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kifki commented on Show HN: Master Numbers in a Foreign Language   foreignnumbers.com/... · Posted by u/jasonlfunk
innocentoldguy · 9 years ago
Counting in Japanese is easy to learn, because it is very consistent. For example, in English, we have "eleven," but in Japanese, it is "juuichi," or "ten one." "Twenty" is "nijuuichi," or "two ten one."

The thing that always throws me off is that the breaks in larger numbers are different than in English. For example, as we add more and more zeros to a number, we say:

One, ten, hundred, thousand, ten thousand, one hundred thousand, one million, ten million, one hundred million, one billion.

In Japanese, they break the numbers up like this (they use different words, of course):

One (1), ten (10), hundred (100), thousand (1,000), one "man" (10,000), ten "man" (100,000), one hundred "man" (1,000,000), one thousand "man" (10,000,000), one "oku," (100,000,000), and ten "oku" (1,000,000,000).

I'm pretty good up until one "man," then I have to start thinking.

kifki · 9 years ago
Not related to Japanese, but to large numbers in general: I just learned that there are to scales for billions - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales
kifki commented on WhatsApp launches Status, an encrypted Snapchat Stories clone   techcrunch.com/2017/02/20... · Posted by u/mcjiggerlog
mcjiggerlog · 9 years ago
I've been using Whatsapp since 2010 and this is the first time I've considered dropping it; all I want is an easy to use chat client. What the hell were they thinking? I'm no expert but I would guess that >50% of their userbase does not want this feature at all. My grandma uses Whatsapp!

I think this could be the beginning of the end for Whatsapp's ubiquity. It's such a shame as Whatsapp has such insane market penetration here (UK/Spain) that it is going to be a huge mess to try to switch to an alternative. I literally haven't received an SMS from a friend in years.

kifki · 9 years ago
Here in Italy Telegram is slowly gaining traction. Even the municipality in my city uses it (for traffic notices and other warnings), very useful. Bonus points: bots, Gif search and stickers!
kifki commented on Ask HN: What're the best-designed things you've ever used?    · Posted by u/whitepoplar
taneq · 9 years ago
My old Snow Leopard MBP was pretty much perfect in its day. It's long in tooth now but with a new battery and an SSD upgrade would still be well and truly usable as a general web-and-email machine.
kifki · 9 years ago
I still own&use one; I upgraded SSD and ram an it is still pretty ok for small web dev and internet browsing.
kifki commented on Fewer than 3% of cars sold in the U.S. have manual transmissions   latimes.com/business/auto... · Posted by u/t23
Reason077 · 9 years ago
Modern manual cars have start/stop technology too.

However, it's more convoluted to use. You have to engage the clutch, put the shifter in neutral, and release the clutch again. Compared to automatic where you just have to hold your foot on the brake pedal.

Stop/start reduces fuel consumption on test cycles like NEDC for both automatics and manuals, but I'll bet in the real world the benefit is mostly seen with automatics as many manual drivers will rarely bother to use it.

kifki · 9 years ago
Manual car with start&stop owner here; I always use it when driving in the city, so do all of my friends. It's just slightly uncomfortable the first times, when you have to train your muscle memory.
kifki commented on Telegram to award grants to bot developers   telegram.org/blog/botpriz... · Posted by u/amima
egypturnash · 10 years ago
Don't discount stickers. Telegram's sticker support (and its ease of creating your own sticker sets) is one of the reasons I and a lot of my friends have moved to it for most of our messaging lately. I personally went crazy and did a set of like 50 stickers with one of my own characters, which can add a ton of whimsey to my casual conversations.
kifki · 10 years ago
That, and the integrated gifbot. My teenage sister went crazy when I showed her how to search for stickers.
kifki commented on Agromafia   cbsnews.com/news/60-minut... · Posted by u/kungfudoi
std_throwaway · 10 years ago
Then why are they investigating foreign products?
kifki · 10 years ago
They aren't. This is the Italian police investigating Italian products.
kifki commented on Japanese Company Makes Low-Calorie Noodles Out of Wood   bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/trextrex
masklinn · 10 years ago
Shirataki are pure konjac, the article talks about adding wood fibers to konjac to improve the texture and taste.
kifki · 10 years ago
Thank you, I didn't know that. Do you think that there are key differences between the two?
kifki commented on Japanese Company Makes Low-Calorie Noodles Out of Wood   bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/trextrex
kifki · 10 years ago
I don't see the news here. Shirataki is quite popular and quite easily found. I think it became popular with the Dukan diet.
kifki commented on Ask HN: Mi Band Xiaomi hack?    · Posted by u/luck87
luck87 · 10 years ago
Thanks, this website is a pretty old, and I hope the protocol doesn't change after the firmware upgrade. The 1st hack, I'd like to do, is to use miband for notification mobile. It will be nice have a library or sdk for this purpose. For android : https://github.com/lwis/miband-notifier
kifki · 10 years ago
Yes, I know... Developers are constantly asking for an API of some sort, but seems that Xiaomi ignores that. Too bad, since the MiBand is a nice little device. Are you trying to use it on Android? There is also an iOs library (but seems very limited) and a Python one (has a lot of functions - http://oscaracena.bitbucket.org/mibanda/api/)

u/kifki

KarmaCake day25May 4, 2012View Original