Why can't we read anymore? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@hughmcguire/why-can-t-we-read-anymore-503c38c131fe <comment><USER2> Part of the problem is articles like this. There were perhaps five interesting sentences of content in that entire piece, and several hundred entirely redundant words and personal examples used only to set the tone.

If modern writers have such disrespect for their audience, is it any wonder some of that audience hasn't the attention span to stick with it?

Older, serious, and timeless literature requires deep concentration because the authors use their thousands of words to express deep pathos that can't be trivialised. It takes practice to commit oneself to a book like that for long enough to get into a flow wherein it can be understood and appreciated. It's _easier_ to read fluff because the dopamine hits quicker, but (for some people) it's worth the effort to read something more meaningful.

In some ways there's an analogy to coding; some books I can't read unless I've got the time to be isolated from distractions. Similarly, some coding problems I can't make progress unless I know I've got more than a half hour to pre-load my brain cache.

Given that I'm railing about redundant words, this seems an appropriate point to stop.

<comment><USER3> > If modern writers have such disrespect for their audience

As opposed to whom, paid-by-the-word Dickens and his amazing menagerie of circumlocutions? ;-)

<comment><USER4> Perhaps, but the further back you go, the starker the shift in reading habits becomes. I skimmed this article in 5 minutes and probably won't remember it tomorrow. Compare two centuries ago, when the only books most people had were the Bible and Milton, and they memorized every word. Or three centuries before that, when the people who could read might have to travel across Europe to read a particular book, and might commit each page to a memory palace.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've read over 500 fiction books and 2000+ non-fiction. I've read many of the big thick classics like Moby Dick, War & Peace, Infinite Jest. I've kept a spreadsheet of all the books I've read somewhat like Art Garfunkel[1] (of Simon & Garfunkel music duo).

I've also read Nick Carr's "The Shallows"[2] and other authors about about the web's effect on attention span, distractions, etc.

With all that said, I'm not convinced that people "should" read long form books. I read all those books because I personally enjoyed it. I just can't say with confidence that others should do the same or they will be "missing out" on some unquantifiable intellectual nirvana.

I also enjoy getting lost in Wikipedia articles and jumping around hyperlinks without fully finishing the wiki article I was reading. (Wiki articles are not ever "finished" anyway so there's no guilt trip in leaving the page to head down another rabbit hole.)

15 years ago, I read a dozen of C++ books cover-to-cover. Can someone today get similar levels of knowledge jumping around quality blog posts and watching youtube videos? I think so. I don't hold my traditional reading method for C++ to be superior; it's simply what I did before the internet was available in 1995. I certainly did not learn Golang by reading a book cover-to-cover.

Books certainly have benefits but I think they are overstated in relation to non-book forms of consuming words.

[1][http://www.artgarfunkel.com/library/list1.html](http://www.artgarfunkel.com/library/list1.html)

[2][http://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing- Brains/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing- Brains/dp/0393339750/)

<comment><USER6> Whenever I real long-form books, my mind will occasionally wander into other areas, while my eyes keep reading on. I'll have to continually go back and re- read what I feel like I've just read. This isn't just an internet-fueled lack of attention, it's how I've always read, and how I image most people read most of the time.

The difference is with a website, you can go investigate your immediate thoughts rather than committing to the re-read. It is lazier, maybe. It's probably not great if you want to learn something in depth and stay focused on it for long periods of time.

<comment><USER7> _" I'll have to continually go back and re-read what I feel like I've just read."_

This is me.

 _" and how I image most people read most of the time."_

I wish I knew if this were true. I've always felt that I have some sort of "disorder" or some form of ADHD or something that causes my mind to wander anytime I try to read a book. I'm a terribly slow reader for this reason (at least when it comes to books -- internet articles, for some reason, don't seem to have this same effect on me), and as a result, I've not read too many books at all. I mostly get my information in smaller bursts.

Come to think of it, whenever I see what I consider super long articles posted on HN, and a ton of discussion about how great the article was, I feel terribly inadequate that I can't read said article in less than an hour (or more). Short articles I'm fine with, it's the longer ones -- and books -- that I struggle with.

And it's certainly not the result of any "conditioning" from reading short internet articles all the time -- I've been like this since long before the era of blogs and HN.

Would love it if someone could shed some light on this.

<comment><USER8> Not for me, when I read I get lost in the book and it gets dark outside, the cats come and sleep on me, the street lights go on and I look up at 10pm and I've read half a novel.

It's a sense of peace I get from few other things in life.

<comment><USER9> This, or even watching a slow paced movie (the kind more common before 1990) is incredibly refreshing break from the modern distraction filled world.

<comment><USER10> As I've gotten older and have less free time and there's so much more content out there, one practice I've come to accept is reading the wikipedia page and plot synopsis for a book/movie before starting watching something. In the same way I read HN comments before deciding whether to read the original article often times. Before wikipedia I would read the last chapters of books first.

I'm more worried about my time being spoiled than the plot being spoiled, and after all a good movie/book is even better the 2nd time around. This has allowed me to commit to watching or reading things I never would have before as I'd get bored (read: worried this is a waste of my time) 10 minutes into a slow moving movie.

<comment><USER11> But how does just reading the synopsis indicate if something is any good? Wouldn't you be better just looking at the IMDB score? Or are you looking out to avoid things with 'dumb' endings?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm honestly a little surprised at some of the comments here. I thought most people on here would agree that many of us do suffer from this. I mean, how many of you actually read through the entire article, WITHOUT checking your email, or flipping to twitter/fb to tell the world about this good article you just found? I had to really force myself to read the entire article first, and not give in to that urge to get a hit of dopamine. But of course, YMMV.

I think the ability to concentrate and focus on a single task is going to become more and more useful, because it is so easy to give in to that temptation to flip away, just for a quick moment. I've been working on practicing mindfulness through meditation, and have thought of reading a book as a form of meditation (nice to see the author allude to that a little).

So your TL;DR: good article, read more books, re-learn how to focus on single tasking.

<comment><USER13> I'm frequently disappointed when I do finish a web-published article to the point where I don't think there's anything wrong with skipping though most of them.

Most of them are poorly written or written in a way to make money.

That is

* clickbait titles when the bulk of the information in the article could be summarized in the title instead

* lack of introduction / thesis / abstract at the beginning summarizing or outlining the actual content

* meandering content with no clear overarching goal

* content padding – lots of words addling little information

So why should I feel bad about not finishing things I think aren't worth finishing?

<comment><USER14> I agree here. I began to read the article but the format completely deterred me from finishing it. I assume the format was on purpose to prevent it from becoming the very thing that it was saying the people have a hard time reading. But in the end, at least for me, I had a harder time reading the choppy, repetitive wording than a well thought out set of paragraphs. I have read many books and also started many and never picked them back up. There is no reason to force yourself to read something that does not capture your attention.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > _Last year, I read four books_.

Since January I read +-25 books. It's not necessarily a good thing. Every book, no matter how short, is a commitment. It requires time and effort you could spend in other, more productive things. As a matter of fact, reading is how I procrastinate.

 _The road to mediocrity is paved with good books_ : I've been reading quite a lot on entrepreneurship... let's say 300 hours worth of reading. I could have spent that time by testing ideas and hustling, but I lacked confidence. It was always " _1 more book... and then I 'll start doing it_".

</comment><comment><USER16> The author conflates two things that are only half related. This sentence is a big hint to why he's not reading books:

> "And it's exhausting. I was usually asleep halfway through sentence number > five."

Reading books isn't exhausting, you can read books 16 hours per day. If you fall asleep after reading 5 lines, that means you are dead tired and shouldn't even have opened that book in the first place.

And maybe the reason why you're too weak to keep yourself from checking your information sources every 5 seconds during all the other activities you (or your boss) care about is because you're tired during the day as well.

The author suggests 5 solutions, I think that's a bit extreme. If you just do 3 and 4, you'll get more sleep and everything will probably be better. Coincidentally that advice is what you'll find everywhere for sleep related issues: "No computers 2 hours before sleep".

<comment><USER17> All my life, within a chapter of text, I'm either falling asleep or lulling at the cusp of it.

Moving my body or locations temporarily wards it off like a snooze button, but the struggle also keeps me from losing myself in a novel. To this day, if you fast-forwarded a video of me reading on my couch, I'd like look a fish flopping out of water to stay awake until the next chapter.

My best solution so far has been to read more in the morning with my coffee before I begin my work, which also happens to be a good time to read in general: it's before the barrage.

<comment><USER18> What if you read while standing? Do you have trouble doing other activities while lying down, like using a computer?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I read a lot. I just happen to do most of my reading online.

I don't follow the notion that what we read online by default has less value than what is available to us in books. I have learned a lot from what I've read online, whether it's long form articles, Wikipedia articles, piecemeal submissions that make up online forum/community sites or even IRC logs.

The mere fact that something is available in book form is not a guarantee of it's accuracy nor a guarantee of the author's credibility.

<comment><USER20> I don't think the author is arguing that that books are more accurate or more credible than other forms of writing. What the author is arguing is that books provide a different sort of experience than those other forms of writing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've memorized a relevant XKCD just for this occasion, because it comes up so much: [http://xkcd.com/1227/](http://xkcd.com/1227/)

> "Intellectual laziness and the hurry of the age have produced a craving for > literary nips. The torbid brain... has grown too weak for sustained > thought." – Israel Zangwill, The Bachelor's Club, 1891

I highly, highly recommend everybody read "The Information: How The Internet Gets Inside Us" by Adam Gopnik: [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/02/14/the- information](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/02/14/the-information)

It points out how this 'Why can't we X anymore", "in the past it was better", "the future will be amazing", "the future will be horrible", and "everything is kinda the same" perspectives have been repeated, remixed, rehashed over and over again.

<comment><USER22> While it does appear that the perspective you're talking about has been repeated over and over, it's important to recognise that it's a perspective which applies to whatever time in which it was held. Therefore, it's relative. Maybe the past _was_ amazing and wonderful, and perhaps _that_ past's past was even _more_ amazing and wonderful. It's possible things _are_ getting worse and worse all the time, only society has failed to heed the "warning" of the doomsayers, leading even greater decline in "wonderfulness".

<comment><USER23> Except most of the activities that are cited as "dying" in the late 1800s are still alive and well. Long walks? Check, still here and valued. Letter writing? Not as prevalent, but still done. Conversation? Still existent, despite naysayers in the 1800s and people claiming text is the death of conversation.

I think the difference people are noticing is that as some things begin to have an alternative, the minority (or majority) that would prefer said alternative can now express that desire where it was not possible before. Take the quote about sitting down and enjoying long meals. Maybe that's not everybody's cup of tea, but now it's a lot easier to get a quick meal on the go and some people prefer it.

<comment><USER24> And 2000 years ago people decried writing because it weakened memory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I read maybe one book in the last half of 2014. I wasn't proud of this number. Then I took a trip with only a kindle, no hotspots.

I read nine books in two weeks.

I felt so energized and accomplished. I vowed to keep it up when I returned to a world with internet.

I have not.

An Internet fast is an interesting experience. People might drop off the grid for backpacking trips, or trips to monasteries... I think it's legitimate to drop off and take anything you think might be your hobby but for internet. Take books, like I did, or maybe a typewriter. Or a musical instrument. Canvases and paint. A sharp knife and some pieces of wood. Yarn. Give your mind some idle stretches, a few days without constant distraction. See what happens, you'll probably be amazed.

</comment><comment><USER26> This man should talk for himself.

I am an avid reader. I am part of readers clubs and meetings. I don't see less people today there than 10 years ago, in fact I see way more(probably something to do with the economic crisis).

The world does not end because we can read online and distract ourselves. A person does not need this for distraction, in fact just a fly making noises around you or thinking on your partner-son-mother while looking at the wall is enough.

The same was said about TV decades ago, and radio before it, even about books when it became cheap centuries ago. The Quijote is a book about someone that reads instead of living and wants to live at the end of his life. At the time cheap books were a novelty because of the printing press, remember that before it it took a year to copy a single book.

<comment><USER27> I'm in your camp. I almost see "hand wringing about attention" as a meme, a common blogger's trope to stir up concern similar to a trashy evening news broadcast about "the new way teens are getting high."

Everyone who I knew liked to read while growing up still likes to read. Some people don't, and thats fine too. What annoys me is people who don't like to read, but feel like they should, and therefore go looking for a scapegoat. And something tells me that some people have struggled to read and felt inadequate about that throughout history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've found the opposite, if you'll allow that eBooks are real books. To me, it's a golden age of books - with self publishing and eBooks, there are more books coming out ever day than ever before. I personally read AT LEAST two books a week (usually not technical - I enjoy sci-fi). I've always been a avid reader, but generally had to re-read a lot (I have about 5k physical books, to support that habit). Theses days, I'm ALWAYS reading new books. The selection is amazing, a lot of the books are very good!

</comment><comment><USER29> One reason I've observed is that the quality of printed text isn't necessarily that good. I can't not let go of a good book, I'm only bounded by the time of day and night: if I weren't, I'd read it on one sitting. Or an interesting textbook that I can't wait to get back to even if it's slow to read because it's just so interesting.

But there are lots of books that just aren't that good in comparison to really interesting articles on the internet. There are a even a lot more articles, so the reader must develop the skill of skimming quickly and deciding early whether there's any meat in it. But good articles are really good and they're easy to find. Books that aren't bad and books that are just all right but not really, truly good can't simply compete: earlier they could because there was no alternative. But now there is.

Nothing can beat a good book but there's so many other things to read that are incredibly good too, so the partitioning of our reading time will simply change.

</comment><comment><USER30> Reading takes all of your attention, all of it. I can't have a conversation while reading a book, I can't watch a movie while reading a book, you have to be ready to give everything to that book for whatever period of time you want to read it for.

I am watching Chopped, skimming articles like this one, I just stepped up mid- typing that last bit to help my wife with something and finally I'm programming. I was interrupted again after finishing that sentence.

Reading is a luxury.

<comment><USER31> I think the point is that _attention_ is a luxury.

These days, the currency is attention. The amount of attention required for reading of any substance is very high, and with thousands of apps, sites, shows, brands, and everything else pulling at us in a way that's engineered to be ideally visceral and tailored to our animal impulses, the lack of attention left over is no surprise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Hard to see problem with this behavior. It is the same reason we don't ride horses to work anymore - better stuff available.

We didn't read at all, then we read leaves, then we read scrolls, then we read books, now we read the internet. Books have been around for extremely small percentage of our species' span. Moreover before the internet, the general public showed more interest in reading up more current affairs/entertainment than traditional books. Newspapers and magazine numbers are still strong.

Frankly, I would rather have a race of people reading up on general knowledge and keep themselves aware than a race of people wasting time trying to read story books just to fit in. It is not that the books have been replaced. Better stuff has brutally shown that books were truly appealing to only a few. If, given chance, most people flea, it is a failed product.

<comment><USER33> > _Hard to see problem with this behavior. It is the same reason we don 't > ride horses to work anymore - better stuff available._

Only in this case we abandoned cars for hoping along barefoot on one foot while wearing a diving suit...

> _Frankly, I would rather have a race of people reading up on general > knowledge and keep themselves aware than a race of people wasting time > trying to read story books just to fit in._

We have that former thing, and its producing a race of people who have no understanding of anything substantial, be it politics, world affairs or arts, and jump from BS celebrity tweet to twerking videos.

Of course one can resort to the classic "People have always complained about new technologies and trends, hence there's no problem with them".

For one, "people always complained about new technologies" is not such an obvious and true fact -- how many people and how seriously complained is not measured, nor is their reasoning examing. We're just given some examples of people complaining for some new technology/trend, and are told that all those examples are of equal zero validity, just "get off of my line" kind of affairs).

Second, even if "people always complained about new technologies" that doesn't automatically mean that they were always wrong (nor is proof offered, besides "and yet, those technologies stayed with us and we now are ok with them" as if that proves anything qualitatively).

A more nuanced approach would have been to check whether something was indeed lost (a tradeoff) in adopting those technologies, something that we could maybe preserve if we adopted them with less abandon.

And in fact a lot of our subsequent behavior --which is usually ommited when glorifying technology-- points to that (e.g. the adoption of cars lead to huge cities built around driving like L.A., which we now find less than great. Or the city noises and environment led to a flight for the suburbs. Examples are numerous).

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> It's a skill. But unlike riding a bike, if you don't use it, you lose it. On the other hand, if you practice, it gets better.

I started keeping track of my reading in 2011. Here's my history:

        2011: 11 books
        2012: 16 books
        2013: 29 books
        2014: 54 books
        2015: 26 books (to date)

I did this while not significantly changing my lifestyle. How?

        1. I read to and from work. 45 min each way.
        2. I read at lunch. 1 hr.
        3. I chose reading instead of watching TV or playing video games.
        4. I use eReaders, so I have dozens of books to read next.
        5. I log my reading (obsessively?) on goodreads.com.

One thing I didn't do: I don't even try to read before bed. If I'm lucky, I get three pages read and then I'm nodding off.

"Why can't we read anymore?" I dunno. Maybe because _you_ aren't reading anymore.

<comment><USER35> Logging what you read is, oddly enough, a new idea for me. One I'll have to seriously consider doing. In 2003 I started college, and an exercise in a class I had we had to tell two truths and one falsehood and let the class guess the falsehood. I don't remember what the falsehood was or the other truth, but the truth one that everybody thought was the falsehood was that I had read over 2000 books.

I only know that I read that many because I owned that many books (and didn't own every book I ever read). I was 26 then, and reading since 5-6, so that's really only 10 books a year. The real number of books at that point might have been more like 3000 - but I did re-read a lot of the books I owned so maybe not.

Since this time last year, I've probably read 30+ books. Gotta love the Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.

<comment><USER34> 10 books/yr x 20 years = 200, not 2,000.

Setting up a goodreads account is simplicity itself. And since it's owned by Amazon, you can import all your books with a click. There's also a bookmarklet that "Adds book to Goodreads" from the Amazon page.

Once you get used to logging progress and marking completed books, you will really see the pages and books mount up.

<comment><USER35> Oops, you are right. I'd say I hadn't had my coffee yet when I wrote that, but even that's not a good excuse. How embarassing. 100 books does seem right though, I thought the 10 seemed a little too light.

I set up an account yesterday and did like that Amazon import feature. I wish It imported all the books you read with Kindle Unlimited though. Thanks for the heads up with the bookmarklet, I'll check it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> _Last year, I read four books._

Last year, I read 25 books. And the year before, too. And the year before. Then I stopped reading this blog post.

The number of books is a weak benchmark, because I read books as thin as 100 pages up to 1,300 pages. I read blog posts that have 50 pages and some that have 140 characters.

Reading is enjoyable, but still a form of consumption. There are only so many ideas per week you can think a lot about and thus, you can read only so many books that really benefit your life and make you change your mindset.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is an amazing article, if you get to the heart of it (though be warned, that requires actually reading it).

One of the amazing insights: _new information is a drug._ It causes a dopamine rush. The influx of all this new information, alerts, everything tugging at us every day is the new legal high, and we're all addicted, with thousands of external entities profiting off the act, dealing out notifications.

I highly recommend reading it fully!

</comment><comment><USER37> This is a terrible article of the variety "I do something therefore everybody does something": typical mind fallacy on crack, nary an actual numerical statistic to be seen.

I mean, I could play anecdote wars (I read ridiculous numbers of books now I have FBReader on my phone) but that would be feeding the foolishness.

<comment><USER38> That is my take as well. Vague allusions to current research but no hard cites. Seems like recycled trope of "modern life is too busy and our brains are rotting".

I read a great excerpt from something published in the 1800s complaining about the same thing... I'll have to dig it up.

<comment><USER38> [https://xkcd.com/1227/](https://xkcd.com/1227/)

There they are... see 1894 and 1895 in particular.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I believe one of the problems with digitally minded brains tackling books is opportunity cost.

In a blog post, a tweet, or email I can quickly decide if it's worth my time -- does it pique interest, make me feel more connected to the world.

With a book, the investment of time and energy is much greater for an uncertain (but perhaps marvelously more meaningful) payoff.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is a difficult problem a lot of us face. I personally have a habit of glancing through hundreds of articles that pop in my RSS reader everyday. Often after reading a handful of those articles, some of them providing certain bits and pieces of knowledge, I feel like it would have been better to focus on a single topic and learn more about it. That's where I miss books. Although I have many of them sitting in the shelf right next to me, it has become more difficult for me in the recent years to pick one up and start reading. I think it's time for a change. Thanks OP for sharing this.

<comment><USER39> One of the great tests for me personally is can I even remember the last 10 headlines or articles I read? The dopamine hit is in the discovery, not necessarily the comprehension.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Because the layout on medium.com, which purports to be a "long form" site for people who read, is for short-attention-span people. Scroll through the article linked. It's painful.

</comment><comment><USER42> His points are mostly true, at least for some people, but I think we should go deeper than that. There are people who hate reading tech books and prefer to get the information in concise/shorter way through internet/SO. I am one of them, I have tried reading different software engineering books(widely recommended ones), but I just can't get into them. And yet I can easily digest an article about specific issue I have, try it out and if it works the article goes into my Pocket so I can check it again in the future, if something similar happens.

But give me a good fantasy novel, I will devour it. Wheel Of time (13 x 700 pages) was completed in 3 months. Chronicles of Amber? Done. ~60 books of Pratchett, a lot of them multiple times? Done. Tolkien? Done. There were countless of times, where I couldn't sleep before finishing a book, staying up to 4-5 am, when I usually go to sleep around 23-24:00. That's why I feel it is really hard to start a book, when you don't know what type of books you like. Some people enjoy fantasy/sci-fi/romance/action/prose and many more. Maybe something non-fiction? And I feel that schools should somehow help students discover their favourite authors and their favourite ganres.

Good article, but he could have given his point in one/third of the content length and it wouldn't have lost anything.

</comment><comment><USER43> Well, I simply find that concentration takes _practice_. And we simply don't practice it much anymore.

I also think that we have forgotten that the point of email and text messaging was so that we could be asynchronous, rather than interrupt driven like a phone call.

</comment><comment><USER44> I couldn't even finish reading this long article. Just a para or two, after that simply skimmed through till end. :-(

<comment><USER45> Meh, I think it's fine.

What is he/she really saying?

There's a thousand and one problems one could be solving in his/her life. Checking twitter/facebook less often and reading words printed on paper is priority number 356 for me. I don't know why it ranks so high for the author to warrant a blog post.

The real issue is not having your priorities straight that you are worrying about your allocation of time/resources. Surely there's bigger fish to fry in your own life - where's the blog post on that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> The difference between books and Internet articles is depth. A good book can take you from knowing nothing to a relatively deep understanding of a topic -- by nature of its format. Consider for example one of the classic books of all time: Newton's Principia. You can start reading that book with just a basic knowledge of geometry, and in a couple hundred pages later you'll know more about physics then you ever thought possible. And that book was presenting physics _for the first time!_ That's not something you can replicate with Internet articles. It would be much more trouble to do that over the Internet, and you would cry "please, write a book and send it to me so I can read all this information in a easier way". Other books are like that, not only in science but also in literature, philosophy, computing (e.g.: TAOCP) and so many other areas.

The problem we have nowadays is that, because it became so much easier to write books, we have more and more books that don't add much to human knowledge. In the old times, writing and publishing a book was hard, which meant that the threshold for acceptance was much higher. Our society views this downgrading of book quality as a sign that books are not a good format, when in fact this is just an unintended consequence of our technology.

</comment><comment><USER47> I think the changes are inherent to interactivity and the infinite volume of the internet. These change everything. Once you can respond, you are a part of the fray and your thinking changes.

When you read an interesting nonfiction book today, you can also check wikipedia, listen to podcasts, watch the author giving a Ted talk and jump into the infinite sea of informal online commentary.

IE, reading on HN is not reading in the sense that reading some book in 1991 was. It's being in a conversation, for better and worse. Your mind is operating in a different context.

I also think that writing is adapting more slowly than reading. Many nonfiction books I find interesting are 250-400 pages when they could be under 100 and just as effective. I think that's some side effect of paperback books published by the publishing industry, the medium and its economic ecosystem.

In any case, if you want to maintain reading of that kind as a habit or pursuit, you need to create an environment for it. Have a reading room in your house, go to a cafe or park or your garden and read there. Set and setting. You also need to be somewhat honest about what you like and how. Are you so engrossed that you read for 3hrs when you meant to read for 30min? Are you doing something that you need to discipline yourself into doing?

</comment><comment><USER48> I don't know if the author can reasonably conflate the issues he does. I often (but not always -- perhaps 50/50) "fail" to listen to a song all the way through -- but I really only did that in the album, cassette and CD days because the tech sucked. Now I can easily jump to the part I want, just listening to i.

I only listen to podcasts when trapped on a long drive. Them I tend to listen to end-to-end again because the tech sucks.

I've always found it hard to sit and watch a film, or even a youtube video, linearly. It's generally just _way too slow_ (and occastionally too fast) and I like to be able to skip around. But the tools suck.

 _Books_ , on the other hand, are ideal. In so many I luxuriate in them, especially fiction which can be so multimedia compared to a film, generally reading linearly. Others I skip around, skipping over boring bits, coming back to them, going back to parts I loved, or just reading something interesting over and over.

It's not that "the digital" caused me to lose my ability to concentrate, rather it allowed me access to media in a way that _supports_ my enjoyment: sometimes intense, sometimes casual, and sometimes intense just on the parts that matter. How can this be bad?

</comment><comment><USER49> Shallows is a great book about this and "what the internet does to our brains". This chrome extension is supposed to combat the internet's unquestionable ability to mess with our work focus: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/focusr/fgdcnfgmneb...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/focusr/fgdcnfgmneblnnldmaffhbniomfajlah?hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER50> This is interesting, and I have been thinking about this quite a lot recently.

I used to read books by the dozen. Sometimes literally, in about 2006 I discovered Gollancz/Orion's "Sci-Fi Masterworks" series and was getting through more than one per week, in addition to holding down a job and having a pretty active social life.

Now I don't think I've read a book since I motored through my second reading of the "Song of Ice and Fire" stuff last year.

I, like the author, also find myself putting on some of the best TV there has ever been, and then doing something else while it's on, like checking email or facebook, or reading HN. So I don't really absorb it.

I don't want to cut out tv, but I do want to be able to concentrate on it, and I do want to read more books again. And get control of my sleeping patterns which have always, always been up the wazoo anyway.

So perhaps I shall join in and try to do as the author of this post has - start reading, deny the instant-gratification urges and reclaim my brain and my attention span.

</comment><comment><USER51> Distraction might be a problem for some of us, but its important to remember that people are reading more books now than they ever have at any point in history, even if you only count paper books and especially if you count e-books.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/the- ne...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/the-next-time- someone-says-the-internet-killed-reading-books-show-them-this-chart/255572/)

[http://edition.cnn.com/2012/04/05/tech/gaming- gadgets/e-read...](http://edition.cnn.com/2012/04/05/tech/gaming- gadgets/e-reader-survey-pew-gahran/)

[http://www.buzzfeed.com/krystieyandoli/facts-that-prove- youn...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/krystieyandoli/facts-that-prove-young-people- are-reading-more-than-adults#.do18qjKwW)

</comment><comment><USER52> I thought this was well-written, and pretty much spot on for most of us. The 'onto-the-next' part is scarily true for me. I always want to finish something, so I can continue onto whatever's next. Maybe this is normal.

I know for myself that, when putting something on the television, I'll pop out my mobile not too much later after, just to check up on things. It's very much the modern day curse, I think, and we seem to have no real constraint. We get these positive reinforcements ("Ooh, new e-mail. Ooh, new message from a friend. Ooh, something new and unknown and exciting.") from constantly not being present, so that's why we keep doing it.

Personally, I bought myself an e-reader and I already read a full book in a week or so. I'm not an avid reader, but I love books. The key was, for me at least, to read one chapter at a time. That way I always got progress each time I read.

</comment><comment><USER53> It's probably quite a compliment to the author that I did actually read the whole thing -- about 2,500 words in a little under 15 minutes -- without switching away, other than a short pause when an e-mail arrived and a notification message popped up that I had to clear to carry on reading. Normally these days I find much over 1,000 words or 5 minutes on a screen and I'm losing concentration.

I don't even use things like Facebook and Twitter, but I do have a habit of reading the front page of HN/Reddit/whatever and opening a dozen different interesting-looking discussions and their corresponding articles all at once. Perhaps this attempt to be a bit more organised is actually more like the example mentioned in the article, where you're reading something but know you have a new mail waiting and it knocks 10 points off your effective IQ.

<comment><USER54> I don't get notification messages like you guys, or check my email for such short rewards.

Instead, I check my email or certain websites for substantial updates to my favorite fanfic or web serial.

3K words is heavenly.

10K words even more so.

The more words the better. If you can update faster than I can read, that'll be awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Why I don't read non-technical things very often:

I have "better" (to me) things to do. I want to read about boost. I want to study LLVM. I want to write code. I want to set up a Linux server running node.js. I want to compare some NoSQL datastores to an RDBMS or two.

When I want distraction or to rest my brain, I'll take entertainment in short spans. I really don't want to invest weeks of two-hour nights reading a work of fiction. I'm not terribly interested in reading someone's biography. And unless a non-fiction topic is currently meaningful to me (for example, books about the human mind when I was in my early 20s), then I'm not likely to Just Read.

I feel like if I Just Read for reading's sake, I'm not honing the craft that's important to me. I feel like it makes me a "jack of all trades" and therefore "master of none."

</comment><comment><USER56> For some time I thought I definitely had a shorter attention span due to the internet - I'd be reading something, and compulsively have to go check my email, facebook, forums I visit, hacker news, my frequented subreddits. Read a bit more. Check everything. Repeat.

But I didn't find it all that hard to just close my laptop and put my phone facedown more than an arm's length away. I thought it would be a titanic struggle - but as soon as I made it slightly inconvenient to distract myself, I found myself once again able to read through hundreds of pages of books.

It's anecdotal, of course. But for me, being able to "read" again was as simple of giving myself the slightest barrier to getting distracted.

</comment><comment><USER57> In many instructional and self-help books, I find that the author's attempt to hit appropriate word-count for the book format bores me to no end. Even worse, it wastes my time. I bought your book, please don't waste 10% of your page count in selling me the book.

I think notable exceptions to this are found in 'The Practice of System and Network Administration' and 'Time Management for System Administrators.'

Fiction, I can read at times. For the last book I read, 'The Mote in God's Eye', I read the first four chapters or so, then put it off for 5 months, and then finished it in a week. That one does start off pretty slowly.

</comment><comment><USER58> Fundamentally there is a sense of not wanting to 'miss' anything, I believe that was the original force behind 24hr news channels, you watched because if you didn't then something could have happened HOURS ago and you wouldn't even know it yet.

I have a slightly different problem which is reading too much. It is embarassing when you miss your stop on the train because the article you are reading has distracted you. I also am something of a completionist when it comes to books, so I find even when I don't "like" the book I'm compelled to finish it.

<comment><USER59> I'm the same way. It's bad enough that I can't read on the train because It's guaranteed I'll miss my stop. I can't read in the evening or I'll be up till 4am finishing the book. I limit my reading to times when I have an open stretch of several hours to avoid it colliding with some other appointment or something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I was reading this article when the urge to check HN's comments to this article struck me. Then I decided to write this comment about it in the browser, to paste when I would be done reading.

</comment><comment><USER61> We do read. We just read in other formats. I never read has much as now, because when you browse the internet, you essentially read.

You are just becomming picky about the format, because when there is a lot of quantity, your brain decides what quality it wants to prioritize.

If something is long, complicated and unpleasant to read, it often can be reformated so it's not. All text are not essais. And you don't need to read or write an essay everyday.

So it makes sense to me. Readers to the contexte, we optimize, and writters should too.

</comment><comment><USER62> I didn't find the article very insightful, because it lumps all "books" together. I haven't read a technical book in several years, because it's so much easier to find what I want online. But I read nonfiction whenever I have the time, or want to decompress. I have no problem switching between hyper- multitasking and deep focus.

Perhaps the author never fully learned that. I wonder if it's age-related. Or maybe I'm the odd one: ADHD/bipolar with hard-won focusing skills ;)

</comment><comment><USER63> Online articles are like junk food - it's more appealing but has little substance. If you can get used to reading real books again then the online stuff is a lot less appealing.

<comment><USER64> Does that include this article that said something very similar?

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> We can. I set a simple goal of reading 100 pages a week and was stuggling with reaching that number for quite some time. Then I started to read books that were better written and the pages started to fly by (and it is not exactly that the books were easier - The Strategy of Conflict is an academic book written by an academic but it is still well written).

My guess is that the same is the case for others, which makes for a simple solution: don't read badly written books.

</comment><comment><USER66> I don't get this either, I think if you're finding it really difficult to read a book then maybe you're not reading the right book. A book should suck you in and not let go until you are finished. I love reading, and I just finished The Stand which was a long book at ~1300 pages but I just could barely put it down over the week or so that I was reading it, even with full time programming work, commutes, and caring for a child with my partner.

</comment><comment><USER38> They said the same thing about television 50+ years ago. And then video games and MTV 30 years ago. As far as I can tell people are doing just fine and books and reading continue along uninterrupted. People are as intelligent as they were a generation or two ago and are able to concentrate and solve problems just fine.

The "research" on how our brains are affected by media has historically been incredibly speculative and shoddy. Is it any different this time?

</comment><comment><USER67> My life was changed when I found out I could use smartphone apps to read texts to me, and tell me exactly how long till I finish. I used to be too annoyed to start a book because it seemed to drag on forever. (That plus I could never find the right chair, lighting, etc).

Now, in contrast to other comments on here, I find the best time to listen is just before bed on my evening walk. If I really want to get through quickly, I listen on my commute also.

</comment><comment><USER68> I have found that since reading Aaron Schwartz's "I Hate the News"[1] I can read more. I consciously try to avoid the morning news routine, replacing it with a chapter of whatever book I'm reading.

[1] [http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews)

</comment><comment><USER69> I agree with this articles and I struggle with this.

I'm asking for help, I identified this issue: all this browsing/facebook/YC/reddit is making my attention span and ability to focus weaker.

How to get it back? I want to have a killer attention span and ability to focus on one task. I started meditation in order to do this, any other recommendation?

</comment><comment><USER70> My experience has been the opposite this year. There's a great library near by and we had our first child. A desire to minimize electronics around the little one, to wind down in the evenings, and to balance my digital life with something more physical has resulted in me reading way more books in the past year than many before it.

</comment><comment><USER71> I think reading books is a waste of time, and I'm a little tired of people telling me I should read them.

Books are archaic, and the idea that you aren't intelligent or informed or cultured unless you read them is just pure dogma at this point.

We have internet-connected devices now. Content can be published, peer- reviewed, and disseminated to an international audience in under an hour. I can have a dialogue with the person who wrote it, ask questions and submit corrections that can be published 10 minutes later.

To me that is such a __massive __improvement over the old model that I no longer have any time for the old model. I don 't have to wait for content from a small handful of people at a publisher in New York, and I'm extremely thankful for that.

I can appreciate some books as works of art or just for entertainment, but books are an incredibly inefficient method of pursuing knowledge and culture, and for that purpose I wouldn't recommend them to anybody.

So to answer the question posed by the title of this article: We can, we just shouldn't, which is convenient because we don't want to.

<comment><USER72> It depends. I think both have their place. Online content tends to be much shallower. But it allows you to explore a much broader content quickly.

Books tend to be deep, and good ones have gone through many iterations. Do you think you can get the ideas presented in, say, SICP or Principles of Mathematical Analysis by going through online material?

I think it may be possible, but it's actually harder.

<comment><USER73> > Do you think you can get the ideas presented in, say, SICP or Principles of > Mathematical Analysis by going through online material?

The parent was making the point that it's possible to have a much better system where the book authors communicate with the readers online which improves both the quality and ease of understanding. As of now, it may not be the situation but in future there surely will be better ways to do things.

Also if we go by the literal meaning, book is defined as "a written or printed work consisting of pages glued or sewn together along one side and bound in covers". The part which requires "approval and published by a publisher" is a model of a book making and there may be better models out there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> The problem is not only with reading, but uninterrupted concentrating on a single cognitive task.

Children do have the same behavior, before they learn to sit down and concentrate.

We are becoming children again. Everything should be super easy. This is what sells. A tablet for example has the haptics of a babies device.

<comment><USER75> IME, children (I have 4 of them) have extremely high concentration levels, if they choose the thing they're concentrating on. My 8yo will read for hours, uninterrupted. My 6yo reads for 30min+. Even my 3yo will happily look through picture books for 15-30min.

<comment><USER74> Well, if you happen to be a music teacher for kids you see the very poor concentration levels of the average kid. You also see the progress of it over time and age. And that nearly every parent is overestimating the skills of their own kids.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> I don't have a problem reading when it is properly paginated like a book or ebook. But when i read a online article it becomes something else because it is just a very long scroll of text. Perhaps the one thing the web really need is a pagination API...

<comment><USER77> I prefer a long scroll of text. Less distraction. Books are paginated arbitrarily, and it's quite a large aspect of the experience to be left up to random chance.

<comment><USER78> I agree. Having a scrollbar as a percentage completion indicator is a very nice thing. I can also highlight the text on the page where I was at in the likely event I get distracted and have to move on to something else. At this point, I do this out of habit on any article longer than a few paragraphs.

Side note, if your site pops up a stupid SHARE THIS ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER when someone highlights text, I most likely won't read your articles. I didn't read this one because Medium does this; SBNation articles do this, too and my browser now loads custom Javascript on their pages to remove it. It's distracting and serves no real purpose, except to take me out of my flow of reading.

<comment><USER76> After posting the initial comment i found a most interesting Firefox extension.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/column- reader...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/column-reader/)

It allows me to single out the main text of a site, and break it into screen height sized columns. These can then be paged through much like a book.

Seems to make it much easier for me at least to get through a long article without jumping between paragraphs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> The author makes no considerations about writing for the web. He would hate to hear that, of course, but there's no way I am going to read that. Well, maybe if I feed it into a summarization app, maybe. ;)

</comment><comment><USER80> Since I've started to meditate a few months ago, I really read a lot _more_ than before.. It seems to lessen my need to procrastinate and feelings of "fear of missing out".

</comment><comment><USER81> We? I'm pretty sure I've finished four books since February.

</comment><comment><USER82> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9443897](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9443897)

</comment><comment><USER83> What if we're reading less and less today for the same reason we no longer have town criers or pictograms?

</comment><comment><USER84> I wanted to read this post, but it was too long and I moved on to something else.

</comment><comment><USER85> I read about 2 books per week on the Kindle, more if I have to wait on Trend Micro (thanks Security!!).

</comment><comment><USER86> Can someone TLDR this for me?

<comment><USER87> I would, if I could still read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> tl;dr

<comment><USER89> why is this grey? Don't people have a sense of humour anymore?

<comment><USER53> HN is not Reddit. Plenty of people make humorous or entertaining comments, but distracting joke threads full of obvious one-liners and no real content aren't generally welcome.

<comment><USER21> There's actually a really interesting discussion on Quora, I think, about why they had something along the lines of a no-humor policy.

The problem isn't that people are humorless– it's that when you reward people for humor (often resulting in puns and pithy one liners), after a while, people start competing to be as funny as possible– and that's all that ever rises to the top. It crowds out more deliberate, thoughtful discussion.

I love humor and comedy myself, but it makes sense to me why a discussion forum might deliberately choose to discourage it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Simple, yet Powerful Programming Languages? - <AUTHOR>

C.A.R. Hoare once said "There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult."
There is also another famous quote "Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler"
What are some programming languages that illustrate these concepts, especially ones which have a high power to weight ratio, simple concepts giving a lot of expressiveness but without being overly baroque or complex? <comment><USER2> That's almost the Clojure motto...

See Rich Hickey's talk "Simple Made Easy" ([http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made- Easy](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy)).

</comment><comment><USER3> Forth and Lisp come to mind.</comment>


Twitter makes IPO plans official: expected value is about $14B - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2013/09/12/twitter-files-papers-to-go-public-at-less-than-1-billion-valuation/

<comment><USER2> I guess I'm old, because it still just seems like a random little microblogging site to me. What's the big deal? And why is there no open federated version? I'm not really interested in using a proprietary, single- vendor communication network.

<comment><USER3> 3 words: massive celebrity adoption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This just means that their revenue is under $1 billion, not that they are valuing at that.

<comment><USER5> But why "just under" $1 billion? They could at, like, $500 million in revenue?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yeah, revenue != valuation.

<comment><USER7> I was thinking more in terms of 10x to 20x revenue per year as more normal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> $14 billion, rather.</comment>


Ask HN: How habits work? hacking habits advice - <AUTHOR>

I need help understanding how habits work. For too long I've been in some bad habits that are harmful to my life and I need to replace it with new ones. Is it uncomfortable when trying a new habit? How long does it take for the brain to actually make a habit an addiction? How do you force the brain to enjoy a habit? for example how do we teach our brains to release dopamine when we try a  new habit? and allow the brain to be happy doing the habit and not be bored by it.<p>I need some advice on new habits I can try in my day to day experiences. I have to find a way to replace my old habits like nicotine and alcohol for new ones that are more productive and make me happier. <comment><USER2> The new habit you want to introduce should be a small thing (maybe a tiny component of a bigger change you want). And you always have to set a trigger for it and celebrate once you do it... Stupid example: I want to introduce flossing my teeth, so i start with a tiny habit - flossing just one tooth right before i start brushing my teeth. The trigger is something I already do every day and it already is my habit - brushing my teeh. So, everytime i go to the bathroom with the aim to brush my teeth, I imediately remember that I'll floss one tooth. And after I do it, I congratulate myslef for doing it (a celebration).

Important - you can't start with 25 habits you want to change. You will fail if you do. Start with 2 - 3 really tiny ones.

You might want to try tiny habit exercise: [http://tinyhabits.com/join/](http://tinyhabits.com/join/)

And you alsow might find this book helpful understanding how habits work: [http://www.amazon.com/The-Power-Habit-What- Business/dp/14000...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Power-Habit-What- Business/dp/1400069289)

</comment><comment><USER3> Nick Winter describes an interesting approach to building habits and reaching goals in his ebook, "The Motivation Hacker" ([http://www.amazon.com/The- Motivation-Hacker-Nick-Winter-eboo...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Motivation- Hacker-Nick-Winter-ebook/dp/B00C8N4FNK)).

He talks about using overwhelming pre-commitment as a way to force yourself to adopt a habit or reach a goal. Try to set up an environment where your success is over-ensured. Rather than tell a few friends that you'll stop smoking, destroy all of your cigarettes, pledge hundreds of dollars on Beeminder that you won't indulge in the habit, ask people to publicly shame you if you relapse, find and use the absolute best treatments and programs in the world for quitting, etc. Attack the habit with overwhelming force, much more than is probably necessary to overcome it. Doing so makes it easier to win.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes, it's uncomfortable trying a new habit.

The reason to be motivated to replace your habits is probably because if you don't, you'll hate yourself for it. But that's liable to trigger feelings of fear rather than of positivity.

It all depends who you are and what you like. What makes you tick. For me, reading through DaVinci's notebook has a way of driving me to be productive in my own life.

Most of the self-help material is unfortunately useless, probably because what works for other people usually wont' work for you.

The best advice is probably to try a bunch of different things and see what works. If you keep trying different things, statistically you will find something that works, because it's very unlikely that nothing will work for you.

</comment><comment><USER5> The Power of Habit, great book, just finished it. [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400069289?ie=UTF8&camp=213...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400069289?ie=UTF8&camp=213733&creative=393185&creativeASIN=1400069289&linkCode=shr&tag=smacovlan-20)

</comment><comment><USER6> I know this may seem outdated, but Aristotle's _Ethics_ may be a good place to start: [http://www.iep.utm.edu/aris-eth/#H1](http://www.iep.utm.edu/aris- eth/#H1)</comment>


Ask HN: Does the prestige of a PhD matter for getting a quant position? - <AUTHOR> I'm admitted to a few PhD programs to do research in statistical machine learning. As a backup option in case academia doesn't work out, I think quant trading/modeling/research would appeal to me (I've enjoyed learning about stochastic processes/martingales from my prob class). I'm currently torn between Johns Hopkins and UC Irvine, if that makes any difference. <comment><USER2> Earning a PhD is though, and can be very hard, depending on your advisor. But even if you've managed to finish it, you face a relentless fight for permanent positions, which according to the statistics, you're going to loose.

Once you've dropped out of academia, the prestige of the PhD will matter for nothing. What could maybe matter, are some skills/contacts which you hopefully acquired during your PhD studies. But whether this justifies doing a PhD is IMO questionable. A topic in statistical machine learning sounds good. But then again, I did my PhD in pure math, and would not have a problem getting a quant position.

If you don't manage to finish your PhD, which is quite possible, you certainly don't have any prestige, and you will in addition face the pain of failure, which can be huge in that context.

In short, don't underestimate the task of doing a PhD, and don't overestimate the impact of having one.

<comment><USER3> On the other hand, my PhD was one of the most rewarding times in my life. I was independent, I worked on fascinating problems, and I had the time to learn about topics at a very deep/expert level. I am proud to have extended the range of human knowledge in a minor way.

> Once you've dropped out of academia, the prestige of the PhD will matter for > nothing.

I don't agree. I work at a large industry research lab, and every position basically requires a doctorate.

I had some sloppy bad habits and a PhD helped me overcome them. It also taught me skills that I'm finding invaluable in industry (autonomy, project management, full stack programming, etc.)

But as the parent said, doctoral programs have high drop out rates (it's like Navy SEAL BUD/S in some cases) and it is almost certainly not about the money: a masters is likely the sweet spot for most technical degrees if you want the best price/Salary optimization.

More to OP's point, I was offered several Quant positions after my PhD and had no trouble getting interviews. I don't this the particular program matters very much. My doctorate was from UT:Austin.

<comment><USER2> I agree, doing a PhD can still be worthwhile. It's just a considerable gamble in my opinion.

> I don't agree. I work at a large industry research lab, and every position > basically requires a doctorate.

I should have been more precise. If you want to do research outside of academia, you will need one obviously. Also, it depends on your field and your location. For instance in Germany, doing a PhD is mandatory if you're wanting to pursue a career as a chemist. On the other hand, having a PhD in humanities will significantly worsen your job prospects outside academia in Germany.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you want to know for real in a way that's relevant to your life just try and apply for a few quant positions right now with what you have. Chase for feedback and investigate for yourself whether your education level was a factor. This will take you very little time and give you intel worth a damn.

In considering phd you need to think about the market as it's likely to be in 3 years time rather than as it is now. In my opinion, the level of qualification for quant jobs will decrease with demand so if your talking about ML applied to industry then a PhD is a poor future investment unless you're a beast amongst beasts. As another poster said a masters is a much better optimisation for time spent vs salary and it's also likely where most jobs preferring phds today will be at in terms of requirements in 3 years time.</comment>


It's 2018 and Material Design still uses a floppy disk as a Save icon - <AUTHOR> https://www.designernews.co/stories/94894-its-2018-and-material-design-still-uses-a-floppy-disk-as-a-save-icon <comment><USER2> because it's universal</comment>


Gmail Senders IP Address ? - <AUTHOR>

http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=26903
I personally find the above information a bit unacceptable. Especially the use of 'may' and then the whole deal about spam filters!
If a Gmail user is bullying you and sending you abusive emails - How do you get their IP address? Anyone know?
Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> Nope! It points to a Google IP in California! And I live in the UK and am quite certain the email came from someone in the UK.

Here's the header:

Received: from DB3PRD0104HT012.eurprd01.prod.exchangelabs.com (10.4.156.40) by DB3PRD0106HT005.eurprd01.prod.exchangelabs.com (10.3.5.131) with Microsoft SMTP Server (TLS) id 126.96.36.199; Thu, 4 Oct 2012 12:35:25 +0000 Received: from DB3PRD0104HT023.eurprd01.prod.exchangelabs.com (10.4.156.53) by DB3PRD0104HT012.eurprd01.prod.exchangelabs.com (10.4.156.40) with Microsoft SMTP Server (TLS) id 18.104.22.168; Thu, 4 Oct 2012 12:35:25 +0000 Received: from mail47-ch1-R.bigfish.com (18.104.22.168) by DB3PRD0104HT023.eurprd01.prod.exchangelabs.com (10.4.156.53) with Microsoft SMTP Server (TLS) id 184.108.40.206; Thu, 4 Oct 2012 12:35:15 +0000 Received: from mail47-ch1 (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mail47-ch1-R.bigfish.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id BF329160077 for <firstname.lastname@example.com>; Thu, 4 Oct 2012 12:35:14 +0000 (UTC) X-Forefront-Antispam-Report: CIP:18.104.22.168;KIP:18.104.22.168;UIP:(null);(null);H:vscano-d.xxx.ac.uk;R:internal;EFV:INT X-Safelisted-IP: 220.127.116.11 X-FOPE-CONNECTOR: Id$17341%Dn$UCL.AC.UK%PF$0%SF$0%RO$0% Received-SPF: neutral (mail47-ch1: 22.214.171.124 is neither permitted nor denied by domain of gmail.com) client- ip=220.127.116.11; firstname.lastname@example.com; helo=vscano-d.xxx.ac.uk ;-d.xxx.ac.uk ; Received: from mail47-ch1 (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by mail47-ch1 (MessageSwitch) id 1349354112842960_16280; Thu, 4 Oct 2012 12:35:12 +0000 (UTC) Received: from CH1EHSMHS010.bigfish.com (snatpool2.int.messaging.microsoft.com [10.43.68.232]) by mail47-ch1.bigfish.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id BE12C140085 for <firstname.lastname@example.com>; Thu, 4 Oct 2012 12:35:12 +0000 (UTC) Received: from vscano-d.xxx.ac.uk (188.8.131.52) by CH1EHSMHS010.bigfish.com (10.43.70.10) with Microsoft SMTP Server (TLS) id 22.214.171.124; Thu, 4 Oct 2012 12:35:10 +0000 Received: from vscan-b.xxx.ac.uk ([220.127.116.11]) by vscano-d.xxx.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 4.76) (envelope-from <firstname.lastname@example.com>) id 1TJkdv-0001ku-Qt for email@example.com; Thu, 04 Oct 2012 13:35:07 +0100 Received: from mail-ob0-f194.google.com ([184.108.40.206]) by vscan-b.xxx.ac.uk with esmtps (TLSv1:RC4-SHA:128) (Exim 4.76) (envelope-from <email@example.com>) id 1TJkdl-0003vW-QD for firstname.lastname@example.com; Thu, 04 Oct 2012 13:34:57 +0100 Received: by mail- ob0-f194.google.com with SMTP id un3so74845obb.9 for <email@example.com>; Thu, 04 Oct 2012 05:34:52 -0700 (PDT)

<comment><USER2> The headers seem to indicate that this was received by Google over SMTP which means that likely something other than the gmail web interface was used.

Are there any other interesting headers?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. How would I go about obtaining any other headers from the email ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's in the message's headers. Go to the top, far right of the message, hit the down arrow, and then click show original for the headers.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also, I suspect they'd be using their iPhone</comment>


Are There Native Advertisments in Hacker News? - <AUTHOR>

I just saw a link to https://www.drchrono.com/jobs/ posted as #16 on the front page. It did not have any upvotes shown, nor any comments. Is this a native advertisement?<p>"16. iOS and Django hackers needed, change healthcare with drchrono (drchrono.com)" <comment><USER2> I'm not sure what you mean by "native advertisement", but YC-funded startups are allowed to post jobs (see [https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs](https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs) and the explanation at [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)). These go into a queue and one appears on the front page at a time, starting around #6 and falling in rank over about 3 hours.

</comment><comment><USER3> YC startups have this privilege/boost for job posts</comment>


Post-Mortem for NASDAQ issues related to the Facebook Inc. (FB) IPO  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/TraderNews.aspx?id=ETA2012-20

<comment><AUTHOR> The relevant quote:

> After the calculaton of the FB IPO Cross was completed, but before printing > the opening trade, additional order modifications were received by the > system, changing the auction order book. As designed, the system > recalculated the IPO auction to factor in the new book state. Again, changes > were received before the IPO cross could print the opening trade, which > resulted in additional re-calculations. This condition persisted, resulting > in further delay of the opening print.</comment>


New Study Abroad Blogging Community: Students Gone Global - <AUTHOR> http://www.studentsgoneglobal.com

<comment><USER2> Very cool new website! Studying abroad is a growing market but many of the blogs are spread around the internet.</comment>


Silicon Valley will soon get its own stock exchange - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1616791/the-long-term-stock-exchange-gets-sec-approval-for-silicon-valley-friendly-platform/ <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19881673](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19881673).</comment>


Ask HN: How do you securely store your Bitcoin? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> It all depends on the value of your Bitcoin and what you use is for. Are you saving Bitcoin for hopes of future increase in value, do you trade it frequently or do you use Bitcoin to purchase goods and services. With that said the safest method is a paper wallet. But a paper wallet makes it difficult to buy,sell and use Bitcoin frequently. I have found that the solution that works best for me is a combination of storage alternatives. A paper wallet for saving your bitcoin (think of it like money in a bank vault), a coinbase account for buying and selling frequently (like a brokerage account) and a iPhone app for small purchases (like pocket money).

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/How_to_set_up_a_secure_offline_sa...](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/How_to_set_up_a_secure_offline_savings_wallet)

</comment><comment><USER4> Definitely the best way to secure your Bitcoins is Bitcoin Hardware wallet like Trezor. It allows you to securely cold store your Bitcoins and also allows easy spending when you need so.</comment>


Paris traceroute - <AUTHOR> http://www.paris-traceroute.net/about <comment><USER2> This was flagged when I first seen it but I'm not sure why. Paris traceroute is a "variant" of the traceroute utility and the one that I, personally, use most often (I'm a network engineer at an ISP, so I run a lot of traceroutes both manually and scripted).

<comment><USER3> Just speculating: Flagging might have been automatic based on factors other than actual content.</comment></comment>


Smart-rendering views with JSX and incremental DOM - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/eliot-akira/idom <comment><AUTHOR> For a client project, I needed a way to render (one or more times) a fairly complex form with dynamic input fields.

I've been following React for about a year, but for a number of reasons (size and complexity of ecosystem) I never could get myself to use it deeply. There are smaller and simpler alternatives popping up, based on similar concepts. None of them quite fit my needs, so I wrote my own little module to do only what I wanted:

\- encapsulated view components

\- ability to build DOM declaratively within JS

\- render new states efficiently, by patching only the difference

Another reason was that I needed a good excuse to learn and use ES6 for a real-world project.

Anyway, whoever gave me a star on the repo, thanks! :)</comment>


Linux Mint attack - <AUTHOR> http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3007 <comment><USER2> This actually looks pretty good. It seems like they are taking this quite seriously.

Love Mint or hate Mint, it's too important to be vulnerable.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does anyone know how many other Linux distributions have come under similar attack?

<comment><AUTHOR> Debian at least. kernel.org too. Ubuntu Forums at one point. Gentoo too.

<comment><USER4> So what's the right process to avoid this when performing new Linux installations?

Image the machine, quarantine it for a few weeks, wait for news of attacks - if you hear nothing, dequarantine the system and proceed with normal use?

<comment><AUTHOR> Verify the OpenPGP signatures provided by the distribution, keep up to date with security issues and join the distribution to help out with hardening it.

Some links for Debian:

[https://www.debian.org/CD/faq/#verify](https://www.debian.org/CD/faq/#verify) [https://www.debian.org/CD/verify](https://www.debian.org/CD/verify) [https://wiki.debian.org/Hardening/Goals](https://wiki.debian.org/Hardening/Goals) [https://wiki.debian.org/Hardening/RepoAndImages](https://wiki.debian.org/Hardening/RepoAndImages) [https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/data/report](https://security- tracker.debian.org/tracker/data/report) [https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/developers- reference/pkgs...](https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/developers- reference/pkgs.html#bug-security) [http://security- team.debian.org/](http://security-team.debian.org/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Thermoelectric Stoves: Ditch the Solar Panels? - <AUTHOR> https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/05/thermoelectric-stoves-ditch-the-solar-panels.html <comment><USER2> Saving you a click - "it's efficient if you count waste heat as useful".

As a rule of thumb, a good PV panel and a good thermal engine will give you similar efficiencies - a little under 20%, more if you want to spend lots, but really very tricky to exceed mid-30s. A thermoelectric generator, quoted as "1/3rd as efficient as PV" \- sounds about right, so maybe 6%.

PV panels consume land. A wood-fired generator as suggested would need _at least_ 10x the land to grow the trees for the same energy input, even _forgetting_ the difference in efficiency. Probably closer to 100x.

Oh, and PV works in literal deserts, where land is cheap, because it's useless to grow food or as a reserve, so you're sacrificing nothing!

The closest practical variant of this is district heating with a _regular_ fossil- or nuclear- turbine generator. IIRC, a few towns in Russia have genuinely too cheap to meter heat because of this.

<comment><USER3> I think the article is worth the click, even if just for the soviet history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I chuckled at this: _" With appropriate stove design, the heat from electricity conversion can also be re-used for cooking or domestic water heating."_

Except that thermodynamics gets in the way :-). The heat that is converted into electricity is, electricity. So it is no longer part of heat available for heating. If you did have 100% efficient thermoelectrics they would be pretty neat since you could put as much wood or fuel into your stove as you wanted and the surface of the stove wouldn't change temperature at all, but there would be electricity available!

That said, using thermoelectric conversion to charge your cell phone when camping[1] (and using the fire for toasting marshmellows) is a win :-). But it isn't going to replace solar any time soon sadly.

[1] [https://gazettereview.com/2016/06/powerpot-after-shark- tank-...](https://gazettereview.com/2016/06/powerpot-after-shark-tank-update- now/)

<comment><USER5> Waste heat is heat.

So long as it is above ambient temperatures, it i useful for _something_. Feeding low-grade heat into a stratified water thermal storage system is particularly effective. So long as the water is allowed to stratify by temperature, cold water will settle to the bottom and can be heated by any warmer material.

In practice, outflow for (re)heating is at the bottom of the tank, outflow for use at the top, and inflow is through a perforated vertical pipe allowing introduction at level of thermal equilibrium.

<comment><USER4> I don't disagree with you, I was just chuckling at the suggestion that heat that created the electricity could be "re-used".

As you note, waste heat is the heat that is left over after you've used some of it. The part you used is no longer heat (it may be electricity it may be kinetic or potential energy, it might even be chemical energy, but it isn't "heat" any more).

One of the coolest uses of ambient heat I've seen so far has been the new heat pump water heaters, they cool your garage as they pull latent heat into the water inside the tank. The trick though is that your garage gets cooler :-) (i.e. the heat has gone elsewhere).

There are also some pretty cool thermo-electric solutions where you stick a device on the indoors side of a window to the out of doors. It uses the delta between the window glass temperature and the indoor temperature to power a simple sensor. Not as useful on double glazed windows but awesome for single pane ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wood burning contributes unnecessarily to deforestation and emits a lot of air pollution, things people used to think were no bueno.

<comment><USER7> Wood pellets are efficient, produce low pollution, and are one of the most renewable fuels.

<comment><USER8> Mind blown. Yet, Life Cycle Analyses show conflicting results. Here is a recent review. Would be very good to know whether this has potential as a future biofuel.

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136403212...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032120305669?casa_token=Lx5In3Xs1ScAAAAA:tw9ybNRqT3vZDtz_FI698oaBCDw- KwLSuRvpoOvd_FWNZHi7haZHm9ZWjmYs8ytXAZDsj3p85Ic#sec5)

<comment><USER7> In our best future we grow trees and log them for construction, storing their carbon. We process the waste branches, bark, etc. into wood pellets which get burned, displacing the use of fossil fuels.

There's very real questions about how wood pellets are sourced, but moving from burning ancient fossils to burning recent trees has to be directionally correct, part of the solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Recently: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23348578](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23348578)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that, I missed that thread.

<comment><USER10> Eh, I'd say you're alright. Usually when people post links to prior discussions, it's specifically to make those prior discussions available to the current discussion and provide additional context. This doesn't seem to be an exception; the previous discussion was more than 3 months ago, long past the point when anyone would still be participating in it, so a new post with a new discussion is perfectly appropriate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Thermoelectrics generate power by allowing heat to flow from a hot area to a cold area. Almost certainly you would be better off efficiency-wise by putting insulation in place of the thermoelectric element and generating electricity in a central steam power plant (fueled with the fuel you save via the insulation).

</comment><comment><USER12> Recommend organic rankin or Sterling cycle engines over thermoelectric generator. I believe households in Sweden actually have heaters that use methane and also produce electricity at reasonably high efficiency.

</comment><comment><USER13> Combined heat and power is fairly common in Europe [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogeneration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogeneration)

</comment><comment><USER14> [https://samharris.org/the-fireplace-delusion/](https://samharris.org/the- fireplace-delusion/)

You should not burn wood at all. Woodsmoke is truly terrible pollution that harms you and everyone around you for most of a mile radius.

It smells really nice but is utterly damaging.

<comment><USER15> There's no debating that inhaling (any kind of) smoke is pretty bad. For the rest of the article i'm gonna have to call bs.

1\. Outside air: We're not talking about cities. Burning stuff in dense habitation zones is stupid. Sibling comments have hinted at atmospheric inversion, which is a localized and largely exceptional effect. Also: it's not too hard to take that into account and have a fire at nights and during winter, periods during which people aren't too much out.

2\. Inside air: Any well designed and well tended fire-place (and its associated well-dried wood) generates no smoke in the room. If it does you're doing in wrong. If you intend to heat your home you should go for a closed stove, if you intend to cook you should have a well ventilated open-furnace and learn to use it right. Source: my childhood home at the country-side heated exclusively (hot water was electric) with a stove in the living room and an open furnace in the kitchen.

3\. Deforestation: we have too much wood. Apart from rain-forests, at "occidental latitudes" most forests are growing (at least i know for sure in france). In my country-side some farmer neighbor always had spare wood to sell, from cutting trees around their fields (of course you have to do it intelligently: not cut the younger ones, etc). A farm of a half a dozen hectares can be self-sufficient in heating wood (source: neighbors).

<comment><USER5> "Too much wood" is only an artefact of recent industrialised use of coal, oil, and nuclear energy. Through the 19th century, deforestation was rampant in Europe and North America, and remains a problem throughout much the rest of the world. Largely driven my small-scale fuelwood use.

Industrial-scale charcoal-fired bronze, iron, and glass-smelting use prodigious amounts of wood fuel, multiples of the yielded product mass.

<comment><USER15> Aren't you contradicting yourself with the industrial uses point? I don't have any strong refs but my understanding is that 19th c. deforestation was driven by growing population, which isn't a problem in europe for much of the foreseeable future. Btw there have been big advances in forest management and forest-compatible agriculture (agroforestry and intercropping in general).

<comment><USER5> Deforestation well-predated the 19th century, and increased at rates greater than population growth, strongly driven by novel or expanded uses.

See Vaclav Smil, _Energy and Civilization_ , on energy use generally. Jed O. Kaplan; Kristen M. Krumhardt; Niklaus Zimmermann, "The prehistoric and preindustrial deforestation of Europe' (10.1016/j.quascirev.2009.09.028 [http://gen.lib.rus.ec/scimag/10.1016%2Fj.quascirev.2009.09.0...](http://gen.lib.rus.ec/scimag/10.1016%2Fj.quascirev.2009.09.028)) gives an overview of trends and some uses.

Wikipedia has a generally accurate though poorly sourced article: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_forest_in_Centr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_forest_in_Central_Europe)

<comment><USER15> Thanks, i'll look into that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Wayfair denies child sex-trafficking claims involving expensive cabinets - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/wayfair-denies-sex-trafficking-claims-involving-expensive-cabinets-2020-7 <comment><USER2> It wouldn't surprise me if this is coming from one or some of the people who walked off the job because of the immigrant children's bedding controversy.

They do seem pricey, but there are industrial cabinets that aren't so far off in price. Here is one from a completely unrelated company: [https://www.cleyn.ca/Extra-Heavy-Duty-Stainless-Steel- Cabine...](https://www.cleyn.ca/Extra-Heavy-Duty-Stainless-Steel-Cabinet- FI345.html)

I don't know what an additional $5,000 - $10,000 will get you, but I'm assuming some premium components, probably fire proofing, higher internal volume (capacity), etc.

Reading that initial Reddit post reminded me of when I discovered the difference in price between home office desks and the kind one buys for corporate use. And they also invariably came with themed names (maybe not girl's names, but just the same).

</comment><comment><USER3> This denial by Wayfair in this article only refers to "industrial grade cabinets" but there were many other products referred to in the conspiracy theory, including pillows and shower curtains, that certainly can't be explained away as accurately-priced industrial models...

<comment><AUTHOR> _" There is, of course, no truth to these claims," _

Plus, what else are they going to say? Admit it? Nope so who knows...</comment></comment>


The Paranoia Parameter - <AUTHOR> https://www.adamjuliangoldstein.com/blog/paranoia-parameter/ <comment><USER3> This is BS. You can be aware of existential threats, and respond to them appropriately without feeling the slightest bit anxious or paranoid. It's called planning.

The personal founder experience related here has value, but trying to create this big theory of psychology from it is not helpful, nor are the extraordinarily tenuous links to panic buying and immunology.

edit: This comment reads quite aggressively, which was not my intent. I just want to provide a counterpoint because I don't believe the central thesis is correct, as it runs counter to my experience. Someone might still find it helpful as a model though.

I guess the more you know, the more threats you can perceive, so at some point you just have to turn the limbic system off. The amygdala is not yet compatible with Wikipedia. i.e. there are existential threats that make the COVID-19 crisis seem like a picnic, but if we can't do anything to mitigate them, why worry?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you are able to deal with existential threats without "feeling the slightest bit anxious or paranoid," you are very fortunate and not the intended audience :)

I agree, however, that planning is often helpful for reducing anxiety, insofar as it reduces uncertainty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From a medical perspective this is quite a hand-wavy fever dream interpretation of the immune system and psychology/psychiatry. It's like saying you should use python instead of rust because it's syntax more appropriately recapitulates the essence of human neural connectedness (or whatever). There are many types of paranoia (not one dimensional) and they don't seem to all be trainable.

<comment><USER4> On second thought, I do appreciate fever dream interpretations of things as an intellectual challenge and really enjoyed reading the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fascinating. People with PTSD (of whatever variety) are hypervigilant - <USER2> much fun but good for survival

</comment><comment><USER6> The author doesn't mention, in "Mental Vaccination", the possibility of learning from _other people 's_ experiences, or perhaps from accurately simulated experiences. That seems to me like the best way to mentally vaccinate: gaining the lessons through something other than the hard way.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's what the next essay is about: how to move the Paranoia Line</comment></comment>