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Medical tourism and paying in cash wherever is convenient/inexpensive might also be an option to consider - there are a lot of places that will be cheaper than Europe.

For local media streaming to Chromecast or Apple TV devices, I highly prefer Airflow app[0] over Plex. The experience for playback really is a night and day difference. Scrubbing/seeking is instant and it basically avoids transcoding whenever possible, including when using subtitles.

[0] https://airflow.app/

I don't know what the interest or accessibility of edaravone (Radicava) treatment might be for your dad, but I'd be happy to share my experience with you by email if that is useful - my address is on my HN user page.

From the current research, the best conclusion I've been able to arrive at is we still don't really understand ALS. My opinion is that there may be several distinct motor neuron diseases, each with accompanying cause[s], currently grouped together in what we call ALS. There are notable differences in early vs. later onset ALS, slow vs. rapid disease progression, initial primary symptoms, genetic links vs environmental factors, etc. (I'm not a doctor or professional academic in the field, but I've studied ALS research extensively - a relative was diagnosed and died from it, suddenly, in their early 60s.)

Stephen Hawking is definitely inspiring, with a few unique points - he had an early onset of the disease, slow disease progression, and extensive resources/access to the most advanced care. With mechanical ventilation, caregivers, sheer will, some luck (basically, not contracting a fatal case of pneumonia), tracheotomy and feeding tube, etc - life expectancy with ALS can certainly be extended far beyond what was once thought possible though.

My experience with Lutron's smart switches and blinds has been great. For any new home construction, I would wholeheartedly recommend adding a lot more LED lights than any builder would normally put in, wiring in smart+motorized blinds, and using smart dimmer light switches. The way to avoid fussiness from smart home devices is to choose ones that are controllable in both the classic ways, like with a switch on the wall and/or remote control - and also through an app or by voice with your preferred device from Amazon, Apple, or Google.

With Lutron, beyond the things you mentioned, two more of my unexpectedly favorite features have been:

1) being able to add additional wall switches anywhere and program them to control any set of lights, without any extra electrical wiring (for 3-way or 4-way switches, or controlling multiple lighting circuits with one switch)

2) range-based programming (e.g. automatically turning on lights for rooms from the garage to kitchen when you're arriving home)

Other devices like smart locks, smart garage doors, water leak alarm sensors, and AV equipment have all been useful and generally worked well for me. Some of them have been slightly fussy, but not as a general rule and certainly not to an "unbearable" extent. Overall, they really do make things significantly better, at a surprisingly low cost compared to the rest of home construction.

I can't recommend Calakmul enough. It is a far larger and more interesting site than Chichen Itza, by a substantial margin. And, there are at most a few hundred visitors per day (we saw maybe ~100 total the day we visited) vs 6000+ per day at Chichen Itza. You can climb all the structures at Calakmul and the understanding you get of the scope, views of the rest of the site and surrounding area, etc are incredible.

Here are a few pictures I took at Calakmul of two of the many large structures:

https://500px.com/photo/1027901445/Ruins-at-Calakmul-Structu...

https://500px.com/photo/1027483989/Calakmul-Ruins-Structure-...

The "Mayan Train" is currently under construction and may eventually bring many more tourists to the area - I would highly suggest going before that happens and everything there changes. (It will be great for the region in terms of economic impact, but the status quo with few visitors on incredible sites is really magnificent.)

The ruins at Becan, Xpuhil (Xpujil), and Coba are all also really incredible - and only a handful of people visit them per day. You can easily stay in Bacalar, visit Chetumal in the morning, drive to see Becan and Xpujil in the afternoon, and then visit Calakmul the next day. (Driving back to Tulum/Playa del Carmen/etc makes for a long drive afterwards, but is certainly doable.)

Fly into Cancun, rent a car, and then go drive down the coast and plan various stops for a really great trip. Playa del Carmen and Tulum are fun, of course, in an "international tourism" sense. Bacalar and Chetumal are also "tourist towns", but they are very different - think of a small, charming beach/lake town with an older, more original/authentic feel.

100% agree, I flagged it since it's in obvious bad faith/disrespect of HN's guidelines: "Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff occasionally, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity."

This person has literally only contributed posts promoting his site, and at this point it's clearly abusive - two submissions of it today (this one and another), once a day ago, and once 3 days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27790278 - 5 hours ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27786752 - 12 hours ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27776497 - 1 day ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27755511 - 3 days ago

What is a "real friend" then? Many would argue that shared interests or experiences can certainly be the basis of at least some level of friendship.

There are certainly some people who might claim that the label of "real friend" only applies to those you could "trust to help bury a body", or some other extremely unlikely/intense situation. Like most things, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. There are likely varying degrees of friendship. Qualifying them as "real" (or not) comes across more like the informal logical fallacy of an appeal to purity (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman) than anything.

Kenji and Serious Eats' work on cooking meat and roasts has transformational. When time allows, sous vide with a reverse sear is my current favorite/unbeatable technique for perfect results without any extra work or active time beyond the initial water bath setup.

Not to lightly throw around the phrase "life changing", because I honestly don't eat that many grilled cheese sandwiches where the difference substantially changes my life, but using mayonnaise instead of butter is definitely a revelation. I think I learned that from another source before Kenji, but I know Kenji has highlighted that tip at various points and it's well worth repeating.

I've watched this Jacques Pépin video countless times and the ease with which he casually prepares the two styles of omelets in ~5 minutes and narrates the process amazes me every time. I still can't perfectly replicate the second "classic French omelet" style even after years of effort. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1XoCQm5JSQ&t=8s

If you're interested in baking, I imagine you already know of Claire Saffitz - but if not, she was previously at Bon Appétit and now has a great YouTube channel on desserts/baking that your description of things like "tacky" vs "sticky" etc being more directly/usefully explained in a video context.

And yes, I 100% agree that Kenji has been an amazing culinary content creator, researcher, and resource for years. Look at his recipes and insights on turkey/prime rib/etc for holiday meals, noodles, cookies, and more as a few outstanding examples. He reminds me a lot of many of the best things about Alton Brown and Jacques Pépin - a scientifically/analytically fussy approach to cooking and baking, but in the right ways - not in the "fussiness without usefulness" (or without useful explanation, at least) route that many chefs take.

I missed getting into Pokemon by a couple years, since it wasn't out until 1998. I was already playing MTG and Star Wars: CCG for a while by then, and didn't continue playing after ~2000. I similarly expected SW:CCG cards to grow in value more than MTG, especially with the prequels - but I think the production runs were significantly greater from the beginning and people had a long association with Star Wars figurines/toys/cards as collectibles being valuable before that. One interesting thing for SW:CCG is that the newer print runs can often now be more valuable than the older ones for SW:CCG, since each run saw fewer cards printed as the popularity dwindled.

Before the prequels, it was relatively easy to meet many of the Star Wars actors. I met Peter Mayhew and had him sign my Star Wars: CCG Chewbacca card at a comic convention. A lot of people seem to comment on what a nice person he was to meet, and I completely agree. David Prowse was less obviously likeable, but was also interesting to meet.

English is the most spoken second language in Spain, with ~35% of the population being able to speak it. Portugal is slightly worse at 27%, along with Ukraine (18%), Romania (31%), and Italy (34%). France (39%), Croatia (49%), Estonia (50%), Slovenia (59%), and Greece (51%) are all a bit higher. And then the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Austria, Luxembourg, and Switzerland are all between 60-70%+.

And although I wouldn't worry too much about language too much if your focus is primarily on work, Spanish is perhaps the easiest language to learn as an English speaker. You can achieve professional level fluency in 600 hours of study. Certainly with 80-100 hours of concentrated study and continued practice after that you can learn more than enough to get by in daily life.

Two big advantages with learning Spanish: 1) pronunciation is easy to learn and is the same for both written and spoken Spanish; 2) there are lots of cognates, so if your English vocabulary is good then you already know lots of Spanish words.

Spain is great, but for the purposes of picking a country for working remotely and having a longer runway, I would argue heavily for Mexico over Spain if you're picking a Spanish speaking country. The overall cost of living is low, internet access can be great depending on the area, you'll be on a similar timezone as the US, and services (cooking, laundry, babysitting, etc) are very inexpensive - leaving you with much more time to work (or to use your downtime more effectively than running errands/etc).

You might be surprised by the ridiculously small amount of money it takes to lobby legislators in the US. I've seen various reports over the years that have shown amounts well below $50k effectively buying deciding votes on important issues. To me, that would have otherwise seemed like an amount that might be effective at a city or state level, but it's shocking to see that being true at a federal level. One recent example that was heavily reported on was the lobbying over net neutrality. ISPs contributed $1.5 million to 273 members of Congress to support overturning net neutrality - that's less than $5500 each on average.

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2017/12/money-flows-into-ne...

I played clarinet, piano, and guitar growing up, but before reading this I had no idea about the story of the relatively modern (i.e. post industrial revolution) invention of the saxophone. I never played jazz, but certainly appreciate it and this quote from the article really struck a chord with me, "Without jazz, what would music be? But without the sax, what would jazz be?"

I'm the same way, naturally preferring something like a 26-27 hour day with 17+ hours awake and 9+ hours of sleep. I'd be very interested to hear more about your experience, especially of bupropion helping - could you email me (in my profile)? I've found melatonin, doxylamine succinate, zolpidem, and alprazolam to each be somewhat helpful at times although they all have diminishing returns over time and seem to affect sleep quality.

The relationship between a manager and his or her direct reports is often cited as the single biggest factor in determining job satisfaction. Try to make the relationship a good one, and hope that they do their part too.

With the benefit of hindsight in similar situations, I would suggest trying not to jump in too heavily on things (like taking sides in a technical debate, volunteering for specific projects, etc) until you understand your new manager's objectives and how they evaluate performance.

The corporate culture, and the reason why the new manager was brought in, both matter. If it's just because the old one moved on and a new one was hired, and there's a strong corporate culture, things will likely continue on pretty normally for you as a junior report. If they were brought on for another reason or it's a smaller company, you could be in for some dramatic changes.

In any case, read up on how to "manage up". Here's a few Harvard Business Review articles that should help, and then you can go from there:

https://hbr.org/2015/01/what-everyone-should-know-about-mana...

https://hbr.org/2014/12/how-to-handle-your-first-meeting-wit...

You should be able to tell within a few months how things are going - if you aren't happy or aren't getting positive feedback from the new manager, start job hunting. At 1-2 years into your first job you are likely at a good point to start looking for a new position with a nice bump in salary anyway.

The study that showed 21% positive antibody results came from self-selected testing of people physically shopping at grocery and big-box stores. Unfortunately, that ultimately doesn't effectively represent the overall population of NYC at all. This was posted by the Head of Decision Intelligence at Google about the study a day after the "21%" headline was published: https://towardsdatascience.com/were-21-of-new-york-city-resi...

Unless you really want to dive into building it for fun, check out the Sensibo Sky. If your unit is compatible, I think that's the way to go. I honestly think they're slightly overpriced for what they are, even on sale, but I've also bought 4 and have been very happy.

Basically you get all the control/features you want by app or API, based on the unit's thermostat and hygrometer. Remote control, scheduling, auto on/off based on your location if you want that, and the big thing for me: programmable event control with any settings (cool/dry/fan at X degrees and Y strength/angle).

I mostly use the temperature based on/off programability because that feels the most like a traditional central air to me. I usually do: "when temperature is >24C, turn unit on to cool 20C medium fan strength" and "when temperature is <23C, turn unit off".

As far as which machine to get, I ended up choosing the Rocket R58 v2 ~5 years ago and have been very happy with it. It checks all the boxes: double boiler, E61 group head, timeless/classic appearance, PID, fits under normal residential kitchen cabinets, etc. I'm satisfied with my current grinder, a Baratza Sette 270Wi, but I do occasionally consider upgrading to a Monolith.

The parent may have more direct insight, but the article does discuss the rules: "The rules were few, and clear. Respect the past of the catacombs. Take out what you take in. Resources are to be shared, even with strangers. No selling and no buying: barter exchange or gifting are the only acceptable modes of transaction. Help is to be given wherever necessary. Create with care—and do not destroy."

Not that it's the best or only methodology to project planning in a given scenario, company, or industry, but I do think there's significant value in PMP training. I completed the PMP exam in 2012 after being encouraged by a coworker, and I see it as both useful and cheap enough to suggest it to most software/hardware developers.

Learning and applying "how to plan a project" has pretty universal career relevance. I suggest 30-40 hours of study time, and it's around ~$600 to buy the book, take the exam, etc.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, since it's probably better to use another source for a secondary if that's your primary.

Closed groups are big for certain use cases - either for small-ish hobby+location specific communities or for attendees of some large events (i.e. music festivals).

There's a lot of truth and value in that quote, but understanding the context behind it is important. It's boxing - everyone understands they will be punched in the mouth, has practiced getting punched, etc.

You need a plan, but have to be able to adapt to changing circumstances.

For reference, that quote was given in an interview about his upcoming fight against Evander Holyfield. Holyfield dominated the fight, Tyson bit him twice, and the fight was stopped in the 11th round with Holyfield as the winner.

(It would have been more arrogant to say, but perhaps more honestly stated as "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth by Mike Tyson". Tyson is widely considered to be the hardest hitting boxer in history. He retired with a record of 50-6, with 44 wins by knockout and 22 of those knockouts were in the first round.)

I read it as part of my business degree. It's a great book, and a fascinating story: "Sam Walton: Made In America" by Sam Walton and John Huey.

I imagine phones will serve that role eventually. GPS chip accuracy is improving constantly and could be accurate to within a foot in some phones in the next year [1]. Google Maps / Waze already do something similar with predicting traffic times based on phone data (and other sources). GPS accuracy currently may make an individual's location slightly harder, but path prediction may help. (And, of course there are privacy concerns to consider.)

[1] https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/9/25/16362296/g...

It's also done for the comfort of the people working there. Standing on concrete all day is more tiring than on a wooden floor.

I've had the Dell U3415W (3440x1440) since it was released two years ago, and it is the best monitor I've ever used. The resolution is great, and avoiding the DPI scaling needed for practical use of most 4K screens is key. As a bonus, it is absolutely perfect for movies in 21:9.

If you haven't seen one, a more familiar comparison might be that the U3415W is essentially the same as a 27" IPS panel, only wider. It has 1440 pixels of height at roughly the same physical height as the 27" IPS panels.

Many people argue that curved screens are unnecessary or a gimmick, which I would agree is true for TV screens with multiple off-center viewers. From my own comparison of several 32"+ monitors, I do think the curve is very useful in reducing neck/eye fatigue.

The new 38" does sound appealing, but at 2-3x the cost of the U3415W on sale I would probably still recommend the 34" to most people.