stana

"The man who led the armed uprising that caused the Costa Rican civil war won, abolished the army, voluntarily stepped down as dictator after 18 months, served two much later terms as president, and at 65 years old stood on the tarmac with a machine gun until a plane’s hijackers surrendered."

Wow! Stuff you will discover on HN. Never knew about José Figueres Ferrer, but his story and 20th century history of Costa Rica seems fascinating and worth further exploring :)

That Scala SQL syntax parsing/validation is neat. Anything equivalent in Python?

'custom' part is the problem. Dealing with few vendor service APIs everyone has a different idea and syntax on how to implement simple AND, OR filter. Few weeks back spent half a day trying to figure out what the correct syntax is to do '<value> IN ...' query due to poor API documentation. Something more intuitive would be nice.

We are Borg.

Romanticism of 19th century can be thought of as rationality winning over less rational religion. The 'God is dead' sort of thinking. Yet in the midst of all of this rationality and scientific progress we end up with 2 world wars?

My daughter made me watch Nosferatu (1922) on a hundred year anniversary of the movie. Very interesting use of shadows.

As cheap money era seems to be ending, long term quality product/service might be the only viable strategy going forward.

"Age is no better qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost. One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value by living."

Henry Thoreau

"If I move out, and I rent out my home, it covers monthly payments approximately exactly."

You cannot borrow for rent, so rents follow income growth more closely. So in some expensive real estate markets, if no income growth, rent might not cover your mortgage repayments.

"The price tag is only justified when there's no end in sight to the appreciation." Isn't that pretty much the definition of an asset bubble. Prices have decoupled from underlying asset utility (eg. rent) and it has become speculation on future price growth. As no return to justify the price all of this seems to hang on optimism/pessimism of future buyers. And availability of easy credit of course.

*Linus Torvalds quote

And according to Alain de Botton we have replaced this artistocratic snobbery with snobbery of profession - "Meeting someone first question you likely to be asked - What do you do? - And you will become subject of interest, of be left alone by the peanuts"

There seem to be many non tech savvy people who were shocked by docos like Social Dilemma and don't understand they are the product. They think they are 'just looking at cats'. Maybe these companies should clearly display on their front page they in personal data collection and targeted advertising business.

"One person remembered that he ate a lot of sticky buns; another said that he loved ketchup." Searching github for 'sticky buns' reveals what seems to be unused account - ghostmachina "dna. deep learning. info theory. sticky buns. the joys of life."

Admin is an app written in Django. Don't see how evaluating admin app applies to evaluating Django.

Aren't interest rates reduced to stimulate a struggling economy, and increased if economy improving?

"... property owner, who will just pass on the tax"

Rental market is more of a market than say, buying a house. It is very much determine by salaries people make in the area. Unlike buying a property, which also has the element of credit availability and willingness of people to borrow, you cannot borrow to pay rent. The point being, owner can TRY to price tax into the rent, but if this prices property too high it will not rent out.

(Edited: typo)

I guess I naively see it as an umbrella identity for the other ones and it makes sense if your parents from different parts, or don't like the divison of the 90s (It pretty much means - south-slavic). But it has been heavily politicized like anything else in the Balkans. Also current political leaders in the region doing their share to smear Yugoslavian identity probably to justify the division in which this political elite prospers, rather than see a return of some idea that will get people to look past their minor differences.

Many who identified as Yugoslavians left in 90s and are now Americans, Germans, Australians or Canadians. They don't live in the Balkans because ethnically clean countries and ethnicity ranking so high on the political agenda is offensive to them.

Many people in central Bosnia identified as Yugoslavians before the war and I would say most in the same region born in late 60s, 70s would have identified the same. So when someone says Yugoslavia, I think Sarajevo and Bosnia, not Serbia.

No mention of share allocations at the company which could affect salaries?

Brutalism not back according to the authorities in Sydney. The Sirius building waiting for the wrecking ball as we speak.

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

Isn't the finance industry in conflict between supporting stable growth of 'real' economy by providing capital vs. their ability to gain during volotile times. Or can someone enlighten me why they are so oblivious to asset bubbles, with no effort to restrain borrowing in a particular bubbly asset, unless volatility is seen as no issue - or even an opportunity.

So how do you rate the situation in Libya before and after Gaddafi?

As mentioned in this article, in most cases, father and the business do not move, only part of the family. Apart for spending in property and luxury items, looks like wealthy migration are passive participants in the economy - not starting businesses employing people, or paying much tax.

One important benefit of using an ORM is not being locked in with a particular DB server tech. Good luck migrating large app not using ORM, from, say, MySQL to Postgres if, for example, Postgres replication is something you are all of sudden interested in.

Surely if you expected someone to open your Yahoo mailbox other side of the world to read your draft email, it would have to be saved on their servers.

Sometimes you just want to share a photo from your daily routine with your family to just let them know you are ok. So not so trivial. In this context why should I have to think about how relevant this stuff is hanging around 5 years from now.

I grew up in the Balkans and was taught in school that assassination of Franc Ferdinand in Sarajevo was jusified act to free South Slavic people from German oppression. To justify the aftermath of WWI - the education at the time said the World War I would have happened anyway.

Moved out West and obviously introduced to a few different interpretations of the event, but it took a few years to start to question what I was taught early on and that maybe it is not 100% what would have happend in regards to WWI if not for the assassination.

Wow! Thanks for this link. Reading this makes me question if relational db-s best way to design accounting software.

In Australia within a few visits to the dentist the cost could easily start going over $5000. I am hearing more and more stories of people going overseas to do dental work - and a lot of these I would say reasonably well off people - upper middle class.

Considering pretty high educated professionals immigration numbers, it is surprising dental costs staying so high (which is not the case with other professions).