mike_h

The pencil is an unexpected game-changer. I have the Penultimate app open next to me on a big Pro all day, it's crazy how much more effective than paper I find it.

No mention of how they share what they learn with each other. I know the main bottleneck here is material / financial, but I get the impression there's also an information bottleneck. Getting them networked might dim the romance a little, but it also might mitigate the tragedy.

Why are male employees sticking with Uber?

Noise-canceling headphones aren't as effective as passive noise blockers. If you don't want to wear earplugs all day, use the earmuffs meant for heavy machinery or shooting:

https://www.amazon.com/Ear-Defense-3000-Muffs-Earplugs/dp/B0...

They even sell some as pretty decent headphones:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004U4A5RU

Re: comfort, you will have to try a few pairs to see which ones are best for you; most seem to be designed more for safety and maintaining a seal than for wearing all day without fatigue.

Going to encouragingly dispute that. Tech hubs are full of people who came out of just this situation and are ecstatic at having found a like-minded community. You may not suddenly be a social butterfly, but the chances of making friends and finding meetups you enjoy etc go up by literal orders of magnitude. If you're an isolated computer type, you owe it to yourself to at least visit a place like this for a weekend and schedule some meetups or job interviews etc to see what life could be like.

No modifier keys necessary for the directional arrows, if you mean the ones that move the cursor? They're under your pointer and middle finger on each side. Having return key (and backspace, space, and mod keys) always directly under your strongest fingers ends up feeling really natural and efficient, in my experience.

Titan Urban ┋ Bay Area, CA ┋ Fulltime ┋ONSITE

Launching with the biggest possible customer, and more are waiting.

Work with a star team of ground-transportation industry veterans to build a new on-demand ride platform. Not ride sharing: premium vehicles, premium drivers, available only to corporate clients. We need:

  - Mobile
  - Web
  - Backend
  - QA

We have two iOS apps, an Android app, and lots of interesting work to do on the web and backend. So far it’s been a sprint, and so we’re looking for some disciplined and thoughtful developers to lay the groundwork for a mature system that will take us through the upcoming growth.

We’re small, so we can offer meaningful equity along with salary. Relocation possible.

This is an unusual opportunity to join a small startup with significant traction, and work closely alongside team members making a ground transportation operation come to life. Our product team includes founders of legendary and successful startups, and we maintain a tough but nurturing culture. We're looking for people who want to do the best work of their lives and be rewarded for it, because that's what we're doing right now.

There have been some crazy twists and adventures so far, with more to come. For more info, please email my username minus the _h at titanurban.com

Titan Urban ┋ Bay Area, CA ┋ Fulltime ┋ONSITE

Launching with a very big client next week, and more are waiting.

Work with a star team of ground-transportation industry veterans to build a new on-demand ride platform. Not ride sharing: premium vehicles, premium drivers, available only to corporate clients. We need:

  - Mobile
  - Web
  - Backend
  - QA

We have two iOS apps, an Android app, and lots of interesting work to do on the web and backend. So far it’s been a sprint, and so we’re looking for some disciplined and thoughtful developers to lay the groundwork for a mature system that will take us through the upcoming growth.

We’re small, so we can offer meaningful equity along with salary. Relocation possible.

This is an unusual opportunity to join a small startup with significant traction, and work closely alongside team members making a ground transportation operation come to life. Our product team includes founders of legendary and successful startups, and we maintain a tough but nurturing culture. We're looking for people who want to do the best work of their lives and be rewarded for it, because that's what we're doing right now.

There have been some crazy twists and adventures so far, with more to come. For more info, please email my username minus the _h at titanurban.com

I only have two personal anecdotes, one 3x and one > 4x. Both for people in their 20s, and I don't know the math but I can imagine that in group plans where rates are flat, young people cost more to insure than individually and older people cost less.

Couldn't find any good data but here's a post representative of the top few google hits for COBRA vs. private:

http://www.mymoneyblog.com/unemployed-cobra-vs-individual-he...

COBRA rates are 3-4x higher than individual plan insurance every time I've heard about them.

In a rapid-churn economy like tech, where people often strike out on their own and companies cease to exist etc., the few $K a year it takes to maintain your own individual plan is something everyone should consider. As you age, starting a new private plan becomes frighteningly expensive, and if ACA doesn't stick, it may become impossible again for many people.

Would something like a google glass app, or another semi-automated assistant work for augmenting his capabilities?

Sounds like he's totally motivated and capable to do e.g. the janitorial work, but his capability needs to be paired with intensive supervision. Could that supervision be implemented as wearable interactive instruction or cheat-sheets?

I agree, and it does seem like these ideas are catching on. The frameworks you mention, and also a big push by Facebook on iOS in the past year are notable examples. The FB "pop" framework was just made public (I think) this week: https://github.com/facebook/pop

Also their quartz composer prototyping framework: http://facebook.github.io/origami/

Awesome collection at your tumblr!

The Kinesis Advantage line is fully remappable, including macros. It's also premium hardware (nice switches) and a supremely ergo layout, with most keys within reach of the home row, and the thumb region divided up into multiple frequently-used (remappable) keys:

http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/advantage.htm

Don't be cowed by the esoteric appearance; it's really just a tweak on the standard layout.

Just some stuff to consider. I wasn't thinking of them as "mistakes"; that's up to you. Congrats on the nice work and feedback session!

App Store marketing suggestion: say what makes you distinct as near as possible to the beginning of the description text.

Which here I think means, get your sketch-recognition feature as near to the beginning of your description as possible. Only the first sentence or two show up in the web and desktop-iTunes store (don't have ipad with me now), until you hit "...More" to expand the description.

Maybe replace "with extreme ease" with something along the lines of "simply by sketching shapes with your finger".

You could also use the first screenshot slot to show a nice illustration of the UI procedure. For example, a photo montage of a finger sketching a freehand shape, and then that shape re-rendered by your app.

The icon too, could be used for some rendering of the freehand concept.

Maybe I'm missing what makes Lekh distinct, but if it's this, show it off as much as possible -- don't bury it in text!

Has anyone moved from a vim workflow to a tool like this and stuck with it?

I've found IDEs useful in the past when getting onboard an existing project that's new to me, but I pretty quickly jump back to my text shredder and terminal windows. Wondering if people see sustained productivity gains with modern IDE tech. I know JetBrains has been a well-regarded IDE producer for years now.

Problem is, some limits are hard to detect until you've exceeded them; "listen to your body" really must be augmented by details and rigor around safe progressions through the practice (which, to complicate things, obviously vary by individual).

Hard to say: it hasn't had much of an opportunity to become popular, because it hasn't been a real option so far ;)

That said, my sense is similar to what yours sounds like -- the audience will remain small, just because it'll never be as fast, even after a tool like yours cuts down the entry time.

I'll ask around and try to generate some use cases or niches where mobile could take off, and get ahold of you if I do. I remember Paul G. talking about it a year or two ago, maybe if you can get ahold of him he could share his thoughts. Meanwhile -- nice work.

Killer leverage there. Also: mobile (touchscreen UI) development.

The main point is always worth reiterating (take care of your body), but before a bunch of people run out and buy wrist supports I just want to add that things like this are not universally endorsed by physical therapists (or fellow injury-prone hackers). They can lead to secondary issues like atrophy and poor circulation, which in turn lead to more issues, etc.

Having been through multiple versions of these (the kind he has, less restrictive ones, custom-molded ones), I found my body held up best when I kept it active and strong on its own. The term "crutch" has a double meaning in the English language for a reason: sometimes it's truly necessary, but when it's not truly necessary it's actually hurting you in the long run.

I've also noticed generational differences. The baby-boomer-age folks who managed to emigrate after spending their youth in re-education camps tend not to be very quiet in their contempt for the regime. But Gen-X'ers that I've met swing in the other direction. These kids were raised by people who didn't want to see their children beaten and jailed, so they were raised to support the party line.

You should put your portfolio link in your user page. I found a link by viewing your comments, but that'll get hidden if you post more. Looks like nice work.

This was my first thought too -- when I saw the icon at the top of your page, I was bracing myself for an awful-looking game and saying to myself "well there's the problem right there". But then the game looks great, compelling even. Talk to this guy about your icon!

Hm, I missed that link to the chart before, and I was trying to respond to the "cognitive diversity -> effectiveness" discussion. You're right: it's hard to see the chart supporting my claim. (There are some hints at a sweet spot there in the middle, except for that drop at 50/50!)

Link to chart: http://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-tea...

When women are around, there's more at stake for men. They need to be more competitive but also more well-behaved (they're being judged not just on performance but also on character).

There could be an analogous effect on the women, I don't know.

In my Silicon Valley experience, a team without women is a disadvantaged team indeed, and not just because they make the men better. But not acknowledging the potential contribution of this dynamic is kinda surprising to me.

Sorry to see this and respond late, but yeah, mine is pretty big too. Most of that doesn't change hour-to-hour in my use case luckily, so incremental backup to disk is good enough for the bulk. If you work mostly with code or other text, you can probably find a few folders of frequent business that fit on a small Dropbox plan and just sync those.

"The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed" is the Gibson quote that often gets applied to technology, but it applies as well to knowledge in general.

Who is arguing against any of this?

Maybe not anyone at a certain level of academic discourse, but US society and law continue to argue against it: the average person would attempt to make an explicit argument, and laws on the whole reflect an implicit discipline-and-punish philosophy more than the rehab hypothesis.

There's a long way to go before this is democratically-actionable knowledge, and I think he does a good job of presenting some easily-digestible food for thought.

Dropbox is an awesome way to offset the failure risk. I keep all my development projects on Dropbox, so the moment I write to disk, it's syncing with at least one other running workstation plus the Dropbox remote storage.

(The brains of my homedir are symlinked to Dropbox as well: all dot files including shell history)

btw, pdx: don't get too neurotic about "making" yourself sit straight. Stick in any one position for too long and you're going to get stiff and cause other problems (the nice thing about finding the right chair is it will keep you in a good position while letting you relax).

frossie is right about exercise too: staying limber and energetic is at least as important as the furniture.

I've owned a few ergo chairs and used each for long periods of time. Here's my take as a 6'2", 185lb male:

- Aeron: be wary of considering this as any ergonomic standard. The mesh is great for air and comfortable on your butt, but the back support is weak and it's not very adjustable. You do need to make sure you get the right size (A, B, C). The PostureFit adapter actually hurt my back when I had it dialed in at all. Sold my Aeron after a month.

- Steelcase Leap: This one is also popular among coders and the first version ("v1" on the net) is actually pretty awesome. I've used it days on end, and realy came to appreciate the reclining support and the many adjustments which help keep things fresh. The v2 isn't as adjustable, and the front of the seat pan dug into my thighs so I sent it back after a few weeks. I've owned two of the v1s for about 6 months and spend 10-60 hours/wk in them.

- Soma Ergo. My top pick of the three. These are so obscure that I don't know if you can even find them outside of the Bay Area; I got lucky and found them back when there was a vendor in Palo Alto (they're made to order in Berkeley, I believe). If you go into a store that sells these, they custom fit each element and you choose from various materials. It comes out to about $1000 for a best-materials seat (this includes some fancy cushion material that is the most forgiving of any I've tred after long long coding sessions). I bought mine in 2006 and it remains my favorite chair. Aeron didn't come close. After sitting on the Leaps, my body always feels relief coming back to this one.

If you're on a budget, the fully-adjustable Patriot that they sell at Office Depot is also pretty good: it's only $200 and I'd take it over an Aeron without hesitation. I used these for about 8 years. Main limitations are that the seat bottom will hurt after long hours and you'll probably want supplemental back support if you're prone to back issues.