How to Use Philosophy as a Personal Operating System: From Seneca to Musashi - <AUTHOR> http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2011/05/18/philosophy-as-a-personal-operating-system-from-seneca-to-musashi/ <comment><USER2> If you want to know where the metaphor of philosophy as an operating system comes from:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c8an2XZ3MU>

(The video is called Culture Is Your Operating System, but what he's talking about is the philosophical assumptions that are completely invisible unless you find a way to step outside your culture.)

<comment><USER3> Not to belabor the point, but I think it bears repeating that Terence McKenna recommended a chemical perturbation of the brain, that is, a visionary substance, be used in order to 'step outside your culture'.

Some substances can temporarily remove/obscure one's entire personality structure and linguistic faculties while enhancing awareness. Such an experience offers one the opportunity to truly exist outside their biographical circumstances for a time.

<comment><USER2> "Terence McKenna recommended a chemical perturbation of the brain, that is, a visionary substance, be used in order to 'step outside your culture'."

So does Tim Ferriss. Here is a short YouTube clip of him talking about his views:

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

But the better source is probably his original interview with Joe Rogan.

<comment><USER4> So are we again talking about scientists encouraging young people to drop acid?

<comment><USER3> Well, at least in the USA, advocating that someone consume an illegal drug is itself illegal.

However, old people can benefit greatly from the proper use of psychedelic drugs. Certain types of psychedelic experiences, called unitive experiences, have been found to be very effective in alleviating death anxiety. More information can be found through searching but this video should be informative: <http://www.maps.org/videos/source/video14.html>

Two excellent, little known books about the phenomenology of psychedelic experiences are:

_The Antipodes of the Mind: Charting the Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca Experience_ [http://www.amazon.com/Antipodes-Mind-Phenomenology- Ayahuasca...](http://www.amazon.com/Antipodes-Mind-Phenomenology-Ayahuasca- Experience/dp/0199252939)

Comments: This is a truly excellent book, it's published by OUP and the scholarship is the best I've ever seen in a book about psychedelics. Benny Shannon is a cognitive psychologist and philosophy and he's personally taken Ayahuasca over 200 times in addition to gathering second hand reports from many informants over years of investigation. In particular, he stresses commonalities between different people's Ayahuasca experiences despite vast cultural differences in their lives as well as the idea that Ayahuasca experiences proceed in sequences reminiscent of a course of schooling.

_The Ecstatic Imagination: Psychedelic Experiences and the Psychoanalysis of Self-Actualization_ [http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Ecstatic_Imagination...](http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Ecstatic_Imagination.html?id=6AJTo76KDO0C)

Comments: This book is also very strong in its own right, although I think that the Antipodes book is superior. In _The Ecstatic Imagination_ Dan Merkur takes a dispassionate, objective phenomenological view of psychedelic experiences. The many, many block quoted experience reports from drug-takers using LSD, mescaline and psilocybin are the best part of this book. Merkur has taken almost all of these reports from published works about psychedelic psychotherapy and they illustrate the diversity and healing potential of psychedelic experiences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well, one of the most famous disciple of Seneca, was Nero (yes the infamous emperor)... As long as you believe that there is such a thing like a "Personal operating system", it's a long way to understand stoicism. If you really spend a lot of time reading Seneca and Marcus Aurelius (I don't encourage you to do so, I did because I learned latin as a teen ) you'll realize that these writings are deeply connected to the context of the first century in the Roman Empire. Many of these thoughts have percolated through Christianism, that's why they're able to reach most westerners today, but remember that stoicism has failed to change romans, both individually and as a society.

<comment><USER6> Hedonism and capitalism have served us better as a society?

Judging a philosophy based on the merits of select adherents does not a representative sample make.

<comment><USER5> I suppose that by hedonism you mean materialism, and I get your point. What I was trying to say is that it's tempting to believe that some kind of ancient wisdom could guide your life ( _indeed I'm sure Tim Ferris doesn't believe it himself, but some readers might_ ). But ideas are reactions to a very specific reality, and even in the context of this reality these ideas didn't work. It doesn't mean that there is nothing valuable in the stoics' writings, just that using these thoughts as a "Personal Operating System" is as useful as installing MS-DOS on a smartphone

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can't recommend enough A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy[1]. It's a great and modern introduction to stoicism.

[1]: [http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Good-Life-Ancient- Stoic/dp/01953...](http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Good-Life-Ancient- Stoic/dp/0195374614/)

</comment><comment> Anth-ny >Marcus Aurelius and his book Meditations, which was effectively a war campaign journal.

I don't think he understands what the book is about.

<comment><USER8> Of course he doesn't. This is Tim Ferris. He didn't spend more than 4 hours on this crap.

<comment><USER9> Haha so true. All pareto all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Art Of War? Book of Five Rings? Huh?) Seems like 4 hours for research is not enough..

And, of course, Meditations isn't any war journal.)

</comment><comment><USER11> If your philosophy starts in Seneca you've got a problem: missing the real thing (Plato & Aristoteles to boot but many others as well).

</comment><comment><USER12> I can't believe he used "Operating System" as "Decision Making Framework".

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> good read along similar lines - On War: Carl von Clausewitz

<http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/117031.On_War>

</comment><comment><USER13> Philosophy and Technology mixed together.</comment>


JavaScript growth and third parties - <AUTHOR> https://speedcurve.com/blog/javascript-growth/ <comment><USER2> EDIT: The HN title changed so I don't know if this comment is relevant anymore.

That sounds like saying "living is the leading cause of death".

I mean, I don't particularly like JS, but it seems like we decided long ago that plain documents and links won't cut it. Everything, apparently, needs to be a rich web application with huge images and a gazillion of ads.

Why is that Javascript's fault?

<comment><USER3> It's not the fault of JavaScript the language, but JavaScript as the name we give to the parts of a web page that are not HTML and not CSS.

And it's not really "living is the leading cause of death"; most of that JavaScript is superfluous garbage - ad scripts, trackers, bloated frameworks. You don't need this for a page to serve a socially useful purpose. You just need someone in your company with enough clout, who's willing to say, "out of respect for our users and for engineering as a practice, we will not partake in the latest iteration of the insanity that is the modern web".

<comment><USER4> You need to be pretty damn high up in a company to overrule the business reasons for trackers, and perhaps more critically, helpdesk widgets. The size of the very common Zendesk widget is obscene.

<comment><USER3> You might not be high enough in a large company, but in smaller companies and startups, an employee-level pushback can go a long way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand why JavaScript is so ubiquitous now. There seem to be very few cases where it is actually necessary and useful (e.g. a calculator form that does computations client side that would otherwise overwhelm the server).

I am constantly surprised at the number of sites that should be totally static (e.g. a local restaurant's menu page) that display nothing at all when I visit with JavaScript disabled.

Can someone who actually makes websites explain why this has happened? Is this about varying screen resolutions and aspect ratios in the era of phones and tablets? Can't you just use CSS instead?

<comment><USER6> JS is very useful in many cases. Don't just think about documents or single blog posts in those cases static content should be sufficient.

But the web evolved to be way more than being a dumb content delivery pipe, it's an application development platform bypassing the underlying OS.

So ask yourself, if you need well behaved image galleries, do you need JS? Yes. Do you want to avoid page reloading to navigate? You need JS. Do you want login/form validation? You need JS. Need an inline calculator? Update content from the server? Monitor the progress of a long lasting server job? Add any logic to a shopping cart?

And these are very simple use cases, web apps are needless to say changed the way we ship apps and they all rely on JS.

I'm very much in support of offloading as many tasks to CSS as possible, but JS is hard to avoid if you want to do anything beyond static content delivery.

<comment><USER7> But it's also used in completely idiotic places. Want to display a 100% static blog post? With just thirteen megabytes of JS, you can break scrolling, zooming, screen readers, and many others.

Reminds me of emails and newsletters. Yes, they have many legitimate uses, but that doesn't change the fact that a large part of them are just plain crap.

I feel like both sides of the debate are refusing to admit the other side might also have some valid points. Which admittably seems to be the theme in all of the internet.

<comment><USER6> Authors are free to alienate their audience the way they please :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Poorly implemented JS makes websites slower. Well implemented JS makes websites faster. The lesson here is not "use less JS" because you'll miss out on some things that JS can do that actually improves (perceived) performance, but rather it's "Use JS intelligently or risk harming your site's performance." The raw number of downloads doesn't impact the speed at all if most of them are done asynchronously in the background while the browser is idle after the first paint and after the page is interactive.

Developers seem to have forgotten progressive enhancement entirely and just piled more and more JS in to the first page load. Consequently users complain about JS, but JS itself is not the problem. There are patterns for building websites that are _fast_ , in terms of both literal download and rendering speed and the perceived speed the user feels. We 'just' need better developers who actually care about the sites they build.

<comment><USER9> Imo, the real problem is that most people believe what you're saying is true, but if we assume that JS itself is not the problem, and that finding the right patterns for building fast websites with JavaScript, the next question becomes: who do we look to to learn the right patterns from.

For most people, the intuitive thing is to look to successful companies: Google, Facebook, etc. The problem here is two fold: (1) operating at scale often has requirements that supercede making individual pages fast for individual visitors and (2) massive market dominance/semi-monopolies/vendor- lock-ins means these companies don't really need to compete on perf. See Facebook.com/gmail.com as lovely examples of some of the worst performance on the web.

You're right that one can make a webpage fast with correctly implemented js, but I disagree that _people_ can make webpages fast en masse with correctly implemented js; dissuading the use of JS is much more likely to have a positive effect than expecting people to somehow spontaneously learn how to write good js.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ironically after 47 minutes on HN their site doesn't load at all.

Here is a cached version that works: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://speedcurve.com/blog/javascript- growth/)

<comment><USER11> Can I just check, do you use Edge browser? We've (SpeedCurve) been seeing some issues where Edge goes bonkers and makes thousands of requests to our CDN and fails to load CSS which would look like a broken site.

<comment><USER10> Apologies, it wasn't down because of HN! I can't edit the original post now, but it was just my computer blocking your domain at the hosts level via [https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts](https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts)

I should have realised, but it's the first time using that hosts list has ever stopped a website I've wanted to go to from loading, so I didn't think of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd rather attribute that to ads, especially terrible ones that cause page reflow, than just javascript.

<comment><USER13> Page reflow is nothing compared to <canvas>es flying on top of the <video> thanks to some overengineered JS code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Google Mail feels like it's transmitting over a 57.6k modem these days. If developers at Google can't make fast JavaScript front ends, what are the odds that an average front end developer can?

<comment><USER15> It's 6MB (closer to 7 if you round it).

[https://twitter.com/mikemaccana/status/1073538289582436352](https://twitter.com/mikemaccana/status/1073538289582436352)

<comment> onion-soup did you just compare a bundle size with the modem bandwidth?

<comment><USER15> Not the JS bundle (if that's what you mean), the site itself (to get to the point where you can use gmail).

And yes, why wouldn't I? My 50Mb/s cable modem can download the fully featured Fastmail (500K) _13x faster than GMail_. That's how bandwidth works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The wheel of karma keeps on turning. Rich-client / client-server / rich-client / client-server. It's been going on since core memory supplanted rotating drum memory. It's not going to stop.

Javascript is an INSANELY GREAT way of implementing rich clients; the best I've seen in my almost half-century in the trade. (Progress. Duh.)

The modern clients (browsers) now have compilation right. V8 and its competitors are astonishing. But as always we have to get the distribution right: security, caches, progressive and async loading, agendas under control (meaning justified amounts of third party stuff).

</comment><comment><USER17> Probably it is not the specific language that is to blame here, but the fact that websites are programs at all.

We all know plenty of slow Python, C and C++ programs.

I think there are some general "laws" that dictate this

1\. all things that are programmable will be programmed at some point

2\. all programs, no matter what language, we become as slow as the users will tolerate

</comment><comment><USER18> > In terms of the number of JavaScript requests, first party has gone up 50% > from 4 to 6 requests, whereas third party has increased 140% from 5 to 12 > requests.

> Third party growth in terms of JavaScript size is more alarming. First party > JavaScript doubled from 53 KB to 106 KB. Third party JavaScript octupled(!) > from 32 KB to 258 KB.

one more reason to use NoScript

</comment><comment><USER19> While I do acknowledge that increase in generic third-party things like ads and trackers definitely plays a certain role here isn't the study is kind of moot unless sites with similar feature sets are compared.

<comment><USER3> You can compare site's performance with it's performance under uMatrix or even uBlock. The amount of nonessential third-party JS is really a big problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> And the saddest thing is that this javascript is mainly used for a) tracking and b) useless UI features that stopped being impressive to anyone like 10 years ago (highjacking the scroll, parallax, sliders, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER21> O(c^n) is what makes websites slow. Piling libraries, frameworks, trackers, and other third party services on-top of each other, that each has thousands of dependencies.

<comment><USER17> Also there is nothing special about websites. The same is true for programs and mobile apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Judging by the bundle sizes, the numbers aren't that bad if you consider the increasing of internet speed:

[https://www.nngroup.com/articles/law-of- bandwidth/](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/law-of-bandwidth/)

Given that HTTP2 will be more and more available, the number of requests isn't a problem either. Global, fast CDN-s are thing for a while.

What would be worrying about client side JS is needless use of heavy frameworks, like Angular, CPU hogging tracking scripts or lame ads, dark UX marketing widgets.

<comment><USER22> The problem with a heavy bundle isn't just delivery it's parsing and execution the bundle aswell.

<comment><USER6> Of course, that's what I meant by heavy _frameworks_.

<comment><USER22> Ah ok sorry, I misunderstood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Web pages were better than web apps. Whisper it.

</comment><comment> onion-soup Fixed: Ad-tracking libraries is the main cause for making websites slow

</comment><comment><USER24> One of the big problems with JavaScript is that some developers don't know it very well (me included) but have to get some feature working, so import multiple frameworks/libraries to get their job done, most of which is not needed.

</comment><comment><USER25> Yeeeeeeeeeeeeees.</comment>


Google's Marissa Mayer Tells Lesley Stahl What's Next - <AUTHOR> http://www.wowowow.com/politics/lesley-stahl-marissa-mayer-google-search-products-242531

<comment><AUTHOR> Link to print version on 1 page:

<http://www.wowowow.com/print/242531></comment>


Data Ownership and the Semantic Web: Interview with Professor Ruben Verborgh - <AUTHOR> https://tapmydata.com/data-ownership-and-the-semantic-web-interview-with-professor-ruben-verborgh-part-2/ <comment><USER2> This smells like a PR piece. No real content and the interviewer only asked 4 questions. No discussion of what the semantic web actually _is_ or how it works to make data interoperable. I kept waiting for the good part...

<comment><USER3> Total fluff. No mention of metadata? RDF?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ruben and the SOLID team are great people.

I wish more projects were lead by such ernest teams.

Their architecture isn't leaning the direction I'm biased towards (it is more federated than decentralized) but they're honest people trying hard to make the web a better place, and need to be applauded.</comment>


Minicomputers: The Soul of an Old Machine - <AUTHOR> https://www.redhat.com/en/command-line-heroes/season-4/minicomputers <comment><AUTHOR> I really enjoyed season 3 of this podcast (which was about the history of programming languages), so I thought I'd share as season 4 is just starting.

First episode is roughly following the book _The Soul of a New Machine_ by Tracy Kidder¹ (1981) — described as a "heroic tale" of technological innovation.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine)</comment>


As self-driving cars come to more states, regulators take a back seat - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/as-self-driving-cars-come-to-more-states-regulators-take-a-back-seat/2015/08/28/7a29413e-474f-11e5-8ab4-c73967a143d3_story.html

<comment><USER2> I agree with VA's approach on this issue, let people do what they want while they're testing. If they screw up hold them responsible as you normally would. When this kind of stuff starts getting sold that's when the possibility of more involved regulations should be addressed. Some regulation that makes sense now might be a hindrance if/when this sort of stuff hits the market.

Having these cars on the road in NOVA is gonna suck for anyone on the road near them. On all the roads in VA with two lanes in each direction the lane that is the "passing lane" is dependent on who's where so it's common to see someone pass someone on the right, then move left so someone else can pass on the right. I doubt this kind of adaptive behavior (especially since it's legally grey) has made it into the software that's running in "production" on these cars. Additionally I find that road speeds there are very variable (when there's not a volume induced backup). Sometimes it's close to the speed limit, sometimes someone doing 70 in a 50 would be the slowest one in the right lane. While that's not technically obstructing traffic, and is technically a misdemeanor (20 over the limit = reckless driving), practically speaking it is obstructing traffic (which is less safe, which is why it's a traffic offense in the first place).

At least VA has mile long stretches at every merge and a separate turn lane for everything because otherwise the timidness of these vehicles would cause a lot less problems for other people than they would elsewhere.

edit "two lanes in each direction"

</comment><comment><USER3> It is excellent to see how onboard the government is with this tech. They don't seem the be getting too in the way.

<comment><USER2> The gov't has a very vested interest in any technology that makes utilization of existing infrastructure more efficient...

<comment><USER4> As well as a technology thats going to cut deaths by ~30K-40K/year, not to mention several times that in injuries.

Its a double-edged sword though. Self-driving (electric) cars equals almost no need for insurance companies, body shops, etc.

More broadly, its important we start looking at quality of life as a KPI instead of GDP. Technology makes us more efficient, it doesn't make us consume more.

<comment><USER5> >As well as a technology thats going to cut deaths by ~30K-40K/year, not to mention several times that in injuries.

if you add the DoD as a major customer - the original Grand Challenges had very clear "truck on the desert road" smell for a reason :) - the life saving effect will be even bigger (at least if we count US/Western lives)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would be more inclined to agree with the California or Nevada approach, i.e. extensive testing and stringent reporting. Only in that manner will the safety of driverless cars approach that of airlines, which is what will be required if a massive backlash is not to occur the first time one of these cars kills someone.

<comment><USER7> I don't see any backlash at all for the ~90 people that were killed today in the US in motor vehicles [1]. I doubt there will be a massive backlash, unless the vehicles were operating in a known dangerous setup. These vehicles are filled with loads of sensors so accident reconstruction will be trivial.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year)

<comment><USER6> We've become used to such accidents, and usually blame them on the driver.

In the event of a driverless car killing someone, the manufacturer will have to shoulder the blame; and Google/Uber/etc are much more attractive targets for lawsuits than regular drivers are.

<comment><USER4> Then have your self-driving vehicles owned by a trust or corporate entity with no assets.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Unions - <AUTHOR> http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/unions/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2FihdT+%28The+Dilbert+Blog%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> The difference is that striking soldiers can cause irreparable harm while the damage done by teachers can be easily repaired.

Let's say some soldiers start striking during a war for better pay. That puts the country in an immediate danger as the enemy advances and potentially causes irreparable harm (a change that cannot be undone). Even if one can retake the positions given up during the strike, many will die doing so. Clearly, there's a problem there.

Now let's say some teachers start striking in September. Accepting Adams' premise that an uneducated populace is a threat to national security, what affect do striking teachers have on national security? Well, maybe those students have class from October through July that year or they loose a few weeks of schooling. The difference is that the harm is _not_ irreparable. The harm is merely a delay or, at absolute worse, a very marginal harm. In fact, any harm is probably about the same as moving from one school district to another. Different schools teach in slightly different orders and in a slightly different way and so when moving schools, a student might loose out on a small portion of learning just as they would during a strike.

Others can argue whether unions are good or bad, but I think there's a clear difference between the irreparable harm that can be caused by a military strike when compared with the reparable harm caused by a teacher strike. So, rather than September to June, students have an October to July school year one year. There's a distinct difference there.

Now, before one says, "well, what about strikes during peacetime", the military operates under a readiness principle. While I don't believe that countries aren't lining up to attack the US, the whole point of a military is to be ready for that possibility. So, it's peacetime, the army is on strike and then someone attacks. By the time you order the strike to stop (due to it no longer being peacetime), irreparable harm could already be done. Striking soldiers wouldn't be on bases doing drill exercises. They might be at home thousands of miles away from. In fact, Israel fought a war somewhat like this. During Yom Kippur, religious Jews don't eat, don't use electricity, and don't work. That's the perfect time to attack - most of the military was home and wouldn't get fast word that an attack had occurred and some wouldn't do anything about it even if they heard for religious reasons. Suffice it to say, a union on strike could provide an attacker with a similar advantage. Soldiers aren't on base, some might not come back if ordered to end the strike, some might not hear about it immediately, etc.

The difference is irreparable vs reparable harm. A strike by a teachers' union can be repaired by teaching a bit into the summer and the harm caused by that lack of teaching already happens to students when they move schools and have a small mismatch in the curricula. I really love the premise that education is essential to national security because I agree that trade and education create stability that means war is very unlikely. I just don't see the harm caused by a teacher strike to be the same as the harm caused by a military strike.

<comment><USER3> I think it's probably got more to do with an (understandable!) nervousness by policymakers about what would amount to a second semi-official chain of command inside such an organisation. The union leaders would have an awful lot of leverage over the government and I can't see any politician giving that away willingly.

<comment><USER4> Indeed. If an army stops obeying its government's orders, it's not a government any more!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This unions vs. education meme seems to mostly a US phenomenon as far as I can tell. As a non-USian I read a great comment here the last time it came up, pointing out that teaching unions gained strength in the US because teachers used to get fired for such crimes as interracial dating, being seen in town after dark and basically anything else that offended the puritanical. I found that an eye-opening insight.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure that arbitrary firings for political reasons is relevant, either to the original article or the issue at large.

What's striking to me is the unions of _government_ employees is legal in any way, shape, or dorm.

I'm pretty sure that private schools here in the US remain non-unionized.

<comment><USER7> In 2006 my AP government teacher was the subject of about a half dozen articles in the local paper and a school board meeting where about 500 angry parents came and tried to get him fired for being too liberal. It is definitely relevant.

<comment><USER8> For being too liberal, or for bringing his private political beliefs into the classroom?

<comment><USER7> His crime was to allow the students to have a debate on the merits of two US policies - the use of torture and the use of depleted uranium.

The key point was that this wasn't his idea. He solicited topics for debate from the students in the class, those two were chosen as the topics.

This got misconstrued by some parents who were offended as he pushed us to consider these questions becuase he was liberal, and thus was bringing his political beliefs into the classroom.

I ended up being the lead on the team that defended torture and depleted uranium (and we won), and somehow the more difficult debate actually ended up being the one I had at the school board meeting defending him.

<comment><USER9> How was the decision made on your torture/DU debates?

<comment><USER7> Not sure if you mean how was it decided that was going to be our topic or how it was decided who won the debate.

The topic was proposed by a student in the class who had actually thought about it beforehand, no one else had any good ideas.

The "winner" of the debate was determined by a panel of other teachers (part of the reason he got in trouble the teachers were "ruling" on gov't policy). Nobody seems to understand that the people (me and a few others) defending the US's policys could actually win. Everyone assumed that it was biased by his politics such that obviously the result would be anti-American. It was actually quite fun. Though I'd say that the reason my group won was largely becuase in 2006 a lot less was known about Gitmo. We could do a lot of "you can't prove that X Y or Z is happening, that is just conjecture", that we wouldn't be able to do today.

As a side note, I'm firmly in the anti-toture and anti-DU camp, but I always find it more interesting in debate to side with the group you disagree with.

<comment><USER9> It's definitely true that to understand your own position you need to come up with the best arguments for the opposing position. It disappoints me when I read lousy arguments made by those who do not share my viewpoint, and even more when an entire position shared by many people is based on emotional reasoning.

Torture is a topic that lends itself to emotional reasoning. How can you be such a meanie? How can _you_ put children at risk while terrorists are running free?

DU also lends itself to sloppy reasoning. People take for granted that it is a radioactivity problem when it's actually a heavy-metal toxicity problem. Radioactivity is more emotional.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's definitely true that labor relations gets simpler when you can conscript your employees and place them under an entirely different code of law than US citizens. Maybe we should try that with developers, too. They're getting awfully expensive.

<comment><USER7> Thankfully we don't conscript in the US anymore. We've been at war for the last 10 years and we've drafted exactly 0 people.

<comment><USER11> Who needs conscription when you've got 10% (and by some accounts 17%) unemployment. A pool of people desperate to take any job no matter how dangerous it is.

<comment><USER7> What a terrible smear on everyone actually in the military for reasons other than the money. 4 people in my extended family are in the military and 1 was turned down becuase he has a titanium screw from a sports injury. All of them make less money than they would have if they didn't join the military, but all joined anyway.

On the other hand, I've never actually met anyone who was in the military for money except for those in the ROTC - i.e. those capable of getting a college education that would put them in the segment of the population with lower unemployment than average.

<comment><USER12> Correct me if I'm wrong, but there are several reasons to join the military? You don't think money for college, or job prospects factor into anyone's decision?

Edit: And again, correct me if I'm wrong here, but I'm pretty sure there are lots of different kinds of people in the military. Your family has a culture of serving, and lots of outside opportunities it sounds like, and that's great. But there are lots of people who join up who didn't have the same opportunities they had.

Do you think it's dishonorable for them to serve in part because they didn't have access to money for college, or a good job?

<comment><USER7> Well my family members joined for reasons in this order

1) I live in New York, our house overlooks what was the smoldering ruins of the WTC. That was about 4 of them right there

2) Our family has been in the military for generations

3) One wanted to be a medic, not sure why but it was his calling? I guess he can be an EMT after but he has been in for 10 years so I don't think he is leaving the military until they kick him out.

Money was never really an issue for any of them. They make the least by far of anyone in the family, they certainly would have made more if they did like the rest of us and didn't go.

Although I might be biased because I heavily considered the military and decided not to _specifically because it didn't pay well enough_.

I'm sure some do for money, but I think that is overblown by people who simply don't understand why someone _would want_ to serve. I can also tell you that most of the people in it for money are in and out, but the people who stay long term have reasons other than money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The reason we don't allow soldiers to strike isn't because giving them better working conditions, benefits or compensation would threaten national security (it would merely be more expensive), but because not having soldiers available 100% of the time would be a threat to national security. We don't need the same availability from teachers.

Mr. Spock would've immediately made this distinction. He also would've objected to the whole "teachers union -> bad education -> bad economy -> bad military" handwave. I like Dilbert, but as I've said before this is why Scott is writing cartoons and not proofs.

</comment><comment><USER14> Government Employee Unions should be outlawed, plain and simple. Even FDR thought they were a terrible idea (<http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=15445>). You're basically using collective bargaining against the taxpayer at various levels of government, i.e. the the higher up you go, the less taxpayers are affected (city ~500k vs federal ~150m taxpayers) and the less they care about bargaining. Besides, when a bureaucrat or politician is the taxpayer's representative at the bargaining table, and unions use their clout to get those people appointed/elected, there's an inherent conflict of interest.

If government employees believe they're getting the shaft, they can form PACs to get their champion into power. That puts the issue in front of the voter/taxpayer more clearly.

Here's a great free market perspective from Prof. Charles W. Baird: <http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2009/Bairdlabor.html>

<comment><USER6> _Government Employee Unions should be outlawed, plain and simple._

Indeed.

I can't imagine a credible excuse for "bargaining" with your fellow taxpaying citizens, except through the electrocal process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This seems very US-centric. In Sweden there is a union for military officers for example.

And there are plenty of civilian employees working for the armed forces that can join unions as much as they like and presumably cause quite a bit of chaos if they go on strike.

Is the argument that teacher unions should be illegal because they somehow stifle education? That seems insane, isn't it a fundamental right to join whatever organisation you wish, not just the ones the government likes?

And there are lots and lots of countries with teachers unions that outrank the US in various quality of education rankings (e.g. Finland), so it doesn't seem like teachers unions are a big barrier to higher quality education.

But you do have the right to select any school you like here, which is considered some sort of extreme right wing thing in the states as far as I can tell. Although free choice of schools has it's own share of problems...

<comment><USER16> "isn't it a fundamental right to join whatever organisation you wish, not just the ones the government likes?"

I agree with you on this, but unions gain power from pro-union laws that enforce things like not allowing hiring non-union workers among other things, so it isn't as simple as you state. Without the legal backing, just joining an organization doesn't have much effect. This changes it from a freedom issue to legal policy issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The education problem is compounded by a lack of competition between schools themselves. Children are assigned to one public school, based on residence. In order to switch schools, you have to switch residence. This, along with unions, have entrenched a mediocre education system.

<comment><USER18> I've come to the conclusion that the only real nationwide problem in American education is one of expectation.

Simply: we don't demand the best from our kids anymore.

Studies have shown that good schools and good educators do matter, but what they all highlight, bold and underscore, is that parents and culture matter so, so much more. 'Good homes' and 'good parents' absolutely dwarf the effect that 'good schools' and 'good teachers' have.

And we're just running out of 'good homes' and 'good parents' that care about the results. We've retained a ritual of schooling, but increasingly we just don't give a shit about the outcome. And we're just reaping what we've sown.

<comment><USER19> And I submit that that is actually an effect of what iwr suggested, not a root cause. Why modify your expectations when there isn't much you can do about it? Higher expectations are only useful when they can manifest as action, but there's an incredibly high bar for pulling your kid out of a school and sending them to another, or going to home schooling, or anything else. Expectations are fading because we are internalizing the idea that they don't matter; no matter what you put in, you get the same output.

I think we can fiddle around with the details but until we actually open up some sort of market and competition the problem will simply never be fixed. Centralized management doesn't work; schools aren't an exception.

Doesn't mean that I want everyone to have to pay for schools. Vouchers are at least a decent idea, even if they still distort the market and raise prices. But without some ability for parents to use the tools of the market to beat low performing schools, possibly unto them going out of business and letting other schools start, we're not going to see improvement. All incentives right now are aligned towards _looking_ like they are improving, not _actually_ improving, and that is the only possible result you're going to get from mandates from above.

<comment><USER18> > _"Why modify your expectations when there isn't much you can do about it?"_

That's precisely backwards. Parents expectations are the only thing you _can_ 'do'. And it's the one thing that studies consistently re-affirm as the _most important_ component. Demand more. Help more. Impart a love for learning and exploring. An appreciate for work.

Yes, if the school sucks, maybe you have to work harder with your kid. And if the community sucks, maybe you have to work even _harder_ still. But that work _will_ bear fruit.

As opposed to signing your kid up at the school across town and staying just as disinterested as before. Thinking that 'shopping' schools is helping is precisely the wrong approach.

> _"no matter what you put in, you get the same output."_

And that's demonstrably false. The families that put in more, get more. The students that put in more, get more. Parent interest and effort and child interest and effort are _the_ most important factors; more important than economic stability, more important than school quality or teacher quality.

<comment><USER19> You're talking about out-of-school. I agree with that part. I'm talking about _in_ the school. No matter how hard you encourage your child, the math curriculum comes at the same pace. No matter how much you encourage your child to love reading, they get the same crappy history lessons. There's no benefit to "expecting" more from the school. Nothing happens when you do. There's no meaningful way to "expect" more from your school.

The question of why we're getting a certain class of person when they hit 18 is a different question from what the schools are doing and how well they are doing it, and if you want to actually _improve schools_ it's important to stay focused on that task. If the only solution to "improving schools" is to improve parental involvement then I for one seriously question what the schools are bringing to that process at all, and if they are to be intended for merely augmenting a parent-directed education they are grotesquely ill- suited for that right now.

(I say this as someone actually planning very seriously on home schooling my kids, so that's how I look at schools. In fact they can provide a couple of services and as I understand it they are legally obligated to do so, but if you actually want a parent-directed education they are still _almost_ useless.)

Based on your message I don't think you understand the theory behind school choice, either (and I'm explicitly labeling it a "theory", though at this point I think it's a pretty safe one). The important thing about shopping schools, and indeed the important thing about capitalism in general, is the _second_ -order effects of the policy. (This is why so many people have such a fundamentally hard time wrapping their head around the concept of a free market. The far more viscerally appealing but fatally flawed first-order theories would be dead by now if it weren't for this, instead of hanging around wrecking up the global economy as they do now.) The point is not that you can move your child from one crappy school of today to another crappy school of today. The point is that you can actually drive crappy schools _out of business_ , while meanwhile another good school can actually start up and succeed if they are good. It's a second-order effect of creating a highly competitive selection process that produces a pool of schools that are better in general, not merely the right to send your kid to a slightly-better school.

<comment><USER18> > _"You're talking about out-of-school. I agree with that part."_

Yeah, and my argument is _that_ is the part that has really changed in the last few generations. _In_ the school, at least in my area, is all but frozen in time since I went through the public schools. Yet the test scores are dropping. I guess it's possible the teachers have all gotten worse, but what sticks out to me is the attitudes of students and parents.

> _"Based on your message I don't think you understand the theory behind > school choice"_

No, I get it. But what I also understand is how _little_ the school and the teacher matter, comparatively.

Put it this way: say we're updating a house to use less energy during the winter months. You're saying we could hang better insulation all around the house and goose up efficiency 8-10%. I don't disagree at all.

I'm saying maybe we should focus on the windows, since they're the biggest problem areas. And with a lot less money, effort and potential for collateral problems, we could boost efficiency around 40+%. You don't say you disagree either.

But where we're not seeing eye to eye, is where you want to start taking down the siding first.

Addressing the cultural problem is lower risk, lower cost and higher return. And if we _don't_ do it, we're still going to have an educational problem when we're done rolling out school choice.

<comment><USER19> Allowing school choice is the single largest thing we could do to address the culture problem. That's my point. You're just handwaving on the culture problem, I'm giving you a step you can actually take to get there.

Second-order effects, second-order effects, second-order effects. When schools actually respond to more effort and it has some sort of visible effect on a child's education, more people will care. Incentives matter. The current system absorbs all of a parent's care and hammers it flat into the same basic mediocre product, suppressing it instead of amplifying it. A caring parent may do better than an uncaring one, but nowhere near _enough_ better. Unfortunately, not investing a lot into the system at that point is perfectly locally rational.

How do you propose to fix the culture problem? The same-old, same-old first order solution where you appropriate some money and run some ads exhorting people to care more about schooling? New programs with the sweet, sweet intentions and nobody even examining the question of whether do anything because everybody's too busy feeling good about themselves? Paying people to care more, perhaps by incentivizing good grades? We've tried all those and more. It's not like "it's a culture problem" is exactly a new idea, and it's an easy one for "the system" to deal with because it does involve just what I said (money and government programs, for better and for worse not hard to push through), a solution very easy for the system to deploy. It won't work until schools actually magnify efforts instead of squashing them, and no amount of central mandating is going to get us there.

Cultural issues like schools aren't houses. That's first-order thinking. They're _life forms_ , second order and so on. They react to your decisions, they do not passively consume them. With those sorts of systems it's actually quite common for the straightest path from here to there to be anything _but_ simply striking out in what is most obviously the direction of the goal and pushing as hard as you can. If it were that easy, we wouldn't have a problem in the first place!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> In the US, police and firefighters are usually unionized. There are limits on their ability to strike. I believe that those limits might be in place for teachers as well.

The military has incredibly strict rules for advancement and compensation that are very union-like. They have defined ways to make a grievance. They get pretty good benefits and pension. I'm not sure that they'd choose to unionize or what exactly it would get them.

There is, of course, the job itself, which they have zero control over, and would probably not be able to negotiate even if they had a union.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've said it before and I'll say it again. If you want the best and brightest to be teachers then you have to recruit where the best and brightest are....and PAY what the best and brightest can get in the private industry. What's Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook paying? That's the competition.

South Korea, Singapore, and many other countries don't have this problem. Why? Because being a teacher there is a good job with good benefits. Benefits the private sector can barely touch. Instead we are left with the PE teacher teaching maths because all the good math teachers are working for Google.

</comment><comment><USER21> Whenever teachers unions come up, I like to throw this out there. According to those who target unions and suggest "school choice" as a remedy for education problems, Finland should be a cesspool of failure and illiteracy.

What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart? <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120425355065601997.html>

<comment><USER22> According to a quick google search, Finland has both school choice and merit pay (a policy strongly opposed by unions in the US).

This suggests that school choice might be a good idea, and that Finland's unions might be very different from our unions.

<comment><USER21> School choice, with equalized funding. I'm all for that. When a public school in Baltimore gets the same funding as a school in a posh upper-middle class suburb, then school choice works.

And saying that unions need to be reformed in different directions is very different from saying that unions need to be done away with.

<comment><USER22> Interesting. So cutting the funding of Baltimore public schools by $3-5k will make school choice effective?

[http://www.somdnews.com/stories/03032010/entetop162900_32193...](http://www.somdnews.com/stories/03032010/entetop162900_32193.shtml)

(The richer suburbs, e.g. Charles and St. Marys spend $3-5k/student less than Baltimore schools.)

<comment><USER21> Are those numbers balanced for special needs and other per-student costs? Does it take into account various other cost requirements? If you compare teacher salaries, are they equivalent?

There's a considerable amount of research done on the effects and nature of funding disparities, if you haven't looked into it, I'd recommend it.

<comment><USER22> Teacher salaries appear to be considerably lower in St Marys and Charles county than in Baltimore. I'm too lazy to do a county by county comparison for all of Maryland (a state I've never even visited).

[http://www.bcps.org/offices/PAYROLL/pdf/scales/TABCO-12-Mont...](http://www.bcps.org/offices/PAYROLL/pdf/scales/TABCO-12-Month- Payscale.pdf&pli=1)

[http://www2.ccboe.com/employment/Teacher- SalaryScale-1011.pd...](http://www2.ccboe.com/employment/Teacher- SalaryScale-1011.pdf)

[http://divisions.smcps.org/hr/sites/divisions.smcps.org.hr/f...](http://divisions.smcps.org/hr/sites/divisions.smcps.org.hr/files/file/2011_Salary_Scales.pdf)

I've heard many assertions that inner city and other underperforming schools are underfunded. But whenever I go to look them up, and compare them to the rich suburbs, they seem to be wildly overfunded. Baltimore seems to be better funded than the rest of Maryland. Newark and Trenton public schools are funded better than most of NJ, and perform terribly.

But hey, you've got vague allusions to a "considerable amount of research". That's more useful than hard numbers.

<comment><USER21> Just so you know, the first link is for Baltimore County, not Baltimore City. They're separate entities, and Baltimore County is considerably wealthier than Baltimore City, having gone to such great lengths to separate themselves as a tax base, that you even have Towson listed as Baltimore County, despite being within Baltimore City.

There's also the issue, unaddressed, of extra per-student costs. For instance, special needs students can be very expensive, often requiring one-on-one instruction, which can greatly skew the per-student costs.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


U.S. planning to cancel visas of Chinese graduate students - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-students/u-s-planning-to-cancel-visas-of-chinese-graduate-students-sources-idUSKBN2342AX <comment><USER2> The NYTimes headline is more specific: "U.S. to Expel Chinese Graduate Students With Ties to China's Military Schools"

<comment><USER3> The military sponsors departments of civilian universities there[1], or even whole universities, rather than individual research grants like we do here.

"Military Schools" is misleading. These 5,000 kids aren't out of Chinese West Point. If they were, _China_ probably wouldn't let them leave.

[1]: [https://www.aspi.org.au/report/china-defence-universities- tr...](https://www.aspi.org.au/report/china-defence-universities-tracker)

<comment><USER4> So would it be analogous to revoking the visa of someone with a DoD or DoE graduate fellowship? Or someone who was in ROTC in undergrad?

<comment><USER3> The reporting indicates it's about the schools they attended, not the students' scholarship conditions.

We haven't seen the list of schools, but from what I can see it'd be more like revoking the visa of someone who attended Vanderbilt, because Vanderbilt has a partnership with Oak Ridge National Labs doing nuclear simulations.

<comment><USER5> I agree that the idea that these are necessarily individuals with military associations is incorrect, but I also feel this is a false analogy because of how different the nature of a US Gov. association with a university is compared with a Chinese Gov. association with a university.

<comment><USER3> All analogies across such different systems will be inexact, of course.

The headline about "Military Schools" is still completely misleading, from the paper who brought you "Saddam has WMD". Both stories fed to them, of course, by _our_ security state.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Loss for the US as Australia will welcome them.</comment>


Show HN: v0.1 of my book "Why programmers work at night" - <AUTHOR> https://leanpub.com/nightowls <comment><USER2> Since this book will likely be unscientific conjecture backed up by an amateur conception of psychology and physiology, I hope you will detail as many case studies as possible to allow readers access to the data on which you are theorizing.

Providing as much raw data as possible will greatly increase the value of the book. It could actually be picked up by academics who study these issues.

When programmers attempt to study their own physiology and psychology, they are leaving their area of expertise. Most blog posts that try to address programmer productivity are tragically uninformed (and just as often contain egregious analytical errors).

It's a very interesting topic and programmers have a lot of data to provide.

<comment><USER3> I read the first chapter and found that his evidence was based on conversations with other programmers. In this day and age, there's enough information for the author to collect more empirical evidence in the form of commits to open source projects.

One could take a sample of GitHub projects and commit times. You would have to find out the contributors' time zones, and adjust accordingly.

You need to balance the hobby contributors against corporate contributors i.e. those being paid to contribute.

If you wanted to make things really interesting, you could try and gauge code quality based on time. Perhaps trying to assign bugs against the commit they appeared in.

<comment><USER4> Commit times do not necessarily convey the correct information; in the worst case i could have worked two days on a commit, or even commit it the following day. Time zones are also not accurate when travelling is involved for a developer/engineer or eg. Is it even correctly set. I believe evidence comes from first hand, conversation or questionaire

<comment><USER2> The social science approach would be to use both. Detailed case studies are essential and should be the starting point. But hypotheses extrapolated from those case studies could then be examined with statistical analysis like this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Developer productivity is nearly a solved problem. What isn't a solved problem is to convince the managers about the solution.

Because the solution is radical. Your ordinary corporate manager is made to believe that, team work + tools + a bit of odd micro management(without a clue about what he/she is managing) thrown around is what takes to win. The fact is that team work matters, but make-or-break deal for ambitious projects is mavericks working full steam for a good amount on project's net demands.This requires a total distraction free environment, a uninterrupted stretches of time(tuits), choice of tools(both hardware and software) and many times managers getting out of the way and letting the actual contributors do their job in peace.

I have thought this over many time, hacked and tweaked my schedule many times and this is what I have come to. Recently every time I decide to work from home. A day before, I write down clearly without any ambiguity the list of tasks I want to accomplish the next day. I start working insanely early. I start at around 3 AM in the morning, The energy level are really high in the morning. I also take in a lot of water. Apart from a break fast break at 8 AM. I work all the way up to 12 in the after. That's 8 hours of uninterrupted time.

The remaining day I generally work on a side project, or some thing I love doing- like play a musical instrument. Or I just continue doing my work. Then to go back to sleep for 6 hours at least.

The great thing about this schedule is, by the time somebody is up and running throwing distractions at you, you are done with your work.

Ironically despite manifest benefits of this schedule, management finds it 'not good team work'(Read- your idea is too radical and is a threat to my designation).

<comment><USER6> I'm excited to hear that you've found a schedule that works for you, but you too quickly dismiss teamwork.

There are perfectly fine projects that only take a single developer. There are some that need a few people working as a loose group. But if you've got something that actually needs a team, then bad teamwork really is a problem.

<comment><USER5> I love team work too. Team work means knowing our mutual interests and how we need to work together to meet our common goal(Which is to make the project successful).

But once I am done knowing that, I want space for myself to shut down all distractions and do my job. I believe that is what the managers want too, then they need to understand as a developer I'm most productive when I get at least two uninterrupted stretches of time during my work day.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps a better term for what the parent may have meant was 'collaboration' rather than teamwork. There are a lot of projects that truly require collaboration, and that's hard to do when you're only working when other people aren't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone,

I'm looking for some feedback on my yet unfinished book - felt like this was a good time. The most developed chapter right now is "About flow" so I'd really love your thoughts on that one.

You can get it for free with this coupon code: HN0.1

<comment><USER8> Why is the price capped at $10? I'm sure there are people who'd be willing to pay more.

<comment><USER9> That's our fault, not Swizec's. We cap it at 10x the minimum price (I think that's how we coded it, anyways).

We're thinking of making the slider exponential (or something with an increasing slope, anyways) instead, which would help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Main reasons programmer work at night would be some or all of the following:

1) Access to resources - be that free internet, the home computer or faster internet. 2) TZ, its the internet and opearates on all TimeZones and with that people interact across timezones and with that night seems to always cover many cross-over times. 3) Distractions, there are less distractions, less noise and with that easier to focus. 4) Coffee overshoots, with that the late hours make productive time. 5) Whatever reason they want, code knows nothing about daylight.

As for the sample of your book I glanced upon I would wonder if any programmer would want to read it, and any manager who would gain from even a hint of insight into programmers, would not be motivated to pick such a title.

If anything it is more a chapter subject for a larger book on how to deal with modern persona's in a work enviroment.

That would be my approach, but my main reason for coding late at night is covered in all the above though less distractions being the primary. Now if you had a chapter on how to justify too your boss that you will be working weird hours, that would be something a programmer would be interested in.

<comment><USER11> Coffee overshoot?

<comment><USER10> Coffee overshoot = overspeccing the coffee requirements thruout the day causing you to stay awake longer than you had planned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I used to work an 8 hour day, then go home, have dinner and go to bed immediately after. I then got a few hours sleep and woke up refreshed and with a clear brain between midnight and 2am. I then coded for a few hours until I started feeling tired again, went to bed, caught an hour or three of sleep and went to work. This had the benefit of me being better rested for my nightly hacking than for my daytime job, which didn't require my full alertness (I was stuck in a dull job at the time). The downside was that I had no social interaction with people in my timezone (other than at work).

<comment><USER13> Sorry I can't do better than Wikipedia; apparently this is 'segmented sleep' [1], and before electric light it was entirely natural. Apparently the extra hours were used almost exclusively for sex, since there was no electric light.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segmented_sleep>

<comment><USER14> Interestingly, was reading this and saw:

"This was also a favorite time for scholars and poets to write uninterrupted, whereas still others visited neighbors, or engaged in petty crime."

Scholars and poets, programmers could fit into this category

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm definitely a night person. I feel like I can turn on a switch on go on turbo mode, hacking away and easily translating my thoughts to code. It definitely agree that being slightly sleepy helps keep the focus, but it doesn't seem to get in the way of accomplishing complex tasks.

I used to wake up at ~7PM and go to sleep at ~12AM for a couple years, which worked out great for me - but unfortunately I couldn't keep up with it, as I got recruited to the IDF (mandatory service in Israel) and than started a business with a co-founder that has "normal people" hours :)

I only do it nowadays when I really feel like I need the extra boost (like when I start working on a new complex project or component - I prefer to do it on nights, and usually have a working prototype with most of the complex logic after a couple "night sessions" that I finish off during daytime).

Great idea for a book, I'll definitely buy it when its ready. Wish you much success!

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm one of "those morning programmers" who likes to get up before the rest of the world. It's great to be well-rested and it's also quiet enough to work. I guess the what I have in common with the vampire programmers is that caffeine is most definitely involved.

<comment><USER17> It's interesting how much more productive and motivated one is when working early in the morning, versus just dragging through the night, when most of the time only passive consumption of information/news is possible.

I guess this has something to do with our willpower depletion - see here for more [http://blog.bufferapp.com/what-the-research-on-habit- formati...](http://blog.bufferapp.com/what-the-research-on-habit-formation- reveals-about-willpower-and-overall-well-being)

<comment><USER18> The "one" who is more productive and motivated in the morning does not describe me in any way. As much as I love mornings, when I wake up early, I am fairly useless the rest of the day. On the other hand, I can start coding at 10pm and have 3am show up without realizing there was anything in between.

I really wish I was a morning person, but I'm not. I'm tired of "normal" being dictated by those same people under the guise of, "you'll be a better person for it" (note: please don't read this as me thinking you are saying that!). I know myself well enough to know that is false.

At this point, I am _so_ happy to be working at home full time, where I can wake up and start working at the time that works for me, whatever time that happens to be that day.

<comment><USER19> My brother found the explanation for this: While those of us that are more active at night were still sleeping, the morning people decided what the proper schedule should be.

On a more serious note, there is a big difference between "A" and "B" people (sometimes tied to A and B blood types -- I've not really tested this -- I'm definitively not much of a "morning" person -- but I am flexible -- I can get up at 2-3 am and work, or sleep until noon -- normally I prefer to be up for 5-8 hours _before_ I do any "work" -- and I am always more productive in the afternoon (as defined by how many hours it has been since I got up). My blood type is AB -- so maybe there is a correlation there.

I have some friends I've worked with that are absolutely useless after around 10 pm -- and others that are absolutely useless before 10 am. And a few that are more like me -- they adapt easily to either way -- and also function quite well even when under severe sleep deprivation -- or on an irregular sleep schedule.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Of interest perhaps is that personally I find that as winter rolls around my sleep patterns get later and later. In the summer I'd guess I sleep 2am-10am in winter it's more like 4am-12noon and I can't for the life of my shift this. Every year as winter rolls in almost like clockwork it changes.

<comment><USER21> I have also noticed this, but maybe it's because in the summer we are more likely to get outside and do something physical which makes you more tired and thus more inclined to sleep earlier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Great idea. I'm often coding at 5 a.m. and that time is magically good for flow.

Have you investigated the history of "second sleep" for clues?

Also try looking at polyphasic sleep, software like RedShift, and products like the Zeo for ideas and people who like night/morning work.

</comment><comment><USER23> Just pointing it out a little trivia:

"Programmers are machines that turn caffeine into code."

was probably derived from

"A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems." (Attributed to both Alfréd Rényi and Paul Erdős).

I believe it is one of the most famous quotes about mathematics (I hadn't heard it's programming variant so far).

</comment><comment><USER24> I wonder how this maps (if at all) to Ayurvedic cycles [1]? This one is quite curiuos:

        Mid-night – 10pm-2am is again pitta time.
        The fire element is strong, and the stars shine brightly.
        Although pitta will give a spurt of energy and creativity one must avoid staying up into the late hours.
        If one stays awake until after after 10 pm, the
        active nature of pitta can prevent sleep.
        It is the hours of sleep that one gets before
        midnight that are the most rejuvenating.

[1] [http://flowingfree.org/using-ayurvedic-principles-to-live- in...](http://flowingfree.org/using-ayurvedic-principles-to-live-in-harmony- with-the-daily-cycles/)

<comment><USER25> I think that's pretty obvious, the people that wrote that passage down, I assume some time ago, were also of the same species and as such experienced the same circadian rhythms.

<comment><USER24> If everything is so obvious then why the discussion here? Why the book? Everyone here (I hope) is a human, so they must know their cycles, why the talk then?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> More talking about the comments here than the book - but I'm seeing lots of repetitions of the working-alone-vital and teleworking-vital anecdotes.

The thing is - I don't care about individual productivity. I care about productivity of the business as a whole.

And on that point pretty much all the evidence I can find shows that co- located teams in a war-room like environment are the most productive.

(And I'm saying this as somebody who spends a lot of their time working from home, and talking to other folk over Skype, etc. There are reasons for telecommuting - personal preference, getting access to people who cannot co- locate, etc. But for business productivity I'm not seeing much, if any, evidence).

Please not that I am not saying:

* Telecommuting is bad (I do it - I like it)

* Telecommuting projects will fail (D'oh - of course not)

* You shouldn't telecommute (of course you should if you want to - but bear in mind that the business may have good reasons to disagree with that decision)

* That telecommuting makes you individually less productive (I'm personally unsure about this. I feel more productive when working by myself, but I know that personal perceptions of productivity can be false. Measuring personal vs team/company productivity becomes hard in anything less than the short term)

* That co-location is always the best solution (it isn't - other factors like team location and skills come into play)

What I am saying is that there is a lot of research showing that co-located teams in war-room like settings are _much_ more productive. This runs counter to many developers preferences (mine too ;-) so it tends to get ignored.

So much more productive that solutions like 'Let's fly everybody to the same place and pay their room and board for a month' can be cost effective.

Here are some references to the research (If anybody has any research that contradicts this I'd love to hear about it. Especially if it talks about actual measured metrics of productivity - rather that self-reported 'I felt just as productive at home' ones.)

\----

"It doesn't take much distance before a team feels the negative effects of distribution - the effectiveness of collaboration degrades rapidly with physical distance. People located closer in a building are more likely to collaborate (Kraut, Egido & Galegher 1990). Even at short distances, 3 feet vs. 20 feet, there is an effect (Sensenig & Reed 1972). A distance of 100 feet may be no better than several miles (Allen 1977). A field study of radically collocated software development teams,[...], showed significantly higher productivity and satisfaction than industry benchmarks and past projects within the firm (Teasley et al., 2002). Another field study compared interruptions in paired, radically-collocated and traditional, cube-dwelling software development teams, and found that in the former interruptions were greater in number but shorter in duration and more on-task (Chong and Siino 2006). Close proximity improves productivity in all cases." \-- [https://docs.google.com/a/quietstars.com/document/pub?id=1Jq...](https://docs.google.com/a/quietstars.com/document/pub?id=1JqRuCbjWs44SWCRzUhCDepc_dOr7BJG307dFe6Vn3-o)

"Based on the empirical evidence, we have constructed a model of how remote communication and knowledge management, cultural diversity and time differences negatively impact requirements gathering, negotiations and specifications. Findings reveal that aspects such as a lack of a common understanding of requirements, together with a reduced awareness of a working local context, a trust level and an ability to share work artefacts significantly challenge the effective collaboration of remote stakeholders in negotiating a set of requirements that satisfies geographically distributed customers" \-- <http://www.springerlink.com/content/0137yud7c3k8xryw/>

"Our results show that, compared to same-site work, cross-site work takes much longer and requires more people for work of equal size and complexity. We also report a strong relationship between delay in cross-site work and the degree to which remote colleagues are perceived to help out when workloads are heavy" \-- [http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?reload=true&#...](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?reload=true&tp=&arnumber=919083&isnumber=19875)

"Our findings reveal that: software developers have different types of coordination needs; coordination across sites is more challenging than within a site; team knowledge helps members coordinate, but more so when they are separated by geographic distance; and the effect of different types of team knowledge on coordination effectiveness differs between co-located and geographically dispersed collaborators." \-- [http://kraut.hciresearch.org/sites/kraut.hciresearch.org/fil...](http://kraut.hciresearch.org/sites/kraut.hciresearch.org/files/articles/Espinosa07-CoordinationInGlobalSWDevelopment.pdf)

"One key finding is that distributed work items appear to take about two and one-half times as long to complete as similar items where all the work is colocated" \-- [http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi?doc=doi/10.1109/...](http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi?doc=doi/10.1109/TSE.2003.1205177)

"Our study of six teams that experienced radical collocation showed that in this setting they produced remarkable productivity improvements. Although the teammates were not looking forward to working in close quarters, over time they realized the benefits of having people at hand, both for coordination, problem solving and learning.Teams in these warrooms showed a doubling of productivity" \-- <http://possibility.com/Misc/p339-teasley.pdf>

"Despite the positive impact of emerging communication technologies on scientific research, our results provide striking evidence for the role of physical proximity as a predictor of the impact of collaborations." \-- [http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...](http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0014279)

"Groups with high common ground and loosely coupled work, with readiness both for collaboration and collaboration technology, have a chance at succeeding with remote work. Deviations from each of these create strain on the relationships among teammates and require changes in the work or processes of collaboration to succeed. Often they do not succeed because distance still matters" \-- <http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1463019>

<comment><USER5> >> I don't care about individual productivity. I care about productivity of the business as a whole.

What follows from individual productivity is productivity of the business. Unproductive people don't make a productive business.

>>And on that point pretty much all the evidence I can find shows that co- located teams in a war-room like environment are the most productive.

Sure, but only as long 'collaboration' and 'communication' is what occupies most part of the work. Which in the case it makes perfect sense. But if you have all what you need, and you are sitting with 20 other people, working alone at that point makes more sense.

War room teams work when a high degree of collaboration or 'piecing together work inputs' is what matters.

If you are solving a tough problem. Or dodging a bullet, you will be productive doing it alone.

<comment><USER26> _What follows from individual productivity is productivity of the business. Unproductive people don't make a productive business._

It's not about having unproductive people. It's about optimising the productivity of the team/business as a whole rather than the individual. It doesn't matter if I'm my most productive sitting in a dark room by myself at 3am if, by doing that, the rest of the team is blocked or going down the wrong route because they need to talk to me.

 _War room teams work when a high degree of collaboration or 'piecing together work inputs' is what matters._

So most software development then ;-)

 _If you are solving a tough problem. Or dodging a bullet, you will be productive doing it alone._

Evidence?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I was a midnight programmer until I had a family and more importantly kids. I've always been a somewhat nocturnal person even before I programmed. Now with a family I'm more of the early bird programmer, who starts working at 6am. You get the same peace and quit,,, but there is still something different. Maybe it's that with mignight programming, you really can have a long stretch and with early bird, you are limited to a relatively short period before others start showing up on the radar. I think the pitch black of night also helps.

<comment><USER28> I have always been a night person and in my case having kids did not change that. I have a teen and a tween and still crank out the most code in the late, late night. In fact, I probably get up later than ever (having a wife that is an early morning person is, obviously, a prerequisite).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Hmm, I just used his punchcard thing @ <http://nightowls.swizec.com/>

And apparently I do 60% of my work on wednesdays.... wtf.

</comment><comment><USER30> I find that I am usually able to do the best critical thinking when I am more awake but I can be the most productive in terms of cranking out code when I am just tired enough that my mind stops racing. For me this period happens between 11pm and 2am and it usually ends with me nodding off and holding down a key or two. Undo is super important at that point!

</comment><comment><USER31> Very nice indeed. Looking forward to the finished product. However,

 _"Perhaps there's just some worrying stuff going on and you aren't Irish enough not to worry about it."_

What does this mean? Never heard that expression. Anyway, aren't the irish traditionally meant to be neurotic and guilt-ridden?

<comment><USER32> No, quite the opposite. Nothing is rushed in Ireland and there's a general attitude of not really spending any effort worrying too much about things that might be important to non-Irish folks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> If you enjoy working at night and use Chrome, this extension has been a huge help for me(and my eyes):

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker- vision/fomm...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker- vision/fommidcneendjonelhhhkmoekeicedej)

<comment><USER34> Check out f.lux

<http://stereopsis.com/flux/>

<comment><USER33> I tried f.lux and do not like it at all; I don't think color temperature is the problem and my MacBook Air seems cheapened when it has a 1970s red tint to the display.

Since using Hacker Vision, I notice that I can turn my display brightness down to 2-3(again, a MacBook Air) which has the added benefit of giving me an extra ~40 minutes of battery life - very cool!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Personally I tend to get headaches when programming during the day. At night I just feel more relaxed and able to think more clearly.

</comment><comment><USER36> its because the black spots on the sun lower your skill in programming due to cosmic radiation, so everybody program when the sun is on the other side of the earth! easy =^,^=

</comment><comment><USER37> "Because my brain is hemorrhaging during my day job."</comment>


Ask HN: Without a background in CS, how do I get into the field of A.I? - <AUTHOR> I have always been interested in A.I., mainly from a creative point of view. Lately, after reading some interesting articles and books, I feel I want to put my resources to work in thinking and working around the ethical debate of A.I.
I am 35, do not have a degree in maths or cs, I'm a master in audiovisual arts, who has been coding fullstack for the last ten years and worked as digital strategist for a few years.
I'm wondering if it is possible for me to get into A.I. And what good steps would be. I'm willing to pick up courses both long and short term.
Does anyone have advice for me how to tackle this?
Maybe interesting extra info: i'm European, living in Brussels. <comment><USER2> Hi. Head to [https://iko.ai](https://iko.ai) and shoot an email to the contact address. We'll set you up with a temporary free account with all the bells and whistles (notebook with GPU and pretty much all the deep learning libraries pre-installed including fast.ai related, object storage, automatic tracking for your training, Docker image creation for your models, and controlling both the training and model invocation with HTTP requests, etc).

You can go through the fast.ai courses as you've been coding for a long time. Just clone the repository in the GPU notebook and get started.

You can learn without the hassle of GPU/libs/config nightmare while you figure out if you like this stuff or not.

It's an internal platform for now. So please use my name or a link to this thread.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was in a similar boat. You can learn a lot by taking Andrew Ng's deeplearning.ai course on Coursera. It doesn't get into the statistical theory of it, but you get a lot of detail and practice implementing neural nets. It taught me enough to realize that I am not interested in supervised learning.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks,good tip! What did you end up being interested in?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Make training sets. Nobody wants to do that, but unless you do the rubber never hits the road.

</comment><comment><USER5> Forget what everyone here is saying. Work on open source AI software pulled from github. Or start your own company based on a machine learning product.

<comment><USER6> For the uninitiated, what is a machine learning product?</comment></comment>


Do you check for cameras before typing in passwords? - <AUTHOR> Cameras are everywhere these days. On the streets, in public transport, at workplaces, etc.
How paranoid are you about typing in passwords/sensitive info knowing that essentially you might be leaking it into the wild?
Did anybody research how often people get hacked through this vector? <comment><USER2> I use 2FA and my Android device as a HW key, so not worried as much anymore</comment>