Woman took 550x the usual dose of LSD, with surprisingly positive consequences - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/27/health/lsd-overdoses-case-studies-wellness/index.html <comment><USER2> No, LSD doesn't cure bipolar disorder.

I have bipolar disorder. I have taken LSD. It didn't cure me. I have met other bipolar people in treatment. A lot of them have taken LSD, some of them in huge amounts (e.g. while manic, when "no" is temporarily removed from your vocabulary) and as far as I can tell, the ones who have taken the most acid have the worst problems: more frequent cycling, higher highs, lower lows, more agitated depression (very bad because it can cause suicide), and more frequent loss of contact with reality.

And the article is pretty insensitive about bipolar disorder in general. It says literally nothing about what it's like to have it, or how to cope with it, or that you can lead a relatively normal life in spite of it. It certainly says nothing about the good parts to having bipolar disorder, that the disease imparts certain talents, and that some bipolar people would opt not to cure themselves if they had the choice.

In the article bipolar disorder is just this generic bad thing that sets the stage for the healing power of acid.

Frankly, my life, and the lives of the other people I've met, are just a lot more interesting than that.

<comment><USER3> Did you use a test kit?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >The woman blacked out and vomited frequently for the next 12 hours

Hey, I love LSD as much as the next guy, but that sounds like a dangerous combination of status effects.

<comment><USER5> It always feels great when you don't die.

Could probably replace the LSD with anything that makes you go thru an ordeal without lasting damage. You'll feel great due to the endorphins alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Keeping LSD around in powder form, especially not clearly labelled is so irresponsible.

There are all these mythical stories floating around of people 'thumbprinting' LSD (effectively pouring dozens or hundreds of milligrams of LSD onto a surface, licking your finger, smearing your finger in the pile of LSD, and then pressing your thumb into your mouth - dosing yourself with many hundreds or thousands of times the conventional dose of LSD), usually in the folklore surrounding the people that followed the Grateful Dead. I'm not sure how many of these stories are real, but they are certainly interesting.

Also, FTA: "mescaline (the psychoactive compounds in magic mushroom)". Come on CNN, spending five seconds to search for mescaline on Wikipedia will show you that that isn't true.

</comment><comment><USER7> tired: microdosing

wired: evidence based psychedelic pharmacotherapy

inspired: macrodosing

<comment><USER8> This seems against the typical HN tone, so expect some tightpants to downvote this, but it gave me a hearty chuckle. Much appreciated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Case report from 1974: "Coma, Hyperthermia and Bleeding Associated with Massive LSD Overdose: A Report of Eight Cases"

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1129381/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1129381/)

<comment><USER10> I would be skeptical of the objectivity of this given the time period, as well as the quality of the LSD. Mid 70s had a lot of homebrew drugs going on, and cutting and mixing were just ramping up.

<comment><USER11> In addition to testing of their stomach contents, urine, and blood (pp184-185), "A white flaky material (208mg) was confiscated by police and identified as the large quantity of powder used at the party. Analysis by thin layer chromatography, fluorescent analysis, mass spectrography and the melting point and mix melting point identified this substance as almost pure (80 to 90 percent) D-lysergic acid diethylamide tartrate." p185.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If our employers and industry talking heads are interested in creating a new technical revolution in Silicon Valley or elsewhere, they would lobby to change the scheduling laws of LSD and other psychedelics. We will use our access to LSD to live more healthfully and creatively than ever.

<comment><USER13> > If our employers and industry talking heads are interested in creating a new > technical revolution in Silicon Valley or elsewhere

They are interested in money and power. The tech is simply a tool to get those things</comment></comment>


The correct abbreviation for Firefox is 'Fx', not 'FF' - <AUTHOR> http://website-archive.mozilla.org/www.mozilla.org/firefox_releasenotes/en-US/firefox/releases/1.5.html#FAQ <comment><USER2> As another commenter here pointed out, it's _preferred_ , not _correct_. This is the old prescriptivist vs descriptivist debate, as seen among linguists. (Disclaimer: I am not a linguist. I just read Language Log.) If you're fretting about the correct this and the proper that (prepositions at the end of sentences, "whom" instead of "who", and so on), you're a prescriptivist, and you may (note, I said _may_ ) be making up rules where no rules are needed. I prefer descriptivism (as in: "nauseous" now means the same thing as "nauseated", which is different from its old meaning of "nausea-making", because that's how it's used).

(Edit: "different to" sounded wrong. I could never remember which way that goes.)

<comment><USER3> As an aside to your edit, I have also seen "different than" used more and more often of late. I'm not sure if it is an Americanism that I was just unaware of. It's not that "different than" is wrong, it's just different from what I'm used to!

<comment><USER2> In Year Eight at school, I had an English teacher who liked to mix things up a little. One time, I was answering a question in class, and I used "different to" or "different from" or something -- maybe even "different than", I don't remember now. The teacher told me to stand up, then explained that there was a right form and a wrong form for this, and got everyone to pick sides -- "than" here, "from" there and "to" over there. Then I bamboozled him, because I noticed that the smartest girl in the class, a gorgeous lass who gloried in the surname of Snodgrass, had picked a different side, so I reasoned that she was more likely right and defected to the same group. The teacher was deeply annoyed that I apparently didn't have the courage of my convictions; my point, which I understood instinctively even at that age, was that embarrassing a student to make a point was a totally shit way to educate people, and if he was going to place such a high premium on game playing in class, he could call me Kobayashi Maru.

To this day, I still can't remember which is correct - "than", "from" or "to". But I can remember the look on his face, and the fact that after that he stuck with slightly less aggravating teaching methods.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The whole planet says "FF". This makes it de facto the correct/preferred/official abbr

</comment><comment><USER5> I think they need to change their FAQ. I've never seen it abbreviated as Fx -- only as FF.

<comment><USER6> Agreed FF is more popular than Fx, but Firefox OS is mostly abbreviated as FxOS[which IMO is much cooler than FFOS]

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The FAQ says _preferred_ not correct though. But it feels unnatural. Having media background FX for me at least means "effects" (as in special effects). Firefox may be written as a single word but there are two words in there and the natural way would be FF IMO. I have seen someone use Fx once and it confused the heck out of me... sorry Mozilla, I will use FF..

<comment><USER8> Depending on the context, FF can also mean Final Fantasy.

<comment><USER9> It can also mean a sexual practice. I'll leave it as an exercise for the kind reader to figure out which one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Searching "FX" on Google brings nothing related to Firefox, not a single link, but "FF" brings Firefox download page. Sorry but I'm going to stick with FF.

</comment><comment><USER11> …and "GIF" is supposed to be pronounced "JIFF" …and "npm" doesn't _really_ stand for "Node Package Manager"

 _sigh_

<comment><USER12> From wikipedia:

 _Contrary to the belief of many, "npm" is not in fact an abbreviation for "Node Package Manager." It is a recursive bacronymic abbreviation for "npm is not an acronym." (If it was "ninaa", then it would be an acronym, and thus incorrectly named.)_

So the author named it npm for node package manager, then wanted to sound clever so he said it doesn't stand for that? He could just as easily called it "aslkdjghasjklg" and said it's an abbreviated version of "aslkdjghasjklg is not an acronym. And that would still be dumb.

It's like inventing a device to produce collimated beams of light, and then naming it "laser" for "laser is not an acronym" when everyone knows what it actually means.

<comment><USER13> Maybe you need to get your satire detector checked?

<comment><USER12> Wikipedia is not really a place for satire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm sure they'll convince everyone in the world before the end of time.

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't think there's many situations where you'd have to abbreviate Firefox anyway, it's not a large word to begin with. Internet Explorer as IE I can understand, it's large and compounding it is useful - but we don't abbreviate Opera or Chrome?

<comment><USER16> All the browsers could be abbreviated to COFFIE. if it wasn't for IE we'd have a perfect acronym there. Darn IE messing things up again...

<comment><USER17> Safari?

<comment><USER18> COFFIES then. IE remains an offender.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> In related news they would prefer we use FrskQet instead of FAQ

</comment><comment><USER20> I wonder if they were inspired by Steve Wilhite (creator of the "jif").

<comment><USER21> It's definitely going in the same file as that and mebibytes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> FF is faster to type. I doubt most people who abbreviated it will change to Fx.

<comment><USER23> I think it's too late to expect any change, the webpage is from 2005, for FF 1.5 ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm looking through their bug reports and developer message boards all of the time... and I've never seen anyone abbreviate it as anything other than "FF".

</comment><comment><USER25> Ugh, shut up, nobody cares. Hey, maybe start taking care of your God-awful rendering engine and CPU cycles instead of wasting time on stuff like this?

</comment><comment><USER26> I use ffx, because unambiguity

<comment><USER27> Final Fantasy X?

<comment><USER26> Argh!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Good luck with that, Mozilla.

</comment><comment><USER29> Well, that page is wrong.

</comment><comment><USER30> What about Fifx :)

</comment><comment><USER31> What was the point of showing this here?</comment>


Research UNIX: Annotated Excerpts from the Programmer's Manual, 1971-1986 [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://archive.org/details/research-unix-reader/mode/2up <comment><USER2> My scan of the print edition (kindly mailed to me many years ago by Doug McIlroy), which includes the historical manpages as well as the commentary: [https://archive.org/details/research-unix- reader/](https://archive.org/details/research-unix-reader/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Pipe written in a night. The good old days.

<comment><USER4> Or nights.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Since the beginning you could `echo hello | mail firstname.lastname@example.com`

<comment><AUTHOR> Not entirely true, but almost! The DNS hierarchy didn't exist until a (very) late version of UNIX, and if I remember right, most mail used ! instead of @ and .

<comment><USER6> In fact, user@host didn't need the internet or uucp.

Even without sendmail rewriting, some systems (e.g. MHSnet/ACSNET) used `@` natively IIRC.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for expanding!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is just the intro. The full document is available at [https://archive.org/details/a_research_unix_reader/](https://archive.org/details/a_research_unix_reader/) .

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh shoot, I knew in my search for a link I could share this at (my own digital copy is of less than perfect quality, and is in a format that doesn't allow viewing inside of WWW browsers, so I just picked the one from McIllroy's site) I had missed something. Yeah, absolutely check the fully copy, it's pretty fantastic.

Sending a message to hn@yc to try and get the link changed.

<comment><USER8> Ok, we've changed from [http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/reader.pdf](http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/reader.pdf).</comment></comment></comment>


Si.gnatu.re: HTML email signature generator - <AUTHOR> http://si.gnatu.re/ <comment><USER2> I like the domain !

Is this a Show HN ?

I wonder how many people will actually pay for being able to edit (probably realizing so after they visit again in a few months). They can just as well create a new one ? Only if its very elaborate the editing might be useful ?

You could offer a login with LinkedIn or Facebook to pre-fill the fields and maybe offer some preset layout settings. Makes it more dynamic and that way you learn more about your clients.

</comment><comment><USER3> The lack of control of the formatting is frustrating. For example, it seems very obvious to me to put my name and title on separate lines, as opposed to just concatenating them and having it wrap.

Also, having the images uploaded hosted on your AWS account is basically a non-starter. Casual users probably won't notice this, but it's kind of a bad idea to have your email signature logo rely on some service that might disappear tomorrow. Offer an option to pay now to make the whole thing self- contained by converting the image src to a data: url.</comment>


The winning 8 kilobyte demo from 2018 Revision: One of Those Days - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp0t2jCMGZE <comment><USER2> The winners of the 64KB and 4KB competitions were amazing as well:

64KB: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE6SZeAhZdM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE6SZeAhZdM) / [http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=75713](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=75713)

4KB: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0qh4lX6slM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0qh4lX6slM) / [http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=75721](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=75721)

<comment><USER3> Whooo... that 4kb is amazing! Very dark, very different from the usual technical performances, especially in that category!

Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The demo appears to be a reference/homage to Candide Thovex's One of Those Days videos. Including the helicopter jump [1], which was apparently real [2].

[1]: [https://youtu.be/R1NagZN2kjY?t=2m48s](https://youtu.be/R1NagZN2kjY?t=2m48s) [2]: [https://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/08/sport/candide-thovex- one-...](https://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/08/sport/candide-thovex-one-of-those- days/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> Is this an 8k standalone binary? It's amazing either way! I'm curious as to what counts as part of the 8k and what might be assumed as part of the platform.

<comment><USER5> Interesting i think these are the rules: 8K INTRO Maximum file size is 8192 bytes for the executable. All other files in the archive will be deleted before showing the entry in the competition Maximum running time: 8 minutes (including loading/precalc). Import by ordinal for DLLs with non-fixed ordinals is forbidden (don't even think about directly jumping into DLLs with hardcoded offsets!). Please use alternative, more compatible techniques like muhmacs import by hash to save on executable size or just use a packer like Crinkler, which does this automatically. It is okay to deliver bigger versions of the 8k along with the compo version (which must be <=8192bytes) in the same archive. We will not show the bigger version in the compo. If your packer doesn't work on the compo machine, it's your problem. We will be able to provide you with details about the compo machine, though. We will not install any additional Runtimes, SDKs, Codecs, Drivers etc on the compo machine. This means that, among others, msvcr70.dll, msvcr71.dll and msvcr80.dll will not be available. You may not use the contents of the Windows "Media" or "Music Samples" directories. These directories will be deleted on the compo machine. Java entries are not allowed. DotNet entries are allowed when they follow the rules listed above. Browser entries are allowed when they follow the rules listed above. For extra kudos, pack your intro as a single png-with-embedded- html file: see JsExe or pnginator for how to do this.)

From: [https://2018.revision-party.net/compos/pc](https://2018.revision- party.net/compos/pc)</comment></comment>


New Bitbucket Cloud features - <AUTHOR> https://bitbucket.org/blog/6-new-bitbucket-cloud-features-that-spark-joy <comment><USER2> For people only criticizing Bitbucket, take a look at this costs comparison [https://imgur.com/a/eZPIHXW](https://imgur.com/a/eZPIHXW)

Source: [https://www.process.st/bitbucket-vs-github-version- control-s...](https://www.process.st/bitbucket-vs-github-version-control- software/)

<comment><USER3> We're talking about 200 developers here.

If you truly have such a large corporation you would just host your own gitlab instance, right?

<comment><USER2> It depends. Every case needs to be analyzed and calculated the costs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm amazed bitbucket hasn't got a move on and actually made the product good since Github and Gitlab are 10000x better and speeding away at rocket pace.

<comment><USER5> At work I use Bitbucket, i use GitHub for personal projects but not for any team based work or any projects at scale.

Just wondering what are the features that make GitHub/GitLab better?

what am i missing?

<comment><USER6> We started out on Bitbucket due to their free tier and haven't moved on since. Generally it does the job, but then again we're not really using a lot of the fancy features.

To us the biggest issue is the speed. The user interface just feels slow compared to eg. GitHub.

<comment><USER7> This is an issue with most Atlassian products. The UI feels like molasses. Github is far, far more speedy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm getting a 403 here so will just say that subtle nod to Marie Kondo in the title certainly made me chuckle.

</comment><comment><USER9> Well, good for them - now can I log on with Firefox again? Somehow, in the last few months whenever I try with FF I get redirected to an openid xml file...

<comment><USER10> It works for me, so this may not be a general problem.

I'm guessing you will need to do something on your end to solve this. E.g., clear some cookies or other bitbucket-related browser-local state.</comment></comment>


Reborn Coma Man's Words May Be Bogus - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/11/houben-communication/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> Basically "facilitated communication" means "someone else takes the guy's hand and makes it type words on a keyboard." Not an exaggeration. Right up there with homeopathy.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is beyond outrageous. Check out the video here: <http://tinyurl.com/ye9d9lp>

</comment><comment><USER4> _Houben has since proven able to answer yes-or-no questions with slight movements of his foot. It's a tremendous accomplishment, and raises the chilling possibility that, as estimated by Coma Science Group leader Steven Laureys in a Monday New York Times story, as many as four in 10 people considered utterly comatose may be misdiagnosed. But the legitimacy of interviews given by Houben and his facilitator to Der Spiegel, and shown on video by the BBC, may not be as certain._

He can answer questions independently with his foot. So why don't they ask him if he's answering for himself when he types?

He could also learn Morse code...

</comment><comment><USER5> I recommend the movie Johnny Got His Gun: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067277/>.

Being stuck, aware like that, seems too damn horrible.

\----

Movie's plot: "Joe, a young American soldier, is hit by a mortar shell on the last day of World War I. He lies in a hospital bed in a fate worse than death --- a quadruple amputee who has lost his arms, legs, eyes, ears, mouth and nose. He remains conscious and able to think, thereby reliving his life through strange dreams and memories, unable to distinguish whether he is awake or dreaming. He remains frustrated by his situation, until one day when Joe discovers a unique way to communicate with his caregivers." Pulled from IMDB.

<comment><USER6> Or "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401383/></comment></comment>


Making WiFi work at large conferences - <AUTHOR> http://serverfault.com/questions/72767/why-is-internet-access-and-wifi-always-so-terrible-at-large-tech-conferences

<comment><USER2> In the Y Combinator / Anybots office we just switched to Meraki's commercial- grade APs and they kick butt. Only a little more expensive than consumer boxes and they provide seamless roaming between APs, multiple virtual networks, and seem to handle large loads well. Somehow they isolate 802.11b users on a separate channel (there are still plenty of laptops that only do .b), so .g and .n users get full bandwidth. I think they push .a-capable users onto 5 GHz too. Also easy to set up. It's the first of many APs I've owned that hasn't made me pull my hair out. Recommended.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not to nitpick too much, but HN has a policy of not editorializing titles. Shortening is fine, but "serverfault.com FTW" doesn't really belong there.

PS: It's nothing personal, (I use stackoverflow all the time, it and serverfault are tremendously useful).

</comment><comment><USER4> Much better exposition here: <http://www.tummy.com/Community/Articles/pycon2008-network/>

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the link. I never realized that conference WiFi was such an involved process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd be interested to see what happens if a conference purposefully doesn't have WiFi. Would people talk to each other, or just not show up? Sitting in an audience of a couple of thousand, everyone staring at their screen (that 'Cannot find server' page is _enthralling_ )... it does make one despair for human society, sometimes.

On the other hand, when there's a bad speaker, we'd be limited to Solitaire; and unable to Google further resources, or diversions, or complain about it on HN.

<comment><USER7> I tend to agree, though being on the #railsconf channel was the only way to make it through Tim Ferris's awful Railsconf keynote this year. Without Wifi there might have been violence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Speaking of which just got back from Health 2.0, supposedly spent 100K for the wireless. It worked for a total of 1 hour over the course of two days.

<comment><USER9> I've been to far too many 'tech' events and conventions that the WiFi just falls over and dies. U-Mass Boston was completely unable to handle even the 500 geeks at Podcamp.

MIT's infrastructure has been able to handle everything that I've been to there (ROFLCon, Barcamp, etc). Seems to vary massively by venue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's usually rogue APs that cause Wi-fi issues. Two access points broadcasting on the same channel and/or two channels that conflict.

<comment><USER11> No it's not. It's usually massively saturated APs, an overloaded DHCP server, or too small a pipe, as the linked article said. That, and even one jackass can really hose a system if resources aren't hardened at all (to avoid spam requests, spam AP hopping, etc.), and often they aren't as it's "just temporary". BYOA has become the name of the game for me: thank god for wireless broadband.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The wifi at FOWA London was dreadful this year.

</comment><comment><USER13> There's a whole company, Confreaks, based around this.

They do pretty sweet recordings of presentations, too.

<comment><USER14> Indeed - they did an excellent job at RubyConf last year.

Maybe I'm going to the wrong conferences, but I think it was the first I've been to where the wi-fi actually worked.</comment></comment>


Bank of England Bludges on Bitcoin to Create a Cashless Society - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsbtc.com/2015/11/13/bank-of-england-bludges-on-bitcoin-to-create-a-cashless-society/ <comment><AUTHOR> O Wise Ones here! Can/Will this happen?

"Instead, the Central Bank of England and international financial institutions are proposing a side-chain like alternative blockchain networks, which either co-exist with the Bitcoin network or operate independently with its own security protocols and mining network, to grant certain level of control to network administrators to restrict transactions and the settlement of assets."</comment>


Test Driving New York City's New Micro Apartments - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/realestate/testing-the-first-micro-apartments-in-new-york-city.html <comment><USER3> So, I lived in a micro apartment last year in Vancouver. Newly renovated like the one in this video, albeit with less features (no dishwasher or multi- purpose furniture.) The apartment shown in this video is a _luxurious_ 300sqft. My "apartment" was smaller than this.

While the space is acceptable, technically, to live in - I can't recommend it if you have the choice of a larger place. These sorts of places typically feature high ceilings, which is nice, but that's about all they have going for them.

For me, coming home felt more like arriving at a hotel. With everything so tightly packed, there was a constant need to pack things away and shuffle items around. It's hard to feel at home when you can barely even (and possibly even not at all!) fit your own furniture in your place.

Murphy beds seem like a fun idea, but unless you're entertaining guests you'll end up just leaving it down during the day (if you're like me, that is..) You then come home to what is essentially a bedroom.

I won't dispute this is a better living situation than many people currently have, but given the price tag of these apartments (I paid over $1000/mo here, $2500-3000 in Murray Hill for 300sqft???) I would advise finding somewhere else to live. Somewhere that has a doorway to walk through that separates your living spaces.

<comment><USER4> I think the whole point is being very close to whatever is attractive in Manhattan, at a price of both serious rent _and_ small area. A very similar situation there is in Tokyo: young professionals rent microscopic apartments close to work and the downtown founts of intense social life, and only use them as sleeping pads.

Otherwise, Brooklyn and Queens offer much more cost-effective, well-connected, entirely urban neighborhoods, maybe not as dense but still perfectly walkable, bikable, and equipped with subway. The cost is, of course, 20-40 more minutes to/from Manhattan.

<comment><USER5> _A very similar situation there is in Tokyo: young professionals rent microscopic apartments close to work and the downtown founts of intense social life, and only use them as sleeping pads._

In Tokyo, this apartment fits reasonably cleanly in the 1DK category ([1] room, dedicated [d]ining/[k]itchen space). It's bog standard. Prices, even in the most desirable neighborhoods, would be a lot closer to $1k than to $3k, and generally coming from the downside.

<comment><USER6> From what I can see in the video, it seems to fall more into the 1K category - a single room with a kitchen - making this even more pricy! 1DK tends to have two separate rooms, one of which can be quite small. Agreed on the price - <USER2> quick search for 1K or 1DK apartments in the most expensive ward in Japan shows that only even the most spacious apartments ever go over that range:

1K : [http://madori.chintai.net/1k/tokyo/area/13103/o=3/](http://madori.chintai.net/1k/tokyo/area/13103/o=3/)

1DK: [http://madori.chintai.net/1dk/tokyo/area/13103/o=3/](http://madori.chintai.net/1dk/tokyo/area/13103/o=3/)

<comment><USER7> Indeed, I previously lived in a 2LDK in a very nice tower mansion in that ward (in Shibaura, near Mita Station), and that was around 700sqft for under $2500. I was sharing with a friend (so my rent was only half that) but it was amazingly comfortable.

My current place is a 1DK, slightly smaller than the apartment in the article, but even that feels big for one person. In any case, after living in Tokyo, I find it hard to describe a 300sqft apartment as "tiny."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If they are serious about space efficiency, they should look at layouts Soviets developed to "warehouse" their citizen in - no luxury, but it really worked magic with efficiency.

I grew up in 33 m^2 apartment. Layout is similar to this, minus the balcony: [http://cdn.gdeetotdom.ru/b/b9f1203ec7061e6dc65984ff104ecfb7-...](http://cdn.gdeetotdom.ru/b/b9f1203ec7061e6dc65984ff104ecfb7-cb300x198.jpeg)

The major difference is that you have a separation of space with the kitchen and hallway (with closets). That separation made it fairly livable for a family with a child! (Don't recommend stuffing a teenager in there, but it has been done...)

The completely open studio layout will likely not be great even for a couple, as sometimes your really do need space or privacy. A blocked off kitchen affords that and doubles as a decent home office.

I don't recall us resorting to space-efficient furniture, but then again Soviet furniture was smaller already and I did sleep on a foldout couch.

For entertaining, that tiny kitchen actually fit 5-6 people reasonably well. I think our informal record was 14 (3 standing, rest comfortably seating).

The kitchen became such a part of the culture as a place to sit down and talk privately, that there have been articles and books written about it. It really highlights the genius utility of that small extra space. Unfortunately, all I could find in English is a really terrible NPR article that shows a place you'd need a hasmat suit to enter as a "typical" Russian kitchen... Still the utility is amazing!

EDIT: as discussed below, Tokyo calls such layout 1DK (with 2 rooms effectively, 2nd being the kitchen). These are much more desirable than the 1K true studio apartments.

<comment><USER9> I was just about to comment, that this "apartment" is pretty much identical in size and layout to an apartment my parents got from the communist government of Poland in the 70s. It was small, but at least it was free - is $2400/month a common price in New York? I currently live in UK and pay $900/month for a detached 3 bedroom house, $2400/month is more than I make a month as a c++ programmer - just seems very very high to me.

Edit: I do make more than $2400/month, I fudged the conversion rate

<comment><USER10> For people working remote, move to Bucharest. It's not just a little cheaper - it's 10x cheaper! 420$/mo (Bu) instead of 4600$/mo for two rooms in NY. Check it out here at the bottom of the list:

[http://ceoworld.biz/2015/10/19/top-50-most-expensive- cities-...](http://ceoworld.biz/2015/10/19/top-50-most-expensive-cities-in- the-world-to-rent-an-apartment-2015-report)

Internet speeds are great and it only costs 10$/month to get 1gbps (probably just 100mbs external, 1gbps metropolitan). Americans are well regarded by everyone, especially girls :-)

<comment><USER11> What are the negatives of living and working in Bucharest as a foreigner?

<comment><USER10> Bucharest has bad traffic congestion, but that's only a problem if you commute to work during rush hour. If you work remote, you don't need to worry about it.

Another negative is bureaucracy. The system is overly complex, stupid sometimes. If you need to open a company or get hired locally it can be a PITA.

Young people can speak English, some quite well. But older people don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> These are stupid. Carmel Place is in Murray Hill. That neighborhood has many normal sized (450-500 square foot) studios in the $2,500 range. Not like gross old units either, nicely renovated ones.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I was shocked by the price. You're paying roughly normal Manhattan studio apartment rent for half the square footage. I don't get it.

<comment><USER14> It's not a normal studio, it's furnished and sounds quite luxe despite the size:

> Carmel Place's rent includes not just internet and Wi-Fi, but a weekly > tidying service and a monthly deep clean, along with dog walking, dry > cleaning pickup and any number of customized errands through an app called > Hello Alfred, all organized by Ollie.

<comment><USER15> They've got the demographics all confused.

Are they in the cheap, low end or luxury high end industry?

People who want those amenities are in the luxury market. They want a much bigger apartment.

The people who want a 300 ft studio are in the cheap market. They don't care about these amenities.

<comment><USER16> I don't think that they've missed the demographics - surely those amenities are in-keeping with a young professional market? As in, small space, nicely outfitted and time saving extras - considering they'd be working long hours and going out to socialise, seems well suited?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _While the lion's share — 32 — of the units are market rate, with monthly rents ranging from $2,446 to $3,195, eight have been set aside for formerly homeless veterans, and 14 units are designated affordable, with monthly rents from $914 to $1,873, and for which 60,000 people applied in a lottery._

Is it just odd word choice or does "formerly homeless" mean they're put up somewhere until these are ready to lease? Also, do these homeless vets have work? Or am I misreading this paragraph entirely?

This isn't any sort of indictment on the homeless population...just, $914 for something of that size is affordable pretty much only by New York (and I guess SF) standards, and I wonder if instead of putting a dent (maybe even a scratch) in some of the problems that creates chronic homelessness, if this is just cycling through a series of "guests" who stay for maybe months at a time and end right back up on the street.

I suppose I have to take the article at its word: "It's a start".

<comment><USER18> The 8 homeless vet units are separate from the 14 affordable units, and are probably being paid for by some combination of federal, state, and city dollars. The affordable units were awarded by lottery open to anyone meeting the income guidelines.

Also in official NYC-government-speak homeless doesn't necessarily mean living on the street. It means a lack of "secure, adequate, and permanent" housing. So it includes situations like living in a shelter or in a doubled up situation (e.g. on a relative's couch).

<comment><USER17> Both very good things to know. Thanks for clearing up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is more roomy than many of my friend's apartments here in Tokyo. Different circumstances, I know, but just some perspective.

</comment><comment><USER19> i lived in a 140 square foot apartment in new york which had formerly been a single room occupancy built over 100 years ago.

small tenement like housing is nothing new.

small apartments slowly create cabin fever</comment><comment>-ANXIETY.

if you live in a small space you must spend a lot more time outside of it than inside of a normal sized space.

also, it is vital to have minimum 9 foot high cielings for a small space. i had 8 foot ceilings that are standard in new york.

finally, a loft in a room with lower than 10 foot cielings means you cannot have a 5'10 foot person stand comfortably underneath the loft and have a 5'10 foot person on their knees in bed on top of the loft without one of them hitting their head on the underside of either the celiing or the bottom of the loft.

furthermore, a loft gets very hot in the summer and remains somewhat warmer than the floor in the winter. this effect increases inversely with measure of distance between the loft surface to the cieling

</comment><comment><USER20> > It's also adorable, a compressed vision of the city in both ethos and mien.

Imagine a "groovy millennial" Instagrammming a vegan cheesecake -- forever. I appreciate the job the NYT Real Estate section does. Without them (and Style) the newspaper probably would no longer exist. But articles like this are so devoid of reality that I understand why everyone thinks people are crazy to live in New York City.

<comment><USER21> In what sense is this article devoid of reality?

This is a real apartment, really available to lease.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have a friend in Paris who lives with his wife in 33 m^2 (355 sqft). Their apartment is not even technically a studio, but rather a 1BR, they routinely host dinner parties with up to 8-10 people. I've also heard people compliment them on the size of the apartment, they probably lived in places of about half the surface.

</comment><comment><USER23> Oh, that's a "micro apartment?" It looks the same size as my San Francisco Soma apartment, or perhaps slightly larger. I don't have any of the fancy specialized furniture either, so my queen sized bed, wardrobe, and desk take up most of the room.

</comment><comment><USER24> _" If groovy millennials are all about cooking and Instagramming the vegan cheesecakes they are making," she said later, "how do you live that life with a two-burner stove?"_

I take it this person doesn't cook. My first apartment (which was quite a bit smaller than this apparent) came with a two burner stove and no oven. With those two burners, a rice cooker and the small toaster style oven I bought, I quite comfortable cooked just about anything you'd care mention.

</comment><comment><USER25> I lived in an apartment smaller than this in Lausanne Switzerland. This seems like luxury in comparison (granted, mine only cost 800 CHF in rent but...).

</comment><comment><USER26> > "New York has long been a leader in social innovation," Mr. Klinenberg said. > "The trend of living alone happened here before anywhere else."

I don't understand. Check Bay Area Craigslist and you will find that a rich selection of small studios is available for rent on any given day. And they're much more affordable than the one in this article too.

<comment><USER27> "Living alone" is more "social collapse" than "social innovation". But New York has long been a leader in social collapse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I live in a rural location.

I could not financially afford that micro apartment but I consider the people who live in it far worse off than me.

<comment><USER29> Depends on how much you value living in New York City.

<comment><USER28> That's true, I'm not the most sociable of people and a lot of what makes cities attractive is wasted on me. When I moved to the country it was the libraries and the bookshops I missed. Today with broadband and amazon, I don't miss those either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> As a non New Yorker that price for the square footage is astronomical to me! I live in a small rural town in Georgia and I pay $890 a month to rent a 1618 sq foot house (+ a large front porch). The house is over 100 years old and it for sure has it's quirks, but for the price it's great. I can live in this house for 3-4 months for the cost of 1 month in that apartment which is about 1/5th the size!

I know that New York salaries are typically higher to compensate, but I work remote for a company as a front-end designer/dev and make a good living without having to pay "big city" prices. I get the appeal of living in a big with though, Atlanta is near by and I love visiting; but I greatly prefer saving my money and/or spending it on things other than expensive rent.

<comment><USER31> Nah, that price per square foot is pretty high even by NYC standards (almost double what's typical for that neighborhood, which is expensive fore city as a whole but middle-high for Manhattan).

And one of the things you learn here pretty quickly is that you don't REALLY need all that much space. My first apartment was about 300 sqft, and a third of it went entirely unused. My current studio is probably 450, and while I have a ton more stuff now than I did then, the amount of space is more than adequate. I wouldn't know what to do with 1600 sqft even with a spouse and kids! Oh, and costs about 2/3 as much as that apartment, in an arguably nicer neighborhood in Brooklyn. /shrug

We each have our own priorities for what we're willing to pay for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Why is this a big deal?

The mobile home and RV industries solved the problem of maximizing available space decades ago. The space spend on propane tanks, water heaters, and other utilities that are no needed at an apartment level can be repurposed having larger hardware in the kitchen and bathroom.

I know it's bad marketing to say "we modify off the shelf manufactured home floor plans to better fit an apartment use case" but that's exactly what micro-apartments are. The same tricks just get applied in a different context.

Living in a trailer isn't noteworthy but living in a 3 dimensional trailer park is? Well at least some writer made a buck off of writing about it.

<comment><USER33> >Living in a trailer isn't noteworthy

It isn't cool. That's the problem. I listen to a podcast about a week ago (sorry forget all the details) on the general topic of how do you sell mobile home materials and economics and lifestyle to people who don't think mobile homes are "cool" especially not for "the cool people". Well, change the name, call it a tiny house or tiny apartment, all done.

There is an interesting economic side issue. Because bubbles are bubbles we can assume real estate will go up 5% per year into infinity, right? That solves the classic problem with RV / mobile home trailer parks where the materials are not built to last more than a couple years... wait for real estate bubble appreciation to build up for five years, cash out refinance, then gut and remodel. Doesn't matter if nothing in there will last more than 10 years if the business model is to gut and remodel every 5... Of course if the financial situation changes and prices can't go up 5% annually in perpetuity, then imagine what the place will look like in 20, 30 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Negative, I am a meat popsicle.

<comment><USER35> something something multipass

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> It's a downer to me, that despite the stated aim of "keeping housing affordable", prices of such apartments will usually default to "still eating most of the household's income".

Is this proof for too much or too less government intervention? Or is the usual increase in price caused by the new micro-renters themselves, in that they are increasing attractiveness of the area?

I think it's most likely just that: We're bad savers and not being in the red at the end of the month will turn off the biggest behavioral signal for switching expenditure habits.

<comment><USER37> I think when folks focus on the price point of _new_ construction being high, they're missing the bigger picture: These kinds of new units put downward price pressure on whatever was previously "lower on the totem pole". In other words, those studios in Murray Hill without a door man / elevator which were already priced below this price point will become even less luxurious looking as these are built.. that means that "regular folks" who don't care to live in these shiny shoe boxes prosper!

<comment><USER32> What your describing happened in the used car market c4c caused a panic that put the price floor of the bottom of the used car market in a place it couldn't have naturally got itself to. This put upward pressure on the entire market. It became much more profitable to have a bunch of higher end used (CPO, certified pre owned) cars lying around to sell. To churn those out better leases became more available. At the same time it became harder to write a housing loan that would obviously flop. Banks started writing more bad new car loans. The incentive to do so being that if it defaults soon enough the car will get repo'd, auctioned and bought by a dealer to be sold as certified pre owned and the loan is in the black at the end of it all. Go look at the average prices for various new/used vehicle categories and you'll see an upward trend everywhere.

Allowing any part of the market to go upward in price puts upward pressure on the rest of the market because there's now more competition for whatever hasn't become out of reach.

Housing, transportation, education and a few others are necessities that pretty much everyone needs the same amount of. Until you saturate the entire market in an area with high end stuff to the point where the price of the high end stuff decreases dramatically the price of low end stuff will rise. It's really hard to saturate the housing market with expensive and new because no developer will build more nice expensive stuff when there's a larger profit margin building cheaper low end stuff that's been driven up in price by all the high end stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> In a nutshell: they're re-inventing what was once a vast and thriving community (since substantially eviscerated) of what was were once widely known, amongst anybody above a certain age, as Single-Room Occupancy dwellings:

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

except now market-rate (natch!), and with decidedly cheesier architecture.

</comment><comment><USER39> The problem with multi-functional, stowaway etc furniture is it tends to fall apart pretty quick with daily use. In couple of years you'll have issues with engaging that table's feet in unfolded position, that neat wardrobe hanger will fall out on you when you open doors and so on. And it's not really a huge choice with this kind of furniture to replace.

<comment><USER40> The table looked very awkward. I actually previously had a solid wood IKEA table with two folding leaves and storage space in between, which cost about £200, and looked a lot more usable (and attractive) than that table. Admittedly you could only get 6 people round it rather than 8/10\. But then again, it didn't cost £3000.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Seems like a very poor approach to space efficiency if compared to something like this [http://www.homedsgn.com/2011/05/07/a-tiny-apartment-in- hong-...](http://www.homedsgn.com/2011/05/07/a-tiny-apartment-in-hong-kong- transforms-into-24-rooms/)

</comment><comment><USER42> New? I remember 300 square foot places for absurd money back in the 90s. How small/expensive are they getting exactly?

</comment><comment><USER43> That expanding table is around four grand.

<comment><USER44> From the mouseovers in the graphic:

      * Wall bed: $7,780
      * Coffee table: $1,450
      * Expanding table: $4,165
      * Folding chairs: $250/each ($1,000)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> 3200? Did she say the cost for that apartment is 3200? First I thought I heard 320. That would be okay. It's the size of a university dorm room (at least where I live). 320 is an okay price for that. But 3200? There are a lot of places on that planet where you can rent a villa for less, a lot less.

<comment><USER46> Yes, but the goal of building housing in New York City is for that housing to be in New York City, not anywhere else on the planet.

<comment><USER45> You are aware that most people on this planet, even in highly developed countries, earn less pre tax than $3200, right?

<comment><USER46> Yes. Again, the goal here is building housing in Manhattan, not building housing for highly developed countries in general.

People who aren't familiar with New York City (especially people whose impression of housing is influenced by San Francisco) may not realize that the city has a generally-competent public transit infrastructure, making is possible to work in Manhattan without living in Manhattan or even in New York City and without hating your life. Of course, housing in the outer boroughs and in nearby cities is _also_ expensive compared to, say, housing in a small university town somewhere in the Midwest. But this project is specifically about increasing the density of housing in Manhattan itself, which will hopefully let demand from people who can pay $3200/month shift away from the outer boroughs and nearby cities.

<comment><USER45> You are right that my confusion is about the squaremeter price in NYC in general, not in this project specifically. That is exactly my point. I don't want to bring any other point. Why are we still arguing about this point?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> This is like twice the size of the studio flat I rented while at university...

</comment><comment><USER48> I made it about a minute and couldn't take the reporter anymore - if you're going to do video, try to hire someone with more life than a dead carpet to do the speaking part.

While she may be a fine writer, clearly, she isn't a presenter for video.

<comment><USER49> Please stop posting uncivil and unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Completely off-topic, but I'm curious what websites/services people here like to use to find a place for rent in the SF Bay Area.

<comment><USER51> Even though we found our place on craigslist, be aware that 90% of postings are scams. In the City, you really need to remember the phrase "if it's too good to be true, it probably is".

<comment><USER26> I rented three times off Craigslist and have not had any trouble. I did respond to a couple of the ads that were "too good to be true" just for the heck of it. The poster came back with a request to wire them money, which was pretty obviously a scam. I wouldn't rent without seeing the place first so this was not a problem anyway. But if you're trying to rent sight-unseen, then you probably should use a service with more serious vetting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> "If groovy millennials are all about cooking and Instagramming the vegan cheesecakes they are making," she said later, "how do you live that life with a two-burner stove?"

Thanks for the stereotype, but I think we just want the right to keep our labour, not hand part of it over to the boomers and part to the banks, thanks.

"Perhaps this apartment is too good, too soft, for the demographic it purports to address. How will they mature in a friction-free environment? It irritated me that a 25-year-old would soon be lolling in my bed"

Really amazing. Such a soft option living in a cupboard and paying a fortune for it, or a fortune for other alternatives.</comment>


One Hostname to Rule Them All - <AUTHOR> https://fly.io/articles/one-hostname-to-rule-them-all/ <comment><USER2> ... so did they reinvent httpd reverse proxying?</comment>


Only 13 percent of Wikipedia edits are done by women - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/business/media/31link.html?src=busln

<comment><USER2> Editors, not edits.</comment>


We had our logo stolen, so we're letting the world know - <AUTHOR> http://www.netgenlabs.com/Blog/We-had-our-logo-stolen-so-we-re-letting-the-world-know <comment><USER2> I think you're making a big deal out of nothing, and I'm surprised Twitter, SlideShare, LinkedIn, DailyMotion took down the 'offending' logo.

You freely admit you have an unoriginal name. You have an unoriginal logo as well, and it isn't trademarked or copymarked or whatever it should be.

You also don't have a company or product that is likely to get confused for the company that stole your logo.

IANAL, but I suspect had you found the need to take this to court, you would have lost.

</comment><comment><USER3> I can see why you'd be annoyed. It's such an imaginative logo.</comment>


Prototype Apple TV predecessor from 1995 sells for $46 on eBay - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/05/05/prototype_apple_tv_predecessor_from_1995_sells_for_46_on_ebay.html

<comment><USER2> Bidding has ended. I would have paid that much just to gut it and cram a little HTPC Hackintosh in there for shits and giggles.

</comment><comment><USER3> Before buying it make sure its not stolen or you will loose all your gadgets including your current Apple TV.!</comment>


Metrics Saas recurring payments business model - <AUTHOR> http://blog.octobat.com/metrics-for-recurring-payment-business-models-saas/ <comment><AUTHOR> It's my second article. Feedback is welcome guys. Thank you</comment>


ESP8266 superfast flashing: flash ESP in 5 seconds - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cesanta.com/esp8266-superfast-flashing-flash-esp-in-5-seconds <comment><USER2> There's something very satisfying about modern techniques walking into the old way of doing things for orders of magnitude gains.

<comment><USER3> Yes, although this isn't quite that; this is a simple matter of turning the serial link speed way, way up over the normal levels. It's probably dependent on having a nice short cable, and since RS232 is single-ended rather than differential there might be more EMI.

<comment><USER4> Mmm, sort of doubt this. EMI would only be causing serious problems with a return path - in this case the RX line, which wouldn't have much of an effect on the transmitted byte stream since relatively little is coming back over the UART_RX. Since this is all at 3.3V logic levels, I doubt there'd be much crosstalk anyway.

If by "EMI" you mean some sort of signal quality issue due to transmission line effects, I'd say that's probably closer to the truth, but still not likely to be the case. At 1MBaud, your UART Tx will be switching in the range of 12-15MHz. As long as your physical UART connection is under six inches or so (and it probably would be if you were using a USB FTDI cable or something like that), it'd be pretty hard to get seriously bad transmission line effects at that frequency or most of the important harmonics in that square wave.

This sounds a little more like an additive error from a baud clock mismatch. At some point, the FTDI is going to be generating a clock at some frequency that isn't compatible with the ESP's receive oversampler. I'm inclined to believe his explanation if he was able to show JTAG captures of the ESP's UART error register.

<comment><AUTHOR> at 1MBaud UART Tx will be switching at max of 512 KHz (if transmitting 0x55).

<comment><USER4> The fact only enhances my point. You have to either be running a really high speed signal or over a very long distance. I doubt either is happening in this case.

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, agreed.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Passwords are dead. It's the future - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@gilani/passwords-are-dead-its-the-future-e3e95affd9a6#.79ftdgrpw <comment><USER2> No-password access can be pretty good for enterprise but just not realistic for consumers (yet). This humorous take on it actually does a pretty good job of explaining the user-experience reasons.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just so we're clear, there are great security advantages to using private keys for authentication. I always use a key for SSH!

But nothing so far is easier for my grandmother to use than a password that is the date of her wedding.</comment>


UK firms 'near point of no return' - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45931537 <comment><USER3> The UK is an odd place at the moment. Brexit is almost too toxic to bring up in discussion: I think it's safer to discuss religion.

I personally feel like a passenger on a train that has a 50/50 chance of derailing. I didn't choose to get on this train, and my time remaining to get off is running out very quickly. But I can't just get off because I have lots and lots of baggage. I can't hear the screaming in the driver's cab. Maybe there is no driver. All the posh people in 1st class keep going in to the cab to argue and decide my fate. All the other passengers are just drinking tea and enjoying the views of ye olde England.

<comment><USER4> I'd say I'm riding a very similar train in America, if only we invested in such things.

<comment><USER5> It can certainly feel like that, but after looking into Brexit, I think we (USA) have things MUCH better.

As much as Trump is loose cannon, our trade was based on the USA being the 'importer of last resort' and many of the changes we're making are not THAT extreme compared to history, or compared to other developed nation's existing rules. Plus _we are the ones choosing to make these changes_.

With Brexit, GB has failed to make any sort of deal or even seemingly understand their negotiating position. The 'deal' they're eventually going to receive is 'having EU non-member rules forced upon them'.

Furthermore, even if the USA did the same thing and pulled out of all treaties instantaneously with no forethought or negotiation, we're a big enough economy that other countries would be forced to negotiate. Check out the comparison of US and UK economies. [http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/United- King...](http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/United- Kingdom/United-States/Economy)

<comment><USER6> The diplomats and Foreign Office well understood the negotiating position, and probable consequences. Which is why a selection of senior figures have resigned over the last two years. Just one example: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk- politics-38498839](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38498839)

Britain _appears_ to have gone with the intent of negotiating by political dogma.

<comment><USER7> Yep. It's actually one of the main reasons I haven't applied to the Foreign Service. I think working as an FSO would be super neat and interesting, despite what all it entails, but I couldn't sign up to do it knowing what would likely be coming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jf- The most likely outcome, in my opinion, is a no deal Brexit. That has been the most likely outcome for several months.

There has only been the illusion of progress in the talks. Really things are in largely the same state they've been in since January.

The Northern Ireland border issue has not been solved, because it is effectively impossible to solve. The EU wants Northern Ireland to remain in the customs union to prevent a border on the island of Ireland, however the UK conservative government depend on the DUP, who are opposed, for support and will not agree. The EU will not consider any deal that introduces a border. There is no compromise position here, either one side backs down or there is no deal.

Also the conservatives have floated the idea of a "Canada+++" free trade deal, which to my knowledge has never been offered by the EU, as it would include services and thus be too close to the single market, rendering it meaningless. Even if the NI border issue were to disappear overnight, the substance of a deal still appears to be unagreed.

The deadline of March next year is fast approaching and any extension to the current negotiation period will need to be passed by the EU. If it comes to that, some EU government will likely derail the extension process and it won't happen. Then everyone will shout "But we couldn't possibly have seen this coming!", even though you could see it months ago, as the UK hurtles towards no deal Brexit with no means of stopping.

<comment><USER8> > The EU wants Northern Ireland to remain in the customs union to prevent a > border on the island of Ireland,

Ireland and Northern Ireland desperately want to prevent a hard border in order to maintain the hard-won peace and prevent the return of the bloodshed that drenched the island (and the rest of the UK). Ireland being in the EU, the EU has put its weight behind Ireland. That's how amplification of international clout/power through shared institution works.

In fact, the UK government also claims to want to prevent a hard border, yet has provided no way of actually doing so except "magically it won't be there", and the only practical solution (discounting magic) is for NI to remain in the CU and SM. That has been clear from the start.

<comment><USER7> The problem is the DUP. May requires their support in Parliament, and I'm not entirely sure what the DUP wants is what's best to avoid reigniting the Troubles. I know my friends in both Ireland and Northern Ireland (Protestant and Catholic) were very much of the opinion that May was making a deal with the devil, and that it wasn't going to be good for the Good Friday Agreement.

<comment><USER9> Given the religious connotations, my hat is off to you for an excellent pun!

(Even though the actual circumstances are dire.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Brexit always struck me as a frustrated response that would have been more valuable symbolically than something to actually follow through on. If they could just reframe it as "sure people are frustrated, let's try to address that" it would be far more valuable than attempting to leave.

The whole last few years remind me of an 80s movie where a teen threatens to run away and the parents let them go through the motions before they realize how screwed they'll be on their own.

<comment><USER11> So, basically ignore the result if you don't like it?

The Bolsheviks also gave fair elections a shot....one shot....one and done.

<comment><USER12> Yes, as it was a nonbinding referendum to see if there was support for leaving the EU, come up with a report showing some numbers that indicate the estimated impact and run the whole thing again.

<comment><USER11> and if Stay wins, of course the result will be treated as Final?

<comment><USER12> If a future referendum indicated that there was no longer support for leaving the EU, then yes, the government would not be in a position where it needed to take further action - call that "treating it as final" if you wish. Of course, in the future it could be reevaluated, using the same approach that led to the 2016 referendum to leave the EU.

Heck, we have confirmation dialogs when you close a word document - I don't understand the opposition to having an "are you sure you want to quit?" for brexit.

Brexit is a pretty major decision, and it's not unreasonable to me to require that the majority that voted for it is in fact stable and consistent via holding a second vote. If the second vote does not indicate that a majority supports leaving, that seems like an indication that it was a fantastic idea to hold a second referendum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I agree that this is crippling the UK and will for some time yet. However, I come to HN to get away from it.

<comment><USER14> This submission has been flagged. Perhaps because it's not really pertinent to HN?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well, what did they expect?

This is sounding ever more like the Quebec referendum, they didn't separate in the end, but the damage was done.

I'm in favour of letting them eat their cake and enjoy a complete separation.

<comment><USER16> Who's "they" in this scenario?

I know it's easy to pretend that Brexit got a massive majority but really it didn't. It was just 52-48%.

A large number of us didn't vote for it and still don't want Brrexit.

<comment><USER15> The leavers, who think untangling a web of commercial, legal and financial connections (which a lot of them depend on - I can't wait to see the face of the farmers when their EU subsidies stop coming) is as easy as unplugging their kettle.

<comment><USER17> Do not be so so harsh on the people who wanted the brexit. They have made a mistake, probably. Some of them realize that.

As a pro eu person from nl(if that even exists) i would prefer not to give uk a hard time to come back on their decision. And even íf they really quit: we still have to work together. It is in interest of all of us to have the uk with us. It is just impossible to negotiate for brexit and cherry pick all the good parts of the eu, while not doing something in return. They will end up with a eu type of deal, with a few minor things stripped off. Or a hard brexit, which may not even happen.

It is a shitty situation, which starts to affect my life as well. I have some stocks on a company "degiro" which has its license in the uk. This is a problem because i am unsure what is going to happen. I moved my investments to a broker with dutch bank accounts and licenses.

<comment><USER18> That's the ideal outcome. The problem is that rhetoric in the UK has shifted away from "Leave the EU in a structured manner with most of the bits intact" to "full-scale immediate departure with no planning for the future". That's going to be a medium-term disaster.

Honestly the problem isn't Brexit itself. I don't agree with that policy, but it's possible to see how it could be executed in a constructive and honest fashion. If we were able to accept that there are benefits to EU membership, but that we were willing to give those up in exchange for theoretically greater sovereignty, the situation would be better. If we were working towards a scenario that was minimally damaging, while importantly being honest about the tradeoffs, then the country would make some progress.

Instead we have an absolute catastrophe of untruth circulating. Large parts of the party of government appear to be aiming for a no-deal, cliff-edge event, claiming that everything will be fine. A huge share of the population seem to think that "no deal" means "status quo" instead of "immediate large-scale problems".

I don't know how we deal with that. We're genuinely in the time of post-facts, post-truth politics, and I don't know that we currently have the tools to fix that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The hostile behaviour introjected by common, good-natured people towards outsiders of any sort is more frightening, though. It is actually self- preservation in this new dystopian environment but it seems mind poisoning or zombification to the receiving parties of that hostility.

</comment><comment><USER20> I have absolutely no opinion on Brexit. It would be amazing to me beyond rational belief if the first attempt at a European government wasn't severely flawed. Maybe it's great, maybe it's awful, but to nail the first time? Probably not.

Having said that, I have no clue about when you should jump ship or hang on. Additionally, these are not the issues of my country. So even if I had an opinion, I'd just shut up about it.

With that prefix, the Brexit _discussion_ is about as whacked as any public discussion that I've witnessed online. You can see from the HN comments that there's a ton of emotion around this thing.

I don't think it belongs on HN. And I've been deleting political leaders as fast as they appear in my Twitter feed telling me to feel one way or another about it.

I love talking with fellow nerds about things that are contentious that we can reach some agreement on, even if it's just to agree to disagree. This doesn't look like one of those things. This looks like something that no matter what you say, people are going to be upset about it.

<comment><USER19> Much appreciated, thanks, but point is we do not live in a bubble and I am not sure Nerdistan would be a nicer country to live.

<comment><USER20> I agree. That's why it's important to talk about....the things we can talk about.

A friend of mine is visiting Europe. As a yank, he also doesn't have a strong opinion. His first night there, he was asked about Brexit.

He said something like "I don't know. Why not leave if you want to?" thinking that if people had voted for it, even the people against it would see how it looked from far away.

They did not. Instead he lost some friends that night, and it completely blindsided him.

Nobody wants to live in a bubble, but if the group is incapable of reasonable discussion, call it out. Let's move on. Just saying it's important isn't going to change the emotional dynamics. In fact, it'll probably just make them worse. The reason people can't discuss it reasonably is because they think it's so bloody important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Why was this flagged?

<comment><USER22> Probably because the comments are a dumpster fire and triggered the flame-war detector.

<comment> jf- They don't look like much of a dumpster fire to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's hard to make someone on HN understand why someone would ever want a Brexit.

As the 10%-ers, their livelihood depends on them not understanding it - <USER2> their social circles can only consider the people who do unwashed masses and scum.

<comment><USER24> It's a bizarre thing, this and the polarized US, as someone who's lived back and forth between the Midwest and California for decades. Both perspectives have genuine value, but both have this ridiculous sense that they hold the Truth.

<comment><USER7> And neither of them are likely to look at long term consequences. Well, one side is, but they often don't factor the other group into their long term consequence outlook, whereas I'm convinced the one side doesn't think of anything long-term. I'm a solidly progressive person teaching in solidly Trump country (like, my state was basically called _before_ the election was even over), and that's just been my experience. But, I went to school in a very progressive school, and it was the same -- they never considered rural or Blue Collar America in their long-term consequence planning, apart from "oh, we can give them this to support them, etc." Wasn't much discussion on how it would affect them individually and, even if they were able to live comfortably, how it would affect them culturally (having a job and providing for your family is what makes you a man, etc)

<comment><USER23> > _they never considered rural or Blue Collar America in their long-term > consequence planning_

Yes, from all I've read and seen it's a case of "millions out of jobs, devastated? tough luck, they need to embrace change, the future's is for those that adapt, etc..." \-- all the while those saying it benefit from the current economy and so have no experience whatsoever with "adapting" themselves (and if they were on the other end would be crying like little babies).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> every crisis is an opportunity if you know how to exploit it.

</comment><comment><USER26> The sky is falling! The UK may be headed for disaster status as seen in basket cases like Switzerland, Norway, Iceland.

Except of course that's not going to happen. Nobody's going to leave anything after all, as per a well-known line from a well-known Eagles song, about the feasibility of check-out.

</comment><comment><USER27> The day after Brexit will be like Neo waking up from the Matrix. Yes, there will be pain and things may not seem quite as bright as they did under the yoke of the EU - but they will finally be free of the oppressive regime of Germany, France, and the EU bureaucrats. The UK should have the chance to drive their own destiny.

The EU was a great and prosperous (for some) experiment but it has outlived its usefulness for all but the elites desperately clinging to power. It's only a matter of time until another major country exits, then the balkans, then the south. The UK should rip the band-aid off now and focus on their core strengths of Finance and Tech, work to build out domestic manufacturing and agriculture capabilities, and establish trade agreements with key partners.

The UK will come out stronger and more globally competitive in the end.

<comment><USER9> Perhaps w/o Scotland though. After all, if the British may leave the oppressive yoke of Brussels, doesn't the same hold true of Scottish leaving the oppressive yoke of London? "But...but...but...how would they DARE!!! Of course they mayn't!", I keep hearing from the English. "But isn't the situation symmetric? Of course we may!", I keep hearing from the Scots.

<comment><USER27> I support Scottish independence as well.</comment></comment></comment>


Living on the wrong side of a time zone can be hazardous to your health - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/04/19/how-living-wrong-side-time-zone-can-be-hazardous-your-health/ <comment><USER2> For those pushing to get rid of adjusting clocks twice a year, this suggests it may be better to stick with standard time year round, rather than daylight saving time.

<comment><USER3> The article contradicts your statement. The reason longer light hours are worse is because they get fewer hours of sleep due to staying up later, but still have to wake up in the morning at the same time.

If we abandoned clock swapping, it wouldn't be an issue because yes people would stay up an hour later, but work/school would also start an hour later so no lost sleep time.</comment></comment>


Don't Quit Your Day Job: Using Wage Earnings to Support a New Business (2012) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.frbatlanta.org/documents/news/conferences/13rdc/s2_p1_new_firms_Perez.pdf <comment><USER2> I'm mixed on this.

I have a full time job and have a growing side business that I am going to be transitioning to my full time job in December.

On the one hand it is critical for myself and my family to have income while we bootstrap. Our business is in the position where we need money to go full time but can't get money till we are able to devote full time effort to it - and even then it's not a guarantee that we will make enough in the first few months to sustain my family and my co-founders families until we have a market breakthrough.

Oh the flip side, not only is your life insane but nobody really wants to touch you because you can't be 100% devoted right then. Investors don't like part-time people, partners don't like part time people and you have a hard time recruiting people to work part time on the side. Not only that but there is a constant nagging feeling in the back of your head that "you're late to the party" and some competitor is going to eat your lunch simply by putting in more hours.

So there are goods and bads and I think the answer is that it depends on your life situation and what you are trying to build.

<comment><USER3> > I have a full time job and have a growing side business that I am going to > be transitioning to my full time job in December.

Are you allowed to do that? Every full time job offer I've read forbids outside work.

<comment><USER4> I have not personally seen a contract provision or company policy that was a blanket prohibition on outside work.

<comment><USER3> Odd, I literally just saw one that did exactly that. It even forbade "outside activity" and I had to ask WTH that meant.

<comment><USER4> I have seen some indications[1] that such a clause may be illegal.

[1] [http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/off-duty-conduct- empl...](http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/off-duty-conduct-employee- rights-33590.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As day jobs expand and expand, expecting more and more hours worked for less and less pay, and carrying a cell phone and checking email 24 hours a day, it seems quite implausible that maintaining a day job and ANYTHING else, whether it be a hobby or a fledgeling company, is not a wise move.

<comment><USER6> This depends a lot on your job. If you work as a software engineer, it's likely that you have sufficient control and freedom to work on side projects.

It's still brutal though - 60 hour weeks are insane, especially when you do them continuously. It can also take _years_ and likely multiple projects before you succeed.

<comment><USER7> And you'd need a fairly mundane day job so your problem solving circuits aren't perpetually exhausted.

<comment><USER4> That has been one of my problems. I frequently come home so drained that I don't have much capacity left for the day. That exacerbates my motivation/procrastination problems.

<comment><USER8> Get up early. You have to make sure to do the important thing first in the morning and chip away at it day by day. This is very hard, but still possible by slowly building up a routine (even if your an 'owl'). Spend your best brain-time on your own stuff, get to work and try to manage the dayjob with the leftovers. Be a B player, fuck them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's very do-able. I work 30-40 hours a week at a Law Firm (weekdays) + Target retail store (weekends). My little mini business is selling my inventions and products at [http://ChrisNorstrom.com/shop](http://ChrisNorstrom.com/shop) . Only 5 are up right now with 4 new ones being added for the Holiday Season and another 2 for Spring next year.

A day job allowed me to experiment and survive failures. I've had 7 products fail in the prototyping phase (costing me at least a grand) and 5 were successful. The simple ones are the ones that succeeded. What people don't realize is that it can take hundreds of dollars of experimenting with materials and suppliers to get even the simplest product just right. Selling my calendar alone took $7,000 in materials/packing/shipping/bulk orders. If it's defective you can lose thousands on the refund costs to all your customers.

● 1.5 years ago = I had 1 sale every month from ebay.

● Today = I have orders from Amazon, Etsy, Ebay, and my website come in 2-10 times a day, every day.

● I started with simple products and am expanding to Glass lamps, pebble imbedded rubber mats for showers and tubs, glass cube wall planters, and a "20" tall Leaning Tower of Piza Lamp". (I'm starting to take more risks with more profitable but harder to make products)

It's growing slowly but growing none-the-less. The more money I make at my day jobs the more risk I can afford to take with my prototypes.

(DO NOT underestimate the amount of space a small etsy/ebay/estore business will take up in your home. Our entire basement is dedicated to boxes, stock, and shipping supplies)

</comment><comment><USER10> A bit off topic, but one of my favorite parts of any social science paper is when the authors describe how they developed the dataset. In this case, it's a clever linking of tax forms, Census Bureau surveys of business owners, and state unemployment insurance databases.

It's a neat solution that the authors are justifiably proud of. But since it's considered passé to talk about your data too much at the expense of your results, it only gets a couple pages (pages 9-10) of the paper even though I'm sure they spent many man-months compiling and cleaning up the data.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've done this. It can work, but it's a huge commitment. YMMV.

Protip: make sure you understand (as in, have your own employment law lawyer explain, not rely on what you think, or what HR tells you) _exactly_ what any explicit or implied employment contract says about this. This will prevent any number of more or less unpleasant surprises down the road.

</comment><comment><USER12> Use wage earnings to support an idea.

Not to support a trading, or self-registered, business.

Make the clarification distinct.

<comment><USER13> True. It would probably kill to do full time job and work on side business as well.

<comment><USER14> Plenty of people work full-time and also work on a side business. I'm doing it right now, myself. Yeah, it's tough, but you do what you have to do.

<comment><USER11> According to the US BLS, almost 5% of the employed workforce has more than one job. Of course, the _vast_ majority of those aren't working a white collar job while pursuing their start-up dream on the side...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The issue I have is that my day job is fairly demanding, and by the time I get home my brain is so fried that the last thing I want is to do even more work. And even if I find it in myself to do it, the quality I put out tends to be... meh.

The reason I want to quit is to force myself to abandon the safety net of a stable day job. I have enough saved up where I can go jobless for a year or so, which should be sufficient time to devote my full energy to ideas. In the end, even if things don't work out, I suspect that my batteries will be recharged and I'll be ready to go back to a steady day job.

Maybe I'm just horribly wrong, though. One way to find out, right? :)

</comment><comment><USER16> I think a blanket statement like the title of the article should be a taken with a pinch of salt. There a plethora of factors that come into play, e.g., what kind of day job you are working at? Do you have a family to support? What kind of new business ideas are you exploring?

Personally, I think it is really hard to do justice to either your fledgling business or your day job when you try to do both. Especially when you have a kids.

</comment><comment><USER17> "Having recent wage and salary income in the same industry as the non-employer business has a large and positive impact on the likelihood of transit- ing to being a non-employer business." \- isn't this capturing the typical Silicon Valley story?

</comment><comment><USER18> Questions to those of you who have done this: how do you deal with exhaustion keeping you from working on side projects after work? I have a bunch of ideas I want to try to work on, but I never seem to have the will to do them when I get home.

<comment><USER3> Become really good at breaking down tasks into 15-30 minute increments and work on at least one increment per day. You may not get much done per day, but over time you will.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Notice that all of the top-level comments so far on this are basically "Don't try and be uppity and make your own business at the same time as you hold a job." In many cases, sure, but it's interesting to see such an anti-Labor position here.

We're all being bought and enslaved, bit by bit, paycheck by paycheck. Don't fight the system, the company cares about you (lol).

<comment><USER20> I think you're reading into it. I read the comments as "straighten this out early so you're not sued later."

edit: and the replies to "I'm tired after work" seem to be "do your own stuff first and be tired at work!"</comment></comment>


Visualizing iPhone location tracking with Google Maps and R - <AUTHOR> http://www.r-bloggers.com/visualizing-iphone-location-tracking-with-r-and-google-maps/

<comment><USER2> [http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/04/al-franken- to-s...](http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/04/al-franken-to-steve- jobs-on-iphone-tracking-i-want-answers.php)</comment>


Google buys chip start-up from ex-Apple designers - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-20002990-265.html

<comment><USER2> I agree with the comments on the link, clearly these were ex semi PA employees who didnt want to work for apple, not apple employees that started a chip company.

What they wilk do for google, provided the employees don't peel from google as well is speculative at best.

But I'd doubt google bought it for the same reason as apple bought semi-pa. Google seems pretty adament on working qith existing handset providers.

<comment><USER3> > But I'd doubt google bought it for the same reason as apple bought semi-pa. > Google seems pretty adament on working qith existing handset providers.

Apple made their first Phone with Motorola.[1] It is not easy to enter a hardware industry; more so if you have no prior experience with consumer hardware market (unlike Apple). I think its more likely that Google was testing the water with Nexus One to see how people will react to it and how the process of manufacturing phones work. If I remember correctly they worked closely with HTC and had quite a bit influence on how the final product will look like. Remember, they are also working on a slate device and a net-book device, which will debut sometime this year. While this acquisition might not have any direct relation to the Google hardware devices coming out this year. I think it is highly likely that they might start building their own devices with custom processors soon.

1\. [http://www.engadget.com/2005/09/07/the-motorola- rokr-e1-appl...](http://www.engadget.com/2005/09/07/the-motorola- rokr-e1-apple-itunes-phone/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Even if they do want to get into chip design (low power chips -- the area where PA semi excelled) they may expose themselves to patent suits if they directly compete with Apple in the handheld market.

Not saying they cannot avoid it, but in that case they loose some of the expertise of these guys.

<comment><USER5> Why would a _patent_ lawsuit directly affect these guys? It would be between the Apple and Google corporations, and absent an impossible temporary injunction (you can only get those by assuming the facts all fall in favor of the other side) while it was being litigated they and Google could continue their work.

As it is, Apple has already shown its reluctance to sue Google WRT to Android by suing HTC; I suspect Google holds one or more patents that Apple wouldn't like to get enforced against it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article mentions there not being any idea of what Google intends to do with the purchase, but at this point it seems relatively clear that although there are a number of applications, a focus on Android (phone and/or table) seems to be the big key here.

Interesting move.

</comment><comment><USER7> Educated guess (back in February) that it could be about servers/network:

[http://www.electronicsweekly.com/blogs/david-manners- semicon...](http://www.electronicsweekly.com/blogs/david-manners- semiconductor-blog/2010/02/could-agnilux-be-making-arm-ba.html)

(If so, not unrelated: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1276510> \- seems there's interest in eating Cisco's lunch.)</comment>


Deft -- easy note taking for Emacs - <AUTHOR> http://jblevins.org/projects/deft Deft is an Emacs mode for quickly browsing, filtering, and editing directories of plain text notes, inspired by Notational Velocity [<i>]. It was designed for increased productivity when writing and taking notes by making it fast and simple to find the right file at the right time and by automating many of the usual tasks such as creating new files and saving files.<p>[</i>] http://notational.net <comment><USER2> It's when I see gems like these that I feel like spending time to learn emacs. I've tried a couple of times.. but it is so damn hard. I feel like vim keybindings are burnt in my memory/fingers.. and it makes it so unproductive to relearn something totally different. Any vim power user successfully switched to Emacs? If so, did you switch back missing Vim or you're still using emacs and couldn't be happier? (I'm still interested in the reverse side.. where Emacs power users switched back to vim).

<comment><USER3> I'm a vim user who started to really get into Lisp (and now ML for school). Emacs (especially with SLIME) is really the Right Thing for Lisp, so I started using it. I've definitely gotten to the point where `C-a C-k` is as well burned into my fingers as `dd` is...it's just that

a) `dd` seems like a more natural keybinding--both because I'd rather double- tap a home row button than involve three fingers and two hands, and because, if you do stop to think about it, `dd` makes sense--`d` means delete, and a double-tap usually makes something apply to a whole line. (Of course, `dd` / `C-a C-k` is just an example--this applies in general.)

b) There's more of a zen to vim. It's been discussed before, but it's worth repeating--vim commands form a language with nouns and verbs. `w` means word and `(` means sentence. Now you know two commands. `d` means delete, `y` means yank, and `c` means change. Now you know _8_ commands--`w`, `dw`, `yw`, `cw`, `(`, `d(`, etc. And adding a few more "nouns" brings you up to several dozen with minimal effort. Emacs has no direct equivalent * .

So I like emacs for the ecosystem, I like it for the freakish integration it can achieve between a REPL and a source file...as they say, it's a great operating system--it just needs a good editor.

* - This is not quite true--emacs does try to do sane things with the use of `C` and `M`. `C-f` means "forward one character", and `M-f` means "forward one word"--a "bigger" form of the same thing. In the same way, `C-d` deletes a character and `M-d` deletes a word. But now you want to delete a line? Time to learn something completely new.

 _Edited to make a lame effort to fix my formatting problems...thus the asterisks surrounded by a sea of whitespace._

<comment><USER4> I had the exact same experience, and agree with everything you said.

I'll note that I tried vimpulse for a while. Then I stopped. I wish I could be more helpful, but that's all I remember. I don't even know if stopping was an actual decision that I made, or if I just didn't start again after reinstalling everything.

(vimpulse-mode is an attempt to bring vim keybindings to emacs.)

<comment><USER3> I tried using viper, and eventually just got confused and realized that I should just learn emacs...and the best way of learning emacs was to go cold turkey. Some things emulated vi, not vim (delete key would not remove a newline, pressing undo twice resulted in undo->redo (and no net change)). Some things were intercepted by emacs (C-v to try to enter visual block mode). It was just a confusing and unhappy time.

<comment><USER5> seconded! I made the same beginner's error, too, and then decided that it was just the wrong thing to do. Emacs does not have a modal concept and cursor movement is not done with "hjkl" (and "ew") in Emacs. As Steve Yegge said, you should use incremental search forwards and backwards instead. I guess that eliminates many of vim's keystrokes (stats would be interesting), so staying with its keybindings might be prohibitive to learning Emacs...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Available via Marmalade as well: <http://marmalade-repo.org/packages/deft>

Just spent a few minutes playing around with it. I like the simplicity, nice work. One thought I had is that you could enter Deft mode whenever you cd into a directory with a .deft configuration file. This file could have a title for the top of the Deft view and perhaps the ability to specify what columns you want displayed. In this way you can have different directories for notes about different topics.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you are a vim user, I recommend vimwiki: <http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2226>

</comment><comment><USER8> My notes have gotten pretty extensive and sprawling, so I have a cron job which every hour indexes all org-mode and python files with swish[1]. It's pretty hacky, but I've integrated this with emacs's dired-mode, so that I get a clickable list[2]. It's an absolute life saver, at times.

      [1] http://swish-e.org/docs/swish-search.html
      [2] http://pastebin.com/xeDbjKhA

<comment><USER9> Clickable urls:

<http://swish-e.org/docs/swish-search.html>

<http://pastebin.com/xeDbjKhA>

<comment><USER8> Thanks, I did that for the formatting, without really thinking about the impact on the links.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hmm. Deft, org-mode, Dropbox, and MobileOrg might just made the perfect desktop/mobile note system. Definitely setting this one up!

</comment><comment><USER11> I use <https://github.com/cefstat/simplenote.el> to synchronize with simplenote service and on mobile device and Notational Velocity.

Deft seems little more refined, and simplenote.el has not been updated for a while, but would be nice if it synced with simplenote.

<comment><USER12> I'm the author of simplenote.el. Deft looks very interesting and I am happy that simplenote.el was of some use to Jason for writing Deft. As a sidenote, I am always pleasantly surprised when I hear that people are using simplenote.el; this was just a small personal project that I put on github on a whim.

You should not expect much more to happen with simplenote.el since I don't feel very motivated to work on it anymore. When I first wrote simplenote.el the Simplenote app and platform were perfect. Since then Simplenote has changed to a direction that I don't like (tags, different pay model) [1]. Furthermore, I have been lately traveling a lot to China and Appspot is blocked there. This limits the usefulness of Simplenote.

I do plan to rewrite simplenote.el for Simplenote's API2 and clean up the code but at the moment I don't plan to add any new features. In particular, I don't plan to add any support for tags. Of course everybody is welcome to fork simplenote.el and continue its development.

[1]: I understand that most Simplenote users are happy with these changes and actually Simperium has done a great job in adding features in an unobtrusive way.

<comment><USER11> I appreciate you creating simplenote.el. I understand disagreeing with direction platform taken, particularly if you are personally unable to take advantage of it.

As far as forking, would you consider merging in tag support into your version, if someone were to send you a patch?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you need a bit more, that is, todo lists, planning, etc. while keeping a way to easily edit text documents, you also have Org-Mode <http://orgmode.org/>

Do not try to setup Org-Mode if you are new to Emacs, you will feel a bit overwhelmed (at least I was), but once you get used to Emacs and Org-Mode, it is a pleasure to use it. I use it for GTD, day planner and notes taking like here: <http://notes.ceondo.com>

<comment><USER14> I think the key thing about Org-mode is to _not_ read the documentation. All you need to start is stars and the tab key. The docs have a way of dumping keybindings onto you. Org mode has a lot of features --- don't try to read the manual through. Just start using it and every time you think of a feature you would like, look it up in the manual.

<comment><USER15> This is probably good advice, and I think I'll give org-mode another try without trying to build it around someone else's setup.

I've been using emacs for years, but could never quite make an habit out of org mode. I think deft handling simple org files might be a good way to get started.

<comment><USER14> I kept trying to start with a todo list in Org-mode, and it was never worth it. Instead, I ended up getting into Org-mode through using it as a markup (it supports inline LaTeX!) and only later learned some of the shortcuts. I've just started using C-RET and similar to add outline nodes, for example; similarly C-. and C-d and such. Now I use Org-mode heavily for literate programming as well.

One of the reasons I love Emacs and Org-mode so much is that it never forces you to use its features. For the right approach and for the power user, this is beautiful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why are the rows hard-set to 80 columns? Is there a way to change this value, or better yet, have it auto-fill to the width of the window?

<comment><USER17> I don't use Deft, so YMMV, but it sounds like you're looking for visual-line- mode.

Interactively:

      M-x visual-line-mode

Or in your .emacs:

      (add-hook 'deft-mode-hook 'enable-visual-line-mode)

You'll probably need to set deft-line-width to some number that's larger than the most columns you ever have in a frame, because from a quick glance it looks like Deft has some magic of its own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Thank you so much for this. This immediately replaced my usage of org- velocity. I used this function to convert my (10,000 line) velocity.org file into separate files for Deft:

      (defun generate-files-from-velocity (buffername)
        (save-excursion
          (switch-to-buffer buffername)
          (org-map-entries (lambda ()
                             (progn
                               (org-mark-subtree)
                               (if (and (= 1 (org-outline-level)) (org-export-get-title-from-subtree))
                                   (let* ((title (downcase (org-export-get-title-from-subtree)))
                                          (filename (replace-regexp-in-string " " "-" (concat title ".org"))))
                                     (append-to-file (region-beginning) (region-end) (concat "~/Documents/Org/Notes/" filename)))))))))

      (generate-files-from-velocity "velocity.org")

<comment><USER19> I haven't used either of these, but they seem to fill a useful niche. What do you find are the pros and cons of deft vs. org-velocity?

<comment><USER18> The advantage for me is entirely in terms of separating notes into separate files; something that Deft does and org-velocity isn't really built for. I was planning on implementing something like that for org-velocity, but with the arrival of Deft I no longer have to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> no org-mode support?

<comment><USER21> Sure there is.

"You can also customize the major mode that Deft uses to edit files, either through M-x customize-group or by adding something like the following to your .emacs file:

(setq deft-text-mode 'markdown-mode)"

All you need to do is:

(setq deft-text-mode 'org-mode)

Or any other major mode for that matter.</comment></comment>