What It's Like To Lose Your Home To A Wildfire

As a massive wildfire in California continues to rage, thousands of homes are in harm’s way. One woman, Risa Nye, knows better than many people exactly how that feels. A writer in Oakland, CA, Nye’s home was destroyed in the Oakland/Berkeley wildfire of 1991. At the time she had three children at home, ages 13, 10, and 5. She recently released a memoir about the experience: There Was a Fire Here.
I spoke with Nye about what it’s like to have your home claimed by a fiery natural disaster.
When did you realize the wildfire was getting close to your house?
It was a Sunday morning, and we were sitting around breakfast, having coffee, and noticing that there were ashes blowing into the backyard. It was very windy, and we stepped outside and smelled smoke. Keep in mind, in 1991 there was no Internet, you had to go outside and look. So my husband and I took a walk up the hill and we could see the fire from there. It was far away, but all the neighbors were out, and people started saying, ‘Well, it’ll never get here, it would have to jump two freeways.’ We came down the hill and decided on the spot that we were going to leave. We threw a few things in the car and decided we weren’t going to stick around.

Wonderful Fascinating facts about sleep

You’d think the human race would have sleep down to a science by now, but many of us are still sleeping poorly (and so we need top 10 guides to getting better sleep). Part of the problem is we have outdated information and beliefs about this all-important health need. Let’s set the facts straight. Here are 10 things you might have been told about sleep but aren’t completely true.

Seven Ways To Bring Out Talent In Your Team

Many of the entrepreneurs and executives who ask me about getting better performances out of their employees can’t see that their own ego and biases prevent this from ever happening.

To say this another way…
Is your ego preventing you from bringing out the best in your team? It may not be that they lack talent, but rather that your need for glory is subduing their potential.
If you don’t believe me, check to see how many of these best practices you are willing to adopt:

America's Next Energy Source: The Water Tank

Mr. Haney from Petticoat Junction would have loved this idea.

The Department of Energy today released a report estimating that the U.S. hydroelectric capacity could increase by approximately 50% by 2050 and we wouldn’t have to dam new rivers.

Instead, the bulk of the new power capacity would come from Pumped Storage Hydropower (PSH), i.e. pumping water into a tower or uphill reservoir and letting it rip when the grid demands it. Water is pumped in the off hours when power is cheaper and released during peak hours.

7 Financial Mistakes People Make According To A Guy Who Manages Millions

Investing is a complex and challenging issue. There are lots of experts who claim to know the best-guaranteed investment strategy and the best way to structure investments for secure and optimal growth. But unfortunately for the average investor, it is rarely so black and white and even veterans of the industry get it wrong on a regular basis.

While everyone may want to be Warren Buffet, the reality is that the market cannot be scientifically predicted. Misinformation, misconceptions, and misconstrued facts are the bane of everyone who has put money into the market to one degree or another.

10 Troubling Habits Of Chronically Unhappy People

Happiness comes in so many different forms that it can be hard to define. Unhappiness, on the other hand, is easy to identify; you know it when you see it, and you definitely know when it’s taken ahold of you.

Five Signs Your Interview Is Fake Because They've Already Hired Someone

We met Alex, who had interviewed with the same company twice. “The first time I had an interview at that company, the HR Manager was very nice and very engaged in our conversation,” said Alex.

The Absolute Worst Thing A Job-Seeker Can Do

I always say that the only people who get more advice than job-seekers are pregnant moms or new moms. When my kids were little, I got unsolicited advice left and right. 

iPhone 7 Serious Problems Suddenly Make Perfect Sense

Everywhere you look iPhone 7 seems to be running into problems. It looks just like the iPhone 6S, it makes no major screen, battery or charging improvements from the iPhone 6 for a third successive generation and the camera protrudes even more. How could it possible qualify as an ‘iPhone 7’? Now we may finally know the answer…

German site Apfelpage reports 2016 will not see the launch of the iPhone 7 after all.

Samsung Galaxy Note 7: Smartphone Widely Expected To Feature Iris Scanner

​Samsung’s next-generation phablet, dubbed the Galaxy Note 7, is widely expected to feature a new biometric security measure called the “iris scanner,” a report said Sunday, citing a product listing on Zauba — a website that tracks India’s import and export.

According to the listing, a camera for an iris scanner was apparently imported from Vietnam for the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 with the model number SM-N930F, Phone Arena reported.

Psychology Today:Procrastination

It's Not About Feeling Like ItHow we can get past not feeling like it.

As my sabbatical came to an end last month, one of my sabbatical projects came to fruition. My publisher sent copies of my recent co-edited book, Procrastination, Health and Well-Being.  Dr. Fuschia Sirois and I assembled a great volume, I think, with contributions ranging from sleep procrastination to the social psychological implications of violating norms. It’s probably time that I distilled these interesting and informative chapters into equally informative, shorter blog posts. The thing is, I don’t feel like it.
Did I just write that? Yep. It’s how I’m feeling.
Why? Well, I just finished writing a lengthy letter of recommendation for a colleague who is up for a prestigious award. I find those letters exhausting. On top of that, distilling chapters into blog posts is hard work. It’s much easier to ramble . . . and I’m doing a good job of it right now you might say.
Seriously, the issue is, as much as I scheduled this blog-writing task for this afternoon, I don’t feel like it now, and, ironically, this is exactly what I want to write about. In fact, my major contribution to the book we just published (in addition, that is, to writing the preface for the book, editing each of the chapters carefully, and co-authoring some chapters with students) was the chapter entitled, “Procrastination, emotion regulation and well-being.”
I put my focus on emotion regulation, because I think that’s the whole story of procrastination. Well, at least it’s absolutely essential.  Let me explain what I mean.

Why is programming/coding so damn Hard

Because it's development. 

You are developing, i.e. creating new things, spawning stuff from where there was no stuff before. That is the craft, the art. It's inventing things. The manuals for creating can never be complete, they will always only be indicative, guiding, but never give you the exact path, because in the end, what you are doing has not been done before. Not exactly, anyway.

PROGRAMMING HABBITS

10 PROGRAMMING HABITS THAT SHOULD BE MORE COMMON

1: Learn your source control process

You know that thing users like to do, where they pick up your application for the first time and get angry because it doesn't do things exactly the way they want — and then they refuse to learn how the program works? You're left scratching your head wondering why they didn't bother to learn the application, which would have saved them all sorts of problems.

Well, a lot of developers do that too, when it comes to working with source control. Every source control system is a bit different and has a workflow that maximizes the value you get from it. Learn that workflow! It may take some time, research, and practice, but trying to fight it by making your source control repository look like the ugly mess you are used to creating on your local hard drive defeats the purpose. You might as well just have good backups for your local system and call it a day.
2: Go with obvious variable naming

This one comes up all the time: developers just give variables uninformative names and think it doesn't matter. Well, it does matter any time someone else comes in to look at the code. I can't speak for all developers, but I have yet to meet one who is typing for eight hours a day straight. Adding a few keystrokes for better variable names (especially when modern IDEs will autofill it for you) will make a measurable different in productivity. Stop making excuses and use better variable names.
3: Use interfaces, not classes when possible

Fun Useless Facts

1. People with higher incomes generally prefer their toilet paper to come over the roll, while those with lower incomes prefer it to go under.

Flickr: jtu / Creative Commons

In a 1989 book, Barry Sinrod and Mel Poretz revealed that 60% of people making more than $50,000 a year preferred the toilet paper to come over the roll, while 73% of those making under $20,000 preferred it to go under.

7 scams which could cost you your savings

iStock

Cape Town - Ask around in your circle of friends – there will be someone who has a family member or friend who lost their savings in some scam. It happens quickly, easily and regularly.

Amazing facts you did not know about being a computer programmer

Here are some unknown facts from programming

Being a computer programmer is challenging and fun at the same time, and before you know it, you will be reaping its rewards when you indulge in it. For those who might find computer programming extremely boring, here are some truly amazing facts that you did not know about this particular field.

1. The very first computer programmer was a female

First Click: Deep learning is creating computer systems we don’t fully understand

How does a computer make a decision? With normal software this is pretty easy to answer. Choices are outlined by a programmer; paths of options are created that are either followed or not, based on definable input. But, with the latest breed of artificially intelligent machines, trained on deep learning methods, it's trickier to work out. Creating these programs often involves selecting the algorithms that give the right results, but not checking how these results are reached. If the program produces the right answer 99 percent of the time, who cares? But when that 1 percent of wrong answers matter the most — when it's a life or death situation — finding out how the computer thinks becomes very, very important.

Take the recent (and sadly fatal) Tesla Model S crash, which happened while the vehicle's autopilot system was activated. Why exactly did the car's computer fail to recognize the truck in front of it? The reasons are vaguely known (it was a sunny day and the truck was painted white, making it difficult to pick out),