computerjunkie

For folks in the United Kingdom, Vanguard index funds are now accessible through their new website[0]. Their website was released mid May 2017 and has caused a good shakeup[1] in the individual investor space as other stock brokers commission charges are incredibly high.

[0] https://www.vanguardinvestor.co.uk/home

[1] http://www.scotsman.com/business/markets-economy/bill-jamies...

They have mentioned that Vanguard will be looking to give access to Europe in 2018.

[Edit] - Removed Financial Times link as they have a paywall.

Story time. I grew up in a African nation were political instability, corruption and a poor economy for a country is not surprising. My family was doing fine, not great, but my parents valued education, kindness and respect above anything else. They did everything they could to ensure that we got the best education. It was until when my father fell ill and passed away when I was 10, thats when things started to go downhill.

My mother had to provide for a family on her own. Most of the relatives from my father's side didn't bother to help, they had their own problems to deal with, add all of this on top of a economy which was non-existent in 2008. We had no place to stay for 4 months because we couldn't afford rent. I couldn't watch shows my peers watched because we couldn't afford cable/satellite TV, let alone a place to stay. There was food, electricity and water shortage for years(still is). Inflation was so high the government had to discontinue the currency.

Teachers in my public school began to flee to other countries so that they could still provide for their family.I had to teach myself Physics, Biology, Chemistry and Mathematics.I took up subjects I was never assigned to do in order to get decent grades so that I could go to college. I had to do two A levels, instead of three because teachers thought my grades weren't good enough, other students made fun of me because of this.The environment I was in was a perfect recipe for disaster, for a young mind.

But here I am, with a degree in Computer Science and working for a software company with like minded people because my father bought and introduced to me a cream rectangular box, big monochrome monitor and taught me how to type with a keyboard at the age of 5. This machine would become my identity project. Computers have been my survival tool, my passion, even when my peers thought I was delusional for pursing a career in Technology(they even made fun of me for thinking I had a chance).

Environment plays a big part in your life but you have the choice to let it dictate your life or you take the wheel and determine your future. I could have given up but I chose not to, even though everything around me constantly said I should.

I'm not in a place where I can say I made it but, but its sure as hell better than what I have experienced in my late childhood and adolescent years. For those young folks that are reading this and are in somewhat a disadvantaged situation, stay positive,stick to your identity project and never give up!

I have people asking me in slightly shocked tones why I don't use an iPhone, and their certainty is always based entirely on social proof

I cannot count the amount of times I have experienced this phenomena. A couple of years ago, when I first got an android phone, I remember someone say "Ha, you don't have an iPhone, your poor!"... the content of the comment didn't really disturb me, what did was the reasoning which lead the person to generate such a perspective.

Thunderbird user here. Email clients are really useful when you have more than one email account. Everything is in one place and you don't have to keep signing into multiple accounts all the time.

I've been using Thunderbird because I simply cannot find an email client that provide that much functionally, respects your privacy and doesn't randomly break.

But there is email client that I am looking forward to called [0]mailpile, that I will probably switch to once its reached v1.0 (early October)

[0] https://www.mailpile.is/

I agree that its neccessary to make a better effort to execise, but I've seen the older you get, the more walking feels like a strenuous exercise. Especially if you don't walk plenty.

So don't sweat it. Keep on walking and enjoy life!

Eat well, sleep enough and walk plenty.

Sleep is something which is seriously overlooked in general. From personal experience, getting enough sleep and eating well are requirements that need to be met first before exercise.

There is nothing is worse than exercising whilst you are deprived of sleep and mal-nourished.

Speaking about exercise, don't get hung up on dogmas and "this is the only way" personality that is common in the fitness industry. Pick what works for you. Just make sure you are moving on a daily basis because sitting down 8 hours everyday is not healthy at all.

Go for long walks in the park with family or friends. As silly as it sounds, it works. Walking is not only good for you physically, but also psychologically [0]. Walking is a basic human movement pattern and is one of the first things we learn how to do early in our lives.

My grandfather passed away at 94 two years ago from old age. He never went to the gym, never participated in long marathons and he was a frequent beer drinker. But he did long walks everyday on the farm in the morning and evenings, he also ate well and by 10pm he was in bed.

Morale of the story is that, go back to the basics and stick to them. You won't go wrong.

Edit: Added a reference.

[0] http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/april/walking-vs-sitting-...

I used to be a heavy facebook user. Now I log in once a week for messages.

Privacy was not the major contributing factor of me stopping the usage of facebook, but how "nosy" I felt in other peoples lives when I don't even talk to them. The more I used facebook the more alone I felt.

Another issue was the cluttered feel to it. The addition of a twitter clone feed made everything feel like an "all-in-one" solution.

After going on a month long without Facebook, whenever I met my colleages, I would have a lot more to say to them and genuinely ask questions about whats going on in their lives. I default alot less to my phone after I meet with friends.

Agreed. I think its not about hate and envy, but the "my life is perfect" image shown to you when in actual fact everybody has their own insecurities or are going through tough family, friends and relationship (personal and professional) issues. We all know life has its ups and downs, but we pretend like the downs never exist.

The majority of the population never speak about the "bad" things happening in their lives, because it makes you vulnerable which is a feeling we refuse to show in todays world.

It will be a interesting perspective as it becomes more common to eat insects in Western countries. The main barrier to break down would be the 'ick/ew' factor, which has been mentioned in this threads comments, that is usually cultural.

But judging from the way some domestic animals are treated by some farms, the ick/ew factor of eating insects becomes less of a barrier.

I grew up in Zimbabwe, Southern Africa. I speak in general that eating insects is a delicacy and is favoured as a snack most of the time.An example, the [1] mopani worm is an excellent source of protein and is increadibly cheap in Southern Africa.The guts are removed, cleaned and dried in the sun before being packaged for sale. They also taste delicious once fried in butter and mixed with vegetables.

It might be a novelty right now in the western world but its been years of tradition in African or Asian countries.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonimbrasia_belina

we beat ourselves up about how unproductive we are, not understanding the intrinsic nature of self-teaching.

Agreed.

"Tot Facienda Parum Factum" - "So much to do, so little done"

This article resonates with me so much. I don't know if every other self taught developer goes/went through this, but its truly annoying.

Its so easy to get caught up in a another_new_JavaScript_framework.js or front end framework, but if you look back you begin to see that you wasted time focusing on the trendy things (author mentions he does this).HN, Techcrunch, Github, Bloggers and other resources all influence us with these shiny things. Sooner or later, priorities will change and you will begin to make rational decisions on how you spend your time.

I only realised this when I started working a couple of weeks ago at this temporary gig. You soon realise that there are not a lot of hours in the day to use all the shiny things you want.

I've come to the point where I have stopped looking at the shiny new things and started focusing on a small set of tools for job at hand.Tools that have been proven to work, and will continue to work regardless of what is currently trending.

Rather than learn 3-4 tutorials about a languages syntax for months, pick one comprehensive but concise tutorial on the language and straight after that start a small project in it and stick to it till its finished. Programming languages (or domain tools) in general all have similar concepts. If you learn python, then ruby or other interpreted languages should be easy to understand.If you learn Photoshop, then Gimp or other image manipulation software should be easy to understand and grasp. Understand the concepts, not the tool.

Pick a technology you are comfortable with and make stuff. Because at the end of the day, your average Twitter, Instagram, Facebook user doesn't even know(or care) if Scala, Python or PHP is scalable and if the application used best design patterns. All what matters to them is the content, likes, shares, comments et. al.

A couple of articles I found truly eyeopening on my journey in software development in general;

1. http://blog.codinghorror.com/php-sucks-but-it-doesnt-matter/

2. http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-php-singularity/

Thanks for the recommendation. I've bought myself a glass bottle and I've never looked back. I'm going to be purchasing larger ones for water/juice storage in the fridge and probably a hydro flask for movement.

The transition from plastic to glass isn't that hard at all, you just have to be slightly more careful when it comes to carrying one. Simply throwing the bottle across the room to somebody becomes dangerous as compared to throwing a plastic water bottle.

This year I'll be moving to storing my leftover food in glass jars, [0] le parfait do really good ones (they are expensive but worth it in my opinion). I'm still figuring out how I will store frozen meat I get from the farm.

[0] http://www.leparfait.com/

Nice work. Quick look at your repo and I'm impressed with how you indented your work. Its makes everything readable (most of the javascript I've seen is a mess, maybe I read too much bad code)

Offline access would be an awesome feature, especially for users who are not "always connected".

Thanks for the reply, I do agree its the negativity everywhere being thrown at us, it really takes a toll on people who really care about these things.

I already do avoid news sites and news papers when possible, thanks for the advice and the extension recommendation

Is this a part of growing up?

A bit off topic: Ive asked myself this question in general for the past couple of months. People dying from wars and incidents that happened a couple of days ago makes me anxious, miserable, lost and helpless.Maybe its media amplifying everything, I don't know but its truly unpleasant.

It would be nice if, at the start of the application process, companies could ask you if you would like to agree not to sue them in exchange for open, honest feedback, e.g. notes from your interviewers.

This. I would gladly tick the check box for some honest feedback. I personally think that leaving candidates with a generic response is unprofessional and says plenty about the company.

Lets talk about a simple example. You apply for a visa to X country for a special occasion (eg; brothers wedding, graduation ceremony et.al). Two weeks later, you get a response saying "No", just no.

Will you be satisfied that you never got any feedback to why it was refused, what you did wrong and what to do to fix it?

Feedback, be it good or bad is crucial. I, myself appreciate this feedback, especially in this scenario the author is talking about. How am I supposed to improve my self when I don't even know what I am doing wrong?

Where do I start.

1. "My client is a leading company in x..."(does the client have a name?)

2. "My client is looking for university graduates from a top 20 university..."(so because I didn't go to Harvard/MIT/Oxford/Cambridge et.al you wont consider my application)

3. "Fast paced environment which is constantly changing..."(this company sounds like a confused sweatshop which decides to chose another technology because they hit technical debt.)

4. Experience in C/Haskell/Python/Java/C#/F#/Clojure/Lisp/Erlang/Rust/GO/Ruby/Assembly/Forth/Brainfuck...(Signs of a dodgy recruiter)

5. "Github account a must and you should have a contributing history to opensource"...(I use open source, I'm a huge fan of it, but because I didn't contribute to it means I can't get a job? Clearly this recruiter is following media trends. And what if I don't want a Github account, with what happened a couple of days ago[0] I would be pretty concerned about having one(though awesome work for getting the message out Github, other companies would just keep quiet and hope nobody notices))

6. Graduate with 2 years of commercial experience(I just finished university when I "learn" hoping to get that experience which you are asking for.)

I could probably write a blog post. I probably will when I get the energy. HR is a dodgy industry which doesn't know a lot about each of the sector it works with.

[0] http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/12/critical-git-bug-all...

Merry Christmas HN. All the best for the coming new year. I wish you all the success available!

Youtube for mainstream music and Soundcoud for upcoming/new/promising music.

Congrats!I can imagine. I'm currently trying to get a job and its quite challenging

- Completed university with a 1st class degree in Computer Science.

- Developed a prototype eCommerce website (not live yet) In PHP(CodeIgniter) for my final year project. (Which I am currently working on porting to Django)

- Deployed a website (Actually took a lot more time than I thought it would.)

- Finally took a break and went on vacation with 10-20% of good online availability for 2 months.

- Lost 11 kilograms (24.25 pounds), although I think it was mostly due to final year stress.

- Attended https://www.siliconmilkroundabout.com/, my first ever technology focused meetup/job fair.

- Started watching my first anime(Naruto) after overhearing conversations from my friends about how good it is.I finally understand why they enjoy it.

I was in the same position as you. I was an avid sportsman during school. But once I started university, everything started going down hill. Fortunately, I realized early that this is not the way I want to live and started doing sports again. But as responsibility grows, there is less and less time to do 3 hours of your favorite activity, so I started walking.

I still do go to the gym but walking is somewhat my meditation. Congrats on losing 50+ lbs, keep pushing and going. The secret(or what I like to call common sense) is consistency which in turn becomes habit. Keep on walking for the next 3 years or so and try stop for a week. You will actually miss walking because your body is used to it now.

>> stop using "hack" for anything

I totally agree. Everything is sold as a "quick fix", add this and your life will be 10x better, do this quick hack...et.al.

The most important thing I found about life in general (or diets/health) is to be specific is habit. Don't sway to a different diet if it doesn't work after X weeks. And don't do silly diets that encourage too much of one thing and too little of another.

I'll definitely start reaching out to people more. As I mentioned earlier, leaving university and not seeing your good friends regularly has made me realise I should reach out to people.

Real good advice there. I have been living in semi-solitude for the past couple of months and its truly unpleasant. I'm definitely going to be interacting more now.

Health comes first.

Seriously, take care of your health and everything else will call into place. Trying to ignore something will only make it worse and not knowing whats causing the symptoms (or what caused an injury) will only make you worry more. Exercise (walking its actually really good exercise) and make it a weekly routine. You will be shocked how much of a difference it makes for your mode.

I also realised that I am a social person at heart. I just finished university and I miss all my good friends who all live in different parts of the country. Not just friends, but family. Its made me realise that keeping in touch is absolutely essential no matter what.

Lastly, don't be afraid.

This has been something that has been nagging me all my life. I really struggled with taking risks in my just-starting-career and social/personal life. Life is too short to think "Maybe I won't be..." "I don't think..." and so on. This is part of my incredibly short list of resolutions for next year and the rest of my life.

Thanks for the advice, I'm going to start looking for roles you have stated whilst I develop applications on the side. I guess if you are starting out, I shouldn't be really picky.

Flux has saved my eyes.

Not using computers/tablets after 8.pm and little/no use of computers during the weekends has reduced/stopped my eye strain I had developed from staring at the monitor too much.