esoteric_nonces's comments

Achieve some level of financial security (say 6-12 months savings), then just do whatever you want.

The hard part is the former. Once you've done that the negotiation bit is trivial because you don't really need to care - you can just take it as a given that eventually you'll be paid more (unless you're taken ill and stop/slow down working).

This is really cool.

I toyed with the idea of visualising travel time using colour heat maps.

London tube map https://tubermap.com/

(in the options you can turn on 'times').

I'd love to see the transit authorities themselves put together something that encompasses all the possible forms of transport. Metro/bus/cycle etc.

welcome to zombo coin

the only limit is yourself.

Hi HN,

We've just gotten finished pushing out a new mobile interface update for our tube map and thought this would be a good opportunity to show it off!

We're using hammer.js for pinch zoom, html5 canvas to draw the map and a wodge of js for routing and drawing.

Best on desktop due to hover effect, though works very well on mobile now too (we hope!)

Looks like the ad network I was using was being naughty and included popunders randomly (which hadn't been caught during testing). Removed now and should work fine.

Hello HN!

I made this as a test of what can be done locally in the browser without a backend, and because I was frustrated with certain things missing from traditional maps.

You can draw routes around the tube network, get time heatmaps from any station, use alternate maps, disable lines, etc.

It should work in latest Firefox and Chrome desktop, Chrome mobile, and hopefully Safari (though I couldn't test it myself yet). IE definitely doesn't work until I've had more time to play with it, it doesn't support maps/sets without polyfill...

I'd really appreciate screenshots from Safari if anyone feels particularly helpful :P

Pieter,

Thank you. For everything. I'm sure the rest of the community shares my opinion that you've contributed so much to the field.

For all that it matters, I wish you a pleasant departure.

Many of these discussions seem to leave the elephant in the room of what is 'enough'.

If your company can only extract 50K per employee, and a home costs 500K in the region, then I don't think you have a legitimate business, and I don't think it should be surprising that people leave for pastures new.

I've spent far too long trying to improve companies' profitability to the point that they can actually afford to pay my mortgage - it's looking likely that I'll be lounging on 10 hours / week for the indefinite future.

Burn my youth so I can rent a fancy apartment? No thanks!

This looks cool and the price is appealing. For me personally, the range is a bit short and 30mph doesn't cut it - in some cities it'd work, London is full of 50mph roads.

I'd love to buy a Zero (linked lower in the thread) if I had a safe place to store it or some good insurance (motorcycle theft is common in the UK).

WRT weather and other concerns - frankly, the time saved by riding a motorcycle in a congested city blows that out of the water, IMO. In conditions other than gridlock you can maintain an average speed ~50% higher than all other traffic.

I'd love to see electric bikes go mainstream because I think they address almost all of the concerns people have about cycling (sweaty, no good for the unfit/disabled, etc).

You can park 4-5 scooters in a car parking bay, tuck them away at the side of footpaths and in front of stores, if the roads became populated with them it'd possibly double or triple throughput for single riders.

I currently own a 125cc motorcycle and it's a godsend. Especially in the summer months it turns commuting into a joy, and reduces the time taken to perform errands by 5x over public transport (there are plenty of places I can ride to in 20 mins or take a combination of buses and trains to get to in 1.5 hours).

I think living in a large metro area for an extended period of time would be unbearable for me without owning a motorcycle. Most cities have radial transport networks - concentric journeys outside of the core have ridiculous routing as a result.

HTTPS link: https://dl.bintray.com/rfo-basic/android/v01.78/Basic.apk

(I have done no verification of the contents here, merely added an 's' and checked that the download still works).

Maciej (HN handle 'idlewords') has an interesting take on this that I'm struggling to find in my history right now. The basic idea is that all of the data these companies collect is still ultimately useless in practice. We still don't have advertising that is even close to being relevant.

But the data retains its toxic qualities (of being a database of every action I take on the Internet and some in the real world).

I fire up the YouTube homepage and all of my recommendations are for UK daytime TV. Celebrities, 'Jeremy Kyle' (the UK Jerry Springer), etcetera.

YouTube sends me adverts for female hygiene products and dog food. (I am male and I own no dog.)

Even when I get advertising that's not selling me stuff that would require I buy something else first (sex change, dog) it's invariably for something vastly overpriced or some sort of megabrand.

I like wide open spaces and I'd live in the forest with no-one around for miles if I had the means and a suitable plot.

Land, or at least a small garden or garage (in order of decreasing usefulness), is incredibly useful for woodworking, mechanical tinkering, painting large objects, basically any sort of real world craft that's not 'micro'.

My social life is less important than the ability for me to sit on that bit of land that's mine and do things that I want to do.

The urban equivalent of that seems to be going to find a specialist to do whatever you want doing. Basically, urban living is capitalism embodied - you can get some fantastic things done, better than you could ever do yourself, but you're trading for it. And you have to take part in the economy too.

E-liquid can be made at home using pharmaceutical grade glycerine. In fact, you can vape glycerine on its' own (possibly adding some distilled water to aid in wicking). It has a vaguely sweet flavour. Commercial e-liquid is made using vegetable glycerin, propylene glycol, or some mixture of the two.

In the UK glycerine is available in pharmacists for ~$2 per 200ml. https://www.boots.com/en/Value-Health-Glycerin-B-P-200ml_852...

The devices themselves can be bought from overseas - AliExpress has many variants, some for <$10.

At that stage, the 'safety of e-cigarettes' is equivalent to the safety of inhaling atomized glycerine. Stage smoke.

Flavourings - you can look for things which are used in aromatherapy (e.g. menthol crystals), but you'll probably want to study whether any chemical changes can occur under heating.

Pre-mixed nicotine is a difficult one. I don't use it so I'm not sure if you can acquire it from trustworthy sources.

I would not want to fall into the habit of using e-cigarettes produced by tobacco companies such as the 'vype' disposable (British American Tobacco). They have a history of producing methods to increase the addictive potential of cigarettes, ramping up nicotine levels, to cheating on tests, using ammonia to produce 'freebase' nicotine, etcetera. I wouldn't be surprised if the same bag of tricks comes out in the e-cigarette market.

Perhaps.

I used to live in Zone1/2, and had 24 hour bus routes. So still ~an order of magnitude - 10GBP vs 1.50.

I'd forgotten about sharing with friends. Taxis certainly work out well there. Maybe that's it?

It's probably simply that I hate spending money! :)

What I find interesting is the sheer size of the taxi industry (Uber included) given the costs involved. I'm guessing it's some sort of socioeconomic group thing. Hardly anyone I know takes taxis of any kind in London.

For personal use, they're just so astonishingly expensive that it's difficult to justify them. As far as I can remember I've used Uber once, to get home after missing the last public transport, and I had to really consider whether it was worth just finding something to do for a few hours until the 5am train.

I live <1h from Central London via train. The fare for that is ~3GBP off peak or 5GBP peak. An Uber costs an order of magnitude more (~30-40GBP).

It would be an extremely notable expense in my budget - probably the largest single item.

I think I'd have to have a home paid off and a fairly high salary before a taxi became anything other than a frivolous luxury, to be honest.

(Business use is excepted here. I've used taxis plenty in my professional life. Uber as a platform doesn't seem focused on business travel, though.)

'end to end' is probably an unattainable goal. I'd go for understanding it at some level given some axioms, and gradually dig in to the axioms.

I think it's difficult to create an all encompassing post for that reason. It's a bit like trying to describe how any application protocol works - can you assume knowledge of TCP/IP? Do you just black-box it? etc.

My contact details are in my profile and I'm happy to lend a hand if you think that might be useful.

Why not give a 'security line' time (like the current gateline time). If the passenger is there before that time, then the flight waits for them, or they're put on the next flight.

That seems to sidestep the issue neatly. As a passenger, security is not a discrete part of the process. I'm actually surprised that airlines haven't done more to make the security experience more streamlined.

A combination of the latter two.

I have bought and sold items from/to individuals using bitcoin, bought and sold bitcoin from exchanges, received them in donation for programs I have produced, and sent them in donation for programs/services others have produced/rendered.

Can a rational argument be made, that addresses the emotions involved, for repealing laws that criminalize the existence or transfer of information?

The best argument I can come up with is that digital security simply isn't understood well enough for us to have solid evidence trails.

It's far too simple for an attacker (not necessarily law enforcement, a frustrated savvy neighbour is enough) to target someone and the consequences are so dire.

The War on Drugs criminalized the possession and transfer of physical objects, in the process providing convenient mechanisms by which to persecute undesirable individuals.

Laws against the transfer of information seem to provide the same loophole, but in a digital space. To me, that's far more worrisome.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a good public library in London?

I've often found myself wanting to read a reference book prior to purchase (technical books are extremely expensive to buy).

Do any of the universities offer subscriptions to members of the public?