runewell

Instead of leaving a simple comment I would like to share my authentic and thoughtful comment brand which communicates my living perspective and collection of crafted experiences working together as a cohesive language of positive reflection in the inverse context.

emacs :)

I agree. As much as I hate learning a platform-exclusive language I do have to say Swift a pleasure to work with.

I grew up in rural Kentucky. People were polite to me but there was always this strange distance I would encounter when interacting with people, a distance that my friends never seemed to receive. I always chalked it up to my personality. I became a bit of an introvert, took on a passion for computer science, and moved to Silicon Valley after graduation. I fit in splendidly and for the first time in my life I felt like I was part of a real community. It was at this point that I started getting asked "Are you white or Asian?" by many people. It was a completely innocent question but it surprised me so much that I mentioned it in a conversation with my old friends and to my amazement they all wanted to know the answer as well. It blew my mind. Here I was, a 22 year old white guy from rural Kentucky, who just found out he was Asian. No one bothered to tell me growing up, it made me feel both incredibly stupid and somewhat perplexed. Pieces of my past started falling into place all of a sudden. All the strange looks I used to get on the field as a little redneck kid topping tobacco during the summer. The old white farmers at the local BP station asking me questions about the world as if I held some sort of mystic wisdom. My ex-girlfriend who would constantly mention how much she liked Asian guys before we started dating. All of these things and more just hit me like a bag of bricks and I laughed my ass off for a good 10 minutes. My grandmother was Japanese and my mom was half but as a child I was a blonde white kid so as I got older and my hair darkened it never occurred to me that I was anything else. Now that I'm older I kind of like it. My differences, although superficial, make me feel closer to my late mother and grandmother who were both wonderful people.

My mother was a nurse for 20 years. She was extremely good at her job and worked in the ICU unit of Vanderbilt Hospital. One day she had a severe headache at home and once it subsided she sent me an email detailing five possible causes. Every item on the list was trivial except the fifth item which said "small aneurysm bleed". I, along with the rest of the family, asked her to go to the hospital but she refused because she did not want to burden the family with a $5,000+ CAT scan and hefty doctor expenses over what she insisted was a just an overreaction to a bad migraine. I assumed, because she was such a good nurse, that she knew best. I ended up moving near her soon after and had the privilege of spending many days with her and my brothers as a family until I received a phone call one night telling me she was rushed to the hospital. When I arrived at the hospital a clerk attempted to block my way to fill out insurance paperwork, I rushed by her and headed to the ICU. When I arrived to the ICU I was told the aneurysm had applied too much pressure to her brain, the doctor said there was no chance of recovery. Even in death she still helped others, her organs saved two other individuals that day. In my home upon my desk I have a photo of my mother and I, a print out of her email, an award she received for being one of the first volunteer nurses to arrive in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, and a big pile of bills (ambulance ride, doctor examination, bed and care costs, etc).

Yes, I would agree, most people do not go to the hospital in the USA unless they are 100% positive it is required. This prevents many early visits to the doctor. People will often wait until the very last moment to get help.

VR is a medium where I could see voice commands and visual programming actually having an impact. I would love to see a 3D version of UE4 Blueprints or Scratch.

We would love to have you in the USA. The other countries you listed are fantastic places to live but if your passion is in programming then the USA is an excellent place to be. There are plenty of immigrant success stories here. Look at recent news, Jan Koum moved here from Ukraine, created a mobile application, and is now worth over $6,000,000,000 thanks to the Facebook acquisition!

We would love to have you and your family. The USA is so large and diverse that practically any living scenario is possible. If you want to live near nature with sunshine, fresh affordable food, and a home with a garden then I would suggest checking out more rural parts of northern California. There are many employers that will allow you to work onsite part-time (one day a week, month, or quarter) and the rest of your time at home, assuming your output is acceptable and you are available during working hours. Special arrangements such as this are more difficult in the beginning but are very easy to setup if you have proven yourself to be a productive programmer.

I would suggest checking out areas such as Redding, CA. If you make over $100k a year you could get yourself setup with a nice place such as the link below.

http://sacramento.craigslist.org/reb/4450341909.html

More properties in that area: http://sacramento.craigslist.org/search/rea?query=acre&sale_...

Note: Life can be wonderful in the USA but our healthcare and education system need work. Healthcare is fantastic if you get good insurance, but that will cost you each month. Being a programmer, it is likely your employer will provide health insurance. Our Universities are some of the best in the world (ex. MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Carnegie Mellon, etc), but our elementary and high school education system is inefficient so you may want to consider one of the many private school options in your area. This too will be costly. Basically expect to pay 10-15% of your salary towards making up for our deficiencies in these areas. Work/life balance is entirely possible here although many European countries structure their national policies around promoting such ideas while the USA pretty much leaves it up to the individual to organize their life in the way they see fit. This is why we have so many people living on the extremes, from super-star entrepreneurs to homeless individuals and everyone else in-between.

So you're saying it's easier to design on iOS then.

This can go many ways. I would say on average a startup is unhealthy for someone with kids but if you're a highly organized and motivated person it isn't that difficult.

I actually thought the music was perfect.

LOL, lots of founders will be sleeping on the sofa tonight after telling their spouse to stay the hell away from the office from now on.

Paywall news article complaining about privatization of information, enough said.

Yeah, our tax/employment/visa system sucks, although European rumors of our impending demise are greatly exaggerated. If you're not from the USA it is understandable that you may not be aware of the nightmare that is our state legislation. Our states are like grumpy siblings in the big dysfunctional family we call our nation. They each have their own method of handling taxation and employment and each have their own irrational set of processes. As a nation we could certainly improve the way we handle such matters.

It's pretty sad when you're not allowed to sell your product to your customer. If car dealerships provide such a valuable service then they should survive on their own merits and not have to exist parasitically through legislation.

I remember when looking for a new company domain feeling like this SNL comedy skit: http://vimeo.com/82393638

Medical companies are ruthless here. I ran an e-commerce store that sold medical equipment, it was nearly impossible to buy any .com domain name related to the medical industry. We ended up settling with JazzMed because one of our founders liked Jazz and we figured it was a unique brand. We ran the company for about 6 months slowly getting to a point where we had roughly 10 orders a day. Needless to say, once we started ranking well in Google a health care company called Jazz Pharmaceuticals threatened legal action, even went through the trouble of sending a certified letter from their lawyer. After reviewing our options and after receiving a formal complaint to the court from the company we decided to shut down and comply with their demands which was to transfer the domain ownership to them. We just didn't have the resources to hire a lawyer and keep the company going. The sad part is that there are so many businesses in that space it's nearly impossible to create a company name that doesn't sound like an existing one.

Lol, all of these items brought back memories. I used to be a master at the 1x1 shim.gif. You should also include the crazy table layouts we had. Before the days of div tags we had to use multiple nested tables with 1x1 gif spacing within them to produce a complicated design accurately on every browser. Sigh ... I feel old now at 32.

Did I understand this correctly, will this actually map onto virtual Earth geometry at the same position and scale as real-life? That would be amazing, you would literally be able to use Google Maps to walk inside buildings and look around not to mention it could be the first Earth-accurate metaverse. Imagine sitting down with a more advanced pair of Google glasses and being able to see both your real-life environment and its identical online copy with virtual avatars navigating the hallways along with your real-life co-workers.

Can this be used in robotics? I know the air-compression muscles provide some of the best performance for grip and human-like motion but they require noisy heavy equipment and can be costly. Although this solution looks more primitive it makes me wonder if it could be engineered into an effective replacement at a much lower cost and weight along with silence when in operation.

Thanks for the link, this is awesome.

8k may not be high enough for true "reality like" vision in an HMD. A good article on the matter can be found at http://bit.ly/1bCyIcj .

What's cool is that mobile manufacturers have already committed to creating screens capable of much higher-density screens than current technology. The VR space was a bit nervous regarding display technology due to the diminishing returns of higher-resolution screens but recent announcement makes hi-resolution VR not only possible but likely regardless of the success of individual VR companies.

I had a different perspective on the book. To me the dystopian future had less to do with VR and more to do with oligarchy, the energy crisis, and our lack of planning for the future. In the book VR became the main character's only way to escape his harsh realities, a place where he actually had a best friend, and a place where he enjoyed experiences with his mother and was able to benefit from the automated education. The end of the book did not give me the impression that VR was bad, only that reality could be good even in a bad unforgiving world.

I know the author went to the Oculus Rift headquarters last year as they are big fans of his book.

http://bit.ly/1gR4hfX

Forbes had an interesting experience with the latest prototype. Especially regarding the motion sickness aspect as the latest tech supposedly addresses the problems with the first dev kit in substantial ways.

http://onforb.es/Kdj1ea

That's true. This is also a good opportunity for those of us that remember the early days of the Internet. If you believe, as I do, that VR will have a significant impact then today is the equivalent of the pre-Mosaic days of the Internet. The calm before the storm. Anyone creating a business in this space has the opportunity to be the next Jeff Bezos or Marc Andreessen within 10 years. It could all be a nerd's pipe dream, of course that's what they said about the Internet and before that computers in general.

I like Node because it let's me focus on a single language for my web apps. I can even use many node libraries on the client-side.

Also, NPM is an excellent package manager and makes code-reuse and API integration so much easier than other languages.

Oh man, prepare for the backlash. These articles are supposed to go the other way or else you're just an arrogant American.

Elon Musk and John Carmack

Kickstarter is a fun risk. I've enjoyed the process of backing a few projects myself, most of which went without a hitch.

If you don't have discretionary income to spend or expect perfection then don't use this service. It is not a guaranteed success, most projects are late, some finish poorly and on rare occasion fail to finish at all.

I love it because it funds many businesses that would have never grown otherwise.

Just yesterday I decided to begin reading a Calculus book (I never went to college). The very first thing covered was ƒ(x) which describes input being passed into a function. Needless to say, as a programmer I am very familiar with this concept.

So far, my vote is for Calculus.