Hacker News: bjcy

New comment by bjcy in "Bank of Thailand freezes 3M accounts, sets daily transfer limits to curb fraud"

bjcy — Sun, 14 Sep 2025 16:50:52 +0000

It’s important to note that many of the expat accounts have been closed down due to the laxity of individual bank branches in enforcing their own policies, which were taken advantage of by nefarious actors. Many expats attempt to open bank accounts on tourist visas (which include the recently popular Destination Thailand Visa for digital nomads) without proper identification, and though allowed in the past, is now being restricted. One can argue about the classification of visas and the dissonance between economic goals and immigration policy, but for Thais, this is a long overdue enforcement action especially as it regards to scams targeting an older generation. Yes, it significantly impacts honest expats looking to stay beyond the short-term, but there is a way to doing things in Thailand that requires guests to adapt to their hosts, of which accepting the reality of Thailand’s political situations is an important part.

New comment by bjcy in "Grab built its own map in Southeast Asia, and is now going after Google"

bjcy — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 16:48:49 +0000

While your point is certainly valid, the parent's experience lines up with mine. There is a disconnect for rideshare/delivery drivers even between getting instructions from Google Maps vs. me reading out instructions straight from Google Maps. If I say exactly what Google Maps, then we're able to get to where I need to go.

I will say that it is changing, though. For younger rideshare drivers, there is a greater reliance on and ability to use Google Maps. In my experience, it is older drivers that have an interesting time adapting. This makes me think that there is certainly some ostensibly unrelated cultural norms at play: for example, Thailand exhibits a high degree of social hierarchy dependent on age, and a priority on saving face. Totally ignoring Google Maps, if I know the best way to get somewhere in Bangkok, and I know that most taxi drivers don't, me communicating it in Thai as respectful as is culturally appropriate can and does get shut down or ignored. In these instances, we invariably get lost and/or stuck in traffic.

Is a dislike for Google Maps in navigation completely a function of cultural values? Probably not, but this kind of technology isn't thought to be by default an amazing convenience in many parts of the world.

New comment by bjcy in "Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be"

bjcy — Mon, 02 May 2022 07:25:17 +0000

When gluten-free diets began to become popular, I had a similar question as to why a food that had been a staple of multiple civilisations for hundreds of years had suddenly become "bad for you". Dan Barber has a book on this called The Third Plate, which served as a great introduction for me on nutrition, but from a culinary perspective. He's also one of the chefs profiled in the first season of Netflix's Chef's Table.

New comment by bjcy in "A $10k poker win changed how I think"

bjcy — Mon, 06 Sep 2021 20:30:23 +0000

I felt the same! The best I could find online was that the match-up is not yet scheduled.

New comment by bjcy in "PM orders internet blocked for anyone spreading info that might frighten people"

bjcy — Sat, 31 Jul 2021 03:39:30 +0000

I can agree, A History of Thailand is an excellent recommendation.

New comment by bjcy in "PM orders internet blocked for anyone spreading info that might frighten people"

bjcy — Sat, 31 Jul 2021 03:35:09 +0000

For anyone wanting to add to their perspective how some younger generations are bringing in their thoughts on freedom/authority:

- https://thisrupt.co

- https://thestandard.co/homepage/ (Thai language only, but you can attempt to Google Translate)

New comment by bjcy in "PM orders internet blocked for anyone spreading info that might frighten people"

bjcy — Sat, 31 Jul 2021 03:22:26 +0000

Agreed, and furthermore, I think it’s easy for most of us to take for granted the influence of our domains of work and study. In general, many of us have backgrounds which pride themselves in their methodology, consistency and pursuit of understanding (whether or not we actually work in line with these values is another matter.) A lot of people outside of these circles aren’t privy to that sort of training (self-taught or otherwise), so adequately analysing the news that shows up on news feeds and timelines is difficult. Any news on the pandemic and the varying responses of the general public are a fine example of this. There’s always room for differences in opinion, but the intense variability highlights the race across the internet between access to all sorts of information and educational material that was previously unavailable, and the ill-intended trash like the link you shared.

New comment by bjcy in "macOS Nix setup: an alternative to Homebrew (2020)"

bjcy — Wed, 14 Jul 2021 05:17:32 +0000

He included a link to this gist on one of the Twitter replies: https://gist.github.com/mitchellh/8aa0b76d42e6f6f12ffe34914e...

New comment by bjcy in "As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen"

bjcy — Sun, 13 Jun 2021 02:21:12 +0000

My first inclination is that the individualism has turned from (admittedly, rosy nostalgia follows here) a propensity towards creative expression and unique identity amongst the whole, into an assertion of control that serves my needs at the expense of others. In my experience, while HOAs can be well-intentioned, they provide easy opportunity for people to build small kingdoms, and for most, being a king is quite tempting.

New comment by bjcy in "Language learning with Netflix"

bjcy — Wed, 09 Jun 2021 12:12:44 +0000

A lot of people have already commented on the part of not speaking being virtually useless at the beginning. I tend to agree with the criticisms listed there, but I submit another reason: muscle memory.

Practicing making the sounds of the target language as soon as possible with the correction of a native speaker, in my opinion, is absolutely essential. For many languages, there are unique sounds that are just close enough to one’s primary language, that our muscle memory causes us to make the familiar, incorrect sound instead of the proper one. Because it’s more a matter of physical exercise alongside the rewiring of our brains to recognise said phonemes, the more time spent working on it, the better on the path to fluency.

Having said all that, everyone’s language acquisition ability and language goals will be different, so I can see where this piece of advice does not have universal application.

New comment by bjcy in "Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself"

bjcy — Thu, 29 Oct 2020 04:38:39 +0000

To add the latest update to the story, the public outcry continues to be strong and after going back-and-forth on whether to pursue prosecution of the heir, the police asked Interpol to issue a red notice: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/05/world/asia/thailand-red-b...

New comment by bjcy in "KDE Slimbook: Linux Laptop with Ryzen 4000"

bjcy — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 12:59:02 +0000

It's so great to see people learning Thai! For both you and parent, if you haven't found this already, this website does a good job of giving accurate English definitions for Thai words, along with sample sentences from Thai sources: http://thai-language.com/id/133751 (this is the entry for 'ลำบาก') There's also a mobile app, which is even easier to use than the site.

Good luck and สู้ๆ นะ!

New comment by bjcy in "KDE Slimbook: Linux Laptop with Ryzen 4000"

bjcy — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 06:12:40 +0000

THIS. Is so ลำบาก[^1]. I tend to use my iPhone/iPad to type certain kinds of stuff because of the dedicated "123" modifier.

[^1]: Completely off topic, but I love when there are words that capture a feeling in one language for which there isn't a suitable analogue in another. For non-Thai speakers, this word means burdensome, but depending on context covers the whole span of "inconvenient" to "distressing". In general, though, I find English has more individual words that express an entire concept vs. Thai which has to use compound words to explain its meaning.

New comment by bjcy in "Apple: Advancements in Game Controllers"

bjcy — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 13:14:10 +0000

If you're referring to the Lightning to Digital AV Adapter, unfortunately it doesn't do raw HDMI output: https://panic.com/blog/the-lightning-digital-av-adapter-surp...

My assumption is that the lag and artifacts makes it a non-starter for the average gamer.

New comment by bjcy in "ACM has made 'Concurrency: the Works of Leslie Lamport' free to download"

bjcy — Fri, 03 Apr 2020 09:08:00 +0000

I hope it was with Dr. Alvisi and various arias to open every lecture!

New comment by bjcy in "Courier Prime: It’s Courier, Just Better"

bjcy — Fri, 04 Jan 2019 15:23:15 +0000

Any top recommendations for those books? Super intrigued to read more.

New comment by bjcy in "Why American cities are weirdly shaped"

bjcy — Mon, 24 Dec 2018 15:50:16 +0000

What thoughts do you have on whether or not it could be both classism and racism at the same time? Or is the hypothesis that on the spectrum running between a system primarily demotivated (since it's mostly behavior to avoid certain things) by race and class alone, some parts of American society post-70s have drastically shifted towards classism (and I guess by extension, racism is no longer a factor)? Trying to think through the implication of your thought.

New comment by bjcy in "Canada has arrested Huawei’s global chief financial officer in Vancouver"

bjcy — Thu, 06 Dec 2018 02:48:28 +0000

As a point of clarification, the Guardian article referenced above reports a request from Thailand to extradite Thai nationals living overseas. Thailand's lèse-majesté law was broken by Thais, as opposed to this case where a foreign national broke a US law and was present in an extradition-friendly country (to note, the sanctions are also law in Canada).

New comment by bjcy in "Yanni – An artificial neural network for Erlang"

bjcy — Sat, 15 Jul 2017 02:49:34 +0000

And don't forget! Make sure to read the intro with this in the background: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfSSQ3Vejao

New comment by bjcy in "Show HN: Spaced Repetition System for iOS"

bjcy — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 00:42:30 +0000

When importing from csv, can you import to a deck multiple times and have it just update? Or do you have to create a new deck each time?

Also, can decks be shared?

Love the design and it's a welcome change of pace coming from other SRS apps.