'Expendables 3' Flops: Is Piracy to Blame? - <AUTHOR> http://variety.com/2014/film/news/expendables-3-flops-is-piracy-to-blame-1201284859/

<comment><USER2> Err, what a joke.

> The Expendables 3″ was widely seen as a litmus test for the impact that > piracy can have on a film's prospects.

How? By what metric? A movie that no one wants to see, that is predictably bad tanked. Trying to blame piracy so that you can justify increasingly anti social measures against your customers is ridiculous. Indeed most people would prob want to be paid to go and see this rather than waste 2 hours on it.

I know a filmmaker and they are fully aware that the marketplace for bad content is very small. Due to internet word of mouth failures are exponentially worse because people these days go to see specific movies and rarely go to see whatever movie happens to be on. They teach courses on this stuff.

This is a studio trying to save face.

<comment><USER3> Are you actually trying to imply that having a DVD quality leak come out far before the actual movie even hit theaters isn't going to have any effect on the box office results?

<comment><USER2> > Are you actually trying to imply that having a DVD quality leak come out far > before the actual movie even hit theaters isn't going to have any effect on > the box office results?

I'm saying that it is demonstrably negligible. For instance before the Casino Royale bond movie made it to cinemas leaks appeared and preemptively the studios made a fuss about this hurting box office figures. Somehow it managed to be the biggest bond release ever.

In fact I would state that the only thing really hurt by leaks are mid level movies that are not good enough to provoke people to go to the cinema.

Further to that I would assert, as others have, that people who often pirate often visit the cinema and would under no circumstances part with money for these mopvies so it economically changes nothing.

<comment><USER4> That's actually evidence that it could have hurt sales. The biggest bond release ever demonstrably has the most interest ever. The most likely that someone will shell out the cash to see it (as hundreds of millions did). If pirate DVDs got sold, they're more likely than ever to have replaced/supplanted a ticket sale.

Its not fair to say "well they made a lot of money anyway". Its also then true that they lost more money than other movies too.

<comment><USER2> Your Aristotelian arm chair logic is not how the world works. There is no metric by which it is possible to conceive of something that didn't happen.

<comment><USER4> Its called revenue estimation, and every business everywhere does it every day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If anyone here has seen this movie or any of the other movies in this series then you would know piracy is merely a scapegoat here. It flopped because, well, it's a bad movie with an expendable storyline.

To be honest, I think the studio deliberately leaked the movie because they knew it was going to flop (studios aren't stupid, they loosely know the numbers before a movie debuts) so they could blame piracy instead of the bad storyline and lack of plot.

The inner conspiracy theorist in me thinks the studios leaked the movie so they could push for tougher anti-piracy legislation and lobby harder. Before this, the studios had no real argument, but you can't deny the numbers are atrocious and on paper, it's easy to blame piracy for this instead of the real culprit. It feels very deliberate.

</comment><comment><USER6> "Expendables 3" scores 35/100 on Metacritic [1]. The original scored 45/100 [2] and "Expendables 2" scored 51/100 [3].

Perhaps it's performing poorly because it's a very poor movie. Or perhaps the leak let people find out in advance it's a very poor movie.

[1] [http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the- expendables-3](http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-expendables-3)

[2] [http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the- expendables](http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-expendables)

[3] [http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the- expendables-2](http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-expendables-2)

</comment><comment><USER7> Couldn't be that it's the third in a mindless action series released once a year. Nah.

I say that having liked expendables 2.

</comment><comment><USER8> nope: it's just a bad movie.

while I enjoyed the 2nd expendables for its rather funny moments, the 3rd one takes itself very serious. with the lack of comedic moments, it's really just a dull action movie with a dumb story and annoying "characters".

</comment><comment><USER9> The only way I see wide spread pre-release piracy causing a dent is if the people who watch it early dislike it leading to bad word of mouth.

</comment><comment><USER10> You mean the piracy of the studio itself leaking the movie on the web in the hopes of creating a little more hype? No.

</comment><comment><USER11> Isn't Expandables 3 nothing more than a movie attempting to suck the last marrow out of someone's stardom to make a quick buck?

The instinct to watch a movie like this is like being in a waiting room at the doctor's office and picking up a two year old copy of People magazine. I might read it, I might even enjoy it, but there's no way I'm paying for that.

If people are pirating this movie, it means that people want to see these actors regardless of how bad the movie is. The entertainment industry could probably make more money skipping out on the huge production costs and doing Shakespeare with rehashed sets/costumes starring Stallone as Brutus.

</comment><comment><USER12> Anybody know whether studios are insured against leaked films? If they realize they're not going to make their budget back in ticket-sales, maybe they're seeking to cover their costs using other methods.

<comment><USER13> I have read of securitization [1] as one way but am not very sure about insurances.

Much of it was before the 2008 era but still think a lot is happening behind the scenes for it to flourish in the secularization markets overall.

[1]: [http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/04/us-markets- credit-...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/04/us-markets-credit- idUSTRE7A35X220111104) [2]:[https://www.moodys.com/research/MOODYS-RATES- MARVELS-FILM-SE...](https://www.moodys.com/research/MOODYS-RATES-MARVELS-FILM- SECURITIZATION-FACILITY-Aaa--PR_101521)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Maybe there are better ways to reduce piracy... How about a global, cross- platform release date for films? Pay to stream a movie to your device, or watch at a cinema.

</comment><comment><USER15> I saw it in theaters, and piracy is not to blame, sorry. I liked the first two, but this one was just not as good. They tried too hard to bridge the gap with a "new generation" of Expendables, and less about our old-school action heroes blowing shit up (which is the entire point of these). And Terry Crews only had a bit part which sucked because he's the funniest of the bunch.

</comment><comment><USER16> Since Expendables 3 supposedly sucks, I bet a high percentage of the losses were due to people pirating/watching the film and telling their friends how shitty it was, resulting in them going to see something else.

</comment><comment><USER17> When a studio allows movie reviewers to see a film before release, are they allowed to influence/censor the reviewer from telling others that the movie is bad?

<comment><USER18> Often early screenings come with an embargo date. Basically by going to the screening you agree not to publish anything before that date. I've even heard of studios forcing reviewers to sign an actual NDA.

That being said I've never heard of a studio suing a reviewer for breaking the embargo. The worst that often happens is that the reviewer gets some angry calls from a studio PR person and then the reviewer and/or the reviewer's employer isn't sent any more early screening or industry party invitations for a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's out?

I enjoyed the first two...

</comment><comment><USER20> No, it probably flipped because it's a ridiculous and bad movie. End of story.

</comment><comment><USER21> Come on, this is a total crap.</comment>


Nervous System Hookup Leads to Telepathic Hand-Holding - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/nervous-system-hookup-leads-to-telepathic-hand-holding

<comment><USER3> Oh dear. A Kevin Warwick "story". This guy is a media whore who has managed to create a profile with outlandish pseudo-scientific garbage popular with low brow newspapers. I recollect first coming across him when he excitedly reported that he had left the human race in order to become a cyborg - <USER2> mundane reality involved the implantation of a rfid chip in his arm... Another one of his high profile press stories - appealing to the same type of publication - contained his prediction that virtual drugs (shared over the internet) would imminently become a epidemic - displacing heroin and crack. This was about 10 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hmmmm.

I find it kind of hard to take an advanced robotic researcher seriously who still uses CRT monitors and low-bandwidth, 2 channel analog scopes.

I _could_ forgive the scopes--if they were one of the really old, very low- noise front-end analog scopes. It's _really_ hard to find a digital scope that has the same level of low-noise performance before about $80K. But these look like your bog-standard, single channel 20MHz analog scope.

<comment><USER5> Hmm, did you not notice the 2002 dates throughout the article and photo captions?

<comment><USER4> I also saw the 10 June 2015 and assumed that some of it was stock while some of it was current.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> david-given Urgh --- the page waits until you're about 1/3 of the way down and then spams a full-screen ad at you. Sleazy as hell.

Anyone know if AdBlock is going to be able to block these?</comment>


How Music Hijacks Our Perception of Time - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/9/time/how-music-hijacks-our-perception-of-time <comment><USER2> Give me back my vertical screen real estate!

( _inspect element_... _untick position: fixed_... done)

<comment><USER3> I don't recall having hit the site before. But I've got a Stylebot CSS that fixes just that issue.

<comment><USER4> I have a dotjs extension (firefox) which sole purpose is to prevent those pesky huged fixed headers.

<comment><USER5> Can you provide a link? This is probably my hugest pet peeve when it comes to browsing the internet. I have no idea how fixed headers became so trendy and I find them absurdly painful. I tend to read at the top of the page and scroll down to keep my current line near the top, and (large) fixed headers really mess with that. Small ones can still be annoying, but some like Facebook's aren't that bad.

I even asked a question on the superuser stack exchange about blocking them, but it never got very useful results.

<comment><USER6> I'm not on my main box, so I can't give you links, but there are extensions for both Chrome and Firefox to add a "remove this element" entry in the right click menu.

Sometimes, it takes a bit of perseverance to get rid of nested elements; sometimes you accidentally nuke the <body>...

Most of the time it works fine.

<comment><USER3> The Element Inspector (in Chrome) and Firebug (in Firefox) will let you interactively modify the DOM.

If you want to make changes permanent, Stylebot or Stylish are useful. Stylebot is Chrome-only, Stylish exists for both browsers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Edit: I expected an analysis of the neurological effects of music, but was not disappointed to find a critique of a String Quintet instead.

 _In 2004, the Royal Automobile Club Foundation for Motoring deemed Wagner's Ride of the Valkyrie the most dangerous music to listen to while driving._

Clearly they've never experienced dubstep.

<comment><USER8> I highly recommend reading 'This is your brain on music' by Daniel J. Levitin if you're interested in learning more about the neuroscience side of music.

<comment><USER9> Also Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Mainstream music is impoverished by its adhesion to danceable tempos and rhythms. With classical the music 'breathes' more.

Listening to the top charts on Spotify, the defining trend of today's pop music seems to be a driving bass drum through all 4 beats of the bar, and getting louder for the chorus.

<comment><USER11> It's not impoverished, it just has a different function. You could equally say "classical music is impoverished by its dismissal of danceability" (and you'd be equally wrong)

<comment><USER10> But there is lots of danceable classical music. My point is that mainstream music _rigidly_ adheres to steady tempo and rhythm. If you only listen to mainstream music (like most people) then you don't hear much exploration of that entire 'dimension' of music.

<comment><USER12> I think that you and I have very different feelings about what is "danceable".

I don't have much time to listen to a lot of different types of music these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The page ends for me after the byline. I just don't see any content. Same effect in Chrome and Firefox.

Edit: Ghostery was overzealous in blocking DISQUS.

<comment><USER14> Had the same issue but it was Soundcloud that was being blocked by Ghostery that prevented content from showing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This agrees with my own experience: I've found that I can type around 10-20% faster when I'm listening to fast music, and oddly enough make less errors in the process (this might be a different effect, however.)

</comment><comment><USER16> I was going to ask what music slows the perception of time, then after checking his soundcloud under related sounds I came across [Orchestral Crunkwave]([https://soundcloud.com/tags/orchestralcrunkwave](https://soundcloud.com/tags/orchestralcrunkwave)).

</comment><comment><USER17> It's odd that the author does not specify what string quartet he is referring to, just calling it "The String Quartet"\- Schubert had 15 of them.

<comment><USER18> In fact, it is a quintet, not a quartet, that the author was referring to. And it was the one in C major, as made clear in the beginning.

<comment><USER17> Interesting that I repeatedly saw quartet and not quintet- probably because the assumption is so strong. He only wrote one of them, so the piece clarification was unnecessary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> That blog has a really pretty font. :)

<comment><USER20> This is the font they are using: [https://philsfonts.com/index.php/fonts/overview/GF060022X1](https://philsfonts.com/index.php/fonts/overview/GF060022X1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I agree! Nice post!</comment>


Instant email: how we made Hotmail 10x faster - <AUTHOR> http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2011/06/30/instant-email-how-we-made-hotmail-10x-faster.aspx

<comment><USER2> I don't know for sure but this seems a lot like GMail circa a while ago. Why no comparison to GMail times? It'd be interesting to see the side-by-side between vendors.</comment>


Terminating a Frozen SSH Session - <AUTHOR> https://www.remembertheusers.com/2020/07/0668-terminating-a-frozen-ssh-session.html <comment><USER2> So much to learn, if only people would read man pages.

[https://linux.die.net/man/1/ssh](https://linux.die.net/man/1/ssh)

See the "Escape Characters" section.

(Linux historically has terrible man pages compared to say the old SunOS man pages of yore, but the ssh man page is complete.)

(When I was first introduced to Unix, it was on SunOS. One day, I typed "man intro" [1]and about 8 hours of man page reading later, decided to call it a day.)

1\. [https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19683-01/816-0210/6m6nb7m45/inde...](https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19683-01/816-0210/6m6nb7m45/index.html)

(Here's another thing you can do. Look at the list of commands in your PATH. I'll bet you're not familiar with all of them. Some will have curious names. Why not see what they do?)

<comment><USER3> > if only people would read man pages

Sounds suspiciously like "if only people would read Terms of Service". A single document, given lots of leisure time, is fine. The aggregate of all man pages (or in my example ToS docs) is ridiculous.

I would argue that man pages are good if you know what you're looking for. The hardest part about modern tech stacks is knowing which layer (therefore which M) to RTFM.

<comment><USER4> I mean, man pages are searchable, immediately accessible, usually callable by the same name as the binary, somewhat standard in their formatting, and frequently exhaustive in at least the interface of the program. It's about 10x easier to `man someprogram` than it is to open a browser and google for some random answer in a lot of cases. What flag is it again? How do I format that string again?

Man pages are part of what I love about the unixy CLI experience. That is, in my opinion, a far cry from a hostile document like a ToS that is asking you to consent to things after going out of their way to be impenetrable and opaque.

The man pages are just trying to help you! Love them.

<comment><USER5> What about googling "man somecommand" in the browser?

<comment><USER6> No (direct) google needed:

[https://linux.die.net/man/](https://linux.die.net/man/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Also, the ~ needs to be the first on the line, so the key sequence is often <return>~. to kill a hung session.

And good idea to ctrl-c ctrl-U before hitting return, just in case there was a command in the buffer and the session wasn't actually hung up.

</comment><comment><USER8> The most comfortably I ever saw a person wield the telnet/rsh/ssh escape sequences was when I was an intern, visiting a Cray division, to port some software. He was juggling multiple hops, to get to a machine across the room, with the panels off.

I'm guessing that juggling multiple hops might've been ordinary in Internet- based supercomputing center practice at the time. Including through terminal servers?

Though it would've been aesthetically cooler to sit at the console of a front- end processor of a Cray or Connection Machine. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxell#/media/File:Blown_Away_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxell#/media/File:Blown_Away_Guy_- _Maxell_ad.jpg)

(I ended up creating some multi-hop-to-go-10-feet situations myself at that company, such as for crudely gatewaying from our main Sun-dominated engineering LAN, to some porting systems, such as VAXstations that were only on DECnet. Half of the engineers had been developing things like LAN-accessed in-circuit emulators, borrowing other workstations' tape drives through rsh as part of a local Unix command pipeline, etc., so they were also unusually comfortable with the hops.)

<comment><USER9> If you are doing multiple hops, it's good to know you can stack tildes to target a specific link in the chain. So if the second ssh connection is hung, you can press ~ ~ . to terminate that ssh connection, and not the first one.

<comment><USER10> See also: detaching from, or quitting a tmux/screen session.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > To view a list of available options with this escape trigger type `~.`

That should be `~?`

<comment><USER12> Agreed, in markdown:

`~`.

I might follow it with a comma and more of a sentence, for clarity or safety.

<comment><USER11> I mean the command to show the "help message" is actually be tilde then question mark.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's ctrl+c ctrl+d ↵ ↵ ~.

<comment><USER14> ↑↑↓↓←→←→BA?

Actually, joking aside, your advice doesn't seem to match the two-character string `~.` in the article. (Maybe your advice is meant to try first to see if the SSH session is really frozen, or if the remote shell is responding?) On the other hand, the article itself seems of two minds about what that two- character string does:

> To view a list of available options with this escape trigger type `~.`.

> To force terminate a frozen SSH session, press `~.`.

(As far as I can tell, in each case, one of those periods is the sentence ender and one is the command to terminate.) Unfortunately, I don't have anywhere to SSH to to check ….

<comment><USER15> ~? gets you a list of options ~. terminates the connection

Sometimes plain ~. just doesn't work, depending on what state your connection is in.

<comment><USER16> > Sometimes plain ~. just doesn't work, depending on what state your > connection is in.

I can't imagine what state that would be. It should work even if the remote machine is completely unresponsive.

<comment><USER15> I agree that it "should", but I've definitely had it not work. It may actually be a problem with the state of my local terminal under macOS. I've had to resort to "kill -9"ing my ssh from another window in some situations.

<comment><USER16> I can only imagine it appearing it not working by hitting Ctrl-s, which freezes terminal output. Killing ssh wouldn't solve that though. Besides unfreezing it with Ctrl-q, you'd have to kill the whole terminal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is this an openSSH thing and therefore an OpenBSD "thing"? I only ask because openBSD's `cu` uses the same ~. escape to exit out of a serial/tty connection.

I honestly had no idea ssh implemented the same escape until I read this.

</comment><comment><USER18> Annoyingly the (not-ssh) AWS session manager cli doesn't seem to implement this.

<comment><USER19> I use the optional approach for using it as a SSH ProxyCommand because it's nice not to have the fidelity gaps like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Btw, this doesn't work in zsh. It does work in bash. But I just lost my session from typing `~.` Don't even have to press enter!

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Weird - it works for me, and it should be totally in the ssh client; I can't even see where the shell is involved. Are you doing something weird with key bindings? Does it work if you temporarily run without your zsh config?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Use mosh and never terminate a ssh session again.

</comment><comment><USER22> tilde dot is life.

</comment><comment><USER23> Am I missing something here ? Surely all the author of the blog post needs to do is put : ServerAliveInterval X ServerAliveCountMax Y In their client ssh config file ? (Where X & Y are values that meet their needs)

<comment><USER16> The issue is that by the time you learn you need that or that your X and Y didn't suffice, you've already got a hung connection. So, now you want to restart the connection, maybe adding those options, but Ctrl+C is not killing ssh because it's trying to pass that to the server, too. So what do you do? Terminate with `~.`, then you can add `-o ServerAliveInter=X`, etc.

Without the escape sequences, your options are to use another terminal to `kill` the ssh client, or kill the whole terminal and start ssh in another. The problem with the former is that it might imply having to login again into the machine that has the ssh client. The problem with the latter is that you might be in multiple nested ssh sessions after having jumped through various servers, and closing the terminal kills everything instead of just the one that got hung.</comment></comment>


Sad Trombone Exoplanet Reality Check - <AUTHOR> http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/08/san-trombone-exoplanet-reality.html <comment><USER2> When I was a boy in the Soviet Union in the late 80's, I picked up a book on computers. It was targeted towards children, and talked about a lot of different components and ideas from bits and bytes to RAM to networking, and interesting applications like barcodes.

I remember my mind being blown by barcodes. But the idea seemed far-fetched and unrealistic. To put a barcode on EVERY single item in the grocery store? That would take decades to implement!

Then we emigrated to Canada and I was shocked to see it was already in place (and must have been for a while).

Maybe this isn't the best example of tremendous human achievement but it taught me to not take for granted what is unrealistic and how quickly humanity could achieve it if we put our minds to it.

With apologies to Cliff Stoll and his magnificent brain, let's not forget a pretty common perspective on the Internet from 1995: [http://europe.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be- ni...](http://europe.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be- nirvana-185306?rm=eu)

Space exploration and rocketry is not cheap, and requires new innovation. Only SpaceX is doing anything on that front. But if humanity set getting to Proxima Centauri as a goal, I have no doubt we could achieve at least kicking off a single-generation journey within my lifetime (ie sub-80 year journey time in the next 80 years)

<comment><USER3> Humans are capable of incredible achievements. But it is unlikely we will achieve interstellar travel any time soon. We are too busy fighting wars (relicts of the stone age, really), improving our advertising technology, and just generally slacking around and looking good in the process.

Thinking is hard. It's easier not to think too much.

<comment><USER4> Humans were busy fighting wars, improving its advertising technology, and just generally slacking around when the internet was being born as well.

It only takes a very tiny portion of this world's 7 billion people to be smart and motivated enough to create a breakthrough for the entire planet.

That said, interstellar travel is an order of magnitude more difficult, so I agree it won't be happening very soon.

<comment><USER5> I'm surprised that the internet so often comes up in the context of humanities great technical achievements.

Don't get me wrong, a seamlessly interconnected network of computers has changed society and our lives tremendously.

Technically speaking, it was not that remarkable of an achievement though. We already had some forms of remote communication for quite a while (telegraph, telephone, radio).

With the rise of computers, connecting them was bound to be the next step, and not that much of a challenge as far as hardware and technology goes.

The actual (technical) achievement was the computer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > note that 4.25 light years isn't an order-of-magnitude improvement over the > previous winners for Earthlike proximity, such as Wolf 1061c (13.8 light > years away) or Kapteyn B* (12.76 light years away). We're talking about the > difference between 40 arbitrarily-huge-units and 100 arbitrarily-huge-units. > So how should we contextualize these arbitrarily-huge-units?

This is nonsense. The point is that the exoplanet was (potentially) found orbiting the nearest star, which means it's as close as it can be.

</comment><comment><USER7> The physics of space travel are harsh, and the distances involved even harsher. Plus, unless you want to go screaming by on a fly-by mission, you have to burn all that delta-V you generated to get there in order to slow down again.

The only real solution will be some kind of essentially magical faster than light technology - never say never, but it doesn't seem likely without some staggering breakthroughs in areas of physics we don't even have an inkling about.

Maybe it's the American exceptionalism and internalization of Manifest Destiny as the natural order of things, but the idea of being effectively stuck, as a species, on this one rock for eternity is pretty depressing. Especially if that is the fate, not just of ourselves, but of all life intelligent enough to look up at the stars and imagine walking among them. If the best we can hope for is a Motey-like[1] Malthusian cycle, it's not much to look forward to.

[1][http://amzn.to/2b5I0Ea](http://amzn.to/2b5I0Ea)

<comment><USER8> It is possible to leave this rock, but we'll need to think in terms of millennia, not lifetimes. Long term thinking that's also kind of unAmerican.

<comment><USER9> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_ship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_ship)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Note in the comments Peter Erwin points out that Charlie has overestimated the density in the (relevant portion of the) interstellar medium by several orders of magnitude: [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/08/san- trom...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/08/san-trombone- exoplanet-reality.html#comment-2008437)

</comment><comment><USER11> > Currently, the most distant visited body in the solar system is Pluto, at > 7.5 billion kilometers. The New Horizons probe flew past Pluto on July 14, > 2015. It was launched on January 19th 2006 by a booster and upper stage > combination that blasted it straight up to solar escape velocity, with a > speed of 16.26 km/sec (58,536 km/h), making it the fastest human-made > vehicle ever: it then executed a Jupiter gravity-assist flyby to slingshot > it out past Pluto, where it arrived nine and a half years after departure.

Lots of people have no clue just how big the solar system is, and how small the planets are in comparison. (Never mind the distance to exoplanets). Here's one video that gives a nice demonstration using a soccer ball and pin heads, from Mark Rober (who worked on a Mars rover at Nasa): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR5VJo5ifdE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR5VJo5ifdE)

<comment><USER12> Bill Nye demonstrated it pretty well on his tv show. Very easy for kids (including me when I first saw this) to comprehend. [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=97Ob0xR0Ut8](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=97Ob0xR0Ut8)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's disingenuous to talk about Fukushima as a "meltdown", or imply that it was dangerous (on the scale of space-travel dangers).

The Project Orion design was for 10% of light speed, and didn't assume any scientific breakthroughs like fusion - it would require a massive amount of engineering , but the core technology (that used in nuclear weapons) was mature in the '70s.

We're still talking about a 40+ year journey, for a craft whose cost was estimated at $367B at the time - about $2.5T now. It's not easy by any means. But it is doable. We'll get there.

<comment><USER14> > a craft whose cost was estimated at $367B at the time - about $2.5T now.

So we can pay for it with just the money _mismanaged_ by the US armed forces.

<comment><USER15> No you can't, Jesus, read the actual article. The entire yearly budget for the US armed forces is around $600 billion.

They had $2.5 trillion in adjustment lines that mostly netted out, they didn't actually lose track of $2.5 trillion, because they didn't have $2.5 trillion to lose track of.

<comment><USER16> That's a yearly budget though. This craft could be built over many years, so the comparison makes a bit more sense.

<comment><USER14> It _would_ be built over several years anyway, you can't get a project of that scale done and ready in a year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wasn't aware this reality check was needed, but it's worth noting that we haven't even left Earth yet (going to the Moon doesn't really count, and we've since lost that capability again). If we were a solar-system-wide civilization, I can see how it would make sense to talk about the feasibilities of interstellar travel, but today we are so far off it's not even an issue. We also don't have _any_ ambitions to change that, so extrapolating from today's state of affairs, we'll probably remain thoroughly Earth-bound until we reach a tech level that enables _individual people_ to have space programs (if we ever get there).

It's fun to think of probe-based exploration, but apart from acceleration/energy based problems we haven't even figured out how to make machines last that long. This is all very, very far off.

<comment><USER18> > going to the Moon doesn't really count, and we've since lost that capability > again

What we've lost is will. The capability is definitely better today, even though still not affordable enough to fit today's budgets.

<comment><USER16> Well I think he means we couldn't just go to the moon next year, even if we wanted to. All the engineers and factories and equipment behind Apollo is scattered or lost. It would basically require starting a whole new moon program from scratch and designing and building entirely new spacecraft, etc.

<comment><USER17> Indeed, yes, that's what I meant. But Jakub isn't wrong either, we lost the will too. But I thought I addressed that, but apparently not clearly enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > This veritable speed racer of an interplanetary probe would thus require a > mere 31,600 years to reach Proxima Centauri (if indeed it was pointed in the > right direction, which it isn't).

Holy cow, that's multiple times longer than humanity has even existed as a civilization, and in all likelihood it might perish before that probe could even make it there. What a reality check. I don't think incremental improvements are going to cut it for space travel.

<comment><USER20> So we should send one out now, and hope we're still around when it gets there.

And each time we complete development of something better send one of those.

Can you imagine how pissed we'd be 31,000 years from now, not having sent whatever we finally determined to be the best we could do, when we could have done it? It may take N thousand years to get something there, but only four years to get data back. It's worth it.

<comment><USER21> Designing a machine that still works in 31,600 years seems a pretty tough challenge. Even remembering to listen for a signal in 31,600 years is probably already a hard problem.

<comment><USER20> > Designing a machine that still works in 31,600 years seems a pretty tough > challenge.

Good point. I'm quite sure we can already point something somewhere and it'll get there, or close, in 31K years. So the real challenge is what you point out. And remembering is maybe even more challenging.

So the first one out ought to be very simple. Maybe it just pings home every N days. That would mean that we'd start out listening for it, and perhaps that infrastructure would be taken care of.

And maybe that first one would die before it arrives. But if we continue to send something better each time we're able, I think we'd eventually have success. And if we do continue to send things, maybe we'd have an institutional tradition of listening for the original.

<comment><USER21> Just a ping from four light years away does not seem worth the effort to me, it seems just slightly above throwing a rock in the direction of Proxima Centauri. At least take a picture.

By the way, there is also a thing called wait calculation [1] which deals with this very problem, when should you start an interstellar journey. There is not much of a point to start today if you can cut the travel time in half in, say, a hundred years since you would pretty quickly overtake the mission started today and arrive first despite the fact that you started a hundred years later.

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

<comment><USER20> > Just a ping from four light years away does not seem worth the effort to me,

That's all Sputnik was, a ping in orbit. But it was worth doing to get something, anything at all, in orbit. Sputnik itself wasn't important, but the knowledge and experience gained was.

You don't not throw a Sputnik up because you know that decades later you'll have the ability to throw up a space station. Sputnik is part of the space station process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The title of this article sounds like a password [1].

Whenever one of these articles comes out I like to think of this fun paper: [2] Are Black Hole Starships Possible?", [http://arxiv.org/pdf/0908.1803](http://arxiv.org/pdf/0908.1803)

[1] [https://xkcd.com/936/](https://xkcd.com/936/) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_starship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_starship)

</comment><comment><USER23> > 4.25 light years isn't an order-of-magnitude improvement over the previous > winners for Earthlike proximity, such as Wolf 1061c (13.8 light years away) > or Kapteyn B* (12.76 light years away).

Wrong. It _is_ , quite literally, just about a order of magnitude better.

<comment><USER24> Maybe in base-3...

<comment><USER25> He was probably referring to base e (2.718281828).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I know Charlie is a writer, not a radiation physicist, nevertheless... major 'units' fail in his radiation calculation. 6 Trillion alpha particles per sq meter per second is 6 TBq per m^2; not 6 Tbq per m^2 per second. TBq as a unit already includes the "per second". In other words, you wouldn't get a Fukushima release every eight days - you'd just get about 1 millionth of a Fukushima... and that's it (per m^2, of course), as long as you are moving through an interstellar medium as thick as he posits at that speed.

160 Curies is a dangerous amount of radioactivity, but nothing outrageous. I often work with gamma sources much larger than that. I use a 1000 Curie source that easily fits in a sq meter, and it's used the same shielding for over 20 years.

</comment><comment><USER27> Sounds like a riveting to-do list, with lots of big implications for the folks back home.

> _We 'd need a whole raft of breathroughs, including radiation shielding > techniques to kick the interstellar medium out of the way of the probe_

Game changer for nuclear power and propulsion, in terms of safety. If we did this with matter, that means we can get closer to hot things [1]. If we did this with energy, ha! - we can now start harvesting edge-of-magnetosphere antimatter and explore mining and terraforming using directed energy.

> _as well as some sort of beam propulsion system_

If we can beam massive amounts of power _out_ that means we (a) have massive amounts of power up there and (b) can beam (a) home [2].

> _and then some way of getting data back home across interstellar distances_

Either we figured out how to keep lasers (or some other stream of stuff) columnar over super-long distances or we broke new ground in information theory. Either way, getting a grainy picture home from Proxima Centauri on an apple of an energy budget means getting lots more closer to home around faster and more efficiently.

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

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

</comment><comment><USER28> Focusing on habitability from our perspective seems somewhat parochial.

From the perspective of colonization: by the time future sentients descended from or created by present humanity get to other planetary systems, we-for- some-definition-of-we would be capable of living anywhere, and space and novelty will be things that you get by computing more efficiently, not by going places.

From the perspective of adding data to the Fermi Paradox: assessing the possibilities of life being out there by looking for places in which bacteria of the known varieties could survive probably tells us little about the true range of life.

From the perspective of resource assessment: by the time descendant entities get to other systems, it won't much matter how the matter there is distributed. It will used efficiently whether a gas disk, rock and ice condensations, or (improbably) somehow all in the star.

</comment><comment><USER29> When I read articles like this, I like to imagine that we are already on a multi-generational ship (earth) and are on our way to see the wonders of the Andromeda Galaxy :)

</comment><comment><USER30> NASA should over the next 100 years build a hyper-telescope, so that people can begin to actually see these planets in detail before before a probe can be sent.

Even with current technology, a hyper-telescope could be self-assembled in space, built from billions of 3-d printed & smoothened mirror segments, all aligned to half wavelength of visible light. We need to have a 1000px x 1000px resolution of earth-like planets out to 100 light years away, which would be several thousand miles in diameter.

<comment><USER31> That's all but impossible. To optically resolve an Alpha Centauri planet of Earth size at Hubble resolutions of Pluto (about 680 pixels square) you'd need a 28 km wide scope (or array).

[https://www.quora.com/How-big-would-a-telescope-have-to- be-t...](https://www.quora.com/How-big-would-a-telescope-have-to-be-to-see- Kepler-452b)

Rather than seeing _shapes_ of objects, detecting their _signatures_ \-- light occlusion, spectroscopy, thermal and radio signatures -- is far more useful. Several of those would reveal chemistry and radiation indicative of life and/or intelligence.

Much xenoplanetary analysis isn't done through optical telescopes, per se, but through spectrographic analysis, which tells us what _compounds_ and _elements_ are present (or are blocking / reradiating) starlight.

<comment><USER32> Nothing wrong with a 28 km array though, if we can put it in space.

Besides, what about dynamic aperture? I know very little about it, I only heard that a moving camera effectively expands it aperture by the distance traveled within the duration of the exposure.

<comment><USER31> You're going to want _both_ light gathering _and_ range.

Keep in mind, a planet is probably going to be moving a lot over the course of a few hours. A 24 hour time-lapse of the Earth will give you a lot of pretty colours. But not much by way of a useful image.

You're trying to see something _tiny_ and _dim_ a _very_ long way away, next to something which whilst also _tiny_ (relative to the Universe) is far, far, far brighter.

A long-duration moving-apature exposure of a remote planet next to a dim star seems to me not to be an ideal candidate for high-quality imaging. I'm not sure a large-baseline, large-collector array would do much better, but at least it could narrow the time interval somewhat.

(Though I think you're still basically going to end up with a glared-out, underexposed, blurred pixel.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The title of this blog post is one of the funniest I've read on HN, really made me laugh.

The author states:

"We might get a small probe up to arbitrarily high velocities if we cheat by using an engine that stays back home where we can keep it running, but then we run into other problems."

Does anyone know which rocket propulsion technology he is referring to there? In the paragraph before he is referring to plasma beam but he doesn't say what this is.

<comment><USER34> The goto site for discussions about interplanetary and interstellar anything is Centauri Dreams:

[http://www.centauri-dreams.org/](http://www.centauri-dreams.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Excellent read, so much insight. We really need those gates from "The Expanse" series.

</comment><comment><USER36> Interesting that he doesn't mention the Breakthrough Starshot concept at all.

<comment><USER37> It's mentioned in the comments:

> As for the Starshot thing, that sounds like a reboot of Robert Forward's > Starwhisp idea from the 1990s. The real problem with that is, how to get any > data back from it. (Not to mention how to construct a continuously operating > gigawatt laser array in space).

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Just finished reading "The three body problem". A civilization on planet in a system with 3 suns would have some interesting challenges.

</comment><comment><USER39> So what you're saying is, "we need a bigger rocket!"

I agree. It's high time we started on near light speed space travel.

<comment><USER40> We need cheap matter-energy conversion. Nothing less will provide enough energy for interstellar travel, and cheap matter-energy conversion may not be possible _ever_. Whether the engine is here or there, the amount of energy needed to launch a properly-radiation-shielded craft is simply obscene.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I don't understand the focus of the article being on sending a physical probe. Why not just send a radio message? Something like "Is there anybody out there?"

I've heard the argument that we shouldn't advertise our existence in case there are hostile beings. But can't we assume that all intelligent life is constrained by the same rules of physics? And why assume hostile?

<comment><USER42> The round trip time for such a message would be 9.0 year, so getting our signal discovered, _and_ getting it mutually intelligible, could easily never happen, even if there was life there.

<comment><USER31> Clearly, part of the trick would be to figure out what to send, and to keep sending it.

Well, that, and figuring out _how_ to send it.

Though when you've got the resources of a habitable planet at your back, generating strong signals seems more viable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Thermodynamics is a real downer...

<comment><USER40> Imho the entropy laws are the real heartbreaker. They're the ones that explain how the universe doomed.

<comment><USER31> But they're also the reason we're here in the first place.

Shiva the destroyer, Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Bah! That's an engineering problem.

</comment><comment><USER45> Same story for colonising Mars, or even sending astronauts there. It's pretty much unfeasible. Yes maybe we could send some people there but the costs involved are so astronomical that it really can't be justified. We're stuck on this planet and we need to make the best of it.

<comment><USER46> And yet, two organizations have plans to do so in the next two decades.

<comment><USER45> Yeah a handful of astronauts can go there. But everybody else is stuck here.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Need advice: Single founder and Early stage chances with YC? - <AUTHOR>

Earlier today I asked fellow hackers about their take on my app. But, just in the matter of hours my situation changed dramatically.
We were a team of two founders, me being the developer and the other cofounder, a marketing/sales girl. Ours/mine is a crowdsourced based non-profit startup in its early stages of development.
Due some reasons, she quit on the startup and I am now the only founder left in the company, I'm really determined to go ahead and apply for YC. I have been working relentlessly to get to a shape.
I was wondering if this happened to anyone before and if yes- how did you manage to compensate the loss(may be for a good reason).
PS: For the curious, here is my original ask hn: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9267658 <comment><USER2> I have absolutely no experience with YC applications and know almost nothing about the teams that got in.

Given that -- my take:

You are worried about all the wrong things.

Instead, you should worry about whether you are making something people want and effectively communicating that you are doing that. All this other stuff is sapping your energy to accomplishing the one thing YC says over and over again that means the most to them. The second thing is relentlessness -- if you are relentless, these are very minor setbacks, and not worth your attention right now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Past the demotivation, PG lists "single founder" as [one of]the top mistake that kills a startup.

"it's a vote of no confidence. It probably means the founder couldn't talk any of his friends into starting the company with him. that's pretty alarming"[1]

"Ideally you want between two and four founders. It would be hard to start with just one. One person would find the moral weight of starting a company hard to bear."[2]

There could be other reasons why a founder chose to be single. In my case, my other friends who _were_ interested in joining as co-founders but, I chose not[include/work them] because they didn't had the same values as I imagine one should. for me, this is more important than their respective abilities.

[1] The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups [2] How to start a startup

<comment><USER3> its doable. Not enjoyable.

You go to "war" with the army you have not the army you want. if you want to get a new founder on board then start looking but I wouldnt delay today because of it.

If you are having second doubts. Then reevaluate. Ask why she left and get More feedback from others.

People will start joining when you least need them ( when you start becoming successful ). So I'd advance only if this is your vision for your contribution to this world.

<comment><AUTHOR> My vision "Awethu" a non-profit startup is to use technology to help people from developing nations (such as mine) to solve their real-world problems, which in either case be expensive. i.e, create a "affordable" solution. And, it's been difficult for me to find co-founders who are as motivated as I am AND be seeking less or no profit out of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If I were you. I'd go and apply and start searching immediately for another team mate.

Ask yourself. What's the worse that can happen?

I have no xp with y combinator or all of its criteria but a lot of people view one founder as a weakness (this can also bleed over with angel investors too from what I hear). Fortunately you have the tech side. If you want another founder then start searching. If you want a business side person it shouldn't be too hard.

I personally have started as a single cofounder and raised money by the users. Its not nearly as fun but it's doable. If you believe in it i wouldn't let anyone stop me.

My 2 cents.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've already started searching for other co-founder ( friends & Co.). I agree, raising money from the Users as a single co-founder can be a daunting task and even more for a Non-profit startup like mine. Henceforth, YC!</comment></comment>


Show HN: Historical order book reconstruction API for crypto markets - <AUTHOR> https://tardis.dev <comment><USER2> I doubt I'll ever be trading enough volume to support this expense, but you just might get me addicted with those monthly free API access days...

<comment><USER3> I have worked before on something similar: cryptomarketplot.com

Free API access is not 1 day but 24/7 on : [http://cryptomarketplot.com/api.json](http://cryptomarketplot.com/api.json) ; if you have traffic limits check [http://cryptomarketplot.com/api.json.br](http://cryptomarketplot.com/api.json.br) added a few month ago but not shown on the mainpage (I did that [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18653590](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18653590) )

Only drawback is the limitation to 1 minute resolution. Still good enough if you are not HFT.

If you are HFT they had packages like "all you can eat" feeds. It was like $500/month for the BTCUSD pair on any 5 exchanges out of 75 supported, with different pricing for different latency offers (going all the way to colo!) using custom client and software integration (for SLA on latency targets)

I'd have to ask if they now provide historical data.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi, founder of [https://tardis.dev](https://tardis.dev) here. Happy to answer any questions you have.

<comment><USER4> Do you plan on extending the product offering?

Edit: Do you use FIX API for the exchanges that provide it?

<comment><USER3> For those who don't know: the 3 main way to connect are REST, WebSockets and FIX.

[https://algosforcryptos.com/trading-apis-top-crypto- exchange...](https://algosforcryptos.com/trading-apis-top-crypto-exchanges/)

But dedicated shops use custom made formats, with custom made software, often running on custom hardware.

If you want FIX, you may also need a low latency feed and at least a custom client where you just add your algorithms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://www.kaiko.com/](https://www.kaiko.com/) seems to the same data but with far longer historical coverage (Tardis starts from April this year). The drawback of Kaiko is the higher price tag.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, kaiko provides similar service and there are others in this space as well, but it's normalized data only and only snapshot of 10% of the top of the order book taken every minute - not streaming order book data (initial snapshot + incremental updates). It works for some use cases, but not all, hence my API which I'd hope fills that niche.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For fun, what's your tech stack and how do you think of it now that you built this project with it? Since we're on HN after all.

</comment><comment><USER7> Great offering and slick design! I hope you guys expand to traditional markets as the providers there are a bit messier.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm pretty sure the crypto exchanges own this data and will be hostile when they see it being repackaged and resold like this.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is this a Stripe product? The site is almost identical.</comment>


Minimal Web Browsers: Why You Need Less Stuff on the Browser - <AUTHOR> https://tedium.co/2020/05/12/minimal-web-browser-argument/ <comment><USER2> I do want less stuff in the browser, but mainly less JavaScript objects and other capabilities for web sites to perform, not less user stuff.</comment>


Comprehensive A-Z guide to more than 70 activities - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/sport/get-inspired/25416779 <comment><USER2> I checked weightlifting. Nothing really helpful for people outside of UK</comment>


The Best Goal is No Goal - <AUTHOR> http://zenhabits.net/no-goal/ <comment><USER2> I disagree with this post, and think it's bad and incorrect advice for most people. Spending lots of time thinking about what you want, writing and rewriting how you could get there and the details, planning on how to get there, etc, etc, etc - much of it is fruitless, but eventually you build some large overarching themes for what you want for your life.

At that point, yes, you could abandon formal goal setting and still do things mostly correctly. But it's terrible advice for most people.

Then some of it is wrong:

> The idea of having concrete, achievable goals seem to be deeply ingrained in > our culture.

Something silly like 90% of people _don't_ have concrete, achievable goals. If you don't, I'd strongly encourage you to start thinking about what you want, and writing it down, and occasionally revisiting/rewriting what you want. It'll do wonders for you.

Yes, you won't follow the plan to the letter, but you will live a more meaningful life and get more of what you want.

Eisenhower quote: "Plans are useless, but planning is invaluable."

<comment><USER3> _Spending lots of time thinking about what you want_

Trouble is, my ultimate goal in life is to do this as little as possible.

<comment><USER4> Then you, unlike most people, already know what you want. If that's truly your ultimate goal that is.

<comment><USER5> It's an enviable state. My goals usually change too often to get very far with any particular one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Of course, you don't actually end up getting there. Sometimes you achieve the goal and then you feel amazing. But most of the time you don't achieve them and you blame it on yourself._

No, where the author goes wrong is believing that unmet goals == failure. The best thing to do is not drop your goals, but stop labeling yourself a failure, blaming yourself, etc... when you miss them. Sure, the only one who can "own up" to that missed goal is you, but leave it at that and don't make it a cycle of negativity.

Just a quick example -- in my HS track years I had a goal that I wanted to break 2 min for the 800m... On the best race of my senior year, I kicked a tad early and gassed out about 15m before the finish, running a 2:00.46.

It'd be quite silly to feel poorly for running the fastest 800m of my life just because I missed my goal (which also would have given me the school record).

To continue the running analogy, goals should be akin to saying "look how far I've come", not "look how far I'm from" the finish line.

<comment><USER7> 'No, where the author goes wrong is believing that unmet goals == failure. The best thing to do is not drop your goals, but stop labeling yourself a failure, blaming yourself, etc... when you miss them. Sure, the only one who can "own up" to that missed goal is you, but leave it at that and don't make it a cycle of negativity.'

Exactly.

I've set out to accomplish a great many things, and have, by all accounts, failed at most of them. However, while I may have missed may goals, these pursuits lead me to accomplish other things.

Having goals is mind hack to get you off your ass and into motion, which about the only way anything happens, planned or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> To live the way he describes, you don't need "no goals", you only need to be able to let go of goals that require steps that you're not passionate about right now. It often takes goals to get me doing things, which is good.

The trouble with goals for me comes when following a goal makes me lose sight of the greater goal, which is feeling good in a wholesome, sustainable way. I've followed external goals to the point where I became very ugly inside at points in my life. The older I get, the less I tend to abide paths that require me to step significant distances away from the greater goal -- that is, to feel bad in the present.

In a sense, I've learned to live my life by a greedy algorithm: do what feels best in the present, and don't worry too much about the future. The mathematician in me is very suspicious of this leading to optimal attainment in my life. In my better moments though, I remember that the greater goal isn't "attainment" per se, but simply the quality of feeling in the present, and those worries dissipate...

<comment><USER9> The mathematician in you should be very suspicious of any algorithm leading to optimal attainment in life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This article is interesting but the perspective isn't balanced.

What works for one person may (and likely won't) work for another. We all work differently, we all learn differently, we're all motivated by different things. It's true that some people may fly happily through life without so much as a thought to personal or professional goals. People who do not define goals have an equal chance of being successful as those who carefully plot their course. A lot of the time, it's more about effort then it is about short term goals.

The underlying problem here is that a lot of people, some of whom are successful, don't know themselves very well. I believe that it's important to know exactly what your learning styles are, where you draw your motivation from and what makes you happy.

Personally, I record long term goals and then think (but don't write) about what it's going to take to reach them. Every day that I devote a significant amount of effort to whatever goal I'm working on, I put an X through the date on a calendar. This is surprisingly rewarding and when I see a chain of X's, I don't want to break the line. This works for me, but it might not work for anyone else.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think the author's onto something, but unfortunately, he never comes out and says the word that could give his article some real legs.

The word is "improvise".

You can plan, you can set goals, you can track milestones, (or not, if you follow the article), but at some point you'll hit a crossroads where all you have to go on are your experience and your instincts. And then you'll have to act.

You'll have to improvise.

And to me, these moments of improvisation are where life is _at_. They're the moments we remember. The moments we tell stories about. The moments when success and failure are _born_.

Now, the author seems to be living a life of pure improvisation. That's a beautiful thing. However, it's most certainly not a goal-free thing. He's eliminated the "how" (he makes it all up as he goes along) but he hasn't eliminated the "what". He still has goals. He still has wants. Heck, his number one advice is to "follow your passions" -- and what's passion but an overwhelming desire to achieve some goal?

What he really ought to have said is, "Know yourself, know what you want, but don't tear yourself up over the logistics."

</comment><comment><USER12> It's fine for Leo to talk about how great it is to not have any goals. What he kind of glosses over is the years of hard work and goal setting/achieving that was required for him to get to this point.

It's like a highly skilled musician telling you that he never feels the urge to take lessons and practice.... of course not. He already has the strong foundation needed to allow for his new lifestyle.

<comment><USER8> That's actually not what he's saying at all. He's saying only do the things you feel the urge to do. He says that for himself it's usually blogging.

<comment><USER13> I wonder how he blogs if he never has a goal in mind? I imagine he doesn't just write random words down. If you don't ever set goals then how do you ever create anything that requires more than a few simple steps? Surely you must have an end result in mind.

I think the message he really wants to get across is a combination of 'be more spontaneous' and 'don't be afraid to change your plans', which isn't the same thing IMO.

<comment><USER14> Do you set yourself a goal of "Get X amount of karma on Hacker News"? If not, how do you ever comment? Are you just writing random words down?

Sometimes, people just do things because they want to _do_ them. You don't need to invoke metacognition on every single element of your day, and in fact it's rather exhausting to do so.

<comment><USER13> No that's not what I meant - let me put it another way.

Say you get the sudden urge to build a car. That will probably require weeks or months of work to complete, so it's a goal that you have to keep in mind while you do all the related jobs - sourcing parts, designing and building the bodywork, etc. If you don't set yourself that goal then what should you do instead? Purely following your day-to-day whims can leave you with a string of unfinished projects in your wake - surely just as disheartening as trying and failing at a particular goal, if not more so?

"Don't set goals, just do things" is bad advice if you find yourself wanting to create anything bigger than an afternoon's work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable." -Dwight D. Eisenhower

I think that this mentality is a better balance between having no plans and singlemindedly following a plan. Being flexible and willing to change your goals is an important ability.

</comment><comment><USER16> This advice, in true zen fashion, is both good and bad.

Still, there's something about writing a blog called Zen Habits that seems rather un-Zen.

<comment><USER17> _Zen Habits [...] seems rather un-Zen_

You're right! I never noticed that before.

My favorite example of this phenomenon is the label I saw on a fancy candle at a friend's house: "Zensual". That is so hilariously consumeristically hedonistically oxymoronic, it's delightful: <http://www.zensual.com/index.php>. (I talked to an American guy who spent a year at a 12th century Zen monastery in Japan. What it was really about was managing the pain from frostbite cleaning stone floors with freezing cold water in the winter and welts from being struck on the back by senior monks with big sticks. "Zensual" indeed!)

Much of this is about the 20th century collapse of Western religious institutions, corresponding exactly, I think, with a hunger for alternative traditions to fill the resulting vaccuum. Prior to WWII this was mostly drawing on Hindu traditions; after WWII, from the Beats on, Buddhism. But these imports have been inexorably and fundamentally transformed on being drawn into our vaccuum.

A writer I like put it this way: The East never came west. What came west was a Western version of the East.

<comment><USER9> Or rather, nothing ever came west. Modern "spirituality" is just repackaged, and somewhat shallower old fashioned Western spirituality.

Otherwise, show me the western buddhist who really denies the law of excluded middle while programming. Or the western hindu who lets pests and parasites infest his property and body because "all life is sacred."

<comment><USER18> > Or rather, nothing ever came west.

That's simply not true. Asian culture had a tremendous influence, even if somewhat misunderstood or reinterpreted, on the West. Our exam system in universities is inspired by the Chinese. People like Voltaire did admire Confucius' way to (not) talk about God. Leibniz was impressed by Yi-king's numerical perfection. Etc. (I agree that the zen-this and dao-that we have nowadays is an uninformed Western distortion, though).

Edit: And I dislike the quote in the article. I read Daode Jing many time, in different translation, and I don't remember having seen this. Anyway, any quotation of Chinese classics that do not give the reference is deemed to be a joke (like those Confucius said jokes).

<comment><USER17> It's in Chapter 27 of Stephen Mitchell's translation. It's by far the most prominent recent English _Dao_. I like Mitchell's translations, but when he strays into editorializing he makes me cringe. (Also - an irrelevant pet peeve - he or his publishers came up with one of the most obnoxiously hubristic titles I've ever seen in "The Gospel According to Jesus").

I agree with your main point. Not only has much come West, much of value has come West. For example, I consider the Wilhelm-Baynes I Ching to be a masterpiece. Our civilization -- heck, my life -- has improved immeasurably by exposure to the Sanskrit and Chinese classics.

On the narrower point of California Buddhism and similar spiritual trends, these do seem to me to be all about rebellion against Western religion, so they're tied up (often unconsciously) in issues that have nothing to do with the models they seek to emulate. In fact both of the two great spiritual trends going on right now -- the other being aggressive atheism -- seem like attempts to fill the same void. Presumably these will give way to other trends over time. My guess (could be totally wrong) is that people will eventually rediscover their own traditions.

Someone who worked at one of the big Zen institutes in San Francisco told me that they were visited by a highly regarded Japanese teacher who walked in on a large room full of silent meditators, hung out for a while, then angrily yelled "You're all looking for God" and stormed out.

<comment><USER18> > It's in Chapter 27 of Stephen Mitchell's translation. It's by far the most > prominent recent English Dao.

If we talk about the first sentence in this chapter ([http://wengu.tartarie.com/wg/wengu.php?l=Daodejing&no=27](http://wengu.tartarie.com/wg/wengu.php?l=Daodejing&no=27)) I fear I can't agree. Waley's translation reads "Perfect activity leaves no track behind it", which is way too far from "A good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving". The Chinese text is straightforward and the context present no difficulties. Word to word meaning is "good, walk, no, tracks" and the actual meaning is about doing things the natural way, avoiding artifices, avoiding to leave "human prints" on the world, a very common rant in Daode Jing.

Agree with the rest of your comment. I'll add the rebellion against Western religion is frightening, because those who spit on Christianism today could be the fanatics of tomorrow.

<comment><USER17> You can't agree that the sentence quoted is from Mitchell's translation? I assure you it is.

I say nothing as to whether it's accurate or not. I wish I could read the original like you. One of my dreams, in fact, is to do so someday.

"Good walk no tracks" is actually a fine translation as far as I'm concerned. It communicates a great deal, leaves a lot of interpretation out. It has that quality of mystery-combined-with-practicality which is essential to the whole book. I wish they'd publish a literal translation like that. Maybe you should!

Incidentally, can you also understand the original text of the I Ching? And commentaries on it?

<comment><USER18> The I Ching is not exactly a text, it is more like a beautifully organized list of named symbols, with their first-hand commentaries (attributed to Confucius), and comments on these comments (like in HN threads). The overall picture draws an interesting landscape of evolving configurations, but I fear some comments on the symbols may have lost their meaning, so no, I can't understand I Ching.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder how this works out for students.

I'm in my third year of college. I love to mess around with whatever piece of tech I can get my hands on. For example, this year I've tried out Scala, MongoDB, Pylons, ArchLinux, x86_64 assembly, Tcl, and writing Python extensions in C. I've also done a fair bit of reading on compilers and virtual machines, but not enough to write one myself. Besides, of course, the usual reading I do. What do I have to show for all this? A slightly larger ~/src/. What did I learn from all this? More than I can describe in words.

I know loads of people who have a laser-beam focus. Unlike me, these people get more done. They actually _finish_ projects. On the one hand, I would love to have made sizeable contributions to projects I'm passionate about but on the other hand, I don't think I can or even _want_ to have that laser-beam focus. At the end of the day, I'd rather be a happy Jack-of-all-trades than an unhappy master-of-one.

Of course, I get flak for this all the time, which makes me wonder if everyone is right and I'm just too stupid to see the error of my ways.

</comment><comment><USER20> To me, having no goal means having no particular goal, not being married to a particular outcome. It doesn't mean not working hard or ignoring opportunities. It means being flexible.

If you're on the way to pick an apple off a tree and you a diamond catches your eye on the way, you should allow yourself to be distracted for a moment. And you should not be so intent on a goal that you ignore everything else.

</comment><comment><USER21> As a generally rule be careful of long term advice. If you can't see the result of an advice sufficiently in two weeks and you don't know a lot of people who have succeed with such advice don't take it. I'm normally open to zen habits articles, but when advice can side track you from your objectives for months it should be taken with great care.

<comment><USER8> As a generally rule be careful of long term goals. If you can't see the result of a goal sufficiently in two weeks and you don't know a lot of people who have succeed with such a goal don't follow it. I'm normally open to HN comments, but when a goal can side track you from your enjoyment of life for months it should be followed with great care.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Consider this common belief: "You'll never get anywhere unless you know > where you're going." This seems so common sensical, and yet it's obviously > not true if you stop to think about it.

Obviously he's never heard my favorite, from Yogi Berra: "If you don't know where you're going, you'll end up somewhere else."

I don't like the absoluteness of saying that people should have "no goal," but I've very much preferred a vaguely-defined path. Getting lost is a great way to learn how to think on your feet, and adapt to opportunities as they come (and sometimes "somewhere else" is closer to where you want to be) — but having _some_ direction or overall aim is important.

There's wandering, and there's wandering toward what you want / what makes you happy.

<comment><USER9> I liken it to a global search algorithm, such as simulated annealing. At a certain point the search entropy should be high, so as to avoid getting stuck in a local minima. However, at other times the search entropy should be low so the actual optimum can be found.

Yes, most of life can be explained with computer science analogies. There should be a book about this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm not sure if anyone is familiar with SMART Goal setting. The basis behind SMART Goal setting is to set Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic goals that can be met within a certain Timeframe.

You, and only you, should control whether or not you attain your goal. That is the only way to ensure that success is wholly dependent on _your_ actions. I'm a big fan of goal setting as I truly believe that my life would be a chaotic mess even without a simple to do list. I get easily distract, and without goals would never actually finish what I started.

</comment><comment><USER24> this is dumb advice.

the crux of his post is that you should follow your passions and do what you love, which is good advice, but that in no way should be an excuse for not having a disciplined, focused long-term plan to get there.

imagine a startup/business saying: "screw goals/plans and holding ourselves accountable, we'll eventually find product/market fit and achieve scale just by doing what we feel is right at the moment." very similar to personal decisions in life.

long-term goals are incredibly important because they keep you treading on the journey. of course, there's randomness in the path (unexpected events/obstacles, crazy learning curve, etc), but maintaining a long-term focus improves your odds of getting over those hurdles and getting to your destination.

now that i'm thinking about this, good re-read of pg's old post on deterimination and discipline: <http://www.paulgraham.com/determination.html>

</comment><comment><USER25> To all those being critical of the idea, consider this:

The only difference between a life with goals and a life without goals is the amount of guilt you put yourself through for not meeting goals. If you live a life with goals but don't make yourself feel any guilt for not reaching a goal, surprise -- it's the same thing as not having goals.

</comment><comment><USER26> My father used to tell me "it's all about the journey, not the goal".

As a kid I thought that was silly, but as I grew older it made more sense.

As an adult, I would sum up that statement as follows: When you look back on you life, would you like to say look at all these goals I completed, or look at how much I enjoyed the journey of all my years?

<comment><USER27> Actually, looking back, the great memories are about the problems I have overcome, not the times when I was enjoying myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Yes following your passion is always a good advice I guess, but that doesn't mean you have to stop setting goals.

It might be a cliche, but goals (when written down, reviewed daily, visualized) have more effect than just giving you direction in what you do on a day to day basis. Goals change the way you react to opportunities that arise and seem to do magic. At least that is my personal experience. Old almost forgotten goals suddenly became reality for me. My advice: do what you like most and set goals to use that passion to get results.

</comment><comment><USER29> This article is good for sanity, but goals are necessary for business

<comment><USER30> As is the pivot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I know where I'm going, I don't know where I'll end up.

I think the better Tao of goals is not by having non-goals, which becomes a goal itself, but by having flowing goals that change, grow, diminish, and lead to more and more branches. There are two commonly used metaphors of the Tao: seeming opposition and imitating water. I think the latter isn't given enough attention.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think most of the comments are are missing the main point of the article: enjoy the journey instead of painfully achieving a goal. Goals are wonderful. However, I think our society is a bit too goal oriented (i.e. be a doctor, get a law degree, go for the promotion).

Have goals and enjoy the journey. Maybe I'm reading too much into the article, but that's what I got.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is sometimes the case in computer search algorithms as well -- sometimes trying to minimize error or some heuristic of distance to the goal performs worse than just searching for things that are 'different' from previous things you've found. My PhD work is on 'novelty search' which is an evolutionary search without a goal.

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen I disagree with the notion that can only get what you want by looking for it from the corner of your eye, instead of looking head-on.

</comment><comment><USER33> "Children have neither past nor future; they enjoy the present." --Jean de la Bruyere</comment>


A Break in the Quest for the Quantum Speed Limit - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/planckian-dissipation-strange-metals-superconductors-electron-speed-limit/576484/ <comment><USER2> Surprised this isn't garnering more attention. This is the best science article I've read in a long while and it's absolutely an incredibly important topic.</comment>