rectangletangle

Joined 13 years ago

Karma

813

Submissions

370

Member since

Dec 1

View on Hacker News

Recent submissions

Comment · 7 years ago

"Practicality beats purity"

Comment · 7 years ago

Orange juice isn't actually all that healthy. Many "natural" sugars are bound up with fiber, diluting them lowering their glycemic index. Also IIRC there was some research a few years back that asserted the ratio of different sugar types actually had a significant impact on the metabolism.

Comment · 7 years ago

I actually attempted to do this.

I used ML techniques to help smooth over some of the difficult parts (there are many difficult parts). The hardest cases are ambiguous names, for instance delineating Hispanic vs. Puerto Rican naming conventions (they're different). The fundamental approach involved pushing all ambiguity up to the end user, so they always have the option to correct the system.

https://www.alphanym.com/demo/?jm2

Comment · 7 years ago

I actually wrote an API for handling personal names, because software mangling people's names irked my pedanticism. The fundamental takeaway is that names are ridiculously complex, equivalent to any other part of natural language. For every rule you could contrive there are exceptions, and many more legitimately ambiguous cases.

You shouldn't ever use first/last name fields, because they force users to adapt around your system (many names don't follow this structure). A long unstructured text fields is best, because it can accommodate nearly anyone who's name can be spelled with unicode. Finally always check your interpretation of a name with the person in question, seeing as they're the end authority.

https://www.alphanym.com/demo/?jm1

Comment · 7 years ago

  >>> wiki_list = []
  >>> wiki_list.append(wiki_list)
  >>> print(wiki_list)
  [[...]]

Comment · 7 years ago

Transposing a matrix in Python is pretty neat.

  >>>list(zip(*[(1, 2, 3), (4, 5, 6), (7, 8, 9)]))
  [(1, 4, 7), (2, 5, 8), (3, 6, 9)]

Comment · 7 years ago

It exists in California too at least.

Comment · 7 years ago

These exist in the US, but they're called black and white cookies. According to Wikipedia they may have been created in New York by Bavarian immigrants. But it's unclear if the confection's origin is German or American.

Comment · 7 years ago

Not quite, I'm referring to american fritessaus, which is more like mayonaise, and distinct from thousand island dressing (which is popular in the US, In-N-Out calls it "spread").

Digging a little deeper it appears like McDonalds may have actually invented the sauce to appeal to the Dutch market, where fritessaus is popular (instead of tomato ketchup). Because McDonalds is American, their take on fritessaus grew into it's own thing called "American Fritessaus," or simply "American Saus."

https://www.hollandsupermarket.eu/remia-fritessaus-american-...

Comment · 7 years ago

https://www.hollandsupermarket.eu/remia-fritessaus-american-...

http://www.typicaldutchstuff.com/ahamericanfritessaus-pi-364...

https://cf.geekdo-images.com/camo/271763ae14b82c0f612b6b9f61...

This is what I'm referring to.

Comment · 7 years ago

Lol reminds me of Hawaiian pizza (pizza topped with pineapples and thinly sliced ham). Hawaiian pizza is actually a Canadian dish, though it's now popular in most of the US, including Hawaii.

Comment · 7 years ago

On the west coast of the US people sometimes jokingly refer to Oregon as "God's Country," because it has lots of churches.

Comment · 7 years ago

Not exactly the same thing. It's like mayo but thinner and sweeter, and has little green fleks in it.

Comment · 7 years ago

For those who are curious it's basically mayonnaise, but not quite. There is no direct equivalent in US cuisine to my knowledge.

Comment · 7 years ago

Kind of curious what the counterpart to this would be. What things are typically ascribed to Americans, that Americans are often unaware of?

American Sauce in the Netherlands comes to mind.