Am I Introverted, or Just Rude? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/opinion/sunday/am-i-introverted-or-just-rude.html?ref=opinion <comment><USER2> I know for me, if I don't get the alone time I completely disengage from anything social, even if I'm physically present. I don't mind being there, so it isn't social anxiety, I just zone out.

I'm also not trying to be rude, it is more like some uncontrollable ADD that makes my attention wander when I'm in social situations. But get a few early nights and walks alone and I'm back to normal. When I'm rested I've been told that I'm engaging and funny, but when I'm not people (well, at least extroverts) think I'm being aloof and, as the author said, rude. But needing to sleep or to use the restroom isn't considered rude, so I really feel that my recharge time should be similar. Or maybe I just need a better way of handling it.

Are there any introverts out there who have developed coping mechanisms for dealing with people when you're already peopled out, and are willing to chime in?

<comment><USER3> > Are there any introverts out there who have developed coping mechanisms

Fake it. I realised couple of years back that there are times when I am not really interested in the conversation but its rude to zone out so I pretend and act as if I am interested.

<comment><USER4> I couldn't agree more. Force yourself to fake it. The conversation won't last forever and you'll leave a good impression which will be a) a social benefit for you in future meetings, and b) possibly helpful to the other person (imagine if they are thinking "oh man, people usually find me so boring but this person is really listening to me"...)

@smsm42 we might not be able to run like Usain Bolt, but we are able to force ourselves to maintain concentration and pretend for a while.

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure if you're introverted to the same degree, but NO, I cannot just force myself to maintain concentration. Maybe for 30 seconds, then I'm back to staring blankly across the room until someone says my name again.

This is not something I can control. I don't enjoy it and I'm not doing it on purpose. I've used this analogy too many times on this story already, but it is like I'm horribly sleep deprived and people want me to stay awake for things that I'm utterly incapable of doing in my present state.

<comment><USER5> Faking it isn't about maintaining mental concentration. If someone is paying attention to you, then it's probably going to be obvious that you're faking it.

Thing is... most people either (a) don't know you well enough to say that you're being flakey or (b) aren't paying that much attention... the free flowing alcohol of adult-aged parties and meetings really helps with this respect.

How do you fake it without putting in concentration? Pay attention to what other people do in similar circumstances: platitudes, sounds of agreement, sticking to unspectacular and unnovel topics like weather/books/sports. I know personally, I don't even like certain sports, but after hearing 3-4 conversations about a particular team, I can regurgitate the mosaic of other peoples opinions about the team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "When I skip big gatherings of strangers, I'm not just being a little rude to the individual people around me, I'm being uncivil in a larger sense. The more we isolate ourselves from new people, the more isolated and segregated our society is likely to become"

What is the objective justification for calling skipping a gathering of strangers rude? Who is to say that a society where people are more apart won't turn out better, once people get over the antiquated notion that they MUST be connected or they are somehow defective?

"There are many excuses for failing to conduct ourselves with courtesy, for avoiding gatherings and conversations we don't think we will enjoy, or for just putting on our pajamas and staying home. Too many of them boil down to just that one thing: We care more about ourselves than about the needs of others.

That's not about introversion. It's just an ordinary version of selfishness."

Perhaps an many introverts are introverted because they had social interactions that were traumatic, and they don't trust others to reciprocate if they give? Most of the introverts I've gotten to know are exceedingly kind and loyal once they view you as a legitimate human being.

<comment><USER7> >Perhaps an many introverts are introverted because they had social interactions that were traumatic, and they don't trust others to reciprocate if they give?

I really don't think that is the case, introverts aren't "broken angels who just need to be won over," they have completely different internal motivations.

<comment><USER8> Besides... implying that extroverts don't have traumatic social experiences? Statistically speaking, extroverts should have many times more such bad social experiences simply because they have many more total social experiences.

If that's your argument, then it boils down to extroverts evidently being able to "get over it" much better than introverts.

<comment><USER9> In my case at least, I absolutely believe the ability to "get over" bad social experiences can turn someone into an introvert or extrovert over their lifetimes.

For example, no amount of conscious effort allows me to let go of bad social encounters, so instead I have a treasure chest of repressed memories over several years (my brain likes to pull one out at random late at night just to torture me sometimes).

Further social interaction always puts me at risk of accumulating more bad experiences that can't be let go, so as a result I have to work extra hard whenever I talk to strangers or acquaintances to overcome the anxiety and "perform well". Around close family where I can be myself, social interaction is not exhausting and I feel like an extrovert.

In other words, perhaps inability to "get over it" leads to social anxiety which leads to taxing social interactions which leads to introversion (...which leads to _suffering_ ).

Doesn't necessarily explain introversion for all people, though.

<comment><USER10> > In my case at least, I absolutely believe the ability to "get over" bad > social experiences can turn someone into an introvert or extrovert over > their lifetimes.

I'm pretty sure that's not the case. One shouldn't mix introversion, shyness and social anxiety. It might be easier to develop social anxiety if your're an introverted or shy person, but you can't overcome your introversion like you can overcome your social anxiety, they're just completely different things.

<comment><USER7> Right. I like anyone have my share of bad experiences, however, I am _not_ shy at all, I am not afraid to talk to people, I just don't prefer it because it taxes on my energy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _Too many of them boil down to just that one thing: We care more about ourselves than about the needs of others. That's not about introversion. It's just an ordinary version of selfishness._

The whole article was trying desperately to shoehorn the quote above as the ultimate truth, but it neglects important nuances and makes me wonder what the author's agenda is. Is the inverse statement true, that extraverts care more about others? That their behaviour is less selfish? Or could it be that both extraverts and introverts can be both selfish and generous, depending ultimately on the individual. That extroversion can be a tool to network with others for no other reason than to gain social mind-share for personal profit, as well as be used to build meaningful relationships depending on how it's wielded and the intention of the user? Or that introversion can be an excuse to snub ones peers as well as a tool to focus their efforts on what they find important, including helping others, rather than spreading themselves thin on many (often meaningless) endeavours?

The author's perspective betrays the unspoken expectations of their culture (as does the name of the publisher). In North Western Europe it's not unusual to keep to yourself and avoid small talk. My partner and I can go for hours without talking to each other while sitting in the same room, often next to each other. You don't have to discuss every idea or observation that pops into your head. You can let an idea brew in your mind, digest it so that when you do discuss it, you can start at a more sophisticated level rather than babbling half formed thoughts and filling the verbal voids with "...like, you know..."

This odd anxiety where if you're not doing or saying something, that you can't just stare out the window and watch the world pass by - that the proper thing to do is to pick up your phone, call a friend, and perform a post-mortem on the little thoughts buzzing around in your head gives me the fucking shits. Sit down quietly and form a cogent thought for one minute PLEASE. _Then_ you'll have something worth talking about.

<comment><USER12> Ultimately everything that everyone does is out of satisfying their needs. Whether you need to help other people recover from addiction, or you need a bag of cheetos, both are about your own personal needs. Therefore we are all continually acting out of selfishness.

Introversion and extroversion are a gross and simplified categorization of our personal needs. One or the other may be more socially acceptable, but both are selfish.

<comment><USER11> _[...] everything that everyone does is out of satisfying their needs [...] we are all continually acting out of selfishness._

If you want to posit feeding the homeless at a soup kitchen as satisfying a desire to feel helpful or fulfilling the wishes of a deity you wish to please in order to secure your place in the afterlife which is ultimately selfish then sure. Let's go one step further and admit we're in a deterministic universe and we have no free will. That takes care of everything. It helps the next beer go down knowing that, despite saying I wasn't going to drink today, it was always going to happen and was determined nearly 14 billion years ago :-)

<comment><USER12> Non sequitur.

<comment><USER11> I actually agree with you, everything is driven by individual desire i.e. selfishness - even helping others, but it's a bit of a grim way of looking at things. The point I was making is that if we reduce everything to the simplest underlying principal we miss what makes life interesting and we may as well not even be having a discussion.

You could, quite correctly, classify my responses as selfish acts of showing off to gain meaningless kudos in an online forum...or more charitably classify them as thoughtful discourse between people interested in esoteric topics.

<comment><USER10> > I actually agree with you, everything is driven by individual desire i.e. > selfishness - even helping others, but it's a bit of a grim way of looking > at things.

Like you're saying, it's a grim way to look at things and it's even a quite simplified view.

Sure, people sometimes help because of more selfish reasons, that they want to be praised, but I'm pretty sure that pure empathy for people can also be a quite big motivation to help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > When I skip big gatherings of strangers, I'm not just being a little rude to > the individual people around me, I'm being uncivil in a larger sense.

I just can't follow this reasoning. People are not entitled to my casual time. I am delighted that there are people in my life who wish I were present more, and it's unfortunate for all concerned that I do not always feel inclined to be. But it is not a wrong done, just an unfortunate circumstance.

<comment><USER14> There are two extremes - on one side is someone who feels declining any invitation is rude; on the other side is someone who feels it is never rude to decline an invitation. Both extremes and their neighborhoods are pretty far from decent. If you're near one of those extremes, you're not entitled to average folks respecting your actions.

Failing to recognize and live in the grey area somewhere in between (where there is a lot of fair play for diversity which sums up to an individual's personality) doesn't mark you as "introverted" like it's some disability and therefore should be respected, it's simply inconsiderate and if you're unaware of this, it's willful ignorance.

It's not against the law to be inconsiderate, nobody should force you to be different. Just don't expect others to like you, and don't get bitter when they don't.

In other words, when it comes to your "casual time" thinking you're entitled to all of it without reproach is just as bad as someone else thinking they can take any of it at a whim.

<comment><USER15> I disagree. No one is entitled to your casual time, and it's not rude to decline invitations. I have no obligation to spend time with people I don't want to spend time with.

That being said, if I decline any and all invitations, I also have no right to expect to have friends who I can rely on, discover networking opportunities or really meaningful relationships.

It's not inherently rude to decline invitations, but I have to also understand there are consequences.

<comment><USER14> Then it comes down to a pedantic discussion of definitions if we're talking about a/any/all/none a single action vs. a series of actions, the qualities of the invitation, etc.

For example, besides from extreme exceptions, it's definitely rude to decline an invitation to your sister's wedding because you don't feel like it.

Likewise it's definitely not rude to decline an invitation to lunch with the coworkers you eat with every day to prepare for an important meeting.

Digging into the weeds about what we really mean by "entitled" and "rude" is probably not productive.

<comment><USER16> Subtle and adaptive (aka: not rigid, meat cleaver rules). You have it right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Am I on the spectrum, or does this...

 _> At first, saying "no" to fund-raisers and coffees brought with it a keen, almost illicit pleasure. What freedom! I started slipping out of meetings and school assemblies at the first possible moment instead of staying to chat. On one delicious occasion, I sat in my car and read a book while my children attended a family-oriented athletic function._

seem like perfectly reasonable behavior? I couldn't care less if someone I knew did this. I had no idea saying no to coffee was rude.

Presumably, if you break one of these rules, e.g. by saying no to some big gathering, you'll be offending someone. This would seem to suggest that there are people out there industriously keeping track of who fails to show up to gatherings and holding it against them. Really? Here, at the end of a century that saw the perfection of human flight, two world wars, and ongoing efforts to make us a multiplanetary species?

If not dragging myself out to spend several hours making small talk is rude, can I just be rude?

<comment><USER18> I don't think it's necessarily about whether you're rude or not.

It's more that relationships require investment. If you never show up to events or coffee with me, don't expect me to be your friend in the future. Similarly, don't expect a deep relationship with your children if instead of interacting with them (or cheering them on) you are always alone or distant.

A single instance isn't rude, but the _pattern_ definitely leads to (justifiable) social isolation.

<comment><USER17> I entirely agree. But the article outright claims it's rude to decide not to go to large social gatherings full of strangers. (I concede your point on coffee.)

<comment><USER16> _" When I skip big gatherings of strangers, I'm not just being a little rude to the individual people around me, I'm being uncivil in a larger sense. The more we isolate ourselves from new people, the more isolated and segregated our society is likely to become. Those casual interactions in dog runs and at kids' hockey games are the ones that are most likely to cross social and economic barriers. They expand my little world as well as the overlapping bubbles that create a society."_

I went back to the article and found the problem, right here, where she ties together being uncivil in the inevitable human interactions of our day (e.g., bringing your bad energy into the dog park) with how you choose to build community beyond that, implicitly comparing her choices with yours. That's the default tone of the self-congratulatory prig.

Yes, it is good to stretch your comfort zone to meet new people and help build community without choosing situations that would make you miserable. Strangers? Ipso facto good? Rubbish. She may have scared more people off getting out than she inspired as some misguided soul is right now looking at Meetups, choosing "random after dark random networking with drinks" over the LUG. Sure, join the political group or the book club if it inspires you.

 _" Years ago, I was habitually late. "I can't help it!" I declared to an expert in time management (I'd turned my effort to reform into a magazine article, as writers do, which gave me the excuse to seek professional help)."_

And by the way, showing up late is garden variety selfish behavior that directly harms at least one other actual human being. The author managed to slip in a less insidious self congratulations here, too, a lot of work for one sentence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > "Sorry I'm late," the T-shirt reads. "I didn't want to be here."

 _I_ don't want to seem rude, but what usually gets me with such cutesy sayings is that it's wholly trite and unoriginal, and why would you want that on a t-shirt you wear?

[https://www.google.com/search?q=Sorry+I%E2%80%99m+late+I+did...](https://www.google.com/search?q=Sorry+I%E2%80%99m+late+I+didn%E2%80%99t+want+to+be+here).

If someone were to show me one of these shirts, and be like, "hey, that's you!", I would kinda feel like... you don't really know who I am. You're just trying to explain something as complex as an introvert's inside life and not doing so well.

So, maybe I do feel for the author of the piece.

I feel also that (as an introvert), it's not that I don't want to hang out with my wonderful friends, it's just that there's something I want to do much, much, more, that just happens to be something I do alone. Tonight, my friends want to go dancing, and I love dancing (and I love my friends), but the weather is nice tomorrow, and riding a bike longer than anyone I know would want to is completely irresistible to me. My hobbies have become so extreme as I'm the only one that now participates in them. Anyone can go drinking and dancing. It's inclusive like that.

<comment><USER18> > If someone were to show me one of these shirts, and be like, "hey, that's > you!", I would kinda feel like... you don't really know who I am

Amen to that. I can't actually imagine wearing such a shirt myself, nor can I imagine most other introverts doing so.

Such shirts seem to be entirely designed for extroverts who want to seem edgy and thereby draw attention to themselves.

<comment><USER20> Or introverts who want to be edgy and scare people away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I am currently writing this sitting in a small motel room very close to downtown vegas and am very alone.

I am back on heroin. I write this not for shock factor because, frankly, I don't give a shit about how anyone feels about it.

I write this as a warning to those wise enough to hear, about how being introverted can easily lead to a lonely, fairly miserable life as you grow older.

My excuse was always the same as I hear here...I'm not interested in shallow conversation or discussing things with people whom seem to have almost complete misunderstandings of the basics of things etc etc.

I am 51yo, my birthday was last week..2 people texted me happy birthday and I spent the day alone, as none of my local junkie friends bothered to invite me to do anything. Yeah, big surprise I know can you believe it?

I spent almost 35 years of my life, starting at age 15, playing in bands and was always surrounded by fellow musicians and all the various bar archetypes.

Coding came super easy to me and it allowed me to earn very good money while living a lifestyle that had all the trappings of a happy, extroverted kinda life, and I enjoyed it immensely. I felt (and still do) incredibly blessed by the genetic gods to be born at such a time where society valued my native aptitude...I am sure there were periods where it wouldn't have been such a blessing.

Looking back, I see how I was drawn to and used drugs and music as tools to overcome my introvertness, and you know what? They worked very well. But, as they say, what happens when the song ends and the dope runs out?

But this is my dilemma and where it gets nutso...I wonder just how much we truly control the decisions our brain and subconscious make for us. Looking back, I have serious doubts that _even if someone had shown me of picture of my bleak life right now, that I would have somehow been able to make different decisions_.

Even now, knowing how I should act to prevent this level of isolation, I am unable to do those things consistently enough to make them work and have all but giving up trying.

So yeah..introverted, rude, selfish, disconnected for sure. But also, passionate, informed, and sensitive as well.

That's life I guess.

<comment><USER22> I'll be in Vegas Monday. Let me know if you want to meet up for Thai food? I realize it's not a likely desire of an introvert, but it might be good to get out and have a chat with someone semiobjective.

<comment><USER21> Just so you don't think I'm a total flake...I tried 3 different "temp email" services and while i got them working, it seemed difficult to be able to log back into them once you create them and one of them only lasted for a few hours or something...so if I missed your reply (if you did reply) its not me being rude or an ass, its just that those email things didn't work quite as i expected them to work...

LOL..i have to chuckle somewhat at the typical experience that this sort of thing is for my life and the irony of it :) Thanks for the offer anyway...it just doesn't seem like its meant to be or whatever and i of course do not want to give out any identifying information.

<comment><USER22> No worries on missing me. I'll be back that way soon if you want to catch up. Alot of those new smaller email services can be flakey and hard to use so I certainly understand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Every social interaction is a kind of investment. At work it's to advance your career or just remain employed. And there are few professions where you really don't have to communicate with anyone at all and can still make a living. Even introverts need to gain enough skill (chutzpah?) to communicate with their colleagues.

Socially, it's another matter entirely. There are obligatory communications that you really can't reasonably dodge, like planning family Holidays, or finding a friend to join you to a concert, or calling around to get a decent price on a set of tires.

Then there are the real small-talk situations. Standing in line at the coffee shop, sitting with another parent you've never met waiting for your turn at the parent teach conference, the bored bartender while you're trying to relax the last evening of a business trip... These opportunities have different payoffs that really depend only to you. If you're an extrovert, a conversation with a stranger may be invigorating. And yes, you might learn something valuable, or offer some advice that genuinely helps a stranger. For me, there is simply no payoff. The investment of awkwardness versus the comfort of remaining withdrawn is just not worth it. Once in a while, I might be in a particularly good mood and actually strike up a conversation. But that is a rare moment for me, and I usually end the conversation thinking that the last thing I said for sure came across as weird and they had no clue what I meant... So usually, I want to remain in thought, or distracted by some type of entertainment or doing something that I deem to be productive. Thank God for my iPhone.

I'll satisfy my obligations to society in other ways.

<comment><USER24> How do you reconcile _" Every social interaction is a kind of investment"_ with _" I might be in a particularly good mood and actually strike up a conversation"_?

Does being in a good mood mean that you will get more upside to the "investment" of small talk? Are you being optimistic that the conversation will be productive (i.e. "maybe I'll learn something interesting or make an important connection"), or does the act of engaging in small talk yield its own reward, dependent on being in the right mood?

<comment><USER25> > How do you reconcile "Every social interaction is a kind of investment" with > "I might be in a particularly good mood and actually strike up a > conversation"?

The price to buy in is less when you're in a good mood.

<comment><USER16> Absolutely true. I tend to attract good energy when I put out good energy. The inverse, too. It's palpable. If I walked around always in the space of my lowest band, I'd see the world and people as pretty bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "The more we isolate ourselves from new people, the more isolated and segregated our society is likely to become."

So this is the only sentence approaching a real argument in the article. And it's not entirely unreasonable, but the author goes straight to words like "antisocial", "rude", "self-indulgent", and "selfish" to describe the act of skipping large gatherings.

I'm just not entirely convinced that introverts are likely to cause the downfall of civilization. Even in the pathological cases of truly isolated individuals, they're really only harming themselves.

</comment><comment><USER25> I go to a bar. Several times a week. Most of the time, it's not very fun. Occasionally, I'll hit upon the right combination of mood and inebriation and I'll have a great time. I'm loud, witty, entertaining. Occasionally I'll run into somebody who can entertain the kind of deep, one-on-one conversations I need to have.

But when I'm not doing either of those things, which is most of the time I'm there, I'm drinking, by myself, at the bar, while everybody else there, most of whom I've known for years, has the kind of group interaction that I simply can't be bothered to participate in.

I have _introverted_ friends that have no problem participating in the group! But I simply can't. It's not that I haven't tried. It's that, even after 6 years of going to that bar, and being friendly with all, some more than others, I'm still not comfortable with group interaction. My mind wanders, I end up pulling away slightly. After a minute it just seems easier to go back to my spot at the bar.

If the conversation is actually interesting to me, then I can participate, at least until it shifts to something I could care less about. I thought about trying to care more, but if I start going against my nature, I get drained and want to go home. If I do that too often I start to wonder why I even go there at all. The way I do it, I'm _comfortable_. I can spend several hours there a few times a week.

Introversion is real. I work to overcome my limitations, but it seems that any success I find is a result of finding workarounds, not actually fixing the problems, if there is indeed any.

My next big push against my introversion will be having small, private dinners at my home with people I care the most for. Perhaps I can get over my group aversion by amping up the comfort level an order of magnitude.

<comment><USER27> > But I simply can't. It's not that I haven't tried. It's that, even after 6 > years of going to that bar, and being friendly with all, some more than > others, I'm still not comfortable with group interaction. My mind wanders, I > end up pulling away slightly. After a minute it just seems easier to go back > to my spot at the bar.

Do you find that it matters how many people are in the conversation? For me, once there are 4 or more other people to follow (assuming they're speaking fluidly rather than slowly and deliberately), it seems like my brainpower is completely consumed just following the dynamics of the interaction, and I have almost nothing left over to process my own thoughts on the topic of conversation. I seriously have no idea how people do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I find the label "quiet" rather presumptuous. If I don't say anything it's likely because I think the odds of an interesting conversation are unfavourable. Nothing to do with shyness. Blame yourself for not being interesting, don't blame me for being "quiet."

Also, I don't need to "recharge" by retreating to solitude, I just find lots of partying, drinking type situations incredible banal and would rather do something else. This is just like getting impatient with any other activity, like watching the shopping channel.

Of course usually I don't say this to people. That would just be rude.

<comment><USER29> Who said anything about partying and drinking? The author is talking about social gatherings of various sorts. Some social gatherings aren't about having interesting conversation but cultivating or facilitating social contact for some purpose. I don't like bullshit banter or stupid conversation, but your emphasis on what you find interesting with no regard for other needs is revealing and speaks to the author's point.

<comment><USER28> > Who said anything about partying and drinking?

The author.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This article hit a nerve with me. I'm an introvert. I know that now but for years I wondered why I hated being around people and large gatherings. I figured I was just strange and let myself not attend gatherings and be by myself. I found it easier and more satisfying than having to deal with people.

Now, many years later, I understand that I did myself a disservice. I missed many gatherings that I now wished I had attended. I'm sure I missed many connections that I would have enjoyed.

I understand now it's ok to be an introvert but it's not ok to let it control how you deal with people. Not necessarily because you're somehow being less than cordial to people, believe me most people won't miss you, but because you miss out on life's moments and that is your loss and no one else's. Life is too short to miss them and most will not come by again.

<comment><USER16> Yes, you're never missing out on life's moments. This is a moment. It's not that bad.

But yeah you'll miss a lot of good good moments and opportunities to meet very cool people because you weren't willing to experience discomfort, risk rejection, and weather some boredom and irritation. Just showing up actually is 80% of it. It's true if done consistently there are pretty much guaranteed rewards. It just will suck some of the time and it's easy to then run. Speaking for myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> So, uh, color me selfish. :) Perhaps this isn't a constructive comment, but I just don't understand these articles that take a long, hard, meandering look at human nature only to arrive at some absolute "truth" like the author's some arbiter of what's right and wrong in the world. Whatever gets eyeballs, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER32> As an introvert with a fairly active social life, I disagree with the general premise.

I took an "always say 'yes'" approach for awhile. I accepted pretty much every invite I received. Eventually I found myself going out all the time, weekdays and weekends. At least once a week I'd have to schedule two or three events in a single day.

It was exhausting in two ways.

The obvious was that it's a pain to schedule so many things, and the nature of social events means you'll meet more people which is a positive feedback loop for more events.

The other was that my personal growth was being limited. I skipped exercise/sports. I was unable to finish, or sometimes even work on, my personal art/programming projects.

I realized it was a problem, and I no longer feel bad turning down event invites. Whether I am overbooked on events or if I just want to build a clay sculpture, I don't consider it to be selfish. Of course I still like to see my friends, and I still meet new people, but it's definitely not the only part of being a human.

</comment><comment><USER33> "In a contest between my manners and my preferences, am I allowing my preferences to win?"

There's nothing wrong with that, as long as you don't mind the consequences that follow.

<comment><USER34> The funny thing is if you get successful people praise you for sticking to your preference.

It's like a fuck-you card.

People will blame the college kid for not dressing more professionally.

But suddenly if the college kid becomes Zuckerberg/Jobs people will praise him.

"Oh he just always wears [that hoodie/jeans/tshirt/turtleneck]. He's cool and simple and down-to-earth like that not like all these other stupid materialistic people who buy expensive clothes."

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I find the article to be a gross oversimplification: It's very hard to put oneself in other person's shoes. The same external behavior might be caused by very different internal mechanism.

I have met people that are labeled as introverted that are just what he describes: One on one conversations about their behavior, with people they trust, show that they really dislike most people, and will never feel at ease in any group. They are selfish people that don't care about others at all. But there's more to it. For instance, my son avoids parties because he gets sensory overloaded very quickly: He'll hide in a corner, covering his ears. Is he selfish? I don't think so. We are doing our best to help him handle such situations, but it'll probably be a struggle for him most of his life.

I also think of my own case: I am a bit of a recluse, but it has nothing to do with not caring about people: I am just painfully aware of the terrible first impression I give, regardless of what I try. It's been described as me seeming a bit 'off' in some fashion, as my non-verbals apparently say terrible things that have nothing to do with what I mean. At the same time, I get to see all that rejection as it happens, making the whole thing exhausting. I do it when I have to, but it's unfun, because it feels absolutely hopeless. It's far easier for me to fix it in smaller gatherings, where I get enough time to override that awful first impression.

On the other side of the coin, I know people that are love large gatherings and social situations because they crave novelty. One example that I got to know pretty well happens to be awesome at fleeting connections: She'll leave a party and half the room thinks they got a great connection, which makes her be seen as a wonderful person in many social circles. But what happens when you look deeper? She is a novelty addict. Travels away from home a lot just to feed this. Her marriage is in shambles, because, of course, she got tired of her husband. Her daughters wonder why she is on the road so much. Friends last her about a year, by the time they are either discarded, or they have run away from the selfishness: People are like chewing gum for her.

Sp when it comes to selfishness, introversion and extroversion, it seems to me that the situation is far more complicated than the article makes it seem, and we should all do our best to take a while before we judge people, as first impressions aren't necessarily correct.

<comment><USER36> > _" I have met people that are labeled as introverted ... my son avoids > parties because he gets sensory overloaded very quickly"_

All through my childhood I was labeled as introverted. As an adult, having gone through a lot of self-reflection and self-evaluation, I realize that I have both strong introvert and strong extrovert tendencies -- with many of my strong introvert tendencies being sensory rather than social. I think I'm actually more of an extrovert socially, but I never got that label because of the sensory stuff.

For example: I do fairly well in group settings, as long as they're focused somehow. I like sporting events, but not clubs, because all the noise at the sporting event is focused on the action on the field/court/ice but the noise at the club is an unrelated tangled mess of conversations and music. Big lecture halls in college, churches big and small, and actual concerts are all fine. Things marketed as a "party" usually aren't. I like most people, and have friends from a lot of different segments of society. I just don't like being overwhelmed.

It seems silly to characterize me as "rude" or "selfish" because I would turn down certain types of invitations.

<comment><USER34> "I like sporting events, but not clubs, because all the noise at the sporting event is focused on the action on the field/court/ice but the noise at the club is an unrelated tangled mess of conversations and music."

This was quite interesting thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I learned a lesson watching "What not to wear." A fashion show about people dressing so badly it would hinder their career.

The "contestant" reason was always that no matter what they would be wearing people should judge them from "what's inside."

Well, though luck, people don't do that. They judge you by what you wear, how you stand, how you talk and there is nothing you can do about it.

Sure you can continue pretending you have bad manner because you're introvert, but don't expect the rest of the world to understand and adapt to your peculiarity.

That's when I stopped blaming the rest of the world for how it worked, improved my social skills and moved on with my life.

<comment><USER38> I'll need to watch a bit of that show. I'm a senior developer and recently promoted to team lead at a very large company.

In my opinion, moving up further is not about whether I know the latest framework or how fast I churn out code..it's like you said...

"They judge you by what you wear, how you stand, how you talk and there is nothing you can do about it."

This means more frequent hair cuts, nicer fitting clothes, getting rid of the canvas laptop bag from college.

Even if it doesn't matter, it makes me feel better and confident - which would reflect in how I talk and interact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I can completely relate to the T-shirt mentioned in the first paragraph: "Sorry I'm late," the T-shirt reads. "I didn't want to be here."

The thing is that I end up really glad I went about 90% of the time. So I'm not sure I qualify as an introvert or if I'm just a chicken shit extrovert. Either way, it's a big struggle. I do enjoy alone time a lot, though.

<comment><USER39> I feel the same way. After considering it, I've decided I'm halfway between an introvert and an extrovert (and also that I don't like telling people about it).

Elaborating on halfway: when my "job" was "be social and go to class all day" and my leisure time was "hang around suburbs with the same crew of friends," I needed a lot of alone time to recharge and I'd be miserable going out.

Now that my job is "write code all day" and my leisure time is "read books and work on music," I feel a heavy need to socialize, and I often enjoy going out.

Just like many things, it's a spectrum, and everyone falls somewhere.

<comment><USER16> Yes, and I've worked at home for a number of years and have really gotten used to it. It makes a person sort of adjust to stillness and, frankly, loneliness.

Yeah, the half way between idea works well. I think that the fear of socializing is all front loaded. For at least a couple days before anything, I'm anxious, and that usually dissipates once I arrive and get settled. The settled part is grounding.

If I fail to ground successfully or if I flat out don't like being there, then the anxiety can continue the entire time I'm there.

It's exhausting. I can see how someone having some experiences like that might conclude that's how it is. Not necessarily is what I'd say. Get grounded. Accept some fails.

Easy for me to say sitting on my couch blissfully aware that I have no plans until tomorrow.

<comment><USER39> > _I think that the fear of socializing is all front loaded_

I agree, at least when I'm in a non-social lifestyle (when I'm living a social "school" lifestyle then I get grumpy and look for ways to leave). I think living in a big city (NYC) "helps", because you have a lot of options available and because the loneliness can be so oppressive that it almost forces you out into some sort of social setting.

Usually it helps me to have someone to go with. Then, (1) I can't bail because they're also depending on me, and (2) it gives me a little safety net to fall back on in case I'm having trouble socializing. That said, I've had great experiences going out alone, but it can be tough to get the conversation started (or tough to convince yourself to start a conversation) unless it's explicitly a meet-and-greet kinda thing.

<comment><USER16> LOL. I've setup a situation for tomorrow where I absolutely can't bail because of how I set it up. I could have done it another way but chose to take on some responsibility regarding an event. I can't bail without being a total asshole. Otherwise, I high chance I would not go.

<comment><USER39> Yeah, probably important you go, then.

I personally bailed on my previously-determined weekend plans because I'm still recovering from a cold, and 36 hours of techno would dramatically set back my recovery.

I was hoping for social plans tomorrow and I received an invitation to the beach, so I'm looking forward to that. Gotta get my friendship hours in while it's the weekend, because other than a yet-unplanned date, I've got nothing every day after work next week.

<comment><USER16> I think that's a reasonable reason to bail on something like that. LOL. The beach is good medicine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This piece is actually about excuses more than anything else.

> "Have you ever missed a plane?" she asked. I had not. "Then you can help it. > You just care more about yourself than about the needs of others."

Typical. Feelings always come first, and we make excuses to justify our otherwise unjustifiable actions of irresponsibility.

But we also confuse what the most responsible thing to do actually is. We assume it is to be on time. But that's what other's expect of us. That's being responsible in their eyes. Abiding by these expectations is done because we fear rejection and accusation and failure. This is not being truly responsible. This is being a coward.

The correct responsible response is to simply state you don't want to be there, and not go. State your feelings, because that's who you are. And say so in a polite and graceful manner. Or don't. Just be honest, and spend your time better. That's being responsible.

The only thing excuses do is sustain your incompetence and cowardice. If you need an excuse you always have one. There are millions of reasons why anything is not your fault. But that isn't the issue.

The moment you reject excuses all together is the moment you lose the life vest that has prevented you from swimming. You need to face the water, not reason with it. You need to actually swim and decide to go somewhere, not float around in a flotation device made of excuses and let yourself be bounced around by circumstances.

</comment><comment><USER41> Just the title of this article is painting a broad picture. Why is it always a binary choice to be introverted or extroverted? Or introverted or just rude?

One thing I have noticed in tech in the past 10 years is that there are more and more people drawn into it who are more extroverted than introverted. This may partially be explained by the increasing appeal of being a geek in today's popular culture/zeitgeist. Being a geek decades ago was not cool. Now, it is almost sort of accepted to be a geek, to the point where some people will try to seem geekier than they really are. Honestly, I don't give a damn about "Doctor Who".

For me, if you really want to "control the conversation" like another commenter said, you don't have to do that. Just take the lead. It is not about being an introvert or extrovert. Be someone who invites people out to do something or asks people if they want to be introduced (and then introduces them - yes, it is not so binary as this can't be an e-introduction v. personal face-to-face introduction). Be more active, less passive.

As I've ranted before, introverts are not always introverts. As Susan Cain talks about in her somewhat-too-popular book called "Introverts", the brilliant Professor Lewin (before he was rightly discredited and tarnished by his sexual harassment problems) proclaimed himself a performer and an introvert. There is no black or white. Everyone has fifty shades of extroversion and introversion in them.

Stop this divide and conquer. Just be yourself. If you don't feel like going outside for three days, just do it. If you feel like social interaction is binge liking your entire facebook feed, go for it.

If to you, you feel it is a net loss to go out to certain social outings, then you have a choice. It can be a net loss, if you are stuck in your head the entire time and thinking 'what do they think about me, what do they think about me' the entire time like a skipping CD. It is all in your head. We all make stories about the world to provide 'evidence' that the world is like X. However, it seems to be, through talking with my extrovert friends, that they don't even have that beat poetry selfish mantra in their head - they just talk to people and find out what that other person is like. Talk to that cute girl or cute guy or 'they'.

<comment><USER16> You might appreciate this PSA for Nerds: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJyMT4ZVQEc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJyMT4ZVQEc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Yes, after that reading I really confirmed (again) about I be introverted. Because I just don't care about myself, so the other possibility would be a contradiction if be True.

And yes... Sometimes the introversion of some people is just about a sick selfishness behavior. Why thinking you feelings is better and superior to others? Why criticism about the bad English of some ones instead try its meaning? Know a language, like Mathematics or Greek is just about opportunities, is not about be smart.

Actually, what you are trying really say each selfishly content whose are you writing in the internet? Why are we trying so hard to just confirm our existing hurting the others? Where is the fun about that? I just don't understand it. :(

This really makes me sad. Thinking about why some people just don't thinks the reason of your "random" feelings and the horrible reasons to hurt the lifestyle of others to justify your own dementia.

</comment><comment><USER43> Real party atmosphere in this thread. We should all get together!

<comment><USER44> speed dating with this merry group of intellectuals must be a blast.

preferably to the temple.

<comment><USER39> It's kinda cool how different sites develop different dialects and tones. HN's conversational tone is probably the least fun/humorous I've ever encountered on a website, which is (obviously) good in some instances and bad in others.

What would it take to shift a website's tone? What factors, both technical/website-related and people-related, determine how the tone comes across? Food for thought.

<comment><USER16> What's your theory on why and what would you suggest to fix the problem? You're not leading by example. :-)

<comment><USER39> Wouldn't exactly call it a problem...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> _In a probably inevitable extension of nerd culture, the Dale Carnegie image of gregarious success was shattered by stories of powerful, successful people sitting quietly in meetings and substituting controlled online interactions for draining real world encounters._

This part stuck out . Outside of social situations, economically speaking it seems like the introverts are in control of most of society. It is a good trade-off between making a lot of money and being successful as measured by prestige, vs. being extroverted and less successful? I think so.

</comment><comment><USER46> (Could not RTFA: nytimes blocked here)

I (41/m) used to think I was introvert but now a think I have a bad case of attention deficit syndrome: I always need to do multiple things or I zone out. I am a steaming social animal: I go to parties, business meetings, friday drinks but a few minutes in I need to get my phone and do work. I just cannot help myself: when someone is talking to me I hear everything they say, I respond and have intelligent discourse but during that I am also talking with 5 people on Wechat, thinking up fixes for sites/apps and adding notes in Teamwork. Some people find it rude but when you know me you know it is not so. It was very good for me to work in China for a bit: here everyone sits typing in their phone while talking. And it is, even in meetings with very large companies, normal to pick up your phone and look something up you are not sure about. That is how it is supposed to be: go to a meeting with a bank in London and you have to know every fact by heart because people will pause and look at you when you pick up your phone... What madness is that: either I say I do not know or am not sure and delay matters we are discussing to a follow up or I pick my phone up and Google it?

</comment><comment><USER47> It's interesting, people see me as very extroverted and I can be but what they don't see is just how much I also like my alone time and the older I get the more I can let myself be introverted and be fine with it. I think social media gives me a fake sense of being connected to people and so staying home becomes easier because I can still be "social".

</comment><comment><USER48> People overestimate themselves. Maybe I'm not introverted, nor rude. Maybe you're just boring, annoying, or rude yourself.

</comment><comment><USER49> I am fascinated as how people are sharing "strategies" here... like "how to cope with people" or considering that social interactions are "transactions" and "investment".

A little empathy anyone? Like being genuinely interested in the people around you? Like having fun by listening to new stuff...

I see a lot of depressed people around there :(

<comment><USER50> I watch my son, who behaves a lot like I did/do. 1. His inner imagination and dialog is often much richer than what most people have to offer. Sorry, hearing people talk about the weather gets boring quickly. 2. that inner imagination and dialog don't shut off just because people are around. You can ignore it for a while, but it gets "noisy" after a while, like a caged animal trying to get out. 3. Those quiet times alone are there to maintain sanity and balance. Give the inner dialog time to work out its thought, process the new information, figure out what you should have said instead of what you did.

My son and I are actually deeply empathetic actually, when people describe injuries I feel it with them, feelings of loss hit me hard as well. But keep all the noise in my head at bay while maintaining conversation for long periods is tiring.

<comment><USER20> If you don't build relationships with people, beware that you might not have anyone to know or care for you when you are in need. If you want to be part of a supportive community, and the standard conversational forms of social grooming don't work for you, take care to replace them with _something_ , like writing letters or doing acts of kindness

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I knew I had come across this idea before:

[http://www.theonion.com/article/seemingly-shy-woman- really-j...](http://www.theonion.com/article/seemingly-shy-woman-really-just- stuck-up-friends-s-3399)

<comment><USER16> The deeper meaning here is don't make assumptions on people's motives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I for one would love to have that T-shirt mentioned in the beginning of the article.

</comment><comment><USER53> I am an introvert but I am aware of the importance of building friendships.

So I took up on cooking and invite people to dinners at my house (the largest was 45 people). People are more relaxed in a home cooked dinner and they tend to like you.

</comment><comment><USER54> I have had several people accuse me of being Aspergers because I am not the back-slapping, party animal type. Lets leave the medical issue for those who have difficulty functioning in society and not for us introverts.

</comment><comment><USER55> I get pretty frustrated if I don't have enough alone time. It's driven me away from almost every relationship I've had. That statement doesn't bother me as much as it should.

</comment><comment><USER56> There is too much "I", that may be the problem.

</comment><comment><USER57> some people like being with random people more or less than others. Some like being with people they know and don't like meeting new people as much. If it affects your life then probably time to learn some new skills, if not then probably just leave things alone. This idea that there is some exactly right amount of number of people everyone should like hanging around is...strange.

</comment><comment><USER58> Can't I be both? I am an introvert (personality type) but I am frequently rude to people I do not give much of a shit about (choice).

<comment><USER59> Of course it can be both.

The question the author is asking, given the above, is: where is the line between introversion and just being selfish? And does she cross it and then justify her selfishness as introversion?

<comment><USER42> Exactly. Good catch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Warning: If you read this title aloud to your spouse, you might get an answer.

</comment><comment><USER60> Missed a plane. Four times. Two of them in the row. ADD sucks.

</comment><comment><USER61> It's rude to expect people to act a certain way as well.

</comment><comment><USER62> Alternate title for another post -

Am I rude, or just introvert?

</comment><comment><USER63> Why not both?

<comment><USER64> Because actually people are neither. I am getting tired of people putting themselves or others into a certain box because this causes a lot of trouble in forms of limiting beliefs.

Categorizing people is like trying to square the circle. You're bound to get it wrong and if you truly belief you've succeeded then you are under a delusion.

Personality traits are nothing but abstractions. Abstractions generally can be useful. For instance, when it comes to programming or engineering. But for stuff like personality traits they are not healthy imho.

I am not big into Christianity but I like how it says in the bible that a.) god made us in his image and b.) you shouldn't have an image of god. Maybe, whoever wrote this, was onto something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Your time is valuable. Never spend it with people who bring less value into your life than you would have got if you spent this time alone. Never ever (exception: if you are responsible for someone, like a child or elderly person). It's that simple. The hard part is estimating how much value somone/going out brings into your life.

Either way, you can call that rude and selfish, I call it a wise way to spend my limited resources.

<comment><USER66> > exception: if you are responsible for someone, like a child or elderly > person

So what about when she says: "I sat in my car and read a book while my children attended a family-oriented athletic function"?

I think from that single line that she was actually being rude.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I suggest you quit drugs and marry a nice girl. Maybe get into NA or something for the drugs.

<comment><USER68> Isn't NA basically a Scientology front?

That said, it's interesting to note that for most of recorded history, the #1 recommendation to someone in cubano's position would be to join the locally- favored religion. Without that option -- as objectively bogus as it is -- the chances of getting his/her life back on track may be lower than they historically have been.

<comment><USER12> "Isn't NA basically a Scientology front?"

What? I haven't heard that one before.

<comment><USER69> Narconon[1] is a Scientology front. Not to be confused with Narcotics Anonymous

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


TI issues a DMCA notice to hobbyist group United-TI (re: key factorization) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/14/145/145316.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting point from the hack-a-day thread of comments[1]:

      "This article lashes out pretty bad against TI. Please
      keep in mind what they have to lose here. It's not about
      keeping software proprietary.

      It's keeping their calculator OSs standardized so they can
      keep their approval for national tests such as the
      ACT/SAT. I.e. a TI-89 is not allowed on them, but if some
      hacker can force an 89 OS onto the 83, then that would
      mean the TI-83 couldn't be used either.

      I'm all for hacking something, but TI stands to lose their
      entire market share because of this. Keep in mind your
      ethical responsibilities. Hackers have it too. A site like
      hackaday should hold it in much higher regard."

[1] [http://hackaday.com/2009/09/22/ti-lashes-out-at-their- bigges...](http://hackaday.com/2009/09/22/ti-lashes-out-at-their-biggest- fans/)

</comment><comment><USER2> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect></comment>


Show HN: PHP-FPM 7.4 (Seven Four) dockerized sneak preview - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/devilbox/docker-php-fpm-7.4 <comment><AUTHOR> I know it is a little early as PHP 7.3 is still an RC, but why not :-)

The PHP(-FPM) 7.4-dev image is built from the official git sources and updated/pushed nightly to ensure you'll always get the latest available state.

PHP modules

In general I try to keep all images as up-to-date as it gets and as feature- rich as it is supported. There's however always the possibility to disable any un-required modules and be sure to only use what you actually also need.

Syncronized directory permissions

When using dockerized LAMP stacks for local development, you probably also came across the issue of syncing file permissions between the local system and the Docker mounted directories. This has been addressed as well by parsing the uid/gid to the container which will then internally assign the same user/group for running process as your local OS user. This has been proven to work for Linux, Mac and Windows. To read more about the concept go here: [https://github.com/devilbox/docker-php-fpm#unsynchronized- pe...](https://github.com/devilbox/docker-php-fpm#unsynchronized-permissions)

Let me know of any issues, I am always happy to improve, discard outdated ideas and try new concepts.</comment>


Startups and Moms - <AUTHOR> http://42floors.com/blog/startups-and-moms/ <comment><USER2> As a 2013 Thiel Fellow, this hit close to home for me.

Growing up in an Asian family, I was always pressured to take the safe, traditional college route. And then grow up to be a doctor or lawyer. It's not their fault, of course, who wants a risky life for their kid?

As part of the Thiel Fellowship, I'll be moving away from Vancouver to the Bay Area. Leaving the nest. This article will be my Mother's Day Gift, to let my parents know - it's okay to let go now.

<comment><USER3> This is really awesome. But please -- save this as a note for some other time for your mother. As a dad, it'd be heartbreaking to get a "it's time to let go" note on Father's day. It would crush me. Even the most amicable divorce is tough.

Give your mom some flowers and, heck, draw something for her. Or use your talent to express your appreciation for her. But don't give her a goodbye letter on Mother's day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> And there was me hoping this was a plea for "generous parental leave policy" to be as common a startup perk as "full health and dental".

<comment><USER5> Indeed, the title could be better (OP here). For what it's worth, we do 100% paid parental leave...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Man, when I think about the heart attacks I've put my conservative Indian parents through (frequently getting lost/injured/severely sick as a small child, dropping out of high school, getting married at 19 with no income, refusing prestigious consulting jobs to go work at startups, then leaving 3 jobs in a row with less than a year at each...) it makes me realize that parenting must be even more of an emotional roller-coaster than starting a startup. I'm guessing it never gets easier, either.

Luckily it's turned out pretty well so far. I'll be sure to thank my parents for putting up with me for so long.

</comment><comment><USER7> We get it. It's an addiction that's glorified by society. Parents can't help because the entrepreneur doesn't want help. Till he ends up totally broke, burnt out, and unemployable. I'm pretty sure then the "don't give us money" rule gets reversed, at least by some parents. It's no different than having a crackhead or dopehead as a child. The chances of success are equal, if not higher for the drug addicts.

<comment><USER8> So if worried, do this after a university degree; make sure not to let your skills rust; pick up practical experience... and then take a job (even temporarily) if things go downhill?

Broke is better than massively in debt - so don't take on debt.

Burnt out is more difficult, but at least somewhat in your hands (and pretty easy to come by in the course of a 'professional' career).

Unemployable? Now that one's wholly in your hands.

Being an entrepreneur seems like a fair, if still-unorthodox way of gaining a lot of life experience, fast. Surely this a lot healthier than many alternatives (including 'just keep your shoes clean and get a white-collar job', right en-route for potential mid-life crisis and regret?)

Surely, with the experience gained (learning to execute, if naught else), the whole endeavour is a success of sorts irrespective of what happens to the startup?

<comment><USER7> Unemployable is not wholly in your hands because burnout is not at all in your hands, as evidenced by the startup culture that expects and rewards long hours even though they know how unproductive and unsustainable that is. Burn out is just another way of saying "major depressive disorder" or some other mental illness. It is not glorious and it's only in your control if you never start down that road.

Is it possible to create a startup and working normal hours while still having tight deadlines? Sure. Accountants do it for startups all the time. Why can't founders or developers? Likely because they're spending too much time working long and late, getting done in 4 hours at 2am what they could have accomplished in half an hour at 2pm. It is possible, but I have yet to see it happen.

<comment><USER9> I agree that burnout is not really in your control when you work for someone. There are games you can play to push out the hard wall, but it is hard to truly regulate it yourself when you are not your own boss.

This does not mean burnout will always happen. It just means your superiors play an important role in managing it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


At a stealth startup, dozens of engineers relentlessly worked 20-hr days - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/Farshchi/status/1159913924298326016 <comment><USER2> This post is infuriating and a new nadir in "tweet leadership" right after that 10x developer myth tweet[0]. Engineers and game devs shouldn't have to destroy their work life balance just for making a video game for children.

This person should fire himself for this post, for even having the nerve to praise such an obtuse culture.

[0] [https://twitter.com/skirani/status/1149302828420067328](https://twitter.com/skirani/status/1149302828420067328)

</comment><comment><USER3> 140 hours and no ownership equals slavery in my book. It's sad that more engineers don't insist on working at meaningful-ownership co-ops and ESOP's. Working for somebody else's C-corp where they're all about the money rarely creates a good environment in the interests of workers.

</comment><comment><USER4> Tweet deleted, archive [1]:

> At a stealth startup, dozens of engineers relentlessly worked 20-hr days, > for many weeks, and overcame many obstacles thrown at them with the vision > to make the public internet native to real-time comms. They went live today, > and end users are blown away by the result. Hats off:

It re-tweeted another [2]:

> #FortniteMiddleEastServers ARE OUT > im from the middle east and the ping IS > SO AMAZING

I'm guessing that's from this announcement [3]

> Today we're excited to launch the Fortnite Middle East server region!

> Why did it take so long?

> In order to make this happen, we had to work with some of the world's > largest cloud infrastructure companies to provide an awesome experience for > players in the Middle East. Beyond servers, we also need low latency network > connectivity to players. This has been a particular challenge in this part > of the world given the number of countries, network providers, and varying > levels of interconnection between them.

> In order to solve the networking challenge, we worked with a new partner to > build out an optimized network to carry game traffic back to our cloud > infrastructure in places where the existing networks did not meet our > performance targets. This network is deployed on hardware running in data > centers across the region with network connectivity to major end user ISPs > and more than a half dozen terrestrial and subsea international private > leased network circuits back to India.

I'm left a bit underwhelmed and confused. This sounds to me like lots of logistics and coordination to get things up, and probably cases where they go into a datacenter with 10x the requirements the datacenter has ever handled before, but.. 20 hour day for _weeks_? Why? Doing _what_?

And how is a "stealth startup" involved? Isn't this Epic Games -- the $15 billion, 28-year-old company with 1000+ employees [4] -- which to me seems like neither stealth nor startup?

[1] [https://web.archive.org/web/20190812150103/https://twitter.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190812150103/https://twitter.com/Farshchi/status/1159913924298326016)

[2] [https://twitter.com/IcyTheCube/status/1159883184483557377](https://twitter.com/IcyTheCube/status/1159883184483557377)

[3] [https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/announcing- the...](https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/announcing-the-middle- east-server-region)

[4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games)</comment>


A Letter from Your Director - <AUTHOR> Dear Employee:
You know how we're short-staffed around here, and you've been busting your hump to keep up with the workload, going above and beyond, in order to land that new managerial position that just opened up?
You know the one with the big bump in salary, more prestige, more job security, with more control over the project, that you've had your heart set on ever since you landed here?
It's time to fill that position.  Are you ready?  Are you excited?
We're going to go outside the company and hire a stranger to do that job, passing you over.  And by we, I mean you. You're going to sort through candidates and pick the person to do this job. You won't be reporting directly to this person, but, yeah, they're basically going to be your boss. They're going to get paid a lot more than you. You will be paid the same.
Oh, and we're not going to be watching your interview process much at all. You won't have to document anything and we won't base your performance bonus on the quality of who you hire, or if you actually end up hiring somebody. Just make sure you schedule lots of interviews with all that spare time you have.  That metric we will measure.
Sincerely,
Clueless Upper Management <comment><AUTHOR> What could go wrong with this strategy? If you've ever been in one of these interviews, on either side of the table, plenty.

Are you going to tell me the hiring manager is going to pick the best person for the job? There's nobody closely watching the hiring manager, and they're making it his subjective judgment call, which candidates fall on which edge of the wastebasket.

If you're anything like most people, you're going to be in absolutely no hurry to finish the hiring process, absent some pressure. Once that pressure comes, you want that position to stay vacant: maybe no hires will clue the higher-ups in to the fact that that should be your job and they should promote from within.

So how do you deflect the pressure while keeping the position vacant? Schedule a few interviews and shitcan every candidate. Not senior enough, too old. Not experienced enough. Wants too much money. Doesn't look like a good fit. Doesn't matter what you say because your excuse will be good enough for the upper management to see things the way you want them to see them. You'll offer your understanding shoulder when they come crying that they can't staff up as fast as they want.

Maybe you realize _this_ is why you're short-staffed. Your only ticket out of this purgatory is to season in your current position a bit and then hope that the company you try to land a higher-paying position at doesn't have someone in the same boat doing the hiring.

</comment><comment><USER2> You missed the part where you'll be required to train and explain the entire business to your new manager. Every doc you've written, every PowerPoint, and you'll need to sit by his or her side at meetings and cover for any technical or knowledge gaps.

Oh, and most of those docs and slides will be modified and marked up to make the business look better than ever. They'll probably even promise _better_ goals for the years ahead since things are going so great.

And, right about the time those goals are due, your new manager will be promoted upward and outward...leaving you to hold the wreckage and explain to the board why you didn't make the goals promised by their up-and-coming superstar.

(based on a true story)</comment>


Hell is Silicon Valley people who won't grow up - <AUTHOR> http://www.recode.net/2016/12/19/13600538/silicon-valley-grow-up-donald-trump-election <comment><USER2> This is not a time in which a sane, serious person looks to Silicon Valley - or the corporate sector in general - to solve society's ills. Look instead to your fellow citizens and voters.

Can the corporate sector solve a given social problem? Perhaps. Is it a good way to get solutions you will like? Perhaps not. Is it a good general way to order society? I would suggest it is certainly not.

</comment><comment><USER3> SV is now the incumbent. The borg. The new black. The man.

And, it's in denial about the fact.

Denial is how you get Trump.</comment>


Experiences Building an OS in Rust - <AUTHOR> https://mostlytyped.com/posts/experiences-building-an-os-in-ru <comment><USER2> I haven't yet read the paper proper but this statement surprised me a little:

> In particular, ownership has forced us to avoid concurrency in the kernel > and include more code than we would have liked in the TCB.

One of the strong points of Rust and its owenership system is that it allows writing concurrent code with greater confidence. I would have hoped that it'd encourage rather than discourage using concurrency.

<comment><USER3> I was surprised by this as well, so I checked their paper:

" _When multiple threads need to share a resource, they can pass ownership through channels. However, as we discuss in the rest of this paper, it does not work well in systems that use non threadbased concurrency models and when resources must be shared [...]

While hardware interrupts are asynchronous, and therefore run concurrently with other kernel code, in our operating system interrupt handlers enqueue tasks to be run in the main scheduler loop, which is single-threaded. As a result, on_receive and send can never run concurrently and no data race is possible. We overcome both issues by declaring most resources as static variables and borrowing them with 'static lifetime. [...]

Being able to mutably borrow static variables multiple times means our operating system can allow multiple drivers to reference hardware resources or each other. However, doing so means we lose the ability to detect real data races at compile time, for example, if the kernel passes a shared resource to an interrupt handler that may run concurrently. Instead, we resort to an overly conservative convention in which interrupt handlers perform no work except posting to the main scheduler's task queue. An ideal mechanism would, instead, allow for shared state between components that will never run concurrently, but disallow sharing when they may._"

<comment><USER4> > Instead, we resort to an overly conservative convention in which interrupt > handlers perform no work except posting to the main scheduler's task queue

This doesn't seem so bad. OS X does exactly this in order to minimise the time spent in interrupt mode, and so reduce scheduling jitter:

[https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin...](https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/KernelProgramming/performance/performance.html)

[https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Device...](https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/DeviceDrivers/Conceptual/WritingPCIDrivers/interrupts/interrupts.html)

<comment><USER5> In reality, IOKit drivers do perform work in the interrupt filter function that actually runs in an interrupt context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Reddit thread and the users.r-l.o thread have insightful posts: [https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/3nauhy/experiences_bu...](https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/3nauhy/experiences_building_an_os_in_rust_feedback/) [https://users.rust-lang.org/t/rfc-and-paper-experiences- buil...](https://users.rust-lang.org/t/rfc-and-paper-experiences-building-an- os-in-rust/3110/2)

</comment><comment><USER4> The "new hardware protection mechanism called MPU available on some new ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers" is a device which lets the operating system define up to eight memory regions (sixteen on the M7), optionally with holes in them. In each region, permissions can be set for read, write, and execute, and the policy for cacheing and sharing between cores can be controlled (although this is presumably not really relevant for single-core microcontrollers).

[http://infocenter.arm.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.arm.doc....](http://infocenter.arm.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.arm.doc.dui0553a/BIHJJABA.html)

[https://blog.feabhas.com/2013/02/setting-up-the- cortex-m34-a...](https://blog.feabhas.com/2013/02/setting-up-the- cortex-m34-armv7-m-memory-protection-unit-mpu/)

It's a bit like a normal MMU bit without virtual memory.

<comment><USER7> They're used in lots of smartcards and embedded designs going way back. I designed, but didn't implement, similar extensions because virtual memory model was a complex mess I couldn't secure. Segments were simple and had been used for effective security before combined with isolation aspect of MMU's. MPU's were the logical step from that. Easy to implement with highly assured methods, too, due to simplicity. Not sure how far back they go but here's an analysis of issues done in 2004 that reference MPU advantages:

[http://www.control.lth.se/documents/2004/5737.pdf](http://www.control.lth.se/documents/2004/5737.pdf)

The documents from Gemalto, Infineon, etc for their EAL5+ or EAL6+ smartcards give details on how they do the high security variants of MPU's. Rockwell- Collins ACL2-based method can also be used given they built a whole processor (AAMP7G) with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Quoting the great feedback from Gankro on Reddit:

Discussing this on Twitter/IRC:

* Wants const size_of closures (for statically allocating that many bytes). We just need RFC #1245 to get implemented (it has been accepted), and for someone to mark the size_of intrinsic as a const fn. However this might get into the weeds pretty bad since "size" is handled by trans (LLVM even). Dunno those details.

* Shared mutability of hardware registers should be able to be soundly handled by Cell.

This leaves the big issue:

The kernel has been architected as a single "main" thread, and a bunch of interrupt handling threads. All the interrupt-handling threads do is enqueue a message for the main thread to handle. The main thread then drives all the drivers off of this queue, so they all run on one thread. However they want to do some shared mutable stuff. In particular, I think they want closures that close over the same value mutably? RefCell isn't particularly acceptable because crashing is Super Bad, and they would like to avoid runtime checks anyway. They just found out about Cell, so it might work, but they seem to think this wouldn't be right.

You can make Cells pretty fine-grained. You can also consider /u/SimonSapin's proposed extension to Cell which has a replace method for non-Copy types so you could replace (say) an arbitrary Cell<Option<T>> with None temporarily through a shared reference.

Alternatively, it might be possible to manually thread the shared mutable state since it's all being driven by some top-level event-loop (as far as I can tell). This was actually an old std pattern: [https://doc.rust- lang.org/0.11.0/std/collections/hashmap/str...](https://doc.rust- lang.org/0.11.0/std/collections/hashmap/struct.HashMap.html#method.find_with_or_insert_with) (the A is "shared" closed state).

Interested to hear more about the finer details of the shared mutable state!

</comment><comment><USER9> There was a recent HN topic here on the redox-os[0] which is written in Rust (and heavy WIP). It did actually use a lot of unsafe, though.

[0] [https://github.com/redox-os/redox](https://github.com/redox-os/redox)

</comment><comment><USER10> As someone who works on the innards of a cooperative multitasking embedded OS for a living, I am sick and tired of C and C++.

Closures is a huge one. Everything is async in HW land, an interrupt fires and calls you when data is ready, so doing a read looks like

        MyOpInitialFunction()
        {
            // Business Logic
            AsyncReadFromFlash(sDataBuffer, sizeOfBuff, sizeToRead MyOpFirstCallback, contextVar);
        }

        MyOpFirstCallback(byte* dataBuf, size_t sizeRead, void* context)
        {
            //Business logic, use data read in some how
            AsyncReadFromFlash(sDataBuffer, sizeOfBuff, sizeToRead MyOpSecondCallback, contextVar);
        }

        MyOpSecondCallback(byte* dataBuf, size_t sizeRead, void* context)
        // and so on and so forth

It gets boring really fast. The system has a nice DMA controller that we use a lot, so a similar pattern exists for copying large chunks of data around.

You can actually implement a variant of closures in C using Macros, and right now the entire team wishes we had done that! (It isn't hard, in embedded land you have complete memory control, you can just memcopy the entire stack down to a given known location and memcopy it back to resume!)

Rust has a lot of features that are really useful for embedded, the problem is that it is going to be a long time, if ever, that the embedded world switches over.

Embedded systems tend to have very little code space, so efficiency of generated code is a must. LLVM and even GCC aren't as efficient as ARM's (horribly overpriced, feature lacking) compilers. The one thing ARM's compilers do though is minimize code space, and they do a very good job at it.

The other issue is that any sort of language run time is questionable. Even the C Run Time is typically not included in embedded (teams opt out of using it), if you want printf you typically write whatever subset of printf functionality you want!

Oddly enough memory safety is not a real issue, though slightly better buffer overrun protection than what we get from static analysis would be nice!

Consumers hand over a destination buffer to Producers, who return it in a callback. Because of the above async pattern, the consumer isn't even running until the data is ready.

That's solved 99% of our issues. :) (If you want someone else's data, you ask for it and get it passed in a buffer you provide!)

<comment><USER11> Any thoughts on C++ coroutines? Microsoft has a draft implemented in their compiler, and there's a second competing proposal.

[https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/magazine/mt573711.aspx](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/magazine/mt573711.aspx)

[http://www.open- std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2015/n445...](http://www.open- std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2015/n4453.pdf)

Ideally we'd implement something similar in Rust.

<comment><USER10> Embedded land is stuck with C++ 2003.

It sort of sucks.

(This is a world where v-tables are still a concern, they take up way too much code space if inheritance is allowed to get out of hand.)

Allocation is basically verbotin. This line of code is very real in embedded:

      #define malloc assert

Back to being on topic, current C++ template, with futures et al., is horrible and may cause eye cancer, Microsoft's final code is obviously cleaner. (The counter proposal is much better written though, they cover a lot more information.)

Now, if I am in happy sappy land where I get my ideal languages, it'd look something like this:

        CopyBuffers(//... assume stuff is passed in)
        {
            bytesRead = 0;
            while(bytesRead < sizeOfFile)
            {
                error, bytesThisLoop = AsyncRead(fileHandle, &buffer, bufferSize);
                if( error )
                {  // do stuff }
                if( bytesReadThisLoop == 0 ) // something has gone wrong, error should have caught it
                { // Something is wrong }

                bytesRead += bytesThisLoop;

                error, bytesWritten = AsyncWrite(destHandle, &buffer, bytesRead);
                if( error )
                {  // do stuff }
                if( bytesWritten != bytesRead )
                { // Something may be wrong, depending on our write contract }
        }

Someplace in AsyncWrite my entire state is captured and handed off to someone. The counter proposal suggests I handle the state myself, which is fine (but not as cool looking!)

Now on to said competing paper;

 _" Memory usage is exactly that required to represent the resumable function's maximum stack depth,"_

Which for a cooperative multitasking system, that is pretty well defined, you have a while(1) somewhere dispatching tasks! (Or an equivalent thread/fibers/etc manager.)

I agree that the "up and out" model leads to more boilerplate. Although I actually like requiring use of "await" to indicate that calling this function is going to pause the thread, but I'd like it used purely as an FYI to the programmer that is compiler enforced to be put in place. (I'm not a fan of surprises.)

They have an idea of a resumable object, which I think they take too long explaining, all coroutine systems have this, you have to at least copy the stack off to somewhere.

 _" Resumable objects are non-copyable and non-moveable"_

Sort of sad, I can think of some very fun abuses, but since 99% of them would result in a crash... ;)

So overall, and this is the part I am not clear about, they want to restrict this to resumable expressions. From what I grok, that seems to mesh with my request for "await" being enforced. (though here it seems needed).

The final syntax at the end is a bit ugly, I am not a fan of out parameters. Ignoring that, it may be less work overall on the programmer to get the base case up and running, I don't want to have to wrap all my async functions in adapter classes, it is nice if the compiler does it for me.

The more complex cases get ugly though. I'd like to see a really simple non- template example of just how to read from a file from the consumer's perspective.

IMHO that is 90% of the problem space for async. "IO is slow, get back to me when you're done."

Thanks for leading me down this hole! :)

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I'm not brave enough for embedded.

I'm still pretty excited about what's happening in this space though. Thanks for your thoughts.

<comment><USER10> In some ways embedded is easier, in others much harder. Doing it all on your own is hard, but if you have a good team backing you I think it is actually easier than trying to write a large desktop app in native.

No OS to get in your way. No decades of legacy APIs to clog things up. Because the entire world is understandable, no need to be concerned about someone else's thread ruining your day.

All your I/O channels are well measured and have know latency and throughput. If you are lucky enough enough to work with SRAM, then you even get a nice constant access speed to memory.

Interrupt routines are a fancy way to say "callback" and Direct Memory Access is a nice way to say "memcopy without CPU overhead".

That said, the initial getting up and running part is hard, that is why lots of pre-existing systems with their own little runtime exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is valuable feedback. It's great that Rust has been so receptive, making changes where appropriate.

<comment><USER8> Indeed, and while I think their specific proposal is quite unlikely to end up in the language proper (it's a lot of machinery for a very specific purpose, and still isn't quite "safe" by Rust's definition), it's great food for thought for future enhancements to the language (such as making size_of a const function so that it can be evaluated at compile time).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's been quite a bit of work at securing embedded systems with safer languages (esp Java) or MPU's (esp smartcards). Gemalto's EAL7 JavaCard work, MULTOS, IBM's Caernarvon... all made stuff to enforce strong protection w/ similarly, rough constraints. Usually no MPU although some smartcards had them with some public data on design or proper usage. I recommend the authors dig up stuff on systems like that to find strategies for countering various issues.

Most that I saw handle resource and security decisions via type system, safe transformations to bytecode, and safe handling of that. Fast paths are sometimes implemented in assembler with safety put into HLL or VM interface to that... if vendor felt like it. (shakes head) Where this didn't work, there were coding rules or frameworks for carefully designing and decomposing the system to manually prevent/catch issues. Most do all of this on development machine with target system just blindly accepting or trusted booting a signed binary representing system or apps. Cuz what else can you do with such constraints... (shrugs)

Far as specific hardware or Rust issues, I can't help as I don't work with those.

</comment><comment><USER11> Basic question — when you're writing a kernel in Rust with its own threading implementation, how does the rust compiler even know what threads are? It has to identify thread boundaries for send/sync, right?

<comment><USER13> The compiler has no concept of what a thread is anywhere, even in the standard library. The safety is imposed by careful bounds on exactly the right functions: those that interact/create new threads, e.g. std::thread::spawn has signature:

      pub fn spawn<F, T>(f: F) -> JoinHandle<T>
          where F: Send + 'static + FnOnce() -> T, T: Send + 'static

Other than implementations of `Send`/`Sync` themselves, this is essentially the only function in std that needs to bound by them.

The same approach can be used in a kernel context, e.g. place bounds on the functions that create (or, at least, initialise interaction between) concurrently executing pieces of code.

<comment><USER11> Ah, so Rust does represent thread semantics through types? It's curious that the authors don't mention that in their proposal.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, everything is driven by implementing (or not, as appropriate) Send and Sync for types.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


$15,000 In Income From An EBook, How I Did It - <AUTHOR> http://www.saturnflyer.com/blog/jim/2012/09/19/15000-in-income-from-an-ebook-how-i-did-it/ <comment><USER2> Very nicely done! Selling books and training is a great way to get into products. My first ebook was released 2 weeks ago ($20k+ in sales so far).

To anyone wondering if they could do it to, the answer is yes. I can point to a dozen stories of successful ebooks that have made over $10k in 6 months. Not to mention to increase in credibility and readership that the author gains.

Here are my quick tips on writing a technical guide:

1\. Find a topic that is in high demand. I chose designing iOS apps, anything related to popular programming languages or new technologies.

2\. Talk about the value to the customer (time saved, better understanding, etc) rather than the features of your product (100 pages, PDF, ePub, etc). You need to mention the details of what the purchaser gets, but that isn't what will sell them on your product.

3\. Don't just sell an ebook. Ebooks are cheap and simple or at least that is how they appear. Sell the book, but with it package code samples, video tutorials, expert interviews, and anything else that will give the reader a head start. This has the advantage of increasing the value of your product which helps with pricing.

4\. Have more than one package. With my book I had three packages, with different amounts of extras in each. The base one included the book and a couple templates, the middle included 5 detailed video tutorials and more templates as, and the largest one had even more templates and code samples. Each package built on itself and the price increased accordingly.

Many people, and especially companies, won't hesitate to buy a more expensive package if it looks like it will save them more time.

5\. Price high. My packages are at $39, $79, and $169. Setting those high prices is the best decision I made. The highest priced package has made almost as much money as the previous two combined. Jim does a great job with a price of $42.

I hope that helps anyone considering selling an information product like what many people on HN have done recently.

For reference you can checkout the sales page to see how my packages are organized: <http://nathanbarry.com/app-design-handbook/>

<comment><USER3> The problem is that books that try and sell me based on promising some improvement in my lifestyle usually set my BS radar off.

I have a lot of programming books on my shelf about various topics , but I don't have one called "make a shitton of money with your text editor".

It would feel a bit like those ebooks that promise to make it easy to generate effortless income on the stockmarket or get highly attractive women into bed with you.

I have no doubt that such books sell, but I wouldn't feel confident writing something that might not necessarily do exactly what it said on the tin for everyone reading it.

<comment><USER4> Email me at brennan at planscope.io and I'll forward you a dozen emails from people who've bought my book (<http://doubleyourfreelancingrate.com>) who now have a higher income and a better lifestyle.

The books on your bookshelf are meant to improve your lifestyle - they teach you new skills that you can charge for. Some books, however, do that on a higher, more general level.

<comment><USER2> After reading Brennan's book I raised my rate from $100/hr up to $150/hr. When I mentioned my rate to 4 new prospects they didn't seem to notice. It didn't seem expensive at all to them.

Maybe I should raise my rates further...

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure why you need a book to tell you that you can raise you rates if you think that people will pay your higher rates.

<comment><USER2> I've thought that I could raise my rates for over a year now. But Brennan's book gave me the drive to actually do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Congrats, Jim!

I think a lot of people severely underestimate their ability to teach others. I didn't think I had any information of value to give to freelancers until I wrote my book and was overloaded with "thank you" emails (and $$$). And I know a lot of other people selling infoproducts (including Jim) that have gone through the same experience.

I'd encourage everyone reading this to think about what _you_ have to offer that someone else might want. Is this something valuable that they'd pay for? Chances are, if this someone can make a better living from your research, they will pay. It's really one of the most rewarding win-win I've experienced.

<comment><USER5> Thanks. It's hard work, for sure, but all the knowledge and experience behind it is there. Impostor syndrome must be overcome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6>
      I already had a leg up because I had most of my product put together. I just needed to figure out how to market it.

      And the first thing I learned was that my product was dead, would remain dead, and was a waste of further time and effort. I fundamentally had begun in the wrong place and needed to first find what people wanted.

You could put a million MBAs in a room for a million years and they'd never come up with any strategy more effective than _talking_ _to_ _actual_ _customers_ _first_.

<comment><USER5> I actually have customers on that product. But they're unfocused and unrelated. How do you add features when the customer needs aren't clear? You don't. You just kill it.

<comment><USER6> "Actual customers" is about as overloaded as "talking."

You need people you can connect with, provide value to, extract value from - and you have to make all that into a reproducible and reasonably predictable process given all of the constraints in play.

If you can do that, you're often well down the path towards a viable business. If not ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cache version : [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.saturnflyer.com/blog/jim/2012/09/19/15000-in- income-from-an-ebook-how-i-did-it/)

</comment><comment><USER8> I like how Jim priced it at $42. It seems like a lot of authors go too low, trying to profit from quantity instead of quality. To me, asking a higher price on an ebook helps show the value you can expect from it after reading it.

<comment><USER5> Less than an hour of billing and they've got new techniques and better understanding of application architecture. It's also the answer to life the universe and everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> $15k certainly sounds impressive, but how many hours have been spent researching, writing and marketing the book? Only once we have a ratio'd figure to compare can we claim success.

<comment><USER4> There is more to success than the income.

1) You build a mailing list of people who have bought from you in the past. HUGE value here.

2) You get some extra personal brand exposure. Invitations to speak at conferences, podcast interviews, and so on.

3) Passive income is the gift that keeps on giving.

<comment><USER10> Good points but don't forget that he probably also increased his expertise in Ruby which itself drives value in his consulting work.

<comment><USER11> Not necessarily.

But it certainly increased his _percieved_ value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow. This is great. I've been working on an ebook myself as I both need the supplementary income and have the expertise in a certain niche to do it.

I tried kick starter, but they rejected me. Apparently they don't allow any sort of how-to materials. I hadn't realized it was so easy to sell as a per- release. This is actually really encouraging and I think I may borrow your entire layout!

Oh, and that sounds like one heck of a week. Glad to hear your spirits are still high.

edit: Where did you put the link to your mailing list in the "tip of the iceberg" piece you linked to?

<comment><USER5> Thanks!

There was a signup form there originally, now it's a link to my main page about the book at <http://clean-ruby.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Thanks for a great read Jim. I've also been doing very well from my own series of ebooks, one of which has remained in the top 10 of it's category since last year (jumping to # 1 several times). Unlike you, I didn't realize the great passive income potential of ebooks until after I put my 1st one out. Since then I've churned out several of them and I haven't looked back.

I won't claim that ebooks have made me rich, but they have provided a very nice supplemental income for me.

<comment><USER14> zupreme: Just curious, would you mind sharing a link to your ebooks ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The buy now link at the bottom of the article points to a nasty warning in Chrome, I tried to add this as a comment but that didn't work and your site in general seems down now.

<comment><USER5> Thanks! I didn't anticipate this kind of traffic. I'm working on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I would like to write an e-book on how I made money from an e-book. I think it will make millions!

<comment><USER17> You mean like John Locke did?

[http://www.amazon.com/Sold-Million-eBooks-Months- ebook/dp/B0...](http://www.amazon.com/Sold-Million-eBooks-Months- ebook/dp/B0056BMK6K)

<comment><USER18> In case anyone thinks of buying the book above, John Locke is mentioned in this NY Times article which says part of his "system" which is not mentioned in his book is buying Amazon reviews.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/business/book-reviewers- fo...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/business/book-reviewers-for-hire- meet-a-demand-for-online-raves.html?pagewanted=all)

<comment><USER19> Interesting article, I always suspected this went on but never to the extent described in the article.</comment></comment></comment></comment>