> On March 18, 2016, Isaac Z. Schlueter, the chief executive officer of npm, Inc., wrote to both Kik Interactive and Koçulu, stating that the ownership of the kik package would be manually transferred to Kik Interactive.
> After Koçulu expressed his disappointment with npm, Inc.'s decision and stated that he no longer wished to be part of the platform, Schlueter provided him with a command to delete all 273 modules that he had registered.[9] Koçulu executed the command on March 22, 2016, removing every package he had previously released
The author simply ran the script that NPM themselves told him to, and later NPM blamed the author for their own failings.
Ok fair! In that case I actually agree with his stance I think. I can understand how isaacs messed this up in what must've been a stressful situation, but it's hard to blame the author for it indeed, if he was just running the commands provided.
I mean if you’re the CEO of a package manager then you should probably have thought that one through a little bit more? Maybe ask one of the engineers what would happen?
Yeah indeed. Though I can appreciate the screwup. I mean, there was a heated thing going on, lawyers on one side and bad community PR on the other and NPM was caught in the middle. Couldnt backtrack on their maybe not so smart choice to give the "kik" package to Kik Messenger, and maybe hadn't thought through the consequences of encouraging the author to just delete all their packages. I disagree that that means they're "kids in suits" like some comments here suggest. It can just as well be an honest mistake made under pressure. People make mistakes sometimes! There's plenty precedence of mistakes by the NPM team but they also got a whole lot of stuff right!
But I do agree now that the author isn't really to blame.
I have two children roughly OP's age, they couldn't possibly be more different in terms of motricity, senses, intelligence, etc. Polar opposites.
My first said her first words at 9 months old, "ba" for ball, bath, and 2-3 more meanings, and made a repeated sound pointing towards the object of interest, sound which cannot be described in words. Before the age of 1 we had amassed over 50 words, most up to 3 syllables, a handful had more. Same for walking, fine motricity, etc. She reads at 5 years old.
My second only started saying single syllable words at 1y10m, started walking similarly later, and isn't able to do at 1y10m most things that my first was already able to do before being 1yo, so the delay between them is higher than 100%, more than double.
Same family, same teaching style, etc, only 3 years apart.
The ability to teach your child to do something depends almost entirely on the child, your teaching abilities don't seem to matter much, they simply copy you. All that matters is that you are present and offer them the attention they need.
Genetics and a bit of dice rolling. That's the biggest part of the equation it seems. I have only one specimen to work with (and I am not inclined to create more), but he was reading at 4 and currently at 6 reads at a 3rd or 4th grade level, despite still being stuck in kindergarden until September.
Sure, we read to him, and we make him read aloud to us too, but we're really just catalysts. He can make himself comfortable in a chair or on a sofa and read comics (Donald Duck, Asterix, etc.) for hours without any prompting (which, honestly, is a really nice feature to have on a child). I expect we'll be able to coerce him onto autonomously reading suitable books in addition to comics by next year too.
I do strongly believe that him seeing us read, and being surrounded by (actual paper) books helps. It means he grows up in an environment where books are normal, not just something you must grapple with because of school.
I don't like the heavy training implied by the article though. I want to raise a kid who likes reading, not one who will resent being pushed to read.
I wonder if it's merely some language or cultural difference, and I don't mean it as a snipe at all, but may I just say - software products have "features", human beings have traits! Maybe it's a confusion based on the fact that human beings as well as traits also do have "features", but that refers to things like having tiny ears.
Having a very strong liking for sitting reading books for long periods is a lovely trait, but it certainly is not a feature (I would say!).
One thing which I tried to do with my kids, after exhausting all the classics (Narnia, _The Hobbit_, _The Lord of the Rings_, Susan Cooper's _The Dark is Rising Pentalogy_ --- highly recommend the latter for folks who have not read it) was to read biographies in chronological order --- as a dry run I did American Presidents (which did great things for my understanding of the ebb-and-flow of American history, since I would try to read an adult biography in advance in anticipation of questions).
The intent was to then go back to the beginning of human history and read biographies of notable persons in chronological order --- unfortunately, my wife's work schedule changed, so that bedtime reading quit happening --- probably my kids were about to age out of this anyway, but it was an interesting endeavour, and one which I have been meaning to take up again for my own sake. EDIT: and, if I should ever have grandchildren, inflict on them.
Are they the same sex? I seem to recall a study where there are some - not huge, but statistically significant - differences in first onset of movement vs. language in boys vs. girls.
Biologically it's not double, you need to add 9 months to both.
Then it's not 12m vs 22m, it's 21m vs 31m. Still a big difference but not twice as fast, just 48% faster overall.
Brain development starts very soon after conception.
Yeah, one off examples don't really mean much when people talk about anything kids related. In this case additionally because hyperlexia exists. (https://www.healthline.com/health/hyperlexia) Maybe the methods worked, maybe you got lucky, maybe the kid learned despite what you did. Who knows.
I see this "yeah well that's an anecdote so let's just ignore it" claim a lot but it doesn't hold water in my opinion. Most glaringly, the article almost immediately links to peer-reviewed scholarly research about the effects of reading for pleasure being initiated at various times in development relative to the average. N > 10,000, not that big N is itself a positive measure but it certainly doesn't hurt.
There are certainly times where "this is an anecdote" is useful commentary, even though everybody knows what an anecdote is. But I don't think this is one of those times.
I meant the method, not the benefits - that one kid reading at 3yo doesn't say anything about the method used. Also, that paper classifies early as starting reading between 0-7yo. Also, in twin studies they show quite high heritability compared to environment impact (which is higher to be fair). Also the impact they showed was between early reading and positive outcomes, but it doesn't show that (simplifying) you can make kids read earlier in some ways.
So it's an interesting study, but it's not really discussing "How I taught...". It's (simplifying) "do early readers have better life", not "can you use method to give kids better life via earlier reading". (Which may still be true!)
Is that just the phenomenon of subsequent children leveraging the benefits of a slightly older sibling? Combined with some training of the parents by the first child, and therefore a significantly different mindset being exhibited towards the second child.
> The ability to teach your child to do something depends almost entirely on the child ...
Is this a summary of your personal experience or are you citing research?
Your third sentence seems to agree with my suspicion - subsequent children get less attention. (Though I reiterate my belief that some of the apparent developmental difference is because second children don't need to be as communicative as the first child.)
The sibling comments here primarily echoed a similar sentiment, while agreeing that there's variation and assuming that's just random, while also tacitly confirming that 2nd-child tended to perform less well.
First Child: ooh I know nothing. Nothing works.
Second Child: Ok, We've got this. Except, No, completely different.
Third Child: At least we've got the range. No. No you don't.
Big issue we had with the first was that he was reading several years above grade level, and we ran out of interesting things for him to read that were age appropriate. When they can read the Hobbit at 7, but are scared, it's really difficult.
Of course, he's now reading things like type theory and scares me with Nix advocacy, so I guess it all comes around.
The problem was coming up with enough to read that wasn't too scary when he was young. Even the Hobbit was rough. Harry Potter is downright scary. Book series were falling in a week. We never had Christmas present books that lasted till New Year's.
I'm pretty sure that we have The Dark is Rising, but it was never one that was a reread, if they ever got through it. I've read the Little Fuzzy and other H Beam Piper books, and they're a little 50's to really let a young kid loose on.
Terry Pratchett worked, specifically the Bromeliad Trilogy. Eragon was ok. There was a set of Wings of Fire. And bookshelves of others that are gone by now.
The problem of course is "the newspapers in utopia are boring" (to paraphrase Mark Twain) and "tales of the land of the happy nice people" doesn't make for much of a story.
Another couple of books which I enjoyed sharing w/ my kids were _Divers Down! Adventure Beneath Hawaiian Seas_ and _The Adventures of the Mad Scientists Club_ (and various sequels).
More or less same here, both girls, now 10 and 7. The 10yo started reading pretty good at 4.5yo on her own, now she reads books for teenagers since a couple of years, the 7yo is more or less OK for her age (probably having her side by side with her sister doesn't help us to be fair).
Came here to say this. Well said. Also language skills and reading have a complicated relationship. My daughter was saying sentences like “no suppository for me!” when she was two (she had constipation issues). But is now seven and while she still has excellent verbal skills, reading is coming slowly for her, though she can read and is making progress, it’s just slower than her classmates. Her school district has high standards (students on average read at two years above grade level). However, I wonder if this push to have kids read at younger and younger ages is not appropriate and harmful at some point. We were warned by our OT upon entering kindergarten that the curriculum will have the kids do things that are not developmentally appropriate. Also, my daughter has a mid spring birthday, so she’s 6 months younger than many of her classmates, which at this age still matters I think.
I think the theory is that it’s okay if the bucket overflows, at least it’s full. However, I worry that pushing kids to do too much too early can make it hard for them to build confidence and enthusiasm for reading and learning in general.
Imagine the leader of some random country taking away your country's judge's funds, their email address, their job, for trying to do their job in accordance with the law, regarding a non citizen.
You don't have to imagine it, it's happening. Is it happening to judges in your country, though?
That would be bad because it tramples that country’s sovereignty, and by that, the sovereignty of its citizens. But the ICC has no citizens, and it does not represent anyone other than a cause.
I've yet to find anything comparable feature-wise on Linux - and they all come with the huge downside of having to roll your own cohesive settings widget ecosystem for basic everyday things like WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. I run Cosmic Epoch on my old Macbook which is better, but again, feature-wise, it's just not comparable for serious work.
Thanks for your reply, but as a Linux user for over 20 years, all I take away from your post is that you haven't really tried, probably because the variety of distros vastly exceeds the two classic options of mac vs windows.
I understand the "roll your own" argument very well. In my time, I've experienced quite the variety of configs and dotfiles, but I'm not young anymore so I've settled with using Regolith which is an opinionated set of tools, including my favourite i3wm, on top of Ubuntu, and I simply use defaults for the most things.
Anyway, it's much easier to use Linux as a daily driver than it's ever been. The choice of distro is simply which package manager to use, and everything else just works, as long as it's in the package manager's inventory.
I haven't compiled my own computer's kernel in 6 years (but I still cross compile for rpi and other IoT), and I haven't used my dotfiles in 3 years, just defaults.
> Thanks for your reply, but as a Linux user for over 20 years, all I take away from your post is that you haven't really tried, probably because the variety of distros vastly exceeds the two classic options of mac vs windows.
A very big and very incorrect assumption. This reads like you asked the initial question without any actual curiosity behind it.
Windows supports Linux because the latter is open source, it's a lot easier than the reverse.
Linux, on the other hand, barely supports Windows because the latter is closed, and not just closed, windows issues component updates which specifically check if they run in wine and stop running, being actively hostile to a potential Linux host.
The two are not equivalent, nobody in the Linux kernel team is actively sabotaging WSL, whereas Microsoft is actively sabotaging wine.
Do you have a link to where I can read more about this? My understanding is that Microsoft saw Wine as inconsequential to their business, even offloading the Mono runtime to them [1] when they dropped support for it.
> Until 2020, Microsoft had not made any public statements about Wine. However, the Windows Update online service will block updates to Microsoft applications running in Wine. On 16 February 2005, Ivan Leo Puoti discovered that Microsoft had started checking the Windows Registry for the Wine configuration key and would block the Windows Update for any component.[125] As Puoti noted: "It's also the first time Microsoft acknowledges the existence of Wine."
Microsoft seems to be taking a outside-in "component at a time" approach to open sourcing Windows. Terminal, Notepad, Paint, Calculator, the new Edit.com replacement, a lot of WSL now, etc.
This approach has been fascinating so far, but yeah not "exciting" from "what crazy things can I do with Windows like put it in a toaster" side of things.
It would be great to see at least a little bit more "middle-out" from Windows Open Source efforts. A minimal build of the NT Kernel and some core Windows components has been "free as in beer" for a while for hobby projects with small screens if you really want to try a very minimal "toaster build" (there's some interesting RPi out there), but the path to commercialization is rough after that point and the "small screens" thing a bit of a weird line in the sand (though understandable given Microsoft's position of power on the desktop and sort of the tablet but not phone).
The NT Kernel is one of the most interesting microkernels left in active use [0], especially given how many processor architectures it has supported over decades and how many it still supports (even the ones that Windows isn't very commercially successful on today). It could be a wealth of power to research and academia if it were open source, even if Microsoft didn't open source any of the Windows Subsystems. It would be academically interesting to see what sort of cool/weird/strange Subsystems people would build if NT were open source. I suppose Microsoft still fears it would be commercially interesting, too.
[0] Some offense, I suppose to XNU here. Apple's kernel is often called a microkernel for its roots from the Mach kernel, but it has rebuilt some monoliths on top of that over the years (Wikipedia more kindly calls it a "hybrid kernel"), and Mach itself is still so Unix flavored. NT's "object oriented" approach is rather unique today, with its more VMS heritage, a deeply alternate path from POSIX/Unix/Linux(/BSD).
I doubt it would happen, large projects that aren't open source from the onset and are decades old can have licensed or patented code, Microsoft would have to verify line by line that they can open source it.
Wait long enough and it will happen, the question is just "how long". (Microsoft has open-sourced OS and languages from the 1980s) Some days it seems like Microsoft is more interested in Azure, Copilot and GAME PASS and Windows is an afterthought.
I would certainly love it if Microsoft stopped trying to sell Windows and just open sourced it. I think Windows is a much more pleasant desktop operating system than Linux, minus all the ads and mandatory bloat Microsoft has put in lately. But if Windows was open source the community could just take that out.
I really don't see it happening any time in the next decade at least, though. While Windows might not be Microsoft's biggest focus any more it's still a huge income stream for them. They won't just give that up.
The author simply ran the script that NPM themselves told him to, and later NPM blamed the author for their own failings.