raamdev

Plenty of close calls have taught me the value of always knowing my exits and always leaving plenty of space between me and the car in front of me (driving instructors often teach 1 car length for every 10 mph: 70 mph = 7 car lengths).

Unfortunately a lot of these rules only work if other drivers on the road are also following them (around here, in the Boston area, you'll be lucky to have 2 car lengths of space in front of you no matter your speed), so I've learned that simply being aware at all times (no phone, no distracting conversations, and holy hell no text messaging or emails) is the best thing anyone can do for improving their safety while behind the wheel.

I recall doing the same as a kid (and as a young adult). The one I remember searching for were the Axis network cameras:

inurl:/view.shtml [1]

and

intitle:”Live View / – AXIS” | inurl:view/view.shtml^ [2]

[1] http://www.google.com/search?q=inurl:/view.shtml

[2] http://www.google.com/search?q=intitle%3A%22Live+View+%2F+-+...

Forethought (visualization) and training play a big part as well.

You reminded me of something that happened to me while driving a few years ago. I was on the highway in the far left lane going about 70mph. I was driving an Audi A4, which had much better (sensitive) handling than the pickup truck I was used to driving. There was a breakdown lane to the left of me (unusual for most highways) and I thought to myself, "if I suddenly needed to swerve out of the way for some reason, I could flick my wrist and get into the left breakdown lane to avoid whatever was happening in front of me".

Not more than a few seconds after having that thought, I saw the car in front of the car in front of me jump up onto the car in front of it. The car in front of me slammed on his brakes. I flicked my wrist to the left without thinking. Only when I passed (in the left breakdown lane) all the cars piled on top of each other did I realize just how closely I dodged a serious accident. If I had not visualized what I would do in such a scenario a few seconds earlier, I'm not sure if I would've done the same thing.

It seems odd to me that DO never bothered to make any kind of statement to counter this guy's claims (at least not that I've seen), especially considering how well-known this story has become. That tells me that DO is either guilty or doesn't care enough about their reputation to even so much as publish a statement to help ease customers' (and potential customers) fears/worries. That's enough for me to stay away from them.

For the punctuation-based text color, it would be great if the software was able to keep track of, or at least attempt to keep track of, what character was speaking and assign a specific color to that characters' text.

For speed reading something like a novel, this would help the brain quickly associate a color with a character and avoid the need to catch the text that makes it clear who is speaking.

Yahoo's prevalence in Japan surprised me the most.

Like others here, I love this idea; a similar concept has been bouncing around in my head over the past few months in light of NSA-related news.

But the thing I keep coming back to in my head is, "how do we get people who know nothing about encryption, or even care that much about being monitored, to use more secure channels?"

When I saw the title of this thread, my first thought was, "how could we build something that allows people to run WordPress--already open-source and used by millions--on a distributed secure network?" How could we make 'distributed and secure' easy and stupid-simple for anyone who already knows how to install and use WordPress (or any other open-source software for that matter)?

I feel like we're trying to build things from scratch when building better wheels is more practical for the masses who already have vehicles they're comfortable driving.

[Edit: FYI, the video on the Kickstarter page makes trsst sound a lot more like a 'social media platform' than a 'blog platform'.]

Export options were my first thought too. The bottom of their website [1] says, "Your data is yours and you have full conrol over it, so you can export or delete it at any time." I'm curious what that actually means though... how can I export it, and to what formats?

[1]: https://www.narrato.co/

The tick problem in the Northeast USA seems to vary wildly every year. I've lived here my whole life (31 years, in the southern New Hampshire area) and I've seen tick populations fluctuate drastically from one year to the next.

A few years ago it was particularly bad: I went camping on my dad's land in northern New Hampshire one weekend and we had literally a dozen ticks crawling up our legs within five minutes of arriving. When I awoke in my tent the next morning, the outside of the tent had dozens of ticks clinging to the outside netting, trying to get in. It was impossible to walk anywhere without getting several ticks on you. None of us, including my dad who has lived here 60+ years, has seen it that bad.

In contrast, we were up at the same area a few weekends ago and we spent three days walking through the woods, camping out, and wearing shorts the whole time. The three of us had a total of 2 ticks the entire weekend.

I'm very curious to know what's influencing their numbers.

That response to the bite sounds exactly like my progression from normal response to near-immunity. As I mentioned above, it's not like I've always been immune and there wasn't one day when suddenly I became immune. Its been a long multi-decade process (I'm 31 now). In my early twenties, I would itch and welt from a mosquito bite for maybe 10 minutes. Now, I don't welt or itch. When I was in my early teens, it was probably more like an hour of welt + itch.

I'm fascinated by bugs. I've always let them bite me for a while (even when I knew they would itch later). The joy of observing them always outweighed the itch for me. I think it's only because I've always let them bite me that I was able to get a sense of how the itching and welting changed over time.

In retrospect, I wish I had kept detailed records of the timing change.

My low-tech deterrent? A lifetime of avoiding deterrents. My body seems to have developed a natural resistance to them.

I grew up in New Hampshire, not exactly as extreme as Alaska but a place where there are certainly plenty of mosquitos in the summer. I went camping a few weekends ago in the White Mountains and had 10 mosquitos biting my arm as soon as I stopped moving.

So what's my deterrent? My body. It seems to have developed a natural resistance to mosquitos, or at least to what they inject into me.

When mosquitos bite me, I genuinely don't get itchy or have "bug bites". If I remember correctly, the itchy welts that most people get are caused by the body's response to something the mosquito injects into your skin to prevent the blood from clotting. My body seems to have adapted in such a way that it doesn't react anymore.

I haven't always been this way. When I was little, I got mosquito bites just like everybody else. The difference was, I always refused bug spray (I hate chemicals on my skin). I don't care how bad the bugs are. If it's 100F outside, I'll wear a long-sleeve shirt and long pants to cover my skin (and yes, they still bite through, so heavy clothes help).

EDIT: Also relevant: my grandmother discovered that dryer sheets--those scented things that people throw in the dryer with their laundry--work as an excellent mosquito deterrent. I didn't believe her until I tried it. Hang one out of your hat or on your shirt collar and watch how few mosquitos come near your head!

So wouldn't it make more sense to promote a turnout rather than talk down the possibility of turning out achieving anything? I'll be at the Old State house in Boston at 9:30am.

+1 for CommaFeed. I had been in denial about Google Reader shutting down simply because all the alternatives were painful in comparison. Thankfully, I discovered CommaFeed a few days ago and now I'm not dreading July 1st.

CommaFeed almost seems too good to be true: it's free; the code is open-source; you can run a self-hosted version. I made a $10 donation to the developer a few days ago and I've stopped looking for my Google Reader replacement.

It looks like despite the error the verification still goes through. I uploaded my ID, it said it was doing some processing, and when I clicked next I got an error. However, I was still able to complete the verification and it now shows me as verified.

I've actually found that one cup of a specific type of coffee, namely instant coffee, drank immediately after breakfast, nearly always guarantees a bowel movement.

I've actually found it to be extremely useful part of my daily routine and when I need to break the routine for whatever reason (I live nomadically so my routines are always changing), my whole day is usually a lot more uncomfortable (i.e., my digestive system and bowls feel slower).

I still haven't identified how all this works, but it's an interesting anecdote.

I personally use Foursquare for nothing more than tracking my travels. Initially, I checked into places just so that I could go back and look at my Foursquare history to remember where I was and when I was there.

Then I realized that I should be archiving that data off-site and plotting it on a map for my readers to see. So I wrote a Python script (i.e., hacked together a Python script) that reads my Foursquare history KML feed every 30 minutes and then appends the data to a master KML file on my web server. I then use a plugin called jKMLMap to show my travels on a Google map on my site: http://raamdev.com/travels/#map

I think Foursquare has (had?) huge potential. The digital and the physical world are coming together and apps like Foursquare allow us to connect the two. The trick, as is the trick for any startup, is to figure out how you can monetize such a bridge. I thought the idea of allowing businesses to give away coupons for checking in or becoming the mayor was a great idea, but that's subject to abuse and I'm not sure how that makes Foursquare any money.

If Foursquare improved on features that allowed businesses to incentivize using Foursquare, and made such incentives worthwhile to patrons as well as businesses (product reviews, service reviews, maybe a way for patrons to offer suggestions to business owners for improving business, etc.), then I think Foursquare could save themselves, maybe by charging businesses for offering such features once there's a demand for them by users.

Very nice! As others said, as if I need an easier way to be distracted by HN. ;) I love that you made reading comments so easy -- that's usually what interests me more than the actual articles.

One suggestion: When you're reading the comments, it would be nice to have a way of opening the full article. I usually read the HN comments on an article before clicking over to the article itself and unfortunately your app has no way of opening the article from the comments view.

This reminds me of an excellent article on Wired called 'Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm' [1] in which Piotr Wozniak describes how he used the spacing effect to learn English, among other things.

In 1985 (!) he wrote SuperMemo, a piece of software that utilized this spacing effect:

"SuperMemo is based on the insight that there is an ideal moment to practice what you've learned. Practice too soon and you waste your time. Practice too late and you've forgotten the material and have to relearn it. The right time to practice is just at the moment you're about to forget. Unfortunately, this moment is different for every person and each bit of information."

The full article is a bit long but if you're interested in this stuff, it's well worth the read.

SuperMemo seems to have fallen behind as far as software goes, but there are great alternatives, like Anki [2] that use the same method.

1. http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_woznia...

2. http://ankisrs.net/

It's called Epigenetics; our environment actually influences which genes turn on and off: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1952313,00....

Actually, he's taking full MIT exams to test himself.

Check out my buddy Scott H Young's site (ScottHYoung dot com) for some serious, and tested, study hacking.

He's currently doing a year-long experiment where he's attempting to complete a 4-year MIT Computer Science course in 12 months.

It could be that growth in Skype usage/userbase has reached a point where this sort of outage is more likely to occur as a result of slight fluctuations in supernode availability.

Thanks!

I have plans in place to do exactly this beginning of next year. But let me clarify: I plan to backpack, living on the bare minimum and traveling mostly by foot and train and using a plane only when absolutely necessary (like when I visit my parents).

It's possible to travel and live in many countries around the world for <$300USD a month -- at least that's what I've gathered from my initial research. I don't have a family to support or a girlfriend so once I quite my job I'll be quite free of responsibilities.

How will I pay for it? Well, the little on-the-side web hosting company I started 5 years ago, which I haven't put any effort into growing, is already close to providing me enough monthly income to live comfortably in many third-world countries.

But I won't be a tourist. I want spend anywhere from 3 - 12 months in an area, learning the culture, the language, the local customs, and meeting and making new friends. I want share my knowledge (mostly technical) and use my skills (technical and carpentry) to help the community where I can. Since I enjoy writing, I plan to maintain a blog about my experiences with the hope that it will help others gain new insights and see that the world is a much bigger place than the 1500sq mile box that most of us live in.

Why? Because I just feel it's what I need to do next in my life to continue growing. I've been living in the same area (Northeastern United States, Boston, MA area) for the past 27 years. Science has proven that the best way to stimulate new growth in the brain is to expose it to new and unfamiliar things. My brain is entering the age where many brains begin to settle into a rut... and it feels like my brain is beginning to atrophy.

Thanks a million for mentioning the keyboard shortcut for restoring minimized windows on OS X! I looked everywhere for that!

Awesome.

When I saw this submission, I remembered seeing it a few months earlier so I tried using searchyc.com to find it. I had no luck, so I tried Google. Got it in one shot ("How to be a Programmer" site:news.ycombinator.com).

Awesome read (and I voted it up again), but this has been here before:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=370874 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=365094

For many, that's not an option. My work requires Internet access.