Ask HN: How do I 3x my performance? - <AUTHOR> Generally, I'm not doing everything I want to do in my life, and I'm wondering how other people manage to do all the things.
After a conversation here with another HN user[0], I'd like to ask high-performers how it is they do what they do.
First, what do I mean by "high-performer": someone who is doing what seems like two or more full-time tasks during their everyday life. In the case of [0] the user in question is a dad, full time at school, and has a full time job.
Second, by "how you do what you do" I mean: when it comes down to the point of action how do you move into an action? When does the choice happen? Did you offload that to a list a week prior? How do you handle feeling overwhelmed? Do you even have a sense of overwhelm when moving in to an arbitatrary task? Do you feel exhausted or mentally non-functional with any frequency? What does your sleep, food, and exercise routine look like? Do you meditate?
I just want to know if I'm lacking something fundamental: something physical (chemical imbalance? gut microbiome?), some lack of character development (do I lack "grit"? am I undisciplined?), or something else entirely.
In the case of the conversation in [0], the user has some external motivation; having faced death by cancer, he now wants to live his best life possible. Is this something I can apply to myself? I ponder death on a regular basis (2 to 4 nights a week, not in a sense of suicide, but considering my own mortality), and that doesn't seem to have the same sort of effect.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19357028 <comment><USER2> Don't aspire to be a high performer. It's a lie. People posture and virtue signal and Instagram how they want to be perceived, and the nerd crowd is no exception.

Want to know the secret to social and economic power housing? Contacts! You only get real power when other people contribute to it, whether you're an artist or a financeer or a scientist or whatever. You succeed when your network wants you to succeed. How many things you can do at once is irrelevant, and only puts you on par with the horse in Animal Farm.

But there's nothing that says you must play that game. Success in life is not how many shinies you get. It's about your deep connections. Nobody on their death bed wishes they'd gotten that Ferrari.

Get the money you need to do the things you want with the people you care about. How you get it is up to you, but it doesn't have to be the measure of your life.

Stop.

Enjoy where you are now, because you'll never be able to come back to it.

See the wonder that's right in front of you. Enjoy your youth while you still have it.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Don't aspire to be a high performer. It's a lie.

Thank you for this reminder. It is often hard for me to see past projections. It is also hard to accept that I cannot _do everything_ that I want to do.

> Success in life is not how many shinies you get.

I'm not so concerned about "success" on the world's terms. What I'm concerned about is the long periods of procrastination, being stressed about outstanding commitments (school? work?), feeling overwhelmed _even though I know what I need to do next_...

> See the wonder that's right in front of you. Enjoy your youth while you > still have it.

Again, thank you for the reminder. I get lost in the world of "pending responsibilities" often enough that a reminder to slow down brings me some peace.

<comment><USER2> I've found that I start procrastinating most after I've run myself too hard. It's important to have lazy days, where the goal is to accomplish nothing at all. This is one area I really struggle in, even after all these years...

<comment><AUTHOR> I feel like I need lazy days about 1/2 of all days. Maybe this has to do with how I meter out my deep(er) work.

I typically procrastinate enough that I spend 10 to 12 hours the day an assignment is due to get it done. Part of that is I get stressed out thinking about the assignment prior to when it is due, so I put it off.

I've been reading GTD and I think at least part of my stress response is not having clear outcomes or clear next steps... I've been working to clarify my most important (time sensitive) projects and it seems to be helping some.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I love what Stephen King says on this topic: "I try to get six pages a day." [1]

He works 3 to 4 hours per day, every day. He most likely works the same time block every day. As he says in the video, life happens. Don't stress life happening. Attend to things that come up and return to your "six pages a day".

The number of pages isn't important. King even qualifies his answer by saying, "...if things go well." The key component here is:

\- every day;

\- preferably same time block each day;

\- concentrated effort;

\- attainable goal with a bit of a stretch each day.

I adopted this model several years ago and my productivity went through the roof. (From my own perspective, measuring against myself; not others.) I can say I'm overjoyed at how much work I can get done using this approach. Five hours each day, starting at 4am, is the sweet spot for me. Note, though, that I wake up at 2am to be ready by 4am and I go to bed, uh, about now.

Here's the rub: it will always _appear_ that you can do more. However, as others have said here, it's an illusion.

Finally, I would make the following observation: if one _feels_ secure and has a _stable_ environment, productivity and motivation don't seem to be elusive. If you're chasing after dollars and you're about to go bust _if-it-doesn 't-get-done-by-this-Friday_, you've already lost. It's been my experience that you cannot start from a foundation of anxiety. It can't be "I have to do this or I'm screwed". I realize this creates a paradox for many folks. My solution was just to accept a much lower standard of living to reduce that meat- computer thread constantly running in my brain saying, "...but where the MONEY going to come from!?" The thread still runs occasionally and I just kill it.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR7XMkjDGw0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR7XMkjDGw0)

EDITED: formatting

<comment><USER4> This echoes the sentiment of Deep Work, which helped me a lot with my own productivity.

If you can do 4 hours of productive work, truly, no distraction, deep productive work, then you're likely way ahead of your peers.

Leave the rest of your time for shallower work, which doesn't require intensity of focus, and make sure to spend some time re-charging, where you focus on not doing work or being connected at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I neglect my health, personal relationships, and rational probability. Also because of however my brain is wired, "making things" is my happy place. Not recommending this, just saying that some "high-performers" might be people with unique problems that you might not want.

Enjoy what you're doing while you're doing it. Enjoy it like it'll never make you a billion. Also, as much as you can, try to stay grounded with your health, personal relationships and rational probability.

</comment><comment><USER6> You think of the activities too much. The 'high-performers' I know, do it unconsciously. They had developed the habits to be 'high-performers'. They don't waste mental energy/willpower on the activities they do daily.

They start writing/blogging every day for 3 months, then suddenly is a habit of writing 2 hours per day. They do not think 'I need to write today' they just write.

Then they develop another habit; they start coding an idea for the next 4 months. After a year of daily coding, it outputs 2 or 3 great side projects. At the end of 5 years, the projects are on the double digits.

Then they develop a fitness habit, they start by swimming an hour a day, then adding a running hour, then cycling weekly. At the end of the year, they complete a half-ironman.

<comment><USER7> For some people, the challenge is having more goals than you can reasonably make room for. Your strategy works, but it doesn't scale infinitely.

Working full-time, excelling at a side business, maintaining a quality relationship with your spouse, and going to the gym regularly? It's too much, and something has to give. So you dedicate more time to certain areas, then rotate which areas you prioritize.

It's far from a winning battle, or truly excelling in any area.

<comment><USER8> > Warren Buffett's secret to success is intense focus - instead of doing more, > he does less. He once told his pilot that in order to reach his goals, he > needed to do three things. The first was to write down his 25 top goals, and > then circle the top 5 most important. Then, separate the top 5 into their > own list - and goals 6-25 get put on a 'not to do' list. Ignore everything > on the 'not to do' list until you've achieved your top 5.

<comment><USER9> FYI Warren Buffett never said that, it's an internet myth. I saw an interview with Buffett and he was asked about it and denied saying it (although he did say the advice seemed reasonable).

<comment><USER8> My life is a lie :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > _Generally, I 'm not doing everything I want to do in my life, and I'm > wondering how other people manage to do all the things._

As if other people do "everything they want to do in their lives"?

Don't fall for success porn, productivity porn, hustle porn, etc.

Who exactly does "all the things"?

Over 80% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck [1].

An untold number struggle with situational depression, opioids, messy family lives, alcoholism, obesity, and such.

Tons work on low income, minimum wage jobs.

If you don't belong to any of these groups, you are achieving way more than the 90% of the people.

> _I just want to know if I 'm lacking something fundamental: something > physical (chemical imbalance? gut microbiome?), some lack of character > development (do I lack "grit"? am I undisciplined?), or something else > entirely._

You lack a job telling others BS about your productivity, and selling them conferences, tutorials, sponsored products, seminars and retreats. But then again those are few and far between, and they depend more on having a charismatic persona and good stage presence to sell BS (Tim Ferris and co) than actual productivity.

You also luck the conveniences, assistants, etc, rich people have to make them appear as they do "so many things" (when they don't have to worry about 80% of what a non-rich person has, from cleaning the house, to picking up the kids).

> _In the case of the conversation in [0], the user has some external > motivation; having faced death by cancer, he now wants to live his best life > possible._

And who said the "best life possible" is to overwork yourself with "two or more full-time tasks during [your] everyday"? That's just a sucker myth sold to people to keep them in the rat race.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/29/us- eco...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/29/us-economy- workers-paycheck-robert-reich)

<comment><USER11> > Who exactly does "all the things"?

Those people he is observing and who he is trying to live up to.

> Over 80% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck [1]

...which merely means their lifestyle is more lavish than if they had adopted a more fiscally conservative one.

> Tons work on low income, minimum wage jobs.

Less than 5% of workers work minimum wage:

[https://www.businessinsider.com/federal-minimum-wage- workers...](https://www.businessinsider.com/federal-minimum-wage-workers- map-2018-10?r=US&IR=T)

The median income worker has higher purchasing power in the US than almost anywhere else in the world or at any time in history.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income)

> If you don't belong to any of these groups, you are achieving way more than > the 90% of the people.

Even if 90% of Americans had it that rough (they actually don't) that's no reason to aim low.

<comment><USER10> > _...which merely means their lifestyle is more lavish than if they had > adopted a more fiscally conservative one._

In some cases, yes, in other cases it's like saying poor are poor because they have costs beyond what they make.

> _Less than 5% of workers work minimum wage_

That's a large number. Now add those that barely make above, but aren't counted -- which adds up to 30% or so.

> _The median income worker has higher purchasing power in the US than almost > anywhere else in the world or at any time in history._

Which is neither here, nor there. Wealth is social, not absolute. We're not animals.

When everybody else lives in a proper house, we're not thankful that we live in a trailer because in 10.000 B.C we'd been living in a cave

> _Even if 90% of Americans had it that rough (they actually don 't) that's no > reason to aim low._

There's also no reason to aim "high", just because some people sell you that lifestyle.

Life is not a race to make the most money. Some people make it, but it's not inherently that.

<comment><USER11> > Which is neither here, nor there.

It's actually kind of the same argument you are making: Look at the "poor" 90%, except in global terms.

> Wealth is social, not absolute.

I don't know what "wealth is social" is supposed to mean. I'm talking about material wealth, not "spiritual wealth". The things I can buy, the services I can afford to use, etc. That's what income and purchasing power is about. If you want to compare by _other_ measures, don't start by talking about income, otherwise you're shifting the goalpost. Talk about "Gross National Happiness" or something like that.

> When everybody else lives in a proper house, we're not thankful that we live > in a trailer because in 10.000 B.C we'd been living in a cave

Except "everybody else" _isn 't_ living in a proper house. The worldwide standard of living _today_ is far below that of the US. To compare good and bad you need a reference frame.

> Life is not a race to make the most money. Some people make it, but it's not > inherently that.

Of course it isn't, but let's dig a bit deeper.

Let's start by making _any_ amount of money, because as you say, most people live paycheck to paycheck. What does money represent to someone who doesn't have any? It's their lifetime, their freedom. You can't say no to a shit job if you need the money. You can't take a vacation if you don't have the money. You can't eat the things you want if you don't have the money. You can't live where you want if you don't have the money.

Sure, at some very high point (tens of millions of dollars) your basic lifestyle can't really any better, but at that point you will probably still find joy in investing into companies or charity. You _still_ can use more money to live a better life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I recently started doing Ultraworking "Work Marathons". This is a 3x improvement in itself. It made me realize how much there is left to gain in performance improvement.

I combined it with Focus@Will with noise cancelling headphones and "run- breaks".

I wrote a little bit about it here [https://www.elijahlynn.net/blog/2019-01-08-ultra-working- plu...](https://www.elijahlynn.net/blog/2019-01-08-ultra-working-plus-run- breaks)

I haven't fully implemented it yet (every single day) as new habits take time but the trend is going up and I have a lot of optimism around this!

<comment><USER13> I just read your blog post, I find it very odd but super interesting.

I'm still a little confused by the base idea of the "work marathon" though. Does it boil down to uninterrupted 30 minute stints?

<comment><USER12> Yes, but the spreadsheet is configurable to be whatever cycle length you want, they just recommend 30 minutes as a type of standard, try this first, length.

The 30 minute work cycle is 100% focused, with a 10 minute break that I usually get up and do some sort of movement, whether it is a run break or stretching or just going outside to look at the trees, and some type of offline processing happens here where my mind is still "into" the current problem space. It helps break things down into achievable units of work, you get a nice spark line chart to measure if you achieved your goal and it gives you a fast feedback loop on whether or not you are creating achievable enough cycle goals.

Once you do a work marathon this is all much easier than it sounds. I do recommend trying one out. When I get to doing this every day for 8 hours a day I am confident I will be 5x more productive than I usually am. This is a compounding time investment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not a high-performer by any measure. But it seems like you are trying to extract meaning from achievements and success in life.

Hopefully this will give some perspective: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL- ydFMI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI)

Some of the other comments touch on the routine building that leads to "high- performance". A buddy of mine says that the ingredients to greatness in anything are consistency, determination and a little bit of anger.

-consistency: devoting time routinely to the thing you want to achieve, i.e. eveyday

-determination: being able to stay focused on your goal when your original motivation is not longer relevant and being able to find new motivation

-a little bit of anger: the key here is "a little bit". You can't be angry all the time, that's not healthy. But when push comes to shove and you need a little extra it helps to become competitive and use that to push through.

</comment><comment><USER15> Don't try to become a productive superman in one day, you'll fail. Don't even decide to work towards lofty goals. Instead slow down and iterate. Move the ball forward a little each day.

What does that look like in practice?

1\. Building routines. People don't rely on making the individual decision to exercise every day. Instead they set a schedule and stick to it until it becomes a habit. Where you'd have to specifically decide to skip the gym rather than decide to go. Imagine if people didn't have any set schedule or expectation for work hours? How much mental stress would be involved in just choosing when to deal with work.

There is only so much willpower you've got, and it should be focused entirely on building habits. Only add one at a time, and find methods that help turn a decision into a routine. For some people that's religiously keeping a calendar. For others it's more ritualistic (I always go for a walk with my morning coffee).

2\. Matching pursuits with available resources. Remember in HS when you had to write a paper about a subject in Biology and you had to write an essay in English class. What did you do? Wrote one paper that could meet the requirements of both. Or at least one that could be cross submitted with minor edits.

Often the people holding down 2-3 jobs are copying work between areas. Doing one unit of effort for two units of credit. I.E. If you are a full time programmer, keeping up a blog about technology developments has a lot of crossover. Being a sysadmin and publishing benchmark results.

3\. Min/Maxing total progress rather than fear of failures. We get a lot further by showing up everyday ready to make mistakes vs holding off waiting for more analysis/knowledge. Be the dumb noob, seek out harsh criticism and embarrassment early in the process.

It's a lot easier to write off mistakes due to inexperience, than it is to explain a long term lack of progress. This area gets me all the time, because it _feels_ right to carefully weigh all options. However any honest appraisal of the opportunity cost would show that I'd have been better off making any decision (even the worst one) and then correcting based on feedback.

<comment><USER16> > Don't try to become a productive superman in one day

can relate. I think if you have a full time job, then trying to take up more than one hard thing beyond that just drains all your energy.

From my personal experience, I can either workout, or learn piano, but if I try to cram both + work I am miserable.

It's like you get only so many coupons in a day. A _lot_ of these things, as I have learned, depend of one's mental health too. Ideas like working in isolation, or extreme will power are fetishised too much at times. Having good relationships and healthy mind doesn't nearly get as much attention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What has worked for me are the following things.

1\. I have quitted drinking coffee about 5 years ago. I love the taste and smell of coffee but it's a joke what it does to people's wellbeing.

2\. I am semi vegan, 3/4 of my diet is a vegan diet. I only eat meat on the weekends and only in small portions. During the week when I need to be sharp I avoid it completely.

3\. I stopped eating bread and if I feel like eating it I would get a gluten free one.

4\. Before going to sleep I get a pint of water.

That's it, 4 simple rules. If you try it for 5-10 days you will never look back. At times I miss a chunk of medium rare piece of steak on Thursday after work or a nice smelly fresh cup of coffee in the morning accompanied by a chocolate muffin but what I learned is that the endorphins spike that follow up the food intake would be momentary and can not compete with the level of energy my brain produce without it.

<comment><USER18> > it's a joke what it does to people's wellbeing.

what does it do?

<comment><USER17> If you have spare 15min I recommend reading this extensive summary of researches on how coffee is sabotaging our brain's energy [http://blog.myneurogym.com/is-coffee-sabotaging-your- perform...](http://blog.myneurogym.com/is-coffee-sabotaging-your-performance)

<comment><USER19> that was a good read and quite interesting. liked that it provided a viable strategy for doing a reset and cycling use so that you still get the health benefits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As I get older in this industry performance obsession has gone from making me sad (how can I possibly compete) to making me laugh.

We work in a field where it is our literal chosen profession to leverage the most powerful machines human beings have ever invented into business logic.

Any attempt to push on the lever harder is just a waste of time. I'm actually trying to learn how to work less right now. I suggest everyone else do the same.

You know what can make you a valuable high performer though? Choosing the right levers to push. Become more tactical and strategic in your work, that's how you start to shine.

Okay so how do you do that? There are lots of ways to do it, but perhaps the most obvious way is to work on things that will make your team more productive.

</comment><comment><USER21> One thing that has helped me is trying to understand exactly the task I am supposed to work on. Because I read once on HN, that there is nothing worse than implementing wrong solution in the right way! What generally happens is, without understanding the task properly in depth, we try to form a solution and start execution. Then, while execution we continously run into problems, slowing us down and causing frustration.

Another thing that has helped me is searching/asking for help. You see majority of the problems that happen with us, someone or the other has encountered them and tried to solve them. It can be very useful to look at what they have done and see if you can apply it.

</comment><comment><USER22> There is more than enough time in the day/week/year to do what you want. You just have to avoid doing other things.

The biggest impact would be changing your desires.

One option is to really want something. You sneak away time from work/sleep to work on a project. You think of it in the shower, in a queue, on a toilet. It has top priority in your brain, above gaming, above any tv show, above any problems. It becomes an itch that you have to scratch.

If you don't desire something enough, your energy is channeled somewhere else. It's there, but in things like volunteering, random hobbies, trying to be good at a game, Tumblr. There are just many people in this whole who make it their goal to channel your energy.

The other option is to desire nothing. This is where meditation brings you. This is what you get from sickness, near death experiences, or excessive rest.

When you desire nothing, you're able to move it around at will. It's no longer a force you can't control, but a tame beast.

Most of us desire something - money, power, fame, attention, respect, knowledge. This can get complex. Many people have some kind of irrational desire as well - to look more successful than their ex, to not work in the same field as a parent, to work as few hours as possible, to see an underpaid project fail. Often born from some kind of mental scar or cultural conditioning.

</comment><comment><USER23> I think the best thing you could do is to find a therapist to discuss these feelings with and help you work out a plan for you. A lot of high "performers" regularly work on their mental health. Nobody talks about it but you see it with high performance athletes, CEOs etc...

Another idea is to focus on your unique skills and do those well. You may find that your skills have no use in one company but are invaluable in another. So it's a matter of context that defines high performing.

Just to note that health scares only briefly change behavior [1]. Some ways to help make a change permanent is to develop a support network and physically change your environment so that something negative is no longer accessible.

The last part of having a support network is huge. You may see someone who is a high performer at work and school and as a Dad but they have a spouse who shoulders at least half or more of the burden. In work they may have a team to rely on and in school a study group. We really should look at high performant teams instead of individuals. We like to assign success as a function of the individual but really it takes a village.

[1] [http://www.nbcnews.com/id/35584798/ns/health- behavior/t/scar...](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/35584798/ns/health- behavior/t/scared-straight-after-health-threat/)

</comment><comment><USER24> For a bit over four years I worked a demanding full time job while also getting my Master's degree and maintaining a relationship with my spouse.

I don't really have any insightful tricks, I just found the time.

When friends would go out, I would choose to stay in and either get some rest or do work. My weekends were fully allocated to my graduate work. My spouse was understanding and supportive but ultimately I spent less time with her, my family and friends.

I felt most overwhelmed when I planned out what I needed to get done next - that feeling usually went away when I started working.

One semester, in an effort to finish my degree faster, I tried taking an additional class. A little over two weeks in I found myself physically and mentally overwhelmed and unable to keep up with the work. Upon reflection, I realized that in an effort to keep up with the work, I was putting in 95+ hours of work per week. For me, that was unsustainable, so I dropped a class.

Most importantly, in retrospect, I regret it. Looking back it's pretty obvious to me that the compromises I made were misaligned with what actually matters to me. The tricky part for me was that it was really hard to see when I was in the middle of it.

I also think that my excessive workload actually took a lot of the joy out of the work I was doing. And for me, I think I'd rather go 50mph and enjoy the ride adjusting the direction as I go than 150 mph holding on for dear life in who the hell knows which direction.

</comment><comment><USER25> I can only speak to the "point of action:"

When faced with a big task, I usually feel overwhelmed. But if I take a step back and focus on a singular thing that needs to happen, it makes it far more managable. The first step is always the hardest, but once taken, you've overcome a the mental block of seeing the whole forest.

For instance, after a dinner party, the stack of dishes seems insurmountable. But if you focus on the first dish, then the next, then the next...pretty soon the entirety of the effort seems manageable.

In my professional life, I have to build a lot of excel models - many of which are complex and take a long time. This, again, seems overwhelming. But I start by putting something - anything! - in a cell. Then I build out a row of headers. Then the column headers and a formula or two. Then iterate on that. Soon, the insurmountable task has been made possible by SIMPLY DIVING IN. And once you have something to iterate on - even if its "bad" \- it's mentally easier to make changes than start from scratch.

</comment><comment><USER26> I consider someone doing okay if he/she is not having one of the following issues.

(a) He/She lost someone close or someone you love has a life-threatening disease. He/She most likely is having a tough time comprehending life/death or the futility of aspiring to be like someone else. Life changes in a moment and everything that was important thus far becomes insignificant.

(b) He/She has a tooth ache. You'll agree that when someone has a tooth ache, nothing else matters

I'm sure there are other examples that portray my point. But I think the root cause of this feeling of appearing "incomplete" or "not enough" to yourself is that we as humans tend to unnecessarily compare ourselves with others. I'm not saying you shouldn't have goals to achieve, but just that those goals shouldn't have origins in somebody else's seemingly successful life.

Any small success you achieve on a day-to-day basis should be celebrated. And believe me, a string of such small kinds of successes will make you contented.

</comment><comment><USER27> Good advice here, I'll add some tactical tips that have helped me:

1\. Offload mental overhead. For example, try organizing systems like GTD. What works for you will be highly personal, but the goal is to clear your head of everything you can so you can devote your full brainpower to whatever task is at hand. In the post you linked MRD85 mentioned keeping lists.

2\. When things get busy, separate thinking about what needs to be done from actually executing it. It lets me plan and organize when I have high mental energy and execute even when I have low mental energy. It's a lot easier to knock out a 15m mindless task after a long day at work than to decide what needs to be done and then do it.

3\. Consider impact in everything you do. It's a lot easier to 10x your output by working on tasks with 10x impact than by working 10x as hard. This is intuitive, the challenge is remembering to do this when things get chaotic and urgent. Related, read about the importance vs urgency quadrants in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

</comment><comment><USER28> Maybe spend 30x the amount of money?

Based, in part, on the concept that the fastest way to become a Millionaire in Business Type X, is to start out as a Billionaire in Business Type X?

Other than that, I think you'd be better off trying to figure out how to be happier with what you've got, rather than looking at all the things you don't have and berating yourself for failing to achieve them.

</comment><comment><USER29> Sleep better, regular exercise, learn the skill of focusing on a single task with no distractions for at least 45 mins. Eat your frog every morning - i.e. do your most difficult task first.

Most of your questions can be answered with the usually productity space answers. If you want resources try Chris Bailey's Productivity Project and the book The One Thing.

</comment><comment><USER30> I am a extreme multiplexer, that means I switch between sound engineering, camera work, music composition, electronics, programming, writing, design etc.

First thing to realize is, that you won't be able to do all things 100% at once. Usually that is okay, many activities benefit from some cool off period anyways (everything were perception matters — colors, sound, shape, etc).

Some activities require more uninterrupted time than others, for these it can make sense to dedicate fixed days or mornings to.

Some activities depend on inspiration, it usually doesn't make much sense to forxe them into a schedule.

Treat off time also as an activity.

</comment><comment><USER31> It's about priorities. I wouldn't necessarily make all the same choices I made in the past or recommend it. I've sacrificed some health, aged more than I would've otherwise, missed out on social events, lost relationships and damaged others in the name of professional proficiency. I just put that first and didn't let anything else get in the way.

A far better way to achieve the same thing is to lead others (making 5 people 25% more productive is much much easier than doubling your efficiency), though that's less of a personal productivity hack.

</comment><comment><USER32> Work up to it, and strip out stuff you don't need to do. For most people jumping into a lifestyle change is likely to fail.

My approach is more triage based: when I find something new I want to do but don't really have time for, I look at the other stuff I'm doing and work out what is less important than the new thing. That explicitly includes "me time", and an honest assessment of what I actually do vs what I think I should. So, a certain amount of randomly reading crud on the internet and posting rubbish (like this)... just because I enjoy doing it. I used to be active on various stackoverflow sites but I found gaming the metrics too addictive so I stopped (viz, too much time writing answers to get rep, moderating posts to get badges... it wasn't what I wanted to be doing, and I found it hard to just do it a little).

When I have been busy all the time it's been like that, but more so. Get up, eat the same thing for breakfast every day, wear the same clothes, etc... routine tasks take little mental effort and can be streamlined. That works for me, it may not work for you. Do a day's work, minimal lunchtime and maximum productivity so I can leave early and still get bonus marks for getting things done. Be conscious of the metrics my workplace uses and balance playing to those metrics against the time it takes (ie, if lunch with the boss is worth the same as an extra 5 hours work a week... have lunch with the boss).

Look for ways to save time and combine tasks. For me that means bicycle transport. I get time outside, exercise, and save time/money over driving. Since I rent, I try to rent somewhere in the area bounded by my other activities and such that I get enough exercise just doing those things. Likewise, vegetarian food can more easily be cooked once a week and stored/transported every day. I make soup or pasta or stew, cool it, put it in meal-sized plastic jars (they held stewed fruit once, which I like eating), then they go in the fridge. Again, efficient to cook, saves money, and no effort spent during the week making sure I eat well. I buy easy-to-eat fruit and vegetables as snacks, and drink water or herbal tea. Bike riding means I need more salt than most people, and more energy. Fortunately I also like eating corn chips :) Those synergies are important, look for them!

</comment><comment><USER33> What do you think full time means?

The people who seem to be high performers are the ones who quit almost everything else.

So your answer is a simple, "quit".

Quit all the things, quit family, quit friends, quit tv, quit YouTube, quit Reddit, quit HN, quit your side gigs, quit your job.

Find the one thing you want to focus on and go for it.

Obviously don't quit all family and friends. Don't quit sleep. But do quit family and friends that bring you down.

There is a difference.

</comment><comment><USER34> Start keeping a notebook how long tasks take, like morning routine 06-06:10. This simple trick makes you understand how much time you waste. At least it did for me. I doubt you can get 3x performance with a full time school, work & family though. Delegating family stuff doesn't work for most of us.

</comment><comment><USER35> Find your most productive hours and squeeze them for all they've got. The rest of the time do passive activities. Spend time with family, go to the beach, eat, sleep, chill.

Mine are early morning or late night, that's just how I'm wired.

</comment><comment><USER36> I just want to say thanks for asking this. I wanted to ask this myself but could not phrase it as good as you did.

</comment><comment><USER37> High performers always delegate or talk what they'll do and then after awhile stuff gets forgotten.

</comment><comment><USER38> First and foremost, you have to be healthy, mentally, emotionally, and physically (yes, physically). If you are not up to par, get these out of the way, first. Go to the gym, sleep well, eat well, don't consume mind-altering substances (for me, even caffeine has been shown to hurt my performance), don't be in an unhealthy relationship that is a constant distraction. I like to think of mental performance as a racing engine. You can have a dirty fuel filter, and not notice it because the air filter is plugged, and the spark plugs are misfiring. Only once everything else is fixed, do you begin to feel the horsepower from all cylinders firing.

Another thing that has helped me immensely, is listening to Jordan Peterson. If you can get beyond his political bent, you realize that he has a lot to teach to motivate. The main take away that has helped me become motivated, is the realization that you must be working towards something that is both difficult, and will significantly change your life. Listening to his lectures has helped me go back to working on a project that I had stalled for a year, and I have been working 40+ hours on it each week for months now (In addition to my 40 hour regular job).

</comment><comment><USER39> I work F/T, I study ~3hrs a day, I work on sideprojects, I exercise on a bike for an hour, I do bodyweight exercises, and I have a partner and social obligations like everybody else. I also get as much sleep as I want and have a ton of free time, mainly my weekends and after work evening hours are completely free as in there isn't one thing I have to do whereas most people I know need to spend hours doing laundry and other chores they put off. Before I did this I worked F/T, wasted all my free time and felt like I had no time to even get essential things done like going to get a haircut. My strategy then was to put off everything to the weekend and then end up not doing it anyway, repeat. After I organized myself I was even working at a university lab on weekends in addition to everything else because of all the free time, putting in 6hrs before 1pm still left lots of partying or beach time.

I agree that productivity memes are getting ridiculous, like actors or CEOs who shill their schedules of getting little sleep and power lifting 5 minutes after waking up at 3am but there is benefits to doing just basic time management. I give myself 4 hours in the morning free time before the daily commute. Before I started doing this I had to blow off social obligations because homework and assigned reading were due, but now I'm already done the assigned reading, already done working through the hw (and last semester's hw), and already went through the lecture slides before I go to the lecture that day. The reading I do while on a stationary bike for one hour. The bodyweight exercises I do during 10 minute breaks while going through exercises and hw. A half hour in that morning period is just for organizing laundry/cleaning and basic chores that before I put off until the weekend, then would end up wasting half of Saturday getting my shit in order. Breaking it up to a half hour for 5 days a week, and now my weekend is completely free, which was a god send when I started doing an OS course and the assigned projects were a ridiculous amount of work like implementing a kernel spec. While I'm doing all this everybody else I know is asleep, there's no phone calls to answer, no emails to answer ect. I'm always out at night doing something with my gf and have tons of energy whereas before I just wanted to fill my face with takeout, passively entertain myself with some Netflix marathon and then pass out. I didn't have a gf, I was overweight, I was tired all the time and thought that it would be impossible to finish a chapter out of a dense math text unless I waited until the weekend, but of course I was so disorganized I didn't have time on the weekend either.

The only reason I made this choice to start scheduling was due to getting older. When I was very young I always felt like there was plenty of time to put off things until later, but like you I'm very aware of time and how little of it we all have. Now if I'm wasting time I'm always thinking to myself I could be learning randomized computation right now and discovering something amazing about quantum information theory, instead I've wasted that opportunity so I can consume yet another zombie themed soap opera. That nagging feeling of winding up on your death bed and realize you've wasted something like 12hrs a week for 2 decades passively watching junk or putting off having a family to just self indulge a meaningless existence is pretty much my primary motivation not making money or becoming a Zuckerberg.

<comment><USER40> It's good that you actually give actionable advice. 1) Wake up early, 2) Don't do all your chores on the weekend, 3) Do less housework, and an optional 4) Don't have kids.

I have the same experience you do as far as routinely finding myself having "too much" free time on weekends. Just don't fill it with TV, interruptions, and bad comedowns from your job stress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I just started Vyvanse today, maybe give it a try? It's not a "magic pill" but rather a supplement to help.

<comment><USER42> It's probably not wise to rely on drugs. Not a good long term strategy.</comment></comment>


Tips For Managing Remote Workers - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/tips-for-managing-remote-workers-2013-9 <comment><USER2> I am the first remote worker at my company, and I definitely feel some of the hurt that DHH describes. I transitioned from working in the office to working remotely a few months ago. We're incredibly meeting-and-email oriented, so I still phone into one or two meetings every day.

Bad idea or not, does anyone have any tips for playing the part of sole remote worker?</comment>


A New Kind of Landscape Photography - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/12/a-new-kind-of-landscape-photography/421287/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Has anyone tried using DigitalGlobe (the service that's used in the OP) for on-demand photography? Their landing page [1] provides several call-to- actions: download Silverlight to see an interactive demo, set up a live demo, or regular Contact Us form. They apparently have a partnership with CartoDB [2], which states that day-of photos can be requested (at $30/km2) and is integrated to their API -- but then states it's for Enterprise clients only (though later in the page, says "Anyone can access this data").

I guess there's probably not a service that just lets you fill out an online form and pay by credit card to get an image on demand, but would like something a little more frictionless than having to meet with a salesperson when I already know exactly what I want to try out.

[1] [https://www.digitalglobe.com/products/spatial-on- demand#feat...](https://www.digitalglobe.com/products/spatial-on- demand#feature-section)

[2] [https://cartodb.com/cartodb-for/satellite-aerial- image/](https://cartodb.com/cartodb-for/satellite-aerial-image/)

<comment><USER3> We looked into DigitalGlobe a while back. They are the best provider of satellite imagery we could find, but there are a lot of limitations. First, you really cannot get on demand imagery. If you wanted the same picture take every day for months or years. They couldn't do it. Second, the costs were too high. Even looking at their startup package it felt like we were a small town band talking to a major record label.

My expectation is that drones will be a much better technology. Unless what you are interested in is imagery of North Korea, Russia, or some remote area in Africa in which case pay up and these guys/gals can do it.

<comment><USER4> So, in the end how much does it really cost, and how hard is it to acquire the service?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That is not Crested Butte - that is Leadville

Source: [https://email@example.com,-106.2825792,23874m/...](https://email@example.com,-106.2825792,23874m/data=!3m1!1e3!5m1!1e4)

<comment><USER6> I was surprised at how easy it was to identify almost everything in the photo and even then Crested Butte stuck out. Weird mistake to make. The only thing that stuck out more (for me) was South Park, which I could identify even in the thumbnail image in the article.

Anyway, completely love the image and would also love to see one pointing a bit more southerly to capture the Sangre De Cristo's and the Great Sand Dunes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> That picture kind of breaks my sense of perception. When I first looked at it, I entirely mis-categorized the scale, and thinking it was looking North from San Bernadino, I was able to place the lakes and landmarks in order for it all to fit, and it pretty much worked, my mind easing over unrecognized characteristics as places I'd not been.

Then I read the article.

<comment><USER8> I believe that one of the reasons that it looks strange to us is that the image is captured using a "push broom scanner," where the satellite captures one line of the image at a time as it flies above the Earth, so the usual rules of perspective do not apply. The image is the same geographical width at the bottom as is it at the top.

<comment><USER4> Also known as isometric projection. Although, because the telescope has a such a small field of view, perspective projection would give virtually the same image.

<comment><USER9> Right. It seems like it's essentially an object-space telecentric view ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecentric_lens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecentric_lens)).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Having hiked, biked, camped, and lived in many of the areas in that photo, looking at this gives me a deep sense of familiarity, yet still offers a completely unique perspective. Thanks for sharing this!

</comment><comment><USER11> Absolutely breathtaking. It's like standing on an _enormous_ mountain.

</comment><comment><USER12> One app I noticed recently might be of interest - "SpyMeSat". Give it a location, and it'll show you a list of forthcoming imaging opportunities from several satellites. Tap on any of them, and you get to see further information on its capabilities, including available spatial resolution. I haven't tried purchasing any images, but the prices look quite sane - £8 for 1 square km, £15 for 4 sq.km. Whether more interesting angles are available, as in the article, or just the more familiar "overhead" flat view, I can't tell.

[https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/spymesat/id691290387?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/spymesat/id691290387?mt=8)

</comment><comment><USER13> Wow, astounding! I want the full-resolution version!

<comment><USER14> Think the closest you can get to that is the direct iframe at [http://www.theatlantic.com/media/interactives/2015/11/colora...](http://www.theatlantic.com/media/interactives/2015/11/colorado- satellite-photo/index.html?v=1) (leaflet page.)

<comment><USER15> You could download all the images from [http://www.theatlantic.com//media/interactives/2015/11/color...](http://www.theatlantic.com//media/interactives/2015/11/colorado- satellite-photo/tiles/TileGroup2/6-0-0.jpg?v=4) to [http://www.theatlantic.com//media/interactives/2015/11/color...](http://www.theatlantic.com//media/interactives/2015/11/colorado- satellite-photo/tiles/TileGroup11/6-41-51.jpg?v=4)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> And here I expected this to be an article about New Topographics, given that the 40th anniversary of the original show just passed: [http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/feb/08/new- topo...](http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/feb/08/new-topographics- photographs-american-landscapes)

</comment><comment><USER17> The star positioning system is interesting.

By the way, does anybody know a open source lib like the one they are using (zoomify) to display very high resolution images on the web?

</comment><comment><USER18> That is a large airport.

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder how often spy satellites take similar pictures, since they might be more willing to play around to peek around cloud cover, if they really want a particular picture right now.

Having a powerful, private "spy satellite" is really cool, since it puts government-style capabilities in the hands of "ordinary" people (at least, ordinary people with money).</comment>


Ask HN: Service to report local ip - <AUTHOR> Is there a service to report local ip address.
for example, my work machine is under a vpn network. I connect from home to the vpn, but I don't know the ip of my work machine, as its ip is dynamically assigned.
I want to find a service, so that my work machine can periodically report its ip address to the service. so I can retrieve it at anytime? <comment><USER2> SuperUser[1] might be a better audience for this question.

[1] [https://superuser.com](https://superuser.com)</comment>


Twply - From Alleged Spammer to Sold on Sitepoint in Less Than 24 Hours - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/twply-twitter-replies-auction

<comment><USER2> that's an awesome exit, cause that service has a 99% chance of being pushed out and included by twitted itself or being banned for spam</comment>


Don't Drink Your Own Kool-Aid - <AUTHOR> http://blog.500startups.com/2010/12/01/dont-drink-your-own-kool-aid/ <comment><USER2> I would go further; I question the value of making your employees drink the kool-aid; I mean, part of what you hired them for is so you have someone to trust when it comes to decision making time, right?

<comment><USER3> Exactly. Why would you give your employees kool-aid you wouldn't drink? Although I do agree with the author's advice on how to prevent it. Good lord do so many companies need to do 2 and 3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think it actively works AGAINST you in a technical business to try to / assume your employees are drinking your koolaid... Technical Koolaid still tastes vaguely like bullshit, which most geeks are somewhat opposed to.

</comment><comment><USER5> Eat your own dog food instead.</comment>


Systemd needs official documentation on best practices - <AUTHOR> https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/linux/SystemdNeedsBestPractices <comment><USER2> I think systemd is useful, but I think the implementation is not very good.

some observations:

\- /etc/systemd is disorganized. config files, directories and links all thrown together. It's like they started with the init.d / rcN.d directories but then threw everything in one directory. This is as mindful as a kid throwing everything in the closet to organize his bedroom.

\- /lib/systemd is worse. binaries, links, configs. unraveling all the dependencies... 450 small pieces of spaghetti intertwined.

\- Having binaries seems like premature optimization (root of all evil). And they're probably not faster, but are definitely more opaque, and much less likely to evolve. It's sort of anti-unix.

\- the config files, which trace their mirrors windows .ini files, allow no intelligence. Giving it the benefit of the doubt, say maybe dumb config files can be autogenerated, I still get sad. Logic still has to be there, but you still require an intermediate script or maybe bake it into a binary.

\- scope. It is like the borg. Or an episode of hoarders.

apart from documentation, it would be nice to have example config files for the most common scenarios.

Nothing is elegant here. It's all "works for me" level mediocrity.

</comment><comment><USER3> So, basically we need a Systemd-docd.

<comment><USER2> I imagine something like this:

       https://git-man-page-generator.lokaltog.net/

(this website generates parody git man pages)</comment></comment>


How to plan for Y Combinator interview - <AUTHOR> http://plumbr.eu/blog/how-to-plan-for-y-combinator-interview

<comment><USER2> We got rejected as well after travelling all the way from Denmark. We landed saturday afternoon and got to the interview sunday morning and took the plane home sunday afternoon. We didn't even reach a point where we had jetlag.

I think one of the reasons we got rejected was our response to some of Paul Graham's suggestions. One of them was to expand the concept to include game characters (Iconfinder is currently an icon search engine). We didn't respond to his idea in a positive way but instead defended icons as a large enough niche to build a initial service people would pay for.

<comment><USER3> So do you wish you had accepted his suggestion?

<comment><USER2> I still don't like that specific idea, but I regret trying to defend our idea during the interview. I think they test the teams by suggesting different ideas to see how we react to new things. The more open you are to new ideas, the better. Just like Reddit, the team came to Y-combinator with totally different idea. So I think it's very important to be open and positive to th ideas bring up during the interview - because if they like you (but not your idea), you can very well be working on theirs instead.

<comment><USER4> I wonder if they ever flip out "bad" ideas to see if they're dealing with a "yes man". Doesn't seem to be their style, but it's not like I really know them well.

<comment><USER5> Not intentionally, but we get the same effect unintentionally because a lot of the ideas we suggest are bad and we later realize it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm interested to know more about why PG thinks that people typically don't pay for software tools? Do others feel this way? In my own experience, if a software tool saves me time, I have no problem paying for it. I've seen this in others. I realize that my observational sample is quite limited, but what do you think?

<comment><USER7> PG was right. People don't pay for software tools. But companies do. The number of freelancers who pay is small so focus could be on getting the sales funnel working for the developers inside the companies.

I'm afraid that memleaks alone would be too small benefit to keep a dedicated overhead running in production. Leaks are something that you worry only after it already happened. What could work is a system monitoring dashboard that includes memory leak detection. Definitely something corp clients and developers could love at the same time. But the competition is already there, just none of them has the memleaks detection.

Zeroturnaround has been very successful with the java class reloading business thanks to the massive pain that java developers face daily with the bloated frameworks that make you develop inside the running application instead of writing small batches of test-driven code. Perfect fit for corporate environments. I'm not sarcasatic here. On the contrary, I'm very happy to see a very serious problem being solved. It's a huge dedication to work with all the containers and frameworks to get the live class reloading right.

Regaring VC funding and tools: VC's are surfing the latest waves to reap the profits and capture the market. Tooling is enabler, not a wave.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Generally ill-advised to mention meetings with specific VCs and angels ("Facebook was truly interesting and led to three new meetings. Next four days went like a breeze - in total we had 15 meetings - with blue chip VCs ([...]) who have presumably passed (otherwise I assume you'd have announced them as investors).

Saying "met with top-tier VCs and angels" is usually good enough, without the downside.

<comment><USER9> Ouch, thanks for pointing that out. Rephrased it now.</comment></comment>


Sunsetting Flash - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.unity3d.com/2013/04/23/sunsetting-flash/

<comment><USER3> As someone who has not been following this very closely, why on earth did Adobe abandon Flash? They had a reasonably capable plug-in shipped in just about every browser, with a huge ecosystem around it, and then they just chucked it all away. This seems to make no business sense at all to me.

<comment><USER4> Because Adobe dont understand the web,it's not in their culture.

They never invented one successfull webdeveloper product, and those they bought from Macromedia ( Dreamweaver , Fireworks , ColdFusion , Flash)...havent evolved a bit or are dead.

They fired most of the legacy Macromedia work force anyway. They should sell all these tools or open-source them.

<comment><USER5> You've clearly never heard of Edge[1]. Adobe are now putting great strides in providing HTML5 tools.

That said, I personally would still avoid Edge just because of Adobe's past record. It might seem petty, but I've lost faith in the company so there's little incentive to pay to join their HTML5 services.

[1] <http://html.adobe.com/edge/?promoid=KAGMS>

<comment><USER6> To be fair, if camus hasn't heard of Edge it isn't _his_ fault - it's Adobe's. Which, in a way, helps to emphasize his point.

<comment><USER5> That would be fine if we were talking about some small hidden product, but Edge has been well covered on HN and it's included with Adobe's Creative Cloud - which has also been well advertised. Plus at some level you have to expect people working in the industry to take responsibility for their own research (assuming he does work in IT, rather than being one of those "arm chair critics" that lesser forums are often plagued with).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To offer a business perspective on this, as opposed to widely spread tech- centric comments...

Flash market is still there, and it's growing. Hard-on-3D browser based games are _extremely_ sparse with business opportunities, as are HTML5 (WebGL, Canvas, plain old school js) games.

Unity player is seeing huge growth, but that's peanuts in comparison to Flash plugin availability. HTML5 games need monetization strategy that ain't just "slap a multiplayer and process most of it on backend".

Thing is, Adobe is a corporation. They think business first, technology second. Market is there. Plugin availability is there. Tools are there. Developers are there. Wtf?

And that's why Adobe doesn't make sense to me with all they're doing with Flash. _At all._

On a more personal note, another _wtf_! Flash enabled huge infusion of creativity on web, way of expressing in much less contrived ways than available. Made you experience web you remember fondly from not so far long ago. Still does. Remember that. Only then move on.

<comment><USER8> I was going to use flash as a frontend for my startup's technology. The thing is, I could already see the handwriting on the wall even a couple years ago. Adobe was running around with their heads cut off trying to figure out how to develop flash. They just had no idea what they were doing. The compiler wasn't very good and simple performance problems with the VM and flash timeline weren't fixed at all. Instead, we got immediately abandoned projects that just sapped resources from more worthwhile endeavors. You basically had to use haxe to get good performance for certain applications.

With all of these issues known to Adobe you might suspect that they would move aggresively to increase the performance of Flash in general and Flex in particular. More integrated tools would have also gone a long way in improving the developer experience for flash/flex. Instead, Adobe went ahead with the strange creation otherwise known as Flex 4. Adobe decided that the main issue with Flex applications was their poor 'skinability.' Flash catalyst made no sense, and was totally unusable for serious application development. It was another tool (bringing the count to 3) for flash/flex authoring that did nothing to solve the problems with the platform.

To sum up, if Adobe had: -aggressively targeted 3D gaming from the start -built powerful authoring capabilities in the flash ide rather than supporting multiple development environments -addressed performance, security and cpu issues with the plugin -developed the as3 language -not wasted time on mobile browser plugins -trust the flash ecosystem to fill in gaps as they worked on the platform

the story might have turned out differently. Of course, they didn't do any of those things when they had the chance

<comment><USER9> >You basically had to use haxe to get good performance for certain applications.

Haxe did nothing you couldn't do with AS3 and Alchemy.

>With all of these issues known to Adobe you might suspect that they would move aggressively to increase the performance of Flash in general and Flex in particular

They did, by quite a bit. They also had parallel project for increasing performance with Stage3D and Alchemy.

I get your point about Flex 4. It is a better UI framework than Flex 3, but not significantly better, so the engineering effort that went toward it could have been better spent doing something else.

I also mirror your thoughts about "what could have been". My pet theory is that Stage3D should have been a FP10 feature (which would put it around the beginning of 2009 timeframe) and Adobe should have had some sort of (optional) browser-based app store to push Flash as a gaming platform. And since we're in hypothetical scenarios, AS3 should have been better designed, and cross- compilation to HTML/JS should have been there from the beginning. This may have given Flash some legs. But the reality is that sooner or later it would have been superseded by HTML anyway. Oh well, hindsight.

Furthermore, looking at the performance gains that Google, Microsoft and Mozilla managed to squeeze out of a language like JS, one can't help but think how much faster ABC and Flash Runtime could been.

<comment><USER10> _Haxe did nothing you couldn't do with AS3 and Alchemy._

So, have they fixed this bug in Alchemy: <http://forums.adobe.com/thread/487570>

It's kind of hard to use C++ when you're not allowed to make a copy of std::string. Last I looked into this in May 2012 this was still not fixed (reported in 2009.) There is a page on stackoverflow where someone explains how to work around this problem by rebuilding a patched version of libstdc++. But after applying that fix you hit other similar problems.

Also, the sztrace() function exists and is documented, but they forgot to add it to the .h file, so if you want to log anything, you have to write:

      extern "C" {
      void sztrace(char*);
      }

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _"When we started working on a Flash deployment add-on some 18 months ago we had high hopes for the future of Flash as a gaming platform."_

That made me wonder whether they were paying attention. The writing has been on the wall for quite some time.

Luckily, they have anticipated this and built a WebPlayer that does not require Flash and works on all major browsers – it even supports Native Client. <http://unity3d.com/unity/multiplatform/web>

<comment><USER4> So you are saying using a plugin is better than another one ? Doesnt make sense. How many users have the unity player deployed ? zip. And a plugin is still a plugin , wether it is flash or not.

<comment><USER11> I'd rather not use any plugins, but not all plugins are created equal. Flash Player is a turd, from security to performance and power conservation. We deserve better.

Even if Unity's WebPlayer were every bit as miserable as Flash, it would still make web browsing better than having Flash installed, as few websites will call the Unity WebPlayer.

<comment><USER12> I wonder if detecting the Unity WebPlayer and using it to serve rich-media ads when present is that far off...

<comment> __--__ It'll never happen. Flash is a lightweight rich media format designed for rich media. Unity is a full blown 3d environment and is not lightweight and not 2d friendly. That said, the only thing unity is really useful for is 3d applications, which are very limited. It's not going to replace Flash for 2d games.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am absolutely sure they work on something targeting ASM.JS. They already support native client and for the rest there is the native Unity plugin. Furthermore Flash is (and always has been) buggy, support by Adobe is lacking and its future isnt looking good.

In that scenario flash seems pretty obsolete indeed.

<comment><USER14> As long as there is fragmentation then flash will not be obsolete. For example the lack of a common supported audio format or shader language in browsers to name two.

<comment><USER13> With ASM.JS and Native Client Unity can basically run their plugin without needing a plugin :) For the rest of the browsers there is still ASM.JS (which just runs slower on browsers not directly supporting it) or the native Unity Plugin. So for Unity Technologies, Flash is pretty much obsolete.

<comment><USER15> Unity can target many platforms, including Native Client, but it's my understanding that Unity can _not_ target asm.js. Of course, asm.js is quite new…

<comment><USER13> not yet, like i said i am sure they are working on this as it should be easier as the flash deployment was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was at Unite last year in Amsterdam, and had a chat with the Adobe reps at their booth. The first question I actually asked them was about the future of Flash, because I'd heard that it was being phased out. But that was "only on mobile" apparently.

Their demo was pretty impressive - lots of nice looking 3D graphics and so on - but I have to admit I was skeptical even then.

</comment><comment><USER17> The more that jump of the whole Flash/Flex nightmare the better off we will all be as a wake up call to Adobe to either sort out the bugs that are quite evident or to just accept that it should be put to rest.

<comment><USER4> except Unity works with its own web player that is very far from being bug free and secure.

<comment><USER18> How about instead of continuing to ramble on with poorly spelled and grammatically flawed comments that claim all sorts of things about Unity (and Flash, for that matter), you provide the vaguest amount of evidence or even speculation to support your claims that Unity's web player is some sort of security nightmare?

How about some CVEs? Or descriptions of botnets using Unity to infect end users' machines? Or even descriptions of bugs in the web player that cause the slightest discomfort to users?

I've played lots of Unity games in my browser and I know lots of developers who use it. I've literally never heard complaints about security problems or had the Unity plugin crash my browser, and I have to terminate plugin- container all the time when Flash hangs, so I'm no stranger to plugin crashes.

<comment><USER19> Two following links should be sufficient to prove the point that just because you have never head of any security issues with the Unity Web player does not mean there are none.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> WebDev are sunsetting flash ! [2 years ago]

</comment><comment><USER21> will unity (player at least) someday work on linux?

<comment><USER18> They already have Linux player support: <http://unity3d.com/unity/multiplatform/desktop>

</comment></comment><comment> kostya-kow This is good news. Flash is a dying technology, and HTML is the way forward. Hopefully this means they will make a HTML5 version with WebGL of their player.

<comment><USER15> The post says nothing about HTML5 or WebGL (or asm.js). They're all gung-ho about their proprietary Unity Web Player (a plugin).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's a wonder anybody uses flash anymore

</comment><comment><USER23> Flash Player not withstanding, the rest of the product line is very good IMHO. ActionScript 3 is a decent language with great compiler support, three good IDEs (FlashDevelop, FDT and Flex Builder) and libraries galore. Desktop support with AIR (i.e. iPlayer) is right there too.

But the runtime, Flash Player, sucks. It pains me to see Adobe throw away everything else just because the runtime is horrible. I would LOVE to see ActionScript shift towards browser-native or HTML5 runtimes. Seriously. Flex can go walk the plank along with the Flash VM, but please, Adobe, take the maturity of that platform and make it do something useful. You managed to compile to iOS, Android and Blackberry, so we know you are capable of really good work, it just needs to be web right now.

<comment><USER15> I like where you're going with this. Adobe has shown that they can make great tools for designers and developers. They're already big proponents of modern web standards like HTML5 and CSS3, see:

<http://html.adobe.com/mission/>

I would be very happy to see Adobe release a competitor to Unity3D Editor that can target all major platforms, including HTML5 (including WebGL and maybe asm.js).

<comment><USER23> That's exactly why I thought Flash would be repurposed - especially as they have a track record in making tools for creating (D)HTML and JS - <USER2> remember GoLive? Maybe they're still working on it, it can't be an easy task.

Actionscript 4 -> Web, anyone?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Last nail in the coffin, the Unity Stage3D demos were easily the best examples of what Stage3D was capable of. Made Adobes examples look like a joke.</comment>


10 Months at Harvard, Quantified - <AUTHOR> http://moalquraishi.wordpress.com/2013/07/24/10-months-at-harvard-quantified/

<comment><USER2> This is very neat. I think this kind of time tracking can be very useful, especially for people in professions that are very self-directing, and provides a mix of short-term and long-term projects. I'm a PhD student and I've been playing around with setting up my own systems ([http://reganmian.net/blog/2013/03/16/unobtrusive-time- tracke...](http://reganmian.net/blog/2013/03/16/unobtrusive-time-tracker- visualizing-time-spent-with-ruby-and-r/) and [http://reganmian.net/blog/2013/03/29/time-tracker-one- week-o...](http://reganmian.net/blog/2013/03/29/time-tracker-one-week-on-new- features/)).

A bunch of the things he noted resonate with me, like noting the difference between time spent in the office, and time spent actually working (even when you are not procrastinating, there's all kinds of little things taking your time). I've not been as rigorous about setting goals and then sticking to them, but I did set up a "traffic light" system, aiming to hit 4 hours work on my PhD every day ( a typical "long-term" goal which easily gets buried under short-term commitments and things you can "cross off a list").

I also have data that can let me show how long I work on things on average, at what time of the day etc, but I haven't dug into it yet... I see some great posts about quantified self people (like Sacha Chua [http://sachachua.com/blog/2013/07/quantified-awesome- adding-...](http://sachachua.com/blog/2013/07/quantified-awesome-adding- calendar-heatmaps-to-categories/)), but either they tend to use totally off- the-shelf programs like RescueTime, or they tend to write their own solutions... I'd love for the QS community to come up with some standards, for example a standard way of storing time-use data, and then some common libraries - I'd like to continue logging my time in whatever way works best for me, but if someone makes a really neat way of visualizing time spent vs length of chunks, I'd love to be able to run that analysis on my data too... R would be one nice place to host that.

<comment><USER3> Interesting stuff, thanks for sharing.

I've been working on tracking my time lately via this app [0] to good success. I was just thinking over something like your unobtrusive tracker there and found myself wondering whether the obtrusive ritual of tracking actually helps "stay on task" and remain aware.

I started using in reference to certain goals, but the most immediate return was realizing just how much time I spend in some form of commute.

I completely agree about standards.

0: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rk.timemet...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rk.timemeter)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Stephen Wolfram has been doing this for a while - the data is really interesting over the larger timescale: [http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/03/the-personal- analytic...](http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/03/the-personal-analytics-of- my-life/)

<comment><USER5> thanks for sharing

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "I must admit to feeling some hesitation before writing this post, as I fear it may come across as self-indulgent. My motivation in writing it was to communicate how useful self quantification can be. It is a lifestyle change that I believe some can benefit from, and one that can reduce the chronic stress from which far too many of us suffer."

It seems more interesting than useful. Lots of analysis, not much benefit. Maybe

"The only hard targets I currently have is to spend >10% of time writing, and >15% of time reading, which I have hit. This was something I struggled with tremendously before, and I only succeeded when I started tracking work type specifically."

is a benefit, but it's fairly representative in that it's something of a goal within the system rather than an external benefit.

Perhaps there's guilt relieved by realising that a tedious week spent organising a mentoring group increased the amount of interaction as a mentor, but what are the benefits beyond that?

<comment><USER7> I think it has been useful to me. For one, I'm more motivated to work because if I slack off, I'll be staring at an empty indicator all week long which really upsets me. I suppose it's just a psychological trick that may or may not work for everyone, but it does for me.

The second thing this helps with is project-based tracking. That is super useful, because I had no idea before how much time I'm really dedicating to my different projects. Of course, my initial assumptions have to make sense. I.e. if I decide to spend 25% of my time on a high-risk project and 35% of my time on a more attainable project, those targets have to make sense. But _assuming_ they do, this system helps me match my targets.

I suppose the next step would be to regress those indicators on some external output, like number of papers published, but I think coming up with a sensible metric would be very difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I started doing something similar to help me with my work as a freelancer.

My approach involves scheduled popups with questions that are really quick to answer. Right now I'm only asking myself "are you being productive?".

I just put it on github an hour ago: [https://github.com/bbonf/productive](https://github.com/bbonf/productive) It's probably too raw to be helpful to others, but I plan to improve it soon.

<comment><USER9> I put something like this on my to-do list a couple of years ago, but haven't made it to that project line item yet :-(.

Thank you for sharing what you do have, even if it's rough!

RE: "You may have to install PyQt4." \- Yes. When I './run.sh', I received...

      |  Traceback (most recent call last):
      |    File "main.py", line 4, in <module>
      |      from PyQt4 import QtGui, QtCore
      |  ImportError: No module named PyQt4

Unfortunately, I don't have time right now to find PyQt4 and install it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a freelancer I too have found it both helpful and interesting from a data perspective to track my time in a detailed way. I've been using Excel for years, plus an independent (from Excel) calendaring system to block off target periods for specific projects.

From the usefulness perspective, tracking my time allows me to a) objectively see where I'm slacking off or rockin' it. Perception can be skewed without the objective tracking; b) view my effectiveness, but only because of how I use my tracking system. If I'm not being effective, I don't enter time for that period. But inspired by OP, I'm going to add an effectiveness metric to my tracking system, and possibly include what my distractors are; c) have a built-in reporting system to my clients, if I need to track hours vs. job for invoicing; d) gain a better sense of how much any given job will take me in advance. This sense has improved dramatically by reviewing my time tracking- data longitudinally.

Thanks for sharing, OP. And thanks to the rest of you who posted your own systems and links to other ones.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd like to hear more about how he used Mathematica for this. Especially since he mentions Dynamic, which is more often used for creating interactive content. Maybe he used it as a listener…

<comment><USER7> I'm the author of the original post. I use Dynamic in two ways. The more obvious way is just to create interactive visualizations that I can easily manipulate, for example changing the time granularity or the set of projects displayed. The second use is the link with my calendaring program. I use Dynamic to set up a timer that calls a DLL (through .NET/Link) every few minutes to programmatically fetch the day from Outlook. That way my dashboard is constantly up to date without me having to do anything, and so I can just glance at it whenever I want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> At first I was really excited when I saw this post. Then it almost depressed me. To quantify my life based on how "productive" I am at working. I'd prefer to have the reverse, to quantify my leisure at the minute-ly level. Imagine looking at these charts when you're on your death bed. Will you regret that you didn't work as hard as you could have? I don't think I will. Of all the "what I regret most about life" posts I've seen on the internet, I've yet to see someone say "I wish I spent more time working".

</comment><comment><USER13> I have been using the free version of Manic Time ([http://www.manictime.com/](http://www.manictime.com/)) and it works quite well, as it's quite unobtrusive and doesn't need any input from me.

Lifehacker.com has a list of other alternatives too - [http://lifehacker.com/5853163/the-best-time-tracking-app- for...](http://lifehacker.com/5853163/the-best-time-tracking-app-for-windows)

</comment><comment><USER14> See Nicholas Felton's work for a more design-oriented approach to personal- statistics. He has an extensive report for most years since 2005.

[http://feltron.com/ar12_02.html](http://feltron.com/ar12_02.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> He seems to put a lot of effort into putting exactly the number of hours into the full job and exactly the number of hours into each project he wants. I don't really consider that valuable, though, and think he is kind of wasting time. At least he made some pretty graphs, though, and got some self gratification for hitting his hourly target exactly. Doesn't really have any meaning re how much actual work he got done, though.

</comment><comment><USER16> There are so many variables in quantifying oneself that I have given up many times. It becomes a chore after a while.

<comment><USER17> That's why it's important to use automated variables as much as possible, so one isn't bearing the burden. Any number of variables can be tracked automatically, it's the ones you have to do manually which become a chore and burn you out. My Zeo sleep data will never be a chore because all I have to do is put on the headband before I go to sleep which has long since become an automatic habit, while writing down my weight on an index card would become a serious irritant if I had to do 5 or 6 of them.</comment></comment>


Claim that jet stream crossing equator is 'climate emergency' is utter nonsense - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/06/30/claim-that-jet-stream-crossing-equator-is-climate-emergency-is-utter-nonsense/ <comment><USER2> Just to provide some context, Roy Spencer (one of the experts quoted in the WashPo article) doesn't 'believe' in Anthropogenic climate change, and is in fact an ardent denier who compared those who do believe that climate change is a serious threat 'nazis'.

He also favors intelligent design to evolution.

I hope all of the author's other sources were equally distinguished.

<comment><USER3> Further context: Spencer partly runs the satellite-based temperature monitoring system at Huntsville. Given his stance favoring intelligent design to evolution, would you therefore have some doubt about the values reported for the troposphere or might that perhaps be using totally fallacious logic?

Newton believed in alchemy and according to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton's_occult_studies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton's_occult_studies) "Newton considered himself to be one of a select group of individuals who were specially chosen by God for the task of understanding Biblical scripture". What does this mean for calculus and the Newtonian laws? Precisely nothing.

<comment><USER4> Newton didn't know any better.

Spencer doesn't have that excuse.

<comment><USER5> How is that true?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Something I find rather unsettling is the very peculiar word choices by both sides.

One says its an emergency.

The other side says it has happened before.

Something that fits both sides statements is a hurricane, or a drought both long term and short term. There's a lot of really bad stuff that happens only rarely.

Its like both sides are trying to act out a scripted dramatic play. "Here's your weird lines to talk past each other, now get on stage and make it look good"

Another thing that's weird is the reported statements exclusively come from cranks outside the field, and people inside the field where its well known that any doubting of official belief means permanent removal of funding, so anyone trusting either side is a fool. Wheres the quotes from a reasonable disinterested 3rd party, perhaps a TV meteorologist or a fluid dynamics physics professor (although retribution if the admit lack of faith in belief could still impact them, they're probably less personally financially motivated). We're dealing with religious-style beliefs on both sides, rational thinking didn't get them there nor is it going to get them outta there, belief isn't controlled by reason. So where's a non-belief based observation and discussion? I suppose that's not good clickbait so it may exist but we won't be permitted to read it.

<comment><USER7> Except, with a hurricane, we all know _why_ that's an emergency: high winds, large amounts of rain, and potential for massive destruction and loss of life. I have yet to see a claim as to why the jetstream near the tropics moving in a slightly unusual way qualifies as an "emergency". It's not like there's some wall around the equator to suddenly got broken down and all the weather is going to go crazy now. It just doesn't make sense, and they didn't say anything to make it credible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice to see Roy Spencer quoted in a spirit of glorious ecumenism.

</comment><comment><USER9> > _The claims are unsupported and unscientific, and they demonstrate the > danger of wild assertions made by non-experts reaching and misleading the > masses._

What damages? You just thoroughly criticized their claim, on a major newspaper no less. The reddit thread is already tagged as "Editorialized & Misleading blogspam." Meanwhile, the earth spins as usual, scientists keep working, and life goes on. In a week or two, nobody will even remember this debate. At worst, some people who are already prone to believe anything they read on the web may have acquired another incorrect belief. At best, people like me have learned a few more things about our wonderful planet thanks to this incident.

> _Such information viewed through the lens of a non-specialist may come > across as both credible and alarming but damages the reputation of the > science when ultimately shown to be flawed._

The reputation and credibility of science comes precisely from the fact that it consists of an exchange of bold conjectures and ruthless refutations, all carried out in front of many watchful eyes, both scientists and laypeople. Thanks to you, we just witnessed such a public refutation. More cycles of this exchange, with more time and more data, will ultimately determine who is right.

Why would this display of science-working-as-intended (regardless of who turns out to be right) damage the credibility of science, except in the eyes of those who already hold nothing but contempt for science, or those who want to use science as a blunt-force weapon in their petty political games?

You don't get closer to the truth by trying to shut up people whom you disagree with. We, collectively, get closer to the truth by finding and presenting better evidence than one another.

Now who's the alarmist?

<comment><USER10> > Why would this display of science-working-as-intended (regardless of who > turns out to be right) damage the credibility of science, except in the eyes > of those who already hold nothing but contempt for science, or those who > want to use science as a blunt-force weapon in their petty political games?

If you haven't noticed, there isn't just a desire to use science as a political weapon. It actually _is_ a political weapon, and it is used regularly to win political wars. That's why extremely loud pissing matches with politicized goals masquerading as science are problematic for the science community...it is too easy, for too many people, to end up confusing the quest for truth and knowledge with a pursuit for power and control.

There are plenty of climate scientists that resent the peon role they've been placed into by politicians that nominally agree with them. By mixing up cause and proposed solutions which happen to be perfectly politically aligned with one side's dogmas, it makes it far too easy to vilify the cause and nullify any chance at a solution.

You may see this as science working as expected, but the wide publication of bullshit and subsequent politicization of it is absolutely a problem for science.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Free link: [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/jet-stream- crossin...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/jet-stream-crossing- equator-global-climate-emergency-dismissed-debunked-a7113241.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> I had all sort of 'philosophical' reactions as I watched the video. One was 'wait and see' if this proves to be widely accepted. Another was 'even if this proves to be unrealistic' his concerns appear to be heartfelt and his commitment to pursuing them diligently seems to be strong, so dismissing them out of hand 'in ignorance of respected opinion elsewhere' would probably be hasty. Don't we need to offer a little extra patience with our fallible but often conscientious independent amateur researchers? Aren't these just our peers?

<comment><USER13> They certainly aren't my peers. I don't make poorly researched misinformation go viral and reduce the level of knowledge within the public.

I saw this nonsense posted on Facebook by the same people who post anti- vaccine rants and cry about chemtrails. That's exactly where it belongs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If the flow dynamics of the wind are taken into account, how much effect does extra rotational energy further away from the axis have on the conservation of momentum?

</comment><comment><USER15> These alarmists and extremists do nothing but block any progression to real change. Stop making it an all or nothing battle: perfection is the enemy of progress.

Speaking of, anyone been to China or India lately? These folks need to be held accountable.

</comment><comment><USER16> "Utter nonsense" is usually a clue.

</comment><comment><USER17> The desperation in this article, to peddle a narrative that essentially no reasonable person can afford to buy anymore, is a little embarrassing.

<comment><USER18> What narrative? That the "climate experts" are FUDing all the time for attention?

<comment><USER17> No. And frankly the desperate "Big Climatology" conspiracies are about as pathetic and credible as "Big Abortion" conspiracies. How desperately sad that you've tried to 'follow the money', and it led you to climatologists rather than say, petrochemicals.

<comment><USER19> That second thing is _actually_ cruel, esp. late ones. Hitler would have liked all of it as he was in the quest of getting rid of not only non-Arians but also chronically ill members of his own "race". It should have been shunned, instead it is defended like some human right.

Edit: I see parent is downvoted and upvoted time and time again. I did not downvote, as my issues are not with the fact that some people have weird ideas about big X, but rather with almost how parent is almost jokingly throwing this issue around.

And don't worry about me, my downvotes on this are expected, earned and worn with pride although I don't usually make comments luke this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> >> "claims are unsupported and unscientific, and they demonstrate the danger of wild assertions made by non-experts reaching and misleading the masses."

Maybe I missed it, but if it's so obvious that it's not unusual, then why're the "experts" unable to use science/data to prove it in the article.

Realize this isn't a popular opinion, but "peer review" is not science.

<comment><USER21> I'll copy a comment by doener in a previous related article: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12012612](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12012612)

> _Ok, seems like this isn 't really unprecedented:_

> > _2015:[https://earth.nullschool.net/#2015/06/24/1700Z/wind/isobaric...](https://earth.nullschool.net/#2015/06/24/1700Z/wind/isobaric/250hPa/equirectan) > ._

> > _2014:[https://earth.nullschool.net/#2014/10/14/1500Z/wind/isobaric...](https://earth.nullschool.net/#2014/10/14/1500Z/wind/isobaric/250hPa) > ._</comment></comment>


Ask HN: AgTech – What's the best way to gain domain knowledge? - <AUTHOR> We're a software development company and we recently changed or focus from outsourcing to creating products that solve real life problems. We also decided to focus on AgTech, as an interesting domain with a lot of growth potential in the future.<p>How do you get domain knowledge? What's different in AgTech then in other industries? Is there a different way you approach people and companies there? <comment><USER2> I mean, not wanting to be pedantic here, but the answer is obvious. You need to network with people in tve industry and learn about their problems. Not gonna happen sitting behind a keyboard. That's the kind if market that requires face ti face contact.

<comment><AUTHOR> I get that you have to network with people. My question was if there is something that you need to do differently that the standard way of networking, attending conferences etc?

What are the tips that can help you get domain knowledge faster?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's a huge space, tons of players. Get some base-level knowledge, start attending conferences > [http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/originals/ct- midwest-a...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/originals/ct-midwest- agtech-conference-bsi-20161114-story.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, are there any European conferences that you would recommend? We're from (Poland)

<comment><USER3> World Agri-Tech Investment Summit - London (2 weeks ago) - still worth researching the agenda/speakers/sponsors for prospective partners & clients > [http://worldagritechinvestment.com/](http://worldagritechinvestment.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> can you get consulting-ish work with clients in your target industry? put the plans for products on the backburner until you build up a bit of a network of interested customers + have experience from a project or two of delivering things that your target industry wants.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, that's a good idea, but a little bit time consuming and we would like to start with our own product next year. How do you identify specific issues that you can tackle in AgTech?</comment></comment>


Hvdos, a simple DOS emulator based on the OS X Hypervisor.framework - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mist64/hvdos <comment><USER2> A nice write-up that explains this code is available here: [http://www.pagetable.com/?p=764](http://www.pagetable.com/?p=764)

</comment><comment><USER3> I hadn't seen Hypervisor.framework before. Has anyone looked into porting QEMU to it? It sounds like this would effectively be KVM for OSX.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like an interesting framework, my quick search didn't unearth any docs for it though? The only reference on Apples website is "we added this to 10.10"

<comment><USER5> As with all Mac frameworks, the full headers are embedded in the framework and the headers all have full Javadoc-style API documentation for each function. Since there are only 24 functions in the whole framework, that's probably enough to work it out.

<comment><USER4> If only I had my mbp with be to read them :'(

<comment><USER6> You can find a copy of the MacOSX-SDKs on github, i.e. [https://github.com/phracker/MacOSX- SDKs/blob/8519a1de16d8384...](https://github.com/phracker/MacOSX- SDKs/blob/8519a1de16d8384359a4f39f1bd82d751b7cfecd/MacOSX10.10.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/Hypervisor.framework/Versions/A/Headers/)

<comment><USER4> thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Gotta wonder who this is targeted towards - the likes of VMWare definitely not as I am sure they've spent a lot of time optimizing everything that happens in kernel space inside their drivers and surely there's more than 24 API calls they'll need inside the kernel to get something like Fusion working.

Maybe Apple is planning to provide a built-in hypervisor and this is just a start of it. Or maybe this is just for old DOS/Win games that'll sell for $9.99 in the appstore.

Also a cursory look shows the API is rather Intel specific. That's fine for the status quo but if they ever switch CPU vendors again wonder how this will work out.

<comment><USER8> _> Or maybe this is just for old DOS/Win games that'll sell for $9.99 in the appstore._

Maybe it's the start of an "extreme sandbox" model, where appstore apps are all virtualized.

<comment> X-Istence This is something I've been thinking about. What if we could easily allow all programs to be sandboxed using virtualisation technology? Run your web browser or parts thereof inside of a VM so that any exploits are limited to just that VM.

<comment><USER9> Bromium does this for common apps (web, pdf, office) on Windows, e.g. each browser tab and HTTP request is a separate VM.

<comment><USER10> It also alerts if a process does something 'weird', it allows exploits to run in a sandbox and records what they do, so you can analyse it later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This reminds me of vx32[0], a user level emulation library that seems to target the same interface. One of the main applications using it is 9vx, which is basically a Plan 9 kernel running in userspace.

0: [http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/~baford/vm/](http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/~baford/vm/)</comment>


Show HN: Muuri – Responsive, sortable, filterable and draggable grid layouts - <AUTHOR> https://haltu.github.io/muuri/ <comment><USER2> This framework has an interesting definition of "fast animations", at least on the latest Waterfox. It's specifically laggy on the Kanban demo.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here, thanks for the feedback =) That laggyness is most likely the demo's fault, not the library's. The demo uses CSS transitions to animate the height of the container, which is very bad for animation performance (shame on me).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> One of my side project was on hold due to one functionality that I was not able to find, but looks like I found it[0]!

[0]. Kanban Demo

</comment><comment><USER4> How would one go ahead and use Jquery Resize with this? Adaptable enough to allow that?

Looks great!

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you mean jQuery UI resizable? In any case it should be very easy to add item resizing functionality to Muuri using jQuery UI resizable or similar library. Actually the easiest way would be just using hammer.js, which is one of the two dependencies of Muuri. I'm in the process of creating a few extra demos to demonstrate Muuri's capabilities a bit more so I'll keep this idea in mind for the demos.</comment></comment>


National Eagle Repository - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Eagle_Repository <comment><USER2> In the Seattle area, eagles nest in the trees in the parks. You can see them soaring looking for mice and cats to eat all the time. I live under the airport landing pattern, and like to sit on the porch watching the eagles and the 747 heavies floating by :-) Occasionally a B-17 will clatter by (they give out rides at Boeing Field).

</comment><comment><USER3> Wait, I'm a European that was on a trip to Canada 2 years ago. A bald eagle flew by and lost one of its feathers mid flight. Naturally, I picked it up and took it back home.

On the way home, we had to make a stop at an American airport. If someone had seen or found the feather in my luggage, would it have been considered an offence?

<comment><USER4> That is correct. You can't posses their feathers even if you found them on the ground. In fact, in the U.S., hawks and owls are protected too.

"All hawks and owls are federally protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (16 USC, 703-711). These laws strictly prohibit the capture, killing, or possession of hawks or owls without special permit. No permits are required to scare depredating migratory birds except for endangered or threatened species, including bald and golden eagles."

"In addition, most states have regulations regarding hawks and owls. Some species may be common in one state but may be on a state endangered species list in another." Source: [http://icwdm.org/handbook/birds/HawksOwls.asp](http://icwdm.org/handbook/birds/HawksOwls.asp)

<comment><USER3> Whew, what would've been the punishment if they did find it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I remember there being a bald eagle's nest off of a fairway at a golf course in Colorado. I always wondered what would happen if someone shanked it and killed one by accident since they are protected. Now I know what would happen to the bird!</comment>