Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | Archelaos's commentslogin

Get a sustainable job first. (Almost) Whatever it is. Then improve from there.

I agree. It looks very unprofessional. No contact adress. No representative person. No explanation of the acronym "EU-INC". Big buzzwords, visions, clichés and self congratulation.

Which isn't to say that "making commerce cheaper in Europe" isn't a worthwhile goal, it is- but at face value this attempt looks comically inept. "We wrote an email to a politician! Progress due any moment! Like and share!"

Doing the insufferable, thankless work of mitigating the commercial choke-points of bureaucracy on a Continental scale makes this effort's failure a forgone conclusion. I would take the attempt more seriously if the individuals tried to make their own country more commerce-friendly, rather than all of Europe.

Even so, points for trying something- anything- and raising "awareness".


The share of the USD as a reserve currency has already been slowly declining over the last decade, although it is all but dramatic. The reduction is not in favour of another particular currency. Instead, the proportion of minor currencies is increasing. Here is a diagram for the years 2016 to 2023: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/232562/umfrag...

If customs duties act like a domestic tax, wouldn't that mean that they should initially be considered neutral? They would then be another type of consumption tax. Any assessment would have to be made in the context of the tax system as a whole. Are consumption taxes too high overall? Too low? Or just right? Who pays the taxes? Is that fair? Who and what are the taxes collected spent on? Etc.

That's the neat part, you don't.

Neat as in fantastic - it literally can't get any better - for the oligarchs. Tax the poor, and tell them we're collecting money for them, from the foreigners.

Raise and lower the rates willy-nilly, no need to really justify why you're squeezing who.


From the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

  burgher noun
  ...
  1: an inhabitant of a borough or a town
  2: a member of the middle class : a prosperous solid citizen
Source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/burgher


> stuff I saved only 10 years ago

There have been a lot of practical options around in the last three decades for using Unicode. To name just a few: Unicode is around since 1991. UTF-16 was supported in Windows NT in 1993. XML (1998) was specified based on Unicode code points. ...


As for many standards, the question is less what's available/supported and more what's the format actually used irl.

Half the mail I received from that period was in iso-2022 (a JIS variant), most of the rest was latin-1. I have an auto-generated mail from google plus(!) from 2015 in iso-2022-jp, I actually wonder when Google decided it was safe to fully move to utf-8.


Yep. Slow reading of HN comments also has its benefits.


I guess this person sees the same mental image as me: Tents with wet floor, moisture sucked into everything inside. A tent that’s been in a lake sounds like a throwaway to me. But maybe what you see as a tent is different from what I see.

For me the story was also a bit weird. “Just take the tents out of the water”. Ok…


Even if that were true (and it obviously isn't), what then would be the point of expending tremendous time and energy to "dam it off and keep it dry"?

These are alternative ways to keep the tents dry ... which entails that they were never soaked in the first place.

> A tent that’s been in a lake

The tents were never in the lake. A few inches of the campsite was in the lake at high water.

> sounds like a throwaway to me

Do you have any experience with this? I've been on trips where tents and even sleeping bags ended up in a river. They don't dissolve ...they can be dried in the sun. And a tent with a wet floor can be wiped down.

> “Just take the tents out of the water”.

Those words don't appear anywhere. Try looking at the actual words and not just your mental images.


> The tents were never in the lake. A few inches of the campsite was in the lake at high water. [...] Those words don't appear anywhere. Try looking at the actual words and not just your mental images.

I think some people are interpreting “campsite” as the literal space occupied by the tent’s ground sheet while you are interpreting it as the broader area - which in an organised institutional arrangement might be called the “campground”

To use an analogy, think of being in a partly flooded parking space vs parking lot

It makes sense that someone with the former interpretation - the tent ground sheet submerged by a few inches of water - would understand that the tent got soaked.


I've always understood "campground" to be a whole area open to camping with dozens or hundreds of campers. A campsite is where your group's claim is staked and the area you occupy including picnic tables, fires, etc--not just the tent.


I'm interpreting the word as what it means and how it is obviously being used. No one takes "campsite" to mean "the literal space occupied by the tent’s ground sheet" unless they are playing some silly sophistic game. Here is what it means (pick your own source ... they are all similar and none agrees with your definition):

"A campsite is a designated area where individuals can set up bedding, sleeping bags, or cooking equipment, such as stoves or fires. This definition encompasses any location that allows for sleeping or cooking, regardless of whether it includes a tent, lean-to, shack, or other structures."

And here's the Wikipedia description, which notes that the English "campsite" is equivalent to the American "campground", but that is broader and neither is so absurdly narrow as your words:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campsite

> would understand that the tent got soaked

I already refuted this nonsense ... there is no reason to think from the OP's description that the tent got soaked.

> To use an analogy, think of ...

I don't need any help with thinking, especially from bad analogies that are flatly contradicted by the OP's description. What's the parking lot analogy to building dams?


I guess the term "tent" is pretty broad, this is what I see: [0], the cotton does not take being in water very well.

But I guess a synthetic ultra light tent will do better.

I also assumed the tents were already there when he arrived (complete assumption, but the term campsite conjures up a place with tents already there), and so must be of the more heavy more stationary kind.

Anyway, the point is, I also had this question: Where do you go when you mess up your tent like that? How can a dam in a layer of water make it dry? Don't you need a dam and then pump it dry.

This is going too far, I just wanted to defend the question. Maybe it's a cultural difference.

[0] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=de+waard+tent&ia=images&iax...


> Maybe it's a cultural difference.

It appears that you are confused with West European camping, which is where you drive two days to the south of France (most of which stuck in traffic), pay large amounts of money for a patch of perfectly flat grass where you are allowed to park your car and set up your tent. In a grid pattern with hundreds of other tents. Where there is a building nearby for toilets and showers. And a swimming pool plus live entertainment for the children.

OP appears to be talking about camping in nature.


A “campsite” is a relatively flat and relatively root/stump-free patch of dirt. That’s it. Also tents are generally not made out of the canvas material you linked that yurts and teepees might be made from.

Tents are generally made of a very wuick-drying, thin synthetic.

And like the other person said, this does make it seem like you’ve potentially never been camping but i don’t want to gatekeep the definition of “camping”. My version is carrying everything I need on my back for two weeks and walking 10-15 miles each day to the next campsite (read: “patch of dirt”, preferably near fresh water). Other people “camp” in RV’s though, so.


Camping is just the bit about sleeping at night. I’d call your version hiking/walking/backpacking depending where I am.


Of course it's not.

"A campsite is a designated area where individuals can set up bedding, sleeping bags, or cooking equipment, such as stoves or fires. This definition encompasses any location that allows for sleeping or cooking, regardless of whether it includes a tent, lean-to, shack, or other structures."

I would note that camping also involves sitting in campchairs talking, reading, singing, etc.

And

> I’d call your version hiking/walking/backpacking depending where I am.

The hiking/walking/backpacking is what nerdsniper does between campsites:

> My version is carrying everything I need on my back for two weeks and walking 10-15 miles each day ==> to the next campsite <==

Despite his phrasing, he of course is not saying that hiking == camping.


Of course what's not what? If you're going to attempt to be a pedant, you need to also be precise.


Have you tried hammock camping? I only tried it at a campground, so, maybe there are some downsides I missed for the real backpackers. But it was pretty cool to not care about roots, the flatness of my patch of ground, or anything like that.


I have! And i do love it. Hammocks generally benefit from very dense forest/tree cover just in case it’s raining!


Natural fiber canvas tents take to water about the same as your tee shirt does. Which is to say perfectly fine. Soaking them for a few days or even weeks shouldn't really bother them if the water is not warm and stagnant (like a nice clean lake). The biggest killer is storing them still wet.


That's a dangerous conspiracy theory.


> the term campsite conjures up a place with tents already there

You've never been camping. Ok.


I think you’re viewing this through your own cultural lens where camping can be totally solo (in the woods?)

In England, we can’t just pitch up a tent in the woods, we need to pay for a campsite where there’s other tents.

I suspect, from their description, this person is from a different country again, where camping may happen in large open steppe with lots of other yurts.


Nothing you wrote contradicts anything I said about camping. Someone else suggested that "campsite" just means the area covered by a tent and its groundcover, which is closer to the "mental image" of the other person who wrongly believes that tents got waterlogged, but is the arch opposite of yours. I've camped in the woods, on open steppes, and in designated camping areas in French and English towns. In each of those cases I brought my own tent, but I've also "glamped" and stayed in existing canvas-sided structures, from Yosemite to Mont St. Michel.

Also, this is about a campsite a few inches of which is in a lake, and people moving their tents. But apparently paying attention to the actual context is optional for some people.


I’m not trying to dispute your version of events. I’m just offering a suggestion of what teekert had in their mind when they thought of a campsite, to better help you see where the misunderstanding comes from. Given they replied with agreement, I hope I captured it accurately.

I also feel it was unnecessary to dismiss their experience as “not camping,” just because it was different to yours. It turns a learning opportunity for us all into a needlessly toxic argument.


None of this is responsive to my comment that you are responding to ... I find that quite toxic. And I will note that you wrote this toxic criticism:

> I think you’re viewing this through your own cultural lens where camping can be totally solo (in the woods?)

Again, your notion of my experience of camping does not come from anything I actually wrote ... that's quite toxic.

And recognizing the mere possibility of camping solo in the woods (which has nothing to do with anything in this thread--the OP was in a group on a lakeshore) has nothing to do with a "cultural lens".

That's the last I will say about this trivial matter.


> I think you’re viewing this through your own cultural lens where camping can be totally solo (in the woods?)

Allow me to correct myself: I meant to say I believed you were referring wild camping, away from a commercial site (either alone or part of a group).

> None of this is responsive to my comment that you are responding to ... I find that quite toxic.

You find it toxic that I won’t join you in an argument that only you want to have?

> Again, your notion of my experience of camping does not come from anything I actually wrote ... that's quite toxic.

I just woke up an hour ago. Did you find that toxic, too?


Yeah, this.


I’ve been camping, on trips that ranged from “park on the side of the road and set up a tent” to “hike four days carrying everything” and also “drive to campsite, walk into permanent managed tent”. Sounds like you’ve only done a more limited range of camping trips.


No, it doesn't sound like that at all, and you have offered no reason to think so. It's the other person who clearly has an extremely limited notion of camping: "the term campsite conjures up a place with tents already there" -- perhaps you have the two of us mixed up. And the OP said that they moved the tents, so ass-u-me ing that they were fixed structures is not rational.


Why would noticing that someone had "an extremely limited notion of camping" make you suggest that they had no experience at all? And if you are familiar with the form they mentioned, why would you act like you aren't?


Thanks for the attempt at a generous reading, but the truth of the matter is I just skimmed the comment and missed that bit. These things happen, no biggie.


Tents often are waterproof for the first few inches.


They don't teach reading comprehension like they used to.


How should they dinstinguish between real and fake data? It would be far to easy to pollute their models with nonesense.


I have no doubt that Microsoft has already classified the nature of my work and quality of my code. Of course it's probably "anonymized". But there's no doubt in my mind that they are watching everything you give them access to, make no mistake.


I found a bug: Got to World Countries. Select Germany. Click on View in API Docs. => I get California instead of Germany.

Your promise in the teaser to cover all ZIP codes is too grandiose as long as it supports only I have a customer who sells worldwide.

I have a customer who sells worldwide. For a company like this, an up-to-date API with the geographical locations of international postcodes would be very interesting for data analysis, ideally in conjunction with population data and options for assigning postcodes by region, proximity, etc.

However, the accuracy and timeliness of the data would be crucial, as expensive business decisions depend on it, such as which regions to select for advertising.


Thanks for pointing out the bug, will fix it to show the selected region once you get navigated to the docs.

For zip code, you can view the coverage we have via our explorer page here: https://borderly.dev/explorer

Curious about the customer, can you send some more info to me at zuhaz3@gmail.com


For reasons of confidentiality, I would prefer not to do so. Furthermore, implementing something like this is not yet a high priority.

There are some information services that offer global zip data, sometimes even as open source. Of course, we could combine this ourselves with other data sources on demographics, income or purchasing power. However, if something like this were available from a single source, it would naturally be easier to implement.

If you want to start a business with something like this, I would reckon that it might be hard to get started, because of the already existing competition, but it might become easier the more datasets you were able to integrate. -- Perhaps you should go deep first instead of broad. Something like starting with a single state and integrating all sort of data sources and then expand from there.


"Long-run growth is driven by a cumulative process of innovation. You stand on the shoulders of giants."

No. You stand on the shoulders of dwarfs, who stand on the shoulders of dwarfs, who stand on the shoulders of dwarfs, ...


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: