Rotary Cellphone - <AUTHOR> http://justine-haupt.com/rotarycellphone/ <comment><USER2> Looks like this got hugged to death. Archive link: [https://web.archive.org/web/20200211231236/http://justine- ha...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200211231236/http://justine- haupt.com/rotarycellphone/)

</comment><comment><USER3> European Union recommended emergency number is "112". Because you can morse it with the hook or even by short-circuitin the wires. This is also why the pulse-dialing receiver is operational in most EU countries.

<comment><USER4> Why not 111? That would have been even easier to manually-pulse dial.

<comment><USER5> In the good old days, they looked at 111 at an emergency number but it was rejected because it was too easy for the digit 1 to be tapped out by in high winds by wires rubbing together.

That's why the UK went with 999 as something memorable, but slow to dial.

<comment><USER6> AFAIK they changed it to 0118 999 881 999 119 725 3.

Sorry. Someone had to.

<comment><USER7> Try calling that number on your Android phone. It still "works" on my Essential phone with stock Android 10.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The problem with the "retro" telephone ring sound that so many modern phones have built in is that it just doesn't resonate and echo and slowly decay over time like a real phone ring. It would be cool to code up a physical ring simulator that reproduces that sound properly, and responds to the accelerometer, especially when you drop it or hang up on somebody by slamming it down.

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

<comment><USER9> Not being able to slam hang up on someone is a critically missing feature and due to such, I believe the entire smartphone revolution is a failure.

<comment><USER8> The biggest problem with telephones that still persists even today, is that you can only hang up on somebody once. Anybody who can solve that problem is bound to revolutionize communication as we know it.

<comment><USER10> Imagine that there was a phone receiver that delivered a zero to nominally painful electric current based on how abruptly the audio from the other speaker cut off... All sorts of reasons that this isn't doable, but the psychological satisfaction of knowing that spam caller just got zapped...

<comment><USER8> I'd love for Simone Giertz to design a crappy robot Hang Up Machine phone receiver, as effective as her Wake Up Machine alarm clock!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbjV7TUSIHs&t=3m36s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbjV7TUSIHs&t=3m36s)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For those interested, here's a Sparkfun project from 2005 on converting an actual rotary phone into a portable cellular phone:

[https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/51](https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/51)

You used to be able to buy them too: [https://www.sparkfun.com/products/retired/286](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/retired/286)

</comment><comment><USER12> > the battery lasts almost 24 hours

It seems like for hobby projects it's really hard to get good battery run times. I wonder why that is. Is is difficult to get everything into the appropriate sleep modes, or are hobbyist parts just that much more power hungry?

Commercial feature phones have stand by times measured in weeks.

<comment><USER13> Most performance optimizations take more time to implement than the actual goals. Hobby projects focus on fun proof of concepts, performance optimizations are ot very attractive (unless optimization itself is the goal).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> On a slightly more practical note, if you want a rotary VoIP desk phone, there's a few models of Grandstream ATAs that understand pulse dialing. They can be registered to Asterisk as normal SIP clients. $20 for the ATA plus $20 for the phone, plus your time to do the software configuration.

[https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Black-Rotary-Phone- Telephon...](https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Black-Rotary-Phone-Telephone- Western-Electric-500DM- Works/174182582307?hash=item288e174823%3Ag%3AurkAAOSw%7EWpeOxjo%3Asc%3AUSPSPriorityFlatRateBox%2198230%21US%21-1&LH_BIN=1)

<comment><USER15> > On a slightly more practical note

Why "more practical"? How is a desk phone more practical than a portable one?

<comment><USER16> You can't drop it in the toilet.

<comment><USER17> In the days of wired handsets with really long cables, you'd be surprised at what could happen to the handsets, and where people took telephone calls. (-:

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Very cool!

i concur with the whole functional simplicity thing.

But I think the dial is anachronistic, despite what's claimed; A bit like fitting your car with reigns for steering and a whip for acceleration.

The only 'functional' aspect of it is perhaps that it slows down your dialing enough (especially when your finger slips on a number, and you have to start over!), for you to think whether you really need to make that call.

<comment><USER17> The article makes no claim that it is not anachronistic. What it says, rather, is that _that is not the point_.

<comment><USER18> True

And I agree it's fun and a cool project, regardless of utility

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I want all of these features in a phone without the rotary part:

* Real, removable antenna with an SMA connector. Receptions is excellent, and if I really want to I could always attach a directional antenna.

* When I want a phone I don't have to navigate through menus to get to the phone "application". That's bullshit.

* If I want to call my husband, I can do so by pressing a single dedicated physical key which is dediated to him. No menus. The point isn't to use the rotary dial every single time I want to make a call, which would get tiresome for daily use. The people I call most often are stored, and if I have to dial a new number, or do something like set the volume, then I can use the fun and satisfying-to-use rotary dial.

* Nearlt instantaneous, high resolution of signal strength and battery level. No signal metering lag, and my LED bargraph gives 10 increments of resolution instead of just 4.

* The ePaper display is bistatic, meaning it doesn't take any energy to display a fixed message.

* When I want to change something about the phones behavior, I just do it.

* The power switch is an actual slide switch. No holding down a stupid button to make it turn off and not being sure it really is turning off or what.

edit:formatting

</comment><comment><USER20> I use an unmodified rotary phone as my main landline phone. In the UK it would seem that our exchanges still support pulse dialling. The only drawback are menu systems that expect to hear tones, but I get around this with a small app on my mobile phone that just plays DTMF tones. If i want to, i can pick up the receiver and play tones down it to dial a number rather than using the... dial.

<comment><USER17> Hand-held DTMF tone generators, for exactly this purpose, were once fairly widespread. A financial institution once sent one to me for navigating its dial-up automated teller system.

<comment><USER21> And before that less widespread, but in circulation [eg 0] for "free" long distance phone calls.

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

<comment> jagged-chisel You didn't insinuate this, but to be clear, a blue box didn't emit "touch tones."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is great, I especially love the form factor. I did the same a few years ago but kept the original enclosure:

[https://www.stavros.io/posts/irotary- saga/](https://www.stavros.io/posts/irotary-saga/)

It was a very fun project and I learned a lot about electronics doing it!

<comment><USER23> I dunno, I like the iRotary form factor. Both are impractical, and yours leans into the impracticality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> in order to one up this very cool project one would have to: \- create a cellphone in a Telephone magneto style from before there were rotaries \- train a machine learning algorythm to emulate the behavior of a Switchboard operator so you can have the truely "authentic" old school behavior

<comment><USER25> I did something like this as a joke at a company I used to work for. Asterisk, a lot of wacky perl, and CMUSphinx. You'd pick up one of the rotary phones in the office[1] and say "operator", wait for a chirp, then you could either speak the number or say the persons name you wanted to call.

[1]: [https://i.imgur.com/O7GLfsa.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/O7GLfsa.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Brilliant!

And this is a gem if there ever was one: "The point isn't to use the rotary dial every single time I want to make a call, which would get tiresome for daily use."

</comment><comment><USER27> when I started visiting this site almost 8 years ago this was the kind of content I wanted (and expected) to see more of. tbh it's been a little disappointing how silicon valley tech industry everything has been focused.

</comment><comment><USER28> I don't understand how one would dial a 1 on that dial. There doesn't seem to be any room for it to travel.

<comment><USER29> I'm thinking of the same thing, looking at the pictures of old phones, there should be space reserved between the "1" hole and the metal stopper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is seriously cool! The device has an amazing set of features and functionality.

I am a bit surprised about the short battery time. I would expect that, without a display, the battery would last several weeks under normal usage.

<comment><USER30> I don't see it listing the battery capacity anywhere so it might not be very big. Also, proper power saving design is a bit more complicated than you might think, it takes a lot of careful attention to detail to take a mobile device from hours to days of battery life.

<comment><USER17> The headlined article states that it was taken from 2 hours to 1 day already.

<comment><USER30> Yeah, but that's from "first somewhat functional prototype" which probably didn't make any special effort to conserve power, to "rev A" which I'd guess does all the obvious things and is all you're going to get without significant effort. You don't get "several weeks" out of a phone without some wizardry or a humungous battery.

<comment><USER31> On my first Android smartphone, an LG Optimus One P500, I had no trouble to reach 4-5 days and the battery was far from humungous, only 1500 mAh. Most things were not running but I was using it to text quite often during the day. I don't believe there was any wizardry on there.

We see the battery on a picture, if it comes from Adafruit, that seems like the 2500mAh one they sell. There's no reasons that thing can't last at least a week, but I can understands it wasn't the goal at all to make it last, so almost no effort was invested in that.

<comment><USER32> > I don't believe there was any wizardry on there.

A lot of that wizardry is not really user-visible. Ensuring that chips spend more time in sleep mode, coalescing events so that wakeups happen together, ensuring that there are no components passively draining power, etc.

<comment><USER31> For me, wizardry would be to go beyond what any other manufacturer would do. No one is considering Android phones to be optimizing specifically toward battery life and that phone was the cheapest of the cheapest, I paid 50$ for it, without any contract in 2012.

<comment><USER30> World's pretty big. A one-in-a-million engineer is pretty damn special compared to the rest of us, and there's 7000 of them out there. Cheap-per-unit hardware can have paradoxically high development budgets since volume is expected to be so high. We probably all have slightly unrealistic how hard it is to design even a "crap" piece of equipment.

It's like how non-software people can't fathom that it costs $50k to build a relatively simple phone app when MS Office only costs a couple of hundred bucks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Given the choice I'd much prefer a device which texts but doesn't have a "phone" than the reverse. The idea of a phone which doesn't text just sounds frustrating.

</comment><comment><USER34> That is awesome. I remember dialing our beige rotary phone for my friend when he came over after school... Haha he was afraid to dial it for about a year.

(Scared of looking dumb, I guess) But aside from choking on our tears and those shameless bellyaches, we didn't give him any grief. This would have been probably 1994 - 2000... when my folks upgraded to touch tone and answering machine :)

</comment><comment><USER35> This would be a great time to see this obituary of John Karlin, one of the early phone UX pioneers:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/09/business/john-e-karlin- wh...](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/09/business/john-e-karlin-who-led-the- way-to-all-digit-dialing-dies-at-94.html)

</comment><comment><USER36> The link for the design files in the story is broken, but the files are up at this link instead:

[http://justine-haupt.com/rotarycellphone/designfiles/](http://justine- haupt.com/rotarycellphone/designfiles/)

</comment><comment><USER37> Justine and I have a mutual friend. I sent him this link and he talked to her and she said she's been overwhelmed by the attention it's getting. I saw it on the Adafruit blog and I'm wondering if that's what started the avalanche.

It's cool project!

</comment><comment><USER38> Weird second time I've seen this this morning. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22303956](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22303956)

</comment><comment><USER39> What I dont understand is why they just didnt use the trimline case as the case for the thing - or at least the blueprint for the case - this thing looks uncomfortable to hold for any length of time.

<comment><USER40> Maybe "uncomfortable to hold" is part of the point. This is basically an art project, after all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'd personally do it with the whole enclosure and handset intact. You could fit a pretty decent battery in there... to operate the bell.

</comment><comment><USER42> So how long until someone ports Doom to it?

</comment><comment><USER43> She should put this up on a crowdfubd site like crowdsupply to mass manufacture. I for one would buy!

</comment><comment><USER44> Awesome, I will have to share that with my former colleagues from Martelsham.

</comment><comment><USER45> 24hrs battery?!?! For a low tech solution with no draining high res touchscreen and all the other battery hungry features of a modern smartphone this is shockingly poor. I thought it was going to be 2 weeks!

</comment><comment><USER46> I would totally fund this on Kickstarter.

</comment><comment><USER47> how about a phone where you just have a clicker to put in the number in binary?

<comment><USER17> Make it double as the hook, and you have just reinvented hookswitch dialling for the mobile telephone minded. (-:

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> wow so cool :) take my money ! I want one

</comment><comment> daniel-dev i really like this, well done

</comment><comment><USER49> Calling this open source is a bit of a stretch. At the heart of this phone there is a huge proprietary dependency (the Adafruit FONA module).

<comment><USER50> This module is basically just a 3G baseband chip on a board. By your definition, no circuit that contains a chip would be open source.

<comment> _-___________-_ "just a 3G baseband chip" does hide an _enormous_ amount of complexity. The point is just that this design contains both non-open-source hardware and non- open-source software (running on the 3G baseband chip). It's still mighty cool!

<comment><USER49> It's very cool indeed, even if it was all closed source :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Record your screen, share and instantly know when people watch - <AUTHOR> https://viewedit.com/ <comment><USER2> From their terms:

"you retain all of your ownership rights in your content however you hereby grant Vidyard and its affiliates a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty- free, non-exclusive, sublicensable, license to use, reproduce, perform, distribute, and display such content. Furthermore, you grant Vidyard, its affiliates, and sublicensees the right to use your name and/or user name in connection with the content."

<comment><USER3> It sounds like a typical case of contract-lawyer boilerplate stuffing where nobody in charge read it or cared enough to change it.

Similar to what Facebook, Twitter, etc have done in the past.

Still, they need to fix that if their business model really isn't to resell your screen-shared content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hi, I'm Steve, one of the developers on the ViewedIt team. If you have any questions about ViewedIt, we're listening and are happy to answer them. ViewedIt recordings are powered by the chrome screen recording apis - [https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/tabCapture](https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/tabCapture) for browser tab recording, getUserMedia for screen & webcam, and the MediaRecorder api to record the streams.

<comment><USER5> As a person receiving the screen recording, do I have the option to opt-out, and not report my viewing metrics back to the creator?

<comment><USER6> +1. Similarly, as a creator do I have the option of opting out all my viewers of metrics, so that the issue never even comes up for them?

If I'm creating a video, I don't want the people I'm sending it to to feel like I'm getting marketing data from them (assuming I'm not).

<comment><USER5> Yep, I was thinking that it will make the viewers feel like someone is standing over the shoulder watching.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A tip for Windows users who would like something like this for other applications: If you are on Windows 10 you can press Windows+G to open the game-bar in any application. It supports capturing video content.

Edit: This does not bring up a prompt to send the video.

</comment><comment><USER8> Other than the Chrome icon on the "Get It" button, there's no real indication on the page that this is a Chrome only extension.

I like the design though. Looks pretty slick.

What's the target use case?

<comment><USER9> One of the makers here, good question. We think there's a number of use cases - customer support (screen cap what they're doing wrong) and sales (personalized sales pitch) being the most obvious for the time being.

Also, good point on the Chrome Extension messaging, will fix.

<comment><USER10> Could teaching be a market?

<comment><USER9> For sure. I think there's a great opportunity for teaching/training/product walk-throughs.

We have a couple customers using the full-fledged Vidyard platform for running training courses, excited to see how this screen recording tech gets adopted by them!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This sounds nice:

        Is ViewedIt really free?

        Yes! We believe in the power of video creation and storytelling and want to give it to everyone.

But how will you support the project as it grows?

<comment><USER9> The product is built by Vidyard, so we make money on the enterprise platform. The use of ViewedIt will always be free. I talked about this a little more here: [https://medium.com/@devongall/https-medium-com-devongall- the...](https://medium.com/@devongall/https-medium-com-devongall-the-future- of-communication-588495c960ec)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nice tool, thank you! An extension to post on Youtube directly will be great!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thx for the feedback - consider it on the roadmap!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is great! Now I won't have to write paragraphs explaining design decisions to my clients.

That single click to gmail is bae.

</comment><comment><USER14> Looks great!

\- Can I download the video?

\- Can I automatically share it on youtube?

\- Some basic editing functionality would be awesome.

<comment><USER15> Those are features that we may offer at some point.

ViewedIt runs on Vidyard's platform which supports all those features for paying accounts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Looks very promising! Are there limitations on the length of recordings?

<comment><USER9> Yes, length is limited to 1 hour unfortunately. Hoping to extend this in the future, but right now for performance reasons we restrict it a bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Where are the videos stored? What does a user need to view a video?

<comment><USER9> Videos are stored in S3, and then syndicated to our CDNs around the world. The player is HTML5, with a flash fallback, so users shouldn't need anything special to watch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> As a sysadmin/IT person, this looks pretty helpful in making user training pretty easy.

The user tracking would help with ensuring that our userbase actually watched our policy videos too. Love it.

</comment><comment><USER19> Will there be a way to list existing recordings & delete them ?

<comment><USER9> One day soon we hope to add a library - this is where you'd find features like this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I was a beta tester for this and it's pretty great for sharing screen caps of UX issues in our software and showing off new features in Github pull requests.

</comment><comment><USER21> I thought the name was ViewEdit, as for me that seems to be the more likely parse of a product name (verb verb vs. past-verb noun.) Intentional pun?

</comment><comment><USER22> nice work. it solves our sales outreach hacks

<comment><USER9> Cool! We're working on some other sales productivity tools alongside this - would love to hear what you guys have been doing. I'm devon [at] vidyard [dot] com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> hi, this may be exactly what I am looking for if ... I don't want to send the video via email, I want to save it in one of the usual formats to my disc, is this supported? Right now your extension returns "Error 503 Connection timed out", I am sure it will be fine shortly, I just wanted to ask.

<comment><USER9> Hi - sorry to hear you've hit some difficulties! support[at]viewedit[dot]com should definitely be able to help!

At this point, download isn't supported. It's something we may do in the future, but for now the hope is that the built in sharing makes download obsolete. Would love to hear areas where DL is important - feedback[at]viewedit[dot]com

Thanks!

<comment><USER24> > but for now the hope is that the built in sharing makes download obsolete. > Would love to hear areas where DL is important

Just in general: Murphy's law. At the worst possible time, the ISP will be down, the wifi adapter will drop its connection, you'll exceed your data plan, or you'll be at the customer's place who's weird about outside machines on their network.

"Stuff happens". More options are always better, even if you hope you never have to use them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> All I am getting is a "waiting" page.

</comment><comment><USER26> No mention of supported platforms?</comment>


On Getting Old(er) in Tech - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/corgibytes/on-getting-older-in-tech <comment><AUTHOR> Age discrimination is a real thing. In the non-tech world, when you're 35+ AND you're living in Ukraine, you can struggle to find a job. I'm not sure if this applies to the engineering jobs here, because developers are always in demand (We have many big outsourcing companies, which hire like crazy).

But what I see, is that all candidates for our iOS job postings were around 20-27y.o. Honestly, I'm not sure if we would hire older developer to work in our team. Not being mean, just it's difficult to have a huge age difference in the team (we all around 22 -25 y.o., small startup team).

What do you think? Would you hire an "older" developer? Did you personally face such issue?

<comment><USER2> It's not necessarily difficult to have age differences in a team: it depends on the people and the team culture.

Notice that iOS development is basically Cocoa, which is basically OpenStep, which is basically NeXTstep, which existed since 1988. Therefore you may very well find people 50 years old and more, who know very well, NeXTstep, OpenStep, Cocoa and iOS, with 29 years of experience developping applications on this platform!

If I had the opportunity to hire such a developer to work with a team of newbies, I wouldn't hesitate, he would be invaluable (and too bad he'd be so close to retirement!).

On the other hand, it may be hard to find them, because they're probably working on their own apps.

In one of my first jobs when I was twenty, there was an old engineer (70+), from which we learned a lot. If you can organize you team such as people are helpful and teaching one another to improve in capabilities and how-to, then having a diverse team, in formation, experience and age is a great way to get a very good team. (and diversity in sex or race just doesn't matter; what matters is formation and experience, and age is only a strong indicator for different formations and experiences, while sex and race are not).</comment></comment>


Fidget Spinners: Why Being Interesting Can Do More for You Than Being Useful - <AUTHOR> https://betterthansure.com/the-ecommerce-of-fidget-spinners-why-being-interesting-can-do-more-for-your-brand-than-being-f059dbb8c17b <comment><USER2> Seems like lots of people dismiss spinners as a fad or silly. They are a fad. But I celebrate the fact that they are generally simple mechanical objects that feel good in the hand. Not a doll, not a cheap molded plastic toy (ugh, Shopkins), not an electronic lump of stuff that will eventually leech into a landfill. (Yes, I know there are LED spinners, but that has it's own simple coolness.)

I have enjoyed having ball bearings, bearing races, and random bike parts to play with over the years - I don't see this as all that different in concept.

School disruption is another matter. Our kids can only share them at recess.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I figure the faddishness will fade in about 6 months, as it normally does, but I'm planning to get one myself. I keep a piece of bike chain on my keychain, a plain silver ring on one finger, and a bracelet on one wrist all for the purpose of having some metal to play with during slow meetings. A fidget spinner will fit right in. Actually, can I get a recommendation? I want one that's solid machined aluminum, minimal plastic, and on the smaller side (I have little fingers).

<comment> gm-conspiracy Winter will end the fad - mittens, gloves, and cold weather.

<comment><USER4> Not all places have winter with mittens, gloves and cold weather.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Its not really an interesting product. Its a fad. The article really doesn't explain why fads happen.

I think humans are just dumb animals at heart who like shiny things and automatically copy what other humans are doing without even realizing it.

<comment><USER6> Our ability to copy others is a sign of intelligence, not stupidity.

<comment><USER7> copying others is a sign of intelligence, being unwilling to choose something of value to copy is a sign of a lesser intelligence

<comment><USER8> IMHO it is more about values, and not so much about intelligence.

<comment><USER9> While somewhat unique, the two are not seperable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a great article about fidget spinners:

[https://geeksdistrict.com/inside-the-fidget-spinner-gold- rus...](https://geeksdistrict.com/inside-the-fidget-spinner-gold-rush/)

"Over the last month or so, the spinning toys have gone from an elementary- school fad to a nationwide obsession. Unlike many other toy crazes, fidget spinners offer a wild-wild west for global capitalists looking to cash in on the craze. For one, there are no patents or trademarks to worry about infringing, so any factory can spew them out by the thousands. They're cheap to make and buy, so there's little risk in investing in, say, 500 or 1,000 of them. And unlike hoverboards, the craze that Chinese factories were cranking out last year, they aren't going to explode or catch fire.

"I'm selling a couple thousand a week just walking around and asking stores if they them""

<comment><USER11> This looks like a product where some investor will end up with a few dozen railway cars full of unsaleable fidget spinners when the excitement dies down.

Some VCs I know had a similar problem with garden gnomes a few years back. They used a few for office decorations and probably buried the rest.

<comment><USER12> But unlike other fads the bearings have some minimal value, and fidget spinners are easy to breakdown into a pile of plastic and a pile of bearings.

<comment> gm-conspiracy This is what I am waiting for - an abundant, inexpensive supply of bearings for projects.

<comment><USER13> They're £3 (GBP) on eBay for a set of 4 scooter bearings. Which suggests they're pennies on AliBaba, perhaps cheaper without a (fake?) ABEC rating.

<comment> gm-conspiracy I don't want to wait 4 weeks to receive them, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm halfway through the article and still have no idea what a fidget spinner is.

<comment><USER15> It's another silly fad toy object that you spin in your hand. A very successfully marketed one, that is.

<comment><USER16> Marketed by who though? Like the article says, there is no main company or companies behind this. Just lots of random products cheap from China being resold.

<comment><USER17> I wouldn't be surprised if some smart folks in China launched a covert social media campaign to sell this stuff. You don't need much (aside from money and some dedication) to create a fad these days, as long as it's something simple and doesn't require extensive concentration to grasp.

<comment><USER18> They have been popular with folks that owned 3D printer for a while. It could be something simple like a critical mass of 3D printers being reached. My wife was printing these for fun a few months before it all exploded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's definitely a fad, they rose along with the 'fidget cube' from the EDC (every day carry) community. I found these over a year ago on Thingiverse. Since then I've made ~$400 selling 3D printed frames to the local skate shop (because they have the bearings).

Once the kids heard about it, the spinners flew off the shelves. They were also popular with people who have ADHD and those in rehab, giving them something to do with their hands.

When my printer broke a month ago they didn't wait for me to fix it and bought their own. They now have an order of over 200 units and nobody that knows CAD design... guess who they called for help.

</comment><comment><USER20> My brother in law bought one the moment he saw one. Returned it for a different color. Now he has 9. It's been 4 days. These things are definitely a phenomenon and the eCommerce world is going crazy.

<comment><USER21> My 45-year-old brother-in-law literally just showed up with a bag of these 5 minutes ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've been in the "fidget" and specifically "spinner" community for a long time, well over a year at this point.

It's funny, but all these articles and all these posts are completely missing the story of the _actual_ rise of the spinners. That's too bad - it's a good story.

These spinners first started getting popular online in a community driven mostly through Facebook/Instagram, and where adults collected metal spinners that cost in the $50-$200. This had been going on for about a year and a half, all started by a single toy from a single maker that was endlessly expanded on (or "copied", possibly).

The plastic spinners that all the kids are buying are one offshoot (obviously the largest) of this community.

(This is hinted at in the Nerdwriter video).

All in all, it was an amazing experience to watch this group grow into this global craze.

<comment><USER23> interesting! Could you expand on what this original spinner was, and what led to it drawing a community of its own? Especially given that it sounds pretty expensive.

<comment><USER12> This is the actual original: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14271914](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14271914)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Anybody tried a fidget spinner? My wife has adhd and likes the idea but we haven't ordered one. Are these interesting for 5 minutes and then shelved? or do they have some lasting appeal?

<comment><USER25> My mother in law suggested that we get one to see if our daughter will do that instead of sucking her thumb when tired

Other night she had thumb in her mouth, fidget spinner in the other hand, so I'm chalking that up as a fail

They're pretty cheap ($5 or so), so it's a pretty low cost experiment if your wife is curious

<comment><USER20> Give her 2 to play with. Will turn pro.

<comment><USER26> she's gonna figure out how to use her toes

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> These have started showing up all over our office. Kind of like a stress ball, but louder.

<comment><USER28> They do seem to be showing up. Do you think there's a common advertising source?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I HIGHLY recommend that anybody who has family or friends who are interested in these things (kids i mean) just take a few minutes and build one. They're super cheap, and super easy.

Go to your friendly local makerspace if you don't have the tools to do it yourself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have instructions for this that you've used with success?

<comment><USER30> Step 1: Drill a hole in the centre-of-mass of any object/material.

Step 2: Insert a bearing of the correct size, aiming for an interference-fit. If the hole was too big, apply glue.

<comment><USER6> Step 1: Build a fidget spinner

<comment><USER31> Step 0: create the universe

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Just the thought of playing with one of these makes me feel anxious - they're supposed to _reduce_ anxiety?

<comment><USER33> Works for me. Not enough mass to hurt anything, but enough to play with precession. I like mine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Came here and thought this is more of a discussion about human behavior and self-portrayal:

> Why Being Interesting Can Do More for You Than Being Useful

Because that is what I witness regularly.

<comment><USER35> Have you found any good ways to mentally deal with this arguably sucky part of human nature, assuming you belong to the part of humanity that would rather be useful than interesting? For me it's a daily source of consternation and I would like to develop a more healthy way of dealing with it.

<comment><USER36> No reason you can't be both.

<comment><USER35> In a given person's life, there might be plenty of reasons why they can't be one or the other, but that's just me being a pedant.

However, as I see it you can choose to invest time and resources into being 'useful' or 'interesting', but the one will usually divert said time and resources away from the other. E.g. you can do deep science, and help the scientific progress of humankind, or you can be 'interesting' like Nye or Tyson.

What really gets be is how fame, or 'interestingness' at times cloud our judgment so that the individuals who focus on that path are more recognized (often for much less actual useful work) than the sticklers who are actually doing most of the useful work.

<comment><USER36> You're talking about fame. I wasn't; I took "interesting" to mean "not boring".

<comment><USER35> I think much of the original point still applies: Should I put mental resources into being perceived as 'not boring' or should I disregard all that and focus on doing what I do well? Maybe I catch a lucky break and somehow just have an interesting personality without having to do much, but then again, maybe not.

Recognition of one's work is a lot of the time a function of how 'not boring' you are, as well. Thus, if you do excellent work but don't advertise it, the next promotion will very likely not go to you.

This is, IMO, an inherent weakness in how humans perceive the world and I'm not looking for a fix, just a way to cope with it, since the injustice of it all sometimes really gets me down.

<comment><USER36> What gets you down isn't the injustice of it, if such there be - it isn't fair that some people are better at a given thing than others, but "fair" is something no one ever promised any of us life would be. What gets you down is that you can see how it would be a useful skill to have, but you don't want to invest the effort required to develop it. That's an internal contradiction, and those are uncomfortable to carry around. Either developing the skill, or abandoning the desire to have it, will resolve the contradiction. Just pick one and do it. You'll be fine.

And it's not even as though the skill is all that hard to develop! The first thing to know is that, to a good first approximation and in the general case, nobody in a social setting cares one way or the other about anyone else, so your actual _personality_ doesn't really come into play here. What matters instead is that you be enjoyable to socialize with, and that's not a matter of personality but rather one mainly of wit, good cheer, and the ability to carry your share of a conversation. If you happen to have the kind of personality to which these traits come naturally, great! If you don't, they can be developed through observation, trial, error, and practice.

Worked for me, at any rate, and I've been a strong introvert all my life. Being so, I remain picky about when and how I socialize, because it costs me energy to do so and I don't always enjoy it - but socialization is a necessary aspect of full membership in a social species, and unless you can make a go of ornamental hermitage (good luck!), it's worth developing the skills to make the most of those social occasions in which you do necessarily participate.

<comment><USER35> I appreciate you taking the time to write this, and for bringing to my attention the concept of an ornamental hermit - that's today's 'huh' moment!

Just for the record, it sounds like I am in quite the same situation as yourself (introvert but with acquired social skills) so it's not all that bad, and part of my lament is actually for those who have less of a disposition for this than myself.

But from time to time there will be people who have more developed social skills but less developed 'deep knowledge' about what they're doing than myself, and seeing that the world in general recognizes them more than me (or people even more able than me) _for doing things that I do better_ smarts. (Especially when they're really dickheads in disguise ;) )

A 'solution' would be to go even more all in to be even better socially, but, like you, it costs me energy to do so, and it's hard not to feel like other people for whom this is a natural skill will _always_ have the advantage here. But it's even more - it's a matter of principle. I don't want to prostitute myself to get recognition, to put it bluntly.

And I guess that leads to the conclusion that I should then abandon the desire for recognition, since I'm not willing to accept the alternative. Which I am trying, I guess, but which is quite hard, and which leads me to such questions as the one that started this thread..

Again, thanks for giving your thoughts, it's good to get the truth straight now and then!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Fidget spinners are genuinely useful though---arguably even more useful than the other items on the list, for their ADHD/anxiety-reducing properties plus portability.

The only way you can do noticeably better is direct, hands-free brain stimulation. The fidget cube is also such an object, but it is MUCH more complex and hence vulnerable to be put down due to a competing distraction.

<comment><USER38> Wait, I thought the cube was just a bunch of interesting things to fiddle with, there's no problem solving element to it is there? And when I say interesting, I really just mean different switches with a satisfying tactile response. I fail to see how it's any more complicated to operate...

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> At the risk of sounding like a fiddly-toy-elitist, I have to say that I prefer practice butterfly knives. There's a wide variety of tricks to learn and it takes some hand-eye coordination. Of course, they're also louder, and tend to freak people out until I point out that it's not sharp (and probably a while afterwards too).

<comment> gm-conspiracy Do you have any good links for learning the tricks?

I saw the practice knifes are about $10 on Amazon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> My barber gave me one to play with as I sat down for my haircut the other day. I was eager to try it out, but once I did, I didn't really see the appeal, apart from a cute name. This thing is going to go the way of the hula hoop.

<comment><USER41> > This thing is going to go the way of the hula hoop.

Still being sold in every big-box retailer 60 years after it was invented?

<comment><USER42> Being stocked, maybe. Being sold, I'm not so sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I feel so out of touch.

I'll just sit over here popping my bubble wrap.

</comment><comment><USER44> These things also make great office toys, give aways at conferences and are conversation starters. Plus they can be branded as well. Here is one that I designed to promote the Go programming language: [https://twitter.com/deckarep/status/864658318479851520](https://twitter.com/deckarep/status/864658318479851520)

Original artwork by Renée French

</comment><comment><USER45> At last - an invention that is truly revolutionary.

</comment><comment><USER46> The yoyo and other toys such as that thing made of two balls attached to a string you moved rapidly up-down to let the balls hit each other, predate this by nearly half a century; only difference is that nobody then was talking about ADHD, and this one requires no ability to operate.

<comment><USER13> Clackers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I feel like there's a very simple explanation the article either ignores or doesn't see: Kids were allowed to bring them to school for a while (till they became a distraction)...that's really all you need for a neat toy to become a sensation.

</comment><comment><USER48> I knocked out one if the bearings from one if the edges, so its off-balance. I actually like it better. i can speed or slow the spin with very subtle hand movements. I can operate it single handed. Its basicly a million times better at being a fidget toy, for me.

</comment><comment><USER49> Submarine marketing has gone meta

</comment><comment><USER50> I ordered one yesterday to give it a try. If someone cares, I can report back later.

<comment><USER51> There is nothing to it really. My sons have several. They are kind of fun but kind of limited in their fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I bought a 3-pack on amazon recently after visiting family over Mother's Day weekend seeing all my little cousins and niece/nephews with one.

I definitely see the appeal after toying around with one.

</comment><comment><USER53> Who's the person who invented the fidget spinner? I hope he/she made some money on this at least.

<comment><USER54> funny you would say that... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSXxAlcbMK4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSXxAlcbMK4)

<comment><USER53> That's gut wrenching. I'm going to send her $10.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> How long until someone sharpens or put spikes on theirs, turning it into a shuriken or similar thing?

</comment><comment><USER56> I'll stick to playing with my pen.

<comment><USER57> Careful, Misophonia is a thing and you might annoy some people. Although the spinner probably wouldn't be much better.

<comment><USER56> Hmm, I guess I'll have to continue using my good judgement and good manners then, avoiding excessively noisy and distractive things.

But frankly, if one is so maladapted that a reasonable amount of pen-spinning makes them unable to work/live/whatever, then we can hardly expect the entire world to conform to their needs. There's a point at which we move beyond the realm of installing handicap ramps (reasonable) and onto the realm of policing innocuous behaviors for the benefit of an extreme few (unreasonable).

I'm sorry for people who can't function around spinning pens. I really am, but it's unreasonable for them to expect anything beyond common courtesy. I suggest they buy earplugs if it's that bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I think It would be a hit to make one with a magnetic bearing. Anyone want to go in one that with?

</comment><comment> gm-conspiracy Is this a symptom of children growing up with touchscreens and lack of tactile buttons?

</comment><comment><USER59> Please correct the title. The actual article's title is different!

</comment><comment><USER51> It's all the craze at my sons school.

</comment><comment><USER46> And whoever makes first one with a generator inside and a port to plug a charging cable for cellphones is going to make a load of money. No matter if the fine print will say it would take six weeks of continuous spinning to fully recharge a phone, it will just make it look more useful.

</comment><comment><USER60> Cheap fad. Kids are ingeniously dangerous with their creativity, so, uh, having worked in Risk Management and Insurance a few years, once a few bad headlines come out regarding these things (think injuries, use as projectiles), the liability will justify a crack down. Disappointing it will take some suffering, but if it bleeds, it leads.

Then schools and restaurants and other places will have the justification to ban them from their property in principle. This will take the "show" culture part down a peg, forcing it into off-campus. Eventually it won't be cool anymore, and actually kind of geeky to have one instead of the new cool thing, a [SECRET INVENTION BY 6STRINGMERCENARY] which keeps score of taps as a game to share online.

If you doubt my Cassandra-screed above, just go look into Slap Bracelets circa the 1990s in the US. I'm not the first person to make the connection (way to go TFF OT!) but I find it extremely comparable. Once they became bare metal razors, as the late, great Bill Paxton said, "Game over man, game over!"

For the record, I don't think Fidget Spinners and Yo-Yos belong in the same sentence. I'm proud to be able to do a half-dozen Yo-Yo tricks with my kick- ass green Butterfly. It's what helped me quit smoking Camel Lights about 6 years ago. Yo-Yos are awesome, Fidget Spinners are Pogs on a ball-bearing.</comment>


I see pixies (and the future of social networks) - <AUTHOR> http://elapsedtime.blogspot.com/2008/03/i-see-pixies-and-future-of-social.html <comment><USER2> cool idea, i sure don't want to wear cheap plastic jewelry just to connect with my real/virtual friends</comment>


The Myth of Mobile Computing (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://coding2learn.org/blog/2013/08/30/the-myth-of-mobile-computing/

<comment><USER3> "At the same time, they have no desire to ensure that a two-year old device is as functional as the day you bought it."

Android devices, at least, can be rooted and your two-year old device could still enjoy the latest, vanilla Lollipop. Hmm...

"They've taken the sales of mobile devices and made an assumption - <USER2> wants mobile and people aren't buying PCs."

Yes, I can see a decline in PC sales, but then again saying people aren't buying PC,s IMO, are completely ignorant: \- Photographers/video editors use their Macs to edit photos/videos. \- Gamers play GTA V or Mordor 2 on PC (or console). \- Programmers write mobile apps on PC. \- etc

Mobile devices are getting powerful nowadays, and sure it's like having a small, pocketable laptop. That's why most people (including myself) love it.

On the other hand, I'm still not sure how you'd write apps on it. Smartphones? No. Tablets? Ummm probably.</comment>


Are You a Crackpot Inventor? A simple test to save us all a lot of time. - <AUTHOR> http://robertplattbell.blogspot.com/2007/10/are-you-crackpot-inventor.html

<comment><USER2> I am the conspiracy :)</comment>


What is your least popular but deeply held opinion on personal productivity? - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/andrewchen/status/1074087782736248832 <comment><USER2> About software development, I have a lot of unpopular views about testing.

\- You should try to write as few tests as needed (and focus on getting as much value as possible out of each test case).

\- Only write unit tests for logic that is either: 1. Too complex to reason about or 2. Very old and hasn't changed in a very long time (like 1 year or more) and you want to lock it down.

\- For TDD; integration tests are the best.

Also, I have unpopular views about statically typed languages; I'm not a big fan of them. I spent many years working with statically typed languages in a professional setting (in fact, my first language was statically typed) so I have a deep understanding of the pros and cons of each one so I feel very strongly that dynamically typed is better in terms of productivity (both for initial development and also refactoring).

Basically I'm against the corporate approach of software development. I'm particularly against all software development approaches which aim to treat engineers as disposable and untrustworthy entities.

It's obvious why executives don't like this type of thinking but it's surprising to me why engineers themselves also often disagree with it.

<comment><USER3> I'm curious to hear how refactoring can be better in a dynamically typed language, especially if you dont have sufficient test coverage.

A statically typed language - even a relatively weakly typed one would seem superior for refactoring.

<comment><USER2> For a lot of projects, a small number of carefully chosen integration test cases can give you a large amount of coverage. Unit tests are often a problem for refactoring because they discourage you from making necessary changes (since updating unit tests is hard work, it incentivizes developers to limit the scope of the refactoring).

The reason why typed languages are slower to refactor is simply because they just take more time to think about. For example, it takes time to discuss and agree on types with your team members; what they should be called and whether or not we should combine some interfaces into a single interface...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mine: getting a good sleep and regular exercise has a greater impact on productivity than your choice of methodology.

<comment><USER5> +1.

A fun mental exercise is to classify sleep as brain training and then compare the results of sleep to a brain training game (or practically any other activity).

<comment><USER6> I classify sleep deprivation as brain damage, that way I use fear of becoming stupider to motivate me to stay healthy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That we (in software development) should worry more about negative productivity than positive productivity. If you're headed in the right direction, doing the right things the right way, you're productive even if you're moving slowly. The world doesn't need more efficient mess makers, but that's exactly what we get when people focus too much on per-hour or per-day pseudo-productivity. Races don't award medals for being the fastest runner in the wrong direction.

</comment><comment><USER8> Being productive doesn't make me happy. Sometimes being happy makes me productive, but certainly not always. I can be very content doing nothing for long time periods of time.

As a result, I generally don't value productivity very highly.

<comment><USER5> I bet a lot of people already know this, but it was a surprise to me this year. The book Flow originated from happiness research. I'd always assumed it was a book about productivity, but it's actually a book about what activities make a person happiness.

That says something important about productivity. You'll only be happy with productivity meets up with a level of challenge that puts you in a flow state. Productively doing easy tasks is boring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Going in with the mindset that I will probably fail (badly) the first time I try at something. Most people, including an earlier version of myself, are discouraged by it. I now find comfort in it, and I also find I'm a lot quicker at trying out new things and implementing new routines while succeeding at them than before.

</comment><comment><USER10> Productivity is not about who is working the most. You can't always be productive. Sometimes it's better to take some time off and think about things.

Moving fast is not always the most productive way to do things.

Workplace environment can have a huge negative impact on productivity. Noise and distraction can kill productivity.

</comment><comment><USER11> 98% of meetings are useless for almost everyone in attendance, and the whole meeting could have probably been replaced with an email

<comment><USER12> I'm always surprised to see another person beat this dead horse.

I've never worked in an environment was happy to see highly paid engineers sit idly in a meeting.

No one has ever said "Yes sure we have the time and money to spend to have you be bored instead of productive".

Obviously, YMMV - I simply want to express how I can in no way relate to the "bad guys" (management) in this scenario.

<comment><USER13> Developers can be like small kids. They will complain about meetings or they will complain about not having the big picture, not being consulted, not having a say in whatever, etc. Irrelevant, unfocused or unprepared meetings are bad, but that is a truism.

<comment><USER11> Oh my.

Being a parent of small kids, not once have my kids complained about "not having the big picture" or "having a say in whatever, etc."

I'm struggling to find the useful, productive substance part of your comment.

<comment><USER13> Taking a metaphor literally is not a good counter-argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Being super organized is a bad thing... [It can] make you overly passive on > other peoples' use of your time.

This is why I practice "Inbox who gives a f __k". I scan the subject lines of the messages in my inbox, and only open the ones that I think have relevant information that I can't get some other way. (I currently have greater than 7700 unread emails in a relatively low traffic account.) Any time taken to touch /manage/sort/categorize/unsubscribe is a waste.

<comment><USER6> I recently started practicing "Inbox delete all".

Coupled with "wtf is this, unsubscribe", I have been experiencing steadily increasing levels inner peace.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Procrastination has benefits. I am not sure it's a net gain, but I will tell you it's paid off more then I would be comfortable admitting (over 20+ years).

</comment><comment><USER16> As a manager, the job is to make your employees not happy but productive. Employee happiness is one of many ways you can get to consistent productivity, but it's not the end goal.

I've found too many managers believe as long as their employees are happy then they're doing a good job managing. It is totally possible to have happy unproductive employees, and sometimes the only way to help them improve is to make them unhappy. Set difficult expectations, alert them to their failings, and establish a transparent plan for improvement. If necessary, take away the damn ping pong table.

I want to employees to be happy insofar as it improves their output, retention likelihood, and company morale. If their happiness kills their and others productivity then difficult conversations must be had.

</comment><comment><USER17> One big screen. Proper full-sized good quality keyboard. Fairly chunky wireless mouse.

If you spend most of your time working at a desk, why are you hobbling yourself with inferior kit which exists to be portable, not productive?

Yes, I'm relatively old... Get off of my lawn!

<comment><USER18> Do you have any chunky mouse suggestions? (wireless or not).

I'm struggling to find a larger size mouse that:

\- doesn't have a million buttons (e.g. gaming)

\- lasts more than a year

<comment><USER19> I find gaming mice seem to be built better than others. Currently using a SteelSeries Sensei Laser RAW which is ambidextrous and has minimal buttons and lighting. It's also on the larger side if that's what you're looking for. Also add. 3M precise mouse pad (I wish their designs weren't so ugly though)

<comment><USER18> That actually looks really good, but I can't seem to find it in stock anywhere.

Do you know if there's a succesor or am I just not looking in the right place?

<comment><USER19> It appears to be in stock on Amazon, and it also recommends a newer version you could look at.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Productivity is a poor metric for actually improving your quality of life, solving hard problems, or doing much of anything other than running in circles at speed.

</comment><comment><USER21> Keep a clean house and your equipment in a good state of repair; your kitchen and bathroom with all of their associated appliances and plumbing are as important as your bedroom and office, and it is worth it to keep a cleaning and maintenance schedule you follow like clockwork.

Get at least 8 hours of sleep, a physical at least once a year and see a dentist at least once a year. Cook your own food, or marry someone who will do it for or with you. If you drink any beverages routinely, invest in the equipment to do it yourself.

I don't care what tools you hack in, you know what you need better than I do, the only thing I will say on this topic is that for any task I use a computer for, I make sure that of my equipment, there is one canonical way to do it. If I want to set a timer, I use Siri. If I want to invoke a podcast, I use Siri. If I want to know the time, I look at my watch on my wrist, not on my phone. If I want to read something, it is either in Instapaper or iBooks, unless it is Wikipedia. Anything overtly mundane, I probably already automated.

It's not what you use, it's how you use it, and I like things to be boring and predictable. I don't ever want to be surprised.

<comment><USER22> Could you expand on the one canonical way to do things: is it about decision fatigue, ir something else?

And, how do things get in instapaper in the first place? That sounds like a system worth trying, but for me the browsing is the hard part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Thow every best software practice out of the window. It is administration growing more administration. Peer programming is just dividing productivity by two.

To be productive: start vi, code, run the code. No source control. No planning. Just do until you reach your objective.

My way is to iterate and improve. I get in one day what a team gets in a month if they are lucky

And when I don't feel like working, I don't. I wait until I feel the need.

<comment><USER24> Do you work primarily alone? How is source control slowing you down? No planning?

I would normally never ask this but since this is such a radical suggestion I'd love to see some of your work. I'm guessing no open source without source control. Would you mind sharing some of your public projects so we can see the kind of results to expect from this mindset?

<comment><USER23> Sure, you can check cryptomarketplot.com - but no open source sorry.

I work in small team because I like productivity.

Why no source control? Same for why not updating the operating system or tweaking the keyboard shortcuts on your editor. Extra things take extra brain power. Remove everything extra to concentrate on the core.

No planning is important to concentrate even more on important features: the right moment dictates what you should do right now.

<comment><USER25> how do you test out changes and revert them easily? (basically how do you backup?

git makes this trivial, and doesn't get in the way of anything

<comment><USER23> The old way: cp -adr program-v3-withnewfeatureX program-v4

Then work on program-v4 with test deploy until you are happy. Then when ready, change your production deploy scripts to use program-v4, and the "emergency- revert" scripts to use program-v3

Editing 2 scripts is not more complicated that running git commands.

That said, I like git. git is nice. But unless you are writing the new linux kernel with tens or hundreds of people you may not need it.

I try to remove everything I do not absolutely need and use the simplest hardware I can get away with. Complexity for complexity sake is not productivity.

<comment><USER26> I've always been disappointed by people that say they work without source control - because it _always_ turns out they do something like this. Always. And this differs from source control in no meaningful fashion.

Once again, my hopes of finding out some interesting new way of working, that I couldn't even imagine: dashed!

<comment><USER23> The ways are not so different. The tools are, a bit.

As you wisely said, this differs from source control in no meaningful fashion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> There are two kinds of work to be productive on: exciting work and busy work.

Exciting productivity occurs when you are doing or learning something new. The excitement motivates you to keep taking another step forward. For this type, I have learned it is best to take baby steps to avoid burnout and to create a steady flow of productive days.

Busy productivity is boring. It is standard routines that you just need to do. For this type, I have found that my mood greatly affects how much I can do. There is no strong motivation other than "it has to be done." That being said, I add additional motivation by keeping in mind that it will make my future self's life easier.

Last thing I want to add is that productivity stems from self love, and the simplest way to love yourself is to take care of yourself: eat well, exercise, and sleep well. Having that basis will motivate you in all other aspects of life.

</comment><comment><USER28> That caffeine is bad for work that requires thought.

</comment><comment><USER29> Productivity is largely dominated by decisions to keep using and deal with a tool which is mediocre for the job or to redesign the tool... and often the best decision is to keep using. I've found management of technical debt to be one of the hardest things. Most people either fall into the camp of continuously reinventing the wheel because it's kinda fun, often easy and satisfying, and they can convince themselves that the time invented will pay off, or they just use bad tools and curse the darkness rather than lighting the candle. Some snap back and forth between these two extremes. Having good judgement about this is a rare and valuable skill.

<comment><USER30> In my very first job, for some reason they paid for my whole team to go a Covey 7-habits training. This was 20 years ago. The only thing I took away from it is the phrase "sharpen the saw". Sometimes you need to stop working and optimize your tools or workflow a little bit. You have to be careful not to let this become a huge time suck, but if you never do it you are paying a massive opportunity cost.

<comment><USER29> I think my point is that knowing when to sharpen the saw, if the saw is sharp enough for the job, and knowing when to stop sharpening and start sawing is the hard thing.

The general problem here is a combination of estimating the time it will take to finish a project, and a problem of knowing what key problems dominate the final product... themselves two of the hardest things to do.

<comment><USER30> I have to confess my decisions here are often driven by frustration that reaches a tipping point. But yes, calculating short and long-term payoffs against the investment is very hard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Mine is getting high and listening to Jazz while I clean the house. (I don't know if it's unpopular or not but I bet if it were more popular there would be less people in a shit mood)

</comment><comment><USER32> For me - no remote work: I would fritter 12 hours being lazy and unproductive.

Instead, I'm at the client's site for 6 hours. I set my monitor so people can see it and then I crank. I go home and turn off the devices and enjoy the time with my family - without worry.

</comment><comment><USER33> It is more productive to hate a task and do it in a rage than to love it.

</comment><comment><USER34> You have to actually use the system for it to work.

Context: I have pomodoro timer, Asian Efficiency, 7 Habits, Personal Productivity self help books galore and still get nothing done.

</comment><comment><USER35> Productivity is the death of personal growth. Talking zero sum game here. More of one means less of the other.

<comment><USER36> Would you differentiate "productivity" from "organization and discipline"? Organization and discipline I think can help personal growth fundamentally.

<comment><USER35> Probably not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> A) You have always done whatever you wanted to do. You get a say in which voice/urge most constitutes 'you'. The more you veto, and the more you can distinguish the urges, the more of a say you get. Everything else is fluff.

B) The productivity industry is a total sham and a net drain on productivity. It's mostly social manipulation. The industry takes attention away from the things productivity is a side effect of, such as level of control, overall health, and level of insight into oneself. This is partially due to -

C) All texts/advice/systems put minor spins on a couple of templates, and most of the good ones steal from Marcus Aurelius. Whichever flavour of system fits the fashion of the day the best becomes 'the best' because reasons.

D) The definition of 'productive' is so absurdly narrow and restricted in the late-capitalist hegemony as to render most of humanity utterly useless. Clearly, they're not [1]. It's more about raising members of a certain class with a certain personality profile [2] up to the status of a golden cow.

[1] for example, parenting is a fairly productive activity.

[2] that is, two things we're lucky to be able to change a lot about.

</comment><comment><USER38> Good god, it's sunday. Can we lay off the 24/7 productivity mantra or propaganda for one day. Monday through saturday isn't enough?

A while ago I tried to count the number of overt "productivity" messaging I came across in a day and I stopped after 17 or so - probably because it wasn't a "productive" use of my time. Who knows how many subconscious or covert productivity messaging I was getting.

<comment><USER39> My best productivity hack so far is to stop reading books and blogs that mention word productivity. I'd rather take a walk or close my eyes for 10 minutes.

<comment><USER38> My personal productivity programming isn't sure that's a good idea.

Your walk seems like suboptimal time allocation and a loss of potential productivity gains. Have you considered the productivity opportunity costs of your decision?

While you are on a walk, have you considered listening to an audio book? Perhaps a self-help audio book on having more productive walks? Why walk when you can walk and listen?

Or think of how many emails you could respond to in your 10 minute walk? Not only is your walk more productive, you will gain more muscle carrying around your smartphone and increase hand eye coordination by typing on a smartphone. A more productive you, is a healthier and happier you.

That is exhausting. People think that dystopia is a future waiting for us. I think it's here.</comment></comment></comment>


Believing that life is fair makes you a terrible person - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/oliver-burkeman-column/2015/feb/03/believing-that-life-is-fair-might-make-you-a-terrible-person <comment><USER2> Clickbait headline for the guy at The Guardian who specializes in little else: Oliver Burkeman. The article actually just says your world view is likely off if you think life is fair.

Another one of his clickbait headlines: "No, I won't watch that cringe- inducing viral video. I'm a better person than you"</comment>


WhatsApp photo drug dealer caught by 'groundbreaking' work - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-43711477 <comment><USER2> >Elliott Morris of Redditch, Worcestershire, was sentenced to eight and a half years for conspiracy to supply cannabis.

Great, just great. Let's jail someone for eight fucking years because they are supplying people with Marijuana. That seams reasonable.

<comment><USER3> According to this article it seems perfectly reasonable:

[http://www.herefordtimes.com/news/regional/16096603.Redditch...](http://www.herefordtimes.com/news/regional/16096603.Redditch_drugs_kingpin_jailed_after_photo_linked_him_to_gang/)

That's a good amount of money and investments for drug-dealing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In the photo, the various pills resemble company logos -- skype, ikea etc. I wonder if that's an attempt to avoid detection when talking about them online, like "I want to go to ikea" being code for whatever the yellow one is.

</comment><comment><USER5> tl;dr: fingerprint identification via photograph: they matched part of the hand appearing in the picture with the hand of the suspect.</comment>


Steve Jobs speaks (On Android, tablets, and the future) - <AUTHOR> http://www.macworld.com/article/154980/2010/10/jobs_transcript.html

<comment><USER2> Here's the engadget link. It contains some audio from the call.

[http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/18/steve-jobs-drops- knowledg...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/18/steve-jobs-drops-knowledge-on- earnings-call-calls-out-google-an/)</comment>


Why Aren't We Eating More Insects? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/t-magazine/eating-bugs-food-restaurant.html <comment><USER2> From the article:

1- the European ice age eliminated almost all of the edible insects in the continent, meaning it's never been a good idea there 2- they live in and on rot and decay, and are otherwise unsanitary

We like meat from animals because it can be butchered without too much contamination. We dislike non-meaty textures- heck, I won't eat chicken feet not only because of the texture, but because what do you think chickens walk around all day in?

Sure, there's limited exceptions- pork cracklins and tripe, though most westerners also refuse to eat those as well.

The comparison to crustaceans is unfair, since most people don't eat the shells of lobsters or crabs, only the fleshy bits. Ultimately, barring some seafood and small game, we're conditioned to not eat the entire animal at once, only the parts that appeal to us. Meat on its own, guts and other soft bits in sausage, bones for broth. Eating insects invariably means that what you eat looks like what it is- an animal.

The article goes on to sing the praises of eating insects- good protein, environmentally friendly, cheap, so on and so forth. That sounds nice, but it doesn't change the appeal of eating an animal whole, or thinking about that same animal living its entire life among a pile of rotten food and poop.

<comment><USER3> It isn't just preference. There are biological reasons why we avoid insects and small invertebrates generally. There are many parasites that use such things as hosts for part of their life cycle. Not eating insects shields us from these diseases.

Take angiostrongylus cantonensis, a tiny worm. It causes eosinophilic meningitis, which is lethal. It is a very rare parasite in the west. Interestingly, when an infection does occur, it is always a male child. Never girls. Never men or woman. Always male kids and the rare teenager. Why? Who else eats slugs?

<comment><USER4> Since we eat animals that we're more biologically similar to than insects, and assuming that parasites prefer to live in roughly similar things, I'm not sure how the parasite risk would be worse by eating insects. If they were raised in captivity, we would have just as much opportunity to pump them full of antibiotics as we do other food animals.

The other thing is that sufficiently heating food will kill any parasite present, along with many other things that would do us harm.

<comment><USER3> Dont assume. It is very normal for a parasite to go through many very different hosts, each covering a different part of a complex lifecycle. Bacteria and viruses are different.

<comment><USER5> Just to add, being a parasite's intermediate host is often a raw deal, because the little critter didn't evolve to give a shit about how quickly and brutally it kills you.

<comment><USER3> Like when they take over hosts, change their behavior, ... essentially operate them as zombies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> y-c-o-m-b A strong imagination does it for me. I used to love eating lamb, but in my teens my father took me to a friends house where I partook in slaughtering a lamb and later eating it. Now I find eating lamb utterly disgusting. If I even smell lamb it reminds me of how the animal wailed around as it was dying and the smell of its intestines and skin as we butchered it.

Same idea with insects - when I picture someone eating insects, I get reminded of the smells, the sounds, and worst of all where they've been. Bees?! Ever seen a portable toilet in the summer when the doors are left cracked open and insects get into? Bees on human feces. No thanks.

<comment><USER6> Props to you for experiencing how your food is made. Some people turn away from meat after that (like you did), some people are fine with it. Regardless of where you land, we shouldn't psychologically shield ourselves from the processes involved in getting food to the table.

It's the one thing that sticks with me from the PETA and PETA-like movements: you should know how your food is created. If it makes you more empathetic, fine, and if it doesn't, also fine. We are omnivores after all.

<comment><USER7> Why is denying ourselves a psychological shield a good idea?

<comment><USER8> Typically because it helps you make decisions you morally disagree with by pretending the bad parts don't exist. You can't decide whether you are morally ok with how a product is produced without seeing how it's produced: this applies to more than just food, e.g. sweatshops

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am not opposed to people eating insects.

However, as I am someone who already does not eat meat, is there a compelling reason for me to start eating insects?

Would adding insects to my diet be, for example, more eco-friendly/sustainable than my plant-based diet?

I don't think I have a diversification need that is not currently satisfied, either nutritionally or for enjoyment of variety.

</comment><comment><USER10> Because we find them disgusting and there are many cheap alternative foods that we don't find disgusting.

Of course it's probably irrational, but that's the way it is.

</comment><comment><USER11> Didn't evolution across the land-bridges groom us to be different at the core in some areas given the amount of time passing? Why do I immediately find certain things super gross? It feels like its within me rather than a learned behavior. Possibly these feelings are from my ancestry passing them on? One of the reasons I say this is because I tried korean "mediche", don't know actual spelling but its very tiny dried fish with their eyes still on. It sounds gross but is very tasty and strangely I was never grossed out by this as they do look like tiny fish. The same goes for sardines. Why fish with eyes on doesn't gross me out but the sight of larvae makes me want to gag?

<comment><USER12> I'll go with "learned behavior", although my argument is 100% anecdotical, my dad grew up in a rural are in a tough period of time when food was not guaranteed, he learned to eat everything from an animal and he learned not to waste anything. Then he moved to the city (before I was born), where food is no longer a privilege, but still after several decades he still enjoys a lot of animal parts that I (a common city boy) wouldn't eat unless my life depended on it.

<comment><USER11> I think there are some things totally like that, but I did notice my young kids seeing a bug and being scared right away. Or funny thing, any cat will do this, put a cucumber next to them without them noticing, and they jump like 3 feet in the air when they see it but its so fast it seems they just react like when you touch a hot metal so its instant. I saw this on Youtube about the cats and tried it with 2 of mine. Its so funny to watch them fly. Anyway, meaning they have an inherent fear of snakes baked into their DNA seems like. We are all mammals and we most likely have some similar things like that.

One thing Elon Musk said that made me rethink some things. In his NeuralLink company, he said they came to the conclusion that our neural cortex is "hosted" by our limbic system in his quest to eventually have our neural cortex host AI itself. What that means is our limbic system is driving the motivation of our neocortex to do complicated things to appease it. So in other words, our underlying needs are still very rudimentary in that sense shared with other mammals and even reptiles despite our neocortex reasoning that we are more than that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Probably because you would need to harvest _immense_ amounts for them to work as a staple food source, and their pretty bland flavor, at least of the various sorts I've tried, is not really something likely to make them a luxury food source, though I'd have said the same thing about caviar.

With modern farming technology the mass cultivation may be possible, but for times past compare this to something like a single decent sized whitetail deer that can provide upwards of 100 pounds of edible meat. One deer = months of food. One insect = minutes/seconds of food.

</comment><comment><USER14> I wonder if an insect based food economy scales. A few years ago, several of my friends were getting into generating biodiesel - they were so excited to be able to go to restarauntd and try to buy up their grease. But it turns out that once a critical mass of consumers (nowhere near the local population) started doing this, it was no longer viable to "make your own" economically. If let's Say a cricket contains 10kC, and you need 200 a day, how do you scale that to city size populations?

I suspect the answer will be mushrooms or yeast, ultimately.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is a cultural/marketing issue, although at this point I'm not sure how separated those are. Also, when I call it an issue, I mean it seriously. The ecological impact of insect production is so much lower than other meats. Non- scientific responses of 'gross/revolting/disgusting' are perfect examples of negative cultural responses to insects as food, rather than scientific ones.

</comment><comment><USER16> At this point (with cricket powders, et al) I think a big reason is because it's so dang expensive.

If crickets are touted as this miracle protein that are easy to farm, low impact on the environment, and are still considered to be undesirable, then _why_ are these companies charging $35/lb for their protein powder when you can get whey or pea powder for $6-8/lb?

</comment><comment><USER17> Because nobody in the west has figured out a good way of preparing them yet.

Lobster (essentially a giant cockroach that lives in the water) was once considered revolting too: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobster#As_food](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobster#As_food)

It's because nobody had figured out how to prepare it yet.

<comment><USER6> I'd be interested to see what a Michelin star chef could do with insects.

<comment><USER18> Noma used ants, [https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and- drink/news...](https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and- drink/news/worlds-best-restaurant-comes-to-town-and-its-serving- ants-7995007.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Mainly because insects are expensive. Sure, they need less food than conventional livestock but they are very labour-intensive.

You typically need thousands of insects to get the same amount of protein as a chicken. You can raise several chickens per square meter but you can't raise the equivalent number of insects in that space which means you either need more real estate (expensive) or typically more labour with insects in many shelves or boxes stacked up. And each of these shelves or boxes requires cleaning, feeding, watering, temperature control...

Without a huge revolution in technology to automate all of these tasks you have to employ a small army of human workers which is only really viable in lower wage countries.

You simply can't produce insects suitable for human consumption at less than $20/kg whereas chickens can sell for just a few dollars per kg. And when the consumer is given the choice between delicious, cheap, tried and tested vs unknown, expensive they will always choose chicken.

<comment><USER20> > And when the consumer is given the choice between delicious, cheap, tried > and tested vs unknown, expensive they will always choose chicken.

Unless they're hipsters. How else does one explain the existence, and outrageous price, of cold brew coffee as compared to its unfailingly disappointing flavour?

<comment><USER21> Has it genuinely not occurred to you that some people might like b different things to you?

<comment><USER20> Has it genuinely not occurred to you that I was being a little tongue in cheek? _And the point stands_ : there will always be people who pay a premium for things that others find unappealing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Because we don't want to. We don't we eat less meat? (not a vegan, just don't particular care for the "tons of meat every day" lifestyle that takes tons of resources).

</comment><comment><USER23> I haven't read the article, but one reason may be the unappetizing portrail. The photographs in this article are bleak and chaotic, in sharp contrast to the colorful and organized way food is depicted nowadays.

Unrelated, I've encountered energy bars with an insect: Standard energy bars, but extra expensive and with minuscule amounts of insect. Selling cheap eco- friendly insects as an expensive "cool" gimmick is a cruel sort of irony.

</comment><comment><USER24> Why not just switch to plant-based sources of protein instead? The idea that we have to eat animals to be healthy isn't supported by modern science.

</comment><comment><USER25> The idea that only in "the West" are insect not consumed is misleading. I've been living in "the East" for a decade now, and had to pull some connections to get crickets in Thailand, or water cockroaches in China. Those are consumed, but not staples (just like French people don't feed on a snails and frog diet).

<comment><USER26> > just like French people don't feed on a snails and frog diet

People might not eat them every day, certainly not at pork and bread levels, but frozen escargot and cuisses de grenouille are easily found in any grocery store in France that's large enough to have a freezer section.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> How to write about eating insects:

Muse about why Europeans don't eat insects. Claim that eating insects is a big thing in Asia, Africa, and various indigenous cultures. Mention seafood. Talk about some new insect farming and processing ventures. Point out the supposed eco-friendly advantage. Point out that they are rich in protein. Point out that they're cheap to raise. Make a quip about how we're already eating insects because tiny minuscule bits end up in processed foods.

</comment><comment><USER28> because the idea is inherently revolting

<comment> jay-anderson There are humans that eat insects. I don't think there's something about eating insects we automatically find unappealing. I believe we've been taught that. Another idea is we don't like seeing the face of what we're eating. Most meat is processed to the point where we can't see where it comes from.

For fun my wife made some cookies including cricket powder. We told people and did not hide that fact from them. Most wanted to try it for the novelty of it and didn't find the idea disgusting.

<comment><USER29> Primate brain has special parts specifically wired to visually process snakes [1]. It is also thought that it has specific parts that process the shape of spider, and maybe other insects [2]. This is one explanation why primates have such a strangely large brain. Processing image requires a lot of computational power, being arboreal, primates need to distinguish snakes and spiders to safely crawl in the forest.

This is not to say, primates wouldn't eat snakes or spiders. I don't know if other primates eat them (they might be?) but humans do eat both [3] [4].

[1] [http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/10/did-snakes-help- build...](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/10/did-snakes-help-build- primate-brain)

[2] [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098221...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982214004539)

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

[4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake#Consumption](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake#Consumption)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Maybe we should first feed insects to the animals/plants we prefer to eat.

</comment><comment><USER31> To avoid a whole new class of zoonotic diseases?

</comment><comment><USER32> This reads like a rhetorical question, but I'll take a swing at it anyhow: because it's gross.

Edit: Sorry entomophages didn't mean to offend.

<comment><USER33> For me insects are a symbol of foul and infestation. Those plates look like they were taken over by what is on them. Can this strong repulsion be a cultural thing, like so many prejudices are?

<comment><USER27> You said it yourself. A SYMBOL of foul and infestation. Where do we get most of our symbols from? Of course it's a cultural thing.</comment></comment></comment>


British student can be extradited to the US for linking - <AUTHOR> http://news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/16148629

<comment><USER2> So basically extradition laws state that if courts of some random country feel that British citizen violated their laws and they claim that this happened on their territory although this citizen never actually was there, he can be expelled from UK to be judged there if British judges believe that he will get fair trial there, whatever the laws there might be?

So Iran could put some "secret" documents up on the web. SEO it, grab credentials of all British citizens accessing the site and demand their extradition?</comment>