I had a 20 minute appointment with a doctor at Kaiser in WA. I thought I had set up a free, yearly wellness meet. However due to Epic's really epically bad UI (they provide Kaiser's online presence), I had setup a standard meeting. My bill was nearly $1,700 discounted to $200 which I was fully responsible for as I/We (family) had not yet reached our deductable limit. Funny things: 1) Doctor wanted me to approve the use of AI to take notes of the meeting so she would not have to (I agreed). 2) The one issue I cited caused my doctor to say (pretty close paraphrase), "I have an idea what the problem is." I asked what it was, but the appointment was over so was advised to setup another meeting. I decided to keep working on it myself as I am pretty sure it is a stiff-ligament issue. Thanks Doc. Also: I like Kaiser overall. This one doc (who is not my regular one) was not as asset to Kaiser imho.
After having this same thing happen a few times I now ask at the beginning of the appointment to confirm that it's a wellness visit. Then I ask the provider to tell me if I inadvertently ask a question that will turn it into not a wellness visit. Then I ask at the end to confirm it will be billed with the wellness visit billing code.
1) Scalable SVG: Adode Air had a pretty good scalable UI. Needed to replace this with HTML/CSS/JS. Ended up using an SVG process. Works well. Even the printed worksheet uses it.
2) Readable code: Use a pretty old-school JS model with mostly functional modules. When I have to go back and review/revise things it seems pretty readable.
3) ChunkIt: There is an entire topic dedicated to this at the website. Like the topic notes say: "...it really is a good lifetime skill."
4) Long Division: I think the step-by-step for the old-style algo UI works well imho.
5) Printable worksheets for single digit arithmetic: I truly believe in the pencil/paper learning enhancement model. The sheets are printed using SVG. Took some time to get this working.
6) Daniel Kahneman: This whole thing was built given my reaction to Chapter 4 of "Thinking, Fast and Slow". I cite DK at the site, and obviously do believe he is right re: Associative Memory (fluency). Also kudos to Amos Tversky who did not get to enjoy the extended plaudits/recognition from DK's & AT's "Heuristics" breakthru and subsequent applications.
7) Eldest daughter did the RMM art work using Affinity Designer.
---Could Be Better---
1) Sync using Google sheets. I tried to find a "no cost" server that met the specs... nada. The Google Sheet solution works, but obviously there is no way this is optimal. Complete and utter KLUDGE. My apologies.
2) Verbose, opinionated main page: Wife thinks I am crazy to keep this text-heavy, old-style format. My subconscious thinks she is right. My conscious says... "The target is parents who will do anything to help their kids gain Arithmetic Fluency" so they will persevere. Likely she is right, but I lack the gift of knowing how to properly market/explain RMM so it stays as is.
3) Readable Code: (yes same as above). I would really like to use TDD, but my longish, readable functions likely will not support it. So lots of hand testing when changes are made (I think some well-known game coder did this for his game -- so not alone). Hate it when I have to do it, but the lock-in is deep.
---Frustrations---
1) Free Math PWA: Since I started this, arithmetic learning apps have massively moved into the "subscription", "App Store" model. Sadly I now believe that most folks cannot associate a free PWA with quality. "Why is it free??" "Why does my App Store not have it??" Most folks cannot wrap their heads around the fact that FOSS/PWA can provide great solutions because contributors care and PWAs can be pretty damn good (not saying RMM, but...) Not blaming the parents in any way, just a result of massive marketing/messaging by the big guns.
2) Focus on cute characters/animations/games: Given how math apps for young children are marketed, most parents conclude that for young children an app lacking cute characters/animations/games likely going to be worthless. Our experience is this is 100% not the case, but again ... App Store Marketing. Personally --and based on my anecdotal experiences-- animations, cute characters, and gamification are totally NOT NEEDED. However, this assumes a caring and participatory parent, otherwise yeah, go for the App Store stuff because you are busy and c/a/g engage the kids (that is very cynical, many parents care and still will not consider RMM).
3) PWA support: Sort of a mixed bag: support is there... could be better. Main complaint: Local PWA data after installation should not be tied into non-PWA browser actions such as deleting "browser data". Kinda shocking to delete something in your browser, then open your installed, local, off-line capable PWA to find all its data gone. Might make sense to some, certainly not to me. Work arounds (e.g. a second browser account) gonna make folks think PWAs are not worth it. Might be the intention... but again I am a cynic.
4) Everything related to education in the U.S. seems to be about monetization. Do a Google search for links from moms blogging about home schooling. Hard to believe their blog links are not related to affiliate income rather than real, honest evaluations. (I have visited many.) Then there are the school boards / curriculum decision makers with lots of money to spend, and lots of pretty big companies interested in how they spend it. Given some of the decisions we have seen, optimal-for-the-kids may not always be item #1 on the decision tree. Again... I am a cynic so "grain of salt".
---Final note---
If you are a ShowHN reader who hopes their young children gain AF, check out the RMM (sorry for all the acronyms). Costs you nothing, and may work. I freely admit there may be better solutions. Do think, though, that it is worth investigating RMM as it is free, and may be pretty good for your kids. If not --and may God help you-- scroll thru the App Store arithmetic apps to ferret out the good ones. There are likely some there, perhaps better than RMM, but... again God help you. And, you will, of course, be paying a sub.
About $1B (billion) in stock incentives for top-level execs in 2025 (Tim alone is $76m I believe). Apple stock is up. They are happy imho. Very, very few humans would care about "detail" vs. this outcome. Satya is close to $100M I believe, and we are shocked the M$FT is trading-in on ads/telemtry in Win11. These guys are just human.
Honestly the M$FT thing might be the greatest thing to happen to the Linux community, so much fresh blood and hopefully far more curious tinkers will continue to make the ecosystem better.
I believe 2026 will finally be the year of Linux desktop.
> I believe 2026 will finally be the year of Linux desktop.
I’ve been hearing this substituting in YYYY+1 every YYYY for the last quarter century.
The year of Linux desktop will never come. Why?
- Money. Hardware manufacturers make more money selling computers that are optimized for Windows and there is nothing on the horizon that will change that meaning that the Linux desktop experience is always the worst of the three main options for hardware compatibility.
- Microsoft. Call me when Office runs natively in Linux. You might be happy with LibreOffice or Google Docs, but MS Office still dominates the space (and as someone who does a lot of writing and has a number of options, I find Word to be better than any of the alternatives, something that 30 years ago I would have scoffed at).
- Fidgetiness. All the tweaking and customizing that Linux fans like is an annoyance for most people. Every customization I have on my computer is one more thing I need to keep track of if I get a new computer and frankly it’s more than a little bit of a pain.
Sting ?? They bite, and given a chance will engorge on one's blood. Pretty sure they came after Adam's bite, so I guess as a form of Eden-ruining punishment that makes sense.
Not sure this is a good post, but might be so taking the risk. I am snacking right now on some UPF - my 10% vice. However, my 90% is pretty good. One NOT-UPF staple is steel cut oats that are slow cooked. Very easy, healthy and likely as NOT-UPF as you can get. Recipie: 3 cups steel cut oats (I use Bob's Red Mill Organic), 1+ Qt water, 1 Qt Skim Milk, 1+ Teaspon salt. Combine everything into a suitable pot. Slow cook at 150F for six hours. Stir occasionally. Explore ways to eat. E.g. warm in microwave with some blueberries, and a bit of brown sugar. Stores in the Fridge for a long time. HTH, NSC (+ means "a bit more than")
I can relate. Buy a lot from Amazon, and play the "crazy-Chinese-brand-name" routlette a lot. Most are low value purchases which makes the risk not too bad. Most purchases have me saying, "Damn that's good quality (e.g. drill bit sets)." So the China brands do a pretty good job overall. Note: One needs to spend a good amount of time sorting thru reviews to avoid the obviously bad stuff.
So now I want to spend several hundred dollars on a magnetic-resistance stationary bike. This is a whole new level of exposure vs. my "small-dollar, small-risk" previous purchases. Main brands (Peleton etc.) are just way out of my price range. So I have spent several days now researching these products. Am confident I am going to make a good purchase... Why you say ??
I was looking at a very niche "vote your favorite mansion" competition on a football fan forum (chiefsplanet) thread. Some very expensive mansion had a photo of the exercise room, and there was my current contender for first choice. What a strange way to get positive feedback.
Amazon excels in this area - pay more but you have a good refund policy. The low value purchases are better done from aliexpress. You'll get the same items but pay less for them.
The article is about two things: Kareem & Bruce, and Kareem & racism. Very much like "Sunday Best" (Ed Sullivan & racism) on Netflix. If you have a sub, be sure to watch it. Younger folks today have a hard time understanding the depth of racism around the 60s. Couple of scenes in SB will help to provide some understanding. Kudos to Kareem (and Ed) for many things.
I know you are correct, but I can't help but feel like there's been a resurgence - at least in the US. Or maybe not a resurgence, but at least they don't feel like they have to hide their feelings and beliefs as much anymore. There's plenty of examples of white supremacists marching about openly in the US.
Thanks for pointing that out, however I disagree that not talking helps.
I see how it goes in Portugal and the few European countries I lived in, including having experienced myself xenophobism in first hand in some of those countries, and stop talking isn't how it gets sorted out.
What is your end game? If you want something to eventually disappear, then it must eventually disappear from common discourse. Otherwise society keeps fanning the embers of hatred.
The greatest rise in the use of racism has been among people using it to divide and to attack political groups and persons. In a manner similar to calling people "fascists", calling people "racists" is a tried and true way to smear someone with little risk to oneself.
There are openly racist white supremacists and that's how it should be - they are allowed to voice their opinions (thanks to free speech). They aren't a significant minority and they know their day has passed. Best to let such movements die out.
Actor Morgan Freeman said, in answer to a question about how to get rid of racism, “Stop talking about it.”
It may be too handy and too easy to use racism as a political weapon for some to let go of. For others it may be a crutch they never needed yet perhaps are unwilling to lay down.
Talking to some younger liberals today you'd thing that they actually lived and personally experienced the US's periods of racial turmoil (all the way back to the Civil War and to the establishment of the original 13 colonies). Their outrage is fresh and full-blown. But that suffering was done by their ancestors (the black ones, in particular) not by them. And remember that the Civil War alone in the United States cost many, many white lives: 698,000 by one estimate - most of whom were white.
Sorry, no. To make clear your subtext: Morgan Freeman being Black does not somehow immunize him from having a really bad take.
Racism is also facilitated by people pointing to the crack pots and saying, we swear we're not like them... oh, also wear this band for your safety... so we know how to easily identify you.
Open racists do not scare me. Plus, I am 100% sure we have very different definitions of what is an open racist. Worse, having that discussion is tiring and ultimately pointless semantics that slows down the actual discussion of important issues.
What scares me is this milquetoast won't everyone just calm down and we really need to turn the temp down and agree to talk...
This while the mid-tier of Side-A is re-posting gas chamber memes, playing the victim card, and calling everything they don't like porn. And Side-B, ever the dutiful neo-liberal centrists, lean into the characterization that they are the resistant or some s-star-star-t because it gives them the tingles.
It is the same everything is normal cosplay over and over again. I am tired of having to, again, entertain the rational suggestion that "racism is a crutch" of the next person in costume that fancies themselves an iconoclast because they are brave enough to say they don't like seeing the homeless in SF.
I’ve been around since the 70’s and it’s improved dramatically. Big difference. That isn’t recognized nor celebrated like it probably should be. But like the CGP Grey video showed, hate seems to spread farther faster on the internet. I think it was called “You won’t like this video”.
>> I’ve been around since the 70’s and it’s improved dramatically
I've been around since the 70's and it's the same as it ever was. The local library has a thing where you can access historical versions of the local newspaper. I read the newspaper headlines from when I was a kid. Nothing is different now from what it was then.
Nothing has changed and nothing has been learned and no one cares.
There's a pendulum swinging, for better or worse. But people do care.
When I was in growing up in the 90's 00's ... I distinctly remember saying to myself: I know, logically, that racism exists but I cannot remember the last time I experienced direct racism, if ever. I know it existed, indirectly, but I, nor my close family or friends, experienced it. The first time I did experience, and increasingly so, has been in the last 10 years.
I think it was terrible until the 70's and 80's (history and family anecdotes prove this, you're right) ... it went relatively underground in the 90's and early 00's which made life great ... and when society was strained by the global financial crash, etc, things have swung back again.
I really put this whole reality at the feet of the bankers and it's amplified by social media. They were the lead dominos in all of this. They released the wankers and populism.
And getting back on topic, society has broken apart again and exposed racism again. You're right. Nothing has changed. But life is better when the assholes are in their caves stewing their hatred rather than emerging and sharing it with everyone.
As above, it's different in how it manifests at the moment, but it definitely rhymes, and at its heart, it's the same hatred manifest in a different way.
The only thing we can hope for is the pendulum swinging back, so the wankers are put back in their caves and we can get on with a relatively normal life again.
Sadly been going to HomeDepot long enough to have been there before all the cages were put up. E.g. if you want a small roll of wire, gotta find an associate to open the cage, get the wire, and walk with you to checkout to make sure you pay. I asked once if all the was necessary, and the experienced associate related some real horror stories such as folks putting a 200 ft roll of 4 guage onto a cart and simply walking out. That is impressive both in regard to the brazenness, and because someone could lift such a roll onto a cart (likely with a partner, but still).
I had a Youtube video account with I think two videos. Got a notice it was suspended for content violations (these were self-created videos with no copyright content). Asked for reinstatement. Nada. This was years ago. On a lark recently decided to ask again. Got approved. Have no idea why/how/what/who/etc.
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