I will be losing my Job today... - <AUTHOR>

I'm employed in a software development company as senior programmer, I have a slightly average pay, and good position as head, and being a key person who created their products to keep the company from running, I was ensured to have a full-time job and out of poverty for the coming days, months or years...
But in the past few months, I felt I was bored of the things I do, because back in College I spend 2 years doing this kind of desktop based software, and now after 2 years, I keep doing the same thing...
I remember while back in College, I enjoy doing web applications and creating and designing web UI's and I was really good at it making websites attractive and at the same time, useful and functional.
This is my real passion, creating innovative web applications and solutions, and also designing it on the process.
2 years ago, I learned Python and CherryPy, and in practice locally, I was very productive and be able to create a very nice web application with it. Then a year ago, I learned Ruby, then Rails, and I was also very productive with it.
I have a pending project with my current company, and my development is slow because I don't enjoy doing scripts, desktop applications anymore, but I was making sure that I will meet the deadline, after all, it was a piece of cake coding.
And now, I posted something on my Facebook, a very cool web application that I made and uploaded to heroku which I envision that will change the way people do things... But my project manager and employer responded to that Facebook post, and I have sms messages from them asking me where's my reports, my progress with the company project, and an e-mail is also sent to me asking me all the stuff about that I should be finishing and doing... Additionally, I'm expecting a bad e-mail in progress...
This is what I really want to do, but I have pending jobs in my current company, and also my salary advances isn't paid yet, and I don't have money because I use it all to pay the bills...
Now I'm in a situation, where I will be facing poverty and unemployment in the next few weeks or months, but deep in my heart, I will pursue what I really want to do and what makes me happy... I will pursue this vision that I have, but no money to buy domain, cigarettes, and will be starving...
Do you have any advice to give? <comment><USER2> Advice for the future: 1) Chase your passion! I'm currently unemployed as well, but I've spent the last decade mostly getting paid to do the things I like to do. For me, that's Information Security.

2) Lock down your facebook profile and don't mistake co-workers for "friends" on social networks. I might let a few "cool" co-workers befriend me online, but in Facebook, I put all my co-workers in a list, and they don't see things that might be used against me later.

3) It sounds like you posted stuff on Facebook while at work, and maybe even worked on your side project on company time. Stop that. It's bad for everyone involved.

4) Be a tad more frugal with your funds once money starts coming in again.

5) If you're near a major city here in the US, there are pantries that will give you free food if you're unemployed. It might be expired (or nearly so) but it's edible.

Good luck, mate! It's tough out here.

</comment><comment><USER3> You are definitely exaggerating. First you say you have reasonable pay and then you talk of poverty and starvation!

As long as you have not done any of your web app work in company time, you have nothing to be guilty about. If you have, first own up. And then, take extra time to make up and finish company work. Otherwise you are just cheating someone who has trusted you (they employed you).

Lastly, most people cannot be creative in the face of poverty and starvation (if you weren't exaggerating. maybe you had some big loans to pay off). Poverty is too fundamental a problem to think of anything else. Think of trying to build a great new web app when you are stranded in an island struggling for survival. Not many can do that.

If you can get by for a year without earning, just quit and do what you like. Being bored and unhappy just ends up fucking your total life and you realize this when you get older.

</comment><comment><USER4> I can't have sympathy for you. You're admitting to slacking off on the job. People with financial worries don't have that luxury.

There are two ways to interpret your Facebook post. Either you wanted to force yourself into this compromised position (if pain is better than boredom), or you're just plain stupid.

The good news is that you won't starve. I've been working since I'm 12 as a lawn mower, lumberjack, tree planter, mover, security guard, research assistant, and professional engineer. People who are willing to work don't starve.

Life did not hand you lemons. You put yourself in this mess, so suck it up and don't expect anyone to feel sorry for you.

<comment><USER5> Seems like he's looking for advice, not sympathy.

Even he admits he didn't handle this the best way, but there's no shame in wanting to align your personal interests with your daily work.

I think the real lesson to be learned here is not to be afraid to use the Facebook limited profile on people that aren't close friends or family.

<comment><USER4> Put yourself in the shoes of his employer, or of his colleagues who depend on him.

Being enthusiastic about new technologies on the side is fine, but no excuse to do a half-assed job.

<comment><USER5> I agree, I just don't think tough love over the internet is really going to change his attitude. He knows he was a bad employee, and it wasn't as if he wrote his post bragging about how much slacking off he got away with before, how dumb his bosses are, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> lol. You aren't going to get fired.

How you handle a situation like this: -Give them a date for when the report will come in. Try to focus these guys on the current solution not the situation.

So, maybe something like "Sorry, I didn't know you were expecting a report from me, but I am willing to provide you a report in 2 days".

If you didn't do anything that is worth reporting, say so. :D

Here again focus them on the solution, say when you will get the scripts done. If possible show them the monetary benefits of you being delayed. :D

Benefits: 1) You are an artist - the delay has helped you to recharge your batteries so you can program effectively. You might want to cite some research papers here.

2) You were using this time to show your juniors the ropes and you were bring them up to speed. Which means the company will not only be fighting with one heavyweight, but also two in the future. You might want to outline the monetary advantages of having more people of your caliber.

Then you need to iterate this to them that you will get them the software by such and such a time. Don't ask, tell.

Also, what I think you should be doing for the future is maintaining constant communication with the upper level. They will tend to think you aren't doing anything if you don't say. Try to send an email a day to them informing them of the project, don't do this verbal; do it by email. It will also help for you own motivation. See goal setting theory :<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goal-setting_theory>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Update: I'm earning 440 USD a month. It's a slightly average pay here in my country I live in. I'm not in the U.S.

It is currently Sunday here, and I posted the web application today on Facebook, and not during work, but my boss just notice it and felt paranoid.

<comment><USER7> > It's a slightly average pay

Slightly above average or slightly below average?

Maybe you work in Zimbabwe or something, but that's way below average for a programmer even in relatively low-pay countries like Romania and India (I have worked with companies in both and personally know the people involved).

Don't confuse average salaries in general with the average salaries in your industry!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> First things First: If there's a life lesson to be learned here it's "make sure you clarify how the company feels about personal projects when you're interviewing for a job". Many companies don't care while others take a hard line (and depending on what contract you sign they could even claim your personal project belongs to them).

That said I think you're over reacting a little. It sounds to me like you're just going to get yelled at. Even if you are fired you have to understand there's never been a better time to be unemployed. I mean, it's not a good situation under any circumstances but with so many others unemployed the social safety net in just about every country in the world has been extended greatly. So your life style will have to change but you aren't going to starve or be homeless.

Beyond that you should do what you said. Work on your personal projects, interview for jobs and check out the freelance sites for short jobs that can give you domain buying money.

</comment><comment><USER9> I quit my job with a friend of mine somewhat for the creeping boredom you talked about to work on my own startup. It wasn't the only reason but one of the major reasons. I had 8 months of savings (Am from India) which ran out in 6. And then to sustain ourselves we are now doing freelance dev work 30 hours a week per person. It took us one month (from the day we started looking) to get a freelance dev work fortunately for us, its a long term project.

I guess if you are good in web development, it shouldn't be hard for you to get a freelance gig. Start looking on rentacoder, odesk or elance. All the best. Hang in there, something good will come up

Cheers

P.S - People have talked about it and I agree its hard to work on your own startup and do freelancing on the side. We didn't have any other option

</comment><comment><USER10> If you're actually making average software developer pay, how is it that you don't have money left over at the end of the month to tuck away into savings? You're either spending like crazy or you're being underpaid.

Anyways, if your passion is web development, then find a web development job. They're not that hard to come across. I personally know of several companies in the bay area that are dying to hire good python web developers, and if you're not in the bay area, consider moving here :)

</comment><comment><USER11> Well, if you want to do some rails work I might have something for you... You can contact me at jobs -squiggly sign- agiletomato.com

</comment><comment><USER12> I think IT professionals should plan their retirement by 40.

</comment><comment><USER13> just wondering about these details: are you located in the united states? and you're two years out of college?

</comment><comment><USER14> No money to buy cigarettes? That must be deeply upsetting.

I don't think it's right to have "no money to buy food" and "no money to buy cigarettes" in the same sentence.

<comment><USER15> It is deeply upsetting if you're a smoker. If he's going through a tough time, nicotine withdrawal is going to be an unnecessary addition to his problems.

<comment><USER16> Not necessarily. Many can stop smoking without withdrawal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why not start a startup?</comment>


Office Code Pro Updated with Italics - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nathco/Office-Code-Pro/releases

<comment><USER2> "Office Code Pro is a customized version of Source Code Pro... The customizations were made specifically for text editors and coding environments, ..."

Interesting, a customized version of a "Source Code" font enhanced for coding and named "Office Code". Am I reading that right?

<comment><USER3> Assuming the name was changed because "Source" is the reserved font name in the SIL Open Font License.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's wonderful to see the improvement on SourceCode Pro font. Can I have a request? Is there any possible to include font awesome ([https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font- Awesome](https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome)) because of this under terminal? ([https://github.com/arialdomartini/oh-my- git](https://github.com/arialdomartini/oh-my-git)). Currently my setup on both OSX and Linux is using SourceCode Pro with Powerline Plus Awesome font from here ([https://github.com/gabrielelana/awesome-terminal- fonts/tree/...](https://github.com/gabrielelana/awesome-terminal- fonts/tree/patching-strategy)). Honestly my setting is too complicated I think.

</comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for this, it seems nice. I've been using SCP for quite a while and this looks like a nice enough improvement to make me switch. I like the inclusion of the Powerline symbols and the tweaks I've noticed to the glyphs and spacing.

<comment><AUTHOR> This isn't my repo, only posted it, but I agree with your observations. The subtleties really make this great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you're trying to get this to work in a Java IDE on OSX (IDEA/PhpStorm for me) the only way I could get real italics to work was to put the TTF (not OTF) fonts into /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home/lib/fonts

Obviously this path will be different if you've changed your IDE to use a different JRE, but they seem to need to live in the Java home lib/fonts directory otherwise they aren't treated right.

I also had to pick the medium weight because regular rendered like light. The font situation with Java on OSX seems very strange.

</comment><comment><USER7> Any image showing the diff between this and Source Code Pro? (The "preview" in the README doesn't actually work.)

</comment><comment><USER7> Is this using the "beta" italic that Adobe have been working on, or something else?

[https://github.com/adobe-fonts/source-code- pro/issues/6](https://github.com/adobe-fonts/source-code-pro/issues/6)</comment>


The Kill Chain - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-kill-chain <comment><USER2> The entire series was submitted here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10392636](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10392636)</comment>


Large-Scale Long-Tailed Recognition in an Open World - <AUTHOR> https://bair.berkeley.edu/blog/2019/05/13/oltr/ <comment><USER2> This is interesting but suffers from not being written by native speakers. For example this section is unclear

"Firstly, we obtain a visual memory by aggregating the knowledge from both head and tail classes. Then the visual concepts stored in the memory are infused back as associated memory feature to enhance the original direct feature. It can be understood as using induced knowledge (i.e. memory feature) to assist the direct observation (i.e. direct feature)."

What is a "visual memory?" Are they talking about a learned feature space? An architecture isn't even mentioned. The word "infused" is used repeatedly in the post but isn't well defined. Do they mean that there is a concatenation of vectors? Or, from the diagram, is there an attentional weighting mechanism in play?

I'm sure I'll understand more when I read the paper, but this blog post doesn't have the intended effect reaching a broader audience through the use of plain language.</comment>


"Inanity of Overeating" ignores the bacon in the room - <AUTHOR> http://crazybear.posterous.com/how-1-graph-reveals-what-3000-words-tried-to

<comment><USER2> That doesn't counter his point at all. The difference between "obesity" and "maintaining weight" is still implausibly thin; what Gary was talking about in the first place was the delta in the top two lines, not the net total. He mentions that more obese people eventually do reach an energy balance, which obviously happens because they income and outflow eventually balance, which is a sign that he understands that. (Sixth paragraph, starts with "First, obese people tend to be weight stable for long periods of their life".) You didn't disprove his argument, you just reiterated bits of it, only with less comprehension and a math simulation disconnected from what actually happens (your simulation lacks the relative stability that people reach and simulates the clearly false scenario in which people become fatter without bound). ("relative stability" - there is a long-term weight gain over pretty much everybody's life but when people become obese they can do so much more rapidly than ~1lb/year)

(Personally I'd break it down to the individual meals since that's where satiety occurs and now we're talking about a delta of 3 or 4 calories. It's an absurd argument. Nothing is that precise without a feedback loop. And if a feedback loop is involved, the idea that the feedback loop is what is broken is hardly that odd an idea.)

I'm seeing a lot more people declare that Taubes is wrong or obviously a crank that there are people actually demonstrating a comprehension of his points, which I tend to consider a prerequisite for an actually-effective "debunking". Maybe he's wrong, but it's not because of people arguing against points he's not even making while blatently missing the ones he is.

<comment><AUTHOR> _(your simulation lacks the stability that people reach and simulates the clearly false scenario in which people become fatter without bound)_

True. All I did was graph the exact scenario Taubes himself described. If it is unrealistic, take it up with him.

The only difference is that I didn't "forget" to mention the 7 strips of bacon the obese person consumes in excess of the thin person.

<comment><USER3> What you appear to be aggressively declining to understand, despite two prior commenters clearly explaining it--including the one that you're responding to here--is that Taubes does not argue that 20 extra calories a day makes a person fat. He argues the precise opposite, in fact, at great length and in some detail.

<comment><AUTHOR> What you appear to be aggressively declining to understand is that I'm arguing that Taube's straw man is misleading. I'm not claiming his main thesis is wrong, I couldn't even figure out from the blog post what that thesis is.

He used a misleading straw man: "Look, modern medical science says only 20 cals a day makes you obese! I'll repeat 20 cals/day many times, and tell you it's just a couple of gulps of beer. I'll never mention the other 100-350 cals/day (depending on year) once in 3000 words. Only 20 cals/day must be wrong, go read my book to learn the truth! Now for a made up dialogue between myself and a personified straw man!"

Yes, technically he made no untrue claims. He just deliberately failed to mention that the straw man has a good point: 7.5 sticks of bacon/day will make you fat while 7.0 sticks of bacon will only keep you fat once you are already fat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a brilliant graph, but I don't think you are reading Taubes' article correctly. He is not offering "straightforward calculations", rather he is setting up a "straw man" ("Aunt Sally") which he feels represents the "almost incomprehensibly naïve and wrong-headed" conventional wisdom. Like you, Taubes does not believe that 20 calories a day is a good way to represent the difference between an obese and non-obese individual.

While it's obvious from the response here on HN that he fails to make this clear, he's setting up a contrafactual argument. He's lamenting that even the best science writers we have (like Jonah Lehrer) seem to offer only simplistic truisms like the 20 calories myth. You point out (correctly) that 20 calories is misleading by using a brilliant graph. Taubes attempts (and apparently fails) to bring it down with logic and rhetoric.

Now, it's true that Taubes wouldn't fully agree with your graph. He believes that 'calories' themselves are a faulty way of viewing the world, and that the composition of the food matters more than the calculated calories. He believes it matters whether that 450 additional calories are corn syrup or lean steak. But at base, you are not disagreeing with him, and your (wonderful and to the point) graph is not contradicting anything he's saying.

I'm just finding it now, but the blog post refers to a chapter in his book: [http://books.google.com/books?id=Pm9ZcFYtLZ4C&pg=PT68...](http://books.google.com/books?id=Pm9ZcFYtLZ4C&pg=PT68&lpg=PT68) Perhaps that will be a clearer exposition of his beliefs?

<comment><USER5> I've heard this one before. "Taubes's argument is more complex than that. You need to spend more hours studying those pages, and read books x, y, and z." It's the same argument they give in college English classes for deconstructionism and all that other nonsense.

Taubes is a journalist. The people on HN are several standard deviations ahead of his audience. If he's doing his job shouldn't we all be able to understand him without any trouble? Here's a simpler argument: Taubes is wrong, and that's where the problem is.

<comment><USER4> _Taubes is a journalist._

Well, sort of. He also has an undergrad degree in Physics from Harvard and masters in Engineering from Stanford. Which doesn't mean he's right, but it does make him better qualified as a science journalist than most.

 _The people on HN are several standard deviations ahead of his audience._

Yes, and this is what's making me want to cry. This is one of the few audiences that knows what 'reductio ad absurdum' means, and yet bright people (whom I respect) seem unable to grasp what to me seems to me a fairly obvious argument. Are contrafactuals truly so rare as to be unrecognizable?

 _Ignoring the fact that his science is wrong._

Sure, it might be, but the commentary so far has not been about "his science" but about his portrayal of conventional wisdom, which he also agrees is wrong. It's like pointing out that a mathematician is obviously a fool for saying "Let us assume momentarily that the square root of two is a rational number" as the preamble to a proof.

It feels like a scene from Idiocracy. It's not that Taubes is wrong, it's that you are misreading his argument. I'm not arguing that "it's complex" --- although I'll happily stand up to defend deconstructionism --- rather I'm trying to tell you that you are in agreement with Taubes that the conventional wisdom is rubbish.

Now, if you want to point out the flaws in his actual argument and say that there is no difference between calories from carbs and from proteins, please do! But insisting that he's wrong because it really takes more than 20 calories sounds an awful lot like chanting "Brawndo's got electrolytes".

It's a new year. I want to regain my faith in the world. Please stop making me cry.

<comment><AUTHOR> _This is one of the few audiences that knows what 'reductio ad absurdum' means, and yet bright people (whom I respect) seem unable to grasp what to me seems to me a fairly obvious argument._

The problem is that his reducto ad absurdum isn't that absurd. It only sounds that way because he spends 3000 words ignoring 90-95% of the actual argument (specifically, 171 calories out of 191 in year 10).

The full argument: 7.5 strips of bacon/day will make you fat (technically fewer strips in earlier years, but you get the picture). 7 strips will maintain your current level of obesity, the extra 0.5 strips will allow you to gain an extra 2 lbs.

The argument as present by Taubes: only 0.5 strips of bacon in excess of maintenance is enough to explain the difference between an obese person? That's ridiculous!

<comment><USER4> Both of these are fair questions: is Taubes accurately portraying the conventional wisdom, and what difference in diet corresponds to what final weight maintained?

Yes, Taubes is presenting a very weak version of the argument. But I think he does this for good reason: it's the camel's nose in the tent, it's the NRA's (legitimate?) fear about reasonable gun control laws. Once he can show that the simple version can be questioned, he opens room for further questioning. And I don't think that his portrayal of conventional wisdom is that far off: we have entire industries based on shaving off a few calories from our desserts, and many people seem to believe that if the fat slobs would just park at the far end of the parking lot and walk another 100 feet they wouldn't be fat.

He doesn't present the version you offer because he doesn't believe it. You're presuming that its possible to eat an additional half a slice of bacon a day and have no other effects other than maintaining a stable weight of 2 lbs greater after a year. You're also presuming that this effect would be achieved by eating an additional sugar cube. Traditional calorie counting would also imply that you'd be in the same place if instead of the bacon or sugar cube every morning that you ate an entire 7200 calories pecan pie once a year at Thanksgiving.

Taubes says this is also wrong: bacon and sugar are metabolized differently, and will have different effects on your body. Both will also have side effects on appetite and energy level. How sure are you that they are the same? How sure are you that timing doesn't make a difference? How would you design a solution to obesity that is more effective than merely encouraging people to eat a little bit less and to exercise a little bit more?

I think these are good questions, and still open to discussion. Likely there are better approaches than Taubes', but I think he's a bright guy on the right path. At the least, I think it's worth attacking his actual thesis rather than complaining that his straw man doesn't fight back as strongly as it should.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Once he can show that the simple version can be questioned, he opens room for further questioning._

If you want to call the simple version of a theory into question, present the simple version of the theory. Don't obscure 90% of it. Taubes doesn't present the version I described because the version I described is pretty hard to question. Has Taubes shown us that we need to question the theory that 7.5 extra strips of bacon each day will make you fat?

Also, no one believes that traditional calorie counting is perfect. It's a good first approximation, but there are corrections to be made. You've identified one - you can't absorb 7200 calories in a single day. But then again, I never heard anyone in the nutritional mainstream claim that Thanksgiving dinner is what is making America fat. They just make claims like, for example, 7.5 strips of bacon/day might make you fat, and 7.0 strips of bacon will keep you fat but not make you fatter. (Substitute cookies for bacon if you want.) There are others, many of which are already well known. Pick up any sports medicine book to learn all about them.

As for "designing a solution to obesity", we already have the solution for the vast majority of people: eat less and exercise more. Taubes is trying to sell books by misleading people about the theory underlying that solution (i.e., ignoring 90% of it). It's hard to see how that is helping us get to a better solution than what we have now.

 _And I don't think that his portrayal of conventional wisdom is that far off: we have entire industries based on shaving off a few calories from our desserts, and many people seem to believe that if the fat slobs would just park at the far end of the parking lot and walk another 100 feet they wouldn't be fat._

You seem to be confusing mainstream nutrition science with people hawking their own wares. Modern medical science, in the form of an about.com calculator, says that you burn about 2 calories by walking 100 feet.

<http://walking.about.com/library/cal/uccalc1.htm>

It might not be exactly right - maybe it's 1.5, maybe it's 2.5. But it's a good first approximation, and so is calorie counting.

<comment><USER4> _But then again, I never heard anyone in the nutritional mainstream claim that Thanksgiving dinner is what is making America fat._

Well, it is the opening sentence of the Jonah Lehrer piece which Taubes is critiquing:

"Thanksgiving has always been a day of delicious gluttony. According to the American Council on Exercise, the average adult consumes nearly 4,500 calories at the Thanksgiving table, which is about twice the recommended daily intake."

This, following immediately after the title "The Real Culprit in Overeating" could cause the impression that Lehrer (one of the best science journalists out there) is claiming that Thanksgiving dinner is what is making America fat.

 _You seem to be confusing mainstream nutrition science with people hawking their own wares._

I don't think so, although I will request a certain artistic license. I was thinking primarily of the signs up in my local Kaiser health facility encouraging people to take the stairs (rather than the elevator) in the parking garage. Mind you, I do take the stairs, and think it's a good thing. But like Taubes (who looks quite fit and trim in his publicity photos), I'm not sure this is an adequate solution to a national health crisis. Or at the least, I'm concerned that this solution is not currently working that well.

Overall, I think you're selling Taubes a bit short. If he's a hack flogging his books for sake of nothing but sales, he's at least got a better basis than most. Time will tell, of course, but I'm betting that in the end he wins the calorie counting argument, and the idea of counting all calories as equal regardless of source won't last.

<comment><AUTHOR> From Lehrer's article: "Why do we overeat? This isn't just a problem on Thanksgiving, of course: More than a third of Americans are obese, which means that we eat way too much every day."

Regardless, Taubes wasn't pointing out that calorie counting fails on a once a year gorging incident, he was discussing a daily increase in intake. Calorie counting works pretty well for such things.

 _Time will tell, of course, but I'm betting that in the end he wins the calorie counting argument, and the idea of counting all calories as equal regardless of source won't last._

If that's all he is arguing, then he is doing nothing but pushing mainstream nutrition science. But if that were what he is doing, why mislead people about what calorie counting actually claims? Why not show the actual claims of calorie counting, and then show how they can be 10-20% off in some cases?

By the way, every single sports medicine textbook already does this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What I find odd about the level of debate on this topic is that Taubes' thesis is easily tested empirically. Give up grains & carbs for a couple of months and see what happens. If, like me, you lose 30 pounds and lower your cholesterol significantly, then all the better. But if not, at least you'll be arguing from something other than "this violates the conventional wisdom." (Remember when the conventional wisdom promoted margarine and said eggs were bad?)

<comment><USER7> What do you think you have shown? Did you make sure to maintain the same caloric intake when you gave up carbs? You lost 30lbs so how do you know that your lower cholesterol was due to no carbs and not simply weight loss?

Most people on low-carb diets end up eating less calories, thus weight loss occurs (pretty basic, but it doesn't sell pop science books very well). I agree that no-carb is a viable strategy to cutting calories in a not have to calorie count way [1], but I'm willing to bet if you simply cut your calories and kept the same macro (P/C/F) percentages as before your diet you would have lost the same amount of weight.

[1] Going no-carb cuts out LOTS of the typical snack food that people eat and don't realize all the extra calories they are picking up.

<comment><USER6> I didn't go into a lot of detail in my original comment, but basically before going low carb a) I was doing a low fat, almost vegetarian diet, b) I was always hungry, c) I was losing weight, but very slowly. When I went low carb, a) I stopped counting calories entirely, b) I stopped feeling hungry (in fact, I rarely feel like snacking), c) I lost weight effortlessly (without even exercising!), and d) there were lots of other side benefits, such as elimination of the post lunch sleepies.

So, no, it wasn't a scientifically controlled experiment, and perhaps you could theoretically achieve the same results via a standard calorie restricted diet. (I'm not willing to regain 30 pounds to rerun the experiment... ;)) All I can conclude that in my case, low carb works and is much easier to maintain than a low fat (high carb) diet. And it's really easy to try.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't know why Taubes gets so much play on HN. His science is bad and his studies are cherry picked [1] for whatever narrative he wants to sell. For a large group of people who usually are critical thinkers I'm surprised at what passes for real nutrition science on HN.

IMHO, if you want to read good diet information from someone who not only knows what he is talking about, but also uses it in practice every day look up Alan Aragon [2]. I particularly like him because he is a research fanatic and understands the difference between high and low quality studies.

BTW, I am in no way affiliated with him at all, but have read his stuff for years.

[1] <http://weightology.net/?p=265> -great read with LOTS of links to studies that Taubes conveniently (purposely?) ignored

[2] <http://www.alanaragonblog.com/>

</comment><comment><USER8> Hm, this also negates what I thought was Gary Taubes's most interesting point -- why is it that obese people eventually maintain their weight rather than keep gaining. But if the maintenance need increases with body weight, there is no need to postulate any interesting regulation mechanism: just eating a constant amount of food would do it.

<comment><USER9> No, in the graph, the green line is pulling the red line up - this is exactly what Taubes says is wrong because the delta is so small. The blue line is a red herring because that's no longer the maintenance weight.

Taubes is saying that kind of precision in calorie counting is absurd, so can't be the explanation for other people that have constant weight over decades. How could a person on the blue line have eaten with such a small margin of error?

It's incredibly difficult to eat a constant amount. People generally eat to satiety, and that changes with weight. The hypothesis Taubes puts forward in the book is that increased weight causes one to eat more, not the other way around (which is conventional wisdom). So the question is, what caused the weight gain (fat storage)? Taubes argues in the book, it's carbs and insulin, not dietary fat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Rearranging the Harris-Benedict Equation the author uses, and holding height, exercise and calorie intake constant, you get an expected increase in weight of a bit over a pound a year -- so just "eating like you're 30" alone would explain 20 of the 40 extra pounds the 50 years old in the original article is carrying...

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't understand how author reasons that in his graph the "calories/day" for fat guy will be increasing with age, and for "lean" guy they will be decreasing.

OK, so if metabolic rate is slowing with age, I would guess the "fat" guy's graph would not be so steep, or actually would be a level line (eating the same amounts of food), while for "lean" guy the line will be somewhat downward sloping (eating less the older he gets).</comment>


Technology leadership lessons from TV show writing - daniel-tlt21 https://www.tlt21.com/tech-leadership-lessons-from-tv/ <comment><AUTHOR> Most television writing is terrible. Dialogue seems to be written to sound cool - structure or sense be damned. Characters talk past each other constantly. Plots waver around like drunken louts. It all lacks coherency.

I can't help but think that a lot of it is to do with the collaborative writing process, with frequent fast rewriting. Films suffer the same. Shows with one writer or at least a very strong creative lead are usually much more coherent.

Television is being carried by production values at the moment. It looks and sounds great!

<comment><USER2> > Characters talk past each other constantly.

To be fair, that is something that definitely often happen in real life.

That aside, I find HBO or netflix series writing much better then the one in movies. The movies became too formulaic over time, relying on the same simplified character stereotypes over and over. The movie plots also tend to move in predictable streamlined ways. The film writing tend to follow stiffing rules.

<comment><USER3> _movies became too formulaic over time_

Don't forget about the endless reboots. E.g. Batman in film: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_in_film](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_in_film)

1940s (before my time)

1966 movie

1987+ reboot with 4 movies

2005+ reboot with 3 movies

2021 apparently yet another reboot

I probably got some of that wrong, because there's just too many of them. And I probably missed some. And that doesn't include the "extended universe".

Sigh. Can't they find any other stories to tell?

I think the same applies to e.g. Spider Man? Countless reboots? Don't people get reboot fatigue? Or does enough time pass that the movies simply appeal to a new audience?

<comment><USER4> Many of us would be proud to have built systems that go > 15 years between reboots.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >With over 200 TV shows produced per year, the TV business could be the closest equivalent to the technology world

Why do people always oversell the equivalence of software and thing-that-is- not-software when trying to take lessons from the other thing?

They're both collaborative creative processes with scheduled product deliverables. That's where the similarity start and end.

If the author could admit the ways live action production is sharply divergent from software development and show how the translatable advice crosses the gap, then I might care what the rest of this article has to say.

</comment><comment><USER6> With the state of scripts of recent TV shows, I am not sure this is a good idea.</comment>


Don't get bitten by Bitcoins - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/11/opinion/angel-bitcoin-currency/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_topstories+%28RSS%3A+Top+Stories%29

<comment><USER2> "I would certainly not trust my life savings to some mysterious computer algorithm created by shadowy anonymous characters in a system that attracts underworld types."

Yes, because the central banks' hands are clean and they would never screw over customers for their own gain.... Oh wait....

I'm not saying Bitcoins are some magical currency that herald a new age of money but rather this article ignores many of the positives of Bitcoin while using week arguments to attack it.</comment>


Startup Quote: Jack Dorsey, Co-founder, Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/9615329871

<comment><AUTHOR> Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details to perfect.

\- Jack Dorsey (@jack)

<http://startupquote.com/post/9615329871></comment>


Slow-Motion Footage Captures Rubber Band Ripples - <AUTHOR> https://physics.aps.org/articles/v11/136 <comment><USER2> This reminds me of something I observed with water. If you get a thin, smooth, and clear (no air bubbles) stream of water coming out of a faucet, you can put your finger into the stream and it will cause a disruption of the smooth flow of water up to an inch _above_ your finger. It's subtle and you might have to look at it in the right lighting to notice. I guess it's not too surprising since the speed of sound through water is faster than the water is falling, so the waves are able to propagate up the falling stream.

</comment><comment><USER3> > The ripples reduce the tension around the thumb, allowing the thumb to drop > quickly, before the rear of the band reaches it.

I don't think you need ripples for this...? The tension on your thumb is plenty capable of pulling it out of the way of the oncoming rubber band. I assumed this was just part of elemental rubber band shooting technique.

</comment><comment><USER4> I love that the article explains why it doesn't strike the thumb. Sometimes I am not fast enough and it does hit my thumb, which is why I opt for the method where you wind it around your thumb to create a trigger.</comment>


Hills Hoist: The Iconic Rotary Clothesline that Shaped Suburban Australia - <AUTHOR> http://99percentinvisible.org/article/hills-hoist-iconic-rotary-clothesline-shaped-suburban-australia/ <comment><USER2> Just as iconic is the Montreal clothesline, strung on 3 levels along the length of terrace houses. They are like conveyor belts for clothes, and fantastically efficient.

[https://www.flickr.com/groups/cordes-a-linge- mtl/](https://www.flickr.com/groups/cordes-a-linge-mtl/)

It is sad that so many areas in North America banned the clothes line, a massive impact on the environment and incredibly expensive.

<comment><USER3> I remember those back when I lived in Montreal when I was a kid. We were on the top floor and I would attach an action figure with parachute to it. I'd send him out over the yard and use a string to release him.

Back then we figured out ways to keeps ourselves entertained. No computers or tablets so it was either be bored or figure something out that was fun and wouldn't get you into trouble.... much.

<comment><USER4> Did you wear onions on your belts?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> These used to be ubiquitous in New Zealand backyards as well, although now everyone has the variety that extends or folds out from the side of the house.

The only people I can think of that has one now are my Grandparents, and they have a farm with plenty of space. I'm sure there's still plenty of concrete pads that formerly held one of these lying around though.

Rather than being a toy as a kid (I don't know why we didn't hang off them much, maybe we weren't allowed) they were an annoying metal obstacle smack bang right in the middle of the lawn, the concrete pads and metal sides intent to injure during a game of backyard cricket or bullrush.

They were solid though, we've broken two of the extendible ones from hanging heavy waterlogged blankets, would never happen with a rotary line.

<comment><USER6> They're still super common in NZ, a lot of older suburban houses have them, particularly outside of Auckland. We have one at home but it's not the folding down type. I never thought of them as being an Aus/NZ thing.

I like the idea of using it for an outdoor shade structure (vintage ad in the OP), will have to try that this summer..

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is even a drinking game that Australian's developed using the Hills Hoist: "Goon of Fortune".

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

</comment><comment><USER8> This article is spot on. I grew up swinging on these as a kid, then helping out with the washing, then playing goon of fortune as I grew up.

</comment><comment><USER9> OT: I am from a large-ish city in Eastern Europe. I grew up calling clothes hangers "trempel". Everyone in my town did. Neither my parents nor my grandparents knew that they had a different name throughout the rest of the Russian speaking word ("plechiki" translated as "little shoulders") and that Trempel was actually a last name of an early manufacturer of them in my area. It's sort of a Xerox vs copy machine thing except here I wouldn't have recognized the other word for it at all, and people from outside my region wouldn't have recognized mine.

</comment><comment><USER10> _" Lance Hill's brother-in-law Harold Ling returned from the war and joined him to form a partnership in 1946. Ling became the key figure in expanding the production and marketing of the Hills Hoists."_

My mum's Uncle Rol, Harolds brother, was a part of the team with the firm. Hills Hoists started with an idea to get into business, between two founders [0] during WW2.

The problem: If you were a housewife with kids there was no easy way to hang clothes. [1] String a rope between two poles was the common way to do things. Two problems, you need two sturdy poles and have to move to hang clothes. The company started in at home in Glenunga, Adelaide. Here is view of the order book and Glen Osmond Road factory in '46\. [2] Every year after that the company size grew, the factory in '47 [3] and so did the team. [4]

If you were a house wife in the 40s, 50s and you needed dry clothes this was the way to do it. [5] There was another manufacturer on the market (Gilbert Tonnes #24553/25 - 1925) [6] but the patent for the winder (gearbox to raise and lower the hoist) expired. It was only in the 50's did Hills decide to file patent on the winding mechanism. [6] I'm not sure how Hills avoided patent infringement here but eventually the Toyne patent expired and on 22nd March, 1956 the patent was applied for the winding mechanism (crown wheel and pinion). [7]

By the 60's the factory had grown somewhat [8] and the move to diversification started. From Hoists, play equipment, then TV servicing, Television antennas, exhausts and electronics. All this was made possible by two founders, and a good core team.

This is what a manufacturing startup looked like in the late 40's, and 1950s. By the 80's this was a billion dollar company that by the 60s expanded into the UK and overseas. If you look through the photos you really get an idea of how many people were employed and what kind of scale the production was.

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/hillsholdingsltd/page2](https://www.flickr.com/photos/hillsholdingsltd/page2)

Most kids who grew up in Australia in my generation, had one of these contraptions in the back yard [9] to swing, hang-off and use in ways not thought of by the founders. [10]

I last saw mums uncle Rol at my grand mothers funeral in '85\. He'd travelled from Adelaide that hot summer and we talked about his war service (Tobruk) and Hoists. Rol offered a job in the electronics division (Antennas), but I was at Uni at that time, declined and thanked him. Computers were my fascination.

Reference

[0] [https://www.flickr.com/photos/hillsholdingsltd/8512016128](https://www.flickr.com/photos/hillsholdingsltd/8512016128)

[1] [https://au.pinterest.com/pin/393009504952667831/](https://au.pinterest.com/pin/393009504952667831/)

[2] [http://nationaltreasures.nla.gov.au/3E/Treasures/item/nla.in...](http://nationaltreasures.nla.gov.au/3E/Treasures/item/nla.int- ex8-s25/) / [https://www.flickr.com/photos/hillsholdingsltd/8531995775](https://www.flickr.com/photos/hillsholdingsltd/8531995775)

[3] [https://www.flickr.com/photos/hillsholdingsltd/8531994695/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/hillsholdingsltd/8531994695/)

[4] [https://www.flickr.com/photos/hillsholdingsltd/8511081973/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/hillsholdingsltd/8511081973/)

[5] [https://www.flickr.com/photos/hillsholdingsltd/8510969367/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/hillsholdingsltd/8510969367/)

[6] [http://pericles.ipaustralia.gov.au/ols/auspat/pdfSource.do?f...](http://pericles.ipaustralia.gov.au/ols/auspat/pdfSource.do?fileQuery=t%8D%91%85%7F%87Y%7E%8E%8B%93%8AB%82%85%88%81%8A%7D%89%81Y%5DqMUNQLNPQQO%5ELJ%8C%80%82Bp%84%81Yp%84%81) (pdf) / [http://s742.photobucket.com/user/bazza4338/media/Stampboards...](http://s742.photobucket.com/user/bazza4338/media/Stampboards/Inventions/HillsHoistPatent1925.jpg.html)

[6] This is the gear mechanism patented [https://www.flickr.com/photos/hillsholdingsltd/8532993704/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/hillsholdingsltd/8532993704/)

[7] [http://www.dinkumaussies.com/INVENTION%2FLance%20Hill.htm](http://www.dinkumaussies.com/INVENTION%2FLance%20Hill.htm)

[8] [https://www.flickr.com/photos/hillsholdingsltd/8533529532](https://www.flickr.com/photos/hillsholdingsltd/8533529532)

[9] [https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/5721585751](https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/5721585751)

[10] [https://www.flickr.com/photos/hillsholdingsltd/8511172789/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/hillsholdingsltd/8511172789/)

</comment><comment><USER11> The price on that thing is insane. $349 for the small model, $1,198 for the big one.[1] A cheap aluminum one is only $49 on Amazon.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/s?field- keywords=hills%20hoist](https://www.amazon.com/s?field-keywords=hills%20hoist)

<comment><USER12> Classic example of durability vs cost. It may seem excessively priced but these things last forever. As in I've seen plenty in heavy use for 60+ years with very few operational problems (maybe the wind up mechanism for adjusting height might be a little stiff but still very usable). Big up front cost but it ends up being a decent investment if you can afford it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Over engineered?

Precisely zero of these clothes lines made it to the UK - you never see them - so there must be a reason for that. In the UK they may have failed compared to the more modern rotary design because that uses far less metal and does not have the heavy and unnecessary handle. In the UK portability probably matters more due to the rain.

<comment><USER14> These are not designed to be portable, though demountable/removable ones certainly exist nowadays. At both of my houses in Sydney when growing up, they were set in the ground in concrete.

So, I am not surprised you'd never see these anywhere outside of a generally sunny climate. Space is also a factor - the average yard size in Australia is far larger than that of the UK, though it is shrinking in the major cities.

The handle certainly helps to prevent head injuries when mowing the lawn around them. I've hurt myself a few times after forgetting to wind ours back up.

<comment><USER15> My mom used to use something like this in Upstate NY. If t wasn't below freezing, it would work just fine.

Typically if the weather was nice we would hang the clothes before school/work, and they'd be done at the end of the day. Some years we would go as late as Thanksgiving before taking it down for the winter.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How would you explain A/B testing to your mom? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for good analogies how to convince someone to try A/B testing. This person is very non-technical. Be nice people. <comment><USER2> Let's pretend your mum was opening a diner, and she wants to sell the best fries in town. She has a good recipe, but knows with a little tweaking, it could be great.

She has a few regulars who come for lunch each day, so decides to see what they think of little changes she makes.

She starts by adjusting the amount of salt, a little more for some tables, a little less for others. She notices sometimes tables order more refills of their bowl of fries, and even stay longer (buying drinks, etc...).

Rather than making bigger changes and directly asking customers their preference ("do you prefer our new super-fries or our classic-fries?"), she's decided to focus on more subtle (often not very noticeable) changes, and most importantly, watched the reactions or changes in behavior to influence any longer term changes.

(imagine everyone she asked said they like some new seasoning, but now only order a single, small serving. maybe the original is actually preferred?)

<comment><AUTHOR> I feel like making a video from this response. This is such a good analogy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The Coke/Pepsi challenge. What matters is not which one is Coke or Pepsi, but which one consumers preferred.

</comment><comment><USER4> We are going to divide up the people who come to our site. Half of them will see one version of the site and half will see another version of the site.

Behind the scenes, we are collecting a lot of site metrics. After the test we will compare the metrics and see which version of the site scored higher.</comment>


Rollup 1.0 – Next-generation ES module bundler - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rollup/rollup/releases/tag/v1.0.0 <comment><USER2> Congratulations to the Rollup team on the big accomplishment of reaching 1.0!

It's a joy using Rollup with Svelte ([https://svelte.technology](https://svelte.technology)) because the tree shaking gives much faster results i.e. much smaller files. The speed and source maps are great too.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The change list is at [https://github.com/rollup/rollup/pull/2293](https://github.com/rollup/rollup/pull/2293)

</comment><comment><USER3> From 2015: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10422726](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10422726)</comment>


Darien Gap: The Most Dangerous (Absence of a) Road - <AUTHOR> http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/09/darien-gap-most-dangerous-absence-of.html <comment><USER2> As a historical anecdote, this was also the site of the Darien Disaster in the late 1690s: the plan was to build a Scottish colony, but it didn't go well. It went so poorly, in fact, that Scotland went broke and had to get a bailout from England, leading to the Acts of Union in 1707.

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

<comment><USER3> Yeah, and now Scotland is seeking independence again - but they still expect England (or at least the Bank of England) to be on the hook to bail them out.

<comment><USER4> Neither of those assertions are true.

Only if there is a yes vote returned in the referendum will it be possible to say that "Scotland is seeking independence" \- at the moment the most that can be said is some Scots are seeking independence.

Secondly, the white paper released yesterday does not suggest that England (by which you rather arrogantly mean the rest of the UK presumably) be liable to pay any Scottish debts incurred after independence.

So get that chip off your shoulder.

<comment><USER5> The White Paper released yesterday was a list of hopes and wishes. A lot of it wasn't confirmed.

<comment><USER4> Of course not, seeing as here in the real world, many questions can't be settled until there's a negotiation between the two parties undergoing a divorce. The sole reason for the white paper is unionists demanding "answers" for things they know fine well it is impossible to answer definitively, then moaning about how said answers are "hopes and wishes".

However I'm impressed you read a 674 page document in less than a day, you win a speed reading award.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just back from Colombia. A swedish tourist tried to cross the Darien Gap in May. His last blog post is here: [http://centramerica.wordpress.com/](http://centramerica.wordpress.com/)

"I'm in riosucio now, on the atrato river. From here it's not far from panama. There are supposedly quite many paths from here to panama. We'll see how it goes."

He hasn't been heard from since. Read the comments on his blog if you want to feel like crying.

<comment><USER7> Wow, those comments really do hit home. I would think he would have a satellite phone or something. Really chilling.

<comment><USER8> chilling indeed.

More here: [http://colombiareports.co/swedish-tourist-missing-in- northwe...](http://colombiareports.co/swedish-tourist-missing-in-northwest- colombia/)

[http://www.panama-guide.com/article.php/20130708131957815](http://www.panama- guide.com/article.php/20130708131957815)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One of my best college friends and I decided we were going to adventure the entire stretch of South America, through Central America and then up the PCT over the course of about 6-7 months via bus and motorcycle (ended up not doing the PCT because we ran out of money).

We get into Ecuador thinking just a few short bus rides ([http://i.imgur.com/kVVqZuX.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/kVVqZuX.jpg)) will have us through Columbia and at the border of Panama.

We got our asses laughed at so hard when we were asking about how to get through this "weird jungle area" \-- asking the dumbest questions like "where are the roads?" "how about hiking trails"

Lesson learned and ended up just flying over it. But highly recommend traveling that area of the world if you ever get a chance. Some absolutely gorgeous areas, and I think it's still relatively under-appreciated

<comment><USER10> I had a plan to do something similar - motorcycle up the pan-american highway. Unfortunately every time I think I have a friend or two sold on the idea they drop out...

Last time it got as far as the planning phase and the Darien Gap came up, and there was a real moment of "WTF? There actually is no road between Central and South America? How can there not be a road?"

It was only a few months after I'd completed a driving circuit of the Australian coastline and I'd assumed if there were roads there then there would be roads everywhere...

I'd still like to go to South America, but the tales of kidnappings in remote areas do still stay my hand.

<comment><USER11> > _I had a plan to do something similar - motorcycle up the pan-american > highway. Unfortunately every time I think I have a friend or two sold on the > idea they drop out..._

Just go do it. You'll make some friends on the way...

<comment><USER10> I'm very good at not doing that! In Australia I managed three weeks without speaking to another human being beyond ordering food and checking in to hotels. I'm not really the talks-to-strangers-easily type.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One of my best friends and old roommate tried to walk this from Panama to Columbia in his "party shirt" (dress shirt covered in puke and blood). Gave up after 3 days because he couldn't cross certain streams/rivers, where the map he had said there would be bridges and the water was too high. Paid a guy going past in a boat to take him to Columbia. They had to stop 6 hours in a long the way in some town in the middle of the jungle were he got picked up by Panama military.

They questioned him for hours (they don't want dumb white kids in there) and then brought him back out the Panama side, revoked his visa, and told him to get out of the country. It is also a cool place for FARC and major cocaine traffickers to do business.

My favourite part of the story was they went through his backpack and were really concerned he was traveling with a girl or someone else because it had luchador masks from Mexico and tight pink underwear my girlfriend who worked at American Apparel gave him, but not much else.

He said being in the jungle there was pretty frustrating and terrible. Like everything moved, and it was sweaty and hot, and you couldn't get a break from it and just cool down. Also Howler Monkeys!

<comment><USER13> >Panama to Columbia

ColOmbia

<comment><USER14> get out of my head!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A popular way is via yacht to Cartagena as someone mentioned. It will skip a bunch of beautiful countryside though.

Less well known are the small villages along both sides of the coast.

On the Caribbean side there is a small town called Capurgana on the Colombian side with a few nice hotels that offer hikes to the village La Miel on the Panamanian side. So it is possible to cross the border there quite safely by foot.

[http://www.brendansadventures.com/paradise-found-la-miel- pan...](http://www.brendansadventures.com/paradise-found-la-miel-panama/)

The area looks beautiful. Since I first of heard of this it's been on my bucket list.

That still leaves you with the question on how to get there without flying. The hotels in Capurgana offer boat rides to Turbo in Antioquia where there are good roads south.

While I know Panama well I was actually surprised to learn from Colombian TV of the villages on the Panamanian side. I nor most of my Panamanian friends had never heard of these.

So your best bet would probably be to go by boat along the coast from either one of the San Blas islands or more likely Isla Verde a bit further west.

</comment><comment><USER16> I did the "Yacht Route" that a bunch of people here are talking about. Well worth it!

We had backpacked North from Peru and ran out of North in Cartagena, so we headed down to the local yacht club to see what we could find out. As luck would have it, there was a woman standing on the dock chatting to some friends. She was single-handed, heading to Panama in about a month, and didn't like the idea of doing the overnight journey without a crew.

The only downside? "Well, I'm not going straight in to Colon. I was planning to spend a few weeks sailing around the San Blas islands first. Would you be OK with that?"

Uh... I guess.

The San Blas are amazing. There's absolutely no way to visit the place if you don't have your own boat. There are no hotels. The locals won't let you sleep on the islands or let non-Kuna run tours there. But for something like $5/month (depending on the local village) you can moor your yacht anywhere you want. Just don't take any coconuts off the islands.

Most of the islands are completely unpopulated, of the white-sand & palm tree variety that you think of when you think South Pacific tropical paradise. The locals clump together on just a few islands, with ridiculously dense concentrations of thatch huts piled on top of one another and overhanging the sea. 200 yards away might be yet another tropical paradise, but they'd prefer to be next to one another, so you can have that one to yourself if you'd like.

They have little shops (and solar powered cell towers supplied by the government), and they'll row their dugouts out to your yacht in the morning to sell you Kuna bread and fresh fruit.

All in, we spent 5 weeks on the boat. It was rather pleasant. Enough so that I often find myself pricing yachts online when I look back on the experience.

<comment><USER17> You can rent a yatch, no need to own :) (though it's nice - but yatchs are costly to maintain!).

One of my uncles rented a yatch to sail on northern Australia (the Whitsunday islands), from his description, it sounds amazing (much like you described, white sandy beaches, awesome weather, nice sailing). He does own a yatch and a sailing license back home though, I think at least the designated captain must have a license.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitsunday_Islands](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitsunday_Islands)

Edit: remember the quote "A boat is a hole in the water into which you throw money"

<comment><USER18> The other aphorism about boat ownership is something like "the two happiest days are the day you buy it and the day you sell it".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Tangentially, Road Fever is a pretty epic read about two roadtrippers who get from the Tierra del Fuego, Argentina to Prudhoe, Alaska, in 24 days. Border crossings, mechanical issues, weather, the Darien Gap, all covered. (They took a ferry I think). Looking at the pictures and the intensity, 90km has to feel like an eternity on actual land

<comment><USER20> I believe you mean 90 megameters.

<comment><USER21> I don't believe he does mean 90 million kilometers (a tenth of the circumference of earth's orbit around the sun)

<comment><USER22> "mega" means million. 90 megameters is 90,000 kilometers, or 90 million _meters_.

<comment><USER21> Whoopsies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Interesting. I was under the (wrong) impression that you could drive or motorcycle from South America to North America. Seems all but impossible.

<comment><USER24> People do it all the time, just with the help of a boat across this obstacle. Given the scale of the journey, its often not "footnoted" in many casual references. For scale, the Pan-American-Highway, which basically navigates from Alaska to Patagonia is _about 48,000 kilometres (30,000 mi) in total length_.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan- American_Highway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-American_Highway)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Think of making a road trip to South America in 1961, as the subjects of my documentary did. They knew better than to try to penetrate the Darien Jungle -- that's why they went in a surplus Army Duck. Unfortunately, the DUKW (which was designed for a ship-to-shore dip like at Normandy) wasn't up to the seafaring in store, and they ended up marooned in that very jungle. Check out here for more: www.facebook.com/TheDuckDiaries

</comment><comment><USER26> Darien Gap: [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darién_Gap](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darién_Gap)

</comment><comment><USER27> redirecting to a broken mobile page is idiotic.

<comment><USER28> Especially when I have my browser set to request the desktop site. There's literally no way for me to find this article using my phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I motorcycled North and South America from 2001-2003. It was fairly simple, and cheap, to fly from Panama City to Quito, via Bogata. The yacht technique was the source of quite a few bad stories, while Colon, the step off point from Panama, was awful. I had to build my own motorbike box, but some others had theirs done for them. These days the number of riders is huge, and the process for flying should be very well covered in the adventure motorcycle sites like horizonsunlimited.com.

I did get to ride on a yacht through the canal - and that was amazing.

</comment><comment><USER30> Guerrilla is not a type of person, it's a type of war. A "little war" to be exact. The person fighting in a guerrilla is a guerrilla soldier or a guerrilla fighter. Also, it's pronounced geriya (with a hard g and a rolling r), not gorilla.

<comment><USER31> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy)

<comment><USER11> It's not even metonymy proper.

It's the adoption of a spanish word in another language, in which it IS used as a noun in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I wonder if they have thought of making the road go around north-east to Acandi and then connect with Hw 62 around Chigorodo. It won't be as direct but it would avoid the environmental issues of cutting through the Darien National Park.

</comment><comment><USER33> see [http://m.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/04/22/130422fa_fact_sm...](http://m.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/04/22/130422fa_fact_smith) too</comment>


How I use 500 Miles to track promising tech companies - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@MathiasArkayin/how-i-use-500-miles-to-track-promising-tech-companies-1e544e9ad0eb#.w73d0a27m <comment><USER2> Quite a commercial.

The app rates only 3.4 on Google Play.

Worse yet, it demands access to all this data:

Version 2.92 can access:

Identity: find accounts on the device

Contacts: find accounts on the device

Location: approximate location (network-based)

Phone: read phone status and identity

Photos/Media/Files: modify or delete the contents of your USB storage read the contents of your USB storage

Storage: modify or delete the contents of your USB storage read the contents of your USB storage

Device ID & call information: read phone status and identity

Other: receive data from Internet view network connections full network access prevent device from sleeping control vibration run at startup pair with Bluetooth devices use accounts on the device</comment>


Quantum Link – Online Community for the C64/128 (1985-1995) - <AUTHOR> https://www.tinytickle.co.uk/quantum-link/ <comment><USER2> Ah, the memories. Also, the hacks. Quantum Link had bugs where people could create illegal usernames, or invisible usernames (Q-Armor) that made it hard for online sysops to deal with you.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, that brings back some memories. The first time I ever went "online" was via QuantumLink.

</comment><comment><USER4> I loved Qlink so much! My BBS and Qlink made life fun. I was sad when they made people move to AOL even though I had long moved on to other things.</comment>


About the Open Angel Forum - 1st event LA Jan 14th - <AUTHOR> http://openangelforum.com/2009/12/04/about-the-open-angel-forum/ <comment><USER2> Thanks for posting pchristensen! I'm hoping that Los Angeles goes well and that we can move on to San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Boston, New York, Austin, Europe and Asia!

<comment><AUTHOR> You probably know me better as GeekStack :)</comment></comment>


Sidekiq Pro: advanced functionalities for Sidekiq - <AUTHOR> http://mperham.github.com/sidekiq-pro/

<comment><USER2> Love sidekiq (supported mike by buying the commercial license even though I didn't "need" it). I am very excited that the development of it is continuing.

By far the best async job framework available for Ruby imho.

<comment><USER3> I do wish Sidekiq had an option for using postgresql for the job store (like queue_classic: <https://github.com/ryandotsmith/queue_classic>)

<comment><USER2> It would be a decent feature, but I understand mperhams argument (<https://github.com/mperham/sidekiq/wiki/FAQ>). And Redis is lightweight and reliable enough that adding it onto any project is fairly painless.

Not to mention when you're already using Redis for sidekiq you tend to find some other solutions work really well built on top of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I second the wish to see PG supported here!

I wanted to use Redis for my SaaS product (I have been using it for behind-LAN apps for a long time) but realized that in 3 setups I studied (RedisToGo, DotCloud and a third I can't remember), you are (if I'm right, and by default) basically exposing the Redis instance to the internet directly, which is not advised at all [1].

So having the PG option here would be fairly interesting.

Please note that the above is just my current comprehension after some research in limited time - I'd love to be wrong here.

[1] <http://redis.io/topics/security>

<comment><USER4> You can setup http authentication to your redis instance which provides at least some sort of security. Also, you can lock your servers down to only accept connections from specific IPs (so like your app servers are the only ones allowed access to your Redis server). Those two things combined are a good start for security at the very least.

<comment><AUTHOR> The culprit here is that restricting connections is often not possible at all if the Redis provider is different from the provider used for the rest of the app (eg: using Heroku/DotCloud + RedisToGo or similar, etc) - that's my main issue here.

You can do this if you use AWS security groups, or if your PaaS support similar stuff, but not all do support it so far, if I read right...

<comment><USER4> Redis is really really easy to host yourself. I'm not much of a fan of outsourcing infrastructure items though, so I am biased

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not contesting that Redis is easy to host yourself - I host it myself on some projects, use Chef to provision servers etc.

If you choose to use the cloud though (PaaS etc) to save time on the rest of your app, then pick a manually managed server for Redis, it kind of defeat the purpose, plus you won't be able to easily follow the changes on the rest of the PaaS infrastructure (eg: change of servers with access right etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> At $500 how did this at one point hit the front page of Hacker News, seriously, not worth it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Great news and great piece of software.</comment>


Mechanical Turk is cool. Anyone used it for something interesting? - <AUTHOR>

I'm using it to have people find proper citations for scientific papers based on press releases. It works really well.<p>Has anyone here used Mechanical Turk for any interesting projects? <comment><USER2> I used mechanical turk to get keyword suggestion tips for an AdWords campaign. It was a quick (seriously cheap) way to see what search terms people would use if they were looking for a company like mine via Google.

I paid $5 for more than 450 responses out of 15 people. Posted about my experiences at <http://www.brianlash.com/2007/11/how-to-get-450.html>.

</comment><comment><USER3> i was trying to get votes on a youtube video for a contest so i offered it up to mechanical turk

</comment><comment><USER4> How much is it costing you?

<comment><AUTHOR> I put in $.30 each and I got two different, correct answers in less than 10 minutes, formatted in an anchor tag as I asked. One was really good, they gave a full proper citation and I had asked for a bastardized citation.

I have a bunch of different requests in for similar tasks now from $.05 to $.15, none of which have been answered in the 45 minutes since I posted them.

Edit: $.3 was way too much, I got an answer in 50 minutes at $.05.</comment></comment>


An open source command-line computer algebra system (CAS) - <AUTHOR> http://www.mathomatic.org/math/

<comment><USER2> Before people start posting an entry for every single cas out there, I'd like to link to the wikipedia comparison table: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_computer_algebra_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_computer_algebra_systems)

Neither maxima nor mathomatic are news in whatever sense of the word.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been using the Python based _sympy_ (<http://sympy.org/>) recently. While this isn't a replacement for Mathematica or even Maxima -- it's pretty powerful. And being able to manipulate equations in python makes it easy to tie operations together.

SAGE (<http://www.sagemath.org/>) is much more powerful but quite heavy in terms of systems resources.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I found this in a comment by papaf:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1994419>

which was in a submission about Maxima. It's new to me, and looks perfect for my simpler uses.

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks like the domain has changed since previously mentioned <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99908></comment>


U-Haul's site really looks like a domain parking page. Just sayin'. - <AUTHOR> http://www.uhaul.com/

<comment><USER2> U-Haul has some right ideas when it comes to their website:

You Searched for: uhaulsucks.com WHOIS results for uhaulsucks.com

       Registrant:
          U-Haul International
          U-Haul International U-Haul International
          2727 N. Central Ave. .
          Phoenix, az 85004
          US
          Email: firstname.lastname@example.com

I had been burned badly by their awful pricing, trucks, and customer service about 4 times in a 1-year span back in 2001 and had the brilliant (to me at the time) idea of starting a site for posting U-Haul horror stories and warning people away. I just laughed when I saw this. Well played, U-Haul, well, played.

For what it's worth, rent their trailers but stay as far away from their trucks as you can. Go Penske or even Ryder if you have to.

<comment><USER3> Interesting, out of curiosity I tried to visit the website. Of course, they don't have a page up. Instead, chrome recommended <http://uhaul-sucks.com>

Secondly, I'm in the process of planning a move from Eastern Canada to the midwest. Uhaul will only rent me a truck for as little as 6 days for 1600. They have determined, for safety reasons, that it will take me that long to complete my trip. It`s a 17 hour trip, of which, I'm young and can do that in a single day - two days, worst case scenario. Needless to say, I won't be using their truck and their service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's pretty well documented that uhaul's online reservation system is 100% a scam. They take a $50 reservation fee, and never actually perform a reservation. Then when you go to pick up the truck that you "reserved", no such truck exists.

I've gotten bitten by this and we basically had to get our local news station involved to get my $50 back. Very shady company.

<http://dontuseuhaul.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> It does, but maybe those stupid parking pages are actually doing something right.

I think U-Haul did a good job of presenting essential information upfront, simply and cleanly. There's no giant logo, or a screen-hogging masthead with pictures of people wearing headsets or shaking hands. Everything I'd want to do is listed there on the page.

<comment><USER6> I think people who visit HN -- myself included -- experience cognitive dissonance because we immediately see a domain parking page. Judging from the persistent profitability of domain name parking, most people don't share our experience.

It's really quite usable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It may look bad, but compared to others, it's functional.

I had to rent a truck recently, and visited websites of three major companies. Two of them have wonderful query pages that allow you to specify the day, type of truck, and geographic area. Those queries then produce a full screen of results. However, when you pick a specific rental location, you can be told "Sorry, this location doesn't have that type of truck," or "Sorry, this location is closed on Sunday."

U-Haul's web site, by contrast, showed me what it promised to deliver-- only rental locations open on the day I requested, and only locations with the type of truck I requested.

For what it's worth, the truck was in great shape, too.

</comment><comment><USER8> I never know whether or not to post comments like this but why was this submitted to this site? It's not news and no one regularly discussing moving trucks here.

<comment><USER9> It was interesting to me because it didn't occur to me that there's a "domain parking page look" that would still look like a domain parking page even with real content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I just tried to rent a truck from them last week, but switched to penske because of uhaul's website and reservation workflow.

Godaddy tries to sell less add-on services than U-Haul. They seriously have like 10+ pages of add-on's that no one wants.

</comment><comment><USER11> Yeah... feels that way to me.

The original Digg page did that as well - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Digg1.6.png>

I had to fight my anti-DP instincts to sign up on it back then.

</comment><comment><USER12> If the OP was looking to rent a truck when they came across this - from past experience Penske is better even though it is more expensive, U-Haul trucks are pretty beat up.

<comment><USER13> My last experience with UHaul involved an old truck that broke down in transit. While its inconvenient to break down any time, its doubly-so when all your worldly possessions are packed in there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sharing a color scheme with GoDaddy certainly doesn't help.

</comment><comment><USER15> It sure does! I half-expected to see a warning about blocked pop-ups!

</comment><comment><USER16> This belongs on reddit.</comment>


Bitmovin (YC S15): Improving Video Quality on the Web - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/aws-activate-startup-blog/bitmovin-improving-video-quality-on-the-web-8670039c4334 <comment><USER2> Summary: We offer fast video encoding.

        Orig wordcount: 1597
        TlDr wordcount: 5
        Saved: 99.69%

</comment><comment><USER3> If anyone is interested to give it a try, just register at www.bitmovin.com for a free trial :-)</comment>


Milk Fat Intake and Telomere Length in US Adults: The Role of Milk Fat Fraction - <AUTHOR> https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/ <comment><USER2> interesting:

"" For each 1 percentage point increase in milk fat consumed (e.g., 1% to 2%), adults had more than 4 years of additional biological aging. ""

<comment><USER3> So if I drink whole milk, and whole milk is 3.5% milkfat, then I guess I've been drinking myself out of 14 years of life?

...but those 14 years would be spent drinking the dishwater we know as skim milk. So I think it's a fair trade. :)

On my deathbed will I curse buttercup the cow.

<comment><USER4> Indeed. I'd rather not drink milk at all than drink skimmed milk.</comment></comment></comment>


Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles Implicated in Silk Road Trial - <AUTHOR> http://www.coindesk.com/mt-gox-ceo-mark-karpeles-implicated-silk-road-trial/

<comment><USER2> Sorry, but this jumped out at me:

> This statement was corroborated by a tweet from Vice reporter Kari Paul, who > has been in the courtroom since Ulbricht's trial began on Tuesday

I hope they bring her some food and let her go to the bathroom once in a while!

</comment><comment><USER3> They'll have to update the acronym DPR to stand for Doughy Pirate Roberts.</comment>


Ask HN: What's it like to be in a relationship with an extremely smart woman? - <AUTHOR> Apologies if the question seems crass. It comes up a lot in reverse, but I figured the HN crowd might have some input.<p>There are a lot of well known (and somewhat true) cliches about dating geeks, mostly men. So I'm curious to hear people's story about what a relationship is like with an extremely smart woman instead. <comment><USER2> I've a male friend who acknowledges that he's not the brightest bulb in the bunch. He's in a relationship with a CPA who he thinks is super-smart. They're not married anymore, but got back together after a few years of living apart. She works during the week while he takes care of house-husband duties, and gets out of her space on the weekend. He figured this arrangement out on his own, so he's probably smarter than he gives himself credit for.

Sometimes smart women are challenged by their hormonal cycles.

My first wife was very difficult to be around. After we'd been unmarried a while, she called to complain that she was still losing half the month to PMS, and did I have any ideas? In the weeks that followed I found something for her to try, and she's been much more productive. She's much more driven to succeed than I am, and is doing quite well for herself now.

/methinks women tend to be smarter than men, on account of the female body's ability to producer greater amounts of Progesterone (which is also produced in the brain, as a neuro-steroid). This is the evolutionary balance for the gender generally having slightly less strength.

Sometimes modern women get intellectually handicapped with the use of 'imitation hormones' to suppress their menstrual cycles. I've spent some times reading women's posts in online forums, and there are a lot of complaints about side effects from so-called "birth control" prescriptions.

I suspect that my current girlfriend was made suicidal [0] with the injectable birth control Depo-Provera (Bill Gate's birth control drug of choice for use in Africa). When I met her, maybe 10 years after this assault, I recognized that she was a rather intelligent person who happened to turn to the street pharmacy to self-medicate depression. I helped her to get herself stabilized, and seems to be doing better now.

[0] This "side effect" of using Provera to chemically castrate otherwise- healthy women was mentioned by a caller on a Science Friday [NPR] segment: [https://soundcloud.com/scifri/looking-beyond-condoms-for- mal...](https://soundcloud.com/scifri/looking-beyond-condoms-for-male- contraception) (The first caller was at 8min30sec):

      SF: Denver and Jessica, Welcome to Science Friday.

      Jessica: Hi, [...]  I tried about six different birth
      controls. Depo-Provera made me manic and suicidal, yet
      that's still on the market and considered acceptable for
      women to take. [...]  It's okay that I was suicidal, and
      that that form of birth control is still on the market.

      [...]

edit: Birth control is great. Chemical castration is not. I birth control'd myself. It was easy, and reversed itself after a few months. I'm going to do it again soon, but I'll collect data this time.</comment>


PayPal doesn't care about 2FA security - <AUTHOR> https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2016/06/paypal-doesnt-care-about-security/ <comment><USER2> I was unable to add my PayPal account while using Google Play on my Android the other day. I assumed it was because of this, but there's no useful error message at all unlike the specific issue seen in this post.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I've had the same issue. I think that PayPal is now so complex it has become fragile.</comment></comment>


Amazon Echo and Alexa really matter - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@anildash/amazon-echo-and-alexa-really-matter-dcc6d817ad6b#.4i0dis20v <comment><USER2> I'm surprised no one is giving a device like that away.

Owning AI in the home seems like a no brainer to me.</comment>