Hacker News: positivejam

New comment by positivejam in "Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder."

positivejam — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 17:10:30 +0000

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.

New comment by positivejam in "Ask HN: Has anyone here turned around their life in their 40s?"

positivejam — Mon, 19 Dec 2022 16:42:46 +0000

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

New comment by positivejam in "Ask HN: Have you experienced decline in problem-solving skills? How to improve?"

positivejam — Wed, 01 Jun 2022 17:25:54 +0000

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.

New comment by positivejam in "Mechanical Watch"

positivejam — Wed, 04 May 2022 17:29:05 +0000

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

New comment by positivejam in "IRS says its own error sent $1,200 stimulus checks to non-Americans overseas"

positivejam — Mon, 30 Nov 2020 17:27:46 +0000

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...

New comment by positivejam in "Show HN: Built a timeline component for React with multiple layout modes"

positivejam — Fri, 23 Oct 2020 17:37:51 +0000

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

New comment by positivejam in "Getting Users Is Hard"

positivejam — Sat, 05 Sep 2020 22:43:43 +0000

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.

New comment by positivejam in "Inside of a Tractor Cab [video]"

positivejam — Tue, 28 Apr 2020 20:36:52 +0000

> 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.

New comment by positivejam in "ACLU: ICE and CBP Are Secretly Tracking Us Using Stingrays. We’re Suing"

positivejam — Fri, 31 Jan 2020 23:05:48 +0000

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.

New comment by positivejam in "War Is a Racket (1933)"

positivejam — Fri, 10 Jan 2020 21:36:01 +0000

> 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.

New comment by positivejam in "How Bad Are Things? (2015)"

positivejam — Thu, 27 Jun 2019 16:35:14 +0000

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...

New comment by positivejam in "I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today"

positivejam — Fri, 14 Jun 2019 17:25:28 +0000

> 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.

New comment by positivejam in "In Estonian parliamentary election, 44% of the votes were cast online"

positivejam — Mon, 11 Mar 2019 05:09:32 +0000

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

New comment by positivejam in "Ask HN: Any good examples of learning through games/puzzles, for adults?"

positivejam — Thu, 26 Jul 2018 15:29:29 +0000

http://www.flexboxdefense.com/

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

New comment by positivejam in "Ask HN: Which YouTube channels do you watch regularly?"

positivejam — Fri, 01 Jun 2018 06:40:19 +0000

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

And Primitive Technology is mesmerizing.

New comment by positivejam in "Algorithms tutorial for beginners"

positivejam — Fri, 27 Apr 2018 16:57:54 +0000

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

I think you meant 1998 there.

New comment by positivejam in "Stripe Billing"

positivejam — Thu, 05 Apr 2018 20:00:51 +0000

Got an email signup for that?

New comment by positivejam in "Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter"

positivejam — Thu, 13 Apr 2017 16:45:05 +0000

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.

New comment by positivejam in "I Open-Sourced All My Business Ideas"

positivejam — Thu, 21 Jan 2016 15:51:54 +0000

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.

New comment by positivejam in "Unintended Affordances (or why I believe encrypting everything is a bad idea)"

positivejam — Thu, 30 Apr 2015 18:35:52 +0000

> 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...