influxed's comments

Looked through all my kids Richard Scarry books and couldn't find that. But might be in Helicopters and Other Fun Things. Internet Archive has it but no logins to borrow books: https://archive.org/details/helicoptersother00newy/mode/thum...

My experience with written/spoken languages vs programming languages has been vastly different.

In my early 20s I picked up enough Spanish working in a restaurant to have conversations about simple topics/small talk, including native speakers at family dinners. Not much effort.

In my late 20s using Anki (SRS) I learned enough Russian to mostly understand radio broadcasts and television, but I never practiced speaking.

In my mid-to-late 30s I started learning Korean also using Anki, and it has been a grinding and slow process. After many months of on again/off again studying, I can pick out some words and use context to maybe understand what is being spoken.

Obviously the curve has gotten a bit steeper with each language being further away from English, but definitely a salient reminder about the ability to learn new languages with age.

Programming languages on the other hand have been a much different experience, not nearly as difficult to pick up. I haven't considered exactly why it's so different until now.

>“The Hart eSlate machines are not malfunctioning, the problems being reported are a result of user error — usually voters hitting a button or using the selection wheel before the screen is finished rendering,”

This is a problem with the machine and the people who made it, not the people using it. "User error" is usually an poor excuse for lazy and/or bad design.

This happened later than the dates in Wikipedia for some of the outer neighborhoods of the time. A visible legacy today in those neighborhoods is vaulted sidewalks and entries, making houses appear shorter than they actually are.

plug for an article I wrote a few years ago about some houses with vaulted entryways: http://chicagopatterns.com/colorful-front-gabled-italianate-...

Very excited for this. It's quite disappointing to see the one/only popular photo sharing app (instagram) work so hard to restrict usage to phone apps.

Sometimes you want to share photos from a non-phone camera, or look at photos on your computer screen.

Rooting for you flickr!

Ease of use is what hooked me in the early 2000s with the Rebel, so I stayed with it during the switch to digital SLR a few years later.

It's interesting that while autofocus is what captured a lot of the market, Canon's current manual-focus lenses are what keep me firmly locked in.

Their TS-E line (tilt/shift) can't autofocus, yet is everything I want and more from photography. They iterate more and have more to offer than Nikon's equivalent lens line, PC-E (perspective control).

I use my phone to take pictures more often than my DSLR, but "DSLR equivalent" or "DSLR quality" are just silly phrases for a phone until they can shift the focal plane or have super telephoto ability.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_control

I wanted to better discover nearby architecture when walking around the city (Chicago) on weekends, so I made https://chicagoarchitecturedata.com/

Over 13,000 Chicago buildings with architecture style, architect (sometimes), year built, and other data points. Uses GeoDjango and browser location api to show stuff around you when you use on a phone or you computer. Also serves as a guide to learning about architecture styles and neighborhoods.

I haven't used Basecamp 3 yet. But criticism of a very minor logo update to bolster claims for user unhappiness seems like the wrong place to start.

If there's something about the new Basecamp you're unhappy with, a better place to start would be how it's regressed in accomplishing tasks or improving communication. Bikeshedding is a distraction.

When I traveled to eastern Ukraine for work a couple years ago, what surprised me the most about the culture was the ubiquitous use of ebook readers. It seemed like everyone had one.

When I asked a Ukrainian colleague why they were so popular, he said it simple: ebooks are cheap/free and easy to find, and print books are expensive and require effort to obtain.

One of the biggest points of friction to consuming content is discovery and paying for it. I think when it's easier to find ebooks and cheaper to purchase them, adoption will really accelerate. Until then, there isn't much compelling reason to switch.

Downloaded this app with high hopes, but left quite disappointed. Sitting in Downtown Chicago and UI is completely empty except for one other "New User"

I think you should give more consideration to empty states, in particular for metro areas not SF (or where ever this currently has active usage) to encourage new users of your app to generate content. As it is now, I don't know what I should do or why I should do it.

Bought this app. Looks fun, but took me a while to figure out that it wasn't actually a drawing program but a template library to use as a guide when drawing with paper and pencil.

I happen to like drawing with paper and pencil, so I'll try it out later.

Beautiful. Thank you for sharing this.

This quote alone shows why the author has zero credibility:

"[...] environmental toxicity and genetic proclivities would have contributed as well. Certainly, Jobs was exposed over the years to massive bombardment from WiFi and other electromagnetic fields (EMFs)."

Digging deeper, it appears her career as an author and nutritionist is based on the idea that eating soy and vegetarianism is bad for you. Correlation is not causation, but it has long been known that vegetarians live longer.

I'll put more faith in peer-reviewed scientific journals than an author who writes in a magazine called "Psychology Today."