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sambeau

8,417 karma · joined March 30, 2009

sambeau.at.hn

### Currently looking for work as a:

- Product Design Manager - Product Manager - Project Manager

### For

- Apps - Webapps - SAAS

### see also:

- [https://sambeau.com](sambeau.com)

submissionscomments
sambeau··on Why Is Sam Altman a Free Man?
I feel for Aaron Swartz, his poor mother, and what the US government put him through.
sambeau··on A deadly fungus that can infect cats and people is spreading
Here in Scotland, 'ginormous' is normal, possibly more regularly used than 'enormous' or 'giant'.
sambeau··on Time to start de-Appling
I turnips were watches, I'd wear one by my side.
sambeau··on 10M people watched a YouTuber shim a lock; the lock company sued him – bad idea
Thritto.
sambeau··on The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain
This is the main issue. People simply cannot afford to use this extra power. If power was cheap then all kinds of devices would switch to electric, especially heating and cars.

The other issue is that the UK has unpredictable weather and no way to store energy at a grid-level. It can store enough to load balance spikes but there is still nothing to replace the months of gas we once had stored in giant salt chambers (you can thank Liz Truss for decommissioning those).

Without vast amounts of long-term energy storage we will continue to throw away power when we have too much and fire up gas generators when wind power isn't making any (which happens surprisingly often).

sambeau··on MAML – A new configuration language
I like it, but it's too late.

It could also do with a datetime datatype, the one thing (apart from comments) that I constantly feel the need for in JSON.

sambeau··on Jeffrey Hudson the Court Dwarf of the English Queen Henrietta Maria of France
The Oakham brewery has a rather fine beer named after him:

https://www.oakhamales.com/product/jhb/

sambeau··on The right wing is coming for Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a global resource, edited by educated—often academic—people all over the world. Why would anyone expect it to conform to the US idea of what is left and right? For most of Europe the American Democrats are to the right of their mainstream right-wing parties.

There is no bias to the left. The USA has shifted so far to the right that balance now looks leftist.

sambeau··on Massive Attack turns concert into facial recognition surveillance experiment
This is face detection, not recognition. Face recognition would have a correct name underneath each face.
sambeau··on Synthetic gasoline
The focus for these kind of alternatives should be on aviation—with the most difficult fuel to replace. Maybe we'd need this for classic cars, emergency generators and a few other smaller things, but even classic cars can get electric refits. Cars, motorbikes, trucks etc should be electric; shipping needs to embrace sail-electric hybrids; and bio-fuels/synthetic fuel should be aimed at aviation (and maybe as a stop-gap for shipping). My 10¢.
sambeau··on NIMBYs threaten to sink Project Sail, a $17B datacenter development in Georgia
These giant datacentres bring nothing to a community; they only take, take, take. Why would anyone want one in their neighbourhood?
sambeau··on CO2 Battery
What is the advantage here over compressed air?
sambeau··on Tell HN: Stop using "dropped" to mean "added"
I can't think of a single example where dropped means added.
sambeau··on Tell HN: Stop using "dropped" to mean "added"
"The player was dropped and released from his contract."

Dropped == released

sambeau··on Tell HN: Stop using "dropped" to mean "added"
Dropped doesn’t mean added: it means released.
sambeau··on Show HN: AI game animation sprite generator
This is so depressing.

Also, why does the female ninja suddenly grow a penis?

sambeau··on Is It JavaScript?
Typescript is not just javascript; Javascript is just Typescript.

/pedantry

sambeau··on German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal
Can we so CrowdStrike next?
sambeau··on Amdash – Human only punctuation mark
Is that a British vs American thing? I had always thought it was a newspaper vs Novel thing.
sambeau··on Show HN: I made an app to create personalized stories for children in 5 minutes
Amongst other things, I'm writing children's books.

Each one is a labour of love that takes years to produce. It requires detailed thought from word choices, character design, world-building, characters, to fun plot twists. It's really hard and takes a lot of work. It's taken me over a decade to teach myself how to do it. I've been working on my current book for over two years.

My government has decided that my copyright is invalid for AIs. So, as soon as it is published, years of hard work will be slurped into the mediocracy machine for anyone—like you—to abuse.

It's theft and you are a fence.

sambeau··on Show HN: I made an app to create personalized stories for children in 5 minutes
This is ghastly.

Children’s books are some of the most wonderful little pieces of art; art that nurtures, entertains, educates and instills both moral compasses and working funny bones. All of our lives have been enriched by them. Some children’s stories continue to enrich us for all of our lives.

This doesn’t just steal work from those artists working today, but it steals from every artist who came before. It adds nothing to humanity; it robs so much.

It also destroys nature to do it. It robs from the world and worsens humanity.

Why do it? Money? Infamy? Internet points?

Please delete the project and do something worthwhile.

sambeau··on Making Video Games (Without an Engine) in 2025
I recently wrote a game in Javascript (2D; Canvas). I was amazed at how simple it was and how performant plain-old-Javascript and Javascript objects were. Despite thousands of animating things moving on screen, and animated stereo audio, I couldn't get the frame rate to spill over an animation frame.
sambeau··on The Barbican
The really amazing architecture of Coruscant is from the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Arts_and_Sciences

In particular, the Museo de las Ciencias Príncipe Felipe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Arts_and_Sciences#/med...

sambeau··on US vs. Google amicus curiae brief of Y Combinator in support of plaintiffs [pdf]
The really uncompetitive behaviour started when Google removed the search string from search links. That killed 3rd party (and home-grown) analytics, which in turn facilitated large scale tracking of users from site with analytics to site with analytics.

If you wanted to know how your keywords were performing you had to use Google Analytics.

sambeau··on International Workers' Day
Incorrect.

Here's a large amount of reading matter to explain. Fill your boots.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/faq/europe/#wiki...

sambeau··on Goenums: Type Safe Enum Generator for Go
Go is a tiny language. I can easily hold it all in my head. I don't think I can say that about any other language I've used. Not even C.
sambeau··on Americans Believe Russian Disinformation 'To Alarming Degree'
This is almost as shocking:

> Republicans were, though, more likely to believe Russian disinformation claims than their Democratic counterparts, with 57.6% falling for at least one Russian disinformation claim, compared with just 17.9% of Democrats

sambeau··on Kermit: A typeface for kids
Here's one that doesn't. (yes it dives me mad, too)

https://kermit-font.com

sambeau··on Kermit: A typeface for kids
If you want to read it on a site that doesn't mess with scrolling, try here :

https://kermit-font.com

sambeau··on How a $2k 'Made in the USA' Phone Is Manufactured
I think that's a very myopic view of what Jobs did. I am of the opinion he was one of the greatest designers of all time.

Just because he didn't move pixels across the screen doesn't mean he wasn't setting the design language, defining taste, sweating detail and holding the vision. No-one would suggest that a show-runner didn't make TV, or that a director wasn't a filmmaker. Jony Ive's design changed (and improved) immensely one he was working closely with Jobs. Once Jobs was gone things drifted. Similarly Pixar was hyper-focused under Jobs then began to drift as soon as he was no longer involved.

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