Hacker News: oz

New comment by oz in "Ask HN: Software you hate but can't replace?"

oz — Sun, 06 Feb 2022 13:05:49 +0000

For some reason, I can't get wireless CarPlay to work on my '21 Q5. Only wired.

New comment by oz in "The Relentless Jeff Bezos"

oz — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:42:33 +0000

In my country, customs is charged on CIF - Cost, Insurance, Freight, so that's probably the correct treatment. Not sure if that's the case in Brazil.

New comment by oz in "A fitness watch that measures blood pressure"

oz — Fri, 10 Jan 2020 18:03:00 +0000

Was just about to post this. I listened to this yesterday, and it squares with what GP said about alcohol raising his BP.

New comment by oz in "A 20-year Follow-Up to an Early Childhood Stimulation Program in Jamaica"

oz — Wed, 23 May 2018 01:32:38 +0000

I'm pretty sure this study was mentioned in a recent episode of EconTalk, where the guest was talking about statistical significance, p-hacking, etc. I'm Jamaican, so I perked up when it came up.

New comment by oz in "Sabotaged by Polish orthography"

oz — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 17:21:45 +0000

Ah, I must have been mistaken. Dziękuję!

New comment by oz in "Sabotaged by Polish orthography"

oz — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 17:05:02 +0000

> There's no need to know the singular for pierogi, because no one has ever eaten just one.

Ain't that the truth! My Polish friend also introduced me to 'pierogi rooski'? Apparently, a Russian take on pierogi, with more meat. Do I have the spelling correct?

> In return, I promise to continue working to stop Polish people from pluralizing potato chips as "chipsy".

As a Jamaican, where banana chips are like a national snack, it was amusing to see "chipsy bananowe" for sale. Fun times; I plan to go back.

New comment by oz in "Last major primeval forest in Europe on 'brink of collapse'"

oz — Tue, 23 May 2017 17:35:25 +0000

I spent two weeks in Poland last summer. Might I recommend Zakopane, hell, the entire Tatra Mountains region while we're at it? Absolutely spectacular.

New comment by oz in "Is WhatsApp down?"

oz — Wed, 03 May 2017 21:41:14 +0000

Down in Jamaica

New comment by oz in "Medieval villagers mutilated the dead to stop them rising, study finds"

oz — Mon, 03 Apr 2017 13:25:34 +0000

I'm Jamaican. My mom (64) says that when she was growing up, it was standard practice to hammer nails into the soles of the dead, so their spirits couldn't "walk".

New comment by oz in "Announcing GVFS: Git Virtual File System"

oz — Fri, 03 Feb 2017 19:50:40 +0000

>the logical thing to ask first is "what do they understand that I don't understand?".

There's even a name for this: "Going from D to C - from disparagement to curiosity". I think I first heard it from @patio11.

New comment by oz in "Lychee identified as cause for mystery deadly childhood illness in India"

oz — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 20:25:09 +0000

I'm from Jamaica, and grew up eating lots of lychees as well. Never had any problems. Only ate them ripe. I haven't had fresh lychees in years though, mostly now buying the canned ones in syrup from China.

The owners of lychee trees, however, had tons of issues. It's such a loved fruit that if you had such a tree, it was pretty much guaranteed that praedial thieves would strike. It got so bad that I remember one nurse in the community cutting down her tree when the sight of strange men roaming her yard became too much.

New comment by oz in "PyCaribbean Call to Proposals is open"

oz — Wed, 12 Oct 2016 21:33:49 +0000

I was a speaker at the inaugural PyCaribbean 2015 earlier this year in Santo Domingo - I gave a talk on doing the first and only Google Transit implementation in the Caribbean (in Kingston, Jamaica).

It was a great conference - Lots of camaraderie, talks available in English and Spanish, ranging from Python's type system to one guy's experience teaching Python in rural Argentina. Johnny Gill (a real character!) from Bermuda showed me a system using Raspberry Pis to collect weather data. Unfortunately, I missed Allen B Downey's talk, but caught Brandon Rhodes' (opening) and Jacob Kaplan-Moss' (closing) keynotes.

If you're anywhere near the region, come on out! It's tropical nerdery at its finest :)

@skfroi - It's Oswald, from Jamaica.

New comment by oz in "Microsoft Edge now gets even more out of your battery"

oz — Thu, 15 Sep 2016 16:13:33 +0000

At home when I'm all plugged in, I have 3 Chrome windows, each with multiple tabs, spread across my PLP setup. Whenever I pop into a client, and awake from sleep, you can almost see the battery draining in real time. Edge to the rescue; and I'm glad they're putting the pressure on Google to do better.

Pro Tip: You think Edge saves your battery? Sheeeeit....Try using the Movies & TV app vs VLC someday. M&TV is a certified power miser - I caught up on several TV shows plus The Martian on a flight from Montego Bay to Frankfurt a few months ago, using my Toshiba Encore 10" tablet that isn't exactly known for its battery life.

New comment by oz in "Weirdly broken Wi-Fi access points"

oz — Tue, 13 Sep 2016 15:04:52 +0000

Was a 2% drop really that noticeable?

New comment by oz in "The Metaprogrammer"

oz — Wed, 07 Sep 2016 18:04:59 +0000

I have an Asus 21:9 29", 2560x1080, not 3440x1440 like the LG you mention (which I've considered). The extra width is nice, and the aspect ratio is perfect when watching movies, but I find I need more vertical pixels.

Instead of the 34", wouldn't make sense to just go 4K (3824x2160) and get it over with? You're getting more vertical AND horizontal pixels. Personally, I'm salivating at the Seiki SM40UNP (40"). Anything smaller at 4K resolution and you'll need display scaling, negating the size gain. I don't think my 2013 ultrabook can drive it at 60Hz, but there are apocryphal reports that I may be able to eke out 50Hz.

New comment by oz in "The Metaprogrammer"

oz — Wed, 07 Sep 2016 17:57:39 +0000

>You might have thought that metaprogramming meant macros, type introspection, that kind of thing. Nope, I'm hijacking the word for today:

Not hijacking. Overloading. ;)

New comment by oz in "Users You Don’t Want"

oz — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 00:42:59 +0000

NRE = 'Non-recurring engineering', for those as ignorant as I was.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-recurring_engineering

New comment by oz in "Turn Off Cortana Completely in Windows 10 Anniversary Update"

oz — Wed, 17 Aug 2016 17:16:09 +0000

Sometimes, I put something in the freezer for a quick (30 mins) cooldown. Me being me, I'll forget about it aso soon as I close the freezer. I've lost several beers that way.

Now? "Ok Google...set timer for 30 mins." Much quicker than unlocking, finding the Clock app, and fat-fingering the time widgets. This also works for reminders and a host of other things.

Speech recognition is not a gimmick.

New comment by oz in "With Windows 10, Microsoft Disregards User Choice and Privacy"

oz — Wed, 17 Aug 2016 17:06:40 +0000

>but there should be an "I'm not a normie" switch somewhere...

Which will then summarily be used by malware authors and we're back we started.

New comment by oz in "OnHub"

oz — Tue, 18 Aug 2015 17:56:36 +0000

It has a USB 3.0 port:

https://on.google.com/hub/#specs