502 karma · joined October 4, 2013
I experienced pain in my shoulder, then, eventually, numbness in my left index finger. It was a pinched C6/C7 nerve, and I've been effectively unable to work for four years.
I'm serious. Go see your doctor, then examine your computing habits very closely.
I learned Dvorak before switching to the Kinesis. I was only able to do it by having some strategic down-time in my job, and I would say it took around a full year before I was even close to my old QWERTY speed. I can now switch between QWERTY (laptop) and DVORAK (desktop) with only an occasional hitch.
Take it from me: the advantage of Dvorak pales in comparison to the advantage of a good keyboard. Add in the fact that the whole world (games, vim, cut/copy/paste) revolves around QWERTY, and Dvorak starts to lose its luster.
(Come to think of it, the biggest plus for me with Dvorak is that I can left-hand mouse and hit copy/paste/undo with my right hand...)
My wrist pain actually increased slightly when I first got it, due to the strain of having to interrupt my years-old muscle memory. It took several days for the thumb keys to become (somewhat) automatic. Within a couple of weeks, I was on my way to pain-free computing. It's now been over a decade, and I consider the Kinesis keyboard to be the primary factor in my recovery.
By contrast, American cities have a couple of arterial freeways, a massive grid of wide-yet-low-capacity surface streets, and neighborhood streets that people speed through in an effort to shave seconds off their commute. And when they get to work, they park in huge parking lots, instead of stacked parking structures (ideally under the target building itself).
American transportation infrastructure is terrible.
The sooner robots replace taxi drivers, the better. And the taxis will probably still feel gross inside.
Computer programming has absolutely nothing to do with learning a foreign language. Learning a foreign language provides excellent perspective on your own, leading to a much greater understanding of grammar.
I took four years of Spanish and it's the only thing that made the endless, repetitive English lessons finally 'click'. For the record, I also took four years of programming and passed both CS AP exams (not that it mattered, since at the time colleges wouldn't acknowledge it b/c it was taught in Pascal and everyone wanted C -- yes, they were really that dumb).
Learning a foreign language provides critical insight into language. Learning to program provides critical insight into how to break problems down and how to structure a solution. Both are valuable and dissimilar.
> planet -- they're more interested in life in space than Americans' lives
And I guess Democrats are more interested in taking jabs at the opposition than they are in uniting the nation in something other than war or fear. I guess we'll have to wait until Mars attacks, then we'll see everyone come together to fund space exploration.
(I'm not actually taking a jab at Democrats, just pointing out that they're all a bunch of useless bottom-feeders who take any opportunity to speak ill of the other. Let's send them all into space like DNA's telephone sanitizers)
Incidentally, given that displays seem to be continually trending larger, I expect that we'll eventually have an entire wall in our homes that's a display. 4k is just another step toward that.
In fact, I'd like to have simply said, "stop being an asshole", but that sort of direct, rude comment gets downvoted here on HN. Meanwhile, an extremely rude, condescending, dismissive, but roundabout comment stays neutral or is even upvoted.
Making friends is about a combination of exposure (meeting people) and sharing something (a hobby, where you grew up, etc.). Part of the process is that YOU have to be genuinely interested in THEM, and vice-versa.
Many people think that you have to be more interesting, but that's not exactly the case. You have to be more interested. And what's the best way to become more interested? Pursue new and different things! I'm going to sound like a broken record on this, but go travel. You'll meet more people in one week of staying in hostels in Thailand than you'll meet in your normal life in a year! Go hiking and backpacking (I've made many friends by getting involved in those). Take up rock climbing (extremely social) and yoga instead of lifting weights (I love the iron, too, but it's not social). As others have said, do some volunteer work. Take cooking classes. Learn to have a passion for cooking and for foods. Check meetup.com for dining groups in your area, where you can share your new passion for food.
Get out of your bubble. Note, I'm not saying to get out of your comfort zone. I think that's pushed too much by vapid people in order to subtly put themselves above others. However, by exploring new and different things, you will find that your comfort zone grows tremendously.
By the way, I've never really liked Fridays because I always feel too tired for activities that "normal" people seem to push (i.e. going out to bars with coworkers). You're not alone.
This reminds me of stories I've heard of Japanese office workers bowing while talking over the phone to their boss. It's said that your boss will be able to tell if you aren't bowing, and you will come across as insincere.
If you find someone mentioning distinctions of this sort, you can be reasonably sure you're dealing with a pedant who enjoys 'educating' or correcting more than producing or doing.
That's not the least bit true, in my experience. I've watched them come over from where their families are working and attempt to sell trinkets, then go back to their families (or friends' families).
As for "crap", yeah, it's crap. Because you don't give children appliances and automobiles to sell. It's no different than the stuff you'll buy from American children going door to door, trying to raise money for their school.
I think you're really looking down your nose at people. You have a choice when traveling in areas like this. You can either act like you have to guard your precious money from all these street urchins trying to cheat you, or you can simply accept it as part of the experience traveling in a very poor area, and embrace the reality that you can make some small difference in an individual's life.
You talk as if denying individuals some income is somehow helping their long-term tourism. Yet Thailand, which is decades ahead of Cambodia in terms of development and wealth, still sees foreigners as wealthy, pesters them for sales and rides, and they have a very healthy tourism industry in spite of this. A country can't force its way into a $500/night resort industry. Thailand has tried for years, and it's not happening anytime soon. Cambodia doesn't even have a reasonable highway infrastructure.
> Hotels really do employ locals
To give an interesting regional example, are you aware that the Thai island of Koh Phi Phi is controlled by the Chinese mafia?
So, you only want your money going to the wealthier families, many of which are foreign?
Street hawkers may be annoying, but they also represent the most basic form of entrepreneurial spirit.
The consensus in the commenting community was that you shouldn't downvote people without explaining why. The rule of the site is that you shouldn't complain about posts. The two are at odds, and personally I favor what the community wants, not what the site overlords dictate.
As I said, I enjoy many commenters, have learned a great deal from them, and have enjoyed my conversations with them.
This is at odds with my very negative view of the site itself, its founder, and how it's moderated. Also, I have to go out of my way to ignore the enormous amounts of link-bait and startup bubble fluff. In fact, I would say that the articles themselves offer almost no value, but some of the discussions are highly educational.
All that banning did was waste a good amount of my time until I figured out what had happened, create a lot of ill-will, and then I made a new account.
Imagine participating in a community, enjoying your interactions with some bright people, contributing knowledge when you can, when suddenly you find that you've become invisible. After some period of time wondering, you eventually find out that you are invisible.
It's a horrible thing to do to someone. I like many of the HN commenters, and I often learn something from reading what they've written, but I have nothing but disdain for the site itself, its mods, and its creator. They all contribute to doing this to people, though they'll brush it off as necessary automation, necessary for quality control, or some other sociopathic nonsense.
Meanwhile, my coworker would confidently answer with whatever he thought was correct. He would often be close, but he would also, alarmingly often, be completely wrong, to the point of describing behavior that had nothing to do with the product in question.
As luck would have it, none of his lies/misrepresentations ever mattered. Whatever prompted the questions ended up being unimportant, or the support issue was resolved through other means. He ended up promoted to manager, at which point the department imploded on itself under his watch. To my knowledge, he never had any idea how incorrect he was, since he was simply wildly confident in himself.