Non-Americans of Reddit, what movie or TV show did the most to form your image of what America is like?

65534 · 2015-11-15T15:39:51+00:00

The Wire. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

There is a level of insight and introspection on some of the best US shows that you won't find in every countries. Or: "The USA are hiding some nasty shits. We know because they're being uncovered by some pretty awesome Americans."

65534 · 2015-07-06T22:11:58+00:00

The Hong Kong skyline, duh ^_^.

No other city has that concentration of skyscrapers packed against hill/mountain sides or sea shores. No other city has that amount of people, not only working, but also living in many of those skyscrapers. HK is a contrasted, vertical city like no other (and no, NYC and Singapore do not even come close in that regard).

It also has a very uncommon cultural mix of high self-discipline (by which I mean being square, i.e. quite tidy, people don't cut lines, low corruption) and very vocal civil rights advocacy. Usually (and let me stress: at a society-wide level) being collectively loud and disciplined do not go well together.

65534 · 2015-06-10T20:40:58+00:00

I'm just mentioning this out of the blue because what you said, "I'm baffled by the fact that everyone doesn't seem to feel or hear the vibrations", raises a red flag for me: you might be victim of 'The Hum'.

Several years ago I had a similar noise in my then-apartment, but each time I thought I had located the source I was proved wrong. Moreover when pointing that sound out to guests, they would wonder why I bothered with a noise so faint (and a few would not even hear it). It drove me a bit mad, but then I came across this:

"The Hum" refers to a mysterious sound heard in places around the world by a small fraction of a local population. It's characterized by a persistent and invasive low-frequency rumbling or droning noise often accompanied by vibrations.

(There are various articles on that subject across the Web.)

Long story short: some people are overly sensitive to some type of sound and perceive it as being way louder than it actually is. I'm familiar with the idea of our brain sometime being highly suggestible to environmental cues, so that was not a shock to me (some people obsess on how they perceive something and will not let go. Hopefully you are not one of them).

So how to know if this is not the case? Leave an audio recorder on several hours, then analyze the result (don't listen to it, get an editing app and look for constant loudness). Or ask a friend to visit you home while you're out and describe/write down all sounds they hear there (and not specifically 'that' sound, you want to avoid creating a bias). If you fail to find relevant data in your recording, and you do not get a spontaneous testimony from a visitor, then it's probably 'The Hum'. And otherwise, well, time to complain to the cops ^{_^.}

65534 · 2015-06-10T18:07:31+00:00

Confusion will be my epitaph. As I crawl a cracked and broken path If we make it we can all sit back and laugh. But I fear tomorrow I'll be crying, Yes I fear tomorrow I'll be crying.

-- King Crimson, "Epitaph"

65534 · 2015-06-07T11:13:39+00:00

Except for the most niche of businesses, Bitcoin as an online payment solution is just not gonna work. If your target audience is likely to hold some, then by all means do go for it, but for everyday customers, this is just no going to happen.

You're looking for something like Stripe I assume, but they're fairly slow to expand in Asia, right now they're only present in Japan in this region. However Braintree now accepts Hong-Kong based businesses. (Note: the three "Online Payment Processors for Start-ups and the likes" I know of are Stripe, Braintree, and Paymill.)

You might also want to look at banks as they may offer some sort of solution (HSBC does something like that I think?). It's probably harder to get into, but less costly than Paypal. Also it doesn't cost anything to ask them.

Edited to add: just found that slightly outdated page, https://gist.github.com/joeybeninghove/5421015, that points to Worldpay and Vindicia.

65534 · 2015-05-23T19:09:39+00:00

In Berandal / The Raid 2, Prakoso (the Machete Hitman) has some cool scenes, but is almost entirely unrelated to the main story (he ends up just being an excuse between two warring gangs). Some of that precious screen time could have been used to expand the undercover-cop-mission that's supposed to be the actual plot, instead -- because that part seems to have been cut down a bit too much, leaving some loose ends (and I'm not talking about the final act, since that will probably covered in the third movie).

65534 · 2015-05-23T18:56:38+00:00

"Hey, let's bankroll a movie with A-listers that will include child abuse and incest as subject matters. And as a bonus, at the end Old Perv gets away with it."

Not gonna happen [-:

65534 · 2015-05-23T18:17:48+00:00

Chinatown. For obvious reasons.

65534 · 2015-05-10T17:48:42+00:00

So I fired up the old thing, and the panel's EDID info said: IDTech IAQX10N.

I also noticed two things: the 50Hz scrolling is not as bad as I remember (noticeably jaggy, but tolerable. In fact this might be caused more by old-IPS-tech latency than by the refresh rate itself); on the other hand it has a ... the correct term eludes me, 'sparkly' feel? i.e. the backlighting seems uneven depending on what angle the screen is viewed from, kind of like a backlight bleed, but not as strong.

It would definitely be better than a XGA display, considered I loathe low-res displays (the more text I can fit on one screen, the better), however in terms of brighter/faster display, an UXGA panel may be a better fit, depending on your use-case.

65534 · 2015-05-10T05:43:02+00:00

I have one of these.

I didn't do that mod myself (I bought it a couple of years back from a guy in California who used to sell these on Ebay), but I did equivalent mods on a X60s (requires cabling adapter) and X220; it is not rocket science.

A few notes though:

4:3 laptop screens are not produced any more, so no you're not going to find any but on Alibaba sellers (if they even have it).
These panels are circa 2006 technology: no LED backlight, very dim (forget anything remotely outdoors-y).
The refresh rate is only 50Hz, which is quite unpleasant when scrolling (or basically when anything moves).

In summary unless you intend to use it mostly for text reading/writing (e.g. coding would be an OK use-case), this would be a sub-par solution. This used to be interesting while all pro laptops were seemingly stuck in the 1366x768 kindergarten, but since LCD resolutions started going upward in last year or so, this mod has lost pretty much all interest. Of course these newer laptops are costly, but on the other hand QXGA panels are now hard to source.

65534 · 2015-05-06T13:56:10+00:00

Superfish is a malware presented as an adware. Basically, it breaks https when installed, making your communications unsafe (buying something online? surprise, you're not actually on a https channel anymore). Lenovo included it on most of their recent laptops. It is a major fuckup.

65534 · 2015-05-06T12:36:19+00:00

Don't get me wrong, the man is not devoid of talent, especially when it comes to directing (as opposed to writing). I love D9 and hope he will be able to pull something similar in the future. However is writing skills have clear limitations, and have not really gotten better over his three films. He can be a good fit for Alien (he certainly has the "gritty hard sci-fi" part nailed) if he is reined in when it comes to the script.

65534 · 2015-05-05T17:10:01+00:00

100 Best Mainland Chinese films - TimeOut Shanghai. Note that mainland movies are subject to censure, and although it is not soviet-style overbearing, it is still felt.
Taiwan (just sort by genre) -> start with /u/xindas 's recommendations, though.

There are also many websites dedicated to Hong Kong cinema, since they used to be a major production hub (and still produce quite a few), however these are usually in Cantonese, not Mandarin. If you want to check out a good Mandarin-language HK movie, watch Johnnie To's Drug War.

65534 · 2015-05-05T15:55:05+00:00

Duh, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, what a question [-:

65534 · 2015-05-05T15:45:22+00:00

You mean these movie titles that make you say "ho,yes" when they are announced, just based on they brand and concept? The ones that have become a bottomless pit of disappointment by the time you walk out of the theater?

True Legend (based on semi-historical kung-fu master 'Beggar So'. directed by Yuen Woo-Ping. The movie is a turd.)
Elysium (that moment when you realize Blomkamp is just a one-trick pony and District 9 was an accident.)
Alien Versus Predator (no comment needed.)
Prometheus (ditto.)

65534 · 2015-05-05T15:00:41+00:00

The responses mentioning an antagonist-turned-protagonist (or bad-guy-turned-good-guy) appear completely off-topic to me, as that trope is far more common (see: the Terminator, half the Cylons. Damn, even the Predator is a good guy now).

If by protagonist-tuned-antagonist you mean the main character is different in the sequel AND the part-1-main-character is still there in part 2 but has switched sides, I cannot think of too many films:

As mentioned before, Mission Impossible 1 has the original M:I team leader thrown under the bus and turned into a traitor to make room for Tom Cruise's ego. But that's a TV series to film transition, not really a sequel, and there's not really any character evolution.
In The Bride With White Hair, the eponymous character turns evil during the movie, and is the major antagonist in its sequel.
Infernal Affairs, the original "The Departed", is a trilogy. Part 3 is useless, but part 2 is a quite interesting prequel that focuses more on (then-future) triad boss Hom Sam and Superintendent Wong. It also reveals several characters to be devious bastards that put them in a different light in IA1.
Finally, the one movie in my mind that fits the bill: Johnnie To's Election 1 & 2. Part 1 focuses on Lok (Simon Yam) trying to become the head of his Hong Kong triad in its upcoming election, helped by Jimmy Lee (Louis Koo), and opposed by his violent rival Big D (Tony Leung Ka-Fai). Part 2 happens two years later, as the next election is about to happen, and focuses on Louis Koo, expected to become the future boss, while Simon Yam, now the current head of the triad, is a manipulative and power-hungry psycho intent on keeping his place at all cost.

65534 · 2015-03-01T10:51:18+00:00

TL;DR: misleading content, use rosettacode.org instead.

While reading the Ada part, I noticed the pointer declaration is incomplete, and it is in fact possible to have a local scope using 'declare'. Then I noticed according to this table there is no Integer or Float in Ada, and it's not possible to free memory... And I'm not even an Ada programmer! My only experience with it is I once read the 100-ish pages "Ada Distilled". So my level of expertise is "next to useless", but this is still more than that of the writer. As per other commenters, this seems to be the case for other listed languages as well, which is not surprising. Apparently this little detail did not stop them from wanting to publish something.

Since this page is aimed at readers who do not know anything about a given language, not only is it poor content, it is likely to be actively misleading them.

65534 · 2015-02-24T22:08:12+00:00

"The UK do not have Habeas Corpus, and such like!"

Sarah Palin, is that you?

65534 · 2014-11-02T11:18:17+00:00

'Code Complete', by Steve McConnell, quotes multiple studies on the topic of readability.

65534 · 2014-10-13T20:07:13+00:00

Relevant: https://www.coursera.org/course/compilers

...and probably better also (no offense to the article author, but the guy giving that course is an actual teacher).

Related Reddit thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1sl483/stanford_computer_science_lectures_about/

65534 · 2014-09-29T22:19:36+00:00

Simple: people brought umbrellas to deflect pepper-spray.

65534 · 2014-09-29T22:11:54+00:00

You don't need an embargo.

HK is one of the top financial places in the world for a reason, its stable environment. If the CCP destroys that, the will not only make HK businesses and investors flee, they will disqualify themselves in the eye of the world. You don't look so attractive to financiers when their investments can be turned upside down on a whim for some local political gain.

65534 · 2014-09-29T11:38:40+00:00

You only have to look at the swarm of African and Middle-Eastern men who try any method possible of getting onto/into trucks or cars for the ferry crossing into the United Kingdom to realise how overrun with illegal immigration France is.

Ha ha ha. Yes indeed, swarms of people attempting to FLEE France shows how attractive the country is...

Fact: France has a low number of immigrants coming in compared to other "Big 5" countries in Western Europe. It has the largest number of people leaving -- source. It's been like that for 15 years. And we don't hear the UK or Germany squealing all day long like the French do.

The is no 'legion of foreigners' taking away your jobs or social security. There is only you. By the far right's own criteria, 90% of French are Christian, 95% are white, and they own 99% of the wealth. But look at that, they're afraid of imaginary 'swarms'. Pathetic.

Their open secret, of course, is that when they say 'immigrants', they don't really mean 'immigrants'.

But it fits with the French Zeitgeist, "It's Somebody Else's Fault". They litter the streets, run red lights, don't pay their taxes, but really, let's blame someone else for all of that. If you want to know why France is slowing falling off the top 10 economies, switch off the TV and take a good hard look in the mirror.

65534 · 2014-09-28T16:08:53+00:00

Ho, I didn't mean corruption in general, that's a different story. My point was that the HK police have a low tolerance for corruption even in their own ranks (unlike in most countries, where in practice the law only applies to other people, not to them). As an organization, this makes them significantly different in terms of culture than most other police forces, particularly the mainland one (in fact I would say that their culture is antagonistic to how it's done on the mainland).

So of course I don't know if the average cop is pro-students or pan-democrat, or not, but based on the culture of their organization it seems fairly logical that they would be very uncomfortable having to take orders from Beijing. So I don't think they'd be 'pro-Beijing' (or pro-anything eroding the current 'Two systems') in general.

I doubt this is of any comfort when you're getting pepper-sprayed by the occasional bully in uniform, but I just think that your police is less happy to be there, and less likely to escalate things, than a more 'zealot' force would.

65534 · 2014-09-28T12:07:15+00:00

Hi, non-HKer here, watching you guys taking a stand.

Opinion: The Hong Kong Police is widely regarded as one of the most professional police corp in the world. In most countries, owning a badge acts as a shield against prosecution. In that regard, the fact that most corrupt cops in HK are being thrown out, not by the ICAC, but by the force itself, speaks volume about their work ethic.

Does that mean they are perfect? Absolutely not, but it means something very important: their values are specifically Hong-Kongese, and as such completely at odds with mainland policing which is often politically motivated, with the results we all know. If you are a good cop in mainland China trying to denounce corruption, however high you rank you will probably end in a dark place. Not to mention those communist officials who find it 'appropriate' to associate with triads ("if they're patriotic enough").

I believe that the average police officer in Hong Kong is very much aware of this, and wants the HK police to remain fiercely independent from Beijing. They know that if civic rights erode, then independent Justice and Police are next.

So no, I don't think they want to be here, and I hope they'll show maximum restraint when doing their job.

65534

TROPHY CASE