dmnd

Joined 19 years ago

Karma
3,535
Submissions
295
Member since
Feb 20
synthesis.com cto

dmnd_ on twitter

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Recent submissions

Comment · 2 years ago
The author's interest in middle-grade books is fascinating. I'd love to read a post of recommendations with accompanying rationale, if only to get ideas for books my daughter might like!
Comment · 3 years ago
The Crew (2019). Approachable but interesting co-op trick taking with communication restrictions and 50 missions for replayability. If you liked Hanabi, you might end up spending more time on this.
Comment · 4 years ago
Amusing that this post goes from

> My first response when the plan to add generics was announced was “meh”. In my 5+ years working in Go, I can probably count on one hand the number of times that I felt like I really needed generics. Most of the code I write in my day job is very specific to the domain and doesn’t fit the use case that generics aim to fill.

to

> I love that I was able to delete 95% of my code because of generics.

Comment · 4 years ago
/default.aspx on every url
Comment · 5 years ago
Given your interest in hiring art and theatre professionals to support education I think you'll love The Diamond Age. It's so relevant to what you're doing I'd assumed you must have already read it!
Comment · 5 years ago
I'm definitely coming at this from my own parent perspective and my some of feedback is probably more a reaction to the realities of classroom instruction than about Litnerd specifically.

I'm going to push on your deflection to legal obstacles to sharing footage though. Get parent permission and make a better example video! :)

Comment · 5 years ago
I'm a parent that just taught my 4yo preschooler to read. So I'm not really your target user, but I watched the walkthrough and read the website, and here are my reactions. Hopefully something here is useful for you:

- I'm honestly baffled by spending so much time on one book (program?) in a classroom context. I imagine some kids won't be interested in the particular story, but it will go on for an entire month. I could see this damaging interest.

- The pace seems incredibly slow. To learn to read, you need to read a lot. But this is one book per month?

- The more stories a child is exposed to, the more chances there are to encounter something especially captivating for that child, and to spark an interest.

- It's hard to believe how much participation there will be without seeing an example class and interactions between the students & actor. The videos on the site make it seem like a completely passive experience.

- Craft activities seem like a distraction from reading unless the activities are grounded in literacy (e.g. letter/word games or creations). Even then I'm kind of skeptical.

- I predict you'll end up changing the name "litnerd". Being a nerd is cool on HN, but elsewhere?

All that said, I'm a fan of your mission and understand that learning to read in a classroom is going to look a lot different than learning 1:1. But I wonder if you could leave the group instruction to teachers and go direct to kids with a more Duolingo ABC-like experience, but include live instructors/actors. It'd be sort of like reading with a remote parent. Instructors could act out the story as you're doing with litnerd, but also unstick kids with reading help and mini-lessons. Basically, build a literacy-specific Young Lady's Illustrated Primer from A Diamond Age with gig economy ractors.

Comment · 5 years ago
Check out the iOS game "Slice Fractions"
Comment · 5 years ago
Tern GSD cargo ebike. This thing is the bike version of a minivan. Biking the kids to preschool every day is so much more healthy and fun than taking the car. We also visit a much bigger variety of parks on the weekend now.
Comment · 5 years ago
I've played a lot Beat Saber, and ended up getting wrist weights. Very recently I've been spending time in Thrill of the Fight. I would never have expected myself to like it, but it's a fun workout.
Comment · 5 years ago
also hilarious if you can understand it
Comment · 5 years ago
Comment · 5 years ago
Ridiculous feature request: Use fancy ML to content-aware fill the extra space

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