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positivejamon Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder.

With the number of comments on this post, I doubt anyone will read this, much less the OP, but I feel compelled to say:

GO TO THE FUCKING DOCTOR!!!

If you're noticing something wrong or different with your body, go to the doctor to rule out something medical. Then continue your investigation. A doctor wouldn't try to diagnose you based on what you've written in your original post, so I wouldn't weight too heavily the opinions of a bunch of NON-DOCTORS with zero skin in the game.

positivejamon Ask HN: Has anyone here turned around their life in their 40s?

What's your preferred medium (one-on-one conversation, book, audiobook, podcast, article, etc.)?

positivejamon Ask HN: Have you experienced decline in problem-solving skills? How to improve?

I don't mean to be alarmist and I have no idea what the likelihood is, but one thing you didn't list as a possible cause is something that has changed in your brain. When I was 32 I started noticing an increase in typing mistakes and having some cognitive trouble. Later that year I had a seizure, got an MRI, and found out I had a brain tumor.

You're probably fine, but in addition to asking HN I'd recommend asking a doctor. After having surgery to remove the cancer, I also got a cognitive psych eval (several hours of testing) to establish a baseline. They were able to estimate the degree of decline I'd experienced due to surgery.

positivejamon Mechanical Watch

He has one on the ICE actually, though I don't have the link handy.

positivejamon IRS says its own error sent $1,200 stimulus checks to non-Americans overseas

Please correct my math if I got this wrong, but a less click-baity headline would be:

> IRS Says Its Own Error Sent 0.0016 Percent of a $2.2 Trillion Stimulus Package to Non-Americans Overseas

34 million / 2.2 trillion = 0.00005454...

positivejamon Show HN: Built a timeline component for React with multiple layout modes

Agreed. Would renaming it vertical-split or vertical-alternating reduce confusion?

positivejamon Getting Users Is Hard

I don't want to just spread negativity, but I see this so often on HN I feel like it's mean not to comment.

I would strongly recommend anyone considering developing an app to have a list of potential customers before they write a single line of code. This is not a revolutionary idea, but I still see it regularly ignored.

When you launch, you want to be able to send the announcement out to your 1,000/5,000/25,000 email subscribers/insta followers/podcast listeners. Simply writing an app and submitting it to the app store is going to be painful.

positivejamon Inside of a Tractor Cab [video]

> I'm guessing that video is taken in the US since she is planting corn.

Yep, Nebraska. I grew up near(ish) the town on her sweatshirt.

positivejamon ACLU: ICE and CBP Are Secretly Tracking Us Using Stingrays. We’re Suing

Has the ACLU's stance on the right to bear arms has been inconsistent, as in, changed quite a bit over time? Or they just haven't had much of a stance to speak of? Honest question.

positivejamon War Is a Racket (1933)

> I would bet that most people who join the military today (at least in the US) do so hoping to avoid ever having to see action, rather than looking forward to killing for their country.

Most of the guys I went to basic with or deployed with could. Not. Wait. To see action.

positivejamon How Bad Are Things? (2015)

I had also heard that. This was the first source I found, which paints a slightly more complicated picture, but does seem to indicate that divorce is less common among the affluent.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/article/marriage-and-divor...

positivejamon I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

> nervous people who are very self conscious in an interview setting may respond completely differently than they would if they were asked the same question on the job by the coffee machine.

This part is crucial. If an interviewee is pushed to the brink but doesn't say, "I don't know," that does not imply they will not say, "I don't know," once they've secured a position.

positivejamon In Estonian parliamentary election, 44% of the votes were cast online

Relevant Computerphile episode (w/ Tom Scott): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI

positivejamon Ask HN: Any good examples of learning through games/puzzles, for adults?

http://www.flexboxdefense.com/

Really appreciated this back when I was first introduced to CSS Flexbox.

positivejamon Ask HN: Which YouTube channels do you watch regularly?

Binging With Babish has gotten me cooking more than at any other time in my life.

And Primitive Technology is mesmerizing.

positivejamon Algorithms tutorial for beginners

>Another popular algorithm is PageRank developed in 1988 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page...

I think you meant 1998 there.

positivejamon Stripe Billing

Got an email signup for that?

positivejamon Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

Re: the notion that "airlines bump people all the time", there are those arguing that while it is indeed lawful and routine for airlines to bump passengers due to overbooking, this was not a case of overbooking, and once a passenger has taken their seat they have very different rights than when they are still waiting to board the plane. I am by no means an expert, but I found this article (posted on HN yesterday) to be illuminating: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/04/united-passenger-remo...

Basically, this wasn't just poor customer service, it was a violation of rules.

positivejamon I Open-Sourced All My Business Ideas

Just a word usage nitpick:

In your "Hacker News for Moms" idea description, you say, "Higher quality posts and articles than the dribble that most moms read on their Facebook feeds" (emphasis mine). I believe you mean "drivel" here. Many parents do deal with their fair share of dribble, but that's something else entirely.

positivejamon Unintended Affordances (or why I believe encrypting everything is a bad idea)

> Good. Censorship and other attacks should be as noisy, obtrusive, and damaging as possible

Agreed. It's human nature to not bother to speak up when a group you're not a part of is attacked. If widespread encryption means that more people will be affected when governments try to censor traffic, then I'd say we have one more argument for widespread encryption. http://hmd.org.uk/resources/poetry/first-they-came-pastor-ma...

positivejamon 1.5 Million Missing Black Men

> My sister

One anecdote

> My girlfriend

Another anecdote

> During high school a huge percentage

Now we're talking percentages, which is better. But you'd still need something better than your recollections (and probably something more specific than "huge").

Obviously, there are plenty of mixed-race relationships, and plenty of them are happy. But there is research that seems to indicate that there is something to what the parent comment was suggesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpersonal_attraction#Simila...

positivejamon Microsoft takes .NET open source and cross-platform

Maybe it's not so much about drawing developers to them but trying to keep existing .NET developers from straying?

positivejamon Blockbuster: Losing the plot

Agreed. Everyone here saying that nothing could have stopped Netflix from triumphing needs to go read the second article you mention. According to it, seeing Blockbuster's demise as inevitable is a fiction born of hindsight.

http://daindunston.com/blockbuster-the-customer-owns-your-pu...

positivejamon Ask HN: How do you use Docker in production?

Very cool, thanks!

positivejamon Ask HN: How do you use Docker in production?

> - Build agents for TeamCity, this was one of the first scenarios and it's been amazingly helpful so far.

Can you expand on what you've done with them and how it's been helpful?

positivejamon Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online

Ah yes, my mistake.

positivejamon Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online

Obviously I don't think it's okay for a hotel to provide services in a slow or rude way as long as they eventually provide them. No one would seriously suggest that.

positivejamon Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online

personZ understood the sarcasm:

-literal meaning of Spooky23's statement: it's unreasonable to expect ice in the middle of summer.

-sarcastic meaning of Spooky23's statement: it's completely REASONABLE to expect ice in the middle of summer.

personZ acknowledges the sarcastic meaning (that it is reasonable to expect ice in the middle of summer), and is pointing out that based on the article, the guests actually DID in fact receive ice, making Spooky23's sarcastic statement not very relevant; the issue was that they had complaints about the attitude with which it was provided.

Edit: unless perhaps personZ edited his original post.

positivejamon Ask HN: What would attract you to a job in flyover country?

Just a guess, but I'd think most of the folks who like to live out in the sticks like to live in "their" sticks

Agreed.

positivejamon Codespaces.com taken down by hackers

From the page: "Code Spaces will not be able to operate beyond this point, the cost of resolving this issue to date and the expected cost of refunding customers who have been left without the service they paid for will put Code Spaces in a irreversible position both financially and in terms of on going credibility."