ludoo

20 days minimum by law in Italy (plus sick leave when needed), in practice though it's more like 28 days for most jobs. Excluding weekends and national holidays of course.

Actually in Italy you don't pay a dime, unless you want to. The level of care you get varies by region, but is generally pretty good, especially for regular, mass events like birth.

My experience is the same, L5-S1 and unfortunately I had surgery (bad decision, but had started developing nerve damage), which just replaced the herniated bulge with a permanent internal scar, having more or less the same effects. ;)

You learn to live with pain, and adapt to it. You learn that some activities are off limits, and will probably always be so. The trick is not to start feeling diminished, not fall into depression by comparing yourself to a mythical healed self, and learn to appreciate the life we have, which even with a bad back is still incomparably better than what the rest of humanity experienced for most of its existence on Earth.

There are ways to get better though, if you don't despair: after 10 years of trying countless practices and remedies, a combination of McKenzie exercises and acupuncture is finally working, allowing me to lead a mostly normal life (eg lots and lots of exercise and just refrain from cycling, contact sports, or bumpy activities like offroading).

My suggestion is to try that with absolute dedication (eg 100 repetitions spread over each day, weekly acupuncture sessions), and if you have no improvements in a couple of months, try something else. Improvement is possible, it just takes a lot of effort and time.

The Land Rover in question is probably a Defender, with a design substantially similar to the original model from the '50s. It really is a refrigerator on wheels.

A really nice project, I might build one for my daughter.

I used to have something similar when I studied Architecture: my drawing table was always covered with thick yellow paper kept in place with painter's tape, on which I jotted down notes and sketches. This is much more practical, as you don't have to cut a new sheet of paper when the old one is too dirty/full.

Video: https://vimeo.com/51365068

yaaaaaaaawnnnnnnnnn

Or just recognize that three consecutive numbers mean you divide by three and get the median of the three numbers. So 69/3-1, 69/3, 69/3+1, giving 22, 23, 24. No algebra involved, you just need to interpret the problem and build a tiny model in your head. Exactly like (some kinds of) programming.

Very well put. I have a similar (slightly younger) age, and often pose myself the same set of questions on speed, tooling, typing. Needless to say, my answers are very similar to yours.

As for the Design Process, it works in the exact same way you describe in other fields like Architecture, which I studied and practiced ages ago at a more than decent level.

Money (VCs'), the myth of the young billionaire, and a few other things are probably what make developing different.

"according to the German agency" I was under the impression it's a European agency...

Actually, he's a well known anthropologist and author of an excellent book, which you should maybe read before labelling him as a political agitator...[1]

[1] and given it's freely available, it won't cost you anything... http://www.unwelcomeguests.net/Debt,_The_First_5000_Years

Epub is essential when reading on a device with a sub-8" screen, if you don't want to scroll horizontally while reading, or having to decipher tiny type. Plus, many Epub ebook readers support synchronization between different devices, so you can pick up your tablet and start reading from where you left off on your phone.

Interesting concepts, but what I really would like to see is a wearable "thing" with computing power, radios, and a way to use voice fro calls and commands, pairable to different screens. So I could have a 4.5-6" screen as a phone when out, an 8-9" as a tablet at home, an 11" and 23" screen for portable and desktop work. All driven from the same computing unit.

The "thing" could be a watch, maybe with an integrated Moto Hint-like earbud for calls. Or a pager-like device to carry on your belt or pocket, etc. Each screen would have its own battery, so the "thing" would need less power.

Great advice.

I might add that another option would be to study something totally unrelated in college, to broaden your horizons. Literature, arts, architecture will teach you how to understand and enjoy culture, at a level that is difficult to acquire as an amateur. The old "study Latin and Greek to better understand life and humanity" thing is still valid.

I'm in your same boat, nicotine is part of what makes me what I am, I feel totally depressed and unable to function without it (tried, for months).

I followed your same trajectory (cigarettes -> ecigs), then found Swedish snus, much much simpler than ecigs (no batteries, liquids, etc.), 100+ yrs of history so no unknown long term side-effects, and all the nicotine you need plus some. You might want to give it a try, and stop inhaling stuff. :)

"An Alenia Spazio spokeswoman said that none of the company's officials were available to comment because of a company-wide summer vacation period." Typical Italian... (I'm Italian myself btw)

Hardware is cheap in the US, I'd leave my laptop at home and get something cheap (either a Chromebook or a used laptop), then access/transfer data and configuration over the net.

As for my phone, if I were in a position to be worried about customs installing backdoors, I'd prepare a recovery zip beforehand with all my data, then download it from my own server or a secure storage, and flash it after passing customs. Or better yet, travel with a SIM and buy a cheap Moto G, the resale value alone once back at home would make up its US price.

If I could find a 12" or 13" Android laptop with a nice screen, good keyboard, no fan, and decent specs I'd use it as my primary machine. Debian kit+console+a decent editor is all I need for work, and for play Android has more and better apps than Ubuntu or any other Linux distro.

It's about time manufecturers started producing them.

Exactly. I know Google's market is primarily the US, but people in the rest of the world mostly read the same news, and get excited about the same products, but then they are unable to get them. Which is kind of depressing.

Self-taught.

1) books, and working on personal projects to "scratch an itch"; progets grew larger, at some time I started doing it professionally

2) ages ago :)

3) I started as a sysadmin since that's what I self-learned from, programming came later maybe 3-4 years

Reading other replies, I totally forgot to mention I first started programming in Basic on a TI-99 with a tape recorder for storage. :D

I did the same, then switched to snus and stopped vaping. I thought the important thing was having something my hand, and some smoke to blow, then I understood that I only care about nicotine. :)

20+ years smoker, about 30 cigarettes a day mostly hand-rolled. I quit 6 months ago and despite vaping turned into a kind of zombie until I discovered snus.

Then I understood what I had missed all this time: I love nicotine, and the surprising thing is that without all the toxic stuff in cigarettes it's not as addictive as it's made out to be.

I often go hours without a portion of snus and completely forget about it, while I could not stay away from cigarettes for more than a couple of hours without getting restless.

Bah, I thought the link was about real steam machines, who cares about a game platform...

Your English has improved tremendously since I've known you.

You only need to launch another successful project which will in time develop a strong international community like redis, then you'll speak and write English like a native. :)

Wikipedia lists lots of activities for the time spent in Milan: several paintings, frescoes in the ducal castle, work on military and hydraulic projects, etc.

Plus, the Last Supper is a huge fresco, not just "a painting", which from concept to execution took several years.

Heh, I agreed with this, clicked on the karma icon, then read the author's name... ofc.... ciao salvo!

Spot on. They should have found an existing model with good but not out of the ordinary specs (something like a 5" HD display, 2Gb RAM, etc.), appealing design, reasonably cheap (as in Nexus 4 cheap), and promised quick delivery. There's plenty of Chinese OEM or second-tier brands able to produce such phones here and now, and having owned a few most of them are good, sound devices hardware wise.

Then started working like mad on getting out a nice, user friendly, hackable OS to early adopters.

It's all in the OS, especially since nobody knows how the specs of the planned phone will compare to next year's models.

Sitting all day on a chair, then going home to sit in front of a TV makes you fat, not exercising willpower and using your brain...

You can already do that: HDMI output, Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.

32 million dollars? 830$ for a device, when high end MTK based phones cost max 300 (Zopo, THL, etc.) on the European market, and less than that in China?

They haven't got a clue... Why don't they start making working ROMs for existing phones. If they targeted a few existing high end phones and the ubiquitous and cheap MT6589 models (quad core, many with full HD screens) they might have a better chance of starting to spread their OS and intriguing users and developers.