MIT Prof Richard S. Lindzen: Global Warming Alarmists Are in Denial - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/search?q=%22public+domain+is+still+uncertain%2C+but+the+emails%2C+whose%22+site%3Awsj.com <comment><USER3> While it's true that there's no consensus on the source of the warming, it is true that the planet is warming.

That's something that tends to get lost in the shuffle, and it's really scary what percentage of the American public believes that the fundamental point is false. It also seems to me that Lindzen is exaggerating the degree of dispute over the future climate trends. I do agree that there's not a lot of evidence we can prevent the climate from warming considerably over the next 50 years or so, but there is a general consensus that the climate will warm considerably over the next 50 years.

It also seems there's a general consensus this is a problem, even if it's purely natural. Lindzen is doing his fellow researchers a disservice by confusing the politics and science of the issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmmm, that's not my impression. The data reevaluation that resulted in 1934 being declared the hottest year in the 20th century, the "hide the decline" games, the fierce debate over the existence of the Medieval Warm Period and its extent (I think the alarmists now admit its existence, but debate its scope, e.g. there's a lack of data in the Southern Hemisphere and the oceans), they all suggest to me that the science here is _not_ settled.

The only way you're going to convince "skeptics" like myself (I only deny that the science is settled) will be to retrieve the original data sets the CRU lost and then do the science again in a totally open manner. Share the data, publish the code and methods, etc.

<comment><USER3> >The data reevaluation that resulted in 1934 being declared the hottest year in the 20th century

This whole argument is getting extraordinarily tired, but 1934 could well be the hottest year on record in the 20th century without invalidating the claim that the climate has warmed on average by several degrees since then. Outlying data points are in every single data set.

>the "hide the decline" games

As I recall there was a single game, in a single email.

>the fierce debate over the existence of the Medieval Warm Period and its extent

Europe? As I understand that's where the data is from. But even so, even if the temperatures have precedents, that doesn't disprove the warming trend - <USER2> just casts some doubt on the alarmism. And that's what I'm trying to get at. Warming is happening. It will continue.

<comment><AUTHOR> The point here is not which year was the hottest but the incorrect research that said a recent one was. An additional point would be the big deal the alarmists made when the first results came out and their silence on the correction.

Your recollection is incorrect, "hide the decline" is found throughout the source code in the CRU archive leak (quoted like that in comments and directly expressed in the code). There's also the green line in that IPCC graph that just ends in the middle of a thicket of intersecting lines. If it had been continued, it would have ... declined. It's a pretty big deal since it throws into doubt the entire tree ring approach (not to mention the explicit or implicit fraud).

Agreed on the "casts some doubt on the alarmism", although I'd say more than "some", since they went to some effort to disappear it in the first place.

Hmmm, maybe I should ask, "Warming tend over what period?"

Since the last Ice Age, obviously. Since the Little Ice Age, certainly. Beyond that? The time series of data really matters in this debate, for if recent increases do not correlate with anthropogenic CO2 increases (e.g. if it got warm in the 20th century before that was big, and now is getting cooler) then it calls the whole alarmism crusade into doubt (at best).

<comment><USER4> Did you actually read what "hide the decline" meant? Go learn about proxies and you'll see that what they mean is that there is a false decline in proxy temperatures that must be corrected for, likely due to increased CO₂ concentrations changing how tree rings are formed. There's no deception here-- they were up front and honest about this problem, and referred to data analysis techniques to correct for a false decline.

<comment><AUTHOR> These "data analysis techniques to correct for a false decline" at best consisted of substituting thermometer readings for tree ring proxies. I wouldn't call that a "data analysis technique".

They also "improved" the curve for the 1930s as ESR learned from the code and data (<http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1447>): " _This, people, is blatant data- cooking, with no pretense otherwise. It flattens a period of warm temperatures in the 1930s — see those negative coefficients? Then, later on, it applies a positive multiplier so you get a nice dramatic hockey stick at the end of the century._ "

Also note how this meshes nicely with the paper that started this thread that did not until it was corrected show that 1934 was the hottest year in the 20th century.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> <http://logicalscience.com/skeptics/Lindzen.htm>

<comment><USER6> Important part:

" Lindzen recieved $2500 a day from oil and coal interests for his services.1,2, 3 His article "Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus," was underwritten by OPEC.1 Lindzen has lectured at numerous Cooler Heads Coalition meetings. The Cooler Heads Coalition is funded by CEI which is in turn funded by Exxon Mobil. He has also given talks for the George C. Marshall Institute which is also funded by Exxon Mobil. His connections to the oil, coal, and even tobacco industry are apparently rather extensive. Here is one listof many that is worth exploring. Richard Lindzen claims he is currently not recieving any handouts from oil companies."

<comment><USER7> If you're going to argue that he's been bought, you get to explain why AGW supporters aren't bought as well. After all, the connection between their conclusions and their funding is even stronger.

Of course, the truth is that money isn't the most corrupting influence by a large margin - true belief is. You can often spot true believers by their insistence that money is the only reason why their position isn't universally accepted.

<comment><USER5> All science is bought by special interests to a certain extent. Frankly, I think the connections to the oil industry, et al., are not as important as the veracity (or lack thereof) of his claims.

<comment><USER8> "All science is bought by special interests to a certain extent." Any evidence for that statement? My academic research was mostly funded by the US NSF, which doesn't really strike me as a "special interest". The NSF doesn't particularly care what the results are, just that the questions are worth answering and that the approach is reasonable.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not asking you to do this work, but to prove your point you'd need to list some research that the NSF has funded that "denies" global warming (assuming they fund the reverse).

<comment><USER4> That's false equivalency. The NSF doesn't fund research to show that the earth is flat, because it isn't. Just because the well-tested AGW hypothesis exists doesn't mean that AGW denialism is on equal footing.

<comment><USER7> The "earth is round" folks don't hide data. They show their work.

Note that the NSF does fund things that seriously test special relativity.

Do you really think that the temp measurements are as sound? You remember the temp measurements. The US ones come from stations in parking lots, and they're the good ones. A huge fraction of the foreign ones have been moved. We don't know how that was adjusted for. (The dog ate their homework.)

Which reminds me, we have data showing that CO2 levels on earth have been several times higher than the projected disaster case. Care to guess what the "unbearable" temps were?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Header from the author's wikipedia profile:

"Richard Siegmund Lindzen (born February 8, 1940, Webster, Massachusetts) is an American atmospheric physicist and Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lindzen is known for his work in the dynamics of the middle atmosphere, atmospheric tides and ozone photochemistry. He has published more than 200 scientific papers and books.[1] He was a lead author of Chapter 7, 'Physical Climate Processes and Feedbacks,' of the IPCC Third Assessment Report on climate change. He is a well known skeptic of global warming[2] and critic of what he states are political pressures on climate scientists to conform to climate alarmism."

Famous scientist and well-known critic of AGW? This is the first I've heard of him...

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmmm ... he's been well known in this field for both of the above since the late '80s, when a friend of mine interviewed him.

At the time he effectively said he had been rather naive in the publication of his research (as I recall it was a study going back 200+ years on ship temperature reports, rather important data since the majority of the world is covered by the seas). He had thought that the scientific community was interested in the truth....

His problem was of course that the '80s were the period where the climate alarmists switched from global cooling/new Ice Age to global warming. As I recall his funding sources went poof, fortunately he'd already gotten tenure.

Anyway, if you're interested in this topic yet haven't heard of him or, say, "atmospheric physicist" Fred Singer (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Singer>; e.g. he "designed the first instruments used in satellites to measure cosmic radiation and ozone" (all quotes from Wikipedia)), you might want to expand your sources of information.

<comment><USER10> What motivates these global alarmists? And how do they get money by being so shrill? Is your average citizen just dying to be worried over the next catastrophe and willing to throw money at whomever can scare them the most?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know, but this specific phenomena goes back to 200 AD (sic), and then you can go back to, oh, the Book of Revelations and so on. There seems to be a strong drive in at least some people towards this sort of thing.

Politicians gain power by not "letting a serious crisis go to waste" (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yeA_kHHLow>); how real a crisis is irrelevant. Funding naturally follows for those talking up the crisis.

<comment><USER11> It isn't just the politicians either, where do you think the major environmental organizations get their money? Since the major cleanup during the 1970s, they have invented "crisis" after "crisis" to keep the money coming in. The "ozone hole" and "acid rain" crises were as overblown, running toward outright fraudulent, as the AGW crap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Click on the results of the search for the full text if you're not a subscriber; real URL is [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870444830457519...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704448304575196802317362416.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> Scientific Opinion on Climate Change [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_c...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change)

Looks like almost everyone's in agreement, there.</comment>


Opera celebrating today: Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Small-Scale_Experimental_Machine

<comment><USER2> I was once on a business trip to Manchester, showing off our project on the Eurographics conference. A quick Googling gives that this must have been in 2001 (the project was Verse, a networking protocol for 3D graphics applications).

My colleague and friend who was presenting at the conference and I had some slack time, and being huge geeks we visited the Museum of Science and Industry. Idly walking around, we came across the "computing history" department, which prominently featured a replica of this machine, in (as as I recall) 3 or 4 full-height racks.

As we stood there contemplating the enormity and general coolness of it (it uses a freaking CRT as a kind of RAM! You can _see the bits_!), we were approached by a gentleman who started describing it.

As we understood it, he was one of the original developers, who had also participated in building the Museum's replica. Once he got that we were in fact working programmers, he was visibly excited and we spent quite some time there.

It was awesome, clearly one of my best tech museum experiences.

</comment><comment><USER3> The original tweet by @opera: <http://twitter.com/#!/opera/status/83119985144233985></comment>


Performance of Iodine over DNS-over-HTTPS - <AUTHOR> https://0day.work/performance-of-iodine-over-dns-over-https/ <comment><USER2> What's the purpose of doing this? If you're using Iodine it's presumably because normal HTTPS traffic won't work (e.g. captive portal), so tunneling your DNS back over HTTPS again is bound to fail in this scenario. It seems to me this would only work if the captive portal whitelisted known DoH servers (which seems rather unlikely).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, you're right on that one.

I don't think I explicitly said that one should use iodine + DoH to bypass captive portals, but sorry if that somehow was implied.

The blogpost was just intended to be an experiment to compare the performance :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> TCP over TCP has always had serious performance issues, because the congestion controls combine in toxic ways. SSH tunnels that connect to something other than localhost on the remote end have similar problems (i.e. ssh -D 1080 as a SOCKS proxy).

<comment><USER4> ssh -D doesn't do TCP over TCP, its performance issues are fore different reasons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've found some mobile carriers still let you query external dns servers when you have a $0 balance, They were man in the middling the http traffic to present the 'You have no balance' page. Iodine and it's android fork andiodine became very useful tools- Facebook Messinger inside links over ssh\mosh via TCP over DNS = Free Phone

</comment><comment><USER6> If you can't send DNS packets directly to a remote resolver, do not expect bandwidth or stability for normal applications like a web browser. Use it for something like IMAP/SMTP, or browsing with lynx/links/w3m, or one-shot ssh commands, rsync, git, etc.

<comment><USER7> Opera Mini mode (where they proxy everything and cut out ads and resize images) might be viable when necessary.

Would a ride-sharing app or navigation work?

I'm guessing there's too much jitter/lag for a 9.6kbps phone call.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Aside from it not working very well for the reason dbt00 mentioned, wouldn't it only work on captive portals that don't block a DoH server? That seems unlikely, at least until DoH is much more widespread.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've been using iodine over DNSCrypt for years, since iodine doesn't encrypt anything. That was one of the motivation for developing it.</comment>


How to ask for more money at a new job - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-mission/how-to-ask-for-more-money-at-a-new-job-1bc6a32ba525#.z7sd2gpph <comment><USER2> If you have references, let them know you're worth more. Of not, show them what you got and ask for a raise within a few months.</comment>


A web startup, circa 2004 - <AUTHOR> http://www.skrenta.com/2011/04/web_startup_circa_2004.html

<comment><USER2> 2004 was much further back than I'm remembering it. The most amazing part is that everything there has been REPLACED, not simply upgraded. If I were to tell you that in 7 years the monitors were slimmer, the servers fit x1000 the capacity in 1/2 the space, and the printers were all-in-one, you'd be impressed. If I told you that you could throw out your server and printer, and run everything entirely off of a laptop and the internet, you'd wonder how that's physically possible. It's amazing to imagine where we'll be even 5 years from today.

<comment><USER3> Oh, its not all that long ago. There were plenty of flat panels in 2004, lots of all-in-one printers, and "cloud computing" had already been around for several years in the form of 'Akamai Edge Computing'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That.... is beautiful. Especially the exit 15 months later.

</comment><comment><USER5> 2011 - 1 macbook pro * n-employees. Maybe some nice flat-panels if you're into that.

</comment><comment><USER6> "When I was your age, I managed my own web servers."

Nowadays, I can't imagine a startup not running on AWS/GAE/etc.

</comment><comment><USER7> Wonderfully nostalgic, kinda like old web pages from the mid-1990s.

</comment><comment><USER8> How fast can technology go...

<comment><USER9> Yep, CRT monitors where something special - LCD's just doesn't glow like that...

Of course they also won't fry your eyes.</comment></comment>


Remembering Steve - I want to put dent in to the Universe - <AUTHOR> http://nuskhalabs.com We have modified our Home Page to give tribute to Steve Jobs. Please find more details on our tumblr blog regarding the new App called Steve Jobs timeline. nuskhalabs.tumblr.com <comment><USER2> Dent in the universe.</comment>


Graphene-based sieve turns seawater into drinking water - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39482342 <comment><USER2> Seems like the duplicate detection code needs an upgrade. But OP, this has been in the top 3 for hours.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14027546](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14027546)</comment>


Desiderata - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiderata

<comment><USER2> For those who find the original poem's advice too daunting, you may have better luck as a devotee of National Lampoon's parody, Deteriorata: <http://plodplod.blogspot.com/2006/07/deteriorata.html>

For example:

> Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself; and heed well their advice, > even though they be turkeys.

<comment><USER3> Also:

>Be comforted, that in the face of all irridity and disillusionment, and despite the changing fortunes of time, there is always a big future in computer maintenance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As far as "words to live your life by", I've never found anything better than "If", by Rudyard Kipling: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If—>

The two are quite similar, but "If" feels like it acknowledges human failing more openly that Desiderata. At least to me.

Sad fact: He wrote it for his dead son.

EDIT: My "sad fact" might be wrong.

<comment><USER5> There are a number of interesting links from that page, including _Invictus_ , but perhaps the most interesting is the reference to this from Theodore Roosevelt (which has a wonderful connection to Rugby _and_ Nelson Mandela):

 _It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat._

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_in_a_Republic>

I'm going to give that link to my teenage son who aspires to be a national level Rugby player! :-)

<comment><USER6> Yep, that was the passage that Nelson Mandela gave to Francois Pienaar before the final, not _Invictus_. I'm not sure why Eastwood chose to use the latter poem instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like this, even though I tend not to like pithy life advice. Granted, it's usually poorly-written compared to this (think the sort of stuff you might see on your Facebook feed), but life is too complicated, has too many circumstances and exceptions, for good, general, actionable advice to exist, like, at all. So when I do enjoy single-line observations, it's because they powerfully communicate something I already understand. Or, even better, they bring forward something I understood all the pieces of but had yet to put together.

I feel that the value in a poem like this is not that it teaches you how to live life, but that it gives you a tool to keep in mind good general principles. A sort of mnemonic device for consciousness.

<comment><USER8> _"[Pithy life advice is] usually poorly-written compared to this (think the sort of stuff you might see on your Facebook feed)"_

So true, and yet, the first thing I did after reading it was to post it in my Facebook timeline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is wonderful -'Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time'

</comment><comment><USER10> We'll all read it, nod head in agreement, maybe even have an afterthought and a moment later just forget about it :)

<comment><USER11> This is not necessarily true. There are a number of poems whose lines play through my head at critical moments in my life.

Although most people will "one ear out the other" with something like this, it'll affect a few permanently.

The best (and worst) side of words will do this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Kind of sad that in some versions cheerful is changed to careful.

</comment><comment><USER13> This has been a personal favorite of mine. I often write snippets of it on post it notes around my desk..."go placidly amid the noise and haste..."

</comment><comment><USER14> Reminds me a lot of Baz Luhrmann's "Sunscreen" (or rather, Baz Luhrmann's "Sunscreen" reminds me a lot of this)

<comment><USER15> Except always wearing sunscreen is not timeless and universal. Lots of studies suggest we shouldn't be wearing any in many parts of the world.

<comment><USER16> Wearing sunscreen is likely the least important part of the speech.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "You are what you love, not what loves you." - Adaptation, Charlie Kaufman

In context: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfGtwkq5sC0>

</comment><comment><USER18> I gave this to my parents as a birthday gift, one of my favorite writings on life wisdom and finding inner peace. There's so much written on self help, yet this summarizes it all well. Various stanzas keep coming up in different situations and it keeps making me remember how to handle that situation. There's so many -isms out there that everyone fights about but this combines the most basic, common sense elements of them all.

</comment><comment><USER19> Funny, about half the links I've put in comments end up as submissions soon later (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5119372>). I'm not saying people are using my comments as fodder, just a funny coincidence.

Guess I have to start making submissions!

</comment><comment><USER20> "Tread gently on anyone who looks at you sideways." Words to live by...

[http://www.johns-jokes.com/Billy-Connollys- Desiderata..........](http://www.johns-jokes.com/Billy-Connollys- Desiderata........-excerpt-from-his-book.html)

</comment><comment><USER21> Desiderata has a special meaning for people with background in Health Informatics: [http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~jeremy/HealthInf/RCSEd/terminology-...](http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~jeremy/HealthInf/RCSEd/terminology- desiderata.htm)

</comment><comment><USER22> Here's a Lazyboy song that has most of Desiderata's principles <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLncHifCu1w>

<comment><USER23> Samuel Barber - Adagio for Strings with Desiderata, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dPDO3Tfab0>

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> My grandfather had this poem framed and hanged in his home office and has since been cherished in the family (especially after he passed away). Also a personal favorite.

</comment><comment><USER25> "...listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story"

Wow, this is a really, really, really great way to think.

<comment><USER26> "Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't." - Bill Nye

Sometimes a simple sentence can change your whole outlook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Funny, I had a copy of this on my wall as a kid, 20+ years ago. I reread it today, and the words are still ones worth living by.

<comment><USER28> Now I don't feel so left out :-) I memorized it when I was 13 because I saw it on the wall every day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I fucking LOVE this.

</comment><comment><USER30> The title revision is less clear. The original title, along the lines of "How to live life at any age" I believe was referencing a post from earlier yesterday titled along the lines of "How to live your 20's".

The larger conversation (and intent of the post) is lost now.

<comment><AUTHOR> That was indeed my frame of mind when I linked this.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What happens when there are no more Bitcoin released? - <AUTHOR> New to Bitcoin, but remember hearing that there is only a fixed number of Bitcoin that will be available. What happens when there are no more new bitcoin available? <comment><USER2> we move to BitCash</comment>


Ask HN: Most comprehensive CVE database? - <AUTHOR> The official https://cve.mitre.org/ database seems like it is lacking a lot of information. There is a lot of useful data around CVEs that is not in any centralized source (e.g. referenced changesets, PoC scripts, github projects, etc) that could be collated into a master database of CVEs that would be very useful.
Has there been any attempt at making the most comprehensive CVE database possible?
Specifically, data I would be interested in for each CVE, where available:
1) The source diff of the patch applied to fix the vulnerability, i.e. the "before/after" of the critical section of code
2) The bindiff of the binary before and after patching the vulnerability
Is this available anywhere?
The reason I ask is because I think this could lend itself to a really cool machine learning system for identifying unknown vulnerabilities. The trick would be to use the code from previous vulnerabilities to determine what "vulnerable" code looks like, and then find code similar to it.
rough idea:
DATA COLLECTION PHASE:
1) Collect the before/after code of all previous vulnerabilities
2) Use the before/after code to identify the "critical section" that caused the vulnerability
3) Convert the "critical section" to its AST representation
TRAINING PHASE:
1) Determine the best ML algorithms to use for comparing AST representations
2) Using labeled inputs of "vulnerable" and "safe" AST representations, train the ML system to recognize a "vulnerable" AST
IDENTIFICATION OF NEW VULNERABILITIES PHASE:
1) Download open source code bases
2) Somehow prioritize which code to convert to AST
3) Convert code to AST and feed to ML system to determine likelihood of "vulnerability"
4) Apply some combination of static and manual analysis to verify the vulnerability
5) Use results as further feedback to train the ML system
Is anyone familiar with something like this existing? <comment><AUTHOR> I'm curious to hear people's thoughts on this. It's an idea I've been playing with in my head for a while, but most of it falls way outside my expertise.

There are definitely a lot of challenges with it, mainly false positives (e.g. maybe a double nested for-loop with a dozen conditionals looks like a vulnerable AST, but it's in a non-critical portion of code). But I think the central idea of training ML algorithms based on existing vulnerabilities would lead to a very efficient way of finding NEW vulnerabilities. At the very least, it could provide an efficiency boost to tools like fuzzers, by directing them to the critical portions of code. Also, it does not necessarily have to work on only open source code. It could also disassemble the vulnerable binary and the patched binary, and compare their ASM instructions. In fact this might even lead to higher signal than the AST method.

<comment><USER2> This is really interesting - and extremely ambitious. Having played with the CVE database, I'd caution you that it was surprisingly difficult (for me) to parse. The content is mildly unstructured, so that would be one of the first things I would look to figure out before building the retrieval system for the affected code.</comment></comment>


Firefox 69 will have Flash disabled by default - <AUTHOR> https://www.neowin.net/news/firefox-69-will-have-flash-disabled-by-default/ <comment><USER2> Finally, now we just need flash to stop shipping with Windows as well :)</comment>


MongoHQ and Sunrise App Compromised - <AUTHOR>

Dear Sunrise UserWe have been informed that our database provider (MongoHQ) has experienced a security breach. In handling security incidents, our priorities are to make sure your data is safe, eliminate the control failures that allowed the breach to occur, and to report the incident accurately to our customers.
Here is what it means for you:
 Your Google, Facebook and Twitter data are safe. We've refreshed the identification key that allows our servers to communicate with your connected accounts, which means any data that could have been taken by a malicious party is useless before or after the incident.
 Your LinkedIn, Foursquare and Producteev data are safe. You'll just have to reconnect those services to Sunrise, as they don't offer the same security control as Google, Facebook or Twitter.

If you chose the "Email" option to signup to Sunrise: your Sunrise email and password are also safe. We encrypt them in our database using the industry standard algorithm (bcrypt).
 If you connected an iCloud calendar to Sunrise, even though we don't store any credentials, the security breach may have put some of your calendar data at risk. As a precautionary measure, we recommend that you change your iCloud password and reconnect it to Sunrise: simply click here and then click on "Reset your password" to do it.

As one of the many precautional measures we are taking, we will be logging every Sunrise user out of the app. Simply log back in using the "I'm Already a Sunrise User" button and choosing one of the options that you had previously connected to your account.
Just to be clear, none of the data affected by this incident has any access to your credit card or banking information.
If you run into any trouble or if you have any questions, please email us at firstname.lastname@example.com. We are here to help. <comment><USER2> This is legit, but here's the link to their actual blog post: [http://blog.sunrise.im/post/65835073540/](http://blog.sunrise.im/post/65835073540/)</comment>


Struggling to Attract Top Talent? It Might be Time to Build a Talent Factory - <AUTHOR> http://venturefizz.com/blog/struggling-attract-top-talent-it-might-be-time-build-talent-factory#.Uht0Tj4NNjM.hackernews <comment><USER2> 1 Stop referring to people as "talent" using porn industry terminology to describe your employees doesn't work very well. 2 Pay more and offer better terms and conditions.</comment>


Ask HN: Are you interested in a very simple blogging platform? - <AUTHOR> There exist a plethora of blogging platforms from WordPress to Ghost but most of the developers prefer just static blog engines like Jekyll, Hugo. But some people are even too lazy to do that too. So are you interested in a platform that is dead simple where you could just login, and write post in markdown, apply some tags and hit publish. Blog layout will be plain and super fast, no side crap. Just good old plain blogging.<p>Any suggestions? <comment><USER2> How would this be different from Medium?

I love Medium, so I think it is a good idea. But is the idea to recreate Medium?

The only feature you would need to add is the ability to customize CSS.

But you would be providing lifetime free hosting, and the ability to have one's own URL. For free. Is that worth it to you?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, I was thinking like very simple plain text, fast loading blog . profile where you can have customizable pages ( about, work ,etc) links (github, fb , twitter ) and your recent and top posts. search . yeah will enable people to point custom domain to their homepage.

<comment><USER2> This is potentially interesting but as you note, it sounds very similar to what is out there.

I think the high order bit is if you are going to provide free hosting or not. ($0)

If you will charge, then how much will you charge ($5, $10, $15, or $20).

Then you can compare features in your price point but, as you point out, there is just so much out there. If I wanted to do what you are saying, I would just get on wordpress.com and pick a theme and post. Or else blogger.com, and update the CSS to something post 1990s.

<comment><AUTHOR> here are my thoughts: Charge:0$ for hosting

costs ? allow people to post a href text link ad at the bottom for a premium charge. It won't affect the flow. Won't slow it down. or get blocked in ad blocker.

If traffic amount increases will allow more people to post links but only one link per page.

edit: grammar

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yup. Got a PoC?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, working on it. Was very demotivated.

But thanks! getting back to work.

<comment><USER3> Keep at it man!</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Marvel – Structured Financial News - <AUTHOR> http://marvel.inferess.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN! We just launched our public beta of Marvel. Would love to hear some feedback.

Also check out:

\- Our blog post "A Revolution in the Structure of your Financial News" ([http://blog.inferess.com/](http://blog.inferess.com/))

\- Inferess, company behind Marvel: [http://inferess.com/about](http://inferess.com/about)

<comment><USER2> nice job. i'll check it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Solid product and value proposition. Quick access to relevant information is the competitive edge that any investor needs to win in today's market. Marvel will win because the established players have failed to address investors' need for quick, reliable data and analysis.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't work in the financial sector so I can't say that I'd use this regularly. It certainly seems like this would be a huge time saver because it distills a lot of information from different sources into bullet points filled with relevant information. Nicely done.

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice. Quickly reduces the news stream into relevant bullet points, easy navigation.

</comment><comment><USER6> Awesome site. Very beneficial for user.

</comment><comment><USER7> Very awesome idea and execution!</comment>


We Should Not Accept Scientific Results That Have Not Been Repeated - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/-we-should-not-accept-scientific-results-that-have-not-been-repeated <comment><USER2> I did not see a discussion about science based on non-repeatable observations.

Are the neutrino observations of SN 1987A not science because it's not repeatable?

"To the surprise of everyone involved, they were able to replicate only six of those papers—approximately 11 percent."

Oddly, that publication is not repeatable. More specifically, I think they described only 3 of the 53 experiments they tried to replicate.

Under the author's own definition, we should not accept the results of that paper.

<comment><USER3> The neutrino observations are a datum. Along with much other data and reproducible experiments, this can be helpful in furthering our understanding of the universe around us.

But it is not a reproducible experiment, it is simply an observation. It can be the basis for creating reproducible experiments that will further our knowledge.

But if it is a one-off observation then it can be given no more significance than that.

I think the upshot of what the author of the article is highlighting is that there is little incentive to do the replication experiments as this does not give any significant recognition or other funding opportunities.

Replication required having all (or most) of the information about the original experiments and being able to confirm the original findings. It has been commented on before by others in various science fields that this information is not available for many experimental reports.

It is also known that if anomalous results are obtained that contradict prevailing theories then it takes a brave and hardy experimenter to continue pushing those results.

When it boils down to it, scientists are no more honourable or upright than any other segment of society. They are people too and as such, like all the rest of us, have foibles, follies, biases, etc. that can get in the road of furthering our knowledge.

<comment><USER2> I agree that my example is not a reproducible experiment. My question is, why should we reject it as a scientific result?

I believe that the author has an incorrect understanding of what science means, is biased by being a researcher in a field ("stromal-tumor interactions in pancreatic cancer") where it is easier to carry out reproducible experiments.

Astronomy is not based on reproducible experiments, but it sure feels like science to me.

I believe that the author's acceptance of the un-reproducible Amgen results highlights how the author hasn't fully integrated the consequences of only accepting reproducible results.

<comment><USER3> The answer is that it is simply a datum. Data can be results, but you would usually have it as the result of something, an experiment or an equation, etc.

The definition of what "science" is or means, is one of those "mirky" kind of definitions. It depends on who you are talking to and the context in which the discussion is taking place. I have yet to see a universally agreed upon and well defined definition.

People seem to act as though it is one of those "I know it when I see it" kind of things.

You could start with a Popper's definition, yet there are fields in which this definition is not excepted (various theoretical physics areas are some).

Astronomy is an interesting field. There is a whole lot of data that is collected and systematically so. Some of this data is used to support the various theories and models that have been developed over time. Yet, there are quite distinct disputes that have arisen as to what some of the various anomalous data means.

Questions that relate to red-shifts or galactic movements that are too fast, etc.

science has, I think, a number of possible features that data collection and analysis, hypothesis testing, theory and model development. The thing I see across a lot of fields is that there are specific ideas that are accepted by the majority but have difficulties with the various anomalous data points that are found.

How to solve this in the short or long term is not going to be easy, simply because all scientists are people and like all people have biases in what they believe is true. So you get various "experts" in their field having disputes with one another over the "truthieness" of their specific models and theories.

So collecting the data is essential but doesn't necessarily lead to any understanding.

<comment><USER2> I'm not asking you to give a good definition of science.

I'm pointing out that the author of the piece make an assertion that only repeatable experiments count as scientific results.

I disagree.

I want to know why we should not accept results which are not repeatable.

You response seems to be more aligned with mine views than that of the author.

For something down to earth, is the Amgen publication a scientific result?

Even if we accept that the author is correct, what it it mean to repeat, say, an epidemiological study? We can't repeat the exact conditions. All we can do is be "close".

<comment><USER3> Now that I am back from cleaning a pool and collecting wood for winter, I would say that determining if a datum from a non-repeatable event is "scientific" or not, requires a clear definition of what "science" is.

I don't have a problem with data from non-repeatable events being used. But it would depend on how it was collected and how it is used. Too often, we see non-repeatable data being used to defend a specific point of view, when that data is only data and could be used to defend any number of points of view.

If one cannot develop repeatable experiments to validate your model and theory, then non-repeatable data cannot be used as a proxy to defend your model and theory. It can be used as additional support but that's about as far as it goes.

Of course, different people in different fields can and will have different views about such data. The thing to remember is that data is data and not the theory itself. It may support a theory but it cannot ever prove a theory. In every field of study, much data has been collected but there is always anomalous data found. This can arise from the simplest of things like the measuring equipment was set up wrong to the theory or model being developed being wrong.

<comment><USER2> Again, I think we are in general agreement.

The author of the original essay doesn't cover any of these issues, which is my complaint.

BTW, there are experiments which could at one time be repeated but can no longer, either because the required conditions no longer exist (East Germany, passenger pigeons) or because the experiments are no longer ethical or warranted (long term progress of untreated syphilis, the most effective way to firebomb a city).

The Trinity test, even without being repeated, did a good job of proving the theory that setting off an atomic bomb does not ignite the atmosphere.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ikea's new wedge dowel joint makes stronger furniture and faster assembly(2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.curbed.com/2017/1/19/14317744/ikeas-furniture-assembly-wedge-dowel-joint <comment><USER2> Ikea is easy to make fun of, but it's really done a lot of interesting work. Tim Harford lists the Billy Bookcase as one of the 50 inventions that shape the modern economy: [http://www.bbc.com/news/business-38747485](http://www.bbc.com/news/business-38747485)

I wonder if Ikea helps enable geographic mobility: [https://jakeseliger.com/2015/03/10/does-ikea-enable- mobility](https://jakeseliger.com/2015/03/10/does-ikea-enable-mobility)

</comment><comment><USER3> The real secret to Ikea furniture lasting is to glue all the pieces together as you assemble.

<comment><USER4> That is blasphemous! It would be like gluing Legos together.

<comment><USER5> Which is what they do at Legoland.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks like a modified sliding dovetail.

Who knew that joinery techniques hundreds of years old could make furniture stronger?

<comment><USER7> We might have known that, but I didn't know that they could be manufactured at scale and then assembled by the lowest common denominator while maintaining acceptable quality.

I thought that these techniques were stuck in my father's woodshop.

<comment><USER8> Maybe not the lowest common denominator:

[https://youtu.be/XjE4q2EyzoQ](https://youtu.be/XjE4q2EyzoQ)</comment></comment></comment>


Kate Turning 10 Years Old - <AUTHOR> http://kate-editor.org/2011/08/11/kate-turning-10-years-old/

<comment><USER2> Probably the most underrated text editor. It pains me to no end that KDE and its applications don't get the attention they rightly deserve.

<comment> s-phi-nl Even if KDE did get more attention, on openSuSE (which seems to have a fairly large proportion of KDE users compared to other distros) Kate does not come preinstalled even with KDE. Anyone know why?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Kate really combines all the good KDE features, in particular its usage of Kparts is excellent. You get complete shell integration, tabs, snippets, loads of plugins, split-views, highlighting etc. The most feature complete editor after emacs, probably.

<comment><USER4> Does it have buffers (as opposite to files) abstraction, ie. can you open the same file in different windows and work on different parts of it?

<comment><USER5> Yes, you just split the current view (vertically or horizontally) or open a new window. Any change to a file will be immediately updated in the other views/windows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anybody know a way to hook windows/cygwin into the terminal on the windows version of kate?

It's highly unlikely but doesn't hurt to ask. :)

<comment><USER7> It's available in the Cygwin/X11 version of KDE from Cygwin Ports <http://sourceware.org/cygwinports/>

There has been talk of porting Konsole to native Windows, but thus far no action.

<comment><USER6> Wow, thanks!

If anyone tries this and ends up with a "Setup.ini signature <@ URL> failed to verify"

add the -X option to the cygstart call; e.g.: C:/<path/to/cygwin/bin/>cygstart.exe <path to cygwin/setup.exe> -X -K <http://cygwinports.org/ports.gpg>

Credit to: <http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.os.cygwin.ports.general/342>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My text editor of choice for many years.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, for me as well. But currently using scite because I haven't figured out yet how to disable all the warning messages which kate prints when started from console in Debian Squeeze. Anyone got an idea?

<comment><USER10> I'm not a kate user, but what about just redirecting all the console output to /dev/null ? Then you shouldn't get any output, and so you can just send it straight to the background.

$ kate &> /dev/null &

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> if kate had ever included a stable, usable vimpart, it would have been my ideal editor.

<comment><USER12> Vim mode for Kate was a GSoC project, expect improvements soon.

<comment><USER11> wow, this year's gsoc? that would be excellent, i was sad when the original vimpart and then yzis both went nowhere.</comment></comment></comment>


A designer used AI and Photoshop to bring ancient Roman emperors back to life - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/21/21395115/roman-emperors-photorealistic-portraits-ai-artbreeder-dan-voshart <comment><USER2> There was a previous discussion on this[0] from the source[1]

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24172603](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24172603)

[1]: [https://voshart.com/ROMAN-EMPEROR-PROJECT](https://voshart.com/ROMAN- EMPEROR-PROJECT)</comment>


Does This Work? - <AUTHOR> https://www.amazon.com/SkySaver-260-Building-Escape-Backpack/dp/B013F0N7G0 <comment><USER2> Having a "backpack" for each person is silly. The device should be attached to the wall next to the window, so it will be there when somebody needs it, and it should be possible for several people to use it, one after the other. (I have lived in a building that had such a device installed, though I don't remember exactly how it worked.)

<comment><AUTHOR> It uses a preinstalled anchor point which would not be something big, exposed to the elements. One can use multiple anchor points. It will be difficult to mount something or buckle up if it is hanging outside the window.

<comment><USER2> The one I saw in real life was installed inside, near the window. Apart from aesthetics, I can't see why you'd want to install it outside.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.thenational.ae/uae/high-rise-escape-chute- could-...](https://www.thenational.ae/uae/high-rise-escape-chute-could- evacuate-dubai-s-tall-buildings-in-minutes-1.762633)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd worry about the anchor part since there is a chance you can miscalculate the length and get stuck in mid-decent. Meanwhile, anchor could get more damage if not planned properly.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://patents.google.com/patent/US4951779](https://patents.google.com/patent/US4951779)

</comment><comment><USER4> No reason it shouldn't. Unless you are panicked and you don't properly attach the line before you jump that is.</comment>


List of common misconceptions - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions

<comment><USER2> This search gets 21 resubmissions, but 1 of them is a false positive: [https://hn.algolia.com/?q=List+of+common+misconceptions+#!/s...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=List+of+common+misconceptions+#!/story/sort_by_date/0/List%20of%20common%20misconceptions)

Last submission: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7655532](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7655532) (1 point, 2 days ago, 0 comments)

Best submission: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1465001](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1465001) (168 points, 1402 days ago, 53 comments)</comment>


Marathon Math: How Not to Hit the Wall - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/marathon-math/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo

<comment><USER2> Would love more details on the formula.</comment>


The Resistance Is Real – Why Side Projects Are So Hard - <AUTHOR> http://davemart.in/resistance/ <comment><USER2> At this point in my life I've started to believe that whenever you talk to someone who is "passionate about technology X and clean architectures" or "wants to work on challenging technical problems" is ultimately doomed to fail when setting out to create a (for-profit, bootstrapped) business. This is a strong opinion and there is certainly a spectrum for this mindset, but at the most extreme your mindset should be more along the lines of "all technology ultimately sucks, let's figure out the most straightforward way and the least amount of effort and headaches so we can create value for our customers so they, and we, can get off that damn computer screen and enjoy the fruits of our labor".

If you're saying "I'm passionate about delivering great products to users" or even "I'm passionate about making money" (I respect that) then technology becomes the tool you unfortunately have to wield to arrive at that goal.

Note that this attitude only applies to people who want to take ownership and deliver a fully functional product. There's tons of great people who are in it for the sheer enjoyment of working with technology, they all will have a great time working on challenging problems at one of the many tech companies. And there's a few people who can both enjoy technical challenges but also switch to dumb and boring crunch mode when it's demanded by the task at hand.

<comment><USER3> This is something I really wrestle with. I intrinsically care about clean architecture and clean code so much that I spend _far_ too much time procrastinating and gold-plating. I realise I'm "doing it again" every so often, but invariably tell my self "yeah, yeah, but it won't take much longer". 4 hours later, I'm still at it :/

I don't know if it's my enterprise upbringing (been working for a megacorp for ~20 years), my love of tech, or my language of choice (C#, which I love, BTW), but sometimes I wish I could just _ship a working product_.

<comment><USER4> You're complaining about 4 hours? If you can spend 4 hours to make your code easier to understand, that's very likely to save someone 4 hours down the road.

When it's 4 days or 4 months, then it becomes an issue.

<comment><USER3> Of course I'm not complaining about a once-in-a-lifetime 4 hours - I mean, I do this _all the time_!

<comment><USER4> I see. Well I used to have a tendency to start refactoring something, then see it'll be easier if I refactor another part and so on.

I would dig myself into a well so deep it might take a month to crawl out of before my code is useable again, but it would be a huge waste to stop.

If you've only invested 4 hours it doesn't seem that bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's a shame no one is really talking about the elephant in the room. At the end of the day, most people are working on side projects... at the end of the day. If you really want to be effective working on something that isn't your primary thing, it absolutely can't be after a full days work, even if that work isn't very taxing. Your mind needs time to not be working, or at least, not be working on things similar to your day job. Worse, is many people working on side projects are also doing it at the expense of sleep, which is kind of like doubling down on a losing bet. Sure you might get lucky, but you've still got a negative expected value from your time. People get dumb when they're tired, and worse, is they often can't even tell how dumb they've gotten.

If you want to work on a side project, you probably don't want to work on it after work. And you probably don't want to work on it on your first of consecutive days off. Even writers who claim to be night owls tend to work on their writing first thing after a good sleep.

Also, if you really want to validate this wisdom, I suggest learning to play a competitive game with a ranking system (although you may never get around to your side project if you do...). I would bet dollars to donuts to that you will tend to gain ELO/rating early in the day, and you will tend to lose ELO/rating late in the day. That has held true for me for any game I play seriously. It can be even worse at night, in that as you lose game after game, you start to go on tilt, and try to keep playing until you get that win, or until you gain back the rating you started with. It's absolutely insane, but often not obviously insane until the next morning. Also, probably just take my word on it, and don't game competitively, you're life will be richer without it. Just understand that there is a mountain of evidence that talks about how bad people are at performing when tired, and that the very best artists tend to spend most of their time recovering from their creative endeavors, punctuated by very short, very intense periods of exceedingly high focus.

<comment><USER6> A good hack to this is to wake up earlier and work on your stuff first thing in the morning, allows you to spend that first energy on your real goals, and then you can move to other stuff. It's fucking hard for me to wake early, but I really need to get back to doing this.

Edit: another advantage of this method is that you can have guilt-free relaxation on the end of the day.

<comment><USER7> I used to wake up at 5am to work on my side project (blogged here[0]). It really is the best way to go if you are serious about a side project. That blog post was from 7 years ago. I again did the 5am stint recently and only lasted a couple weeks. Although my day job now is much more stressful than it was back then, so I think that is a big factor (along with being seven years more tired...)

[0] [https://www.mattgreer.org/articles/waking-up-at-5am-to- code/](https://www.mattgreer.org/articles/waking-up-at-5am-to-code/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My inconsequential guess is that he only not launched it yet because (i) he thinks the technology he uses matters more than the product and (ii) he is building features that should not be included in the first version.

I was able to launch my side-project (the for-profit bootstrapping biz type), a web app, in 7 months even being a junior frontend developer.

I chose the tech with the sole criteria of how easy it would be for me to build it (I went with Ember, that I use on my day-job, and Rails).

And the whole time I was _constantly_ thinking hard about a feature and then realizing _" I don't need that for now..."_. I then would write the feature idea in a card on my backlog (a Github's project board) and move on to the next important feature.

What I guess is making so hard for him is not the diligence, commitment or motivation, but the product decisions he has to make (and I speculate he is making the wrong ones).

</comment><comment><USER9> The absolute best advice on side projects (and full startups) I know of is that classic quote attributed to Reid Hoffman:

"If You're Not Embarrassed By The First Version Of Your Product, You've Launched Too Late"

These days I even apply it to my blog entries.

No one else cares about those details you are obsessing over.

What matters is that your product lets people do something that they couldn't do before - or in the case of blog entries that it teaches them something they didn't know already.

<comment><USER10> I agree mostly with this, but I would emphasize that your first release must _be usable_. I've seen a few promising products get released too early by people pushing to "ship early, ship often," etc, only to crash and burn because they quickly developed a reputation for being buggy pieces of crap. Once you have a slate of bad reviews on an app store, it's difficult to fix.

<comment><USER11> I agree. If users have a poor experience, they'll be less likely to try it again after you've polished it. I'm sure there's a balance between the two, but "if you're not embarrassed" is too strong of a statement (I suppose it's an exaggeration to send a message). Plus, embarrassment is subjective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have a very different take on why you're struggling. I read this in some book a long time ago when I too was struggling with a similar problem of procrastination and this advice helped me a lot (but YMMV).

What it says is (in my own words) you have three people living in you called the id, ego and the superego. The id or the kid is the child who wants to play, be happy all the time and wanta instant gratification, while the exact opposite is your superego that wants to impress others and wants to be perfect. The ego is the middleman trying to settle the two. So anyway long story short your superego or the perfectionist is what is making you obsess over the technology and you're doing the same work over and over again (if I'm correct you've rewritten it 4 times?) yet your id is not getting any reward and just more and more mundane work, so it revolts and creates resistance and starts giving you the excuses for not doing it anymore or calling the whole thing lame.

The best approach as others have pointed out is because you're being a perfectionist. As soon as you can stop doing that you will suddenly see that work even though mundane is getting done. Also you may need some play too as you've said you're feeling like a failure (search play it away), that book may have some invaluable advice for you on how to get back in the game.

</comment><comment><USER13> IMHO tech is the easy part. The two hardest parts of side projects are: 1\. Finding a solvable problem that hasn't already been done a million times. 2\. Getting users and breaking even on user acquisition costs.

If you're re-writing your project 4 times, it means you're having fun or learning(nothing wrong with that).

But for those that are building a business, it is about delivering value to end customers.

<comment><USER14> > breaking even on user acquisition cost

this has become increasingly hard as we are short of options for monetization,as startups focus on being acquired since many years ago

> it means you're having fun or learning

I guess developers look at the huge salaries and decide that a job with the latest qualifications is a more profitable investment of their time in the medium term.

<comment><USER15> _this has become increasingly hard_

I take it you weren't around back when the only realistic method of finding customers was magazine advertising and a 1.5"x2" ad in a tech magazine was $500/month with no guarantee that anyone would even notice it?

 _look at the huge salaries_

For a lot of us it's not about the money; it's about being to live by your own rules.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've found that the heart of the problem is... money.

With money comes time. If funds are sufficient, most of those whispers are diminished.

Let's say one is sitting on a pile of money:

> A year! Why haven't you shipped yet?

I would not be bothered by this if I could continue to fund the project.

> This is boring. Just shelve this project and move on to something fun & > exciting.

With money could come the possibility of hiring someone to do the boring stuff, or making the project look professional enough that it attracts contributors who think it has a future.

> This niche isn't big enough. You should change the target to developers? > Marketers? Sales?

If the project has enough money, course correction should be much less of a risk.

> No one will actually use this. / Will designers really find this useful? / > What if you launch and no one finds it valuable?

Ok, this would be a worry no matter how much money one has. Although I suppose it's less of a risk if a project is small.

I recently set out to work on a side project with virtually no funding. I wouldn't call it a mistake as I've learned a lot about myself and the nature of doing a side project full-time, but money is a biggie no matter how much motivation one can muster. Maybe if I had spent less money on fancy lunches when I worked for a company, for example, I could have bought a lot more time to finish what I was working on. Now I'm at a point where I have to focus almost all my time on finding employment because the electricity doesn't pay itself.

Next time, I've gotta learn how to raise money for what I do instead of believing I can self-fund it. lol

<comment><USER17> It's not about money, it's about time, flow & motivation.

Time is the biggest obstacle, side project implies that there's another full time job. With a full time job and other obligations such as family or volunteer activities.

Without enough long stretch of time, it's difficult to get into a flow state.

Without enough flow while working on any project motivation wanes.

The secret becomes figuring out how to manage your small chunk of time, how to get into flow fast, suspend it and resume it across time and how to keep the motivation up if you miss out on flow.

<comment><USER18> No, in the end it's pretty much all about the money. And not just funding, but about making money. I mean imagine that you did finish your side project and did ship it, now what? Does it become sustainable the moment you ship it, does it pay your bills, does it maintain itself, pay for its own infrastructure? Of course not. You still need to make money just to keep it and yourself alive, and quite a bit of money.

<comment><USER17> end goal for all side projects is not money, end goal sometimes is scratching your own itch and using it, conquering a challenge you encountered, learning whatever you set out to do, etc. I have built 100+ side projects, most of them have NOTHING to do with money. People write poems, stories, music, paint, build all sorts of things for the fun of it, and guess what? many of us code for the joy of it too.

Keeping a side project going is pretty much $0-$5/month. if you already have a VPS, you can just run it on there, or you can run it at your own server or on a raspberry pi, you can even run it on many cloud servers for free. Using serverless for instance, you can run many side project on AWS for free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Reading this blog post, I see two skills in conflict:

1\. Ship now, ship often

2\. Strive for perfection

The first one is required for entrepreneurs. Your "work <\--> reward" iteration cycle should be as short as possible, and should end with the customer handing you money.

The second one is a skill that rewards knowledge acquisition, and can be especially helpful for those looking to improve their skillset in order to move up the career ladder. It's also an iteration cycle, but the reward often doesn't end with directly delivering value to a customer.

Lastly, I think that startup media (Tech Crunch, YC, etc) has a lot to do with this. There are way fewer stories told about bootstrapping something long term, compared to stories about successful startups hitting home runs. The reality is that the bulk of the work will be after you launch, and will likely require continuing effort in the form of years rather than months.

<comment><USER20> IME, the core of your product, the part that your customers use regularly, should work perfectly. It's okay for the other stuff to not be perfect.

<comment><USER21> On the other hand: if nobody is buying your product, it doesn't matter how perfectly it works.

<comment><USER20> There is some truth to that, but most people want to try out a product before they buy it. So if they run into bugs during that trial period, then your conversion rate will suffer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is my side project at the moment:

[https://getpolarized.io/](https://getpolarized.io/)

.. but it's sort of become full time.

For me it started off as a need to manage my reading as I was working on another project around cryptocurrencies and reading tons of PDFs and web content.

Got majorly side tracked but launched it and so far there are a few thousand active users.

<comment><USER23> Thanks for sharing, this looks neat and useful! The pagemarks are an interesting concept. It would be cool if the top progress bar above the document showed, not cumulative progress, but the progress as it maps to the areas marked on the document, which aren't necessarily contiguous. Kinda like the progress bar you have for a torrent as non-contiguous chunks are downloaded. This provides spatial information about what parts of the document have been read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have launched several side projects a couple of them financially successful.

They have had plenty of bugs in them and I got several angry emails about various things, but over the time I have fixed them as they come in. It's a great way of prioritizing what of that last 20% you should fix.

In other words. Ship as fast as possible, treat it as a project then over time improve. If you have something of value people will use it even when it's not optimal.

</comment><comment><USER25> Really, you probably don't want to hear this, but you need to ship. You have probably overbuilt already.

The reason I've basically embraced a lifestyle with a "second job" is that it's enormously rewarding both intellectually and financially. Over 4 years the business has grown from a "hobby that made me a few bucks" to meaningfully changing my families financial outlook.

There is no way I could have sustained the investment without those two sources of reward.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm about halfway to launching a side project (I seem to be close than 50%, but there's always the 90-10 rule).

It's been fun. I've been writing the backend in rust, using squire for storage, and actix-web for the server framework. The front end is plain html without a lick of js. And my css is really just compiled scss.

I'm happy to report I've only engaged in a small bit of yak-shaving (writing a custom derive for defining APIs I need to hi from my backend for integration purposes) and only a small bit of framework churn (I switched web server frameworks because I wanted an abstraction that wasn't ergonomic/available in the initial one i had chosen).

And it's been fun. The best part is that even if it flops, my wife and I will still use it.

Edit: I've only been at it for a couple months

<comment><USER27> Couple of months and you're half way? So if you cut some scope you can launch by dec 31st right?

I have no idea what you're working on but I bet you don't launch till March at least.

<comment><USER26> I have already cut features - I was going to launch with multiple integrations, but I decided to just do one. The difficulty is carving out time, and being painfully aware that anything I go to do could give me a grief and cost me lots of time trying to figure it out :)

I am mostly done with the bare minimum of what I need for it to be usable for _myself_. I have a little more work to do. Not much though, I've tested the most of the bits I still need to do. Now I just need take that learning and finish building it.

I think I'm only halfway because I need to get billing working (planning on integrating with Stripe - there goes my no JS goal...), fix the CSS so it doesn't look _terrible_ (doesn't need to be fancy, just passable), and work on my error logging / reporting. So... mostly polish. But not feature polish, but "don't drive away potential users via stupid stuff" polish.

Edit: I do hope to launch by Jan. 1 since new years resolutions _could_ be a great driving force for new user signups, but your assessment is a reasonable guess.

<comment><USER28> I've heard of quite a few products that launched without billing in place yet.

They gave users a 30 day trial period, so starting on launch day, they had precisely 30 days to get billing sorted out if they hoped to be able to charge anyone.

A free trial period may or may not be suitable for your product. But you can probably get by without it on launch day.

You could even launch in beta mode and give people access in exchange for feedback.

If you're targeting graphic designers, then go ahead and tweak that CSS. Otherwise, go ahead and get some real people using it. If they're using it to solve a pain point, they'll quickly tell you what's good and what's not. And if they don't use it at all...well, that's valuable feedback too.

<comment><USER26> Thank you for the advice. I hadn't considered launching without billing. I don't think a free trial for my product could be very long (since it involves sending lots of SMS which would cost me quite a bit if I get a big user spike). But I think I can provide a sort of demo without that bit.

<comment><USER28> Right, that makes sense. It's not the right fit for every business idea.

If you could find yourself a 5-10 beta customers, perhaps launching to them before billing is ready might work? You could even perhaps set a cap on how many SMS messages they can send per day or week. That would keep your costs low while still getting you some feedback.

You should of course do whatever is best for your product. I've just learned from experience that launching as soon as you can is great, because you'll often find that many of your assumptions about how and why people will use your product don't match how they _actually_ use it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Don't mean to be mean (i've been there) but this is the money line "Re-written the code base 4 times (Laravel, Vanilla JS, React, then back to Vanilla JS)."

Is the goal to ship or play? If latter, no harm done, else that's your resistance, nothing else.

</comment><comment><USER30> So true, I'm constantly plagued by those thoughts to stop whenever I work on anything, in case it's either not good enough for the public, boring, not gonna sell/find users, etc, and every minute I spend working on my projects is a battle between declaring I'll actually finish them this time around and a feeling of 'relax, you can take more time here'.

That said, they're not the only issues. In fact, I'd say what hurts me more than the nagging thoughts in the article is a deadly combination of OCD esque perfectionism and a tendency towards feature/scope creep that really needs a good project managing laying down limits.

This means endless reams of time is spent on 'nice to have' features that keep wasting more and more time, like a one person version of Duke Nukem Forever. And then even more time is spent procrastinating because I'm worried about said goals being too ambitious and the amount of work required to meet them being overly daunting.

Still, I guess it's not a unique issue, and I suspect this perfectionism is why (as some others commenting here mention) many successful entrepreneurs are the kind who can step back, stop trying to be 'artistic' and just get the damn thing done, tech be damned. Heck, sometimes I suspect someone like Homer Simpson/Peter Griffin would probably be the ideal entrepreneur/founder, since while they're not particularly bright, they've also got no inner filter whatsoever, are completely delusional about how good their work is and are willing to jump into new projects and ideas without a second thought. I'd rather be a delusional moron who gets things done than a normal person haunted by inner doubt and constantly worried about whether their work is good enough.

Either way, hopefully I'll just bite the bullet and get my current projects in the next year or so. Better to have something rather than nothing.

<comment><USER31> I'd be happy to look over your project and its features to let you know if something should be a v2 feature. Kick you to the finish line so to speak and keep you accountable.

In fact, this would make for a nice community. Anyone try to set one up like this?

<comment><USER32> Cool idea. Kind of like the boss as a service idea, but with peers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> My philosophy has always been "make it run, make it right, make it fast". If it runs and is functional it's good enough to ship and release. Making the codebase pretty and optimizations come afterwards

</comment><comment><USER34> The trick is finding a problem you have a passion for. That way, no matter what or how long, it won't feel like work. Your side project is the sabbatical.

<comment><USER28> The downside to this approach is that it can kill the passion for the thing you were passionate about.

Also, I've noticed that real world solutions to problems tend to include lots of schleps that are excruciatingly boring, but necessary.

The longer I do this kind of work, the more strongly I believe that the people who are most likely to see a project through to completion are the ones who have the stone cold professionalism - or just plain stubbornness - to grind though the boring stuff instead of just faffing around on the bits of the problem that they're passionate about.

I think a side project that's just about indulging a passion is totally fine. But a side project that is also a product that makes money will almost require lots of pieces that definitely feel like work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Side projects are hard when you are using "best practices" from Google and Facebook, choosing the best and "most right" js framework, even landing page looks like landing page of "best unicorn VC companies".

<comment><USER36> For me, it's easy to complicate things by saying "for this side project I'm going to learn new thing X" \-- using 'learning something new' to help justify the time spent, but usually screwing up the project as a result.

<comment><USER37> So true. I've done it, I know it. It's very dangerous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I've found that setting a very hard deadline, ideally with some money on the line, is the best way to guarantee something gets done. It seems like this should be the authors next step. To get my last video out, I sent a friend $200 through Square Cash and said "Only send this back to me if I have X published by X hour on X date". It worked!

I definitely feel resistance in the last stages of side projects, but I don't necessarily buy Pressfields reasons for why it's there. Still valuable to know it will be there ahead of time though, regardless of what its origins are.

</comment><comment><USER39> 12 years ago I could code on a side project 8 hours straight. It was fun and exciting. 6 years ago I could do that, but with less frequency. Today its a rare thing that I can even sit down and get in 4 hours in. My computer is littered with barely started projects and a few projects sitting around 50%-90% completed.

The last side project I was able to hammer out was a thin API wrapper that I open sourced to github. It only took about 4 hours to code. It's a piece of a bigger project I am working on. Maybe thats a possible solution? Breaking your bigger project into smaller chunks?

<comment><USER40> > Maybe thats a possible solution? Breaking your bigger project into smaller > chunks?

Definitely. Anything I cannot hammer out in a weekend I break into smaller chunks and treat each one as a separate project even though they are all contributing towards one larger one. This advice generally works great for any large type of problem or endeavour.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> > "Re-written the code base 4 times (Laravel, Vanilla JS, React, then back to > Vanilla JS)."

The path of least resistance is to research all available options, pick one, and see the project through, not to jump back and forth. It's a side project, but still, this isn't going to make it any easier.

That aside, the side project looks like it could see a good degree of success. I wouldn't use it because it seems like it's way too simple a feature to outsource, but then again, many companies also pay for simple customer / customer-service instant messaging services.

<comment><USER42> I fully agree with the premise but many times, it's just way too hard to actually _predict_ the production problems you will have even with your most favourite tech.

Truth is that while working in a corp you can't see the big picture of seeing a project through from start to finish.

For example, I am helping on mostly good faith -- and at about 30% of what I'd normally charge -- a friend to bootstrap their website / platform and even though I use language and tech I very much like and I am the dictator of the backend, 95% of the work is extremely boring and it's just "make this controller, make this API endpoint, wire this object to that other object, integrate this payment provider" etc... Combine with the universally bad deployment experience of basically 99% of the languages out there and things aren't really that glorious even if the tech is much better than what you worked with your entire life beforehand.

What I am saying is -- even for every experienced programmers it's very hard to make an accurate prediction.

But if there's one metric I always use, it's this one: "does the tech stand in my way to productivity and waste my time with details I shouldn't care about?" \-- if so, I try to ditch it (not possible with JS but still, there are transpiled languages and frameworks that make things better).

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> This is relatable. I have even begun to read "War of Art". Consistency is key to momentum.

My most recent project won an overall award at ETHDenver - which at the time became the world's largest cryptocurrency hackathon. My teammate and I created a cyberpunk-themed cryptocurrency trading game based on the classic Drugwars. My teammate is a great multimedia/graphic artist, and it was very well received. If interested, Beta is at [https://www.cachethegame.com](https://www.cachethegame.com).

However, I would about 20% of the current total project (it's been 9 months) was completed in the 36 hours of the hackathon. We were on a roll.

After the hackathon - we ended up talking to investors, but decided to pass. This is a double-edged sword with downside.

"Side" projects are hard in the way self-guided learning is hard. You don't have people breathing down your neck periodically to keep you on track.

The further we got along to releasing a Beta the more the "Resistance" crept in. To the point of, as soon as the Beta was released - basically taking several weeks off altogether.

This is where some seed investment would have helped, besides the obvious ability to clear the calendar a bit. Forget big splashes of "raising a ton of money" or an ICO - it's practical to raise a bit money for reasons I mentioned.

</comment><comment><USER44> I've found that if I can't just complete a certain feature, task or function on my product, and it keeps dragging on, then there is likely a reason for it being too difficult (more than just laziness on my part!)

A good approach when this happens is to redefine the feature. Either by reconsidering its importance, investigating different ways to achieve a similar outcome or mostly decomposing the feature into even simpler and more minimal deliverables and implementations.

Then deliver the extremely minimal implementation.

In a lot of cases you then come back and make it more rounded later on, or in many cases, the simpler deliverable is actually all that is required and you move onto something else entirely.

It's taking a disciplined and strict MVP approach to every task you have and focusing more on continual delivery as a north star. This tends to work because – as noted by the author – giving up on a side project is the biggest risk and one of the larger reasons for failure (you can't succeed if you don't show up).

By always delivering something/anything you get the satisfaction and reward of progress which is a lot of times all that is needed to keep going.

</comment><comment><USER45> These questions are telling:

* No one will actually use this. * Will designers really find this useful? * What if you launch and no one finds it valuable?

Why not do some basic user research and get people to pay for it? This isn't some new ground, there are literally hundreds of internet gurus all saying that if you whip up a prototype, present it to people, and they pay for it, you'll have a higher chance of success.

<comment><USER31> Do you have experience with this? What if your prototype doesn't have any of the important functionality?

<comment><USER45> Then you analyze feedback and redo your prototype with what your customers need?

The key thing is understand the underlying desire. Ford is famous for saying that if he asked people, they would tell him they wanted a faster horse. He understood they wanted a quicker means of transportation, so he built a car. That's what you do with the feedback of the prototype. Listen to responses, and adjust or abandon.

As for experience? Not directly, but seriously, this isn't hard. This is literally the standard way every successful businesses operate. They analyze market demand, built an answer, get feedback, and adjust. Only very rarely does an individual's personal itch ever become a successful product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> The real reason they're hard is the employment contracts that forbid them (or surrender their ownership, which is almost worse)

<comment><USER47> Just because you sign a contract doesn't mean it's enforceable.

<comment><USER27> Bingo- has there actually been a recorded case of this happening to someone who's working on an unrelated project? Obviously if you copy your employers product or do something very similar it's suspect, but if you work for a defense contractor and build a social network for cats in your spare time, they're not going to care

<comment><USER46> Are there recorded cases of this happening where the employee won? I've heard of those 'used a company laptop to work on the project so the employer is out for you' cases, but never read much in detail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> My breakthrough this year has been working on a side project that really really isn't just me. It's a collaboration with a small research group at a university.

I do my stuff mainly outside of work, and generally am improving the group's overall research bandwidth, rather than taking a full project on all by myself. Having some social obligation to keep the relationship going is enough to overcome a lot of the little hurdles, and having some excited feedback when I make some genuine progress is super helpful. It's also been a great chance to just meet lots of lovely people in the community, and having the communication has helped me make progress much faster than I would have on my own.

And best of all, I get to have the feeling of doing some real Science, in an important but generally underfunded problem space. It's been great.

<comment><USER42> Would you be comfortable to share what you are working on?

I'd love to be a part of something like that... but definitely don't have the network for it.

<comment><USER48> I spent about a year or so reading and reimplementing interesting papers around machine learning on audio - probably six months was actually getting to know signal processing in a real way and learning tensorflow, and then some months doing seq2seq for ASR slightly more seriously. And now I've been doing things that you can find in the lifeclef or dcase competitions, with a group that focuses on one of the sub tasks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Good luck. If you use your side project, it's worth it. If you learned new skills, the project taught you better than any textbook.

Marketing is hard. If you ask people what they want, they don't know what they didn't imagine. (Insert quote by Henry Ford about a faster horse, or the St Pancras train station champagne bar, etc). It's better to build something first, and if people like it, continue developing it.

I've made several Show HN, and occasionally even been offered jobs that way. I need a job now, and I've tried some more projects with that purpose, sadly without success. I think it shows motivation and initiative far better than a résumé, though, and attracts like-minded new friends.

<comment><USER42> Landing a job you deem [almost] perfect for you is, as many other things, a matter of luck beyond many other factors.

Very uncomfortable truth and something I had to gradually accept over being unemployed for 6 months (in fairness, I had enough money reserves to live very comfortably for 4 of them).

I am not gonna bore you with my story but the bottom line is -- keep trying. As you said, marketing is hard. But very, VERY essential, including in how do you present yourself in interviews. In the end what landed me the job was an injection of optimism I got from a really good massage by my wife and then 8 hours of tight sleep -- I used that optimism to send out several more job applications to leads I deemed highly unlikely to even get a response from. And lo and behold, 3 days later I successfully moved through all phases of the interview process of one of the companies, and I am starting in several days.

Don't let a bad period get to your head, no matter how long it may be. Persistence is basically your #1 advantage.

Good luck to you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> As a perfectionist myself, I continue to learn that you have to live with some "shit" in order to get your stuff out there. There's the tendency to rewrite/refactor, this makes side projects harder than it needs to be. It's self-defeating, really. There's plenty of time if you succeed, but no time if you don't.

The perfectionism also prevents shipping because you want to avoid the impending negative feedback of your current project, and so you bounce off to something else.

How to overcome? Experience (and failures) helps. You've spent so much perfection on something and it still didn't succeed the way you hoped. The next time you would care less about perfection and just ship.

</comment><comment><USER51> I can't relate to this at all, I work on a side-project for a week or so and then launch it. Here's last week's, a community of maintainers that aims to maintain abandoned FOSS projects:

[https://www.codeshelter.co/](https://www.codeshelter.co/)

Why rewrite stuff? Just see if people want what you're building first and then figure out whether it's well-written or needs a rewrite.

</comment><comment><USER52> A note to the author: this is by far the whitest font I saw on so many light gray text on white background sites. Why? It's beyond readability.

<comment><USER53> Yeah, it's unreadable. Too bad, the article seemed interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I too have a side project that is nearing completion but I'm nervous to launch it. It's nerve-racking not knowing if and when someone might sign up. As a a non-dev it's even harder since I had to pay a developer out of pocket. I'd this doesn't work I'm out of a lot of my personal money.

<comment><USER54> If you don't launch, I can predict with 100% confidence how many people will sign up: 0.

What do you have to lose at this point? The money's already spent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Hi Dave, Kudos for sharing what you experienced. I actually completed a year working on [https://shareseer.com](https://shareseer.com) on thanksgiving day. It is a side project. I have found shipping whenever a small milestone is hit to work for me. Another trick i use is to keep a backlog of items that need to be done, which brings me back to work on it. Thirdly I really care about the problem. Fourth an d finally I realized distribution is a vastly harder problem than product. Getting people to use what you build is the core of whether the product succeeds or not.

</comment><comment><USER56> I think this is natural. The line between a hobby project, and unpaid venture can be quite thin. When your attention is split, it only becomes harder. Most rational people want to live life a little, and not work constantly.

</comment><comment><USER57> Related Ask HN from a few months ago: "Why is nearing completion so demotivating?"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17138794](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17138794)

</comment><comment><USER58> I know I'm nitpicking here, but I find it annoying when people say things like: "If you've yet to read these x books, do yourself a favor and buy them today".

Did myself a "favor" a few times in the past and every single time I only read the first couple of pages and ended up giving them away. Or worse, I get FOMO so I keep those books around and it becomes clutter around my small apartment.

Its hard to focus and read the rest of what the author has to say if he makes blanket statements like that.

<comment><USER59> Worse, the mentioned books are some veiled Christian propaganda, as mentioned in this review: [https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/review/1936891026/R1PIVDBK0NS9D...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/review/1936891026/R1PIVDBK0NS9D3/ref=cm_cr_dp_mb_rvw_6?ie=UTF8&cursor=6)

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> It gets hard at the 90% point because that's when you realize your idea was bad, and nothing you can do at the last 10% will fix that.

</comment><comment><USER61> I've run a side project for about 8 years ( [https://farmshares.info](https://farmshares.info) ) with varying levels of effort and commitment (and income).

I think it's key to realize:

* you have to be really into solving the problem

* you probably aren't going to make much money from it

* a side project is a great way to experiment with different tech

</comment><comment><USER62> Usually, after I build everything out, I debate whether I want to publish my work or not. I find that to be very hard. What motivates me is at least sending it out to my friends and getting validation that this is good and I should share it. So that pushes me to do the extra mile for polish.

</comment><comment><USER63> Great post! Added my two cents: [https://medium.com/@ronreiter/why-side- projects-are-hard-psy...](https://medium.com/@ronreiter/why-side-projects-are- hard-psychologically-speaking-1672331ead79)

</comment><comment><USER64> My year long application update is finally nearing publication. The emotion and fear are very real. The psychosis resembles combat fatigue. It's exhausting to think about, but I know people have waited on this and depend on my delivery.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm three years in.

<comment><USER65> Four here. Cheers!

<comment><USER66> Hello, eight here. Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Just started a side project and hit all of these ideas. For me they just aren't pronounced enough to be stopping points at this early stage. Hope this helps!

</comment><comment><USER68> Obligatory reference to За миллиард лет до конца света: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitely_Maybe_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitely_Maybe_\(novel\))

My friend developed first then Soviet software-controlled modem. He said they experienced more line cut-offs (hangups by telephone line operator) during testing next to the end of project (which was a success). He explained that their modem had crude analog adapter and caused a lot of noise and/or interference with the other phone company machinery. He said he also suspected KGB who they may thought that this is new voice scrambling device.

Basically, the Resistance is real, but can be explained by some real factors, just like in the novel above.

</comment><comment><USER69> Hire a boss ;-)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18512197](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18512197)

</comment><comment><USER70> Purpose pushes us forward. Find yours.

</comment><comment><USER71> Looks more like you're procrastinating writing blog posts

</comment><comment><USER72> Note: this applies to finishing a novel manuscript as well.

Source: self.

</comment><comment><USER73> Why the rewrite from React to vanilla JS?

</comment><comment><USER74> > "GET's"

</comment><comment><USER75> I am amused by how easy I find it to work on corporate drone work 8-12 hours a day + during my vacation, but have a hard time forcing myself to work even a couple of hours on my own stuff.

I think it's because in the end, it's hard to really believe it's not all for nothing.

<comment><USER76> I'm literally laughing out loud. I thought I recognized your username: you were one of the ones calling Boss as a Service a complete scam for losers who have psychological issues motivating themselves. And yet here you are, talking about how it's easy to work on boring corporate stuff _where you have a boss_ , but it's nearly impossible to motivate yourself on your own stuff.

Which is _exactly_ the issue that something like Boss as a Service is there to solve.

It's so perfect that I'm pretty convinced this is a subtle troll on your part.

<comment><USER75> Hmm, saw this just before heading out. It's not a troll. It has nothing to do with having a boss, it has to do with knowing you are getting a guaranteed paycheck and knowing you need that to survive or maintain a certain lifestyle.

<comment><USER77> Not OP and I think too it's not about the boss. But marketing and sales as a service could be a help. I guess this is at least a part of the job that investors are doing for the startups. Maybe not marketing and sales but guidance to get a ROI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Steven Pressfield's War of Art (mentioned in the post) is such a great read when you're stuck - [https://amzn.to/2FF9Nts](https://amzn.to/2FF9Nts)

<comment><USER59> Is it? Not according to this review: [https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/review/1936891026/R1PIVDBK0NS9D...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/review/1936891026/R1PIVDBK0NS9D3/ref=cm_cr_dp_mb_rvw_6?ie=UTF8&cursor=6)

When God entered the picture, I lost all interest.

<comment><USER79> The book invokes the pagan notion of a pantheon of gods, rather than the Judeo-Christian God. He describes a ritual where he propitiates the Muses (the gods of creativity) before sitting down to write. You might find it easier to swallow, because when people invoke the J-C God they often mean it completely literally, while the Muses are clearly allegorical.

But to get through the book, you have to suspend your rational empiricism quite a few times. Perhaps no more than to read The Odyssey or Macbeth, where internal human struggles are illustrated with supernatural imagery.

<comment><USER80> Not true. A quick search of my Kindle version shows references to "God" – the one we all think of as God – twice on p34 then on p86, p109, and so on.

The author believes in God and isn't afraid of letting you know about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Calling procrastination resistance is a bit rich. And wasting time writing a blog post about it ... kind of nullifies the blog post itself.</comment>


Mesh Management (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.robots-everywhere.com/re_wiki/index.php?title=Management

<comment><USER2> "Emergency response is coordinated by anybody who is there and knows what they are doing."

Historically (not talking about management fads) this hasn't worked out well. Best case is it merely devolves into the photo-op. Usually the problem revolves around self assessment of "who knows what they are doing" vs everyone else's assessment, especially when "everyone else" isn't there or there's a continuum of what "there" means.

Aside from that, and the diary thing, this scheme is analogous to typical meatspace 'n' cardboard board game playing. This is how we handle division of labor when we play modern eurogames or old school board games like Monopoly. That it works pretty well when we just want to have fun and there are no real world concerns about the end result can be viewed either optimistically or pessimistically. Don't forget that "winner takes all and almost everyone ends up a powerless loser" is not just a stereotypical board game design, but also a fairly accurate description of our current economic and political system, so its not entirely crazy to compare the two activities.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point...

I should clarify that "anybody who is there" means "whoever happens to be at the scene NOW".

How do you mean modern eurogames?

The nautical industry actually has excellent emergency management protocols in place -- it constantly amazes me that other industries do not copy it.

<comment><USER2> modern eurogame = Powergrid, Agricola, stuff like that. Monopoly is from the USA and the 1930s. Old USA adult games + modern eurogames = complicated adult games.

I was trying to draw distinction between adult board games which are often kinda complicated and kids board games like chutes -n- ladders. If you need an elaborate scheme for distribution of labor when playing "Stone Age" that's normal, but if you need similar elaborate labor sharing agreements for chutes -n- ladders or Uno, you've been playing for booze shots too long or something like that.

<comment><AUTHOR> A Democracy game of Uno sounds like fun... especially with alcohol involved.

I get your point, thanks -- true, game theory often fails to account for the reactions people have when there their self-interest is concerned. If I could fix that, I'd probably rule the world :)

Thank you for your help! How does the other stuff look? I'm going to freeze edits on that page for now, and discuss it here.

<comment><USER2> it looks good, and best of luck to you</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>