Show HN: M4b-tool – a tool to merge, split and chapterize audiobooks - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sandreas/m4b-tool <comment><USER2> I'm curious: what players do people use so that they feel the need to _merge_ an audiobook into a single file? With VLC, the accuracy of my aim on the time bar would become nonexistent. Just two days ago I've finally whipped up a script to _split_ books, and not by chapters but into 10-minute chunks.

<comment><USER3> I use Apple Books and it works well with chapters so I usually create the books with [https://www.splasm.com/audiobookbuilder/](https://www.splasm.com/audiobookbuilder/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Audiobookbuilder is nice, but commercial and only available on MacOS... Another open source alternative is Audiobook Binder ([http://bluezbox.com/audiobookbinder.html](http://bluezbox.com/audiobookbinder.html)) - which is good and also comes with a command line utility, but it hat some GUI issues and is only available for MacOS.

Another german project for Windows is [http://www.audiobookcreator.de/](http://www.audiobookcreator.de/), which works, but it also did not fit my needs - i prefer auto command line merge instead of manual GUI interaction

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another poster cited "a cover per chapter, etc" as an advantage, but I don't see that capability in the linked tool (and I don't think it's part of the m4b format, which is a shame - the ability to change art per chapter or even more so, at points in the timeline, would really open some new uses e.g. saved lectures with slides).

<comment><AUTHOR> There already is an issue for this on m4b-tool: [https://github.com/sandreas/m4b-tool/issues/21](https://github.com/sandreas/m4b-tool/issues/21)

In this issue there is a detailed description, how this can be achieved, but i did not manage to get it working with cover and audio (help wanted)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very cool. This should integrate well into my ongoing audiobook hacking work. Building my own personalized shell scripts to interact with my library is fun!

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you like it. The batch mode together with the docker image and the --jobs parameter was a huge improvement to convert a bunch of audiobooks, even if there is much room for more.

</comment></comment><comment> em-bee this looks useful. i wonder how accurate it can detect chapters. i have been doing this work manually with audacity. and while the silence detector got me quite far, there always was some manual post processing to do because sometimes there were long silences within chapters or the chapter break was shorter than the others...

<comment><AUTHOR> Chapter detection is one thing that I'm working on. The speech detection thing is promising, there is a log of work to do for this. Especially non-english languages are difficult.

I'm also working on a online platform in my free time to share manually crafted chapter sets via api (like freedb), but I'm not sure that it will ever go online :-) I won't give it up either...

<comment><USER4> I have sort of an opposite wish for the chapter detection feature. I'm a big fan of podcasts that tell a story per season or whatever you want to call it. Lot's of them have an intro ad for an indeterminate period of time and signal the beginning of the episode with an intro blurb usually voice over of 'welcome to ..' with some background music. I really don't mind listening to the ads the first time through but would love to save whole seasons without the leader ads as an M4b file - I've thought about writing this in the past, just haven't gotten to it. The ability to detect those points in a series of mp3s and bundle them up into an m4b would be super useful in my book.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice idea... perhaps i will try to build this feature more generic and instead of only a chapter detection feature i will add a plugin interface, so that hooks could be defined for merge, split or chapter... But this is far far in the future ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


People Who Claim to Work 75-Hour Weeks Usually Only Work About 50 Hours - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/04/people-who-claim-to-work-75-hour-weeks-are-lying.html <comment><USER3> Many years ago I was working for a small consulting firm and had a stretch of time with a lot of overtime; aka "crunch time". Since these were billable hours, time was tracked daily, even if they weren't all actually billed. The tracked hours varied over the ~6 month span, but ranged from 55 hours a week to 93 for one week. Of course not 100% of the time was spent on actual work but it was pretty close.

The 93 hour week was pretty much: go to work, eat meals at desk, go home, work from home until bed time, go to sleep, then repeat. But in general weird things happened during that time, probably due to a combination of stress and unhealthy habits. For example:

\- I've never been a morning person and struggled to wake up before 9 all my life. During this time I woke up early to meet with the client early in the morning. After some time I'd habitually wake up 15 minutes before 6, which was when my alarm was set at. Also due to lack of sleep I'd always be pissed that I was missing out on 15 minutes of sleep too.

\- I was sleep deprived but didn't feel sleepy at all during the day. Granted I did consume a lot of coffee, but still. Adrenaline?

\- Got drunk really easily. Part of client facing work is drinks with clients every so often. I used to be able to drink 4-5 beers and not show much effect externally. Towards the end of this period 1-2 drinks and I'd be slurring.

\- Perversely, things were often times "fun". The team got really close to each other and we actually looked forward to going to the client office to do "battle".

Definitely not sustainable nor healthy. I got pats on the back and some token raises / bonuses but I've since learned that going above and beyond like this is not worth it. The hit to mental and physical health is just not worth the small amount of extra money and (possibly) career advancement.

<comment><USER4> Make that 6 months into two years and the sleep time to an average of 5 - 5.5 hours a night and you have parenthood of a crybaby.

You have to add in a boss who spends 2/3rd of the time you're home screaming at you to the mix.

<comment><USER5> As a parent who added a second child when my first was 2 and a half, I think you're doing it wrong.

A year later, both children are still extremely demanding. It's all about setting limits and knowing when to bend them, like last night when my daughter finally figured out how to wake herself up in the middle of the night to go poop. That's one of the rare sleepless nights that's worth it.

Otherwise, knowing how you sleep is also important. I fumble around in the dark, use extremely dim lights, and have no problem letting my kids sleep with me for an hour or two. A full night's sleep is vital. I'm really good at falling asleep after giving a bottle because I make them before going to bed, turn on no lights, and keep my eyes closed once I'm in the rocking chair.

> You have to add in a boss who spends 2/3rd of the time you're home screaming > at you to the mix.

You really need to learn modern discipline techniques. We use 1-2-3 magic. When our toddler screams at us, it's usually an immediate "ONE!" If it's really bad, there's a time out with no counting. It really works.

I even help my wife learn by shouting "ONE!" "TWO!" ... when I'm out of the room and hear my toddler get tough. The 1-2-3 magic technique requires a lot of disciple to not get sucked into a toddler argument.

See [https://www.amazon.com/1-2-3-Magic-Effective-Discipline- Chil...](https://www.amazon.com/1-2-3-Magic-Effective-Discipline- Children/dp/1889140163/ref=sr_1_3?crid=X0IAN6HFZNBZ&keywords=1+2+3+magic&qid=1556228008&s=gateway&sprefix=1+2+3+magic%2Caps%2C140&sr=8-3)

<comment><USER6> As a parent of multiple children (3+), your comment really rubs me the wrong way.

It comes off as judgemental ("you're doing it wrong", "you really need to learn to"), and you're generalizing your own children's behavior as if it applied to every child.

Every child is different, their sleep cycles, reactivity, personalities, etc.

I'm not even going to comment on the 1-2-3-timeout technique apart from saying I think it's disrespectful towards children; it is basically conditioning them to fear certain words you say and to force them to do something. Isolating them when they "misbehave".

You're free to raise your children how you want, but perhaps be mindful of how you.. "give advice"

<comment><USER7> Moreover, not all parents/families are the same. Some are heavy sleepers, some are light sleepers. Some get to sleep easily, some have difficulty getting to sleep. Some families have everyone on the same schedule, other families have everyone on shifted schedules. Some have generous parental leave or a non- working parent and can devote significant direct time/attention to kids, others are working full time with little parental leave and not much support. Some are extremely relaxed and are unfazed by noise or mess, while others are anxious and have trouble controlling physiological responses to stress. And so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In my experience, when a workplace has a perpetual crunch time culture, little if any additional work gets done that wouldn't have gotten done if everyone stuck to 40 hour weeks. I'm very curious how true this is in 996 places. When someone knows that they're going to spend 12 hours in the office regardless of how much work is actually required, that time gets padded out a LOT with non- work stuff, both to preserve their own sanity and out of resentment for the expectation of 12 hour days.

<comment><USER9> In my experience 996 is a scam to get compensated for doing tons of hours of work while often doing no more work than the employees on a regular schedule. I've seen plenty of people working two jobs who just do the needful and rest every minute they can who do far less work tha their "less hardworking" peers.

You CAN take a 40hr week worker, make them work extra, and their productivity will spike pretty hard. It's just that people eventually adapt by resting more at work. Employers end up seeing little additional work done even if they schedule somebody for an extra 20hrs a week.

The only jobs where more hours = more work sustainably are jobs like trucking where the work is actually very easy and its just a matter of staying awake at the wheel. Long work weeks are mostly a form of virtue signalling which you recieve money for doing. The only reason the 24/7 crunch time companies don't immediately go broke from sheer inefficiency is because they don't pay their staff overtime. Everybody would be better off in the long run with a culture that was focused on hiring a greater number of people to work more reasonable hours with strongly encouraged breaks. This 996 crap is a reflection of the egos of people like Jack Ma who would rather have employees with his work ethic rather than employees that get a lot of work done in little time.

<comment><USER10> I know of two truckers personally who fell asleep at the wheel because of that attitude/culture/expectation, leading to crashes. They were okay but it was scary stuff.

<comment><USER9> Oh yeah but you legitimately can get more work done. It's just every now and again it causes a trucker to plow through a schoolbus because they're half awake at the wheel. This is why Truckers are hired as independant contractors to limit the liability of companies making them work unsafely. So they can argue they don't need to pay for little Billy's wheelchair.

Yet for the companies involved this arrangement is highly profitable. They don't pay any of the externalities. I'm not saying it's a good thing. It's merely a profitable thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I worked 60-70 hours a week for 6 months and destroyed by health ( _actually_ programming for 50+ of those hours, tracked time since it was billable hours for a consulting firm). Finished the project by the deadline I was hired for, but quit soon afterwards and within 2 months I was in the ICU, and then in and out of the hospital several times with some serious chronic health issues that I'm still recovering from 2 years later. I made a lot of money but spent the next year barely working and recovering my health. Doctor's weren't 100% sure it was stress/work related("possible" it contributed), but I was pretty sure. All things considered, it was a losing option despite the pay. I could have done it at age 25 but not at age 45.

Now I work 40-50 hours and week, make even more money(for where I live, average by SV standards), but it's still a high pressure job. I'd gladly work 25 hours a week for 1/3 the pay.

Why isn't there someone disrupting software development paying experienced people like me a low salary for 20-30 hours a week? I'd still get over half as much done as I do working 50 hours a week, I'm sure.

<comment><USER12> > Why isn't there someone disrupting software development paying experienced > people like me a low salary for 20-30 hours a week? I'd still get over half > as much done as I do working 50 hours a week, I'm sure.

I've seen many, many developers working 30 hours a week. It's generally not acknowledged openly or written into the contract, but it takes the form of coming in late in the morning, "working from home" at least one day a week. Or leaving work early "to beat traffic", pick up the kids etc.

The key in my experience is finding a manager who is willing to evaluate you on your performance rather than time spent at your desk, and to be a little flexible about accepting a job that doesn't pay top dollar. An experienced engineer should be able to get more done in 20-30 hours anyway than a junior engineer can in 50 hours. As long as you're reasonably productive and you don't cause trouble for anyone, I have seen people sustain jobs like that for more than a decade.

<comment><USER13> I'm in this situation. I spend about 30 hours on real development and 10 hours on self improvement (trying new stuff/learning new techniques) . I easily get as much done as my co-workers who go to every meeting and work overtime. Difference is I'm not burned out like the ones who try to look like "company men" by putting in 50 hours a week and attending every little corporate meeting and event that happens.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This happened to me. I was working 40 hours per week but saying I was working 75 hours per week (without really measuring it). Then I got a second job which made it more important to manage my time effectively (including measuring my time). With the second job, I actually started working 72 hours per week and realized how hard it is to work that much time due to the necessities in life (sleeping, eating/shopping, bathing, commuting, ect) not to mention all the distractions that come up during work when you think you have more then 40 hours to complete all your work.

I recommend anyone try to work that much for a few months, it really puts perspective on how limited our time is and the value of time management.

<comment><USER15> Also puts into perspective how much of a mental wear working 70+ hours is.

I did it for a few months - really starts breaking you down as a human being.

<comment><USER16> 30 years ago I did 70 hours a week for 12 weeks and have RSI in one of my wrists as a result.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> And even if they do spend 75 hours at their workplace, they're probably spending far less than 40 actually working.

(says the guy posting on HN instead of actually working).

<comment><USER18> > And even if they do spend 75 hours at their workplace, they're probably > spending far less than 40 actually working.

Interesting, in Europe the hours are less but you are expected to work every minute you are there. In America you are expected to physically stay longer but being on FB/Reddit is no big deal.

Sounds like a bad way of doing things.

<comment><USER19> > Interesting, in Europe the hours are less but you are expected to work every > minute you are there.

No, you're not. Also, Europe is large and diverse. Source: European.

<comment><USER20> Most people unfortunately refer to Europe when they mean north-west Europe or even the Nordic countries alone.

<comment><USER18> Yes sorry I was being sloppy with language, I was describing northern/Germanic Europe. Southern Europe has their own rules

<comment><USER19> I still find it hard to believe that it's universal across all or even most companies in (for example) Germany. Do software shops there not have Playstation/table tennis/table football or whatever that people use to take a break during working hours?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What is work anyway?

If you are a programmer then work is different. Sure you are not on your feet all day at the beck and call of customers, however, if you are not working then your computer is. Waiting is not supposed to be part of the job. Learning on the job is also verboten. Very little time that is on the company clock is spent travelling.

I have colleagues in sales that do lots of travel, then, when they are back in the office they spend the morning filling in expenses. Sure this is all work that the company needs someone to do and someone has got to go on those planes. I also know from experience that time spent travelling is tiring, but is it strictly work?

On the plane they could have the laptop out and be working on spreadsheets. Or they could be playing Angry Birds. Would one activity count as working and the other not?

If you are a security guard and are mostly monitoring the TV and kettle, how does that compare to the secretary that occupies the same desk by day, juggling phone calls with a constant stream of people needing assistance?

Or if you are a taxi driver working with half the day spent waiting for a fare. You could easily put in long hours doing that but how much of this work is actual work and how much of it is reading the newspaper?

With every long hours job in the Western world there are these job-specific factors to consider. If someone is doing extra shifts in a factory where there is a production line then I am far more willing to believe claims of long hours worked.

<comment><USER22> > I also know from experience that time spent travelling is tiring, but is it > strictly work?

If I'm someplace other than where I want to be, it's work.

A lot of comments in this thread don't seem to understand - even if you're free to read HN during downtime, if I need to be in by 9am and am unable to leave until 7pm, the period in between was work. If I would have suffered professionally if I'd left at 5 regardless of how much "work" was done, the performative behavior is also "work".

Labor law in the states uses "engaged to work" and similar language often, mostly in the context of hourly employees. You can't tell someone "you must show up to the jobsite and wait to see if you're needed" under threat of no future work... that's being engaged to work.

<comment><USER23> The confusion is because many of us work many days remote, and/or have flexible hours. For many of us, our entire existence is oriented around improving a bottom line...so when we have down time, we are recreationally reading about how to do that better, whether we are on the clock or not. So, if you are a remote worker, and you produce 3 proof of concepts for your company for fun, and none of them pan out, how many hours did you work? Nobody knows, including you.

<comment><USER22> Why does the concept of being salary always seem to go one way (more than 40)?

I worked in a place where people "worked long hours".

A typical day would go like this: around 4pm they'd declare they had a "conference call" and call a friend from a meeting room. Then they'd watch some Netflix til 7ish, then go out to dinner (probably with the friend they called), where they'd fire off several drafted emails. If someone actually responds, they'd draft a reply then send it while getting ready for bed.

When the definition of "good work" becomes subjective, "work" becomes art, specifically performance art.

<comment><USER23> I didn't think I suggested this necessarily went "more than 40," only that "on" time might be hard to differentiate from "off" time, and that some activities that look like "off" (having dinner with teammates) might have real value while others that look like "on" (researching some tech framework that is irrelevant to the problem you are trying to solve) might be worthless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> So this is something you learn sooner or later. People lie. And I don't mean maliciously. I mean they lie to themselves and to other people. Some prime examples:

\- How much they get paid. Honestly you need to see a W2 before you believe what anyone tells you.

\- Commute times. "It's 15 minutes door to door". No, it's not. It's like 35. This isn't even a "perfect circumstances" type deal. I honestly don't know what this is but it's so common for me to hear outright falsehoods for this I just take any estimate and double it and then go from there.

\- How much they work. Most people who work 70, 80 or 100 hours a week just don't. I mean they may work a lot but not that much. Kudos to this study for using a diary allocating time rather than self-reporting.

\- The article mentions this one but I'd forgotten about it: how much people go to the gym and how long they spend there.

There's a weirdly large amount of self-delusion and presenting a particular image that honestly I could never be bothered with (which isn't to say I don't have my own foibles of course). Sometimes I wonder what I missed out on here in terms of social norms. But it just seems so exhausting and pointless.

</comment><comment><USER25> Investment bankers will often claim this, while also lying about their salary.

I was often surprised by my colleagues claiming extra long work weeks, all while looking remarkable fresh. I couldn't work it out - I mean, if I worked a solid 14 hour day, you could see it clearly on my face, yet if they do it, they seem to develop a healthy glow. Turns out a lot of them were in the building, but not at their desk. Oftentimes they were in the gym/steam/sauna. That explained the healthy glow!

<comment><USER26> On the other side, I know some investment bankers and they work more than 60 hours per week. They look unhealthy to me :)

<comment><USER25> I too was one of those unhealthy looking, overworked bankers. I was promoted at a young age and had a lot to prove, so I overdid it for a year or two. Then I understood the secret the other MDs had known for years - you just have to look busy, not actually be busy!

<comment><USER27> When I was working construction many years ago there was an urban legend about a guy that always looked busy running around with some tools, but no one ever saw him actually working. Turned out he used to find himself a hidden spot at the site and sleep there most of the day. Just making sure to walk across the site with tools once in a while.

<comment><USER28> I learned as a young sailor that if you always had a broom in your hand, nobody would find something for you to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I recently started turning up at around 10 and leaving at 4:45 and I get just as much done as when I was in the office 9-6.

I've also started giving more fucks about work, which is amusing as I started showing up late and leaving early due to my lack of fucks.

So in my unsanctioned (and I'm sure time limited once someone complains) experiment with a sample size of one I can say shorter days definitely keep me more engaged and don't seem to slow down my work.

<comment><USER30> This has been my standard work day for ~4 years. I've found people don't complain as long as you get things done.

<comment><USER25> If you work in a large corporate, people will complain, _especially_ if you get this done. It sorta highlights the inefficiencies of the punctual, yet less productive employees, and they don't like it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think selling time for money, more than anything, is why I don't want to be an employee forever. It's good for learning the ropes and knowing what it's like in the trenches, but ultimately there are only so many hours in the day and the human body evolved to require a good number of hours for self- maintenance.

The path to sustainable growth is through automation, increasing your market rates/prices/value, and owning capital (money and assets that generate more money/assets).

You can see this analogy play out on an international scale during the Cold War. The Soviet Union reached its peak during the 1970s, where it could not find any more resources (whether labor or raw materials) to use. "They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work" is a famous Soviet joke. The U.S., by contrast, invented new blue oceans of productivity (e.g. computers) and increased GDP and GDP per capita. It played out in foreign policy; the U.S. invested in and traded with Western Europe to make it more productive; the Soviet Union cannibalized Eastern Europe for parts. The result was that the U.S. won the Cold War and the Soviet Union died.

At no scale does throwing more resources at a problem change the nature of the game. Devising more efficient ways to use the resources you have changes the game.

</comment><comment><USER32> Actually working more than ~55 hours in a week is soul crushing and physically very hard. At a certain point you would need an escalation of stimulants or risk not being able to get out of bed if you actually worked 75 hours.

<comment><USER33> I can confirm. In the consulting world I've had several instances of either being doubled up on projects or having to hit extremely demanding deadlines for milestone payouts that required legitimate 60+ hour weeks. One week is doable, 2 is a stretch, beyond that people (myself included) generally had to turn to things like modafinil to keep going and there's a noticeable toll on general health and wellness.

On the flip side, people who say they work stupid hours are _usually_ just at the office stupid hours, not necessarily working all the time. But so are people who say they work 40 hour weeks. From working with hundreds of "normal" employees at clients over the years, I'd say the average actual productive time per person is around 25 hours.

<comment><USER34> >But so are people who say they work 40 hour weeks. From working with hundreds of "normal" employees at clients over the years, I'd say the average actual productive time per person is around 25 hours

Agreed, I'd be surprised if I spent more than 25 hours a week actually actively working

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm currently working legit 65-70 hours per week. We have a hard stop that costs millions if we miss. It basically means 6am-6pm Monday through Saturday. I'm not as productive as when I work less but there is a net win in productivity. I don't think I can do this for much more than a few months. I can already tell it has markedly harmed my health. Being stressed for months at a time is hard.

<comment><USER23> No shade here, but how can you possibly be on HN right now? Or do you consider this kind of commenting activity to be part of your job? I consider myself to work maybe 15 hr per week, but according to my contract I work 40, and sometimes my timesheet says 60. Nonetheless, I am "on-call" quite a bit, at my own discretion.

I just can't imagine how I could stay in deep concentration and be "legit 65-70 hours per week," unless I was also counting chatting on HN, Slack, meals with coworkers, research...ie the things that make my actual "work" time (of maybe 15 hours per week) truly productive.

I guess it would be totally reasonable to include some of those activities as "legit work time," but then how do you decide what is and isn't legit? I require a lot of adjacent "down" time to provide very high-value "on" time for my company, but how could you possibly know if 20 hours spent researching something you are excited about will have any value whatsoever for your company? Should it be "billable?" This is the unsung benefit of being a salaried worker: you don't have to concern yourself about whether your research and exploratory development is "on task" or not, you just need to bring the benefits back to your company.

<comment><USER35> I actually posted this during a change management meeting. I was required to be there despite my portion of the meeting being 10 minutes of the hour. There are varying descriptions of "work", but my day usually lines up like so:

4:30am wake up 5:30 leave 6 arrive at the office 6-9 heads down coding 9-11 status, project, and various other meetings and help/administrative work 11-12 take lunch at the desk while I code 12-2 any follow up various other meetings 2-6 more code/tech work

Or course Im not 100% utilized. Nobody is. If I were to work 8, I would have no time to actually work on the project I have deliverables due on. Meetings are toxic, but also necessary, and Im manager and technical in this role so I have to split my time. Saturdays I usually get a solid 8-10 hours of work in with few interruptions.

I don't feel badly at all for posting here during billing hours, and if anything my invoices are conservative on real hours worked.

<comment><USER23> Oh, yes, I hear you on being present for 10 min of a 1 hr meeting. Your presence is absolutely valuable for the entirety of the hour meeting, even though it's not clear from the outset where precisely during that time those 10 min will be valuable.

I guess that's what I mean; it's not necessarily obvious when is work time and when is not. Even as you're posting on HN during your meeting as you understand it is not valuable for you to be 100% "present" and it would be more valuable to explore ideas and culture on HN as you listen, so it is also true that many will be working on ideas as they eat dinner with their families, solving problems while they sleep, and planning their dependency graph during their commute. I just don't think "hours worked" is an honest metric any more than 4 years at college shows that you were anything more than present.

Those 4 years could have been rigorous and honest and intense and valuable with a B average to show for it, or you could have been partying and have an A for your effort. Time spent _might_ be required, but it also doesn't matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> In the last year, I had two jobs,one at the office, and one at a startup I was working with.

I managed to make more than 75h a weeks only 3 weeks of the year.

During these weeks, my life was, sleep, go to the gym, go to work, go to second work sleep, every weekday, and on week-ends gym + work.

75h per week is 11h per day EVERY day. when you do that, your body is tired, and if you want to be productive your have to sleep a lot, and you have no social life.

(I track my time with an app, so it is not fake numbers, my max is 78 hours)

</comment><comment><USER37> There's something about work.. I always felt better at low level producing jobs (bakery, burgery) because I knew that my work was quantifiable (and predictable). It felt like a robot to many but to me it felt like the difference between superstition and arithmetic. There I couldn't say I worked N but in reality only worked M because there was no way to be confused; it was obvious and there were traces of my work that were function of time.

</comment><comment><USER38> I met a couple subgroup of people that were weirdly proud of working a lot. And I caught a lot of them inflating their work hours (for example pretending they work 70 while they work a normal 40). To them it was a way to show off how important they supposedly are.

I really think that most people that pretend to work > 40 hours a week are not really working those hours. They might stay a lot at the office but are usually the least productive people ever

</comment><comment><USER39> I think 75+ productive hours are doable if:

1) you start early

2) keep focus 100%, no browsing/distractions etc.

3) after 7 hours you make a 2-3h long break and do something completely different, like taking a walk outside, sunbathing, biking, sauna or whatever makes you happy

4) when you return, you work on another task/for another company, never the same stuff you worked on in the morning

5) you take only one day off, i.e. depending on your location/culture/religion one of Fri-Sun is strictly no-work

6) you are single & healthy

<comment> munk-a Why do you want to work 75+ hours? What are you working for - what value are you receiving from life?

These are serious questions, I've worked crazy overtime (defined by me as anything over 50 hours a week) and never want to return to it, consistently doing 10 hour days is draining and significantly lowered my productivity, it was just bad times all around.

<comment><USER39> I managed to work like that for ~9 months; when you work on some bleeding edge stuff like inventing some new Deep Learning method you can actually have fun and be eager to keep doing it. If it's just usual treadmill caused by silly decisions from the top and inability to push back to customer, then it's hell.

<comment><USER13> that type of work is < 0.1% for most of the use cases we're talking about here. Generally it's just a huge corp abusing their employees.

<comment><USER39> Sure. I summarized rules that helped me when I needed to do that. Somebody might find that useful (e.g. while starting their own business or going through exponential growth).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> People like this generally consider seat and monitor warming as work. Is a butt keeping the seat warm and the mouse moving enough to keep the computer from going to sleep? If so, it is work.

</comment><comment><USER41> I worked for a period of my life (around two years) a sustained 100+ hour workload (real work). I literally did nothing but work, eat and work, and sleep seven days a week. The only times I didn't work was in the bathroom.

I didn't get physically ill or burn out, but I slowly started to drift away from reality. The quality of my judgment calls started to decline and while never doing anything outright crazy, I did and said things that in hindsight were very strange.

One of the side effects of this is I had no idea what happened in the world in that time. To this day I am still learning about historical events that happened in that two year period that continue to amaze me.

</comment><comment><USER42> I know my productivity plummets passed 7-8 hours of work. Many times I would say it becomes negative, I.e. I make a lot of sigbificant mistakes and/or break something. More work is rarely an actual solution.

</comment><comment><USER43> How many hours are people who say they work 40 working?

<comment><USER44> That was the most interesting part of the Mother Jones article to me. If you compare people who average 43 hours a week (but claim they are averaging 50), the folks who think they are working 70 should be working about 20 hours more a week. But it's only 12. Pretty amazing.

[https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/04/most-of-us- do...](https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/04/most-of-us-dont-work- more-than-40-hours-a-week/)

<comment><USER13> But on average they died within 5 years because of stress/cardio incidends and mcdonald's cheese burger being their primary source of sustenance. So over a 10 year span the normies were 50% more productive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Interesting caveat that people also overestimate leisure time.

I suppose the takeaway may simply be that people are not good at remembering/estimating quantities of time?

</comment><comment><USER46> The nature of this topic is that:

\- Those who don't work long hours will want to understate how many hours hard workers work (to avoid being labelled a slacker)

\- Those who do work long hours will want to overstate how many hours they work (to accrue more perceived clout)

The reality is almost certainly in between. There are certainly people who both claim and do work 75+ hour weeks on a persistent basis. I've done this for 4.5 years straight as a founder.

</comment><comment><USER47> When I got my first job, I did similar. 9 am to 2 am straight for 2 weeks with 6-days week. Reaching home back around 3.30 am. Then waking up at 7.30 am and reaching office again at 9 am.

I was replacement for senior dev, who was leaving on very short notice. Noticeably, I used to eat very little than usual. Caffeine and nicotine helped me go thr' it. But now I feel like stupid for being so naive that time.

</comment><comment><USER48> Seems to me that people tend to get anchored by their high-water marks rather than average... for example I will definitely have 110hr weeks and have the occasional 35hr weeks, my "generic" week is probably 55hrs, but not sure where the true average is (probably closer to the generic week), but the mean of my extremely good weeks and bad weeks is 72.5 hrs...

</comment><comment><USER49> Some kinds of work are easier to do than others. At one point, I decided that 60 hr/wk of active work seemed the approximate sustainable limit for some typical mix of both hard&easy work, over a period of weeks or months. But even if you can schedule the hard&easy parts for fatigue, 60 hr/wk still has extra costs (e.g., stresses to health, outside relationships, outside activities, internal morale as people get irritable).

I've also done my share of all-nighters and 80-hour weeks, and it's rarely/never worth every hour. I've learned to manage projects and tasks better.

I also have some sense of how performance degrades severely by the 30 hours awake mark, and a sense that there's a ramp up to that impairment before it becomes obvious.

Most recently, I advised a developer to try for 40 productive hours of work per week, and to emphasize being sharp and non-fatigued for any task that would benefit from that. Almost all of their work required them to be sharp. Keep the 60-hour heroics in reserve for emergencies only. (Or for occasional easy flow work, like sketching out a UI skeleton in some new framework. But don't work all night on something easy, and then throw off your sleep cycle for a week when you need to be sharp for harder stuff.)

(The last time I did a weekend work marathon, which required some meticulous reverse-engineering-ish work that I think was already the work-smarter way and couldn't be sped up further, I imagined the focus and pace of an astronaut who was calm and all-business about solving some critical problem in time. That was both inspirational and also set a simple internal watchdog on my mood and how progress was going. Had I been burning stressful 60-hour weeks for months before, I might've been too fatigued/stressed to pull it off without error or poor decisions. Had I not had much experience with working long hours, I might not have appreciated how much discipline they require, and the costs.)

</comment><comment><USER50> I recently starting using a training a productivity tracker that has a decent mix of tracking but keeping the data local. It's really amazing to see how time is spent in the office. If on a very unusual and rare day of say 10 hours, I might be lucky to get 6 hours of actual work (with maybe an hour of deep work in there).

<comment><USER51> What software is this productivity tracker?

<comment><USER50> Qbserve

<comment><USER52> Thanks this sounds like something I'd like to try - are there any others you considered whilst looking around as that is mac only and I'm Windows unfltunately ( or any one else in this thread do something similar )

<comment><USER50> Yes I think I remember RescueTime but that doesn't store your data locally I think?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I've recently been working a lot, but not all of it has been desk time. I think it's fair to include time spent thinking about work as work time - <USER2> I've worked out how to solve a task I can churn it out, but something particularly complicated might take a few days of thinking (fast and slow) to work out.

A survey like the one in the article may be too simplistic because I could be in the gym while mulling over a problem, out for a walk, doing my shopping, playing games, etc. but in the background I'm still mulling things over. It's not pure relaxation time like when I'm not trying to work something out, but still leads to that "Aha!" moment, even if it happens in the shower or while doing the washing up.

I think it's reasonable to include all that thinking time as work time.

<comment><USER54> It's not work time in the sense that you will be paid for it though, which is _usually_ the metric people use. Unless I am missing something.

<comment><USER53> True, but then a lot of people in permanent jobs don't get paid extra for overtime anyway. I mean it more from the perspective of how much of your day you're "on", and that leisure/other activities aren't necessarily mutually exclusive to thinking about work related tasks, which can make you more productive during your usual paid hours.

<comment><USER54> > True, but then a lot of people in permanent jobs don't get paid extra for > overtime anyway.

Can you specify what countr(y|ies) this applies to? It is most certainly not the case where I am.

> I mean it more from the perspective of how much of your day you're "on"

I'm firmly of the belief that if you spend a lot of your leisure time thinking about work, perhaps you have an unhealthy work/life balance. You are of course correct that it is possible to still do so. I don't agree with the point that this should be counted or even is work time. It is free time you have sacrificed to your job, without compensation. Work with no compensation doesn't satisfy the conditions for what I consider to be employment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I used to be a practicing attorney, where we tracked our time meticulously. My craziest month was 360 hours. I remember it well, I didn't cheat on a single hour, if anything I may have under-reported. That was a hell-month, but I do think many other people could do it for one month.

I later started a company, where I also worked insanely hard, but did not keep track of my hours. The big difference is that with my startup, I loved every second of it. On countless nights, I would get upset whenever I saw the sun start to rise because it meant I probably ought to go to sleep soon. Five hours can go by without looking up from what you're doing.

All that said, without a time sheet, it's impossible to know for certain which job I worked more hours.

</comment><comment><USER56> Well Marissa Mayers claims to have worked 130 hour work weeks[1]

[https://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer- on-1...](https://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-on-130-hour- work-weeks-2016-8)

<comment><USER18> > "the hardest working CEO in Silicon Valley, bar none."

i'm sorry but she was early stage at Google, what since then has all that hard work gotten her?

<comment><USER57> hundreds of millions of dollars?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I've noticed quite a few very unproductive workers, send emails and pretend they are working at 11pm kind of hours. Worker output is the only thing that matters. The problem is in our field how do we measure this?

</comment><comment><USER13> I have worked 75 hour weeks but only like a couple times a year, people who say they work that much are usually filling their time with worthless filler. I bet less that 1% of them actually do it. The rest is meetings, web surfing, wasting time on the phone. However business owners can easily do this when profits are down.

</comment><comment><USER59> Isn't it weird to lie about how long you sit on your butt? I could understand lying about output of your work. But hours? The perception is that it doesn't matter what you did, but rather, how much you suffered for it.

</comment><comment><USER60> 50 hours? I work to live and value my free time. Avoid the water cooler talk and stick to 40 hours a week. Non work chatter with co-workers is what slows you up.

</comment><comment><USER61> Hours spent at the office do not equate to hours worked.</comment>


Amazon amends seller terms worldwide after German antitrust action - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/17/amazon-amends-seller-terms-worldwide-after-german-antitrust-action/ <comment><AUTHOR> > changes to account termination and blocking to remove its unlimited right to > do so without justification — meaning ordinary account terminations will in > future require 30 days notice.

Now if only we could get that for the customers, along with the mandatory data export...</comment>


Is the Earth Flat? - <AUTHOR> https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/earth/is-the-earth-flat/ <comment><USER2> Short answer: no.

Slightly longer answer: kind of but no.

Longer answer: can be apparently flat for a limited region around you but generally no.

Accurate subtle Answer: round because that is easier than flat.

Descriptive longer answer someone else said: the earth is a spheroid. Average roughness of earth if size of billiard ball would be as smooth as a typical billiard ball.

<comment><USER3> Flat locally, round globally.

<comment><USER2> I like "round globally". Nice.</comment></comment></comment>


Recognizing an inspiring woman for Ada Lovelace Day: Haskell hacker Audrey Tang - <AUTHOR> https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/recognizing-an-inspiring-woman-for-ada-lovelace-day-audrey-tang

<comment><USER2> Maybe not the best example given the focus of the article on inspiring women, since according to Wikipedia Audrey was born male? I thought that might deserve a mention. In fact I wonder if the author even knows? Or maybe better, just focus on the Audrey as an aspiring _person_?

<comment><USER3> Hooray, transmisogyny (as mentioned in the article)! Maybe you should be more respectful to LGBTQ folks and not misgender them. You're like all the self- proclaimed Chelsea Manning "supporters".

<comment><USER2> No disrespect intended (or involved at all, in my view), she was born male. Curious how you would describe the situation at birth though?

<comment><USER3> She's just not cisgender; she's trans. That doesn't make her less of a woman.

Children are trans too. It happens every time a doctor coercively assigns a baby's gender and ends up being wrong.

Either way, women are women, and this one is an inspiration.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


People reluctant to use their Octopus cards for fear of leaving a paper trail - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/maryhui/status/1138675837165641733 <comment><USER2> Follow on tweet:

> For additional context, since this photo doesn't show the whole scene: the > line at every ticket machine stretched back 10+ meters.

Anecdotal, but I've never seen a queue at a ticket machine in Hong Kong. Octopus is so entrenched as a vital necessity in Hong Kong you'll even hear comics making jokes about one of the only essentials in HK is an Octopus card (while things like clothing are optional)

It's not at all like the minimal copycat that Oyster in London is. Your Octopus can be used in lieu of card or cash payments in many retail outlets, restaurants, vending machines, even some taxis, all over the SAR, not just on HK island.

The downside is every single thing you do is logged and tracked against your card, and associating a card with an individual is just one MTR ride with facial recognition away.

<comment><USER3> You can now use a contactless debit card in London in lieu of an Oyster card.

I don't really see the difference between that and Octopus, now, except that contactless debit cards are a federated global system, which seems superior. Is the difference that Octopus cards can be obtained arbitrarily and anonymously?

Because nobody gives a crap about being tracked by debit card usage, and they're _already_ deanonymized.

<comment><USER2> To get an Octopus card, I need HK$150 cash.

To get a contactless debit (or credit) card, I need proof of ID and proof of address.

Octopus cards were launched in 1997. Oyster cards didn't come to London until 2003.

Contactless debit cards didn't come into play with TfL until 2014, and Oyster cards never really extended beyond transport uses in that time.

In comparison, retail establishments, vending machines, parking meters, car parks, were accepting Octopus cards as early as 2004.

There's a lot to be said for that momentum / inertia, which Oyster cards never had, and the accessibility to absolutely everyone without any requirements beyond having the cash to pay for it (approx £15, with £5 deposit for the card and £10 initial credit)

(It's also worth noting I dumped my Oyster card within a couple of months of contactless cards being accepted with TfL, while I still have my Octopus card as it's vital in HK in a way that Oyster never was in London)

<comment><USER4> So the main difference in 2019 is HK Octopus doesn't require ID, while UK Contactless does?

But is that a big issue given all these people are actively avoiding using the Octopus to avoid being tracked? I guess Octopus doesn't have age limits, I think you need to be 11 or higher to get a UK contactless card for yourself these days. Don't know if that's a legal minimum or just a banking decision.

Edit: You can get prepaid cards too: [https://www.mastercard.co.uk/en- gb/frequently-asked-question...](https://www.mastercard.co.uk/en- gb/frequently-asked-questions.html#prepaid)

<comment><USER5> You _can_ get an Octopus without an ID, but most people have their primary octopus linked to their ID for one of the following reasons: student transportation discounts, residential/school building access control, linked to credit card for automatic top-up, verification for child/elderly Octopus.

Given that a lot of the protestors were students maybe they're buying child tickets rather than paying double with an anonymous adult Octopus.

<comment><USER2> > You can get an Octopus without an ID, but most people have their primary > octopus linked to their ID for one of the following reasons: ... linked to > credit card for automatic top-up

When did that become a thing? I've always known Octopus to be cash only. Can non-resident foreigners also top up by CC?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Do they have their mobile devices with them? Electronic trail.

Did they appear in any photos? There's a trail.

Did they buy anything in that locality?

Did they call someone in that locality?

Just not using a card would seem to offer little protection unless they take care of at least the above.

</comment><comment><USER7> "This raises a lot of interesting questions about cash vs. cashless societies, and how in times of protest people may drastically adjust their usual economic behaviour."

Also what happens when you dont have the option to "adjust your behavior"? Like at least in Germany payments above some amount I don't remember can not legally be paid in cache.

<comment><USER8> Citation? As far as I know, there is no limit for paying cash in Germany. To fight crime, you have to show an ID if the amount is 10.000€ or more. In some other European countries, there are limits for paying with cash, but I don't think it applies to Germany at the time of writing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As a frequent visitor to HK and Octopus Card holder, I don't believe I ever had to present ID to obtain my card. I just purchased it with cash at the Airport Express counter. Is it different for HK citizens?

<comment><USER10> No, there are "anonymous" cards and "personalized" ones. Anonymous cards can't be refunded if you lose them, they also can't be linked to a bank account to automatically add value to the card "purse".

A large percentage of the resident cardholders have the personalized cards because it means not having to use cash at machines to add value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's interesting how what this girl said (which frankly could be exaggerated or even made up for retweets and exposure) has turned into the title of this submission. Like embedding a pair of tweets and saying everybody is outraged. Journalism in 2019.

Isn't it more likely that, for example, many of these people had to come from far away to protest and they simply do not have an octopus card or it's not valid for this zone?

<comment> King-Aaron Considering the history behind the Chinese government's response to protesters, I would be willing to consider that the title and related tweet is somewhat accurate.

<comment><USER12> Though I'd say that the hunch is right in this case, I'd be careful of falling into the trap of considering a news source more worthy just because it confirms your preexisting ideas.</comment></comment></comment>


City living affects neural social stress processing in humans - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v474/n7352/full/nature10190.html

<comment><USER2> Could somebody translate - is living in cities more stressful or less stressful? I suppose more stressful, but I can't discern it from the writing here.

Or is it just stressful in a different way than living in the countryside?

<comment><USER3> More stressful, though the linked study isn't focused on showing that either way--- it takes the city/rural stress difference as an assumption from previous work, and is focused here on looking at neural correlates that might explain it (or at least be associated with or somehow mediate the process).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe it's just age, but I feel a lot of recent "discoveries" regarding stress, the importance of the natural environment in one's well being, etc., I was figuring out for myself 20 years ago.

I hope maybe it will reverse some of the trends that have created a lot of stress in my own life. (E.g. noisy cube farms and crappy fluorescent lights, I'm looking at you.)

<comment><USER5> until a scientist runs the experiment, it could be said that our wisdom is anecdotal. that having been said, I don't think you should wait for science if you know from experience what's right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Did anyone who has a subscription read this? Any thoughts?

It looks interesting, but not $32 interesting, to me.</comment>


Majuro.js - Create Detailed, Interactive Maps With Open Buildings Data - <AUTHOR> http://majurojs.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> via: [http://www.functionn.in/2012/12/majurojs-create-detailed- int...](http://www.functionn.in/2012/12/majurojs-create-detailed- interactive.html)

If you liked Majuro.js and would like to know about similar resources, check out www.functionn.in for more web resources to keep you functionn.in'.

Majuro.js is an open source and free web application which allows you to create detailed and interactive maps with open building data. How does it work you ask? Well, you just select the map of your city from the Majuro.js website, or if it not available, you get one and then use it to start your work.

Once you've got the map, you open it in the Majuro.js draw application where you will be able to select areas of the map and provide information about those parts. You can drop markers to color-code buildings, add photos and descriptions as well.

Your custom map is saved on the Majuro.js website, but you can also download the data for Google Earth, or via a KML or GeoJSON file or simply setup your own Github Pages for your map.

The maps works all the way back to IE7 and the drawing application is totally open source and free.</comment>


Book: Introduction to Economic Analysis. - <AUTHOR> http://introecon.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I found this to be an excellent, and Free, introduction to microeconomics. It's quite crisp and mathy, unlike most econ texts which yak on for hours.

It would be nice to see more economics in here.</comment>


Shit HN Says - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/shit_hn_says <comment><USER2> Reminds me of 4chan's opinion of HN: [http://rbt.asia/g/thread/S38087806](http://rbt.asia/g/thread/S38087806)

<comment><USER3> Thanks! I enjoyed your link much more than the OP. The 4chan version is consistently funny, while the OP is more like funny, SRS, funny, SRS, funny. That's interesting to SRS/SJW kind of people, but I try not to hang out where they hang out, they're too authoritarian.

<comment><USER4> SRS?

<comment><USER5> "Shit Reddit Says" i.e. [http://www.reddit.com/r/ShitRedditSays](http://www.reddit.com/r/ShitRedditSays)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "It should be something like Java bytecode. Except not actually Java bytecode, because Java bytecode was made specifically for Java."

Don't really see anything wrong with this one. Although one can't see the context in which this comment was made.

<comment><USER7> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7654065](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7654065)

<comment><USER8> Oh my god these are real? Hah! :)

<comment><USER7> I've not been able to find the one about big-O being premature optimization...

<comment><USER8> deleted? ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "GNU Screen is great. The only downside is that it can't persist through a machine restart."

<comment><USER10> This isn't crazy... checkpoint restart for something like this is viable.. infact, I think people are doing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would like to request a Markov Generator of this.

BTW, enjoy the fun while it lasts because this isn't long for the front page.

<comment><USER12> If it were to remain unflagged this time around, I think it would show that HN is reaching some kind of social maturity.

Let's just wait and see.

<comment><USER6> Why?

<comment><USER12> Because the content really is hillarious, breaks the HN bubble a bit and is tightly related to this particular community.

To take that kind of joke badly shows immaturity and potentially some other psychological disorders, if one would try to ascribe them to community as opposed to individual.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Related:

[http://bradconte.com/files/misc/HackerNewsParodyThread/](http://bradconte.com/files/misc/HackerNewsParodyThread/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Most patterns I see there involve JavaScript, Ruby, MongoDB and lots of incompetent morons.

I think I couldn't bear with the "Shit Internet Says" version.

<comment><USER14> Don't forget the heavy discrimination against women.

<comment><USER12> Or never-ending _" Hey, ever heard about SSH config files!?"_. :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> " _Why the hell should I worry about text encoding before sending a string into a TCP socket..._ "

" _Well, TCP is a very simple protocol_ "

" _Most of the time, if you 're thinking about big-O, you're practicing pre- mature optimization._"

This stuff is _Golden_! I may have to start paying attention to twitter again.

</comment><comment><USER16> >Am I the only person that gets annoyed when I read "an order of magnitude" and the article doesn't mention whether it's binary or decimal

I thought I was the only one! Seriously, that kind of ambiguity is on par with the imperial/metric issues that destroyed the Mars climate orbiter back in '99.

<comment><USER17> Conversations would be very tedious if we did not permit ourselves to rely on conventions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is really funny. But it should be a HN thread instead of a twitter account, so we can vote.

<comment><USER19> Someone should create a subhacknewsit hn/shithnsays.

<comment><USER20> This subreddit comes up when you search certain ones, the posts link back to the actual comments to. [http://www.reddit.com/r/shns](http://www.reddit.com/r/shns)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The internet seems a bit obsessed with this kind of thing. From /r/cringepics to this, the goal seems to be to make fun of other people. It's like an extension of highschool: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7690995](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7690995)

I'm genuinely curious, what takeaway is there other than "Ha ha, look at that idiot"?

Some say that it indicates social maturity: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7690934](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7690934)

I don't understand how making fun of people is socially mature. Or is that not the goal here?

<comment><USER22> The tweets individually could be seen as digs at people, although they are (hopefully on purpose) not attributed.

Taken together I like to think it helps everyone realize that HN is a clique, albeit a generally knowledgeable, inclusive, and well-educated one. The HN community is no more immune to the sort of groupthink that inspires the thoughts published in the twitter feed than any internet community, and it never hurts to be aware of the fact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> [https://twitter.com/shit_hn_says/status/412810234994757632](https://twitter.com/shit_hn_says/status/412810234994757632)

"I personally have been a PHP developer since 2001, I haven't maintained any bad code"

If I ever worked with someone who said something like that I'd either demand they be fired or quit immediately.

</comment><comment><USER24> "I've long felt that type safety is largely a solution to a problem that doesn't really exist."

this made me LOL #lol

<comment><USER25> Oh. That was the one I came closest to agreeing with. :-|

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Everyone on HN (including me) would be like "I don't say such silly stuff, others do!"

</comment><comment><USER27> I love the order of magnitude one, but I think whoever said it was probably trying to be funny.

</comment><comment><USER28> this shows that there are massive inefficiencies in this market

</comment><comment><USER12> previous discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4375342](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4375342)

</comment><comment><USER29> I hope it gets more updates.

</comment><comment><USER30> Now I want to say something oblivious so I can be anontweeted too!

</comment><comment><USER31> Most of everything on HN is shit. But we read it anyways all day long.

</comment><comment><USER32> Followed! Hilarious stuff. :-)

</comment><comment><USER33> omg, I can't believe someone posted something inconsistent with feminism, or your old school software engineering background. What a loser.

</comment><comment><USER9> This. Is. Hillarious.

<comment><USER34> Yup, I'm bookmarking this immediately. Of course we have to go deeper, so Shit Shit NH Says is coming soon.

<comment><USER35> Shit Shit HN Says _Says_. Always close your parentheses!</comment></comment></comment>


Falsely Attributed: Famous quotes and the people who didn't say them - <AUTHOR> http://laphamsquarterly.org/swindle-fraud/charts-graphs/falsely-attributed <comment><USER3> My favourite quote like this is "great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people" which is usually attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, but this is disputed. However the nature of the quote highlights that squabbling over the provenance of quotes is not a great minded thing to do.

<comment><USER4> Every time I hear this quote, I remember that this quote is about people, so the author, whoever he was, defined himself as small.

<comment><USER5> No, the quote talks about ideas and trends, not individual persons. It is not talking about persons. You could even say it is almost prescriptive in that it is meant to urge you to do something or not do something. It is disguised as descriptive but the facade is quite obvious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Quotes are words.

The content is all words.

So why is it a huge PNG?

Oh, oh, is it an "infographic"? Right, yes, the graphical content is so important, of course…

<comment><USER7> It's a copy of one of it's pages, as it's a quarterly journal with a less- than-stellar web presence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A wonderful resource for quotes and their origin is Quote Investigator:

[http://quoteinvestigator.com/](http://quoteinvestigator.com/)

They have countless posts with in-depth research and sources. Lovely to browse for a couple of hours.

<comment><USER9> A couple of hours?! Ain't nobody got time fo that! Wait, I'm in the office... I think I have them. "Compiling!!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The amount of misinformation on the internet is staggering.

-Abraham Lincoln

</comment><comment><USER11> I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to misattribute it to Voltaire.

— Voltaire

</comment><comment><USER12> TVTropes has a rather large list of missattributed quotes: [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BeamMeUpScotty](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BeamMeUpScotty)

</comment><comment><USER13> The full Mencken quote is superb:

"The state—or, to make the matter more concrete, the government—consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get, and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time it is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods."

<comment><USER14> >The state—or, to make the matter more concrete, the government—consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me.

This quote starts out really good, but runs off the rails very quickly. Replace government with 'corporation' and everything is still true.

Basically you're describing humanity, and this type of criticism of government isn't very useful in todays world. You have two choices today: your life is controlled by the government or it's controlled by corporations. Or, I suppose, you move out to the woods somewhere extremely remote (then you're still going to be affected by everyone else due to pollution and global warming, which know no boundaries).

So sure, you can rail against government all you want, but when it comes right down to it, I would prefer a government I can at least participate in through the democratic process than a corporation where my only influence is whether or not I buy things from them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A more interesting thing would be to understand how the mis-attribution occurs in the first place (and who is at the origin of it).

<comment><USER16> Well now I have to tell you my theory, which I happen to have handy.

Famous quotes are a winner-take-all market: they all accrue to the most famous person of a given category and period. Thus mid-19th-century American folk wit goes to Abraham Lincoln (who, for example, never actually said the thing about fooling some of the people all of the time), mid-20th-century artist wisdom goes to Picasso (who never said great artists steal), mid-20th-century scientist wisdom goes to Einstein, and so on. The big names are large planets; their gravity pulls in the small stuff.

As past eras recede, more and more figures get forgotten, so the quotes get reassigned to the last ones standing, who come to seem wittier and wittier over time. Occasionally a folk attribution is even correct, but the odds are surprisingly low, and if there's no textual evidence forget it.

It used to bug me that quotes always get misattributed, but it's almost a process of nature if you think about it. And there's a related phenomenon: they get optimized as countless people repeat them. Any inelegant bits that are hard to remember or say out loud get dropped. An example is T.S. Eliot's "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal" turning into "Good artists borrow; great artists steal", which is so much catchier. It's as if detaching from their origin frees them to evolve. Maybe the endgame is that they turn into pure proverbs and enter the language itself.

Edit: oh, and the internet has accelerated all this. It's way easier for a misattribution to propagate—Google any famous quote and you'll see page after page of dreck—but it's also way easier to search original sources as well as link to real citations (like Quote Investigator and Wikiquote). So both sides win.

<comment><USER17> And the even catchier: "Mediocrity borrows, genius steals" which I've never seen attributed to anyone. I think ideas that are really good tend to lose thier attribution entirely because they stand on their own, so the bigger and older the name attributed is, the more critical of the idea we should be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's interesting that there seem to be two broad categories of miss- attribution. One where a quote is missattributed to someone other than the original speaker and two where someone tries to give something they are saying more weight by claiming a famous historical figure said it even though it is of their own making.

<comment><USER19> There are also a great many aphorisms and witticisms whose attribution seems to gravitate towards an especially well known and respected eminence, although actually said by someone lesser known. One example, widely misattributed to Leonardo da Vinci:

        Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

(Those words were written by William Gaddis, in his novel _The Recognitions_.)

<comment><USER15> > One example, widely misattributed to Leonardo da Vinci:

Whoever believes that in the first place is also mistaken that such concepts/wording as "sophistication" actually existed at the time.

<comment><USER20> da Vinci was Italian, so of course those exact words couldn't be used.

<comment><USER16> The roots in the quote are all Latin, so close enough. But the point isn't the literal words, it's that "sophistication" is a modern concept that would have seemed strange and probably repugnant in Leonardo's time.

I'm pretty sure that even Gaddis intended the phrase ironically. The Recognitions is a novel about fraud.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'd never heard the false attribution of the riddle/enigma/mystery quote. My problem is always getting the order of the terms right. :)

</comment><comment><USER22> I find it amusing that the article is so quick to assign a quote to Glenn Beck, just because they cannot verify his one attribution.

<comment><USER23> What makes you say it was quick? Jefferson has been extensively studied and presumably well cross referenced, this shouldn't be hard to check. Are you assuming they didn't do the work?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> As this is hacker news, the "640K ought to be enough for anyone" should probably have made the list here at least.

<comment><USER25> We know who didn't say it, but last I checked, no one knows who did. Might it be sarcastic fabrication?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Of what importance to a statement is the authorship? What is said speaks for itself or it is appeal to authority.

<comment><USER27> I would emphatically disagree. Consider, in particular, the quote on the linked page that's attributed to Thomas Jefferson, but was (apparently) coined by Glenn Beck.

Appeal to authority isn't fallacious if the authority appealed to is, you know, _actually an authority_.

<comment><USER15> > Appeal to authority isn't fallacious if the authority appealed to is, you > know, actually an authority.

It is fallacious in any way, because it detracts the argument by imposing the view of someone else without the need of justification.

<comment><USER27> "A logically valid argument from authority grounds a claim in the beliefs of one or more authoritative source(s), whose opinions are likely to be true on the relevant issue." [0]

"The appeal to authority is a fallacy of irrelevance when the authority being cited is not really an authority." [1]

"Appealing to authority is valid when the authority is actually a legitimate (debatable) authority on the facts of the argument." [2]

[0] [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority)

[1] [http://www.skepdic.com/authorty.html](http://www.skepdic.com/authorty.html)

[2] [http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical- fallaci...](http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical- fallacies/21-appeal-to-authority)

<comment><USER15> I'd like to hear your definition of an authority. For example, how do you define an authority in Economics when experts disagree on conclusions on both sides? There can be no absolute authority for about anything, unless it's actually demonstrated by facts and maths, and if that is the case then there is no need to call for authority but simply explain the proven observations.

CQFD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "We really hate the blind." \- Lapham's Quarterly

flagged

</comment><comment><USER29> A classic quote from Abraham Lincoln sums this up: [http://lh3.ggpht.com/-9uSUrf74wFA/U2FE7ecM3AI/AAAAAAAAAJ8/yH...](http://lh3.ggpht.com/-9uSUrf74wFA/U2FE7ecM3AI/AAAAAAAAAJ8/yHGrwEFJh64/fb- internet-lincoln-quote-960x720.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER30> My grandmother Florence Swope frequently quoted some rich guy - <USER2> Carnegie or Rockefeller but I don't recall - as saying "If you're down to your last hundred dollars, use it to buy a suit."

That struck me as good advice so I actually did just that one time, however it set me back $450.00 at Nordstrom Rack. Real nice suit, I really enjoyed it.

Eventually I donated it to a thrift store in hopes that it might help someone else get a job. This because I wore it to a bunch of interviews for coding jobs. My experiences led me to conclude that no one believed that I was really a coder, see because computer programmers never wear suits.

Carnegie or Rockefeller? I couldn't remember so I tried to find a citation, and was unable to. I'm convinced now that grandma was just making that up.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is ... an image!?</comment>


Ask HN: What is the role name for this job? - <AUTHOR> I have a SaaS product (EXPORT OrderPro) that needs allot of attention from the customer point of view.
It needs a Documentation portal, knowledge base, video tutorials, onboarding material, customer communication, use cases, and promoted through social media and blog posts.
Since I am quite busy to keep the application running and providing new features I need a person to help me with all these tasks.
I need a 'Product owner' but with marketing and writing skills, a person that can understand the product and can provide helping material to the end users.
Is there any well-defined role that could help me with these tasks? What kind of background such a person has? What should I look for this hire?
Shall I hire a Marketing person or an IT person with writing skills? <comment><USER2> I would look for a "technical writer" or "content manager".

I would look for that over an IT person who can write because I would want someone who is looking at this from the customer/user perspective. The key skill you want is "explainer".

I don't know how big your company is. If you're big, you can hire this person. If small, you can find someone to do this on a contract-project basis. That's how I would start, in order to find someone who is a good fit. (Something I have done in the past is hire two contractors for the same project, as a bake- off. It cost double, but helped me find the right partner.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm a solo developer, nothing close to a big company, I suppose that a contract is the best fit in my case. And if I need them again I can rehire for a contract.

With a contract, I can give them more time to learn the product, and to understand the business. With a freelancer I think I will lose my time and money.

You hired two contractors, did you assign them the same project overlapping or different parts?

<comment><USER2> I hired two contractors to do the exact same project for the exact same amount. It was a fixed dollar amount, so I didn't have the problem of them running up the hours.

This cost twice as much, but I wanted a long-term relationship, so I wanted to find someone I could work well with.

Now, my situation was a little different: I was at a small company, so it was company money, not my money. You may feel a bit differently since you're a solo developer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> _Technical Evangelist_. Ex: [https://remoteok.io/remote-jobs/69179-remote- technical-evang...](https://remoteok.io/remote-jobs/69179-remote-technical- evangelist-china-elastic)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion. Although I would see this role for a company that produces tools for developers such as MS, oracle, Elastic, etc.

My audience is e-shop merchandisers.

<comment><USER3> r/Technical/Product</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A directory of the best free resources for remote workers and nomads - <AUTHOR> http://remotestash.co <comment><USER2> Some feedback:

All of your titles are "Remote stash" instead of what they're really about, so it's hard to find tabs if you have multiple open.

"Work hard anywhere" doesn't seem to have anything to do with discovering the best cafes to work from, it seems to be some kind of weird motivational iphone covers + wrist bands emporium.

There is a lot of duplication. It would be better in my opinion to try to curate more: pick what you consider _the best_ app / website to find co- working places, instead of listing 10.

Ideally these links would come with a paragraph explaining why you think this is actually good, as to look a little less like a link farm, and to provide context.

I realise you probably want this for analytics, but I'm not a fan of having "profile" pages for sites, because inevitably I'm just going to want to click through to the site so it wastes a click.

Site note: I live in London, and the websites which show cafes you can work from are surprisingly empty, for one of the largest cities in the world. It seems no one has really cracked this yet.

<comment><USER3> WorkHardAnywhere is primarily a mobile app, one that I've found of moderate utility in locating workspace and coffee w/wifi whilst roaming around Palo Alto this month. I'm supposing the website is just their merch store.

<comment><USER4> Pretty sure they took that from [https://workfrom.co](https://workfrom.co), which incidentally I find to have a better UI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> for ref, you should use [https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote- job](https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job) to improve your list.

it's already curated and contains great content.

</comment><comment><USER6> Just stumbled upon the following job agregator, you might want to add it to you list: [https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/comments/64tqng/i_crea...](https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/comments/64tqng/i_created_remotejobsio_a_tool_for_finding_remote/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Umm crew is not accepting anyone at this time... And this curated list is full of Indian sites - am I to compete with that market? I think not.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, Are you serious?

<comment><USER8> Why would they not be?

<comment><USER9> Crew was sold to Dribbble last week.

<comment><USER8> So what?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I built a tool to aggregate Airbnb, Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda and some other sites you left out. It's [http://AllTheRooms.com](http://AllTheRooms.com), and it's the only accommodations search engine that includes everything from Airbnb plus all online hotels and hostels.

</comment><comment><USER11> Cool site. Quick question re: these 'stash/curated/stack/list' sites that seem to be popping up everywhere (especially on Product Hunt lol).

How are people making money from sites like this?

I've been working on a travel oriented site similar to this and am curious on how to strategize my launch and monetization (if at all?!?).

Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER12> [https://cafewifi.com](https://cafewifi.com)

</comment><comment><USER13> [https://whoishiring.io](https://whoishiring.io) should be somewhere on that list, it does pretty good job in aggregating programming jobs. And you can easily filter just remote jobs there.

</comment><comment><USER14> Looks like a great resource. Thanks for making it!

The mobile experience could use some more polishing. Mainly the company pages are having issues on mobile.

How do you pick what's featured on the site? I work for a company that helps you run your freelance business and we provide many of the tools that you need.

</comment><comment><USER15> Nomad Projects ([http://nomadprojects.io](http://nomadprojects.io)) would be good to add as well.

</comment><comment><USER16> Great set of resources. Many are of interest to wider audience not just for remote workers. You may target a wider audience.

</comment><comment><USER17> A category for task management or project management would be good.

</comment><comment><USER18> because no-one else has mentioned it: "AHH MY EYES!!!!"

Good idea. Terrible design. It needs major UI help, but i will definitely be going through it for resources.

<comment><USER19> Yup, the colors are jarring. The contrast is very poor. My eyes hurt! I guess the UI isn't that bad, but the blue boxes with white text need to be replaced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Great idea!! Good work! ;)</comment>


End-to-End Robotic Reinforcement Learning Without Reward Engineering - <AUTHOR> https://sites.google.com/view/reward-learning-rl/ <comment><AUTHOR> Link to paper: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.07854](https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.07854)</comment>


Apple and DOJ fight over photos that have 'national security concerns' - <AUTHOR> https://9to5mac.com/2020/05/05/national-security-concerns/ <comment><AUTHOR> 'In the latest of the case's twists, the DOJ has asked that Apple's request for deposition of Corellium cofounder Chris Wade be delayed, but hasn't openly stated why. The government says it wants to know what evidence Apple is planning on presenting before its lawyers question Wade.

'The evidence has not yet been revealed, though in its court filing Friday, Apple counsel wrote that it "includes photographs Apple obtained" that "reveal highly sensitive information about sources and methods related to Apple's internal investigation." Apple said it was happy to hand the evidence to the government, but wanted assurances about its confidentiality, which it claimed the government had not provided.'

The case is Apple Inc. v. Corellium LLC, 19-81160, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida (West Palm Beach).

[https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/29583744/Apple_Inc_...](https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/29583744/Apple_Inc_v_Corellium,_LLC)</comment>


Does long term use of psychiatric drugs cause more harm than good? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bmj.com/content/350/bmj.h2435

<comment><USER2> This article is unhelpful, typical of the BMJ.

There are so many different classes and types of psychiatric drugs that even attempting to make sweeping comments like this (one way or the other) are ludicrous.

<comment><USER3> There are so many problems with this article.

 _> A cohort study of patients older than 65 who were their own control found that all cause mortality was 3.6% higher when patients were taking the newer antidepressants for one year than when they did not take antidepressants._

This is a well known effect where depressed people previously didn't have the energy to follow through with suicides. Some antidepressants increase energy much sooner than they improve mood and so you have a depressed person who now has the energy to follow through with suicide.

Edit: I just realized this article presents both sides of the argument. This just seems like super clickbait for a hot button issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe. There were several I tried that were horrible and only one I liked.

Most drug trials are 30-90 days. I haven't seen a study that tracked drug vs. placebo over years/decades.

In only 30-90 days, drug withdrawal can cause placebos to seem worse, if a patient switches from drug to placebo during the experiment.

<comment><USER5> _Most drug trials are 30-90 days._

Is this specific to psychiatric drugs? I write software for a company that facilitates patient report outcome/clinical outcome assessment trials for the pharmaceutical industry, and we have trials that run for years. I don't believe our products have been used in a psychiatric drug trial, though.

<comment><USER4> For any drug trial, if a patient switches from drug X to placebo, compared to patients who switch from drug X to drug Y, that could cause the placebo to seem worse than it actually is, due to withdrawal.

All the drug research I read regarding psychiatric drugs had a 3-6 month timeframe max.

Another flaw is that "Is the patient doing well?" was based on the subjective opinion of the doctor. (Even if the doctor does not know which patients are taking placebo, a competent psychiatrist should be able to tell. "Compliance with medication" is one thing doctors are trained to look for.) I would have liked to see other objective metrics, such as "How high can the patient score at Tetris?"

A multiyear psychiatric study is very hard, because many patients will struggle to follow any treatment plan. Also, placebos might cause the patient to initially get worse before they get better, whereas a drug might cover up symptoms while hurting long-term recovery. It's hard to find patients who would follow through for years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The first few comments posted here didn't even describe the article, so I thought I should at least do that. You can, of course, read the whole article yourself to form your own opinion. The article is organized as a pro-con debate (with the "con" side first) on whether the broad classes of medicines prescribed for psychiatric conditions (mostly mood disorders and schizophrenia) are helpful or not.

The writer who says that the drugs' "benefits would need to be colossal to justify [patient deaths associated with their use], but they are minimal" is Peter C Gøtzsche, a professor at the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen. I would ordinarily expect someone with an affiliation with the Cochrane centers to have an evidence-based perspective on evaluating treatments for human disease, and I think he makes some good criticisms of study designs about drug effectiveness for treating psychiatric disorders.

The writers who say that "Psychiatric drugs are as beneficial as other treatments used for common, complex medical conditions. Leucht and colleagues reviewed the efficacy of psychiatric and general medicine drugs by analysing meta-analyses: they found that psychiatric drugs were generally as efficacious as other drugs" are Allan H Young, professor of mood disorders at King's College London and John Crace, psychiatric patient and a writer for The Guardian. They in turn make several thoughtful criticisms of the studies Gøtzsche relies on to infer harm. My personal impression is that they have the better of the argument, because the conditions treated with the drugs mentioned in this article are themselves fatal, and if left untreated greatly increase patient mortality.

I think everyone who follows this research closely (as I do, as part of my journal club participation with researchers on human behavior genetics) has settled on the conclusion that patients are genetically diverse even if they have the same diagnosis, and therefore a drug that works for one patient may not work for another. But a drug that works for an immediate family member of the patient probably will work for the patient, and "talk therapy" of a kind proven to be safe and effective is an important both-and to add to treatment of major psychiatric disorders. Patients with major psychiatric disorders ARE living longer and enjoying better day-by-day functioning than ever before in my lifetime, so the statistics trump the anecdotes in showing that something about current treatment is working to help patients.

</comment><comment><USER7> I haven't read the article. But I've done something just as important---sought to understand the interests of those who wrote it. Here goes:

The authors: "Peter C Gøtzsche, professor, Nordic Cochrane Centre, Rigshospitalet, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark, Allan H Young, professor of mood disorders, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neurosciences, King's College London, UK, John Crace, psychiatric patient and parliamentary sketch writer, Guardian, London, UK"

Declaration of competing interests: "Competing interests: All authors have read and understood BMJ policy on declaration of interests and declare the following interest: AHY has done paid lectures or been on advisory boards for all major companies producing drugs used in affective and related disorders. He was the lead investigator for Embolden Study (AstraZeneca), BCI neuroplasticity study, and Aripiprazole Mania Study, and received funds for investigator initiated studies from AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Lundbeck, Wyeth. He has received research grants from NIMH (USA); CIHR (Canada); NARSAD (USA); Stanley Medical Research Institute (USA); MRC (UK); Wellcome Trust (UK); Royal College of Physicians (Edinburgh); BMA; UBC-VGH Foundation (Canada); WEDC (Canada); CCS Depression Research Fund (Canada); MSFHR (Canada); and NIHR (UK)."

So Allan H Young has been bought and paid for by the pharmaceutical industry. Just keep that in mind.

John Crace would also seem to have an interest in justifying the status quo because he participates in it as a "psychiatric patient".

Gøtzsche would of course benefit from acceptance of his argument, because it would likely mean more book sales.

<comment><USER7> I'm curious about the downvote here---is pointing out financial and other interests of authors unwelcome here?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> hmm Well considering heroine use has doubled in the passed 5 years, and doubled from 2012-2013, and that three-quarters of all heroine users now started out by getting addicted to their prescribed pharmaceutical equivalent, due to the delay in the administration cracking down on the pharmaceutical pill farms who incentivized the healthcare system to hand these out like candy with anyone who used the word "pain, back pain or anxiety", I would say, yes, psychiatric drugs and painkillers, are causing more harm than good. We are in the middle of the biggest heroine epidemic in U.S. History.

The Huffington Post has three articles in 2015 detailing this epidemic and providing the statistics on this for anyone interested. This one is the most in depth and compelling I have seen so far: [http://projects.huffingtonpost.com/dying-to-be-free- heroin-t...](http://projects.huffingtonpost.com/dying-to-be-free-heroin- treatment)

The best part is there is a compelling treatment, but it is stigmatized in favor of abstinence/cold turkey teaching. Of course there is no data to support this is more effective (in fact a disturbing amount of data to show otherwise) but alot of politics of holier than thou to support the failing system. Read more about this tragedy here: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause- of-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of- addicti_b_6506936.html)

<comment><USER9> Heroin (and prescribed opioids) are not psychiatric drugs, so while yes they are a big problem, they're not really relevant to whether psychiatric drugs are positive or negative.

<comment><USER10> It definitely is relevant because psychiatric drugs are _how_ people get onto heroin.

<comment><USER9> That's not the way my parent was talking about, nor something I'm aware of.

What's very common is people getting prescribed painkillers (oxycodone, etc.) and then moving onto heroin, because they are similar drugs. But those painkillers are not psychiatric drugs.

<comment><USER10> Yes that is what I meant. A confusion on my part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The truth is that we need lots of well designed clinical trials to decide if psychedelics are helpful or not. It's really difficult to decide on efficacy of drugs. For example, we still aren't certain how much salt is bad for you, who knows if LSD and other drugs that react in mindblowingly complex ways in the brain can be good or bad.

We can only get somewhere with this by being as scientific as we can and refining our view of these drugs, be they prove to be good or bad. Prohibition of them definitely hasn't helped us decide. I'm willing to believe that they do help some people, some of the time.

<comment><USER12> the article is about psychiatric drugs, not psychedelics.

<comment><USER9> Not related to this article so you're right to call it out, but a side point: psychedelics are a class of psychiatric drug.</comment></comment></comment>


The Case for a (Much) Smaller iPhone - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/the-case-for-a-much-smaller-iphone-e9cc71f52aa9?source=rss----444d13b52878---4&gi=2fb9a3121e48 <comment><USER2> Samsung squits out something like 50+ models per year. That's about one new model per week. How is that any better than what Apple does?</comment>


SendHub (YC W12) raises $5M Series B - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sendhub.com/post/103041840167/new-series-b-funding-to-enhance-and-improve-business

<comment><USER2> Congratulations! Just to spark some conversation, what was your biggest hurdle getting to this point and how did you guys overcome it?

(Also love to see a company tackling innovation in real estate.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Figuring out the business model was tough. We started off with a freemium model and pricing that was a hunch. Now we're doing 30 day free trials and it's much easier to spend time on the right kind of customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Congrats! Was it a convertible round? Series B convertible is unheard of.. Curious to know the reasoning! How are you planning to compete with switch.co?</comment>