The U.S. Is Getting Closer to a Recession, Data Show - <AUTHOR> https://www.barrons.com/articles/the-u-s-is-in-the-late-stages-of-expansion-data-show-51549642305?mod=bol-social-fb <comment><USER2> If there were a way to predict future recessions, and it was reliable, and it was well known to the point of being published on a public web page, then it wouldn't work. As soon as it predicted a future recession everyone would sell their long positions and the recession would happen almost instantly.

There have been ways of predicting market movements in the past that, kept secret by their discoverers, were later turned into trading empires before they stopped working. But there are no ways of predicting future market movements that both (A) work and (B) are on the front page of Hacker News.

<comment><USER3> 1\. There already is an incredibly accurate predictor of recessions: the 10 year vs 2 year yield ratio.

2\. The NBER defines a recession as "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales." It has nothing to do with the stock market.

<comment><USER4> > There already is an incredibly accurate predictor of recessions: the 10 year > vs 2 year yield ratio.

This is not quite true. 2s10s curve inversion is commonly discussed, but 3m UST bill vs 10y UST note has far greater predictive power [0] -- and this indicator does not exist for all large economies. BoJ and ECB factor in curve inversions already, which diminishes their predictive power.

Additionally, some have argued that the US tax policy changes have diminished the signal from the curve (companies repatriating cash tend to hold it in short dated tenors, making the curve steeper than it would otherwise be). Finally, there's argument over whether yield curve inversions are causative or indicative of recession in the US.

[0] [https://www.frbsf.org/economic- research/publications/economi...](https://www.frbsf.org/economic- research/publications/economic-letter/2018/august/information-in-yield-curve- about-future-recessions/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Part of me wonders if we are talking ourselves into a recession, the market is definitely spooked about how China's growth slowdown affects the global economy but in terms of wages and unemployment the US economy still has a long ways to go. For instance African American unemployment is at record lows but still around 6%. Many people are working gig economy jobs and part time and would love a full time opportunity. Growth (discounting tax cuts) is low but stable, so is wages.. so is inflation.

If anything is going to trigger a recession I would put my money on corporate debt, so many companies are loaded with debt that will rear it's ugly head the moment any slowdown in growth is on the horizon. That will trigger lower spending, job cuts, and other means that would bring us into recession.

<comment><USER6> Recessions are usually triggered by market sentiment...unless a volcano explodes and blocks off the Sun or something like that.

<comment><USER7> Market sentiment effects it but I don't think it is usually the trigger. Wikipedia doesn't have anything on triggers but I remember my econ textbooks taking about it and there is usually one thing that pushes it over the edge like oil shocks or the housing loan defaults.

<comment><USER8> Or student loan defaults?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > This matters to investors because, although bear markets are only fair > predictors of recessions (seven of 13 postwar bear markets were followed by > economic downturns)

Roughly the same predictive power as flipping a coin isn't what I'd call a "fair predictor".

<comment><USER10> The yield inversion predictor is 100% over the past 40 years with no false positives. The only problem with yield inversion is that it may be 2-years or 3-years early. (2005 yield inversion was followed up by recession in 2007).

Here is a graph of 10-year minus 2-year, a yield inversion is whenever the graph dips below 0%.

[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T10Y2Y](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T10Y2Y)

The yield inversion predictor is incredibly powerful.

\</comment></comment><comment>----

EDIT: Part of the reason for yield inversions to happen is that a large number of people are buying long-term bonds, because they think a bear market will exist. Its better to hold onto a 10-year bond through a recession, because short-term rates will drop during a recession.

We don't quite have a 10-year inversion yet, but we have a 7-year inversion. 5-year yields less than 1-year at the moment. So investors prefer making less money on a 5-year (to guarantee a stable interest rate), rather than 1-year.

That means a large number of people are predicting a recession.

<comment><USER11> Predicting something 2-3 years early is not a "prediction", it's a failure to predict.

I'll suggest better predictors of the health of the economy would be 1) Record domestic manufacturing output, 2) Most energy security in history (US is now a net exporter of oil), and 3) lowest unemployment since 1969. The US Economy is firing on all cylinders and I wouldn't be surprised if a strong economy runs for another 2-5 years. This is not all that unusual, since the US is returning to a historical average GDP growth rate of 3-4% after an abysmal decade of 1-2% growth.

<comment><USER12> > Predicting something 2-3 years early is not a "prediction", it's a failure > to predict.

Why do you say that?

<comment><USER13> Predicting the economy will experience a recession is like predicting a person will die: you'll be right eventually, but without knowing _when_ , you can't do much useful with that information.

<comment><USER10> IMO, this is the time for policy makers to start to debate policy changes. It takes over a year for tax laws to have any effect for example, and maybe 2 or 3 years before tax laws really kick in and affect the economy. (First year, people will be typically surprised at their new refunds instead of really spreading it over the year)

Trump's Tax Cuts were written into law in 2017, but only these months (tax season 2019) is when people are fully understanding the scope of the tax law, as it hits our pocketbooks.

A surefire predictor within 2-years or so is good for policymakers, but probably bad for traders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "The U.S. Is Getting Closer to a Recession, Data Show"

Of course the U.S. is - every day we are one day closer to the next recession. It's that nobody knows when that day is. A lot can happen between now and "that day".

<comment><USER15> But maybe _this_ time we'll be able to prevent it! ;-)

The media loves to point fingers at specific individuals/organizations that are ostensibly responsible for each recession, but there's no known way to completely dampen the oscillations without deep-sixing the economy.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A google search of past failed predictions of recession shows people ,including experts with PHDs, are generally not good at this. In hindsight they can explain why the economy went into recession but are hopeless at predicting when

</comment><comment><USER16> These articles on the "coming down turn" are written in such a way that they seem so matter of fact.

The article basically says that they had people study past recessions and therefore the markers are there, but things in the real world don't work like this at all. They say that the tax cuts extended the bull run for two years but now it's over, as if they are 100% sure.

Fidelity who, I guess, sponsored the study should follow its own advice that they give their customers "Past performance does not guarantee future results".

Therefore I just feel these people are shorting the market and trying to move things in their preferred direction.

However, in reality no one knows what will happen next and no Model can tell us. There are so many variables at play right now in our modern economy and saying that there will be a recession in the future is like saying everyone has to die at some point.

</comment><comment><USER17> Hitting close to home, I wonder which software companies would survive and where would VCs be willing to invest during a recession?

During the dot com bust in 2000, my local job market for developers full of just regular companies writing internal apps wasn't affected at all. The company I worked for in the bill pay industry, kept humming along.

During the 2008 recession things were a lot crazier until 2011. The investors weren't willing to invest in our pivot from writing software for ruggedized Windows Mobile/Windows CE devices for large companies to smart phones.

I would think that companies working in the health care industry would still be attractive.

<comment><USER18> Software-wise it really seems like it depends on how bad things really get. SaaS spend might actually be relatively sticky if sales across the board decline but there aren't widespread business failures on the idea that it's replaced internal infrastructure required to run the business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think we're already in it.

Over the past year or so, each of my friends from a broad swath of industries say their company is going through layoffs. Almost across the board, everything from marketing to engineering.

<comment><USER20> Unemployment is very low and we are adding jobs. I usually get 2-3 recruiters/week contacting me. However you do some seem some layoff stories too. I am wondering where these jobs are going.

<comment><USER21> Not all jobs are equal. Are the jobs we are adding good ones? or desperate ones?

<comment><USER22> [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/01/nonfarm-payrolls- january-201...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/01/nonfarm-payrolls- january-2019.html) : On a year-over-year basis, though, [wages] still amounted to a 3.2 percent increase, consistent with the past few months and around the highest levels of the recovery.

Higher wages are a good thing.

<comment><USER23> That's 1% wage growth after adjusting for inflation.

<comment><USER22> Fair enough, we should adjust for inflation.

From Brookings : "Real median household income grew roughly 1.6 percent in 2018" [https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up- front/2019/01/31/household...](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up- front/2019/01/31/household-income-likely-continued-to-grow-as-employment-and- wage-gains-lifted-incomes-in-late-2018/)

Median household income : $60K . $60K * 0.016 =$960.

<comment><USER23> note the reason for using household income: it includes those who were previously unemployed. It's a way of blurring the line between the average person's earnings and unemployment. Of course if we want to know the unemployment rate, there are separate stats that clearly show that. The only reason to include it here is to make wage growth look better than it would otherwise.

Removing those who found a job, we get back to the lower 1% number. And a big part of that is people just working longer hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > in June the economy will celebrate a decade of recovery from the Great > Recession

Or the US already suffered a mild recession in 2015 and the recent higher growth is a bounce out of that.

S&P 500 corporate profits contracted for four straight quarters from mid 2015 to mid 2016. Sales contracted for six straight quarters.[1]

From July 2015, to November 2016, manufacturing employment contracted slightly (essentially was flat). Manufacturing employment has exploded higher since that month.

The U6 unemployment rate was stuck between 10% and 9.6% between Sept 2015 and Oct 2016.

The civilian labor force participation rate for 25-54 year olds (the single most important participation rate), was fairly stable from January 2013 until mid 2015 (after finding a new general floor post great recession), and then suddenly plunked to a new post great recession low of 80.5% in July 2015. It has been setting higher lows and higher highs ever since that drop.

Consumer confidence, which had been rising persistently for years post great recession, stopped going up and then declined from early 2015 through early 2016.

The S&P 500 index was near a peak in May 2015 at around 2134, then proceeded to go nowhere for a year to ~June 20 2016 when it was at 2032. During that weak year, it hit a low of around 1810 (~15% decline).

The small business confidence index tanked from the first quarter of 2015, until early to mid 2016.

The markit US manufacturing PMI began tanking from a high in mid 2014, until it bottomed out in the second quarter of 2016.

The consumer price index had been rising for years post great recession, stopped rising in mid 2014, flattened out until Oct 2014, plunked lower until Jun 2015, then proceeded to go nowhere for another nine months. In net the consumer price index went no higher from Jun 2014 until Mar 2016. The price index then resumed climbing after Mar 2016. That ~20 month dead spot was the longest post great recession.

In 3Q15 GDP growth dropped dramatically from the prior five quarters, to 1% (3Q14 was 4.9% by comparison). 4Q15 GDP growth dropped further to 0.4% (4Q14 was 1.9%). 1Q16 was 1.5% (1Q15 was 3.3%).

If you've got 1% and 0.4% quarterly growth back to back, with a near zero fed rate, what you've got is a recession.

There are countless more data points that indicate the US suffered a mild recession at some point over that year.

[1] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/corporate-profits-set-to- shrink...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/corporate-profits-set-to-shrink-for- fourth-consecutive-quarter-1468799278)

<comment><USER25> > If you've got 1% and 0.4% quarterly growth back to back, with a near zero > fed rate, what you've got is a recession.

No. If you've got two quarters back to back with _negative_ growth, _then_ you've got a recession. That's literally the definition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> And in the long run we re all dead

</comment><comment><USER27> My God, the grammar of that title.

</comment><comment><USER28> I really dont think that lack of growth of the quantity of goods produced for a few quarters is really so big of a deal

This is how recession and depression are defined, when gdp simply isnt growing a fraction of a percent quarter over quarter. Is this really a proxy to give insight into everything effecting the general population? The words recession and depression are loaded with so much more than what they actually track, I think just saying them slows down the business spending and lending facilities more than the actual trend of printing slightly lower gdp numbers per quarter.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm from Europe and I remember very well the 2008 financial crisis. The corrupt banks in America and their massive bailout waved over the ocean and crashed the markets here in Europe, then I was pretty young and I could hardly understand how the housing loans there can lower my salary here. It's funny how naturalized the language is, as if markets are some natural force that goes up or down independent of people's will. Living under capitalism at it's best.

<comment><USER30> You missed the UK based banks and financial institutions that were acting just as badly, such as RBS and others?

<comment><USER31> Or even in Iceland, which was notable because they allowed their banks to fail for the role they caused in the recession?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%932011_Icelandic_fi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%932011_Icelandic_financial_crisis)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Generate laughable ideas for silly startups - <AUTHOR> https://ideasforstartups.appspot.com/#humour_for_real <comment><USER2> Silly though it may be, _Decree appraisals in space through puppet theatres_ sounds like fun. So does _Use your cat to grow the galaxy_ , though I'm not sure my cat would enjoy it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha! Thanks . Good one. XD

Just played it again now and got one I'm quite fond of.

 _Disperse micropayments using Millenials_

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like how some of these are actually actual startups. Thank you. I needed someone to say this to not lose all faith in humanity

</comment><comment><USER4> That one gave me food for thought : "A website for your secrets"

</comment><comment><USER5> "Learning for Humans"

First one I got. The machines have become self-aware.

</comment><comment><USER6> Very funny!

I like _A smartwatch to transport wearables_</comment>


Show HN: A platform for K-6 classrooms to set personalized academic goals - <AUTHOR> https://prolio.com/invite/fbA2aXhn <comment><AUTHOR> Founder here. To start the conversation, I figured I'd share that this was built with React and Laravel. We use React, React Router and Redux for the frontend. We use Laravel mostly as a Rest API, and to hydrate our initial Redux state.

Overall, things worked well building with this stack, but sooner than later we'll probably split the frontend into its own codebase and use Node.js to serve it so that we can utilize SSR to gain some extra speed. But overall, the application performs pretty well, we think.

If you'd like to read a little more about what Prolio does for classrooms, feel free to check out the write-up at Medium:

[https://medium.com/@brandoncarroll/hello- prolio-298170b3067c...](https://medium.com/@brandoncarroll/hello- prolio-298170b3067c#.vsbok3x5e)</comment>


How Apple's Siri Works: Interview with Tom Gruber, CTO of SIRI - <AUTHOR> http://www.novaspivack.com/technology/how-hisiri-works-interview-with-tom-gruber-cto-of-siri

<comment><USER2> Hmm, sounds more serious than I thought it was. Like Apple is readying it to be the biggest differentiator since the original Mac, in terms of user interface.

</comment><comment><USER3> To those confused by the use of "Apple's" in the title, Siri was acquired by Apple in April of 2010.

(edited because I was one of the confused)</comment>


Rework, A Book Review - <AUTHOR> http://litlift.com/irony-a-book-review

<comment><USER2> Not a good book review in it's current form. I'd recommend going into more detail, make it longer, and making it less of a self-promotion thing for your project -- for that is how it appears now. I would like to see a good review of Rework though, before buying it.

<comment><USER3> I read Rework recently and I am planning to write a review about it.

What would you consider a good rework review?

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure if others agree, but I personally think some of the highly-rated reviews on Amazon tend to be valuable. I thought the first review listed here was thoughtful:

<http://www.amazon.com/Rework-Jason-Fried/dp/0307463745/></comment></comment></comment>


Why Techstars Acquired Startup Weekend - <AUTHOR> http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/247416 <comment><USER2> Good news! If TechStars keeps improving at that speed, Y Combinator will need to make improvements as well in order to stay first.</comment>


Penny4NASA - Increase NASA funding to be 1% of U.S Budget - <AUTHOR> http://www.penny4nasa.org

<comment><USER2> Mandating that a certain amount of money (especially a percentage) of budget be spent on something (no matter how noble or desirable or effective) is one of the ways that California has managed to ballot initiative itself into failure. I think I actually prefer the system where people decide what to spend money on, I just wish there was a better way to dislodge the beneficiaries of the current money spigot before they become institutionalized automatic rubber stamped welfare recipients...

</comment><comment><USER3> This presupposes that funding is a limiting factor. I don't know enough to know if that's true. However, in many areas of life, more money does not always equate with more success. I worked in pharma for years and there was no wanting for resources. That didn't make a bit of difference in new drugs discovered. Biology is hard and is unimpressed by money. I'm confident our success rate would have been unchanged, even with unlimited funds.

</comment><comment><USER4> There's dozens of these penny for NASA websites. In my opinion, one vote on the Petitions website[0] is worth more than a 10 dollars donated to an armchair lobbyist.

Alternatively, you can actually send money directly to NASA[1]. I'm waiting for a new box of checks to arrive, but that'll be the first thing I use em for.

[0] <https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/> [1] [http://nodis3.gsfc.nasa.gov/npg_img/N_PD_1210_001G_/N_PD_121...](http://nodis3.gsfc.nasa.gov/npg_img/N_PD_1210_001G_/N_PD_1210_001G__main.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER5> is it me or is everyone tired of signing yet another online petition to get our government to do the right thing? I feel extremely discouraged by the state of our nation yet I have no idea how to fix it. Signing online petitions to just be ignored by our representatives doesn't do it for me anymore. I wonder if a secession of the nerds and geeks from the rest of the nation would be a good idea? bah, i'm gonna drink another beer and wallow in some self pity now. ignore me.

</comment><comment><USER6> The petition on that site is by change.org if you choose to fill it out prepare to recieve lots of junk mail.</comment>


Overnight success takes years - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1624-overnight-success-takes-years

<comment><AUTHOR> Also seems this post is in direct response to a question he received at his Q/A. A link to the blog post about his talk was posted by another user just recently (can't seem to find the user atm), <http://www.rubyrailways.com/dhh- fuck-the-real-world/>

</comment><comment><USER2> Quoting Steve Jobs:

 _"Look underneath the covers of an overnight success story and you usually see a lot of work, a lot of years."_

I remember reading this on Time or Newsweek, back in 1996 or something. Marc Andreessen was on the cover of the magazine. It was quite an inspiring read.</comment>


The New York Times Surrendered to an Outrage Mob. Journalism Will Suffer for It - <AUTHOR> https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/05/14/bret-stephens-new-york-times-outrage-backlash-256494 <comment><AUTHOR> We can't, and shouldn't, trust media outlets to provide accurate diffs. But for text media it would be easy enough to poll them every X minutes and commit changes to an online git repo, accessible from the origin site as annotations.

It could be organized like a decentralized Wayback Machine, with volunteers tracking sites like people choose books in Fahrenheit 451. For major sites like NYT there could be multiple trackers, reducing the need for trust.

If that doesn't fit within fair use, maybe it should.

</comment><comment><USER2> First off, the article in question was an editorial, not reporting.

Second, the issue with the Henry Harpending reference isn't that he's a forever morally stained as a person. His career is built on bullshit theories, and he doesn't get to wipe the slate clean with every article he publishes. It's perfectly reasonable to redact a reference to his work if you have reason to believe his conclusions are tainted by ulterior motives.

</comment><comment><USER3> >it's essential that mainstream journalistic institutions reaffirm their bona fides as disinterested purveyors of fact and honest brokers of controversy

This hasn't been true for decades. Almost all modern mainstream journalism is activist journalism. I think it's been normalized to the point that even journalists are unaware of their institutional bias.

</comment><comment><USER4> >not because anything in it had been shown to be factually incorrect but because it had become controversial

But this is the standard by which journalists censor/cancel a lot of things? Why an exception for Ashkenazi Jews?

</comment><comment><USER5> The authors of this piece are afflicted by Gel-Mann amnesia.</comment>


How do I get my username in green on Hacker News? - <AUTHOR> I notice some people's usernames are green in hacker-news. What's the significance of that and how do I do it? <comment><USER2> It marks new accounts (I think created in the last 14 days)

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you! I guess I was already green :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> New users have a green username. This is so you can provide friendly, helpful, notes to those users.

<comment><AUTHOR> great thank you for the information!

</comment></comment><comment> Pick-A-Hill2019 I was about to add a snarky "Easy answer: Read the HN F.A.Q. level comment but after a bit of looking around the answer isn't obvious (yet somehow I sort of knew it through being a HN user) and using the Search box didn't return anything useful so instead of snark I used a bit of google-fu & here's your answer. HTH.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2456602](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2456602)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3848762](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3848762)

TLDR; Green Accounts are for users who are under 5 days old. You can see all their submissions at - [http://news.ycombinator.com/noobstories](http://news.ycombinator.com/noobstories)

[Edit to add, Or perhaps it is 14 days as per [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3848820](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3848820)]

Double Edit: Confirmed, 14 days (not 5). See [https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news- undocumented](https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented) for a full list

<comment><AUTHOR> wow, you are very thorough and I would have gladly accepted the snark :) This was a case of efficiency on my part,i.e. 30second hacker-news comment vs 5-10 minutes searching (my wife might not call it efficiency). Thank you for the response!</comment></comment>


Co-Collaboration Startups - <AUTHOR> Any individual working on social co-collaboration software, would like to start a conversation around the subject. <comment><USER2> I'm in. I'm currently teaching an undergraduate course in collaboration software, and I'd be interested to hear what others are doing, or what ideas they have.

</comment><comment><USER3> what would use cases for this be?</comment>


Consider the e-bike: Can 200 million Chinese be wrong? - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/137518/consumers-the-world-over-love-electric-bikes-so-why-do-us-lawmakers-hate-them/

<comment><USER2> E-bikes are great.

One of the reasons they have taken off is the low price and cheap running cost.

This article says they can be bought for $1000. The price in China is more like $300-$400.

Most apartment building will charge 1 yuan a day to park/charge your bike. No tax/license/Insurance

</comment><comment><USER3> "Strangely, most US politicians are doing little to encourage their use, and some are actively discouraging it."

Because they are friends with people in the oil industry?</comment>


The Remote Work Power Shift - <AUTHOR> https://blog.oysterhr.com/2020/05/08/the-remote-work-power-shift/ <comment><AUTHOR> We'll have to hope and wait and see. Bosses that want to tell you what to do will be replaced by better bosses that tell what results you should deliver. I am encouraged by sharings such as this: [https://github.blog/2020-05-06-octoverse-spotlight-an- analys...](https://github.blog/2020-05-06-octoverse-spotlight-an-analysis-of- developer-productivity-work-cadence-and-collaboration-in-the-early-days-of- covid-19/)

I think this "disruption" has now lasted long enough for a lot of newbie remote workers to have gotten past the initial anxiety-ridden "productivity signaling" phase, and are now hitting new strides.

</comment><comment><USER2> It won't catch on; managers will no longer be able to walk over to an employee, rattle off a stream of vague instructions, then later claim that wasn't what they asked you to do.

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://giphy.com/gifs/boss-nightmare- KDvEfaVlqOEvK](https://giphy.com/gifs/boss-nightmare-KDvEfaVlqOEvK)</comment></comment>


For Hackers Who Don't Sleep - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/health/01mind.html?_r=2&ref=science <comment><USER2> While its no more than an anecdote, I've found this to be true. I only seem to have trouble sleeping when I'm working on a project that keeps me thinking all day long. When I am, I sleep light, waking often, and frequently only sleep 5-6 hours and wake rested. On the other hand, after finishing the project, or in a lull when I'm waiting on something (parts to arrive, someone else to get back to me or the like), I tend to sleep deeply and need upwards of 10 hours a night.

On the other hand, I will once in a while get an opposite period, I'll be working on a project and not be able to get by without at least 10 hours of sleep, or I won't have anything to do and not be able to sleep more than 4 hours at a time.

Sleep just generally seems to not be worth losing sleep over...

</comment><comment><USER3> >Why should lions get 15 hours a night and giraffes just 5 — >when it is the giraffes who will be running for their lives >come hunting time?

Lions also have to run for their lives come hunting time.

<comment><USER4> When you're running for your dinner, you get several tries.

When you're running for your life, you win or die.

<comment><USER3> You need to look at it from the genetic point of view, not the individual organism point of view.

Catching prey / avoiding being caught, is a matter of life and death for the gene pools on both sides.

Hence the "crazy" arms races amongst prey & hunter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Most of this article pretty much flies in the face of everything that I've read on the physiologically restorative powers of sleep, including things like links between insomnia and alzheimer's.

As a "hacker" that hasn't slept well or regularly for about 15 years now, I'd dearly love to be able to fix my sleep lack-of-patterns. Sleep has become one of those imaginary, wistful things that sounds wonderful but is out-of-reach.

<comment><USER6> This is an honest question: how much exercise do you get? More general question: Any insomniacs out there that also happen to get cardio (running, yoga, whatever) at least 3 times a week for at least 30 minutes each time?

<comment><USER7> Yes, 3km swim sets 4 or 5 times a week. Doesn't seem to help mesleep at all. It does make me knackered, but sleep is still elusive!

<comment><USER8> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_syndrome>

Maybe it's this? It's very common among hackers, and easy to confuse with insomnia. Well, it's effectively the same if you have to wake up early.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The research described is about the adaptive benefits of sleep to _species_ as a function of their ecological environment. This has no implications for the differences between individuals, even though the article desperately tries to make it seem that way.

If you're suffering from insomnia, get help. Don't be a smart-ass and fool yourself into thinking you're supremely adapted to your environment.

<comment><USER10> I wouldn't say I _suffer_ from insomnia...

<comment><USER11> Right with you there. However, I _do_ suffer from the people around me bitching about my sleep problems because they see me up at 7 AM after a long night of coding. If one more "helpful" printout with an "FYI" scribble on it mysteriously appears on my desk explaining how to fix a chronic sleep problem I swear I'm going to scream...

But "insomnia" probably isn't the right word for me. I get my eight hours like clockwork, I just take it whenever it suits me. A lot of people think that's a problem, but if it is, it's certainly not mine. I don't have a 9 to 5 for a reason (many, in fact), and I'm going to enjoy the benefits of that as long as I can.

There's just something so productive about that midnight to sunrise stretch that's impossible to replicate during the day...

<comment><USER12> please, would you do me the favor of catching these printout-droppers and whacking them over the head for me?

if my school and work didn't interfere, i'd try the 28-hour day... <http://xkcd.com/320/>

also: <http://xkcd.com/571/>

<comment><USER13> I've had better results with a siesta schedule -- 6 hours asleep at night, half-hour nap during the day, awake for both night life and morning obligations and nobody thinks you're crazy (as they would with the Everyman schedule).

The Wikipedia page on Sleep actually covers the current theories pretty well, including this article's hypothesis and a rebuttal to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For non-subscribers:

[http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/0...](http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/health/01mind.html?_r=2&ref=science)

<comment><USER15> As an aside, it bemuses me how someone does this for every NYT article posted here, when a repeated theme on HN is the death of old media.

Like the NYTs content, why not register? They need all the help they can get.

<comment><USER16> I registered years ago, I can't even remember how long ago (5 years+ I'd guess, maybe even 10). I have not gotten a single email from them.

I don't understand why they want the registration, but at the same time it's not problem to do it.

<comment><USER17> I am speculating here, but I suspect it gives them a metric that is in some ways more reliable than just measuring unique IP addresses.

Most likely it is that metric they really want, but if you want to be cynical, they could be selling those addresses without ever sending a single message themselves.

<comment><USER16> It's a unique email address that no one else has. It has never received email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My take-away from this: We don't know anything, for sure, about sleep yet so do what comes naturally.

</comment><comment><USER19> _Jerome Siegel, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles, argues that sleep evolved to optimize animals' use of time, keeping them safe and hidden when the hunting, fishing or scavenging was scarce and perhaps risky._

IIRC a character from "Beggars in Spain" (a Nancy Kress novella that she later expanded into a trilogy) makes a similar argument for why her clever genetic hack for creating children who never need to sleep will have no negative side effects. It seemed like an audacious handwave when I read it; I had no idea it had the backing of a Real Scientist.

</comment><comment><USER20> _Why should lions get 15 hours a night and giraffes just 5..._

Lions are carnivores who eat huge amount of raw meat intermittently. They need lots of rest to save energy to digest that meat.

Giraffes are herivores who must continuously eat just to get enough calories. They don't have much time to sleep.

What's so difficult to understand?

<comment><USER18> That one of many possible explanations. Science relies on reductionist proof.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This Dr. Siegel guy makes no sense:

 _"as Dr. Siegel put it, sleepers are less vulnerable to harm than they would be if they were out on the street late at night"_

Circular reasoning. If people didn't need sleep, there'd be just as many people on the street as during the day and it wouldn't be any riskier.

 _"argues that sleep evolved to optimize animals' use of time, keeping them safe and hidden when the hunting, fishing or scavenging was scarce and perhaps risky"_

... so if all the animals are asleep at night, we should be awake then, right? We can just walk up and bop them on the head from behind, Halo-style. Why don't lions hunt at night if it's got anything to do with that? Moreso, why does any creature at the top of its food chain need to sleep?

It's hard to imagine any scenario when asleep humans are more safe at night than awake humans. Even if there were giant nocturnal monsters all over the place, they could just hide .. in the same place they would be so safe sleeping, say.

Very unconvincing.

<comment><USER22> _Circular reasoning. If people didn't need sleep, there'd be just as many people on the street as during the day and it wouldn't be any riskier._

No, what he is saying is that when you're sleeping in your bed, you are in a situation that are far less risky than being out on the street, driving your car, etc. How many people, statistically, die in their sleep, compared to "out on the streets" (especially when it is dark)?

<comment><USER21> That's not how I read it. But if so, if the safety of sleep is indeed an evolutionary pressure, why don't we sleep _more_? And why do we have to close our eyes and lose consciousness to get the benefit of this safety?

<comment><USER23> Well, try an experiment. Find a time of day when you are alert and well- rested, and lay still in your bed with no external entertainment for eight hours

I'm not saying the idea is correct, but your argument is sorely lacking in plausibility - creatures with complex nervous systems get bored staying still unless they lose consciousness (and actually, we spend a lot of sleep with our brains still active in dream-world). If evolution "wanted" to come up with a way to keep animals out of trouble for the part of the day they'd be vulnerable, sleep might be a reasonable and generic way of doing so

<comment><USER21> It wouldn't be lying in bed motionless. It would be sitting in the cave talking quietly instead of sleeping. Or whatever.

I don't think that being asleep is safer than being awake, even in the exact same place. Why do you think someone always stays awake to guard the camp?

Oh well, not like I know what the hell I'm talking about. I just thought Siegel's explanations were too cute by half. Of course we evolved to sleep, there's nothing about us that _didn't_ evolve. But the idea that the state of being asleep makes us safer from predators, and that's the reason for the selection? Doesn't pass the smell test IMO. Could be wrong. Been wrong before.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple's Piggybank Earns Less Than Savings Accounts - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-11-02/apple-s-piggybank-earns-less-than-savings-accounts.html <comment><USER2> Clearly Apple has no idea what they are doing and should take their investment/M&A advice from the peanut gallery.

<comment><USER3> It was actually a good article, despite the flamebait title and first two or three paragraphs. It covered the reasons investors want Apple to seek higher returns on their cash horde, along with the (good imho) reasons Apple has for being risk-averse with it. Worth a full read.

<comment><USER2> I don't see anything wrong with Apple maintaining this much cash, it has serious strategic (albeit unquantifiable) value. Who could outbid them if they saw a serious opportunity?

One of the best ways to maintain a strong lead is to have the cash necessary to dispose of the competition at will.

What's the alternative, bankrolling dipshit* startups as an expensive way of handling recruiting ala Google?

*I jest, don't freak out and get into yet another argument with me, I beg you.

<comment><USER3> Oh I 100% agree with you. I think the idea in the financial press/industry that a cash stash like this must _always_ be put to work earning some measurable ROI is short-sighted, fallacious, herdish-thinking, and completely blind to the fact that by not risking it, Apple is making an unmeasurable but valuable return.

It is insurance, a hedge against uncertainty and the worst case scenario, a psychological edge where they never have to worry about losing the company and can focus their attention and energy elsewhere (invaluable imho).

With Foreclosuregate clearly demonstrating that the US banking system is still in tatters even after trillions in Govt. stimulus and Fed backstops, and QE2 and international currency wars coming up, I could go on and on about the invaluable but unmeasurable ROI of conservative management of that stash in volatile times. In a nutshell, not losing money is often a better strategy than chasing returns. It may not be 'actionable', but it is wise.

I just meant by my comment to point out that the article doesn't argue for one position or the other, but seems to fairly cover the basic arguments of both. Judging by the title, I thought it was going to make a case for Apple seeking higher risk/return, but it didn't.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What we wish we'd known before building the Prismatic Android app - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nstevens/androidguide/wiki <comment><USER2> I primarily program Android and have talked to many other Android programmers.

The primary blunder companies make on doing an Android app is they pretend they're making an iOS app. This is very widespread.

The company has a database. They have a website. They have an iOS app which connects to a web API connected to that database. They have a designer who makes his 2 (or 3?) designs for each iOS form factor.

Then they decide to make an Android app. The web API is usually OK. But it becomes decided that the company will ignore that Android's come in tablets, very small phones with low resolution, phones with very high resolution, "phablets" etc. It becomes decided that the goal will be to make a pixel perfect design (just like for the iPhone!) for the Android phone the designer has, and perhaps the other one the boss has, and then to just pretend that the other 99% of the Android market does not exist.

There is more Android work then experienced Android programmers, so some inexperienced kid right out of college is the programmer on the project, who is easily intimidated by the designer. They proceed this way until weeks and months go by and the CEO realizes the app looks like junk on tablets and most phones, and then blames the programmer for this situation.

Anyone thinking of stepping into a role as an Android programmer should get everyone on the same page about the UI goals before he agrees to work on the project. Especially between you and the designer and whoever your common management is, perhaps all the way to the top. Because the easy way is for the designer to do what he did for iPhone - 2 designs for the 2 phones he has access to, which are pixel perfect (which is completely pointless if it looks like crap on 99% of phones).

This situation arises again and again and again.

If there's any secondary thing, I guess it would be how far back you want to support Android in terms of versions. You really don't want to support something before v3.0 if you can avoid it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Completely agree. Some of the unhappiest engineers & designers I know are on teams trying to copy the company's iOS app on Android.

We were admittedly in the position you describe: a company of majoritively iPhone users who shipped the web & iOS apps, cleaned up the API and were starting on Android.

I don't think there's a perfect solution but we found digging into some of the guides & sample apps listed here to be particularly useful: [https://github.com/nstevens/androidguide/wiki/General- Androi...](https://github.com/nstevens/androidguide/wiki/General-Android- templates-&-education#general-education-and-other-guides)

We also ordered a range of devices and hooked them up to our Play Store alpha channel so every build had to go through the 3" phone and 10" tablet test.

Finally, it helped to have a couple hard core Android users on the team who could explain why simple features like the 'back' button are truly game changers. There's a good post on some of these differences here: [http://paulstamatiou.com/android-is- better/](http://paulstamatiou.com/android-is-better/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> As someone who is rapidly becoming an old-timer, I have to say I miss the old days of Make. It was everywhere and had weird quirks. But you didn't need to spend too much thought on it. These days, I see projects using Gradle, Maven, Ant, Ivy, ... and it makes me feel like yet another tool I have to to learn in order to use X. As a technophile, I'm not against the new new thing. Newness in language is fantastic .. lets us express ideas or concepts that were previously hard to do. The explosion in tools that do somewhat similar things makes me feel like we're doing the wrong thing as a community. I have an equal disdain for devops solutions like Chef, Puppet, CFEngine, Ansible, whatever. Is software not mature enough to just standardize on a few and get on with it? Surely there is not much in it for the winners (maybe I am deluded about this). Anyways, rant over.

P.S. I was being facetious about missing Make. Point stands.

<comment><USER4> It might be accurate to say that we're doing the wrong things but iterating fast. That's why we have this tumult of tools. Software is definitely not mature enough to just standardise on a few of them.

I feel confident in saying that because the thought of permanently standardising on any existing build or configuration management tool fills me with horror. In the JVM world, ant is inadequate, Maven is diabolical, Gradle is a huge step forward but has many warts and one or two fundamental mistakes, and sbt is just vile. Gradle is good enough to be getting on with, but i'm looking forward to the next step.

Provided, that is, that the next step is taken after learning from previous steps. Sometimes that happens - Ansible and Salt are clearly attemps to improve on the overcomplexity of Puppet and Chef. Sometimes it doesn't - i'm not sure that Gulp or Leiningen do anything to help.

<comment><USER5> > Gradle is good enough to be getting on with, but i'm looking forward to the > next step.

Check out Buck. It's fast, the codebase and general complexity is a tiny fraction compared to Maven or Gradle, and it's more sound in at least one fundamental way. (It uses file hashes instead of modtimes to figure out if a task has to be rerun.)

I agree with the rest of your post. Most build systems suck. Here's an off- hand idea:

All build systems I know work share the same core concept, a directed acyclic graph of tasks. Each task has inputs (which might be the output of another task) and if the inputs are changed then the task is rerun. That same idea also covers a lot of systems for data processing.

Why can't we have a simple, minimal tool for doing _only that_? Then, we could plug in different task definitions for different uses (eg building a Go project, a Java project, or running a data pipeline).

This seems preferable to a bunch of different application-specific build systems that each roll their own DAG, and their own DSL for defining tasks.

<comment><USER6> We do have such a tool. It's called make.

<comment><USER7> And the "modern" reimplementation of make is ninja: [http://martine.github.io/ninja/](http://martine.github.io/ninja/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Another useful resource [https://github.com/futurice/android-best- practices](https://github.com/futurice/android-best-practices)

<comment><USER9> best practices sounds a bit pretentious to me, 'how we dev at Futurice' would be less presumptuous. Some of these points are common senses, other are arbitrary library or architecture choices that are not going to fit every project and some just need to be updated ASAP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Regarding the use of Google Play alpha/beta testing, I created a Jenkins plugin to automate app uploads: [https://wiki.jenkins- ci.org/display/JENKINS/Google+Play+Andr...](https://wiki.jenkins- ci.org/display/JENKINS/Google+Play+Android+Publisher+Plugin)

Though personally I use HockeyApp as you can upload iOS/Android apps and they become immediately available to testers — no waiting for several hours for your apps to appear, as occurs with Google Play. HockeyApp doesn't tie you to a particular form of user management either. Hopefully Microsoft doesn't change too much there.

<comment><AUTHOR> great! added a link to the wiki

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Every time I see a post like this I always learn a few new snippets for best practices. There almost seems like a need for a primer site for all sorts of languages and ecosystems.

I'm sure something like this exists right?

</comment><comment><USER12> As an Android developer building and maintaining a larger app, I'm curious: Are there any performance hits or worrying complexity issues caused by including multiple paradigm-shifting libraries like RxAndroid, Dagger, and Butterknife? I've always tried to keep my app slim by keeping out unnecessary libraries (particularly ones that require I follow non-standard platform development), but I'm open to change if it's worth it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd say the two most important libraries for our app have been Retrofit & Picasso. Both are built on RxAndroid so using it as well is a natural extension. I think most people would probably only need RxAndroid or otto but we've enjoyed using both. We mainly use the former for chaining network calls and the latter to maintain a bus of state updates.

Dagger 1.x (which we currently use) certainly helped slim down code size but it's mix of compile time and run time injection made using tools like Proguard a bit messy. We haven't made the jump yet but it seems like Dagger 2.x solves for this: [https://github.com/google/dagger](https://github.com/google/dagger)

Butterknife is just plain useful to avoid a ton of view boilerplate code.

Our app is admittedly not too complicated but so far we haven't seen any performance issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> When I think Prismatic, I think clojure(script). Did they write their app in Clojure?

<comment><USER14> Engineer from Prismatic here. The Android app was written with Java. While we would have loved to build it with Clojure, but support/perf on Android isn't quite there yet (at least for us).

<comment><AUTHOR> Libraries like RxJava definitely made it easier [https://github.com/ReactiveX/RxAndroid](https://github.com/ReactiveX/RxAndroid) [https://github.com/nstevens/androidguide/wiki/Libraries](https://github.com/nstevens/androidguide/wiki/Libraries)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Lack of Google login while supporting Android is kind of glaring, in the app itself. Not everyone has Facebook or Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER16> Anyone know of a similar doc for iOS?

<comment><USER17> This document has some good advice: [https://github.com/futurice/ios-good- practices](https://github.com/futurice/ios-good-practices)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I would ask how they dealt with nested fragments pain

<comment><USER19> Don't nest fragments. Just don't. Fragments are half baked. Nested fragments are half (quarter?) baked.

In most cased the inner fragment could be made into a custom View, and those work a lot better. Most new Android developer do not make enough custom views. They are the fundamental unit of UI re-use. It's relatively simple to extends FrameLayout or RelativeLayout, encapsulate a view normal views, layer your logic on top, and you have a nice usable component.

<comment><USER12> As an experienced Android dev, I cannot agree more. I have never had a particularly fun experience with fragments, although they definitely have their place. Custom views though... I love them more every day.</comment></comment></comment>


Envs.net – a new minimalist, non-commercial shared Unix system - <AUTHOR> https://envs.net/ <comment><AUTHOR> we are linux lovers, sysadmins, programmer and users who like build webpages, write blogs, chat online, play cool console games and so much more.</comment>


One subdomain name can only be used in one droplet, is it true? - <AUTHOR> https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/one-subdomain-name-can-only-be-used-in-one-droplet-is-it-true <comment><USER2> HN is not for getting people to answer your support questions.

If this was a question with interesting answers, it would be a fine submission.

So far it is a very short and vague question with zero answers. What's there to discuss?</comment>


Ask HN: How to validate hardware inside your mac? - <AUTHOR>

How can I ensure that apple shipped me what I paid for in terms of processor, RAM and graphic card if I can't open the iMac or Mac Book? <comment><USER2> Apple Menu->About This Mac->More Info->System Report or /usr/sbin/system_profiler from the Terminal.

<comment><AUTHOR> is this something I can trust?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you don't trust Apple's tools, use a Linux livecd and one of many system analyser packages.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I just think that when money is involved there is a natural conflict of interest.

At least on the Mac Pro you can open the box and peek into the hardware.</comment></comment>


Why Is 10GBaseT Not a Big Deal? - <AUTHOR> http://packetpushers.net/10gbaset-big-deal/ <comment><USER2> When the article says "Coax is cheaper than BaseT because easier silicon and running coax in a rack is simple enough", what is meant under "coax"? Does someone use coaxial cables for 10 gigabit links?</comment>


How to Read Aloud - <AUTHOR> https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n17/irina-dumitrescu/how-to-read-aloud <comment><USER2> If only reading aloud to others couldn't be construed as a breach of modern copyright clauses.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means ... without the prior written permission of the publisher

<comment><USER3> It's unfortunate. I benefit greatly from having audio playing along while I read complex nonfiction.

The only way I know of to get audio recordings of a textbook (other than brain-melting text-to-speech) is to....record it yourself.

Unfortunately, after recording audiobooks of a couple of 900-page textbooks I lost my enthusiasm.

It would be great if there was a community of people doing this, and we could share the burden.

I can't imagine it hurting the publisher's bottom-line, as the audio of a textbook is pretty useless without the diagrams and tables and such, so you need the book anyway.

If textbooks came with decent audio editions, outline notes, and Anki decks linked to page numbers it would be awesome.

I could see it coming from a publisher like NoStarch, but Elsevier, no way that's happening.

It would be a good deal for the publishers too, since students don't seem to really buy/read the books anymore as they've ballooned up to hundreds of dollars and thousands of pages of crap to slog through. I'd love to see a textbook that's actually designed for the 21st century in some way other than adding a DRM-wrapped digital edition with a couple extra videos and figures!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So found out an interesting fact the other day. I was reading the book Moonwalking with Einstein and when reviewing ancient memory practices I found out something that I was never told before.

It turns out that the idea of separating words didn't appear until about the 9th century in Europe, which mean you had to read out loud in order to understand what text was saying. In fact for a long time being able to read silently was considered an almost magical ability. I find it fascinating how many things we just take for granted that really are big breakthroughs.

<comment><USER5> And here we are, hearing about people who can read without saying what they are reading in their minds!

I tied few times to develop this ability and failed each time.

Apparently without this inner narrator voice you can consume books much faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Do modern UK pupil not read aloud?

The tone of the article seems to suggest that reading aloud was somehow a uniquely prevalent act in pre-modern education. It didn't specifically mention whether it is still used in modern education.

But surely --- hopefully --- people still read aloud all the time? At least in Chinese education, students of all ages are expected to read aloud, in both the course of literature and the course of foreign languages.

<comment><USER7> In the US you still do some reading aloud but it's very limited. Certainly it's not common to have a class on rhetoric.

One of my hobbies is quizbowl, a type of trivia competition. Quizbowl questions need to be read aloud with speed and clarity. At higher levels they will have a lot of unfamiliar words. A typical college freshman usually isn't very good at this (I certainly wasn't). After practice they often improve, but some people (including myself) never get great at it--and some never even to an acceptable level.

<comment><USER8> > In the US you still do some reading aloud but it's very limited

It's been 20 years, but I remember just going "Ugh" at how slow some of my classmates would read when reading out loud. Many of them would read slower than half the speed that they would normally talk.

I read much faster than I can talk, and when reading something to someone, I often find myself paraphrasing things on the fly. I don't say the words on the page, but a reinterpretation to something shorter.

<comment><USER9> I do the voices. And also dynamically reduce vocabulary level, or add in exclamations or slang expressions. Reading is fun when you've got an appreciative audience!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Warning: CrashPlan "Unlimited" Not Unlimited - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/Crashplan/comments/ezuztk/warning_unlimited_not_really_unlimited/ <comment> java-man Didn't they also discontinued some products before?

<comment><USER2> The personal version / plans were canceled a few years back. That's when I got off the CrashPlan train.</comment></comment>


Tell HN: CNN Brought back their Lite website - <AUTHOR> http://lite.cnn.com/en <comment><USER2> That's amazing!

Does anyone have a list of websites that provide this kind of view? And is there a browser-extension automatically redirecting to lite-versions?

Browsing with cvim, this is a _blessing_.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> m.cnn.com and lite.cnn.io also work

Edit -> but now it seems to only have audio snippets?</comment>


HP: WebOS phones only, no Win Phone 7 - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20011559-260.html

<comment><USER2> Of all the things that have come out of HP's Palm acquisition so far, this gives me the most confidence. It signals a clean break with the old Palm practice of firing blindly with multiple strategies on multiple platforms; it shows they have focus, and that they're confident in the value of WebOS.

I think Windows Phone 7 has a lot of promise itself, but HP has everything they need here for full vertical integration of their mobile experience. Good to see they don't plan on wasting it.

<comment><USER3> With Windows Phone 7, they would be essentially selling commodity phones, in a similar vein to Android manufacturers. Going with WebOS potentially puts them into the Apple league, where - if they play their cards right - can allow them to charge a premium and have a strong, dedicated following.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had the chance to use a reference WP7 device last week, and walked away almost entirely unimpressed. I had my doubts about its chances of success already; this news doesn't bode well at all for Microsoft.

<comment><USER5> >walked away almost entirely unimpressed

I'd be curious to hear why - most of the feedback has been good so far. I haven't had a chance to play with one myself.

<comment><USER4> The simplest answer is style over substance. The UI _looked_ nice enough, but I wasn't that impressed with the way it actually worked. One of the central UI paradigms seems to be a carousel interface, that loops upon itself. Personally, I feel like a more linear interface that has bounds at each end is easier to navigate.

There's also no clear way to navigate between applications. If I started a song playing in the music player then played with maps, there wasn't any easy way to jump back to the media player app to skip songs, etc. There's basically no paradigm for moving between apps other than dropping all the way back to the home screen and digging for the app you want.

I'm an Android early adopter, so that may color my opinion some. The guy who had the device for me to look at is a hardcore iPhone guy. I think his description is probably best -- "it feels like iPhone 1.5." That may have been passable in 2007, but not now.

I guess the bottom line is I came away feeling like Android, iOS, and even Blackberry's OS were far better, and I'm not a fan of the latter two. There's just absolutely nothing compelling about WP7 that makes me feel like I'd want a handset running it. It's a far better system than WM6, but that's a rather low bar, IMO.

<comment><USER5> >"it feels like iPhone 1.5."

This part actually does match what I've seen. I know it's behind iOS 4. But if I could use iPhone 1.5 but ditch AT&T and use the Zune client instead of iTunes, well, that's actually interesting to me.

That said, my iPhone contract lasts another year, and I am kind of hoping there will be a big 1.1 patch in sight by next summer, with some of the core features that didn't make release.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So who, apart from HTC, will be an MS partner? Samsung made the reference hardware but are heavy on Bada these days. Sharp have history but got burned by Kin? I guess that leaves Asus and maybe LG.

<comment><USER7> The list has: HTC, Dell, Asus, LG and Samsung.

I don't think many were expecting an HP phone (who has an HP phone?). Probably the biggest name not on the list, IMO, is Motorola.

And lets be clear about Samsung -- they have Bada, but they're still big on Android. Ever heard of the Galaxy S phones? And I fully expect they'll be big on WP7 too. If Apple let them do an iOS phone, they'd ship that also.

<comment><USER8> Unless WP7 allows for user interface customization, its licensees will be competing in a fully commoditized market, making phones that cannot differentiate themselves from one another in anything but physical form and price and doomed to low margins.

<comment><USER7> Actually more than physical form, but device characteristics also. For example, if HW companies can do great customized chipsets, ala A4, for WP7 they may be able to get improved battery life.

Also, remember MS specifies minimum HW requirements, but vendors can go above and beyond (except in the case of screen resolution). For example, there's nothing stopping one from adding front-facing cameras, with software supporting it. Or a gyroscope, etc...

One thing we have seen though is that HW manufacturer skins are not a desired feature. The only one that people even moderately like on Android is Sense. And even there people say that straight Froyo is better. And believe that with Gingerbread, this situation is exacerbated.

Plus the custom skins is largely what blocks these phones from being quickly rev'ved to new versions of the OS. Apparently one of the things that MS has worked out with the carriers is that they'll own the update of the OS.

At the end of the day the HW companies really should be competing on the HW. The SW is probably better left to MS and Google.

<comment><USER8> > At the end of the day the HW companies really should be competing on the HW. > The SW is probably better left to MS and Google

We agree on these. I am not sure if our telcos agree with us :-/

Telcos want lock-in and experience control. They want to remove features that they don't like and features that would reduce their revenue. Many phones have crippled Bluetooth or even cable connections so that when you want to move a picture over to your computer you need to send an MMS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder how they will brand this? Use HP or Palm?

Subjectively both brands are a little stale comparing to Android and Apple. Maybe they could work with Nintendo and use WebOS to create a Nintendo branded IP/Phone device.

Id buy that and download many of their games onto such a device. Games are the biggest draw on Apple, a Nintendo phone would probably be huge!

<comment><USER10> The "Palm" brand name still has huge mindshare. I wouldn't say the Palm brand has been so much stagnated in recent years as it has been under-marketed. A large marketing push by HP for new Palm phones, with the well-received WebOS behind it, could be very successful.

<comment><USER9> Yeah Palm to me is not as stale HP. Of course this subjective, but when I think sexy and elegant I do not think HP (Apple and somewhat Andriod).

Overall I still hoping for a Nintendo IP/phone type device.</comment></comment></comment>


A Crash in the Dollar Is Coming - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-08/a-crash-in-the-dollar-is-coming <comment><USER3> Maybe.

The article's whole argument centres on whether the US' place in the world is waining or not. That isn't really the point. The dollar is the world's currency because it's the most _stable_ of a bad bunch of options. For another currency to displace it, that currency would presumably need to be seen as _more_ stable than the dollar at that time (and probably by quite a bit to elicit wide change).

What would replace the dollar? The yuan, euro and pound all have a history of fiddling whenever it suits the government of the day, so why switch from the dollar?

"Already stressed by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. living standards are about to be squeezed as never before."

The US economy is driven by it's companies, who enjoy lucrative tax arrangements and a lot of leeway relative to other jurisdictions. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft are going nowhere, and neither is anyone downstream from them. They aren't going to get a better deal based on tax _or_ red tape anywhere in the world.

<comment><USER4> What fiddling has been done to the euro?

<comment><USER3> Seriously?

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/isabeltogoh/2019/09/12/what- to-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/isabeltogoh/2019/09/12/what-to-expect- from-the-european-central-bank-decision/#2a4fd91b3df9)

[https://www.intereconomics.eu/contents/year/2016/number/4/ar...](https://www.intereconomics.eu/contents/year/2016/number/4/article/quantitative- easing-in-the-eurozone-a-one-year-assessment.html)

[https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/070115/under...](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/070115/understanding- downfall-greeces-economy.asp)

<comment><USER5> The Forbes and Intereconomics articles are both about quantitative easing (QE), which is also performed by the US Federal Reserve.[1][2] In your original post, you had implied that the euro was being manipulated in a way that the US dollar is not, so QE is not enough.

The Investopedia link is about Greece, and it does not even mention QE, let alone any other type of currency manipulation.

1\. [https://www.ft.com/content/11b338a2-6d0c-11ea-89df-41bea0557...](https://www.ft.com/content/11b338a2-6d0c-11ea-89df-41bea055720b)

2\. [https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/03/23/federal-reserve- pl...](https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/03/23/federal-reserve-pledges- unlimited-quantitative-eas.aspx)

<comment><USER3> I don't want to repost a reply from elsewhere in the thread but as it's directly relevant:

Yes, I was referring to QE, which is much more disruptive in the eurozone than in the US, even at lower volumes. In the US, you have a central bank that is tasked with protecting the economy of the country, and the central bank is responsible for the money supply. Same in the UK and almost anywhere else. In Europe, the central bank is tasked with protecting the economies of 19 different countries who each have divergent tax and expenditure strategies (some markedly so), meaning the currency is subject to the fluctuations caused by any number of those states getting into difficulty at any time, which happens frequently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here are the other articles the author has written for Bloomberg: [https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/authors/ANXbd- tdHWs/stephe...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/authors/ANXbd- tdHWs/stephen-s-roach) From this list, you can see a theme in his messaging.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for that link, I found the OP pretty specious and wanted to see what else the author had been up to.

<comment><AUTHOR> He was the chief economist of Morgan Stanley and his speciality is China. Why is he necessarily a paid operative of one thing or another (that's the absolute implication here). People can believe things. And anyway that's the point of argumentation, right, to have a back-and-forth of ideas? You did see he had an argument with facts, that can be proved or disproven, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is, no doubt, a dollar crash coming at some point in the future. That's kind of like saying a recession is coming; always true, but without know when, it's not to useful. I have read articles saying that the dollar's days of special status are ending, for at least 20 years now. Someday it will be true. Don't bet on it being soon.

Given that none of oil, bitcoin, euro, yen, yuan, etc. seem to be skyrocketing in (dollar-denominated) price, it doesn't seem like the current environment is any different in this respect. Gold is the only store of value that seems to be going up in dollar terms in a major way. I don't doubt that gold is a good store of value, but I don't think (for logistical reasons) it will displace the dollar any time soon.

Someday, it will be true. Is this the time? I suppose it could be. But we keep hearing this, every few years for decades now.

</comment><comment><USER9> Not identified in Roach's scenario are the beneficiaries of the coming crash of the dollar. Judging by his regular criticism of U.S. trade and foreign policy in publications such as People's Daily, Global Times, and Beijing Review, that would be China.

<comment><USER10> The US would lose, and so would those who hold dollars or dollar debt. China would also lose.

But that would weaken the dollar's position and thus lead to an increase in the use of other currencies, and in that aspect China and the EU would gain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The US is engaged in a modern version of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) game theory using using national debt backed in USD instead of nuclear weapons. Any strategic move against the dollar by another currency endangers the value of the country's economy because they hold so much US debt. Try to screw with the US and you will be destroyed faster because of the way debt markets work

Can China move their Yuan into a premier position by lowering the dollar? NO WAY. The minute their US denominated debt value reduces, their economy goes bust

In the end, as long as the US has the most distributed debt, the biggest bombs, and the most aircraft carriers, the dollar stands supreme and will even survive the marginalization of petrol.

<comment><USER8> "If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem." \- J. Paul Getty

In this situation, China would be the bank? Not, I should add, a long-term stable situation; sooner or later the bank will have a liquidity problem, and then you have a problem when you need more cash. But it probably does keep the U.S. and China from rushing as headlong into enmity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Overly simplistic view that misses out on a lot of nuances about who in the US benefits and who is harmed by the dollar system. For a much better essay see here: [https://phenomenalworld.org/analysis/the-class-politics- of-t...](https://phenomenalworld.org/analysis/the-class-politics-of-the- dollar-system)

</comment><comment><USER13> As someone who's lived through significant inflation in his lifetime, American's are ill prepared. In my experience, the government will do everything possible to hide the fact that inflation is even happening. "Official measures" of inflation won't begin to capture the problem until the damage is already done. People buying debt at these absurdly low interest rates have, quite frankly, lost their minds.

There's not many options to protect yourself either. Stocks? Maybe, but a lot of companies will go bankrupt. Gold? Maybe - but if you're investing in paper gold it likely won't be there when you need it...if you're attempting to hold physical it can be easily stolen.

Preparing for this the second time in my life, I'm opting for Bitcoin and real estate (with nice fixed-rate mortgage debt to purchase). Fingers crossed...

<comment><USER14> > People buying debt at these absurdly low interest rates have, quite frankly, > lost their minds.

how does this jive with

> I'm opting for...and real estate (with nice fixed-rate mortgage debt to > purchase)

Honestly, I don't have a finical background. But isn't a mortgage just buying debt that is slowly paid off. I don't think real estate is a terrible strategy, but it does not always raise in value. 2008 was a reminder of that for a lot of people.

<comment><USER13> People buying debt are the people buying bonds. Would you lend 100k to someone for 30 years at 3.25%? If you do, I think you're foolish.

However, if you're borrowing 100k from someone at 3.25% for 30 years you'll likely be very happy you did.

<comment><USER14> Thanks for the answer. That appears to be a logical answer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> tuna-piano The expansion of the Fed's balance sheet is just extraordinary... given the news coverage in other areas, this seems like a huge piece missing from public discourse.

[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BOGMBASE](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BOGMBASE)

While the gigantic increases in monetary base in the 2008 crisis didn't cause inflation, I (as a layperson) don't know that is too relevant. In 2008 there was a huge decrease in monetary velocity, meaning the total money supply didn't jolt up.

Today, this seems very different, with a gigantic jolt in the M2 measure of money supply.

[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2)

Quite scary to me to build this crisis before the previous crisis was unwound.

<comment><USER15> Yes the fed's balance sheet has inflated, but it has inflated at the same time as dollars have stopped flowing out of the United States through trade and tourism.

The global economy needs dollars:

\- 84% of all non-domestic debt globally is US Dollar debt. \- Around $100trn of global debts are denominated in US Dollars.

This creates a tremendous demand for dollars, and if they aren't flowing through trade and tourism, dollars will need to be purchased on the spot market or missed debt payments will make these foreign cos go BK.

US Fed's monetary base inflation is different from the ECB and Japanese Fed in that the world will sop up basically all of the money it prints. In order for the US Fed to have the same impact on inflation, they need to print multiples of what the ECB and Japanese Fed print.

I agree in the end the dollar will come, I just think we will have a dollar bull rally before then.

See this thread from Raoul Pal: [https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1264224744271945728.html?...](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1264224744271945728.html?refreshed=yes)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Of course the crash in the dollar is coming, but no one knows when. I read a good book on the subject "Dedollarization" a few months ago which I recommend both as an interesting read and also because the authors' analysis seemed right on.

If I were entering into a betting pool with friends, I would bet on it either happening soon (like this fall) because of our political and covid-19 situation but if we get through the near future without a dollar crash, then I would bet on about 5 years from now.

Interesting times, my friends, interesting times.

<comment><USER17> What do you suspect would replace the US dollar?

<comment><USER16> A basket of currencies, that would also include the dollar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Somewhat true. The dollar's place as the world currency today stems from not just its stability and negligible political volatility but also the key role the US plays in keeping the world trade (most importantly oil) efficient with its gargantuan deployment of armed forces around major trade routes. There has been a significant shift in the latter policies in the last 4 years that is bound to cause some reverberations as we step into the next decade.

</comment><comment><USER19> There is no alternative. Really, all other currencies are just trailing the US dollar as the world leader in printing.

However, yes, the world is sick of using the dollar only. If another viable alternative shows up and erodes only 10-20% of global transactions, the US dollar will decline rapidly.

The only way I can see this happening today is with Euro growing balls to buy oil in euros only or island nations around China using Chinese yuan.

</comment><comment><USER20> Do people actually believe that you can create trillions of new dollars without that having an impact on the value of each dollar?

<comment><USER21> It can if other processes are effectively destroying dollars at a similar rate. Modern economies are credit economies with the majority of money in circulation being multiples of M1. If there's a credit crunch, vast amounts of money can be thrown into the fire very quickly.

The Fed thinks we are having or are about to have a 2008-like deflationary credit crunch. If they're right, then we will not see massive inflation. If they're wrong, we may.

<comment><USER20> In your example, it still devalues the currency. The devaluation is just offset by other factors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> bullshit. is dollar overvalued? purchasing power index of the U.S. is equal to most other developed countries.

[https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/PA.NUS.PPPC.RF/r...](https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/PA.NUS.PPPC.RF/rankings)

<comment><USER13> Right - but this neglects the fact that the US has printed an enormous amount of dollars to finance an incredible amount of spending. So sure - <USER2> purchasing power is on par with other countries, but those other countries haven't had the luxury of printing trillions to finance themselves.

<comment><USER22> They had. Japan printed a lot more in terms of GDP. In fact U.S. debt is pretty much average looking for the developed world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The biggest problem with the dollar is America's ruthless crackdown on dollar transactions, examining everyone and criminalizing those who break the rules.

That isn't bad, the problem is you never know who's going to be in the bad box. Iran, Cuba had agreements with Obama administration and trade was opening up then a few years later you go to jail for making dollar payments with Iran see Huawei exec. Places like Indonesia, Saudi, Turkey, Argentina, Egypt are sometimes friends then suddenly enemies. I dont know why they will continue to want to hold dollars. I think if we see another 10 years of the Euro holding together and/or some good crypto currency dollar will fade.

</comment><comment><USER24> The article focuses on "savings", but much of the impactful forces were already in play. This article was discussed previously and had much more valuable insight: [https://www.lynalden.com/global-dollar-short- squeeze/](https://www.lynalden.com/global-dollar-short-squeeze/)

Nit pick:

> Look no further than the Trump administration. Protectionist trade policies, > withdrawal from the architectural pillars of globalization such as the Paris > Agreement on Climate, Trans-Pacific Partnership, World Health Organization > and traditional Atlantic alliances

TPP was the worst example to throw in there. It was a horrible proposal, that both parties hated, and both presidential candidates said they would withdraw from. Either the author was trying to just make it look worse, or had zero clue about the mulit-year TPP debate.

</comment><comment><USER25> [https://archive.vn/NIw0L](https://archive.vn/NIw0L)

</comment><comment><USER26> One thing this op-ed is not mentioning and that is becoming a stronger motivator for many countries to find an alternative global currency is the abusive use of economic sanctions that started with the Obama administration, and almost spiraled out of control under Trump.

If any bank wants to transact with dollars inside or outside the US, it needs to either open "an account" with the federal reserve, or work with a bank which has one as an intermediary. If a company ignores sanctions put in place by the US against another country, industry, company or people, their bank is liable, and can have its license to transact with dollars suspended, essentially cutting it off from the global economy.

Back when the US believed in multilateralism and concentration with its allies, sanctions were perceived more positively that they are today in the America first and alone era.

</comment><comment><USER27> So where to move the money? EU? China? Australia?

<comment><USER28> I buy toblerone bars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Paywalled, try:

[https://www.yahoo.com/news/crash-dollar- coming-210024166.htm...](https://www.yahoo.com/news/crash-dollar- coming-210024166.html)</comment>


Choosing Between Windows and MacOS Still Matters - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/why-choosing-between-windows-and-macos-still-matters-1832023864 <comment><USER2> Could be re-titled as "Which duopoly eco-system is for you? A pangyric of user lock-in".</comment>


Szabo Discussing Pseudonyms, Digicash on Cypherpunks List in 1993 - <AUTHOR> http://borg.uu3.net/ldetweil/medusa/originals/unpleasant And here he admits to fake name use:<p>"In my limited experience creating Internet pseudonyms, I've been quite
distracted by the continual need to avoid leaving pointers to my True Name lying around -- excess mail to/from my True Name, shared
files, common peculiarities (eg misspellings in written text), traceable
logins, etc.   The penet.fi site explicitly maintains a list of pointers
to the original address.  All kinds of security controls -- crypto, access,
information, inference -- have to be continually on my mind when using
pseudonymous accounts.  The hazards are everywhere.  With our current
tools it's practically impossible to maintain an active pseudonym for a
long period of time against a sufficiently determined opponent, and quite a hassle to maintain even a modicum of decent security.  Pointers to info and/or tools to enable the establishment and maintenance of a
net.nym, beyond the standard cypherpunks PGP/remailer fare with which
I'm now familiar, greatly appreciated.  Especially nice would be a list
of commercial net providers that allow pseudonymous accounts." <comment><AUTHOR> And here he admits to fake name use:

"In my limited experience creating Internet pseudonyms, I've been quite distracted by the continual need to avoid leaving pointers to my True Name lying around -- excess mail to/from my True Name, shared files, common peculiarities (eg misspellings in written text), traceable logins, etc. The penet.fi site explicitly maintains a list of pointers to the original address. All kinds of security controls -- crypto, access, information, inference -- have to be continually on my mind when using pseudonymous accounts. The hazards are everywhere. With our current tools it's practically impossible to maintain an active pseudonym for a long period of time against a sufficiently determined opponent, and quite a hassle to maintain even a modicum of decent security. Pointers to info and/or tools to enable the establishment and maintenance of a net.nym, beyond the standard cypherpunks PGP/remailer fare with which I'm now familiar, greatly appreciated. Especially nice would be a list of commercial net providers that allow pseudonymous accounts.""</comment>


Coca-Cola Named Most Polluting Brand in Plastic Waste Audit - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2019/10/23/coca-cola-plastic-waste-pollution/ <comment><USER2> The "Coca-Cola was found ... to be the most polluting brand" point seems ridiculous.

It's not the only point in the article, but is the only one I'm commenting on here.

It's basically, "the majority of plastic waste comes from the company that sells the majority of the products" (or if they aren't selling the majority of the products, the article doesn't argue they have an outsize contribution), and it is implying that somehow Coca-Cola is where the blame for this pollution lies.

But what evidence are we given that they're worse than other companies, that it's not just because they sell the most popular products? The article doesn't give any (it does not say why they are comparatively worse). And nor does the article argue why the fault should be with the product producers. Are they the ones dumping the used containers in the ocean? What about the government policies regarding recycling or waste management? Or consumer behavior regarding waste?

I'm sure some people are going to see this comment as somehow just trying to defend a big corporation, but that is not my goal at all. I'm interested in the quality of the discussions surrounding these issues, and I'm trying to point out that the article's discussion doesn't meet very high standards.

<comment><USER3> Relative rankings serve more as PR tools for the brands themselves than anything else. Pollution matters in absolute numbers. It's only fair the company that sells the most plastic to also be held accountable for the most plastic waste.

E.g. Coca-Cola could claim to have reduced their use in plastic in 25% and still be the most polluting brand.

<comment><USER2> > It's only fair the company that sells the most plastic to also be held > accountable for the most plastic waste.

What would you suggest they do to reduce the amount of waste?

If the products are sold in plastic bottles, there are severe limits to what the control the company has once the product is in the hands of the consumers.

If we're talking about government regulations, why is that company to be held accountable for those regulations?

<comment><USER3> They can sell in non-plastic packaging. They can invest in research of biodegradable packaging. They can collect the packaging.

There's a lot a company can do.

<comment><USER2> There's some questions you have to ask about potential courses of action. Because what a company can do is restricted to what it is economically viable for them to do. Actions that are not economically viable would put them out of business. They would make their product go up in cost to a large enough degree that people wouldn't purchase their products. And you can't just wave this issue away by pointing out that the company is very wealthy.

So we have to ask whether it is economically viable to, say, collect the packaging. I imagine that country-wide programs to do this would be very expensive.

Of the ones you mention, I imagine that research is the most likely to be viable (keep in mind it's not just the research but also finding a material that is economically viable to produce) But how do you know they aren't already doing that?

<comment><USER4> I do know Coca-Cola was lobbying against mandatory returning of bottles against deposit in my country (Slovakia). It was already implemented in the 90s and no major increase of cost happened, but they didn't like it anyway. It's just usual corporate penny-pinching (and in your case, probably FUD).

In Germany collection of bottles has been implemented all the time and it is definitely not "very expensive". In Slovakia it is planned to start again since next year or so.

<comment><USER2> We were talking about the company selling the products being responsible for collecting the products, not for whether there were voluntary collection schemes.

<comment><USER4> No, about what the company was accountable for.

<comment><USER2> The quote in question that I was responding to was "They [Coca-Cola] can collect the packaging."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Would be great to have a global synchronised boycott of their products to force some action here. Pretty sure spooked shareholders will drive overnight packaging innovation.

<comment><USER6> I think there is a need for some boycott aggregator where reputable organisations would register their boycotts and users would subscribe by organisations and causes, and can check products they are about to buy by scanning barcode...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> not surprising</comment>


Ask HN: Time to start using Python 3.x? - <AUTHOR>

Is is time to start using Python 3.x?
I'll be starting a project for a class next semester, not sure what at this time, but it will be in Python. Is Python 3 now at the stage where one should start using it regularly for projects? <comment><USER2> For class - yeah, definitely use Python 3. There's basically no downside to this - you'll write your project and never touch it again after 4 months, and in the meantime you'll have gained valuable experience for yourself as to whether you should use Python 3 for future projects.

The folks who should pause before using Python 3 are those who have to maintain legacy systems that need to interface with libraries that may or may not support it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Noted. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment> workhere-io Flask supports Python 3, but a lot of its plugins don't, according to [http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/python3/](http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/python3/).

</comment><comment><USER3> I am using Python 3.3 for my startup, and I never have to look back yet. I think you should go for Python 3 for class.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. What's your startup?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If the libraries you need are all ported, absolutely.</comment>


Should Your Employees Take Naps? - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/articles/201108/sleeping-on-the-job-should-your-employees-take-naps.html <comment><USER2> I just started my first FT job as the first IT guy. It's the first 9-5 job for me and honestly I feel very sleepy around 1pm. I I've been going to the washroom to take a quick nap. It's a very specific type of nap where at the end, I feel a moment of my body shaking after which point I'm completely awake. I hold my phone loosely such that it drops soon as I have that moment and boom I'm awake, fresh and back at work.

At some point I'll tell my boss and I'm pretty sure he won't have a problem with it. I just don't want to be the guy who started napping in week 1.

</comment><comment><USER3> We napped at my old DoD contracting gig.

They encouraged us to take a half hour nap if we were feeling sluggish/brain- tired as they knew that half hour of rest would buy a lot more development time than having the developers try to push through the last four or five hours of the day with a groggy brain.

I'm the type that ends up more tired after a nap, so I'd often leave the office if I had a difficult problem and just take a nice half hour walk. I'd usually come back with a fresh mind and a solution to the problem.

<comment><USER4> I'm the same type if I sleep in a bed - but a nap in a slightly uncomfortable position that keeps me from falling into a deep sleep does wonders. This results me in taking naps on the living room floor and feeling great and the girlfriend yelling at me about it, and taking naps in bed with her and waking up really tired and me yelling at her about it :P

<comment><USER3> Your story gave me a good chuckle. My girlfriend and I both have different types of epilepsy so our mornings frequently consist of: "You punched me in the face!" "No! You punched ME in the face!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Am I the only person who thinks this is a stupid question to ask? Either you are talking about a huge corp where you have employees that you can't trust to be honest about the amount of time they dedicate to the company, or a smaller company where if you can't trust your employees, you hired the wrong ones and just need to let them go. No naps in the former case and sleep whenever the hell you feel like it in the latter.

</comment><comment><USER6> For those who feel groggy after a "nap" I think there's a misunderstanding.

In this context taking a nap means: closing your eyes, relaxing your brain/whole body, and trying to empty your mind of all the thoughts that are usually racing around in there.

Most often you don't fall asleep in the first 15/20 minutes; and if you do it won't be a deep sleep that makes you feel groggy.

Practical tip: I use a timer App to make sure I know when to "wake up".

<comment><USER7> I am following this tip [http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2009/08/from-the-tips- box-coffe...](http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2009/08/from-the-tips-box-coffee- spoon-naps-grocery-shopping-with-access/) . There was a discussion about it in HN, could not find it.

<comment><USER8> I wrote an article about it too (which was actually featured on LifeHacker):

<http://danieltenner.com/posts/0017-how-to-nap.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When I sleep a bit during the day I wake up feeling more tired than I was before. If I do sleep my productivity goes way down, I do find I'm much more productive when I go play racketball or something like that for a while. Am I the only one like that?

<comment><USER10> For me, it is 15 minutes or two hours. If I drop in the middle, I might as well be two hours. But 15 minutes can make a HUGE difference.

<comment><USER11> That's the trick. I find having a coffee and then closing my eyes for 15 minutes leaves me more relaxed yet full of so much more energy than before to take me through the rest of the day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I nap at work, on the floor under my desk. We're in CubeLand. I simply told the intern who sat across from me this summer "If you see me on the floor in the early afternoon, I'm not dead."

</comment><comment><USER13> I used to get terribly sleepy in the afternoons; sometimes I'd go out to my car and take a 15 minute nap, even in the brutal Texas summer. Then I started taking vitamin D and went on a paleo diet, and now I almost never get tired in the afternoons. Nada. It's a great relief to not always be fighting to stay awake.

<comment><USER14> Same, gone slowcarb, don't eat bread even on weekends, take a vit supplement, and no longer do I totally crash about 2 or 3, and feel the need for a Mars bar. Now waking a bit earlier and feel alert until the evening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What's odd to me is that while napping will improve my energy level _if I'm tired_ , I'm only inconsistently tired.

I would love to figure out what variables contribute to me becoming tired in the afternoon. I'd rather not get tired at all, then take a 20 minute nap to get refreshed.

<comment><USER16> Lol, not everything in life can be hacked. Many people, including me, believe that humans are naturally bi-phasic sleepers requiring a short nap in the afternoon around 2pm.

To me, this is like asking to figure out the variables of why we need sleep at all so you can just go without sleeping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Encouraged employees and my co-founder to use the futon, and did so myself several times.

There's solid research to show this works - and if you try it, you'll see what a difference it makes. The only reason it's not OK is because of some stupid macho attitude to work and sleep.

</comment><comment><USER18> If I feel myself dipping then I put on earplugs, cover my eyes and take a nap. I awaken in 20 minutes like clockwork and am good the rest of the day.

I usually get sleepy around 1:45. If I don't get a good night's sleep, then I might have two episodes like this. The nap is the cure.

FWIW Winston Churchill was a great proponent of napping: [http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/02/opinion/l-churchill- unders...](http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/02/opinion/l-churchill-understood- afternoon-naps-838589.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm not sure if there's a direct correlation with age or not, but I noticed that when I hit my 30s, I started getting tired around 3pm. It's like clockwork. 3pm rolls around and my eyelids start feeling heavy.

I don't usually take a nap however, but the few times I did, admittedly, I felt reinvigorated.

But before my 30s and this odd 3pm sleep clock, taking a nap didn't reinvigorate me at all. Instead, I would wake up even more tired than before. Go figure.

</comment><comment><USER20> I am so much more refreshed and clear-headed after a 20 minute mid-afternoon nap than after drinking any amount of caffeine.

However nap or no, just having a regular schedule and 8 hours of sleep a night makes either remedy less necessary.

</comment><comment><USER21> Absolutely! Do you have a happy, productive workplace, or are you running a sweatshop? It's all part of the equation. Who naps, how often do they nap, when do they nap, all these things are signals that tell you what's going on in your team. In Europe they have the phrase "soup coma". It's what happens after lunch when the blood sugar level rises and the insulin kicks in and shuts off the brain. Expect it, and work with it, as the company in that article did.

</comment><comment><USER22> I worked as an intern over the summer at a small startup and had an hour long lunch break. While the other interns would eat out and be gone for an entire time, I would eat the lunch I brought and take a 30-40 minute nap each day. I slept at my desk, right in front of my boss.

I was away from work for an hour, like everyone else, only I would be much more productive after the lunch hour. My boss was amused by my behavior.

</comment><comment><USER23> A nap after lunch seems to be common in Chinese companies. In both big consultancies, and small entrepreneurial companies, i have seem people put their head down and take a brief nap at their desk. I have read that some companies have a formal policy encouraging this, but it seems widespread anyway.

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't know about you guys, but I have been napping at work before it was cool!

</comment><comment><USER25> I wish i knew how to take a 30 minute nap! I just can't seem to, so i end up having to power up on caffeine.... not the same

<comment><USER26> Try powering up on caffeine and then immediately taking a nap. The caffeine takes a few minutes to kick in, and when you wake you'll feel the combined effect of a short nap and the caffeine.

I recall reading about a study which showed that this method is quite effective, but I don't have a link handy.

<comment><USER27> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_nap#The_caffeine_nap>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The suit is back!

</comment><comment><USER29> Yes.

</comment><comment><USER30> I don't care if my employees take naps, just get shit done.</comment>