samdb
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4 years ago
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on: Moving to London for a Tech Job
I've never understood why people pay so much money to live in studio flats in crap areas of a city. We live out in Kent and including a drive to the train station and buying the ticket can be in central London in 40 minutes. That gets us an £1100 mortgage payment on a 4 bed house surrounded by farmland. Sometimes when we meet friends who live in London for dinner it takes them longer to get to the restaurant than it does us.
samdb
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5 years ago
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on: 5k Year Old Bog Oak Table: Digging up 4k-year-old trees for furniture
People have been volunteering their time and they are still raising £200,000 to get the table completed.
samdb
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5 years ago
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on: Covid: Large trial of new treatment begins in UK
Looks very promising. There was some doubt about interferons as they can also help COVID to get into the body but some new research from the University of Southampton has cleared up that there are two kinds of the ACE2 receptor.
samdb
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5 years ago
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on: Special filters in glasses can help the color blind see colors better
I had only heard of Enchroma but then stumbled across and bought some Pilestone glasses last month. I think they cost me around £120 here in the UK.
At first I put them on and they just made everything look tinged with pink so removed them after a minute or two. Then I noticed the instructions. I had assumed glasses didn't need instructions but all it said was to leave them on for at least 15 minutes for your eyes to adjust.
My eyes did 'adjust' after a few minutes more and while it wasn't something that would make me cry like the viral videos, there was definitely an emotional reaction. I wore them on a walk through the countryside and the vivid colours of certain flowers did make me stop and I found I couldn't stop grinning.
I did find that reds look a bit orange - things like the Royal Mail van which is certainly red appeared quite bright and what I would previously have called orange. Who knows if that's wrong or right though? It's hard to know how everyone else sees things.
I don't wear the glasses day-to-day but I do take them with me if we are going somewhere picturesque.
samdb
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9 years ago
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on: Wal-Mart Plans to Test Grocery Delivery Through Uber, Lyft
In the UK we have Yodel, which is essentially 'contracted amateurs' delivering in their own vehicles.
samdb
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10 years ago
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on: Slip coach
There must be some form of this still in practice in the UK, though maybe it doesn't do it while in motion.
I frequently have to get into a particular set of carriages on my journey home from central London, as the train divides en route.
samdb
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10 years ago
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on: Why Software Outsourcing Doesn't Work Anymore
I can hire good local people an hour outside of London for that price.
samdb
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10 years ago
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on: The xkcd survey
samdb
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11 years ago
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on: The Golang UK Conference – 2015
We wouldn't want to miss out on a great speaker because they couldn't afford to get to and stay in London.
samdb
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11 years ago
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on: Show HN: Responsive Dashboard Templates for Bootstrap
We just started making one of these for internal use - will probably use this instead now.
samdb
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11 years ago
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on: Yandex.Browser for Linux
We built a site for a Russian supermarket and tried using Yandex maps as that's what they wanted. Was accurate for Russian addresses, as you would expect, but ended up switching for Mapbox so we could heavily customise it.
samdb
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11 years ago
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on: Show HN: Duckling – Open-source datetime expression parsing
From 'fourteen nights' - two weeks
samdb
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11 years ago
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on: Show HN: Duckling – Open-source datetime expression parsing
'To' is the most common version in British English.
samdb
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11 years ago
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on: What are hedge funds, and what social functions do they serve?
Another Lewis book, The Big Short, is also a good introduction to the events leading up to the 2008 crash.
samdb
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11 years ago
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on: Highcharts – JavaScript charting framework
Google Charts is hosted, like
https://app.chartblocks.com - you can download or save the charts that get produced but it's not a charting library that can be used offline. If you want hosted charts you've also got to give someone access to your data.
samdb
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11 years ago
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on: X to close
Someone in our office insists on calling closing a window 'crossing it off'.
samdb
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11 years ago
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on: New Chart.js beta version launched
We tried NVD3 when we built
http://www.chartblocks.com as it would have saved us loads of time. It wasn't great though and had almost no flexibility.
samdb
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11 years ago
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on: Ask HN: What projects are you working on?
Thanks, needs some improvement according to our metrics - a lot of people don't manage to make a chart, which is pretty fundamental - but it's getting better every day.
samdb
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11 years ago
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on: Ask HN: What projects are you working on?
Though I'd give it a go but Facebook login on iOS fails for me.
samdb
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11 years ago
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on: Show HN: ChartBlocks – Create and share charts in a few clicks
Creator here - would love feedback about what kinds of features would make this a useful tool for you.
