kellishaver

For some people this would work well, and when you do know a lot about your condition, it is very annoying to have to deal with doctors who have to come to and verify conclusions that you have already made.

I have a pretty dense medical knowledge compared to the average person. My mother had a lot of medical issues that I studied in detail. I have several of my own that I have also studied at great length, and I used to be an EMT. Waiting around and going through a tedious process for a new doctor to "catch up" with you is frustrating.

A lot of people aren't like this, though. I have a friend who, after weeks of not feeling well, had, at one time, read pages and pages of research on a particular disease and had convinced herself that this was the thing she had, this was why she was sick, and this was what she needed treatment for. What she failed to neglect was the title of the paper -- she had diagnosed herself with kennel cough.

As much valuable information as there is available on the internet, I also feel like the internet breeds hypochondriacs like nobody's business.

So I don't really think we need a change in the way healthcare is delivered, exactly. I think what we need is more education for would-be doctors about how to better engage and involve a patient in their own care and how to talk to a patient sincerely about their condition and evaluate the people who just googled something vs. the ones who genuinely know what they're talking about, and then how to work with the latter.

Good doctors will do this naturally, but a lot of doctors will take the attitude that they are the doctor, they know best because they have been to medical school. They may well have a better overall understanding of things, which can very well be extremely important when looking at how diseases and medications interact in conjunction with and affect one another. However, there simply isn't enough time for them to become experts on everything. There should be more emphasis on this fact and more instruction on how to work with the patients to make them the experts so that they can be more involved in their care.

I feel like I'm not making my point well, but this is starting to ramble a bit, so hopefully that makes sense.

That was my first thought, too - $200k could fund the writing of a lot of really good JavaScript, which would benefit the JS community (and the web at large) a lot more than a vanity TLD.

Scratch may be worth looking into: http://scratch.mit.edu/

I've also considered this beginning Python book: http://www.amazon.com/Hello-World-Computer-Programming-Begin...

My daughter seemed kind of "meh" on Scratch, but still interested in learning to program. I think she sees me spending most of my day working within an editor or the command line and the highly graphical authoring environment of Scratch doesn't fit the idea she's got in her head of what "real" programming should be. I'm not sure if I should correct her or embrace the fact that she wants to learn "the hard way."

This is a great article. Learning to code a little and do some simple programming is something my own daughter wants to tackle this summer. I'm not the world's most patient person, so I've been a little intimidated about the idea of teaching programming to a 10yr old, but it is something we are going to tackle.

I'm curious as to how other parents have gone about this. I was considering some kind of pair programming environment and possibly beginning Ruby or some basic HTML/CSS/JavaScript. I feel like either would be easy to get into, but the more fragmented nature of the latter would make things more confusing (having to learn 3 technologies instead of one language).

In my head, that letter was narrated by Richard Dreyfuss as I read it. It feels very much like their advertizing. My gut reaction would be to simultaneously be excited about the possibilities and worried over what I had gotten myself into, since i was clearly being sold to in such a manner. That's pretty much what I imagine working at Apple is like, though - potentially awesome, fun, exciting, and interesting work, stressful, difficult, and somewhat abusive company culture and demands. So, I guess maybe it's accurate.

Ha! I hadn't seen that, thanks. That's cool. Definitely more refined than our cereal box machines. :)

As a parent, I can't imagine how I would feel if a bunch of random internet people had basically taken care of my kid's college education within a few days.

I assume a used auto-parts dealer in LA isn't rolling in money. In families like that, things like paying for your kid's college education can be difficult, impossible, or at the very least, stressful and a bit frightening.

The outpouring of support for this little boy and his creativity is heart-warming. As a parent, seeing the college fund money pile up it's just completely mind-blowing.

Haha, the paper towel and Tide box computer brings back memories. My cousins and I made side-scrolling video game machines this way.

We set up the paper towel rolls in the box, with paper (half-sheets of copy paper taped together end to end) rolled around them, with a big, long scene/level drawn on it. One person would turn the crank, causing the screen to scroll while the player controlled a character which could move up and down, courtesy of being attached to a popsicle stick poking out a slot on the side of the box. The object of the game was to hit goals and jump over objects and pits.

More complex games had two popsicle-stick controlled sprites, and I seem to remember that we experimented with cannibalizing the motor out of a broken remote control car to run the screen, at one point.

Does anyone have any idea what program he's using for this?

I would suspect that it's because he feels browsing web pages doesn't need to be instant, in a lot of cases, and he can just fetch pages via email and read them later at his leisure, and also have a convenient archive of them.

My degree is in fine art, with a concentration in design (and a minor in art history). I started out as "designer who can do a bit of development" and over the years, that's changed to "developer who can design."

I didn't plan it that way, it's just where the work has taken me, and I do enjoy programming slightly more, I think (maybe - I love both).

I've engaged in a ton of self-directed learning and have been fortunate to work for some extremely smart, and extremely patient people who were happy to teach and happy to give me challenging, real problems to solve.

I make it a point to learn something new every day.

Switch, synch, publish, unpublish - those all made sense, but when they started adding things like 'sprout' and 'graft' it just passed into the realm of trying to be too cute with the branching metaphor for my tastes.

Personally, I'd pick git-flow over this. It seems more useful and makes, syntactically, more sense (though it can get a bit verbose at times `git flow feature start some-feature`). Starting and finishing features, hotfixes, releases, etc. handles all of the necessary branching, merging, and checkouts for you while adding structure and basically documenting the lifecycle of the code in your commit logs.

Maybe it's not as 'human friendly' as sprouting a branch, but starting and then finishing a feature sounds pretty straightforward.

https://github.com/nvie/gitflow

As one of those elusive "females in tech" who generally gets somewhat tired of hearing about all of the complaints about sexism in tech, because I think a lot of people are overly sensitive to it, Sqoot's actions were the first thing I've read in a long time that actually offended me.

I think basic Bootstrap is great for small projects, experiments, open source projects that don't have a designer on bard, etc. and for bigger things, it's a great base to build from.

Bootstrap's strength is that you can use to to quickly build a uniform, fully functional, cohesive and clean UI.

Just because you can, it doesn't mean you have to.... and just because you don't have to, doesn't mean you shouldn't. It needs to be evaluated on a per-project basis, like anything else we do. Some tools and services really call for a custom look. Some, let's be honest, just don't.

I see things like internal tools being a great example of when to use Boostrap's defaults--that web app to visualize analytics on your data, your ticketing system, that private web interface you built for your Git repositories, the documentation manager, etc. Use Bootstrap, be cool with it, free up your designers and creative energy to roll out custom layouts on your client-facing pages.

Got that, too! :D Here.... let me just make a list of what's in the cabinet: http://pastie.org/3502486 There's not anything there that we don't like, but I'd say family favorites would be Qwirkle, Ticket to Ride, Robo Rally, Carcassonne, and Pandemic. Caverns was a lot of fun and may make the favorites list, too, but that could just be the newness... too soon to tell. :)

Our daughter's almost 10, and with the exception of Twilight Imperium (this game is massive, especially when you add both expansions) plays them all with us. In addition to spending more time together as a family, I'd say it's helped a with her math, reading, and critical thinking.

We have it, along with many others. Our newest addition is Cutthroat Caverns, which we played tonight, for the first time. If you like tile-based word games, we picked up Lexigo a while back and it's pretty fun.

Boardgames have replaced movies and TV in our house. There are some great games out there. Good ones can run anywhere from $20-80 (though usually around $40-50) but the value for your money is far greater. We get some quality time together as a family and the kid gets some strategic and problem-solving skills.

Of course... they take up a lot more space. :)

Usability issues aside, the UI is so flat and, in places, so low-contrast, there's a large segment of the population that wouldn't be able to see it, let alone use it.

This happens to me, too, but I'd gladly trade all the good ideas in the world for a decent amount of sleep!

Starting from about age 12, but definitely getting worse as I get older, sleep is something I just can't seem to get right, no matter how I approach it.

I've tried getting eight hours of sleep, and it doesn't work. I do pretty good on six hours, but only for a while. Over the course of a few weeks, six becomes four, which becomes three, which is then two, and suddenly it's 3 days later and I'm still awake.

When it gets to the point that I find myself getting less than four hours of sleep a night, the only way I can force my body to sleep more, despite being very physically tired, is with medication. Of course, most sleep aids can't be taken for long periods of time, so that only helps for a short while.

Sometimes I don't get tired until 4am, and other times it's all I can do to stay awake at 6pm, regardless of whether I got up at 6:30 in the morning, or noon.

I've tried enforcing a rigid schedule, meditation, exercise, various sleep aids, antidepressants (Pazil, Zoloft), just "going with it", and as of late, melatonin supplements at the recommendation of my doctor. They helped for a few weeks, but then that, too, stopped being effective.

The closest I get to a normal sleep schedule is that about half the time, I can go to sleep around 4am and get up at 10am - but that's not really a very practical solution and there are 3-4 days a week where it's just not at all possible from a logistics standpoint.

I was amazed at how much of a difference this has made in text quality.

Funny story: I thought the blurriness I was noticing before was due to my new interocular lens implant that I got in December-nope.... turns out it was the font rendering all along and my vision was too bad before the surgery to notice it.

So, better rendering all around, really. :)

I'm not sure it's something Facebook is necessarily pushing. I think it's just businesses squeezing e-commerce pages into Facebook page tabs.

I think a lot of folks still don't notice the custom page tabs. They "like" something and they see the items that get dumped into their stream as a result or they occasionally go to the "wall" for that thing, and just don't see the links in the sidebar to the custom pages.

Even if the company sets it as the default tab for their page, once the user has "liked" the page, the default changes to the wall.

I think it's because Facebook isn't officially enabling and supporting e-commerce that it's not working out well.

Ah, nice.

> That this isn't achievable directly from the standard dialog is probably a good idea to avoid training Joe Average User to become blind to the warnings.

Yes, this is a very good point.

I feel like there's a (probably smaller, but still not insignificant) middle ground of people who generally know what they're doing, but would still like the extra layer of protection, for whom the per-app exceptions would be handy. Having it not the default, though, is probably a good thing.

Ah, I misunderstood the intent. I thought cancel would close the warning and allow the application to be installed anyway.

So there will be no way to bypass this in a per-app basis without changing the system preferences for all applications? You either completely disallow unsigned applications, or you always allow them?

I'm not sure that's the best approach, but I'm not sure it isn't, either. :)

I know it's a small thing, but I really just do not at all care for the round user avatars. They're distracting. They create too much movement on the page, when all I want to do is read text. Square avatars don't draw the eye away from the content nearly as much.

Edit: Can someone please explain to me why this was downvoted? I'm not complaining, if it was done for good reason, just curious. I'm not the world's most prolific HN user. If my tone came across as being too harsh, it wasn't intentional.

The suggestion to trash the app is a bit harsh. The rest doesn't seem bad, though. Maybe something like "The identity of this application cannot be verified by Apple. Only install applications from vendors you trust. Installing applications from unknown sources may damage your computer."

Also, that "Cancel" button is pretty ambiguous. I'd think "Eject Disk Image" and "Proceed Anyway" would be better options.

I really like the Boston tech scene, and the atmosphere and social environment created around it. I work with a lot of folks from/around the area on a daily basis, so even though I'm not in Boston, I have a lot of friends and connections there and make at least one pilgrimage there a year to spend a few days doing business in person. If it weren't for separating the child from the grandparents, I would move into the area (though maybe not in Boston itself, due to the high cost of living). Maybe when the kid is older.

I'm flying in April and plan to opt out (I don't fly often). I'm down to less than one eye. I don't really want to irradiate what's left.

I wanted to the last time I flew, but it was so crowded and TSA was being so rude to everyone and had already handled my baggage so roughly that they dropped my Macbook on the tile floor (Logan International), that I just went through the scanner rather than bothering with it and raising a bigger fuss.

I'd say a lot of people feel pressured into "just complying" because of long lines and mean looks.

On the other hand, I've been in airports where the agents are just as friendly as can be.

Two of my almost-10-yr-old daughter's favorite things are Minecraft and LEGO.

I was just about to say the same thing about Basketball here. I'm in KY and our local high school team always does well, and our college team, while never great, had a good season last year, as well, and has a few bright stars amongst its roster. March is crazy here. It's nothing but basketball, basketball, basketball, and my Facebook and Twitter feeds fill up with commentary every time there's a game. The local community gets behind it, even at the high school level. The school district closes school for the day if the team has an out-of-town game in the state tournament, so people can attend, etc. (As a parent, I don't agree with this action, but none the less, it is interesting from a social perspective).

I'm not a huge fan of the sport, but even I find it hard not to get sucked in.

This is very similar to the way we're raising our daughter (9). She gets herself up and dressed in the morning and off to the buss top (too far to walk to school). We do things together, but it's not our job to entertain her. She finds her own entertainment, and often that means playing with other kids in the neighborhood - fine, so long as she's home by dinner. She knows if she's late she misses dinner and if that she misbehaves at someone's house, then that privileged of being able to come and go with the other kids in the neighborhood is gone.

She has daily and weekly chores that she's expected to do. She doesn't get an allowance for that - it's just a normal part of contributing to the family duties, and if she wants something, she does extra chores to earn the money.

She's a great kid, never have had a behavior problem out of her. I think part of the reason for that is in addition to just giving her a whole bunch of love, we also respect her and hold her to a standard that we know she's capable of.

That's very much how I was raised, and I have a great relationship with my dad and a lot of respect for him. I hope this leads to a similar relationship with her, and so far it seems to be.

It's working out. She does stupid kid things from time to time, like all kids do, but she's learning to think for herself and make good decisions, too.

Proud of my kid.

Last summer, though, I got a call from a neighbor down the street telling me that my daughter wasn't allowed to come down there and play with her kid anymore, unless I walked her down there, because it was too dangerous for my then 8 year old child to be walking down there by herself... Mind you, you can see their house from our front yard. I feel really badly for the little girl who lives in that house. She's 8 now, not allowed out of the yard, and has no other friends in the neighborhood.

I realized today that I've been listening to the same playlist 203 songs for about a year now. It usually plays all day long. I'm kind of bored with it when I'm actually paying attention to it and want to listen to music, but it's great for programming. The songs are so well known to me at this point that I don't really consciously think about them. My brain just kind of sings along without me while I write code.