throwaway12309

I've read to my kid since forever, my wife as well. We have a library that rivals most school's and we read to him 2-3 books (at least) a day. He is 3.5 years old and can't read at all (heck, I think he recognises some words but I'm not even sure of that).

At 3 I was able to do math (addition, subtraction and basic multiplication) quite easily but basic reading only came to me at around 5 years old.

Kids are different, some learn to read earlier, others later, same with math, same with diapers, same with everything really. My 3.5 year old can climb trees like a 7 year old (better even if the kids around here are any indication). Do basic math (he has the concept of multiplication and can do most numbers times 2 or times 10). Recognises flowers and various different birds. He knows most traffic signs. He can almost cook his breakfast with just a bit of help with the oven. He does physics experiments (with our help). Are we worried that his peers at school know more letters? No. Kids develop at different speeds, but unfortunately, schools/kindergartens/parents expect their little treasures to be the smartest, brightest unique snowflakes and push them to it.

Most likely, when HN started, you had the YC groups and a few others. This meant Ivy League educated ($$$$) or related to VC/Investors ($$$$). Now you hear comments from plumbers, doctors, fast food employees so you get more perspective from the other side

Just as a counter point, for me was the opposite. Skipping breakfast was what made me be more focused.

I remember since I was a kid, I hated eating breakfast (no matter which type: eggs or sugar ridden cereals, it was the same) and growing up, I always had trouble focusing in the morning. It was only when I started to skip breakfast and have lunch at around 1-2pm did my focus and attention improved.

Long story short, different strokes for different folks ;)

Well, there is the fact that is US (and other) corporations that sell products in the US market, but are able to skirt US rules by offloading those costs to other countries without contributing much to the US wellbeing. It is not about being more deserving, is about taking advantage of 'loopholes' in the whole process. For example, in Europe, it is quite common for employers pay on top of the salary 20-40% extra in taxes and social security for a local employee. Even if they pay the same salary to an offshore person, and skirt those 20-40% of taxes, the company wins, the offshore person may win, but the company that uses the country it is doing business in isn't paying it's fair share.

Think of this differently. Imagine a company that offshores all costs (employees, manufacturing, etc) and just has a director/owner in the US. They also use creative accounting so their tax rate is very low. Lets ignore the costs of using the infrastructure as well. Now, this seems like an amazing deal for the owner + their non-us suppliers right? IS it fair for the citizens? What would the owner ask the gov. to do if the citizens then just decided to rob the owner blind? Or destroy the cargo ships as soon as they entered the US? Would he just say "well, tough luck" or they would fight tooth and nail to get the gov/police involved?

I'm fairly liberal, but more and more believe there has to be a balance of responsibilities between corporations and the citizens, because if not, there will be a point where something will change, and most likely by force (check European countries history in the last decade for example)

Different approach then, have you tried having one or two beers (wine/scotch whatever) before? Not enough to get drunk, but enough for some of that paralysis by analysis to fade?

I enjoyed 'How to talk to anyone' - http://www.amazon.com/How-Talk-Anyone-Success-Relationships/... for general advice.

There is also Dale Carnegie's 'How to win friends and influence people' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influen...

Apart from that, maybe join some kind of regular group that is more oriented for social than physical? Toastmasters or something like that or even board game groups (most games have some social aspects to them). Wine tastings also come to mind. Just choose activities where you know you will have to speak with people.

One one hand, I'm a bit worried as I know various folks that are dependent on the oil industry and this will probably mean more layoffs/companies closing, on the other hand, I'm really happy to see this (helps many economies as well as ordinary folks) and it seems some of the changes from oil to other sources of energy are finally showing some results (I hope)

Yes. That was the point of the grandfather post. That on top of that you even have employers contributions. If you add all of that you will get a value that often reaches 50-60%. I've given the example of myself, since I'm self-employed I pay everything, my tax rate is around 60%.

Damn, never thought 50k was that good for UK to be honest. Always thought it was an ok one.

But even using 26.5k (average), we are at close to 30% on taxes on income alone) http://www.listentotaxman.com/26500?

Sorry, can you explain the difference? When I was in the UK that was basically what I paid and never got anything back.

If you are in the UK, 50k a year (above average but honestly, if even remotely close to London, not that much) will bring you a tax bill of around 38% (19k) if you consider employee NHS contributions ( data from http://www.listentotaxman.com/50000? ). So you are already at 38% and you have council tax (probably another 2k or more a year) plus VAT (21% or something?) on stuff you buy. I don't remember other taxes I paid while in the UK but these were the big ones. It isn't hard to get to the end of the year and see that you(+ employer) paid around 50-60% in taxes.

I live in Portugal, and if I consider VAT+income tax+social security contributions (self employed so I pay both parts or approx. 33% in social security) and ignoring other extra taxes (property, road tax, etc) 62% or so of the money I earn goes to the government (this was for 2014, my accountant did the math). I could probably get this lower with some creative accounting I guess.

FUCKING SPOILER ALERT next time

Yeah, I think that may be the main difference from folks that feel disconnected when they are off FB. I have relationships with individuals (or sometimes couples), but never with 'groups'. Probably the most group thing I do is people that play tennis where I do, but again, I have their phones and whenever I want a pick up game, I just do a few calls. I love leaving my laptop/smartphone behind and just go enjoy doing something without the fear of missing something.

No problems to be honest.

I use email/phone if I want to do something with someone (mostly phone). There may be events like a house warming party that only gets posted to FB, but somehow that tends to reach me through someone, and if they don't, well.. not much is lost to be honest.

To be fair, most of the people I hang out with aren't that into Facebook/other or even if they are, they know I'm not there so they reach out to me/my wife over the phone.

I'm in my early 30's if it it counts for anything.

I have no twitter, no fb, no reddit, no g+, Github, and my account here is a throwaway which I regularly abandon and create a new one.

I was never asked for any of this (well, except github on job applications in the past which never been a problem when I explain them I don't have one) and if in the future I am, I probably will drop the deal (whatever it is) on the spot.

That bit about Spain just made me realize something:

- Spanish banks lent to overpriced real estate: The spanish people got austerity with the Spanish bank bailouts

- The German/french banks lent to a state they knew to be weak: The greek people got austerity with the German/French bank bailouts

The main problem is that we don't know a lot about what will happen to kids that grow in this kind of environment (video games, indoors, 24 hour cartoons, etc). From anecdotal experience and observation, 'indoor' kids seem to be less social, have slightly less verbal vocabulary and more fearful of things and people (both adults and other children) vs. the outdoor kids. My kid is a mix, he likes to stay indoors watching cartoons or playing with the iPad and will do it all day if we let him, but we 'force' him to go outside, jump in the pool, climb some trees, talk with strangers, etc. There are few places where he isn't the most social, most outgoing, most friendly kid around (only ones topping him are the ones that go to the local waldorf school). Now, is this important and should be our goal as parents? I don't know, but having learned about the world after 30 or so years, I think this kind of personality is better suited over introvert/indoor type (maybe I'm wrong though)

Actually, spend time with your kids every day. Or your special one. Or kitesurfing. Or playing pool. Or just learn about chess and play folks in the park.

Do other things and let your mind expand and bring those benefits to your code. It will make you a better coder (and person) and life will actually be interesting.

yeah, but when he says something so stupid he should be called on it, just because it is pg doesn't mean he holds the absolute truth

No, I mean stupid shit for people that think looking at a GitHub page is all they need to know about a developer. I'm happy folks work on Open Source software and Github has helped a lot of these projects with visibility and infrastructure, but as the gp basically stated: "you either have a web presence or we don't interview you", then yeah, I don't care about that and having been on the interviewing side a lot, 95% of the github links in resumes (and yes, I check them) are crap and I can honestly said, done so they would have something to show and not because it had any real value (sorta like the 4043th JS framework, you do it because it brings you a bit of status, not because you are actually solving a problem or improving on a solution)

* 20+ years of development experience 15 of those professionally * published author of various books * worked in systems that most startups would shit their pants with the requirements * some of the big name companies have tried to poach me based on the products I've worked * used professionally: C, C++, F#, C#, Ruby(Rails), Swift, Obj-C, Kotlin, Haskell, Scala

I would never be called based on that criteria as I have no inclination to spend my free time doing stupid shit online for hipster new developers that think GitHub is the end-all.

ps: to be fair, I probably wouldn't want to work in a company that has this mentality, so maybe that really does work

ok, since this is posted here every freaking time there is an article about dieting in HN, let me stress this out:

A Ketogenic diet (per the actual medical definition and not from fitness gurus) is not low carb, adequate protein and high fat. it is high fat, little to no carbs and low protein. From medical recommendations, calories from fat should be in the 85-90% range. Most of the articles you read about the benefits of ketogenic diet is the MEDICAL definition and not the fitness definition.

Also, protein as a nutrient creates a similar insulin response as carbs.

(nothing against keto diets, but they just seem to be the hip diet of the moment and annoys me when this keeps being stated)

Just avoid HN for a week or so while WWDC is on. It is always like this

If you work with a good remote team, they usually don't make you work on 9-5 kind of schedule. Sure they ask for some overlap, but it does allow you to take a Tuesday morning and go surfing/skating/just relax and then make up for it in the evening. I do. Yesterday I took my kid to a waterpark in the morning and then just worked until late to make up for it. No issue from my team whatsoever.

It also helps if all the team is senior and can work well together and understands the business. I can't see this working as well when you have juniors that need mentoring, or seniors that have zero clue about the business side of things so they need constant questioning.

Other companies see remote work mostly as a way to pay less for a developer, but want to treat him like he is in the office (heard stories of some companies wanting to have a constant video link to the office to make sure you aren't goofing off).

Yes, because Clojure and Go used soooooo much more than F#, Scala and Lua (among others).

Rails was nice when it came out, other languages/frameworks caught up. NodeJS non-blocking IO was nice when it came out, other languages/frameworks caught up. Now that you have those 'features' in other languages (Play for JVM and ASP MVC on .net to name two), some folks gone back to those platforms while others stayed in Rails/NodeJS. Only the freaking hipsters - look at me I have a blog - developers are switching platforms every 2 years for the next shiny thing.

(and I know there were other languages/frameworks that did similar as Rails/NodeJS but just never caught up)

And assuming this is true, what makes you think Putin's regime will fall before Greece or UK or Portugal? Greece is on the very edge of the cliff. If Greece leaves the Euro/EU, it isn't going to be as 'contained' as european leaders are making it to be, since Portugal will probably be targeted next, and while on paper seems Portugal is doing better, it isn't really (Gov. is doing everything it can to show Portugal doing well, unf. at a GREAT weight for the populace. Just heard on the news this weekend, the food bank is doing a campaign to feed about 400.000 people that are malnourished. This is around 4% of the population. I know there are many other countries that have more poor people, but as in Greece, when you see your gov. paying money to ECB/IMF and your people is starving, at one point they will break (as they did when they elected Syriza)

As for the UK, I can't really say. I think the referendum in 2017 will end with a "stay" vote, but it will depend a lot on Greece's situation and how France/Germany deal with the UK issues regarding the EU in 2016.

Aim/Reason: I don't really trust facebook/google, but more importantly, if he decides when he is 14-15 to put his photos online, it will be his decision. Also, growing up, baby/young pictures were usually something would use to make fun of each other.

As for the other people taking photos, sure, if he is in the background there is not much we can do, but other places (nursery or school or even playdates) can't by law do that and to be fair, those places we tend to hand pick them and they do share this with us.

I have a 3 year old and he has no photo (that I know of) in facebook. Both me and my wife don't post anything online (also don't have FB) and if I find any family member/friend posting a picture of my son online, they will have picture taking permissions revoked. Also, there are a lot of people like us where I live.

Portugal has the same issue, if 70%+ of your company income is from a single entity, the company is taxed as a self employed person and not a company. So technically, the paying company doesn't have to pay nothing, but the receiving company will be responsible for those contributions. But there are ways around it and limitations, for example, in PT doesn't apply if you have employees or if the volume of business if over a certain amount or if ownership is divided by two (or more) people (if you are married, you can name your partner as a shareholder when you create the company and get around it easily)

Not really true. Most countries have a residency rule (for personal income) that if you live more than 165 days (or something to that effect) you will be taxed as a resident of that country. Even if you register a company in another country within the EU, you may still be liable to pay corporate tax on your residence country as some countries also have conditions on that (if you own more than X (usually around 70%) of a company, and the company country is considered a low tax jurisdiction (this can depend for some countries where some have lists, others have a corporate threshold and others have countries corporate tax < owner resident country corporate tax - 10% is also a tax haven) they will want to tax that company as a resident.

As others mentioned, while more common, intra-community workers are a bureaucracy nightmare if you don't register a subsidiary in the employee's country, which if you do, then you have tax/social security+other stuff you need to take care in the employee's country.

Best way to do it is for employee to setup it's own company in country of residence and play by the rules, and then just be paid for services rendered and be responsible for all taxes/other.