes··on Why American Eggs Would Be Illegal In A British Supermarket, And Vice Versa
The bacteria is named after Dr. Salmon, not related to the fish.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmonella#History

deadmansshoes··on Fizzbuzz, Interviews, And Overthinking
It should be possible in a single line of Python..

  pip install fizzbuzz
And then:

  import fizzbuzz
  print fizzbuzz.fizzbuzz()
Or for the second solution:

  print fizzbuzz.fizzbuzzbazz()
deadmansshoes··on Physical assault by McDonald's for wearing Digital Eye Glass
Except that number is for the US McDonalds. The French numbers would be +33 1 30 48 65 28 or +33 1 30 48 60 00 as stated on the contact page.

"I don't have the resources to take on a branch of a large multi-national corporation operating in a distant country" - doesn't really cut it when the contact page and number can be found on the Internet in 2 seconds of searching.

deadmansshoes··on What really happened aboard Air France 447
I hope the analysis of the flight was more accurate than some of the translations.

02:08:03 (Robert) Tu peux éventuellement le tirer un peu à gauche. You can eventually pull it a little to the left.

Eventuellement is not the French equivalent of the English. It should be "You could pull a little to the left." Many sentences read like a straight copy and paste from Google Translate.

deadmansshoes··on You Are the Average of Your Five Closest Friends
"You slowly replace your friends with "better" ones"..."will make you more of who you want to be"

I believe the talented Mr Ripley used this strategy to good effect. There's a saying about never trust anyone who doesn't have at least one friend left from childhood.

deadmansshoes··on Immigrant entrepreneur arrested to meet quotas
And reactions at http://mapbrief.com/2011/10/19/political-hypocrisy-economic-... and http://blog.entchev.com/2011/10/17/a-call-for-help-for-atana...
deadmansshoes··on The Missed Red Flags on Groupon
I think if a groupon is unused then the merchant is not paid, so Groupon keeps the $10. This is how kgbdeals works. However Groupon redeem expired vouchers (if asked) whereas kgbdeals refuse to redeem vouchers even if valid.
deadmansshoes··on Occupy George
Sure, but the $900 dollars would otherwise have gone to buy a car from someone else who fixed up a car or made cars.

I can see how reducing the cost of items or services can make more people "wealthy" - such as being able to buy a second car. But reducing costs normally means reducing wages meaning the owners get richer, and the manual jobs disappear.

deadmansshoes··on Occupy George
Am I missing something with this "pie fallacy"?

If you restore a car and then sell it to someone that needs a car then surely there is someone else who has sold one less car. The same principle applies to crop prices when all the farmers have a bountiful year.

Surely the reason that wealth has grown, is that the human population has grown - creating more needs and desires, and more workers to meet them.

deadmansshoes··on Hire For The Ability To Get Shit Done
"Explain virtual methods to me" - thereby ignoring anyone who can code in Python or Ruby, or anyone from VB.NET and several other languages where Overridable/Overrides is the terminology used.
deadmansshoes··on Latitude doesn’t exactly mean what I thought
There's always http://proj4js.org/
deadmansshoes··on Digg/Delicious Traffic Down 40%. Social Bookmarking Fragmentation
It took months for Delicious to update their FireFox extension. I've only just tried again now, after reading this article and it works again.
deadmansshoes··on Estimate your English vocabulary size
I felt the same. Also there were some words I thought I knew what they meant, but my definition would only be partially correct.

Also some definitions you can guess at - do these count as part of your vocabulary or not? E.g. Clerisy, can be easily deduced to be the class of clerics, but not sure if I'd be able to say if it was a real word or not.

deadmansshoes··on Wi-Fi–Hacking Neighbor From Hell Sentenced to 18 Years
Where in the article? Not in the one this post links to.

In a PDF linked from the article, it is stated that the mother had her back to Ardolf, and heard a "wet kiss."

Ardolf then admitted to the father of the child he kissed him on the lips.

My point is that accusing your new neighbour of being a paedophile on that basis could, if innocent of the charges, be a strong motivator for revenge.

deadmansshoes··on Wi-Fi–Hacking Neighbor From Hell Sentenced to 18 Years
Any reference to where he pleaded guilty to a charge of molestation (I presume this is the kissing incident)?

He sounds like a psychopath, but if he was labelled a paedophile in the neighbourhood based on the statement of a 4 year old (or did the parents witness the incident?), then it's understandable there was retaliation.

deadmansshoes··on User testing in the wild: he has never used a computer
In these cases I've often thought it would be useful to have an "interactive" character guiding you around the application, such as a dog, or maybe a paperclip for a word-processing program.
deadmansshoes··on What hackers can learn from Djokovic
Strangely no mention of his new gluten-free diet as a factor, which has apparently led to increased strength and new-found boundless energy.
deadmansshoes··on Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships
Maybe a minimum wage policy has a wider remit than "the economy." Why bother with any regulations, or indeed employee rights at all? As for your arguments about immigrants - people may migrate to live "the American dream", but how many people's situations are actually improved?
deadmansshoes··on Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships
What's wrong with paying at least the minimum wage to interns? I presume you can't claim unemployment benefit if working as an intern, so who is funding an interns living expenses? Unpaid work should be reserved for charitable organisations.
deadmansshoes··on Why is there only one human species?
Animals in the English language already means any living thing other than humans.
deadmansshoes··on Rumor: Microsoft To Buy Nokia For $30 Billion
No just the Windows start up "fanfare" while the smartphones crash and reboot..
deadmansshoes··on MIT is a national treasure
All well and good, but I'm not sure doing "research at a reputable university laboratory" and having "a good recommendation from a well-known professor" can really be classed as bypassing the academic admissions system.
deadmansshoes··on Is This The Girl That Hacked HBGary?
Sorts of language used like "Perl, Python and PHP"? Areas of interest including x86 assembly and the Linux kernel? Yep, all girly..
deadmansshoes··on Natalie Portman - Scientist
"Maybe they're just a fish out of water, spending too much time on things that don't interest him."

Doesn't sound too smart..

deadmansshoes··on How Your Coffee Mug Controls Your Feelings (& What You Can Do About It)
"It may seem incredulous to imagine that the boring coffee mug you held this morning while chatting with your kids, or the clipboard you held while filling out that interview this afternoon, were actively priming your behavior and emotions."

Yes it does seem incredulous.

Are we to believe that the only differing factor in each case was the stated coffee cup, puzzle piece softness etc..

deadmansshoes··on Why didn't the Romans have hot air balloons?
"You don't fly in the balloon your soldiers do."

Strangely, I wasn't suggesting the Montgolfier brothers were going to take Gibraltar single-handedly.

There is a huge difference between climbing a wall with seige ladders where once you get a few men across everyone else can follow, and 2-3 men floating in a wooden basket and trying to land (!) in a fortress.

Granted reconnaissance may have been useful, but if after 4 years of seige you haven't worked out your enemy through espoinage and being shot at, a balloon is not going to help.

deadmansshoes··on Why didn't the Romans have hot air balloons?
Kudos to the Montgolfier for inventing the hot air balloon based on a need to invade a strongly held fortress.

But when did the idea of slowly floating towards your fortified, gun-toting enemy in a giant gas filled balloon seem a good idea?

deadmansshoes··on Self-Doubting Monkeys Know What They Don’t Know
So monkeys are shown high density images and low density images and they can press the correct button for a treat. For medium denisty images they can either make an incorrect choice, or press a skip button.

If I wrote a computer program to do the exact same thing it would not prove computers had self-doubt, just that they had a programmed intelligence. Pressing the centre button gets you to a sure treat quicker.

deadmansshoes··on Show HN: LifeEnsured, privately manage your on-line life after you pass.
Is this US only? I don't see this on your FAQ, but references to social security would imply it is.

Can a one-off fee be payable by the estate?

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