r_klancer

This is actually why I want to get my 6yo a real, old-fashioned boot-to-BASIC computer.

We've minimized her screen time (she gets ~1hr TV per week and no phone/tablet/computer time outside school) and the result is she knows how to entertain herself with drawing, writing, reading, or just playing.

My kid is still entertained by typing words and sentences onto my computer (the one computer activity I've occasionally let her do). It feels like the window for her to be entertained by typing in commands and seeing them do something is still open ... but maybe not for long.

Unfortunately, many of the "hackable computer for kids" products like Kano assume a full UI, Internet access, etc. Which seem like a counterproductive distraction.

Relevant HN discussion about boot-to-BASIC: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18228740

Anecdata: I signed the contract yesterday for a small Somerville single-family, near the Cambridge line, for just over $700k. I'm expecting to put $200k+ into it. If a developer got their hands on it, they would expand the square footage to the maximum possible extent, put in the trendiest appliances and finishes, and flip it for > $1m. That seems to be the economically rational thing for them to do in this market.

But I lock in a 20-25 minute bike ride (or 50-minute walk + public transit ride in winter) to work in the Seaport. I saw I-93 at rush hour once, and I shudder at the memory.

At least part of my reasoning was, "What if Amazon does choose Boston? Do I move my family into a second or third floor condo with no yard at all?"

My takeaway from the comments in this thread: self-driving Ubers don't drive defensively, almost surely can't "read" pedestrian behavior, and even with lidar may never have seen Elaine Herzberg. Oh, and they speed.

This sounds like straight out of the "hell" scenario for driverless cars: "we cannot accept responsibility for what happens to pedestrians and cyclists foolish enough to stray out of their designated safe zone".

I'm referencing Robin Chase (the Zipcar founder)'s "heaven or hell" framing - https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2014/04/will-world-dr...

For a recent, thoughtful talk about the damage self-driving cars might do to the city if we are not careful, see this Congress for the New Urbanism talk about "Autonomous Vehicles & The Good City" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utnPEbDNbrE

It's also worth mentioning that there's a bill (AV START, or S. 1885) in the current Senate that would actually preempt local and state regulation of autonomous car safety, but it has been put on hold.

Other way around. Parked cars ("car culture" meaning the expectation that there should be free and easy street parking everywhere) take up space that could be otherwise used by contractor and delivery vehicles.

No one is arguing against contractor and delivery vehicles needing space; car free places such as campus quads or (say) Vernazza, Italy allow "special purpose" vehicles in.

I am biased (I also work there) but the benefit of a Fitbit is the consistency of the focus on fitness and overall wellness.

Over the long term the compounding positive effect can be a bigger deal in most people's lives than whatever effect is created by a flashy, "fun" gadget that enmeshes you further in the electronic haze. As a result, though, Fitbit's market positioning has become pretty solidly middle-American.

Only, now it can do some of the flashy too.

To think about where this all may be going, I had a "wow" moment after really thinking about what things like continuous glucose monitoring for the healthy masses might mean someday: http://www.businessinsider.com/blood-sugar-tracking-device-d...

This is excellent. I've been meaning to do something similar for my five year old. As always the hard part is finding the time to get started. This will get us started.

(It was easier back when building this stuff was my day job! -- http://mw.concord.org/nextgen/)

Hey John! I agree. My email address's been the same since 1996 thanks to pobox.

I remember a pobox faq back then to the effect of "how do I know you'll still be around?" IIRC it asked, rhetorically, how do you know your bank will still be around?

Well guess what? New Brunswick Savings Bank got swallowed up by bigger and bigger players since then. But pobox has stayed the same. It's been so reliably the same I haven't even bothered to get a vanity domain.

I did once use FastMail too but their circa-2007 web interface was too clunky and I dropped them for that one that reads your emails...

> I wonder how much w̶o̶r̶s̶e̶ better it'll be when they don't have to worry about being hit

There. Fixed it for you. (I commute by T and foot in Cambridge and Boston, by the way; and, yes, sounds flippant, but how awesome would it be for all streets to be "complete streets"?)

I'd say the opposite. The bag of chips display ad is annoying, ugly, and slows down whatever I'm trying to do on the web.

The location breadcrumbs ... well, it's not that I really want those shared. But at least it happens entirely in the background. I'm not even sure I care that much, given that I never even see the precision ad it theorectically enables.