> "I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone".

> I said that after a frustrating attempt to use a "feature-rich" telephone sometime around 1990. I'm sure the sentiment wasn't original, and probably not even the overall phrasing; someone must have thought of that before me.

https://www.stroustrup.com/quotes.html

I can also draw outlines with my eyes closed - e.g. I can point my finger out and trace the positions of my desk, table, windows, etc.

But when explaining the concept of aphantasia, my go to explanation is to look directly at a person, close my eyes, and say "I have no idea what you look like." I can still sense where they are - height, weight, - and I can state facts about their beard or hair colour, but I'm not seeing it in any way I'd normally use the word 'see'.

But with all that, I feel like it could be close enough that that might be how others sense things and we just lack the terminology to express it, so I tend not to say I'm aphantasic as a definite term.

I think I disagree with this, but maybe I'm misunderstanding you.

Pay as you go sounds strongly to me that you pay based on your actual usage, not that it's free except for add-ons. A pay as you go phone, for example, does not imply you need to buy a telephony add-on, an SMS add-on, etc.

PAYG phones, however, were always prepaid, so I think I would expect PAYG hosting to be similar. That said, if my site was publicly accessible without my prepayment, I think it would be clear that it works the way it apparently does.

It's potentially misleading, but I don't think it's intentionally dishonest.

Maybe I'm not crazy. Twice in the past couple weeks, my phone has seemingly unlocked itself in my pocket and I suspected it was to do with moisture/sweat, but dismissed it as unlikely.

In the first instance, it emergency dialed. I had just hung up the phone and put it away, so I thought I hadn't secured it.

In the second instance, I hadn't touched my phone in several minutes when suddenly my podcadt was overlaid with a demo video from an executive at my company which had opened in Teams. I closed out of that and discovered an unsent text to my wife filled with gibberish and a dozen image attachments.

I have a swipe and fingerprint enabled. My best guess is the mosture is registering my leg through the pocket and swiping it unlocked in an infinite monkeys scenario. I switched to password only for my walks now and haven't had an issue since.

You're welcome to take the cynical approach to that, sure, but I've never felt it to be a particularly harmful thing. It's good to have some semblance of a friendly culture, if only to break up the day.

Some people will like it and I'm sure some people hate it. I've never given it a second thought though.

Since "redditor" is a community name, it makes sense there would be a different internal/employee demonym and Snoo fits the site as good as any other name might.

Isn't this a bit concerning? It sounds like this was created on employer time with employer resources, yet there is nothing about this in the Kickstarter page itself. It seems like there could be a potential legal issue because of this, but there is no reassurance that either it's already been cleared, or that it's a potential risk.

Seems like a big oversight that might prevent some people who read this from contributing.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3755040

Points: 408

# Comments: 75

For a person dealing with trust issues, this sort of realization shatters any chance of progress, at least in my personal experience.

I can't feel safe if I think I could say the wrong word and have the cops drag me off for questioning. That's why I never got anywhere with counseling. For a person with trust issues, it's extremely important that you feel safe in counseling since you're making yourself extremely vulnerable by exposing yourself to them.

I've since dealt with a lot of my issues on my own. I haven't hurt myself intentionally in over two years, and that was an anomaly. It had been over two years since I had last hurt myself at that point.

The point is that these aren't easy problems, and there are no easy solutions.

I can relate to that part of the note. With one (minor?) exception, I've never seen a proper doctor about my issues, but I've been to a number of counselors over the years. Almost all of them have been completely useless to me, because I can clearly see that I'm not safe there.

I think it's a bit like the situation Mr. Zeller faced. I don't want to go far into my issues, because this isn't the place for that and, even if it were, my issues are nothing compared to his, but suffice it to say that in high school I was pretty concerned about my ability to manage my anger. I managed to tell a guidance counselor this, one I'd known since I started high school (she had first been my French teacher, then was assigned to me when she transitioned into counseling), and asked to be referred to a counselor before I hurt someone.

When I was with the counselor, however, although I was there explicitly because I was worried about hurting people, I was always measured in my responses. I limited what I said because I was always trying to determine where exactly the line was where a counselor becomes legally obligated to report me to someone, and I tried my damnedest to stay on my side of that line. It limited what I said, and it limited how much I could get out of the experience, and so ultimately everything broke down and the counselor more or less told me to come back when I was willing to actually talk. I ended up getting basically nothing out of the experience, except for some extra time with my grandparents since they lived near the counselors office. Considering my grandfather died in April, and I still think of him every day, I suppose I should be grateful for the experience because even if I got fuck all out of the actual counseling, I still got to see my grandparents more.

Money is tight, and I'm even considering paying monthly for a shared host rather than paying less per month on a longer contract so I can pull the site early if it fails hard. With the hosting itself being only about $10/mo, I'm having a hard time justifying to myself that I should pay 50% more to get a dedicated IP, in addition to the cost of the cert.

This isn't e-commerce, so the only thing being secured are the user login. The data will initially be entirely public, though I do have plans for private-unless-you-want-it-public features.

HN doesn't secure its logins, nor does reddit, TheDailyWTF, or any number of other forums, so how guilty should I feel about not providing secured logins? The site is aimed at developers, in case the users are an important part of this equation.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1710576

Points: 12

# Comments: 15

Anyway, a couple weeks ago I started getting pain in my wrist while I was typing. I managed to get an appointment with my family doctor for a week later, but because of the pain and my fear of doing more damage, I opted to go to a walk-in clinic I've been to a number of times previously.

The doctor at the clinic seemed to assume it was most likely Carpal Tunnel Syndrome just based on the fact that the pain was in my wrist. He had me flex my wrists (Phalen's Maneuver) and tapped on the underside of my wrist (Tinel's Sign) but neither of these tests really did anything to me - there was no pain or tingling present in either case (NB: When I try Phalen's now, I feel a bit of pressure in the underside of my wrist, but that's it).

The doctor told me to get a wrist brace, and specifically told me to get one made for CTS. He told me that a lot of people flex their wrists into odd positions in the middle of the night, so I should wear the brace when sleeping and when typing. I looked this up later, and there are mentions online about CTS sufferers mangling their wrists like the doctor said, and that this can present as waking up with your hands numb/asleep. I had noticed this a few times recently, so things seem to line up there.

After looking at various models in the drug store and discussing the situation with a girl who worked there, I eventually purchased a relatively expensive model (http://www.amazon.com/M-Brace-Wrist-Splint-Size-Regular/dp/B000X9SUKA). I wore this brace home that day, and have generally worn it when typing since then and always while sleeping.

Things seemed to be improving until I went to my doctor the following week. At my appointment, my doctor did hardly anything to check on my condition, except trying Tinel's again (no symptoms presented during this test this time either). He examined the brace and had me put it on, and he said it was good. The point, he said, was just to limit the range of movement for my wrist, and that the brace did its job just fine. He asked me why I wasn't wearing it when I came in, and I told him that I only really wore it to bed and while on the computer. He told me I should be wearing it all the time, but that I could take it off to sleep (which struck me as horrible advice, given what I had researched). He told me I should wear it all day, and through the night if I wanted, for maybe the next week or 10 days, which I've mostly done. I asked him if that was a bad idea since I had read that leaving the brace on all the time could weaken the muscles, but he said that that only occurred over the long term, and a week wouldn't do any damage.

After wearing the brace all day for several days, I started noticing that the base of my thumb was stiff/sore and the area around my pinky was sort of the same. Everything else felt more or less ok, so I started not wearing the brace through the day, thinking that maybe the brace was constricting my thumb too much. Things have been pretty good for the last couple of days, but there's still lingering... awareness, I guess. I'm aware of a bit of a strain in my wrist/forearm (and there's a tingle in my elbow sometimes) from time to time, but it's mostly alright. In fact, I've typed this entire post without the brace mostly without pain. There is some noticeable strain, but by taking a lot of mini-breaks it's very manageable. I'm also aware that I shouldn't be pushing this hard, but I wasn't really expecting to write quite this much.

Another factor seems to be that I'm typing sitting upright on my smaller couch, with ample room for my right arm (the pained one). Normally, I type lying down on my other couch while watching TV or just relaxing, and my right arm can sometimes get pinned a bit. Another factor I think is probably relevant is that not terribly long before I started getting the wrist pain, my elbow/shoulder would feel a bit cramped while lying down and typing. I moved the pillow beside me out of the way and that seemed to help the issue. For this reason I'm wondering if I might have pinched a nerve or something which is helping cause these issues.

Before it's mentioned, I know that my "laying on the couch" arrangement isn't good for me, but it's a habit that formed out of convenience. I don't have a good desk chair (and even my cheap piece of crap chair is broken to the point that my posture would suffer), so I don't really use my desk anymore (I really never have since I got this laptop three years ago).

I'm currently unemployed (one year today!), so money is extremely tight right now. This means that I consider a lot of typical fixes (better desk, better chair, laptop dock with ergo-keyboard and trackball mouse) are hard for me to considr out of financial concerns.

The one expenditure I am considering is massage therapy. There is a school across the road from my apartment that only charges $27 per session, so I think I could talk myself into paying for a single session to see if it'll work out any pinched nerves I might have.

I have a few questions regarding the "free" fixes I can try:

* I've been taking a lot of Ibuprofin as an anti-inflammatory on the advice of my doctor. For the last couple of days, I've been taking two pills right before bed on the assumption that if my body does most of its healing while asleep, then the anti-inflammatories would do the most good if they reduced inflammation during periods of increased healing. Is this an accurate assessment, or is this more likely to be a placebo?

* Regarding icing, I've read a number of different options for this (rubbing ice directly on the wrist until the skin is pink to promote bloodflow, icy dips followed immediately by hot dips and repeated several times, gel packs, etc.). Is there a "best way" to go about icing? How often should I be icing the arm?

* Regarding stretching, am I risking damage by stretching (see http://lifehacker.com/5195481/exercises-that-protect-against-carpal-tunnel-syndrome) while the condition persists, or should I wait until the pain has dissipated via rest before beginning a stretching regimen?

* I lead a pretty sedentary lifestyle at the moment, but I've been thinking that cardio is likely a great idea since increased bloodflow would likely promote healing in the wrist. I'm told that the wrist, being a smaller tunnel, doesn't always have the best bloodflow, which is partly why wrist injuries like this can take so long to heal. Does this seem like a good idea? I'm thinking of walking all the way up the stairwell in my building (it's 9 stories to the top from my apartment) and back down.

* I've heard that the electrical nerve tests (or whatever they're called) are extremely painful, but would they be worth it to determine if this really is carpal tunnel? If the problem is carpal tunnel, I've heard that the surgery is pretty much batting 1000 in terms of permanently ending the pain. If the nerve conduction tests show carpal tunnel, should I get the surgery as a preventative measure? What's recovery like?

Sorry for the extremely long post, but I'm extremely worried about my present condition. I'm only 25 years old and I'm terrified that I'm going to end up unable to work or go back to school because of this issue. Just writing this post has been incredibly theraputic to me, especially since it hasn't been particularly painful to write (though there are pre-cursor signs in my wrist, so I should really rest a bit after this).

Thank you so very much for any advice or anecdotes or support you can provide!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1496597

Points: 7

# Comments: 10

I lost my job a while back and during my involuntary downtime I came up with two website ideas that I would like to build. The first is a bit of a joke and I'd hope that I could get it to a point where it could support itself via advertising (e.g. AdSense). I'm planning to build this one out first in order to convince myself that I've properly learned web skills to an adequate degree before moving on to the second project.

The second project falls into the category of "building a better mousetrap." I was recently searching for something (tangible, for purchase) online, and found that the resources for this were rather inadequate compared to my expectations. I came up with a list of things I would prefer existed on other sites, and came up with something else which seems new and innovative (to me, at least, though nobody I've explained it to has told me it was a dumb idea).

This site would be selling listings (i.e. advertising for a thing, as in "car listings," "rental listings," "job listings" etc.) to interested parties.

What I'm interested in acquiring from this community is resources relating to such endeavours in Canada. It seems a lot of information I see online relating to startups or business in general is geared toward American audiences.

I should note that money is something of an object to me at the moment (unemployed, savings getting low, living with girlfriend who likely wouldn't want me to push us into debt), so I'm hoping to imitate patio11's original "$60 budget."

Key topics to get the discussion moving:

- Liability: Do I need to start an LLC/Corporation for this? I've heard you don't even need to register as a business (you can operate under your own name) until you reach $30k or more per annum, though I assume if you're selling to businesses it would be preferably to have a proper company name to use.

- Taxes: Do I need to collect GST? What are the mechanics of that? What about tax reporting (personal and business)?

- Collecting payment: What are the catches to accepting payment online in Canada? What is my liability when using a provider for this in terms of data security?

- What else am I just completely missing right now?

I realize I'm asking a lot of the community here, but I'm rather afraid of missing something dumb and getting into legal trouble. I'm slightly paranoid that way.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1351630

Points: 17

# Comments: 7