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MJRon iPhones are hard to use

The point was that I don't believe anyone should act to normalize a behavior, in any context, of using a medical disorder as a metaphor for anything, in this case, software usability concerns.

MJRon iPhones are hard to use

100% agree. I stopped reading when I saw that. What exactly is "Windows autism" exactly? My autistic son would like to know... And I would encourage you not to say it in private contexts with friends either.

MJRon Reported difficulties getting help on Equifax's phone lines

Hopefully saving people some time - Equifax is "unable to process" online requests - which they tell you after your submit the form. And Transunion's website for fraud alerts is currently "temporarily unavailable".

MJRon My Hackintosh Hardware Spec

If anyone is considering building their own, this is a good reference. Dan Benjamin's site detailing his recommendations: http://hackintoshmethod.com/

MJRon Angie’s List Sues Amazon Local

Did you read the court document? Amazon employees signed up, sometimes with fake addresses and then immediately began running wide ranging searches across numerous categories in completely separate areas across the country from their primary residence. Jumping from searching on roofers to dentistry to day spas and everything in between. They have some cases where the Amazon employee even used Angie's List internal messaging system to send service providers messages asking them to run promotions on Amazon Local or to talk to them about business deals. It's the commercial aspect that is forbidden in the TOS.

They have all the search histories of all of these accounts, the titles of the employees at Amazon, their home addresses, etc. It's clear what they were doing, the question is will a judge see it as a pattern attempting to defraud Angie's List and were the employees directed to do this or did they do it on their own.

MJRon CareLedger (YC S15) Aims to Provide Free-to-Employees Medical Care

How are you going to compete with insurance companies who have all of the data, existing relationships will their entire networks of providers and pre-existing negotiated rates with providers? Insurers are already creating local provider specific networks to serve this type of need and they have the largest incentive to drive procedure costs down - because it allows them to drive their rates down, increasing business or accounting for the losses they're suffering due to the ACA.

How will you protect your business when they decide to cut out the middle-man(you) and begin working with their networks directly to renogotiate procedure costs and kick-back discounts to employers for using these selective Cost+Quality networks? Truth is they're already doing this.

EDIT: My points may be moot - Are you only working with self-insured companies? That's the only thing that makes sense here given that you're splitting costs with the employer.

MJRon Why I Joined the Static Blog Movement

Blogger was a static blog generator well before this. It launched in 1999 and was around for a few years in that form before it was acquired by Google in 2003 and transitioned . You logged into the Blogger site and wrote your posts and then published them, which would generate your files and then FTP them to your server.

MJRon Laravel Forge – PHP Platforms On Linode, DigitalOcean, AWS, Rackspace

It's just another web framework, Coca-Cola is just another sugar water drink, Calvin and Hobbes is just another comic and a Lamborghini Aventador is just another car.

"Just another" is a really easy thing to say when it's someone else's creation. And more importantly trademarks are not indicators of quality or innovation. He's the owner and he chose to put it in the footer. This doesn't seem like a big deal.

MJRon Groundbreaking drone coverage of tornado damage piques ire of FAA

Last month Patrick Geraghty, an administrative law judge with the National Transportation Safety Board ruled "the FAA regulations approved for manned aircraft did not apply to unmanned aircraft any more than they applied to paper airplanes or balsa wood planes."

The FAA is appealing the decision, but as of right now it may pique their interest, but it's not illegal.

Article: http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/07/us/drone-pilot-case-faa/ Full decision: http://www.kramerlevin.com/files/upload/PirkerDecision.pdf

MJRon Show HN: 2048 in 2048 bytes

And on top of that, when you get to that point, up and down don't do anything. You should be able to combine those tiles vertically.

MJRon Tory Boss of Government Coding Education Initiative Can't Code

Am I the only one who was confused by the title and thought that the article was about someone named 'Tory Boss'?

MJRon Show HN: I made 30 apps this year and I'm 15

Seriously? Go look at the games, we're talking about a single image of a character in most cases. And showing something off doesn't have to be putting it up on Microsoft.com for the world to download. The kid is 15, my point is find the friend you have that is taking art class and get them to sketch something for you. I bet money that if this kid is into games, one of his gamer friends can sketch a game character for him pro-bono. We're not talking about developers and designers - these are high school kids making one-off test-the-water apps.

MJRon Show HN: I made 30 apps this year and I'm 15

First, no being an artist isn't a requirement to be a gamedev. That's why I said find a friend who is.

Second, If, as you say, the app isn't the end goal, then don't release it and this issue doesn't even come up.

Third, you said "Wasting time fitting society's arbitrary moral standard is time not spent becoming a better gamedev."

As a parent, that is exactly why I would encourage him to create his own characters. It's not at all an arbitrary moral standard. Is theft an arbitrary moral standard? Plagiarism? If you don't have permission to use the characters, don't use them. These games are available on the official MS site right next to the official ones. Why go down the path of having to potentially have your account suspended, or whatever the punishment is if MS decides your apps are infringing.

Finally, What do you tell the kid the first time they have a successful project and someone rips it off? Don't get upset, you did it when you started, so it's ok? It doesn't matter that he's just getting his start, stealing these characters is just like stealing the source code an releasing it as your own. Are we condoning that as well? In my opinion, it's just as important to learn integrity as it is to build the app.

MJRon Show HN: I made 30 apps this year and I'm 15

This doesn't detract what the fact that you had the initiative and drive to complete 30 different games. But if I can offer some advice now, rather than when something real happens: Create your own characters rather than borrowing someone else's creations and building them into your games. Pac-Man, Mario, Minecraft, My Little Pony are all great characters, just unfortunately not yours to make a game with. Find a friend who can draw and have them create some unique characters for you, write a little story and you've got an indie game that's all your own.

MJRon Data looks better naked

His books were written over 24 years so they idea of writing one great book is just not a practical one. He made his living as a professor not simply self-publishing, lectures and book sales. For someone who evangelizes effective presentation of information, creating a CliffsNotes or Nutshell version just completely misses the point of his work.

MJRon Show HN: Use Intercourse to improve your pitch – we'd love your feedback

I completely disagree. 'Funny ways to market it' will instead be 'Offensive and inappropriate' in many settings. The average person on the street doesn't give presentations, so immediately you're trying to target an education or business market. Is that the audience that will respond best to a name that can be taken out of context or isn't easy to grasp? Simply choosing that name already gives you a steep hill to climb. Not every company can take a name like this and turn it into a viable brand. There aren't that many opportunities to be a Virgin Records and make it work.

MJRon Kevin Rose’s idea for a new blogging platform called Tiny

Back in the day we had these things called webcams and bloggers would set them to take snapshots every few minutes and automatically upload them to their blogs. As an example, Kottke had his running for a long time: http://kottke.org/cam/

Gamers stream themselves practicing and playing matches live on Twitch so regularly that fans can sponsor or make donations and its become a form of income for them. Podcasters often run a live stream while they're recording and have open chatrooms for live discussion in the moment.

It seems like we've found ways to peak behind the curtain in some media forms already. The desire for this type of interaction has been there for a long time and in some communities is already being met with different technology solutions. For blogging, what is old is new again.

MJRon A Deeply Unsettling Time Lapse Of Every Nuclear Explosion On Earth

Previously on HN...

Nuclear Explosions since 1942 (map) (datavis.tumblr.com) 3 points by transburgh 4 years ago | 1 comments | cached

Animated History of Nuclear Explosions (ctbto.org) 2 points by brianmckenzie 3 years ago | 0 comments | cached

Animated map of nuclear explosions, 1945-1998 (pinktentacle.com) 58 points by gnosis 3 years ago | 26 comments | cached

MJRon Show HN: I mapped US medical prices. Save thousands by driving a few miles

You have a PPO plan so you pay a copay. Many people have HSA, High Deductible or Catastrophic plans where they pay out of pocket until their hit their deductible. So all of these people have an incentive to shop on price. You're just choosing to pay more in premiums for the benefit of not having to worry about the costs for care.

But this tool only includes Medicare data so it doesn't apply to any of those cases we just mentioned.

MJRon Show HN: I mapped US medical prices. Save thousands by driving a few miles

These are called cost and quality or transparency tools in the industry.

Many insurance companies have tools that can do this exact thing for their members AND apply it to your specific plan at the time of the inquiry. So you can choose based on the procedure cost and your actual cost based on your deductible and co-insurance. Not only that, the tools will also tell you about quality so you can compare based on the quality of service, cost of service and your actual cost at the same time.

Unless you can do all of these things at the same time with your tool, it leaves out critical factors for those actually searching for this type of information as it applies to them at any given time - most importantly when they are trying to make a decision.

Additionally, you only have access to negotiated rates for Medicare whereas an insurance company providing this information is going to provide as much information as they can for all of their members by displaying their negotiated rates specific to your plan.

As an HN reader, if you like this tool, go check with your insurance company and see what they already have and how specific it is for you.

MJRon My Biggest Takeaway on 37Signals’s New Book on Remote Work

I completely agree about social isolation and missing the in-between conversations. I also don't think the next generation will suddenly all become insular thinkers because of technology.

I'm someone who really enjoys and needs discussions with my coworkers about ideas, strategies or tactics. Some people prefer to take a question and mull it over for a while and return with their thoughts. Others, like me, prefer to think out loud and talk it out. The act of having a conversation - in person - is a major factor in that. When I have tasks to get done that require pure execution then working remotely is fine, people put on headphones in the office during this type of work as well. For everything that requires definition and discussion, reading body language, etc - I prefer and believe that I work better with others in person.

MJRon Rejected from YC? Here is what you're missing out on

Thanks pg. Based on filling in the details you provided I agree with you. As a reader I assumed this was his analysis as a true founder - present from pitch to alumni. Clearly, that's not the case.

MJRon Rejected from YC? Here is what you're missing out on

(many of which were about what to do about you)

What does this mean? Is this as an attack on the author's credibility, character, skills or otherwise?

It seems like there should be a distinction on whether he shouldn't have written this because he didn't have the full experience of a founder or because he is not a credible witness because he was an employee that was going against the grain and that the founders were struggling to deal with in some capacity.

MJRon Ask HN: Making a living selling software components, not SaaS?

Looking at his profile: I'm a co-founder of JGraph. We make mxGraph and draw.io http://www.jgraph.com/ http://www.draw.io/

MJRon Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)

It's actually been posted 6 times over the past 5 years.

Why I Hate Frameworks (discuss.joelonsoftware.com) 193 points by gavingmiller 2 years ago | 103 comments | cached

Why I Hate Frameworks (discuss.joelonsoftware.com) 123 points by Jebdm 4 years ago | 125 comments | cached

Why I Hate Frameworks (2005) (discuss.joelonsoftware.com) 82 points by patmcguire 1 month ago | 123 comments | cached

Why I hate frameworks (2005) (benjismith.net) 110 points by lkozma 3 years ago | 56 comments | cached

Why I Hate Frameworks (benjismith.net) 16 points by iamelgringo 5 years ago | 18 comments | cached

Why I Hate Frameworks (discuss.joelonsoftware.com) 1 point by thewarrior 1 month ago | 0 comments | cached

MJRon There's a .00006% Chance of Building a Billion Dollar Company

Or something like the type of business. A local service-based business like a hair salon, diner or hot dog cart shouldn't even be considered as a business that has the possibility of being worth a billion dollars. If this is based on total number of registered businesses, removing the large number of established small businesses that have been in business for X years would help arrive at a better number.

MJRon Glare from London 'fryscraper' blamed for melting cars

There was a similar story in NC with energy efficient windows melting vinyl siding on homes: http://www.wncn.com/story/22737381/homeowners-frustrated-by-...

MJRon Oregon Proposes Investment Model For Student Loans

For a free trip to the colonies, you paid with all of your output for the next 20 years(or longer) - not just 3%.

MJRon Oregon Proposes Investment Model For Student Loans

I used 100K as an example showing even if you made that much a year 3% would still only be 72K over the 24 years. If you were only making 35K a year, say as a teacher, 100K in student loans would take a LONG time to pay off. With this program someone making 35K would only pay back a little over 25K into the program.

MJRon Oregon Proposes Investment Model For Student Loans

I used 100K as an example that even at that high of an income $3,000 a year only adds up to 72K. If you make 50K salary for 24 years you're still only paying 36K for your education. The program stats "students would pay 3 percent of their paycheck back for 24 years in order to help fund the program for future students".

With the direction higher education costs are moving, this could be a very inviting choice for those who would pay for college with student loans.