kschua | 7 years ago | on: Show HN: Ip Man. Mac menu bar app displaying your IP
kschua's comments
kschua | 8 years ago | on: Apple Maps vs. Google Maps vs. Waze
Recently, their routing algorithm has gotten so bad that I am on the verge of discarding it and probably try HERE maps.
The issues are
1) There was a railroad removal which block the road for several weeks. Waze didn't detect it and I arrived about 15 minutes later. I went home and tried to edit the map and to my surprise, I couldn't do it now whereas I was able to edit the maps once upon a time.
2) Recently, it has routed me to another supposed faster route to my daughter's school. I took that route once and we were late for school. From then on, I took the route which I am familiar with (which incidentally was what Waze had always been showing me till recently) and I keep seeing the ETA dropping. The ETA for the my regular route is about 5 minutes faster than the new Waze suggested route which is about 35 minutes
kschua | 8 years ago | on: Ask HN: Best books you read in 2017?
I read this book based on the recommendation of Bill Gates. It was one of the best books I have read in a while
kschua | 8 years ago | on: Chinese umbrella-sharing startup loses most of its 300,000 umbrellas in 3 months
It doesn't mean they are going to replace it. The 60 yuan probably factor in cost like manpower etc rather than just the cost of the umbrella.
So like some of the readers pointed out, it could possibly be a good way to sell umbrellas whilst crying out wolf that they are losing money as a way to prevent copycats
kschua | 9 years ago | on: Can I Talk to that William Fellow? He was so Helpful (2009)
kschua | 9 years ago | on: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?
I loved the DiskEditor which enabled me to recover lost files by manipulating the FAT table, hack byte codes to bypass copy protection in the days when copy protection was done by reading in bad sectors in floppy disks.
Norton Commander for the ease of use to navigate file system in DOS days. I use TotalCommander now which is the best $40 I ever spent.
kschua | 10 years ago | on: Ask HN: What's the hardest problem you've ever solved?
Back in the CRT monitor days, I was working for a computer repair company. There was this particular client (in the defence industry) who had monitors that started flickering and having a greenish hue at its sides after a week.
Every week, we had to go to his office to swap the monitors and bring the faulty ones back to recalibrate (it was costly, but hey, its a Defence contract and those pay big bucks)
It didn't matter whether the monitor was brand new or recalibrate ones, it just started flickering and had greenish hue after a week, and it only happened in that room. Other monitors outside that room and in other levels were fine, thus the room was dubbed the Poltergeist Room (as they blamed spirits for messing with it).
One day after the monitor exchange, I returned to the office and my supervisor queried me as to why I didn't reply to his multiple pages (we were using pagers back then). I realised I was in the Poltergeist Room when the pages were sent and therefore did not receive any page. It then dawned on me, "Could it be some electro magnetic interference from another level directly above or below that was playing havoc".
I went back to the client the next day to tell him what I thought and he (being electronics trained) realised that above him was a defence lab carrying out EMF experiments, which could have caused the monitor problems. He got to work to build a simple Faraday cage to prevent EMF from getting to the monitor. Since then, the monitors worked perfectly.
kschua | 11 years ago | on: Why Singapore banned chewing gum
The ban is on the sale and import of chewing gum, not on the consumption of chewing gum itself. The maximum penalty is a jail term, not a death penalty nor caning.
Though the link below doesn't mention about the sale, I do remember that the sale itself is prohibited.
(http://statutes.agc.gov.sg/aol/search/display/view.w3p;page=...)
kschua | 11 years ago | on: Microsoft Changes Tack, Making Office Suite Free on Mobile
The worst was maintaining a Hotel front office guest system written in GW-Basic
kschua | 11 years ago | on: How con artists trick your mind
kschua | 11 years ago | on: July 20, 1969: One Giant Leap For Mankind (2013)
kschua | 11 years ago | on: Google Offers A Free Crash Course In Android Development
You can see the feature matrix for the Free vs Paid
Click on View Course Ware and you can get the free version
kschua | 11 years ago | on: Where have you gone, Peter Norton?
I remember the first time I used Unerase to recover a deleted file and was fascinated by it. Then I discovered DiskEdit and began poking around in the FAT system and found out more about how DOS actually deletes a file. It actually marks the first character with a ?. Thus started my hacking days.
Then I used DiskEdit to bypass copy protection hacking the byte codes.
DiskEdit rescued me again when I switch to DR-DOS, set passwords on my files and forgot the passwords (fwiw, it was just setting the next dozen or so bytes after the file name in the FAT to zero)
Such memomories, DiskEdit and SideKick were my two must have utilities in the days of DOS
kschua | 12 years ago | on: Show HN: Digitizing photos of whiteboards using the command line
kschua | 12 years ago | on: Ask HN: What under $100 item would you recommend everyone buy?
Yes, I know most smart phones can do that, but not everyone owns a smart phone, and I prefer not to drain the battery on my phone
kschua | 12 years ago | on: Ask HN: Best Dotcom Bubble Stories
kschua | 12 years ago | on: How a movie changed one man’s vision forever (2012)
kschua | 12 years ago | on: Apple Literally Stole my Thunder
Guess what, in 2012, Apple put in an uncannily similar feature called "Repeated Call" in iOS 6
kschua | 12 years ago | on: The Girl Who Turned to Bone
kschua | 13 years ago | on: Facebook's New Feed