The antidepressant effect of sleep deprivation - <AUTHOR> https://mosaicscience.com/story/staying-awake-surprisingly-effective-way-treat-depression/ <comment><USER3> How very odd for me to find this on HN this evening. I'm on "day 2" of my once a week sleep fast, which means things are a bit surreal to begin with.

For each of the last seven weeks, I stay awake from Thursday morning until my "regular" bedtime hour Friday evening.

I do this because it actually seems to be an effective way to avoid falling into a hole of anhedonia and "stuck-ness." I am hip to many of the cognitive tricks of depression, and can deal, kind of--I am utterly unable to deal with the physical listlessness and absence of drive that comes with it.

Skipping sleep on a set schedule seems to work for me. At first I didn't think I could keep it up, and I was concerned by potential safety hazards. My concerns are justified, as I am pretty loopy by Friday afternoon, or around the 32 hour mark.

Of all the esoteric treatments for my mood, this is perhaps the only real success except for Yoga (BKS-style Ashtanga).

I have a feeling I might receive some benefit from ascetic practices in general; and will experiment with caloric restriction, e.g. in future months.

I have no idea if I should expect the effects of this practice to remain pronounced, and my experience seems to differ somewhat from that described in the article.

I sure hope I continue to benefit, because I don't respond well to any of the usual methodologies. Also, I don't feel comfortable enough in the onions to do a proper Ketamine trial.

// I don't mean to sound breezy. I only include that last note to emphasize how unendurable my world was becoming.

If this makes sense to you, I feel for you. One foot in front of the other...

The downside: I am totally sober, but I know my executive function is not working very well, and I may very well regret commenting.

edit: some glaring issues with words

<comment><USER4> Wow! I awoke early this morning from a bit of a bender last night and have a similar feeling of mania (the positive, productive kind). At first I attributed it to a GABA rebound, but thinking back, a sleep fast has historically injected a sense of urgency and vigour.

I have been fasting intermittently after reading Valter Longo's metabolic oxidation research (the term they used for aging research to get it published). I skip breakfast and try to leave 16-18 hours between meals. Have been losing weight but keeping muscle tone almost effortlessly. My skin has also improved. No negative effect so far.

Good interview about I.F.: [https://youtu.be/d6PyyatqJSE](https://youtu.be/d6PyyatqJSE)

<comment><USER5> I'm also skipping breakfast. Trying to keep at least 16 hours between dinner and lunch. Started nearly a year ago. Generally I feel better, and intend to continue, but:

* Somehow I didn't lose much weight. I wasn't particularly overweight to begin with though. Maybe lost 1-2kg over this period(?)

* My blood tests showed _increase_ in cholesterol. I was reading about it and it seems common (or not very uncommon). It's still not too bad, but higher than before.

Actually, I'm not sure what I'm trying to say or ask :) but mostly curious if there's something I'm doing wrong I suppose.

<comment> 52-6F-62 You should be careful doing that too regularly. Once a week is the maximum I've understood would be healthy for typical first world lifestyles.

It will otherwise coax your body into starvation response. This is true even with low calorie diets.

You can cause you're body to retain store energy and retain fat rather than in a constant state of burning what you take in.

If you're looking to lose weight you're better off just limiting carbohydrates on non workout days. Eat a lot of vegetables and protein, take a multi, and do cardio and high intensity interval training 3-5 times a week.

If you want to build strength and lose weight then mix in resistance training into the routine as well.

As a baseline that schedule will help with anxiety, depression, and get your metabolism on track.

For most people, that is. I've been on antidepressants before as well as some anxiolytics. Excercise, vitamins, and eating healthy most of the time does a world of difference. Another benefit is you don't have to limit you're calories as harshly. Energy levels go up as well— to the point where sitting at a desk all day is too much idling!

Btw, I eat between 2 and 6 eggs a day (between breakfast and lunch), use butter/olive oil/sesame oil in cooking regularly, and my cholesterol has never been high following that general scheme. No hacks or tricks.

[https://www.health.harvard.edu/diet-and-weight-loss/does- met...](https://www.health.harvard.edu/diet-and-weight-loss/does-metabolism- matter-in-weight-loss)

<comment><USER5> > Once a week is the maximum I've understood would be healthy for typical > first world lifestyles.

As far as I understand, the 16-hour fasting (skipping breakfast) is something you keep doing rather than once a week. Unlike a 24/48+ hour fasting some people do once in a while... Maybe I missed some crucial piece of information?

<comment> 52-6F-62 Yes, that calorie reduction to that degree increases the chance (body type- dependant) that your'll induce starvation prevention reactions in your body. An at rest adult human typically requires 2000 calorie sharing a day to maintain weight. That's if you never left your bed. Regularly reducing that further will cause your body to store more energy which results in fat gain. And not always the good kind.

The simple way for me to put it is move your body and fuel it regularly for the best results. You don't have to fast 16 hours a day, and I d wager you'd meet better results without doing so.

If you don't want to move your body then that's a whole other world of questions. But if you're generally healthy and capable, you should.

<comment><USER6> The IF literature I've read indicates that calorie reduction isn't really a goal, though it often happens to some degree. But I'm generally not taking in 2/3rd of prior calories just because I'm eating 2/3rd of the meals - more like 3/4 or 4/5.

This is all new to me so curious where you're getting this info from so I can read up.

<comment> 52-6F-62 No problem. I really brought up calories, etc due to the other posters mentioning limited weight loss (or sometimes gain) as well as increased cholesterol even though they were reducing the frequency of meals (I was guessing at a reduction in calories because of that, though it's fair to say that I don't _really_ have that insight in this case)

The info I'm conveying is part coaching, part experience/anecdotal, and part reading aggregate from health studies, running and sports health magazines, as well as general health magazines.

My parents were national-level athletes (70's/80's) and, later on, coaches. My mother was certified to coach in the Olympics (though she did not and continued her work locally). I was an athlete when I was younger and learned most of it then, but have in recent years taken a return to focusing more on my health. Also much of my reading stemmed from trying to lose weight after quitting smoking (also went from a physical job to a physically-idle one around the same time. Gained nearly 50 pounds. I was on antidepressants and anxiolytics at the same time. It was messy)

My girlfriend's step mother is competing at the world championship Iron Man race this fall in Kona, and her advice was much the same (we plug everyone we can for coaching. Her stepmom even has her on a custom workout).

I don't have much hard reading I can provide off hand, but a few searches surrounding the points I put out there should yield quite a bit of information. Primarily links between excercise and how it helps with depression and anxiety, and metabolic studies including starvation responses.

If you want to continue the discussion further I'd be happy to, and happy to help find further info that might resound more than some hexadecimal-aliased rambler on a message board. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've definitely noticed that this works for me on occasion - staying up all night to see the sunrise and then going about as usual seems to be a cleansing experience of sorts.

In such a state, it feels that the mind is too exhausted to lend itself to worry or anxiety. The troubles seem far less consequential through the haze.

I didn't keep track of what happens the day after catching up on sleep, but in general, being lifted even for a single day out of the quagmire is very helpful: one can make plans for the future (in a depressed state, people tend to not make any plans because they don't want anything, and what they want, they think they can't do), and one can feel contrast between their good and bad states of mind (depression tricks people into thinking that their depressed state is actually their normal state).

That said, sometimes staying up all night just meant sleeping all day -- and I don't know to which extent my experience even compares with the one of the people in the article.

Still, it's something everyone suffering from the symptoms can try for free. Beats a night of restlessness and bad sleep hands down, and there's little to lose if you experiment on a weekend.

<comment><USER8> exhaustion is often a nice way to cleanse; but I've been ill to the point of not being asleep for 5 days, and the confusion was nearing madness to the point I'd avoid feeling that way as much as possible :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Somehow my quackery detectors go off on this one, but I'm not quite sure.

The article talks about "recent studies" without linking to them. The "references" section at the end links to a single peer-reviewed article ([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5447205/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5447205/)) in a journal with an impact factor of less then one (compare [https://www.researchgate.net/journal/0379-5284_Saudi_medical...](https://www.researchgate.net/journal/0379-5284_Saudi_medical_journal) for example).

If it works, why not give some citations in more reputable journals, for example?

Most articles, when searching for depression + sleep deprivation, talk about the correlation between the two, which seems to be pretty well-established. There's little on the possible treatment of depression through sleep deprivation.

I found a meta-analysis on the subject: [http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/28937707](http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/28937707)

"The overall response rate to sleep deprivation was 45% among studies that utilized a randomized control group and 50% among studies that did not. The response to sleep deprivation was not affected significantly by the type of sleep deprivation performed, the nature of the clinical sample, medication status, the definition of response used, or age and gender of the sample.These findings support a significant effect of sleep deprivation and suggest the need for future studies [...]"

I don't have the qualifications to assess this meta analysis; at least it's published in a more popular/reputable journal.

<comment><USER10> I felt a little bit like this last time the subject was on HN, and after similarly looking into the research further, I feel like the treatment is valid and works, but only for specific people with specific problems. It's very important that the article qualifies this as working only for severe depression and/or possibly bipolar disorder.

Treatments having the opposite effect on someone with an uncommon symptom as they do on the general population aren't unheard of. Like how some people with real ADHD are calmed by caffeine.

I attribute my disbelief about sleep deprivation to not having heard about this before and to the mountain of social narrative around good regular sleep being so critically important to your health, which also has evidence but isn't trivial to pin down specifically by reading research journals.

</comment></comment><comment> B-Con It sounds like the theory behind this is kicking the circadian rhythm to see if it improves.

> Depression is also associated with altered daily rhythms of hormone > secretion and body temperature, and the more severe the illness, the greater > the degree of disruption. Like the sleep signals, these rhythms are also > driven by the body's circadian system, which itself is driven by a set of > interacting proteins, encoded by 'clock genes' that are expressed in a > rhythmic pattern throughout the day.

A classic, almost cliche, way to address "common depression" is to normalize the person's sleep schedule. Many people keep erratic schedules and participate in activities (eg, playing video games) at end of day that make going to sleep hard. They get poorer quality sleep and have no consistency, which messes up the circadian rhythm and contributes to depression. Such people are advised to at least try keeping a consistent sleep schedule for a couple weeks to see if it helps them.

The technique in the article seems to be the figurative opposite, possibly because regular sleep cycles are either inadequate or infeasible to achieve. They force a short-term horrible sleep cycle to see if they can jolt the circadian rhythm into working better.

<comment><USER11> I can attest that for me a regular sleep schedule works, but only so far.

At first it works kinda well as I feel increasingly settled as days go by, but at some point it seems being too restful kicks my mind into overdrive mode. From experience I can now detect such events, as it starts with a general feeling of everything being awesome, incredible energy, and fantastic happiness as I just am _there_ (as with mindfulness and meditation), do many things† for a day or two, then everything inevitably crashes down†† as I start feeling increasingly but subtly anxious about minute details, followed by an increasing inability to focus and then comes listlessness. If a (even remotely) bad event happens right after the peak happiness state it can send me spiralling down even faster.

The only thing that can curb that is:

\- an occasional short night (like getting 3 to 4 hours of sleep) once a week or so, after which I feel surprisingly refreshed. Sometimes it happens naturally as I wake up in the middle of the night and can't sleep, or go to bed late. But it better not last two or three days in a row or then the crashing down thing happens and it's even harder to climb up as the added sleep deficit combined with listlessness makes me very sleepy during the day. Note: I am largely unable to voluntarily control my sleep schedule.

\- regular strenuous physical exercise, like daily, and for hours, and preferably outside. It seems I need to shoot my body through a satiated state of physical sensations in order to saturate my nervous system and keep my mind in check. I can skip a day or two but exercising, say, every other day doesn't check out as though the slope, while less steep, is still trending downwards. Outdoors is incredibly important to me as there are so much more physical stimuli (light, wind, sounds) and with greater variations than indoors.

\- food and water. Regular hydration is capital for me, and some kind of mineral water is best. Tap water is out of question for some reason (strangely seems to upset my bowel/urinary system after a few days). A balanced diet can do wonders but it seems I can be derailed easily on that front.

I sort of picture my mood swings as _f(t+phi) = mood_ , with f basically resembling a sine wave, and physical exertion seems to help me in adjusting phi. My general strategy to combat that is to try to hit that sweet spot where I'm right before the super-happiness point and attempt to ride the wave using exercise, caffeine and nicotine†† (sadly, using tobacco).

Honestly though I try not to put too much thought into it as I managed to turn anxiety about the situation into more like curiosity. Anyway on a larger scale the general mood trend is sensibly upwards as looked at retrospectively I'm climbing inch by inch out of that hole.

† I tried not being so hyperactive, pacing myself and not doing so many things but it doesn't change a thing to the process.

†† I found out that one of the dead giveaways of when I'm trending towards the downward slope is that I start skipping on automatically hydrating myself.

††† caffeine seems to act as a baseline offset but too much outright prevents sleep, while nicotine seems to act as a dampener, both for high and low swings of mood.

<comment><USER12> If you're using nicotine to help regulate your mood, I would definitely recommend grabbing a vape; your lungs will thank you.

On the flip side, a vape 'may' not be as effective, as it is possible its one of the other chemicals in tobacco that's helping. Tobacco is known to act as an MAOI, and MAOIs tend to be prescribed as antidepressants

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Haven't read the article yet, but it sounds grim, I don't think it can be good for me.

Instead of forced sleep deprivation, try this for a week: intermittent fasting and calorie restriction, good nutrition (veggies, nuts, olive oil, eggs, etc.), no drinking (at all), going to bed early (like 10 pm), waking up early (at dawn in the summer at 4 am would be perfect), but naturally, without an alarm clock.

Doing this, you may find out that you only need 5-6 hours of sleep, especially in the summer. And moderate (outdoors) exercise - this is important.

Since a lot of you guys are in the bay area, you have a lot of sun during the year; that makes this routine a lot easier and more rewarding (sunshine increases the feeling of "high" for most people).

After doing this for a while, you might find out you're naturally high all the time, without going through crashes.

<comment><USER14> > good nutrition (veggies, nuts, olive oil, eggs, etc.)

I'd highly recommend reducing carb intake; cut out your bread, sugar, starch, pasta and try to stick with meat and greens. Low carb diets (Keto, Adkins, etc.) made a huge difference for me health wise.

<comment><USER15> Ugh. Carbs are fuel. Cutting out the specifics you mentioned are good, but generally cutting out carbs is not good for most people.

<comment><USER16> Carbs are one source of fuel/calories. Fats are another, and protein as well (albeit to a much lesser extent).

<comment><USER15> Yes, but if you look at studies for the vast majority of people the common denominator across diets like the GP mentioned is improved diet quality and eating less. Most people don't need to remove carbs themselves. Sure, pasta is refined grain etc, but if you are well and not overeating then there's nothing wrong with it. A (if not the) primary problem is that people tend to overeat things that contain lots of carbs and/or fats that fail to satiete.

<comment><USER16> To your point, restricting carbs in those diets is one of the keys to eating less. You mention (and rightly so) that "people tend to overeat things that contain lots of carbs and/or fats that fail to satiate": if there aren't carbs in the mix, fats (and protein) satiate more quickly (and for longer) than when accompanied by a hefty portion of carbs.

'djsumdog pointed out diets that many have found successful and meet the requirements that 'georka mentioned, moving the conversation forward constructively. If you have diets suggestions that also meet those requirements, or constructive criticism that 'georka's or 'djsumdog's points are off base and have alternatives, great!

As for "Most people don't need to remove carbs", at least in the US, while complete removal isn't necessary, I believe many could benefit from restricting their carb intake, keeping everything else constant (as long as they're getting adequate protein and vitamins/minerals). Whether that's due to shifting the macronutrient balance or just from the reduced caloric input, they should see a benefit, and likely will not feel hungry. It sounds like you agree that low carb diets can benefit people. In that case, if you have other diets you prefer, offer them up constructively (though likely elsewhere, as this is now well-off the beaten path of this thread).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For me, the big shock has always been the extent to which sleep can kill a fantastic streak of productivity. I sometimes have weeks of incredible energy, where I work 12 or even 14 hours every day, and I do my best work, and I have deep insights, and invent new products and new kinds of software. And generally, over the course of a week or two, I become more productive each day. And finally I have a day when I am on fire and I'm writing incredible code and I'm writing some of my most popular essays, the stuff that continues to be read years later. And I go to sleep thinking that tomorrow will be just as good. And I sleep 9 hours. And I wake up and I am a completely different person. My thoughts don't make sense. I'm a bit disoriented. I drink 3 cups of coffee but I still feel groggy. I have no energy. The magic is gone. I'm lucky if I get 4 hours of good work done. And the next day is terrible, and the next day is terrible, and the so on. And it is always a shock what a sudden start there is to this prolonged grogginess, and it always seems to start with one night where I sleep a bit too long.

<comment><USER18> Maybe you're mixing up cause and effect. Maybe your "sleep" was collapsing with exhaustion when it all caught up?

<comment><USER17> That theory would only work if sleep caused me to feel refreshed. But I don't think any of us have ever had the experience that more sleep lead to more awakeness. It's not as if we are well rested after 8 hours of sleep, and even more energized by 9 hours of sleep, and even more energized by 10 hours of sleep, and even more energized by 11 hours of sleep, etc.

I think most of us have had the experience of over-sleeping, and then being strangely groggy all day. Certainly, most of my friends have had that experience.

<comment><USER18> That may be because your sleep deficit is say 20 hours and your need 8 (6 if lucky) to break even so you need something like 10 hours a day for 10 days to catch up.

All this is to say I occasionally feel groggy but if I consistently sleep "a lot" I feel great after a few days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "if you're depressed, [sleep deprivation] can prompt an immediate improvement in mood, and in cognitive abilities. But, Benedetti adds, there's a catch: once you go to sleep and catch up on those missed hours of sleep, you'll have a 95 per cent chance of relapse."

Sounds like there's a high risk for turning depression into insomnia. Not sure if it's an improvement.

<comment><USER20> Yep, once I caught up on my sleep the next day would be the same anxiety, depression cycle all over. Crazy to read about this today after having this exact phenomenon happen to me years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> My personal experience is exactly the opposite. Lack of sleep induces depression. This is also supported by many studies. I recommend this read [http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/matters/conseque...](http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/matters/consequences)

<comment><USER22> In the article it says:

"Sleep deprivation really has opposite effects in healthy people and those with depression," says Benedetti. If you're healthy and you don't sleep, you'll feel in a bad mood. But if you're depressed, it can prompt an immediate improvement in mood, and in cognitive abilities."

<comment><USER23> Sounds like the theory relies on distraction to provoke attention away from depression. "Look at that shiny thing over there". Unfortunately the shiny thing is the effect of unhealthy sleep deprivation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> My experience is that sleep deprivation amplifies emotion. That can be good or bad feelings. It's like an op-amp.

Prayer is like a diode. It manages the low emotions.

Together, sleeping less and praying more works like an AC-DC rectifier. My average emotion moves above zero, so things are better.

</comment><comment> master-litty I'm in the middle of a sleepless night now and am already feeling that familiar high.

I've never met anyone beyond family who could relate -- especially about the cognitive improvements, this is when I do my best work! This is an exceptionally interesting post for me.

Much of my mother's side is bipolar and it continues in me. As long as I can remember noticing, I run through 3 very definitive emotional states:

* I am feeling productive and withdraw from society. I get frustrated when I'm unable to work and often go without sleep to make up lost time

* I am feeling social and withdraw from the extreme productivity. I simply don't want to sleep when I can have late night company

* I am feeling depressed and withdraw from everything and everyone. I am inconsolable and confused by my mood. I eventually and magically get sick of it, often after a sleepless night

The sleep deprivation is a critical part of my natural rhythm now that I really think about it. The article rings deeply true.

</comment><comment><USER25> So the cure for depression is to take hallucinogens like ketamine or deliberately deprive yourself of sleep? It's like making yourself happier by making yourself less sharp. Perhaps, then, one is depressed because one is _rational_ \- because there are real, serious problems with life that need to be dealt with, not escaped. The recent "cures" sound almost Huxley-an.

<comment><USER26> You can have everything you want in life and still be depressed. I find even people who have been there and overcome can forget this about depression.

Depression is a thing that happens to you, an ailment that occurs. Sadness about a sad thing is not depression, apathy because things aren't going okay is not depression. They can lead to depression if they go on long enough, but they aren't themselves a mental disorder. They're just emotions.

Depression is a mental disorder. An incorrectly operating subroutine in your brain that's flooding you with emotions that make no sense and shutting down others that you would normally feel given the circumstances.

You stop smiling at puppies, you stop crying for movies, but then you cry because you dropped your fork, and get annoyed that people you love are talking (okay, sometimes that's normal!).

Granted, your line of thinking is why I think some people stay at jobs they hate, stress themselves out with it, and then fall into depression through years of stress and apathy toward their health. But you could also suffer from depression while working a job you love and sleeping on stacks of cash every night.

<comment><USER27> This isn't wrong, but it is a simplistic model of one layer of depression, which can be a pragmatic way to look at it for some people during some periods, typically the most severe periods. I've suffered from severe depression for my whole adult life, and I am thankful that I haven't had a psychiatrist who subscribed to the medical model as an absolute, in many years. The big picture of depression can indeed be about your life, and no psychiatrist I've seen in the past 15 years has failed to acknowledge that. It's well known that major depression often follows major life stresses such as divorce, breakups, deaths, trauma, other illnesses, and so on. I've never found it fruitful to make it either all about the brain, or all about your life. It's rather a feedback loop between the two. The very nature of subjectivity makes it almost nonsensical to try to distinguish between your mind and your life, from your own perspective. And there's a reason treatment almost always includes talk therapy. I've always been able to articulate what my depression is about. Some people can't. It's just not so clear cut.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Personally I find it's the opposite if I'm not well rested I feeling death and feel super depressed. I had a job that believed this and limited us sometimes to only 90 minutes sleep. I never worked with a more angry group of people. I'm 46 years old, working like that at 45 almost killed me. Oversleeping can also be a factor in depression but there is a golden sweet spot of just enough sleep and not too much that can vary greatly between individuals you have to find out for yourself what that sweet spot is. Certainly 90 minutes is not enough to sustain health

<comment><USER29> > I had a job that believed this and limited us sometimes to only 90 minutes > sleep.

Can you elaborate on that? How could your employer possibly control something like how long you sleep?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've experienced this first hand. However the line is very thin as sleep deprivation tends to ricochet in the other direction.

</comment><comment><USER20> Roughly 2 years ago I fell into a depression because of debilitating anxiety. The anxiety would keep me awake through the night. Low and behold the whole next day the depression and anxiety would be gone. I wouldn't be overly tired either, so the trade off was fine. This would happen roughly once or twice a week. Always, the next day following a sleepless night I pretty much felt 'normal'.

Eventually I swallowed my pride and went to the doctor and was prescribed an SSRI & NDRI. I was too afraid to take the SSRI(with anxiety can some OCD, I was obsessed for awhile I was becoming schizophrenic) so only took the NDRI(Wellbutrin, generic). Eventually it pulled me out of my depression and I was began sleeping normally again. I weened off the NDRI about 6 months later.

Luckily the depression hasn't came back, in full force. I go through cycles of what I would say "mini-depression" every once awhile, but I am able to push through and conquer. The medicine was a must for me to get through my depression and get back on a normal sleep cycle. I don't miss the sleepless nights at all, but they sure helped me stay somewhat sane during those rough times.

<comment><USER31> The symptoms you described in your first paragraph describe what I'm currently going through to a tee. Theses symptoms only started about a week ago for me.

Day 1: Debilitating anxiety, can't concentrate.

Night 1: Can't sleep, overwhelmed by anxious rumination.

Day 2: Anxiety eventually subsides because I'm so exhausted. By the evening, I'm feeling like my old self again - I might have anxious thoughts but they don't become obsessive ruminations.

Night 2: Sleep well. Repeat cycle.

\---

I'm glad you got better. Hopefully the same will happen for me as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Ok, so this is _one_ possible thing to try when one has depression. Who is keeping a list of _all_ things to try, and where does this experiment fit in that list?

<comment><USER33> Sounds like a a web app with voting would be a useful thing. In the UK mental health services have almost disappeared, especially for those who are not extreme. Maybe a list of things to try yourself is useful?

<comment><USER33> Well this got the better of me, there is now a list on Github [https://github.com/Jimnotgym/Hacking_Depression](https://github.com/Jimnotgym/Hacking_Depression)

Please PR if you want to comment. I'll do a ShowHN once there is more on it

<comment><USER32> This is a great initiative!

Some quick ideas. Perhaps you can mention what should determine the order in the list. For example, every experiment has:

\- A success rate.

\- An average time to noticeable improvement

\- An average time to recovery.

\- Risk and severity of side effects.

\- Cost.

\- Difficulty.

\- More?

So for example, checking for nutritional deficiencies (very important) or other tests can be near the top of the list (little side effects, low cost, not difficult, etc). But psychotherapy should be near the bottom (high cost, difficult, long recovery time, etc.)

Perhaps split according to cure/prevention/coping strategy. (For example SSRIs are in many cases a coping strategy and not a cure).

Again, great work!

<comment><USER33> If we can get a consensus about what people are doing, rather than just what is getting posted on HN I am happy to write a quick app that applies your very sensible success criteria. Comments Issues and PR are most welcome

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Interesting, this has worked for me on occasion during times of suffering from depression and anxiety and I was wondering about it recently. Sometimes I have trouble sleeping and have noticed positive effects in my mood and energy level the next day after staying up all night.

</comment><comment><USER35> > "We can think of it not as sleep-depriving people, but as modifying or > enlarging the period of the sleep–wake cycle from 24 to 48 hours," says > Benedetti. "People go to bed every two nights, but when they go to bed, they > can sleep for as long as they want."

That reminds me of the sleep experiments performed by Michel Siffre [1] in the 60's & 70's who studied the experience of time underground without time cues. He found that without time cues, several people including himself adjusted to a 48-hour rather than a 24-hour cycle.

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

[2] www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/30/foer.php

</comment><comment><USER36> I have a history of depression and anti depressants. I stopped them some years ago, and I went to a 2 weeks military training 3 years after I stopped those meds.

Not only did I love it, but it really gave a big energy boost. Awesome sleep.

Maybe depression comes from boredom.

</comment><comment><USER37> Another way is travelling and getting hit by a considerable time difference.

It seems resetting your circadian rhythm can, in some circumstances, have beneficial effect.

I knew someone that referred to doing that as "degaussing".

</comment><comment><USER38> I disagree with that study. Myself and a colleague used to go for days on what were called "micro naps". After a certain amount of practice you can train your mind to hit REM within the first few seconds of shutting your eyes for sleep.

Over time it really messes with your head. You become very irritable. Lookup "Peter Tripp, radio DJ". A very famous story with a very sad ending. Long-term sleep deprivation is very bad for you. I know, I've tried it.

</comment><comment><USER39> I can anecdotally confirm that for me, sleep deprivation appeared to significantly alleviate symptoms of severe anxiety. Around a year ago I was having what I think you'd call panic attacks every day and general anxiety all day. I had a breakdown of I think about six weeks, mostly focused on my insecurity about not having a better job, masters degree, etc. Etc. I was non functional.

I read about the sleep deprivation studies then. One day I had stayed up very late anyway, so I decided I would just wrap it around and stay up all night. I had no job to go to anyway.

That day I had no strong attacks and generally felt far more relaxed. It was a great respite.

However, it's very temporary. For me it felt like respite, not a cure. A break from attacks and nerves. It came back over the next few days. I wish I'd kept a more detailed diary. Why I'm okay now I can't say for sure, however I sleep too little and quite badly now, being busy with work, clubbing, parties, and coding in my spare time, so there's possibly a correlation there - causation, who knows. I don't think eight hours of sleep is bad, I think it's beneficial, but I do think over sleeping is harmful to mental health and easy to do - <USER2> theory is that like high calorie foods, we didn't evolve with unlimited sleep available to us, so getting too much just wasn't a thing.

Of course, it's one data point and could be the placebo effect for coincidence, but, much like my experience using MDMA to improve a depressive attitude (careful: may make it worse for some people), the effect was real enough to me that I personally believe in it and think it can be valuable to at least a subset of people if used carefully.

</comment><comment><USER40> The most useful model of depression I've found is that it's anger directed inward.

Essentially, a restriction of emotional freedom and a suppression of feeling all our emotions.

This is typically due to trauma or neglect or some other developmental adaptation not to feel fully.

This is reinforced by a culture in which people try to fix or cheer you up when sad or angry.

In a culture where actually feeling basic human emotions are taboo, feeling said emotions can be extremely isolating.

If you've never felt safe fully feeling your emotions, it will be unlikely you will ever learn unless you conciously work on it and build relationships with people who can hold space for your entire range of experience.

Psychedelics can help because they loosen the pathways of suppression and can help us reintegrate the parts of ourself that we've been suppressing.

Main stream treatments like SSRIs end up making things worse long term because they just reinforce suppressing symptoms.

I spent a decade of my life dealing with depression, psychosis, schizophrenia, suicidal thoughts, bipolar, anxiety and panic attacks.

The things that helped me were a mindset that feeling all of my emotions was fully was required to be healthy, seeking out people and processes to help me get more embodied and to feel, Psychedelic therapy (specifically to be able to go deeper into emotion), NARM therapy to help me do relationship in a way that was connected; telling the 100% truth in relationship and holding space for the emotions that emerge; falling and staying in love; Gratitude.

I've mapped out these states of consciousness enough in myself and in people I've worked with combined with finding enough accounts of others as well as emerging research to believe that we are on the cusp of a fundamental shift in how people deal with mental health.

I'm now in love and enaged, working on a number of creative projects, my relationships are antifragile and honest, I have a practice helping others with relationships & mental health; don't take psychiatric medication (occasionally a tune up with psychedelics); and if I encounter a context which triggers something like depression, psychosis, mania, anxiety, etc. I understand how to work with those states to emerge from them even more integrated and connected to myself.

The biggest developmental edge now is that once you start healing old traumas, you need to finish the work. Meaning, things will continue to come to the surface for your attention. It's not always easy, but the end result is always worth the time and work to release and heal.

This last month I've really gotten aware of how being sexually assaulted at 25 really left an imprint. I had remembered what happened intellectually, but realized I never released the somatic memory of it.

Residual anger, shame and fear kept coming up during sex with my fiancé and it wasn't until I made space to fully go into those emotions that I was able to see the connection with the assault (in grad school a male student got me drunk under the pretext of going to pick up girls and then tried to have sex with me while I was too drunk to move.)

So, the work is not done, but man, my life is unrecognizable to where it was when I began this work and my creative life has really opened up to more possibility (we just signed a contract to buy a tropical island in Panama and build a village for visionaries! Please come visit!).

Anyhow, I feel its my dharma to share my story and experiences and the personal research I've done, so thanks for giving me a space to do that.

<comment><USER41> Excellent comment. Returned after some hours to check if some other people followed your thread and I felt the need to give you this simple feedback.

Feelings/Emotions are a neglected part of our western culture.

<comment><USER40> The inner world is really our final frontier. Appreciate your feedback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> On the herbals: Fishoil gel tablets work very well for depression, if you don't mind some occasional fish smell. They keep me very clear when I take them. Caveat: If you have MAOI inhibitor issues you gotta make sure you can take certain supplements safely. This is a great discussion and the 2nd time I have heard of the positive impacts of sleep deprivation on depression (SD/D). 1st time I didn't buy it because lack of sleep, unless I am working on a project, makes me amped up and close to rowdy. I use the rowdiness to workout, walk, skateboard or bike; all of the above manages depression and absorbs high energy. Hearing so many intellectual viewpoints on YC makes the SD/D argument more believable.I thought I was the only one with this issue.

</comment><comment><USER43> This is good news, but also shows how little we actually understand the complexity of our bodies and our brain in particular. We have good antidepressants, but besides observing the positive effects, there doesn't seem much of a consensus on what exactly these psychoactive molecules are doing to help.

So no surprise that something seemly simple like sleep deprivation can have a massive effect on the issue. It's not like we understand all the mysteries of sleep either.

The involved mechanism and chemistry are so complex, and we barley scrap the surface, even with all the advances in medicine. So many people arguing about what depression is, what it's causes are, but it would be foolish to assume we have this even remotely figured out, and I would be very open-minded to anything on this issue.

</comment><comment><USER44> inb4 a lot of sources sleep deprivation is hurting your brain in a long term. Not sure what's better.

<comment><USER45> It should be noted that anti-depressants also have side effects.

<comment><USER44> I dont doubt that. The way how I treat depression myself is via acupuncture. Works great so far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> If you are tired maybe you don't think too much, thinking too much is part of depression

</comment><comment><USER47> Saw this article and decided to try to roll over my half-phase-out-of-sync horrific sleep schedule by staying awake through the next day. My mind was nowhere near fully functional from the period of 6pm the first day through 11:30pm the next, but I somehow managed to experience a sense of urgency and elatedness I may have forgotten how to feel over the last few years, and got some work done to boot.

Unfortunately I'm back as hopeless as ever today, but I would be willing to bet with a little more discipline it'd be a pretty great way to at the very least quickly restore a sleep-early wake-early sleep schedule.

</comment><comment><USER48> > "Sleep deprivation really has opposite effects in healthy people and those > with depression," says Benedetti. If you're healthy and you don't sleep, > you'll feel in a bad mood. But if you're depressed, it can prompt an > immediate improvement in mood, and in cognitive abilities. But, Benedetti > adds, there's a catch: once you go to sleep and catch up on those missed > hours of sleep, you'll have a 95 per cent chance of relapse.

This is really counter intuitive to me. The article goes on explaining that using a combination of skipping sleep, lithium and light treatment the results are much better.

</comment><comment><USER49> I noticed this myself a long time ago. I have major anxiety, stress and depression problems(the last one I mostly fixed).

When I stay up very late, or lose most of a night's sleep, I no longer care. I'm very resistant to stress. The downside, aside from numerous all other long term negatives of sleep deprivation, is that I can't focus on anything moderately complicated and take loong to get anything done. It's like time passes faster. And it's really hard to make decisions.

</comment><comment><USER50> In retrospect, I've been leveraging this effect constantly since early high school. I suspect this explains many people's poor sleep habits. Anyone else?

</comment><comment><USER51> Whenever I read about this sleep-cures-depression topic on HN (and it seems to come up relatively often) I think about and often go back and read this post. [0] Definitely doesn't have all the answers but it really changed how I thought about the issue.

[0] [http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/12/14/ssc-journal-club- mental...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/12/14/ssc-journal-club-mental- disorders-as-networks/)

</comment><comment><USER52> Besides experimenting with polyphasic sleep and such, I could never think that sleep deprivation could become a therapy.

Regardless of the validity of these claims, I welcome this new idea into my brain.

</comment><comment><USER53> Strange, in my case (tested on myself and my wife) sleep deprivation (e.g. sleeping and hour or two less than optimal sleep time) causes depression.

</comment><comment><USER54> Ya I used to pull an all nighter once a week. It has a lot of long term deleterious effects but it does the trick for a day break from depression.

</comment><comment><USER46> And then there is just a new article posted up there in HN that talks about how bad sleep increases risk of depression

<comment><USER46> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16562599](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16562599)

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I've successfully managed allergies with sleep deprivation. The issue is that it is obviously not sustainable.

<comment><USER56> Care to explain how?

<comment><USER55> How: By keeping myself busy and not sleeping!

But I suspect that's not the question you were asking.

Does it really work: It works for me, yes. But we are all different and I suspect it'd have different effect on different people.

Why does it work (for me)?

I don't know for sure, it could be placebo effect or... I have read that lack of sleep affect the production of cortisol and histamine, interestingly enough some studies say increase, some say decrease (could it be a different effect based on individual?). The fact is, both histamine and cortisol affect the immune response, and allergies are basically your immune system reacting too much or reacting to the wrong thing.

Definitely not sustainable for more than 2 or 3 days, but it's a nice way to take a break from drugs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Careful with this, sleep deprivation is known to cause health issues.

[https://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/features/important- sle...](https://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/features/important-sleep- habits#1)

</comment><comment><USER58> This article confuses depression and bipolar disorder quite a bit. They're inducing mania through sleep deprivation in patients with bipolar disorder going through a period of depression. This is somewhat dangerous, as mania can have severe consequences. The article even states that there's a 95% relapse into depression for those not taking lithium. Only people with BPD take lithium. It's not about the lithium, it's about that population having BPD.

DO NOT TRY THIS IF YOU HAVE BIPOLAR DISORDER WITHOUT MEDICAL SUPERVISION. Inducing mania could ruin your life. If you don't have BPD, then this likely won't work anyway.

I have several family members with BPD. Irregular sleep schedule is a major warning sign that mania is coming on, and interrupted sleep schedule can induce mania.

I can see why you might try this in a controlled setting, and I'm not saying it doesn't work. I'm just saying that this is very dangerous, and should not be done without qualified medical supervision.

<comment><USER59> It's probably worth noting that bipolar disorder and manic depression are the same condition. In other words, bipolar disorder is a form of depression, though they could have been more clear and said "other forms of depression" in certain places.

<comment><USER60> In recent writing it's usually seen as more clear to treat them as distinct (though related) disorders rather than bipolar being a subset of depression, although that usage is still common. The ICD, for example, classifies "Bipolar affective disorder" (F31) and "Recurrent depressive disorder" (F33) as two distinct disorders under the parent category "Mood [affective] disorders".

</comment></comment></comment><comment> cup-of-tea > Sleep deprivation really has opposite effects in healthy people and those > with depression

I used to "play" with my sleeping pattern a lot. I would stay up extremely late sometimes because it's impossible to go to sleep before a bug has been fixed. But being a student I could just sleep in the next day. It had that classic effect which is observed in hackers of drifting "West" and becoming completely out of phase with the Sun's cycle.

I did suffer from depression. It's always difficult to say this, though. How do I know that I _really_ had depression and I wasn't just unhappy? I don't know. But maybe it suffices to say that I had near constant suicidal thoughts at times.

I've since turned my life around and I am no longer depressed. I attribute it to having a much more regimented life which includes regular and sufficient sleep, regular, healthy meals and regular exercise.

So the above quotation suggests that I am "healthy". Presumably as opposed to those that are "unhealthy" and _really_ have depression. But what is the difference really? I have to do this particular thing to avoid depression, and they have to do that particular thing to avoid it? Is it just that my "cure" happens to be the same as everyone else's cure? Or am I missing something here?

</comment><comment><USER61> Huh well whatever works for people. If I don't get enough sleep I am more prone to depression, not less.</comment>


All of Microsoft's Mobile Failures Have Been Redeemed with This Windows 95 Phone - valiant-comma https://gizmodo.com/finally-all-of-microsofts-mobile-failures-have-been-re-1827139336 <comment><AUTHOR> that actually looks _amazing_ , I would buy it in a heartbeat and I haven't touched Windows in 20+ years.

I grew up with Windows 3.11 and '95/'98/XP/NT/2k and I think my sense of good UI is frozen at that period.

</comment><comment><USER2> It looks wonderful, my only suggestion would be for the logo on the back of the phone to be a silhouette of the actual Windows 95 logo. And maybe footage of Solitaire. Or SkiFree.</comment>


Suit warns of Russian 'back door' into U.S. fingerprint systems - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/Suit-warns-of-Russian-back-door-into-U-S-9140446.php <comment><USER2> I never trusted these devices and unless mandatory I opt out. If one of these systems gets hacked and the encryption is poor now my fingerprint image scan or data points is irretrievably in the wild. A few years ago my gym installed fingerprint scanners to speed up entry to the gym instead of a clerk checking ID cards. I opted to continue to use my ID card and at first there was subtle and not so subtle pressure to use the FP scanner. I complained to corporate and eventually they must have got the message as the clerks check my ID to let me in the gym without complaint or (passive aggressive) delay.</comment>


Dropbox Beta Build 15.3.19 - <AUTHOR> https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Desktop-client-builds/Beta-Build-15-3-19/m-p/194282#M3484 <comment><USER2> Dropboxes lack of transparency is particularly worrying because they have board members who support warrentless surveillance.

In my mind Dropbox became a company not worth supporting when Rice joined Dropbox's board ([http://www.drop-dropbox.com/](http://www.drop- dropbox.com/)). Personally, with a board member who advocates warrentless surveillance it seems unlikely that we share similar views on the security of my data, and I wont be using their service.

Transparency in tech companies seems even more important with a Trump administration on the horizon...

<comment><USER3> > Dropboxes lack of transparency is particularly worrying because they have > board members who support warrentless surveillance.

Agreed. I switched away from Dropbox for that very reason. Granted, i'm not liking the alternatives that much.

I've been planning to backup my home storage on "unsafe" providers (Dropbox/etc) after encrypting it. Just as i would with a "dumb" storage solution like S3/B2/etc.

Is there anything that might make encrypted data on Dropbox/GoogleDrive less safe than the same data on S3?

> Transparency in tech companies seems even more important with a Trump > administration on the horizon...

Heh.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure why it's not more well known, but Dropbox's actual track record when it comes to this stuff is pretty strong.

From the EFF: "Dropbox earns five stars in this year's Who Has Your Back report. This is Dropbox's fourth year in the report, and it has adopted every best practice we've identified as part of this report. We commend Dropbox for its strong stance regarding user rights, transparency, and privacy."

[https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-government-data- reques...](https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-government-data- requests-2015#dropbox-report)

Full disclosure: I used to work at Dropbox.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Found several bugs and regressions in this build", could be one fitting feedback.

</comment><comment><USER6> Disclaimer: I'm an ex-Dropboxer. My opinions are my own.

I worked on the Desktop Client team. When I left Dropbox, the team was trying to move to a 2 week build cycle. The big focus at Dropbox was to increase the speed of iteration in order to get features and bugfixes in front of user eyes as quickly as possible. One of the compromises there was to cut back on the amount of time and energy the team spent on constructing public changelogs. I wasn't a huge fan of this change, but I understand the argument that it's probably better for the engineers and PMs to work on features and bugs than public documentation for the beta builds.

There was also a faction that wanted to completely get rid of the forum builds. Most of the engineers that I knew were strongly against this, as some really valuable first-touch feedback came out of forum builds.

I'm not going to defend forced automatic updates, though. I lost that argument, at least on Mac/Windows. :(

</comment><comment><USER4> This seems more like "You're under no obligation to do so, but if you find issues and want to report them, this is a place you can be sure we'll see it, and we'll be thankful and look into it."

It would definitely be an improvement if change logs were posted as well, but just having this venue alone seems like a net positive even without change logs. Especially because (at least in this instance) an employee responded to the reported issues quickly. This doesn't seem like something worth bringing out the pitchforks over to me.

Definitely possible I'm just biased since I used to work there though. Curious to hear what others think.

<comment><AUTHOR> The issue is that we users don't know what they'll bring in an update. And mind you it's auto updated without warning, you have to basically rename couple .exe files, disable some tasks in the Task Scheduler and Services on Windows to stop the auto update. This combined with the notion you don't know what changed is asinine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> We've updated the title from "Dropbox doesn't write change logs for their builds, but expects feedback". You can't use Hacker News titles to editorialize, and this has always been against the site guidelines.

It's absolutely fine to criticize Dropbox's development and release practices, and content that stands alone (like a blog post) is the place to do it before submitting it here for discussion.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> This is a bad post. Why am I looking at this? Why should I care? Answer those questions first.</comment>


EWDs (Dijkstra essays) every day via Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/#!/EWDijkstra

<comment><AUTHOR> For those who may be asking, it is a simple Python script which automatically publish every day (via a cron job) a link to every PDF of the essays (EWDs) of Dijkstra. We can then follow the ideas of this great mind with (a little) delay.</comment>


UEFI on top of U-Boot on ARM - <AUTHOR> http://lists.denx.de/pipermail/u-boot/2016-February/244378.html <comment><USER2> I know there is no real standard for ARM booting, but would it really have been too hard to come up with something simpler and more like what PC BIOS does? Then again, if you're already choosing to use grub, I guess you probably don't care...

 _When enabled, the resulting U-Boot binary only grows by ~10kb, so it 's very light weight._

For comparison, the original PC BIOS, which includes far more functionality than just a bootloader, is 8KB.

<comment><USER3> For aarch64, SBBR [http://infocenter.arm.com/help/topic/com.arm.doc.den0044b/DE...](http://infocenter.arm.com/help/topic/com.arm.doc.den0044b/DEN0044B_Server_Base_Boot_Requirements.pdf)

If you were expecting it to be lightweight, I'm afraid I've got disappointing news for you. The UEFI/aarch64 binary is 2MB or so. But it's like a mini- operating system with drivers for a bunch of disk hardware, network devices and filesystems, because it supports network booting and booting from files located on local disks (so similar to grub).

<comment><USER4> Mini??? I seem to recall you used to be able fit _Linux_ on a 1.44 megabyte floppy...

<comment><USER3> Probably not a version of Linux that can drive multiple types of recent PCIe graphics adapter, USB, SCSI hostadapter and network card though.

While I have no great love for UEFI, it's damn convenient to be able to use the UEFI command line to mount up local filesystems, browse files etc when troubleshooting boot problems. Also to be able to plug in a USB key, see the files there, and try booting from one of them.

Since SBSA/SBBR is used almost exclusively on servers, 2 MB - so what?

<comment><USER5> > While I have no great love for UEFI, it's damn convenient to be able to use > the UEFI command line to mount up local filesystems, browse files etc when > troubleshooting boot problems. Also to be able to plug in a USB key, see the > files there, and try booting from one of them.

So UEFI can to the same as a much smaller u-boot?

<comment><USER3> If everything was compiled into u-boot and a bit extra added, then yes. U-boot as it is commonly found (the small version you're referring to) doesn't do as much stuff as UEFI. Plus Secure Boot is a thing that people really care about, and when used correctly enhances your own security, it's not (always) some giant conspiracy.

As I say I have no great affection for UEFI. Internally the code is pretty awful. But if you want a standard that works the same across x86 and ARM servers _and_ exists already on those servers, then it's UEFI (I'm aware you can run u-boot on x86, but next to no one actually does that).

BTW UEFI is fully open source as of a few months ago after Microsoft relicensed the FAT driver. So we're just comparing two free software projects with different takes on the booting problem.

<comment><USER5> From a developer perspective is secure boot more of a obstacle than really useful. You need to use gummiboot, etc. to terminate the signing in order to use developer kernels without having a bottleneck, that one person in the company that does the signing, in the development process. (I am currently working with an Intel Quark X1020 where secure boot is enforced, it's not really nice)

U-boot is ported and regularly run on the MinnowBoard with an Intel Atom.

Do you speak about tianocore? I don't have much experience with it, can you configure it as well as u-boot and just compile in stuff you need?

Update: If you didn't know, u-boot supports signed images too. So UEFI is not necessary for this.

<comment><USER3> EDK2 is built for Fedora here. It contains build instructions, link the sources, etc. [http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/rpms/edk2.git/](http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/rpms/edk2.git/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why not barebox[1] which iirc is a fork of U-boot that does EFI, etc?

[1][http://www.barebox.org/](http://www.barebox.org/)

<comment><USER7> As someone who has added support for a few boards to both U-Boot and Barebox, I really recommend looking at Barebox first.

U-Boot does have support for more architectures and SoCs, but the Barebox code base is of _much_ higher quality. Also, the bourne-like shell is a pleasure to work with!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is the method that OpenBSD will be using for the armv7 port starting with 6.0, a version of u-boot loader loads our EFI bootloader ported to ARM, along with .dtb/FDT (Flattened Device Trees) files for each system that is currently supported.

[http://www.openbsd.org/60.html](http://www.openbsd.org/60.html)

It's actually pretty cool, the advantages of this approach are:

* We can use our standard boot(8) loader, which has already been ported to EFI for i386/amd64. Code sharing! :-)

* There is a single ELF kernel for all supported SoCs, no longer need special u-Boot headers/images.

* The kernel can be loaded off of our native filesystem (FFS/UFS) vs. FAT/ext2. The kernel can live inside the root filesystem and be updated normally.

</comment><comment><USER9> UEFI is one of the blocking hurdles for running CoreOS on Raspberry Pi and ODROID boards. I wonder if this would help overcome that.

</comment><comment><USER10> Patch from February - how far is this along?

</comment><comment><USER11> Taking a different approach is EFIDroid - [http://efidroid.org/](http://efidroid.org/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Why not coreboot?

<comment><USER13> Gotta NIH fast.

<comment><USER12> Could you please explain what NIH is.

<comment><USER14> Not invented here syndrome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does this also come with an increase in surface attack from malware?

<comment><USER16> Don't believe the FUD. UEFI does not increase attack surface. It _reduces_ it through means such as secure boot.

The other option is insecure booting with no verification, and if your malware is running with privileges to be able to inject itself into the boot process, the machine is already compromised anyway.

In this case secure boot provides some means of protection. People not using UEFI however, they are vulnerable and most likely affected.

<comment><USER17> I would argue that, taking Secure Boot as a given, the UEFI design provides an amazingly large surface which to attack Secure Boot.

<comment><USER16> Unless you're arguing for something new and different, the only other option you have to UEFI secure boot, is completely unverified boot which provides zero security.

And that has to be less secure than UEFI by definition.

In that regard arguing about how UEFI brings attack surface seems misguided. Yes, there's is an attack surface, but that's only because now there is something to attack where there previously was a fully open door.

What you're saying is pretty much that any imperfect security measure lessons security compared to no measure at all, because it brings attack surface. That's a fairly backwards way of thinking.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Rate a StartUp Redanyway.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.redanyway.com

<comment><USER2> I'm not really interested in the service but I did look through the FAQ. The link to Gravatar is broken, looks like an autogenerated link, so you might want to check all other external links too. Back button is broken on the FAQ page. Also, why not have the answers on the same page as the questions and have a list of questions at the top instead of this ajaxy hide/show thing. It makes reading multiple FAQs a pain with too many clicks on shifting targets and breaks the back button. Also the frontpage seems very slow and loads stuff from facebook, which slows it down further.

</comment><comment><USER3> Typography on the homepage could be better... large font Arial just doesn't look good.

Too many obvious photoshop bevels, especially on this page: <http://www.redanyway.com/register.php>

All of the pages look different from each other. You need to get one consistent look and feel.

Lose the registration process. Make someone register or connect with twitter/facebook in order to save something or send something.

When I click about, I expect about the company, not about the team.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comprehensive feedback. I think this could really help.

Only that I didnt get your second-last point. If I get it right I think we already provide that.

<comment><USER3> You provide the connection to twitter/facebook, but users really won't do that until they want to -- until they have a reason to. Let them save something or create something on your site, interact with it somehow, and then to have it the same when they come back later, they have to register. Your homepage right now just consists of buttons to sign up and buttons to register. There's no "Try it now" and there should be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't really get it. So I can use the site to post my blog posts to it. Then what happens?

... 5 minutes pass ...

Okay, signed up. Now I get it. Pretty clever, actually. This allows you to follow people like on Twitter, except posting is done by just posting to your blog, which is polled by Redanyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's exactly our purpose.

And I think you are right, we need to explain that better on the home page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How will you make money with this site? I don't think using it is enough of a value add for people that you'll ever see the tremendous amount of traffic necessary these days to earn even a small amount of money from advertising.

</comment><comment><USER6> They lost me at "insanely easy to join" ;<).

</comment><comment><USER7> One thing I absolutely hate is not being able to use something without signing in/up for it.</comment>


Watching TV Makes You Smarter - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/24/magazine/24TV.html <comment><USER2> ... Except that there's a large body of research demonstrating otherwise. The recent New Yorker article "Twilight of the Books" at [http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2007/12/24/071...](http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2007/12/24/071224crat_atlarge_crain) is a good place to start.

<comment><USER3> From that article: "According to the Department of Education, between 1992 and 2003 the average adult's skill in reading prose slipped one point on a five- hundred-point scale..."

I don't know if this sentence is meant to raise alarms about the public's literacy or about journalists' numeracy. Without having seen the study itself, I'm going to guess that 0.2% is within its margin of error.

The first page makes a lot of slippery statistical arguments about people 'reading less,' but there's no factual connection between the opening numerical salvo and the transition on page 2: "...some sociologists speculate that reading books for pleasure will one day be the province of a special 'reading class'..."

Older people have always thought that younger people are stupid and illiterate, and that future young people will be even stupider and more illiterate.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Orb – The World's First Germ-Killing UV Light Ball (1st Kickstarter) - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/572058660/orbtm-the-worlds-first-germ-killing-uv-light-ball <comment><USER2> So, there's a problem here. When you expose human eyeballs to UV light, you risk causing serious damage to your retinas. You won't feel the pain, but you could easily go blind. It would probably take some time, but the damage is cumulative -- a little here and a little there turns into a lot down the road.

So, you need to protect your eyes from potentially damaging UV light when you work with these things. But I don't see any of the models in this video taking care of their eyesight with regards to this product. That's something the manufacturer needs to deal with, unless they want to be the target of Asbestos-scale lawsuits.

<comment><USER3> Adding to this:

\- UV is effective only when it directly hits a microbial cell

the lamps must be cleaned regularly to remove any dust and dirt that may block its germicidal effectiveness (ethanol approx every 2 weeks)

\- UV lamps used in biological safety cabinets use much more power than a battery powered micro-lamp (so they're much more effective), yet do not disinfect the spill area under the directly exposed surface, a favorite hideout for fungal spores

how can a couple of balls scattered throughout the house actually have an effect ?

\- skin cancer ??</comment></comment>


Even isolated cultures understand emotions conveyed by Western music - <AUTHOR> http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2009/04/even_isolated_cultures_underst.php <comment><USER2> Did the western researchers make the music dissonant? That could explain the difference between Germans/Mafa, because the Germans and the researchers have the same sense of dissonance.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've seen results of studies wherein some people in the same culture couldn't agree to the mood. So if there is anything to this, it's probably just two axes - sad/happy, and slow/exciting. Maybe a tension meter as well.</comment>


Quora Will Now Publicly Show Who Has Read a Post - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20120801/quora-will-now-publicly-show-who-has-read-a-post/ <comment><USER2> Wow. Let's see how the readers of posts like [http://www.quora.com/Does-a- human-male-corpse-have-an-erect-...](http://www.quora.com/Does-a-human-male- corpse-have-an-erect-penis) or [http://www.quora.com/Coming-Out-Outing/How- should-I-know-if-...](http://www.quora.com/Coming-Out-Outing/How-should-I- know-if-I-should-come-out-of-the-closet) feel when their identities are listed for all to see. (Don't click them unless, you know, you're ok with your name being on that list.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Downgrade. What a terrible idea. What is this supposed to add for users?

</comment><comment><USER4> I could see reporting how many, but who steps over the line.</comment>


Last generation to remember life before the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/252456/what-it-feels-like-to-be-the-last-generation-to-remember-life-before-the-internet/

<comment><USER2> _" These people, says Harris, are the last of a dying breed. 'If you were born before 1985, then you know what life is like both with the internet and without.'"_

That statement really needs to be qualified a bit: it's people living in the "developed world". A significant chunk of the planet (e.g., large parts of rural India or Africa) doesn't yet have electricity and running water, let alone internet service.

This source claims that only 42% of the world's population currently has internet access:

[http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm](http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm)

<comment><USER3> Heck, my 87-year-old Ma doesn't know what life is like with the internet. She's never touched a computer in her life, has no electronic gadgets other than a pacemaker.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A way to build multiplayer browser based mobile adventures using lua. - <AUTHOR> http://geolua.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I built Geolua, a website that allows you to play and develop mobile adventures using lua. Lua runs on the server side and controls the user interface and game logic of one or many players. Players use a web browser (on their phones) to play.

I tried to make it easy for programmers to get started: There is lots of executable example code available on the documentation page: <http://geolua.com/doc>

Players can be guided to locations or interact with the environment or other players by scanning qr codes. Here is an example, showing all available widgets and some qr code multiplayer interaction: <http://geolua.com/adventure/all-widgets-132>

The sourcecode of some adventures is available on github: <https://github.com/dividuum/Geolua-examples>

The site is written in python, using werkzeug and jinja2. I'm using GWT on the game page. The wsgi app is running in gunicorn behind nginx/varnish. Lua is running sandboxed in a custom service called luaengine. It hosts all active lua instances.

I'd like to hear your feedback and questions. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER2> I looked at the website, but it's difficult to tell what kind of game this is going to be if I scan the QR code. Perhaps adding some kind of incentive for me to actually pull my phone out, scan the code, and see would be nice. Potentially that could be a video or image showing gameplay to entice me. Just a suggestion.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your suggestion. I'll try the redo some parts of the landing page.</comment></comment>


Booting the Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> https://leiradel.github.io/2018/01/06/SmartStart.html <comment><USER2> Is it just me, or did the author forget to copy the initialized data into the .data section? He did remember to zero the .bss

<comment><AUTHOR> The .data section contents are already in place when the kernel.bin file is loaded by the GPU. This is made by the linker script.

<comment><USER2> Generally linker script places the data initialization values somewhere after the code. You then usually have to copy them into actual location and RAM where they need to be. This is usually done right before or right after zeroing the .bss

the only way for this would not be required, is the code expects to run from RAM, and the linker script specifically placed the .data after the code

<comment><AUTHOR> This is exactly what the linker script does: [https://github.com/LdB- ECM/Raspberry-Pi/blob/master/Multicor...](https://github.com/LdB- ECM/Raspberry-Pi/blob/master/Multicore/rpi32.ld)

The resulting binary is loaded as a whole to RAM, there are no intermediary representation of the executable like a PE or ELF, and there are no relocations; everything is already resolved during link time.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Problems with Hash Tables - <AUTHOR> http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/problems-with-hash-tables/ <comment><USER2> This doesn't make much sense to me. The author correctly identifies that hash resizes that are done by changing the size by a multiple remain O(1) amortized over their construction and use. But then asserts that many hash tables (who?!) don't do this, and that makes them O(N). I've written a ton of hash tables in my career. None have that characteristic. Nor do any I've studied in popular software.

Then he finishes up with a discussion about "bad hash functions" without actually pointing to any examples of tables that use them.

Worst, the point of the whole (rather long!) article is about performance, and yet there's not a benchmark to be seen. Nothing is measured; it's just one assertion after another.

The whole thing is a giant straw man. Not worth reading.

<comment><USER3> Good criticism...

Yet, if you want to avoid your application occasionally freezing when the user hits a key, then isn't distinguishing worst-case scenarios good? You seem to agree with the article's claim that hash table sometimes give you an O(n) hit. Even if this happens very occasionally, aren't there situations where this could be worse than a constant O(log(N)) hit?

On the other, what keeps the hash algorithm from expanding the buckets little- by-little?

<comment><USER2> Sure, latencies can be a problem. Though even extraordinarily large tables aren't going to have user-visible latencies, really. I'd worry more about real time applications where occasionally high latencies would cause things like buffer underruns. Think packet routers, video transcoders, things like that.

But even then, the naive solution would just be to pre-size the hash table and be careful about insertion/deletion architcture. Not to chuck it in favor of an AVL tree or whatnot.

<comment><USER4> _the naive solution would just be to pre-size the hash table and be careful about insertion/deletion architcture. Not to chuck it in favor of an AVL tree or whatnot._

Sometimes, a pre-sized hash table is the "best" solution, depending on context, and for some perhaps debatable value of "best." If I was doing hard real time (which is not what I generally do) and I didn't have any good idea of how much space the system would need, then I'd use a largish pre-sized table as a starting point then think about cooking up some sort of incremental growth/rehash code. Start out just using one hash table. When it gets too close to full, you allocate the bigger table and you start moving things to the larger one with each table access. To check for membership in this state, you check both tables. To add a new entry, you add to the larger table. Once you are done, you can throw away the old table. I don't do hard real time, but this is just what comes off the top of my head. (Note that table allocation might have to be done incrementally, if nulling out lots of entries would take too long.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Potential benefit of hash tables: cache locality.

Assuming you already have the key in the CPU cache, computing the hash is relatively cheap and gets you directly to the desired value.

A binary tree structure always makes you traverse several levels until you get to the desired value. Of course, this can be minimized with high-fanout trees -- see clojure for example).

<comment><USER6> Cache locality: especially with open addressing and linear probing.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've done a search and found that this was submitted a year ago ...

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=123718>

However, it got no comments, and replies are now closed, so I'll leave this here. Useful information, many lessons to learn. If you're not into algorithms or low level details, you can probably ignore it.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you want a compromise that takes little space like hash tables, has average time complexity of O(log(N)) like balanced trees, and is as simple to implement as hash tables, take a look at skip lists.

</comment><comment><USER8> The eficiency of hash tables (insertions, in particular), is actually slightly worse than he indicates. They are not amortized O(1) for all data, but only for _typical_ data (or on average over all possible data sets). To see this, suppose that every item inserted happens to go into the same bucket. The amortized time complexity is linear.

On the other hand, insertion is not O(1) even for average data; there is always the periodic table resizing. So: _amortized_ O(1) for average data, not O(1) for average data.

The upshot of all this is that hash tables are still pretty good, but insertion is only constant time in a "double average" sense: on average over a large number of consecutive operations (amortization) _and_ over all possible data sets.

A note to those who say, "Why not just use a different hash function?": This can greatly decrease the _probability_ of poor hash-table performance. But it does not change the worst case, unless we allow for an arbitrarily large number of hash functions, _and_ one of them is guaranteed to be a good one. I've never seen this done (actually, I'm not sure anyone knows how to do it within reasonable efficiency constraints).

And a note to those who say, "But in the real world it doesn't matter": No, sometimes it matters, and sometimes it doesn't. (Don't use Python to program a pacemaker ....)

</comment><comment><USER9> i would love to read this except i am using windows mobile and am shown some "use a different browser!" page instead. this is annoying

<comment><USER10> He's blocking Opera?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hashtable routines are far easier to write and debug than balanced binary tree routines.

Of course there are open source implementations available for both. But I would guess it is easier to write your own hash function than learn to use somebody else's, and easier to learn somebody else's B-tree routines than to write your own.

So we live in a world with O(N) hash implementations and O(1) B-tree implementations, for N programmers.</comment>


How Do Venture Capitalists Make Decisions? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/pnr-paper/venture-capital-decision-making-c3258bc1b09c <comment><USER2> I would be curious to see more detail about these factors:

"...the attractiveness of the market, strategy, technology, product/service, customer adoption, competition, deal terms and the quality and experience of the management team."

I feel that there is another layer of analysis that is being missed which is the interaction.

Q: Would you invest in AirBnb at 31B?

Hypothetical response: No, there is so much competition from the hotels, and competing sites. I think they have liability risk.

Q: How about at $1B value?

Hypothetical: Are you kidding me? Of course!

The valuation interacts with the other criteria.

Q: Would you invest in my personal device company at $100 million?

Hypothetical answer: No way. I think the market is saturated.

Q: Will you do it now that Steve Jobs is back from the dead and has agreed to be the CEO?

Hypothetical answer: duh! Of course!

Again, the "team" has now changed things around.

I can't think of any situation where these factors don't interact with each other.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey op here, good feedback,

Yes factors do interact. However it was not really part of the survey.

One thing they had was the difference between most important factors and important factors

In the summary, I reported only the most important factors. If you look at the important factors here are the results, which show a bit the factors interacting:

Team 96% for early, 93% for late

Business model 84% for early, 86% for late

Product 81% for early, 60% for late

Market 74% for early, 69% for late

Industry 30% for early, 37% for late

Valuation 47% for early, 74% for late

Ability to add value 44% for early, 54% for late

Fit with the fund 48% for early, 54% for late

There are also other factors that will impact the companies valuation such as anticipated exit, comparable companies, competitive pressure and desired ownership.

For more a deeper analysis I think it would be interesting to see the survey applied to a scenario planning model like the team at the OS Fund did [1].

[1] [http://osfund.co/the-osf-playbook/](http://osfund.co/the-osf-playbook/) [EDIT]: Formatting

<comment><USER3> In the report, I didn't see much mention of _traction_ , revenue, _social proof_ , etc.

For _technology_ , sure, bio-medical VCs can evaluate that, but I doubt that information technology VCs can or will.

For deal flow, a common remark of VCs is that an entrepreneur who contacts a VC direction is just "coming over the ransom" which means that they are to be ignored. From that contempt, tough to believe that VCs care much about deal flow.

A common remark is that VCs lose money on ~90 percent of their deals but that last 10 percent, or even the one best deal, makes up for all the losses and makes money besides. Okay, then, necessarily what the VCs are interested in are exceptional deals. That is, they are looking for another Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, Google, Facebook. Okay, then in their deal sourcing they have a fundamental problem: They are getting too much of their deal flow from their colleagues, and that's not promising for finding the needed exceptional deals.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd say anticipated exit, comparable companies, competitive pressure and desired ownership play the role of social proof. For revenue, most likely related to the business model.

The interesting distinction in the report was between deal flow and deal selection. VCs care more about deal selection. For deal flow most of it is in their own network or through syndicates.

For the 90% fail 10% success you can look at exit multiples coupled with type of exit (M&A, IPO, failure).

My hypothesis is that most of them dont really have a proprietary deal flow and are unable to make great deal selection apart from the top VCs..

<comment><USER3> > For revenue, most likely related to the business model.

You totally lost me: In the report, I just didn't see any mention of traction or revenue. I can't see that traction or revenue are part of the business model, product, technology, or anything else that was mentioned.

Business model? Sure, for some early stage, can discuss that independent of traction or revenue.

IMHO, from all I've seen, for information technology VCs and early stage, far and away, far above anything else, what VCs want to see is traction significantly high and growing rapidly. In comparison, everything else is small potatoes. The form of traction they want to see most of all is revenue, but they will also consider number of unique users per month, any COMSCORE data, number of Web pages viewed per month, etc.

My guess is that the LPs enforce the high interest in traction. Or, the LPs very much like traditional accounting, even the traditional approach of a commercial banker where a loan is against assets as counted by usual accounting. Well, for startups, the commercial banker approach won't work, so the VCs talk the LPs into accepting a substitute, a surrogate, _traction_. So, the _asset_ they are investing in is the _traction_. For team, determination, technology, business model, etc. accountants and commercial bankers don't care about those, so LPs don't either, so VCs don't either.

Or the VCs believe in a Markov assumption: The past and future of the company are conditionally independent given the current traction and its rate of growth. Or, if the traction is good, then everything must be good. If the traction is not good, then nothing else matters.

The report mentioned that VCs can invest in ideas. My guesses are that information technology VCs regard an idea and a dime as not quite enough to cover half of a 10 cent cup of coffee. The standard remark is that "ideas are easy, plentiful, and worthless. Execution is hard, rare, and everything." Of course, by an _idea_ what VCs have in mind is just some fast, over the back fence to a neighbor description of the project, say, as a user or customer would see it. For people in technology, an _idea_ is something that might get a patent, be protected as a trade secret, is the crucial, core, enabling _secret sauce_ and the main asset of the whole project. Information technology VCs won't evaluate such ideas. I can think of no sense in which a VC will invest in an idea. Moreover, I have to suspect that VCs really hate ideas that would be secret sauce from research. Why? Because the VCs know that that then would be part of the business they would not understand, and that scares them. For _technology_ , what information technology VCs want is just some routine software that, if necessary, they could turn over to any of 20 programmers they could recruit in less than a week.

My guess about VCs is that they are looking for some special situations. So, there are, say, four co-founders. The company has traction significant and growing rapidly. But so far the company is still losing money and, really, is about to go out of business. All the credit cards are maxed out. All four co- founders are married, and all the wives are pregnant. Then, sure, a VC might give enough money for a little more runway and take a lot of control. The company is so desperate that they are ready to sign a bad business deal. The VC sees that even if the company totally flops, given the four co-founders, he could likely get his investment back from just an acqui-hire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is it a perfect team, with a complete working product, massive user base and sales and no risk and lots of other investors wanting in? We're in!

Else, "Your company is not a fit for us right now but keep us in the loop."

<comment><AUTHOR> Mostly ;)

Marc Andreessen wrote a good article on the layers of risks that VCs are looking into [1]. Most of them want to maximize the upside while minimizing the downside..

[1] [http://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part2.html](http://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part2.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a founder, my observation of seed stage fundraising is that there's a high degree of randomness, or at least most of the factors involved are outside of your immediate or near-term control. Decisions are mostly based on the excitement investors have for the team and idea. Since excitement is emotional, this can really vary. Decisions can be made based on how the investor's day has gone so far.

You would think that success is mostly about your pitch, and if you have great slides, meaningful graphs, and nail the delivery then you get money. It's not like this at all. VC fundraising is not Shark Tank. It's market timing, it's people, it's emotions.

There's a saying that seed funding is easy and the money grows on trees, and things don't get hard until the Series A. I think the more nuanced explanation is that when seed funding is successful it is usually easy (the stars aligned!), otherwise it's impossible. This leads to successful founders telling stories about easy seed rounds, but there are probably fifty times as many founders who have failed to raise that just don't talk about it.

Here's what Aaron Harris of YC said this year:

"Unfortunately, fundraising takes up a lot more time and thought than it should, because it seems like something that should be systematic but is actually chaos, which really confuses people, especially people who are logically brained." (source: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZXU84_sGXo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZXU84_sGXo) )

Not terribly actionable information, but good for founders to know.

</comment><comment><USER6> So they report the factors they weigh, then self-report the factors they think contributed to success?

That feels like fertile ground for confirmation bias.

<comment><USER7> I have a foot in the engineering research, the educational research, and the business research camps.

The level to which I trust the findings in business research is basically this order:

1) Educational Research

2) Engineering Research

3) A guy on the corner saying 'trust me'

4) Business Research

The issue is simply down to the level of trust they seem to place in their data. The data is treated as invariant and highly positivist, and their trust in experts self-reports (because they are self-reports) is staggering. You should be really cautious at an epistemic level of taking anything business researchers tell you about how people make decisions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, I look at about 10 business paper a week and quality of statistical analysis is frequently missing. What I liked about this one is that they are pretty transparent on the methodology so you can see the surveyed VCs biases. They also cross check the sources with other data..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yikes. Look institutionalized. The big money is made during the troughs when hand shacks work: 70s, early 90s, early 00s.

At the end of the day, most VC valuations are pulled out of a hat. There's a reason why $1B has become a sexy handle: people ascribed some type of value to this valuation.

</comment><comment><USER9> The first table, which shows where deals are sourced from, was most interesting. I was surprised that VCs reported that 22% of leads were proactively sourced.

Beyond that, I don't think the trust VCs to self report. In particular all VCs say "team" is really important. But in my experience they don't really probe the team very much, or get to know them and their background well.

Possibly what they mean is "has previously been CEO of successful startup" or something similar.

Overall, I think VCs build up a qualatitive feeling of how comfortable they are with a play. And critically, how well it can be justified as being a reasonable decision if things don't go well.

</comment><comment><USER10> [http://www.kauffman.org/what-we-do/research/2012/05/we- have-...](http://www.kauffman.org/what-we-do/research/2012/05/we-have-met-the- enemy-and-he-is-us)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good research, thanks for sharing. Kauffman has interesting content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This write-up is wrong and incorrect.

At the seed stage, VC's actually do not make decisions this way.

I am going to give you a simple example: if a VC were presented with an opportunity and they knew for a fact that this was proprietary dealflow and if they did not invest, the company certainly would die, i.e. had precisely zero viability _but for_ their (and only their) investment, are there conditions under which they would invest?

The actual demonstrable answer at the seed stage is "no."

This proves that the write-up is incorrect. Not how VC's make decisions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can I drop you a mail, I would be interested to explore where its incorrect.

Also please remember that the survey simplifies the reality by putting everything in the same model of deal selection.

From a practical standpoint I have some VCs friends that use a model similar to this and others dont.

<comment><USER11> Your VC friends only _claim_ to use a similar model as this and it is not true. It is also falsifiable empirically - you could verify it experimentally if you really wanted.

You can email me at the email in my profile if you wanted. (I am not affiliated with YC and I'm not a VC, though.)

However a good starting point for how investors actually make decisions is here: [http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2012/10/what-goes- wrong...](http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2012/10/what-goes-wrong.html) under the "investors" section.

It is a much better summary of how they actually make decisions (as opposed to what they report). I won't try to summarize it, just read those 11 paragraphs - but I will quote "If you remember one piece of advice about investors, it's that you've got to create some type of competitive situation."

This is entirely absent from the article (which is wrong.) "Table 2: Important Factors for Investment Selection" is entirely, laughably wrong.

It is simply not the way VC's actually make their investment decisions. At all. (Certainly at the seed stage.) Completely wrong. Sorry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was cofused. In the one chart, 0% of VCs reported that their own controbution contributed to success, then father down 27% of VCs reported that value add was an important factor in value creation. Anyone have additional insight?

<comment><AUTHOR> The way the data was structured is they were asked what is the MOST important factor (you can only chose one) whereas other parts of the survey were what are the important factorS.. Might create the confusion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Based on booty, both kinds.

</comment><comment><USER14> this was an awesome read. archived for future ref: [http://archive.is/XM2BO](http://archive.is/XM2BO)</comment>


Ask HN: What's your ultimate home tech/av setup? - <AUTHOR> Let's say you were Gates or Zuckerburg... if you were building a new (single-family) home from scratch, and money was no object... what cutting-edge tech would you integrate, and how would you design the house to accommodate it?
Some starter ideas... somehow covering the living area (outside too?) in alexa-enabled listening microphones. Gigabit wifi (and internet access). USB(-c?) charging ports abound. Would you bother with qi wireless charging built ins or something?
For security.. just ring.com doorbells? Smart locks/garage door openers? Which ones? An aptonomy.com security drone?
Get the new tesla solar roof tiles and powerwalls?
The AV system.. giant TVs or digital projectors? Color e-ink panels? Subscribe to directv go / netflix / use plex? With chromecasts or roku or amazon firesticks? How do you best get 4K everything?
What about the speaker system? Use Sonos to drive them?
Have a VR room with HTC Vive? The MS Hololens?
Is there any "smart kitchen" stuff worth anything? Get some smart mirrors?
What software would you run it all with? Control it with a smartwatch or just your phone or via the always-listening digital assistant? What about remotely?
Asking for a friend. <comment><USER2> With an unlimited budget, something like Prima Cinema would make sense:

[http://www.primacinema.com/what-is-prima- cinema/](http://www.primacinema.com/what-is-prima-cinema/)

TL;DR it's a system that delivers first-run movies to your home on(ish) the _theatrical_ release date. Pricing isn't given on the site, but other articles covering the system have quoted around $35k for the hardware & $50/viewing for movies.

For piping 4K everything everywhere, you'd probably wind up with equipment mostly intended for commercial broadcasting. Many of those devices also have support for control over either RS-422 serial or Ethernet, so there's plenty of integration & remote control possibilities.</comment>