tsuyoshi

I tried to do this not too long ago, but (at least in the US) all of the mobile networks are switching to LTE, and shutting down their 2G and 3G networks. I was unable to find any "dumb" phones with LTE support. The closest thing I found was some overpriced Android phone with most of the smartphone features stripped out.

The decision I most regret was moving to a city without many tech jobs (Philadelphia). The difference in number of available jobs, salaries, working conditions, and even the intelligence of coworkers is kind of mind-blowing, now that I've moved back to a city with a lot of tech jobs (Seattle). The cost of living is higher here, but it's worth it.

In Cambodia, I got what I assume must have been a less serious case, because I didn't have any vomiting or diarrhea, only the worst headache I've ever had in my life. Luckily the lack of air conditioning wasn't a big problem, because it was close to the coldest part of the year.

It permanently reset my pain scale. When I later had a pulmonary embolism and appendicitis, the doctors were confused that I said my pain was only 7 on a scale of 1 to 10.

The drug I took for it (mefloquine) didn't give me any unusual dreams, but it permanently altered something in my brain.

I don't agree that DDT is necessary to eradicate malaria. See for example that malaria has been eradicated in Thailand (except for border areas), but not (yet) in Cambodia, Laos, or Myanmar, despite having the same climate. A combination of regular pesticides and flood control are sufficient - if the government is competent and dedicated. It's a political problem, not a technical problem.

If you want to parse complicated strings using only a POSIX tool, and put the results into an array, you're better off using Awk.

When I converted a CPU-intensive program from OCaml to MLton-compiled SML, without changing any of the algorithms, I got a 30% speedup. That was more than 10 years ago though, and both compilers have seen some improvement since.

I wrote this for parsing CSV in Awk: http://yumegakanau.org/code/awk-csv/ It maybe doesn't handle all the CSV out there, but the cases you mention (quoting and commas) it does handle.

I usually load CSV data into PostgreSQL to do anything with it; mostly wrote this Awk library for fun. So I'm not going to argue that Awk is the best language for doing this kind of thing, but it is possible.

I never had a Facebook account.

For political science, these are not exactly textbooks, but they are by far the most useful I've ever read:

The Art of Political Manipulation by William H. Riker

Get Out the Vote by Donald P. Green and Alan S. Gerber

Well, I majored in both political science and computer science. I don't think the two cases are different at all. I find it very irritating to deal with both political people who don't understand any math, and computer people who can't write a coherent sentence.

However, if I had to pick one mathematical subject everyone should learn, it wouldn't be algebra, it would be statistics.

Your wife could move to the US, get even a minimum wage job, and sponsor you for an IR-1. This would require living apart for probably at least a year.

Or, if she has any family or friends in the US, they can sponsor you. This is what I did for my wife's visa - my brother sponsored her.

Or, if you have some savings, you can use that instead of income. Savings counts 1/3 as much as income.

Or... you really should not go to the US on the visa waiver program with the intention of filing for adjustment of status after arriving. But, if you do enter the US without that intention, you can then file for adjustment of status.

I would not bother filing for any other type of visa, personally. Permanent residence will, among other things, make the job search easier.

x86-64 replaced the stack with registers. So this article, while interesting, is not of much practical use anymore.

"Vim is, without question, the worst C codebase I have seen."

From the example you give, I agree it must be bad. But if you want to see something worse, check out PHP. No, not the billions of programs written in the PHP language (which are, indeed, almost all terrible), but the C source to the PHP interpreter.

Obviously PHP was invented by someone who just doesn't care about creating a decent programming language. Everyone knows that; it has been pointed out so many times that it's a cliche. But if you look at the source to the implementation, you will find that it was developed by someone who is so incompetent that whether they care or not is beside the point. Dealing with that codebase (and thinking about how successful PHP has become) made me question my will to live.

I guess this is talking about price-to-book? In some other countries, price-to-book is usually close to 1, or even below it, which always struck me as strange. Either something is wrong with their stock markets, or companies are not as profitable as they might be for some reason. (Maybe a good reason; profits aren't everything in life). I'm not familiar with the Q ratio so maybe it's a slightly different concept...

It makes sense for a single company, if it is so unprofitable, even including future potential profitability, that it really should be shut down and stripped for assets. But ordinarily I would expect a company to be worth significantly more than its book value. Otherwise, you could easily recreate the company by just "replacing" the assets. But this is only true if the company is based entirely on easily replaceable, low skill labor. Are there any large companies like this anymore?

In reality, there are intangible assets - and I'm not talking about software etc. - that are very difficult to measure, and guarantee that any worthwhile business should be valued at more than its tangible assets. Some things are hard to price, but might be possible to sell off: brand identity, customer base, marketing data, etc. Still, replacing these things is hard.

Some things are very hard to sell off. Businesses have employees, and employees are in an organizational structure where they know how to work with other employees to get their jobs done. As well, there are relationships with contractors and vendors. Replacing these is extremely hard.

Another issue, comparing the MLton FFI and the Ocaml FFI, is that the FFI in MLton is somewhat slower. When I converted an Ocaml program to SML, I discovered that a small portion written in C ran much faster when I rewrote it in SML. In Ocaml, writing portions in C is almost always a performance win, just because the Ocaml compiler doesn't optimize very well. In MLton there's a bit of overhead just for the FFI (possibly because the code generator allocates registers very differently from how it's done in C). That overhead goes away if you use the C code generator instead, but usually the native code generator performs better anyway.

If I remember correctly, it has been proposed to rewrite the MLton floating point conversion in pure SML for precisely this reason.

I am American and my wife is Cambodian. We live in a Cambodian neighborhood in the United States. We have a daughter, born in Cambodia, who is now 4. I speak to her in English and her mother (and everyone else in the neighborhood) speaks to her in Cambodian. Until she started preschool last September, virtually everyone except myself talked to her in Cambodian.

Not too long ago, she asked me why some person (I think it was a waiter at a restaurant) spoke English and not Cambodian. For her, everyone spoke Cambodian, and then some of them also spoke English. I tried to explain that in America, most people actually speak English and not Cambodian. After that explanation, she kept asking "is this place America?" everywhere we went for a few days.

Given that by far most of the water in California is used for growing food, an interesting question would be: at what point is it cheaper to grow the food somewhere else where water is more abundant? Of course the amount of sunlight, temperature etc. would factor in too. But with enough energy, you can simulate the conditions of California anywhere.

When I was living in Cambodia, I heard someone talking about how you could buy citizenship there. I assumed that it would be involve bribing a government official, since that's the kind of place Cambodia is. But I found out that in fact, Cambodian nationality law explicitly says you can apply for citizenship after donating 1 billion riel (about $250 thousand) to the government. But you still have to pass a Cambodian language test (which I've heard you can bribe your way around anyway - total cost I've heard is about $500 thousand).

Unfortunately though, a Cambodian passport is almost worthless. You get visa-free entry to ASEAN (Southeast Asia) countries and that's about it. My daughter has Cambodian citizenship, but I never bothered to apply for a Cambodian passport for her, since her US passport is totally sufficient.

That deal on Cypriot citizenship seems like a pretty good deal though. An EU passport would be more valuble than just about anything else. I imagine it won't last though; I would bet the other EU members would try to stop it.

http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b5210.html

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/pros-and-cons-selling-...

Actually, both the DJIA and the S&P 500 (the index that's actually worth a damn) are produced by the same entity these days: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S&P_Dow_Jones_Indices

I wonder who actually does care about the Dow? Are there actually a lot of investors that don't know any better? Or is it just people who think the stock market is important (itself questionable) but don't know anything about it?

This is not really my area of expertise, but is the Harvard CS department actually in the same league as Stanford? When I think of top CS schools, I think of MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and Berkeley. Neither Harvard nor Yale come to mind. Maybe they are trying to play up the HYS rivalry for people that know even less about this than I do.

I live in South Philadelphia (7th and Oregon), and while I have neither Comcast nor Verizon service, it seems like I can get either. They both mail me at least once a week, and occasionally come to my door, asking me to sign up. I investigated signing up for FIOS, but the cost was $90/month, and it just isn't worth that much to me. I have FIOS at work and it's fantastic, but my employer only pays $25/month for it.

From what I understand, Verizon is not expanding their FIOS service area anymore, because so many people are like me, and don't want to pay much for it.

I think a better title might be: I Missed the Obamacare Open-Enrollment Deadline, So I Fly to Britain for My Medication.

There are exceptions to the open-enrollment deadline. The author is not completely clear on his situation, but two exceptions may apply: gaining "status" (i.e. permission to work, or permanent residency) or moving to a new area. Either will allow you 30 days to apply through the insurance marketplace. It would be interesting to know if neither of these applied, or if even Obamacare-subsidized insurance wouldn't cover the drug he needs.

The fact that prescription drugs are more expensive in the US than anywhere else is not news to me, at least...

Here is my anecdote:

I wanted to know more about my representative to the state legislature. First I went to Wikipedia. It had a stub page, with only basic biographic information. Checking elsewhere, I found that the FBI and IRS raided his office, home, and business some time ago. His chief of staff, his business partner, and and a former staffer that became a judge were all convicted of fraud and/or tax evasion. Other than this, his political career was a whole lot of nothing.

So, having done this research, I put it into the relevant Wikipedia article, with appropriate references to news articles and legal documents, carefully noting that he himself was never charged with anything. Reading between the lines, I realize that the authorities tried to get his subordinates to roll over on him, but failed - but that kind of subjectivity doesn't belong in an encyclopedia article.

Anyway, less than a minute later, the change was reverted because of "vandalism". Whoever reverted it had either not even glanced at the change, or was a supporter of this politician, protecting his page from negative information. Probably the former, but who knows?

This was the last, and worst, example of me wasting my time trying to contribute to Wikipedia. I have had every single change I have ever made to Wikipedia reverted (going back years). Sometimes I have done it anonymously, sometimes I have logged in; it doesn't make any difference in my experience. What seems to matter is if you're willing to put in the time to master Wikipedia's bureaucratic procedure, which I am not. I just don't bother anymore. So to me, this article makes perfect sense.

But I have to admit that I still read Wikipedia all the time. It is without question, the most useful web site there is. It's not as comprehensive as I would like, and for subjective information it's actually quite bad, but I think that in general it seems to be getting better over time, on both counts. So I don't know if you can say it's declining.

By the way, despite him either being a crook, or merely employing crooks on his staff, I voted for him anyway, just last week. I really don't have a vendetta against this guy.

Well, the cause of death for someone dying from their addiction is not always "drug overdose", but things like accident, murder, or suicide, which in fact are the top three causes of death for young adults.

This article is somewhat confused. The author seems to be asserting that Tokyo is so populous because more people commute by Shinkansen than by other means, but that would be totally false. The number of people commuting by non-Shinkansen trains is much, much higher. And how can the long-term shift of business from Osaka to Tokyo be explained by the Shinkansen? There are far more people living west of Tokyo (i.e., in the direction of Osaka) than north of it, so I don't see how the Shinkansen, on its own, shifts the center of gravity toward Tokyo. Or what about the growth of the west side of the Yamanotesen (i.e. Ikebukuro, Shinjuku, and Shibuya), which the Shinkansen doesn't even serve? The Shinkansen is great and all, but this article doesn't make any sense to me.

I agree about some tropical fruits (mangoes and durians especially), but I've had bananas straight off the tree in Southeast Asia and they really didn't taste any different to me.

Most of the people using pay-per-ride cards don't have credit cards (or debit cards). The credit card-only machines are mostly for disbursing monthly unlimited cards. And most tourists in New York, believe it or not, don't even use the subway. So this is really a problem that affects a small minority of people.

As an executive at a nonprofit, I was renting an apartment several blocks from my office. The apartment building was purchased by a developer who proceeded to convert them to condos. I was offered some money (I think $1500 or so) to end my lease early. I was planning on leaving the country in a few months anyway, so I took the money, and just moved all my belongings into my office.

I stored my clothes in an otherwise-unused filing cabinet, took showers at a gym a few blocks away, and slept on the floor, with just a blanket and pillow. The biggest problem was laundry; the nearest laundromat was pretty far away and I didn't have a car. I ended up strapping a sack full of clothes to the back of my bicycle and riding a couple miles to the laundromat every weekend.

I had a private room with a door that closed, but everyone at the office knew what I was doing. The only conceit was that I claimed that it was only temporary until I could find the right place to move into; in reality I found it so convenient and cheap that I stayed for over a year (until I did, in fact, leave the country). One Friday night, I even had a friend stay over; he slept on a couch in someone else's room.

Our organization rented a suite in a larger building, and every morning when I woke up and went to the restroom, I saw other people seemingly doing the same thing. One guy even went to the restroom every morning in a bathrobe. From about 6-7AM it reminded me a truck stop restroom, with people brushing their teeth and giving themselves sponge-baths at the sink. There are zoning laws that prohibit people from sleeping in offices, but I think the property manager didn't really care as long as everyone was reasonably discreet.

There were a few significant disadvantages. First, there was no kitchen. I had an electric kettle that I used to cook ramen, which I would add eggs and canned meat and vegatables to, but that was about it, except for eating out. There were plenty of nice restaurants nearby, and I had plenty of extra money from not paying rent, so it was not a huge problem.

Second, personal mail. The US Postal Service has a policy of not forwarding mail, addressed to an individual at a commercial address, to a residential address. This meant that when I forwarded my mail from my apartment to my office, I couldn't later forward my mail from my office to somewhere else.

Third, the gym was not open on holidays. On Thanksgiving and Christmas, I went to my parents' house anyway, so I just took a shower there. But for other holidays like Labor Day and Independence Day, I had to do without a shower.

I would do it again. Actually, I would even consider just renting an office instead of an apartment to live in. Generally speaking, office space is cheaper, easier to rent, and more centrally located than housing. These days though, I'm married, and my wife would not be so enthusiastic.

The closest is probably MLton, a compiler for Standard ML.

Most HTML email I receive also has a text version. I prefer text, but I don't see why you can't do both.

I think there's something else going on there though...

South Korea (per capita GDP $24k) is hardly the only success story in that part of the world. Japan ($38k), Hong Kong ($38k), Singapore ($55k), and Taiwan ($20k) have basically pulled off the same trick. All these places have in common that they are either Chinese (mostly Chinese, in Singapore's case) or very closely related culturally to China (Korea and Japan are more closely related to China than, for example, Laos or Myanmar). They are all small, without huge agricultural potential or much other resources, but with good access to the sea.

A more recent, and possibly more relevant example is Malaysia ($11k). Malaysia is an interesting case. It is majority Muslim, but it has a significant non-Muslim Chinese minority that controls most of the economy. It is a large petroleum exporter, but it has successfully expanded to manufacturing and services, arguably escaping the "resource curse".

You might be tempted to conclude that Malaysia pulled this off because of their Chinese population (and I know some Malays have said exactly this), but there are counterexamples to this - Thailand ($6k), Indonesia ($4k), Vietnam ($2k) and Cambodia ($1k) all have significant ethnic Chinese populations. On the other hand, ethnic Chinese control business in all those countries far out of proportion to their share of the population.

What useful lessons Arabs can draw from this I have no idea. Well, I have some idea: just look at North Korea ($0.6k) and Vietnam ($2k). The lesson isn't just simply "communism is bad" though, because they are well behind Russia ($15k) and even Cuba ($6k).