Recent submissions

Comment · 4 years ago
We didn't see massive uprisings in Nazi Germany also, and there were some Jewish individuals collaborated with the Nazi regime. Your argument couldn't be less convincing.
Comment · 12 years ago
For a moment I thought I was reading a Xinhua article.
Comment · 12 years ago
Well, 'nearby pretty girl' would not describer herself as such, but would have a plausible looking profile picture. :) Also the distances are a bit bigger than the bar you're sitting in (up to a few kilometers).
Comment · 12 years ago
It's a problem because of spam.

On WeChat it happens that if you send a message to a 'nearby pretty girl', you get a link to some dodgy website back.

And before you call people who would send a message to a 'nearby pretty girl' naive. WeChat is in fact used a lot for hooking up with strangers.

Comment · 12 years ago
Actually, it's quite frustrating. It means that for many (geeky, 'international') apps that I'm interested in there's no rating available.
Comment · 13 years ago
My question wasn't whether neurons have agency. It was whether people have agency.

Also, I intended 'limited agency' to be read as 'zero or very little agency'.

Comment · 13 years ago
That's a question, not an argument.

Here's another question: "How can a human being, which consists of many neurons, each of which has limited agency over the aggregate actions of that entity, be remotely capable of demonstrating moral agency?"

Incidentally, I noticed that you substituted 'human-like moral agency' for 'moral agency' in the OP. I never said states have human-like moral agency (nor am I making a claim to the contrary per se).

Comment · 13 years ago
You state your opinion as facts, but forget to give an argument. The least you could do is provide a reference.

Prima facie, I don't find your view plausible at all.

Comment · 13 years ago
Great customer service??

I don't have experience with other mobile phone companies in the US, but T-Mobile's customer support line is unlike anything I had ever experienced in Europe. It made my experiences with China Unicom not seem all that bad—and that's saying something!.

I have experienced the following things:

- I would be on the phone for ten or twenty minutes before I could speak to an operator;

- The voice recognition software utterly failed for me (granted, I'm not a native English speaker but I have few to no problems with Siri);

- I would be connected to different departments several times, in circles;

- I would have to enter my mobile phone number over and over again;

- The operators were entirely clueless about SIM cards for iPads and about their inability to accept foreign credit cards.

It's very much reminiscent of calling a national phone company for support in Europe in the 80s.

Also, I've been in T-Mobile shops where they didn't know the term 'SIM card'. They would literally ask me if it was one of those cards you put into an iPhone, and then tell me I could only buy those online (indeed, they're not free!).

They're also very, very expensive by European standards. Again, my previous horrible experience with China telcos made a lot more sense after being a T-Mobile customer. I now realize they just copy the US a little to eagerly!

Edit: Here's an example. When you would call to top up your SIM card they would enumerate all the plans you could get starting from the most absurdly expensive plans that you wouldn't otherwise realize existed. A reasonably priced plan would only come in as the 7th option and it would take a minute or more before they'd tell you what button to press. It was a very painful process to top up my SIM card and I imagine that if I lived in the US longtime I'd ultimately give in and just get a monthly plan that I didn't really want.

Comment · 13 years ago
Interestingly, in the Netherlands they often call them Flemish fries. Flanders being the Dutch-language region in Belgium.

If you called them that in Belgium I bet you would cause a riot. ;-)

Comment · 13 years ago
Comment · 13 years ago
> McDonald's french fries are great. At their best, they are everything a french fry should be: salty, crisp, light, and not greasy.

Funny. I tend to think of super thin fries as an American thing. Fries from McDonald's, in particular, taste like cardboard to me.

Then again, I'm Belgian.

Comment · 13 years ago
"Americans have an anti-nationalist, universalist ideology"

Come on. You're just trolling.

Comment · 13 years ago
Spying on foreign corporations, if I were to guess.

Live from the official Hacker News API

A modern reader for Hacker News · SvelteKit + Skeleton