The peril of talking to normal people - <AUTHOR> http://www.math-chocolate-circus.com/the-peril-of-talking-to-normal-people/ <comment><USER2> I had this experience in undergrad. And I had to stay for several days because I had no therapist for the staff psychologist to call. Being surrounded by genuinely crazy people for three days almost made me crazy.

Coming from a music, then music theory, then philosophy, then technology background, it's an understatement to say that being precise in my language is extremely important.

Most people just don't care that much about the exact meanings of what the say or the chain of logical implications implied by certain types of careless wording.

It's a constant challenge for me to interact with people in a casual social way, so I mostly just don't.

I probably come across as a pedant in many cases, but that's not my intent. I just have a hard time intuiting what people mean when it's something other than what they say.

<comment><USER3> Language is a tool that humans use to interact with each other, if you can't use it for this very purpose, then you're the problematic one. In written language the product can be revised and rephrased many times to arrive at a mostly unambiguous result, but with the spoken language, the product is produced and consumed contemporaneously and spontaneously. Ambiguity is in the nature of it: nobody has the mental capability to construct non-context- dependent, logically-completely-unambiguous sentences in the context of a casual conversation. You have to learn to differentiate among various linguistic contexts and registers.

<comment><USER4> Why are you calling someone "problematic" for not being neurotypical? Do you really think that's helpful?

As far as I can tell, the person you're responding to hasn't said anything offensive nor criticized anyone, so I can't understand why you're responding with insults and criticism.

And further, it sounds like they understand the situation pretty well, and I doubt your "explanation" is going to help anyone negotiate social interactions more easily by "getting with the program" or whatever.

<comment><USER5> I think you're overreacting quite substantially here. They used the word "problematic" once, and you're calling that "responding with insults and criticism".

Also no one mentioned anything about anyone being non-neurotypical before you.

<comment><USER3> Well, I may have used that word mistakenly. I meant "source of the problem". If that's an insult, then there are no other in my comments, I do actively refrain from insulting both online and in person. As for criticism, yes, my comment is a criticism, and tries to be a constructive one. I spot the problem, I suggest a solution, I may well be mistaken, but there are no insults. And I comment on the situation, not ad hominem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not a mathematician but a programmer and have had similar problems in the past, I've found that its all to easy to fall into the trap of thinking the world is black and white and that solutions to peoples problems are similar.

Mostly people don't want you to propose a solution to a problem they just want someone to listen.

It's a trap because when you really look into it you realise the world isn't absolute, I think most of us could come up with a better tax system for example in theory which looks obvious however when you start to look into it you realise the the real world is messy.

It is a bit like saying WW1 was caused by some archduke getting shot I guess, a lot of humans like simple answers.

<comment><USER7> There was a recent podcast (Freakanomics) that went into some depth about this concept, and it focused on a story about a pencil describing how it gets made, and the _millions_ of people who are involved.

The moral given in the podcast is to "tread carefully" when attempting to fix something, because there are often many moving parts which can't immediately be observed.

[http://freakonomics.com/podcast/i-pencil/](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/i-pencil/)

<comment><USER8> It seems that startup thinking is to say fuck it all of those millions are probably there for useless purposes or politics or historical reasons or some other bullshit and me and my friend can come up with something better in 15 minutes.

And sometimes it even works and they get filthily rich.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The author is a classic case of a smart person who has not quite cracked how humans work and why and is as a result frustrated.

The psychiatrist did what he/she did to cover their own ass. Those questions are mandatory procedure and if someone is potentially going to hurt themselves and you knew and decided 'ah probably not', then it is YOUR fault. Nobody's going to take that chance.

That's simply knowing how the game works - the same way you're supposed to pretend you've gotten along with every workplace you've ever been in during an interview to avoid raising red flags. There are many many more examples of unspoken social rules you simply have to learn.

Being smart has the advantage of having the capacity to catch up and make up for traits you naturally aren't good at. An average person does not have that luxury - if they're born unattractive, they have almost no way to overcome that as one simple example.

<comment><USER10> I am convinced that 'smart' is something else entirely.

There is an awful lot of brainpower dedicated to skills like walking into a party where you know noone, meeting with annoyed customers, or even polite conversation, etc.

<comment><USER11> A lot of people (most people?) seem to have that built into their BIOS. Or at least the most basic functionality needed to do that. That's not to imply they all like those situations, just that they don't freeze up and experience the human equivalent of a BSOD when confronted by one.

<comment><USER12> Some certainly do, but I highly doubt it's "most" people. There's probably a significant self-selection bias for people who frequently end up in these situations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Distressingly, this is why you should probably use the same rules talking with mental health and social service personnel that you would use with the police. Tell them nothing. Honesty does you no good, and can get you in a world of hassle.

Works well with doctors as well. Tell them what is wrong with you, so they'll give you the right treatment without jerking you around and wasting your time.

<comment><USER14> >Tell them what is wrong with you, so they'll give you the right treatment

Yeaaah about that, am I the only one concerned about the state of medicine, i.e. diagnosis? There always seems to be a myriad of symptoms that are common between various diseases/conditions. I honestly don't see how to _blindly_ trust doctors.

inb4 edit: I am not saying we shouldn't trust doctors.

<comment><USER6> As someone who sees a lot of doctors the ones I really trust are the ones who say "I don't know" or "I'm not certain but...".

Given that my symptoms matched a host of things and its a 7 to 20 in 100,000 thing that only got caught because a good AE (ER) doc told me to forcefully request an MRI I've learnt which doctors to trust over time.

Also if you have a rare condition don't expect your average doc to know much about it even my specialist (first one) wasn't that up on the latest research (again unsurprising, they are concerned with hundreds of patients, I'm only concerned with one).

Doctors are generally excellent but they are not omniscient and the good ones own it.

<comment><USER15> This is a good heuristic for just about _everybody_.

The more people are willing to say "I don't know", the higher the likelihood that they are saying what they really believe to be true when they don't.

<comment><USER16> Part of the purpose of training for a doctorate (and one of the things that they will test for in a final viva examination) is to demonstrate the responsibility to not claim something to be true when you don't have sufficient evidence. So therefore, people with doctorates should typically say "I don't know" more often than other people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This reminds of this article, Useless Medical Disclaimers. It's about how medical disclaimers are useless because they don't include probabilities, but they can't because most people don't understand probabilities: [http://lesswrong.com/lw/h4/useless_medical_disclaimers/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/h4/useless_medical_disclaimers/)

>innumeracy being so widespread, no one would dare put numbers on that sheet of paper. If "amputation" is listed as a consequence with a probability of 0.0001%, patients will run screaming out of the office, crying, "Not my toe! I don't want to lose my toe!"

<comment><USER18> See also Gerd Gigerenzer's book "Reckoning with Risk".

[https://plus.maths.org/content/reckoning- risk](https://plus.maths.org/content/reckoning-risk)

>The probability that one of these women [asymptomatic, aged 40 to 50, from a particular region, participating in mammography screening] has breast cancer is 0.8 percent. If a woman has breast cancer, the probability is 90 percent that she will have a positive mammogram. If a woman does not have breast cancer, the probability is 7 percent that she will still have a positive mammogram. Imagine a woman who has a positive mammogram. What is the probability that she actually has breast cancer?

> Eight out of every 1,000 women have breast cancer. Of these 8 women with > breast cancer, 7 will have a positive mammogram. Of the remaining 992 women > who don't have breast cancer, some 70 will still have a positive mammogram. > Imagine a sample of women who have positive mammograms in screening. How > many of these women actually have breast cancer?

His point is that it's not just patients who don't know the numbers. Doctors and nurse, who use these numbers every day, also don't understand them.

<comment><USER17> That's a classic problem to introduce Bayes theorem. However the more interesting fact is 95% of doctors get that question wrong.

<comment><USER19> Surely doctors would learn to expect the numerous false positives after a while. Or does the question not really relate to reality?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Feynman gets a psychiatric exam:

[http://physicshead.blogspot.com/2007/09/feynman-gets- psychia...](http://physicshead.blogspot.com/2007/09/feynman-gets-psychiatric- exam.html)

<comment><USER21> The full version:

[http://surelyyouarejokingmrfeynman.blogspot.com/2015/01/uncl...](http://surelyyouarejokingmrfeynman.blogspot.com/2015/01/unclesamdoesntneedyou.html)

<comment><USER22> (Even though I'm reading this again) what a great read!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The opposite end of this is why it annoys me when people complain about politicians being liars. Of course politicians lie: a strong commitment to truth is very much against social norms and causes people to be bored at best and angry or creeped-out at worst. Politicians by the nature of their jobs must conform very strongly to social norms and so have to lie more egregiously when forced to answer "simple questions" on complex topics by people (journalists) whose profession incentivized them to create drama.

<comment><USER23> The right way (to the degree that I've figured things out. Please please pop in with suggestions on how to approach this in a more ethical way) to handle the conflict between wanting to tell the truth and wanting to conform to social norms is to think of it as a UX problem: try to predict what your listener's mental model will be as a result of hearing something. Given that mental models are always imperfect reflections of reality, try to determine if what you say would add or remove flaws in their mental model. If it clears up some flaws and adds others, make a guess at which ones are going to be impactful and which ones aren't.

This has the failure mode that you tell someone what you think is an inconsequential lie, and it turns out to hurt them. Unfortunately, it turns out that it is usually better to err on the side of lying than on the side of being pedantic.

Gauge people's receptiveness to truth-seeking as you get to know them. Actively seek out people whom you can trust to have the patience to listen to more true explanations. If you can do that, you can build for yourself the privilege of lying less severely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> OH FFS. This person is pedantic at best, if not dumb. How can you call yourself academic and then proceed to completely mis-communicate with people. When the therapist asks, "Are you absolutely sure you're not going to hurt yourself later today?", she's asking it within a certain __context __. The therapist is obviously excluding out of the ordinary incidents that may happen. Apparently the author is completely missing the context because she 's either a pedantic nerd, a foreigner still learning English, or just dumb, not because she's in her "academic" circle.

<comment><USER25> If you haven't been "trained" on what a psychiatrist's context is, how can you be expected to know what they "obviously" meant? I would think that it's the opposite: to the extent that the psychiatrist is unable to clarify their questions to arbitrary precision, spell out implications, etc, then s/he is the one with insufficient mastery to be taking on such a role (not that it matters in our "fake it till you make it" world).

<comment><USER26> Saying 'if you are then I am obliged to have you taken to a psych ward' is incredibly threatening to people who need that supervision and can drive them to lie. This is why they ask the way they do.

<comment><USER25> I meant clarifying what being "absolutely sure you're not going to kill yourself" means as a mental state, not what it would imply for their later treatment of you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Unfortunately, Dr. Safe Side was just doing her job. Therapists are often explicitly instructed to do this check and to err on the side of ambulance, of course for liability and legal reasons. Which is IMO ridiculous; what better way could there be to make someone who is having suicidal thoughts feel more alientated and stressed.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is really "The peril of talking to psychiatrists" and it's a trap normal people fall into also. Life is full of little spring loaded legal traps like this.

<comment><USER4> As someone else in this thread noted, this also includes police and other authority figures, but it can also include family and friends.

<comment><USER29> > can also include family and friends.

This is, unfortunately, very true. Once a few people have decided there is a problem there is often very little you can do about it, confirmation bias will set in and external influences often err on the side of "caution" \- do not contradict the current widespread opinion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This reminds me a lot of the chapter in "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman" where he enlists in the military and walks away with a 4f exemption. Same precision and honesty in his answers and the same misinterpretation by the doctor.

You can find it online, the chapter is titled "Uncle Sam Doesn't Need You!"

</comment><comment><USER31> > she would laugh at our jokes, use words like "trivial", "modulo" and > "orthogonal" in casual conversation, and even get their meaning right. She > became, for all non-work purposes, a mathematician.

Is trivial not a word normal people use in conversation? Many people I know who are not Mathematicians or even in the STEM fields use this word in casual conversation. And even the ones that don't use it at least know what it means.

\</comment><comment>-

>"Is anyone else concerned about your child's hearing?" I was about to check "No" when Pink objected: "How would we know that no-one is? We can't read everyone's minds."

So it looks like the author can actually think in a way that is not 100% logically correct. So answering "How could I be sure?" to "Are you absolutely sure that you will not hurt yourself today?" is obviously a bad idea, and was not a result of the author only being able to think and respond in a 100% logical way. She totally brought this on herself.

<comment><USER32> Most normal people don't use "trivial" to mean "probably not impossible."

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've noticed a similar thing about myself when I'm making plans with friends. They'll say, "Are you coming to XYZ event tomorrow?" I've noticed that I very rarely answer with "Yes" or a common equivalent even when I fully intend to go. In the back of my mind I'm thinking, "How could I possibly know whether I will be there tomorrow." I could die, be involved in an accident, or my transportation could be severely delayed. I usually respond with something like "Probably" or "I'll definitely try to make it". It doesn't have the dramatic impact that this story did, but it echoes the same way of thinking.

<comment><USER34> One that I notice is "Where should we go to dinner tonight?" Which naturally begins as SELECT * FROM All_Restaurants, too big of a result set, so I have to start adding filters. 'Too far away' is a nebulous variable, and 'likely to have a long wait time' is a guess at best. By the time I narrow it down to a reasonable subset, we have long since eaten cereal for dinner, she's gone to bed, and all the restaurants are closed. Not a fun experience for either of us. I try to mix it up with just randomly saying "Hey, let's go try this new place that we've know nothing about!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I relate totally, but

Just a thought: why is the doctor considered the "normal" one? Just because they're in the majority?

It's certainly possible that the majority is a temporary abberation. Even Homo Sapiens could be considered an abnormal mammal with a pesky, self-defeating, super-sized pre-frontal cortex.

</comment><comment><USER36> This story and the comments here really strike home to me. I too am used to talking in very precise language and when I choose words to say, I choose them with carefully thought-out intent. However, this all happens naturally and very fast in my brain, so it doesn't look to other people like I'm thinking carefully about what I'm saying.

I am now a manager of people. I have discovered that I suck at it. I have discovered that it's because so-called normal people don't talk precisely. They rely on emotions, interpreting the unsaid, and so on, especially in Asia where I am currently located.

I've had a ton of these communication issues with friends, family, co-workers, etc, at various points in my life. I've learned to adjust for other people, and some people have learned to adjust for me. But wow, does it take effort from both sides. If only one side is willing to make an effort to achieve understanding, my experience is that it usually doesn't resolve fully.

One story still rings for me. My family had a condo that we were renting out to people. The tenant moved out, so we were looking for a new tenant. I suggested Craigslist, but my father also wanted to put an ad in the local newspaper website's Classified section. I can't remember the exact cost, but it was ~$200 to put up the ad for a certain amount of time. What the heck. No Dad, let's not do that. Try Craigslist first, see whether you can get a tenant that way that would satisfy you.

Mom hears us arguing, she asks what's going on. I say that Dad wants to pay the newspaper for an ad on their website to find a new tenant. Mom says, "Well, if it's to find a new tenant, why not? Even if it's $300, that's a great idea!" At that point, I threw up my hands and said OK, whatever.

A little while later, Mom receives the credit card bill. She freaks out over this ~$200 charge, why did we pay so much for whatever this thing is? I blew up because she's the one who had said it was OK to pay over $300 if necessary. She was so confused and said, "But that was just an expression! I didn't mean actually pay over $300!" We had a long talk about how to communicate.

And now as a people manager, I discover that I must have this type of conversation every day. It was much easier when I didn't have to deal with ambiguity directly. Before, I could just wash away the ambiguity with detailed requirements documents, contracts, project schedules, knowledge bases, and the like. I am finding that I suck at talking with people. It was much easier when I was a project/program manager or a developer.

It's odd because I was great at talking with people when they're simply my client. I can provide amazing customer service, especially for difficult customers. The dynamic is completely different as a people manager. I think in my previous situations, I was driving the conversation to dig out problem details regarding technical stuff and working towards solutions with others. Much more black and white. Whereas currently, I'm trying to dig out problem details regarding feelings and personality disputes. So not black and white.

<comment><USER37> I have the same general experience with my wife: we've learned to communicate and it's a skill that needs to be practiced on both sides. Otherwise, especially if we're tired or emotionally worn out, we each speak "clearly" but the other doesn't understand. Now we know that I must ask for clarification (even when there doesn't seem to need one) and she mustn't think I'm making fun of her or deliberately wasting her time. If we don't, we end up fighting because "all the clothes can go in the dryer" actually means I should still check.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> This is also classic case of a society which does not trust individuals or let them mind their own business but needlessly interferes int their lives in the name of protecting them.

</comment><comment><USER39> I'd say this story is the peril of talking to people who prefer to err on the safe side. Feel free to read deeply into that.</comment>


Mark Zuckerberg Has Never Cared About Your Privacy, and He's Not Going to Change - <AUTHOR> https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/11/mark-zuckerberg-has-never-cared-about-your-privacy <comment><USER2> I'm definitely not a FB fan but the amount of anti FB articles coming out this past week feel excessive.

<comment><USER3> Well, the anti-world actions coming out of facebook over the last few years have been way more excessive, with disastrous consequences.</comment></comment>


How many work emails is too many? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2019/apr/08/how-many-work-emails-is-too-many <comment><USER2> If email is your only communication path to other employees and customers, then I would expect it to be quite a bit.

I scan through email maybe twice a day and might open an email if it looks to be directed at me. If something is urgent, people will bug me on the distract- o-slack or do a warm hand-off in person.

</comment><comment><USER3> Depends on your job and work requirements?</comment>


Idea: Gravatar for everything - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/anonymous/979c1001a3d79611963f

<comment><USER2> Here's the problem with this idea: [http://xkcd.com/927/](http://xkcd.com/927/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I wanted to write something like "inb4 someone posting the obligatory xkcd" but realized that it doesn't apply to this idea.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are most recruiter letters from director-level employees ghostwritten? - <AUTHOR> Hey everyone,
I've noticed a trend recently and wanted to see if anybody else has experienced it.
I updated my LinkedIn late last year, and for the past month I've been receiving inbound letters from engineer directors, managers, and CTO's at some local startups (I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area).
I've been swamped at work so I haven't had time to answer them all, but I've noticed that all of them send exactly three emails, with the third email always containing something along the lines of, "This is my last letter."
That's kind of fishy, but I waved it away.
But then I responded to a handful, thanking them for reaching out and asking them if I can reach out to them next month when my workload settles down a little.
So far, of the 6-10 letters I've sent, not a single one has replied! I'm wondering why this is. Why would someone take the time to write three letters, only then to completely ignore you when you respond?
My pet theory is that someone else is sending recruitment letters on their behalf, and when they get a "gray / lukewarm" response like mine, they just ignore it.
What does everyone think? It's such a strange trend that has been confusing me for the past few weeks.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I've found this trend common in B2B spam emails in the last six months or so.

Rather than sending a straight pitch, they add a lot of stuff to the message that tries to make it sound like a personal business communication, specifically mention that they've contacted me N times, and that "this is my last chance".

Of course this is spam and you always get another chance.

I've noticed similar tricks from people who make spam phone calls and have some shtick like "You wouldn't imagine how hard it was to get through to you..." or "The last person who I talked to was so rude..."</comment>


How You Can Explore Nefertari's Tomb in Hyper-Realistic VR - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2018/10/31/explore-nefertaris-tomb-vr-virtual-reality/ <comment><USER2> Funny, I used an SGI Onyx Infinite Reality beast of a machine to do this two decades ago. This was for TV and we had a really good lighting crew to make the presenter look as if they were truly there and a brilliant cameraman to make it all work in a 'hand held' style.

The beast of a machine had 256M of main memory and 64M of texture memory. Our old-school TV skills produced results that you don't get with these new fangled VR things, we had genuinely flickering candle light.

Have to say the sand on the ground is more realistic in this VR version. Having worked on the tomb with some dedication it is funny how I recognise the place instantly from the screen shots!

<comment><USER3> I'd be interested to see the TV program if it happens to be uploaded anywhere

<comment><USER2> Me too! I can't even remember what channel it was for, my Google Fu has not helped me to find it.

Memories can deceive, however, thanks to my colleagues in the world of lighting and camerawork (plus the edit suite) it was pretty good. We had CAD files and all of the images, my challenge was to get the polygon count down to something that could render in real time. The thing about it and why I think my efforts were 'good' is that you still have to actually do all of the work, it doesn't matter if you are using the fanciest computer or not - that ceiling has to be 'painted' and that entrance hall has still got to be built.

We also needed some scenes of entering the tomb. So, as you can imagine, that entailed building the view outside. We didn't quite have to build 'the whole of Egypt' and model the entire Solar System (and universe) but it was getting that way. There is a lot that can be done with choosing your camera shots carefully and also using 'magic tricks', i.e. sleight of hand magician stuff, so nobody notices that you haven't modelled absolutely everything.

The funniest thing I found was having my name in credits for various programmes that people close to me watched. I enjoyed not owning up to my work and being in the same room as a friend or a relative with my name going past them on the screen for them to never notice. Happy times, so much was possible in the 1990's.</comment></comment></comment>


Do you set goals? - <AUTHOR> Hello.  Do you set goals?   If so how do you go about doing it, I'm talking about things like...<p>- certain categories (finances, relationships, etc.)? - do you limit the goals and/or prioritize them? - do you use a SMART method (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, Time related)? - do you set a plan for each goal? - how do you keep focus, avoid distractions, and keep attacking the goal? - do you write them done or do you use certain software? - does setting or not setting goals helped you? - what has worked the best for you? <comment><USER2> I set goals. For 1 month, 1 year, 5 year, 10 year and 20 year intervals.

I break them up into categories: things, learning and financial.

I start off with ridiculous goals, things that seem unachievable, at the 20 year milestone and bring them closer to reality as the time interval shortens.

I write them down and display them in my home office where I can view them in plain sight each day. I have been incredibly fortunate in achieving almost everything I've written down at the 1 year interval for 3 years running.

I refine these goals every so often which helps me realign the mental image that I have of myself. I think if you can imagine it vividly and remind yourself of this image then you'll naturally move toward becoming it.

<comment><USER3> I do the same thing, but one additional step that I like to do is have a few daily habits that I try and do every day (in my case Mon-Fri) that are "connected" to my longer-term goals and ambitions. For example, one of my long-term goals is to learn how to play piano, so I have a daily habit of practicing for 25 mins. Another of my daily habits is to review my goal plan, just to keep it fresh in my mind.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Ryan for posting. Do you find that the time of the day matters? For example, do you practice on the piano first thing in the morning? I've found that the longer in the day I do something, the more chance I have of not doing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like to put myself into a position where I've got no choice. For instance, I signed up for a Marathon in May and told everyone that I had. Better get training for that then...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the post gaius. Makes sense and what I like in your case is that you gave yourself time to do it. Alot different than saying I need to have some big huge thing done tomorrow and setting yourself up for failure. Also, like the idea of letting everyone know and the motivation of "saving face"

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This may sound a bit shallow, but the only thing that's ever worked for me is I always ask myself the question: "What is the next step that I can do right now to make me the wealthiest man on this planet?"

This usually leads me down a path of questions that result in me having to teach myself something to build something to solve a particular problem which fulfills a need. I know that this may seem vague, but try it in your own context of life and see what answers it yields you.

<comment><USER6> Did it work for you?

<comment><USER7> I guess not, unless he is Warren Buffett

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Most of my long-term goals fail, or (more often) are redefined, or (still more often) are left in a state of purgatory where "I may complete them someday, but not today". So I don't set long-term goals anymore. Living in the present keeps me focused and productive.

That said, a todo list _of small goals_ is extremely valuable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point palish. sounds like focusing on the small goals keeps everything on track. Maybe you are breaking down the big goals without even knowing and thus, having success. Thank you for posting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was deeply, deeply skeptical, but then I read a lot of blogs and comments from people with whom I clearly identified who said it was fantastic and absolutely worked for them.

"Getting Things Done" - the personalised version.

I read the summaries, then some snippets, then a "Zen" version, and thought - actually, this could work for me. I started some of the techniques and kept track of time spent, and lo - time was saved.

I bought the book. Despite the very high "Ginger Factor" in places it communicates well, albeit slowly.

Now I have a GTD system running, and am putting my life into it. It gives me my goals, it lets me review and prioritise my projects and activities, it has delivered my life from worrying about whether I've done things, or whether I've forgotten something.

It helps me set goals, and it helps me see how to achieve them.

More importantly, it helps me keep things in perspective and do what really matters.

YMMV, but it works for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice post RiderOfGiraffes. Can you give some detail of you GTD system - paper? application? how you turn goals into next actions? etc. Thank you.

<comment><USER9> I'll write a longer reply later and put it on my web site. For now, as a quick response:

I started with a filing system. I've always had trouble knowing whether to file the car insurance under "Car" or "insurance". My filing system is now undifferentiated. Every item gets a (mostly) unique number, usually YYYMMDD where the date is vaguely relevant. Then I put in a file a line for that item, starting with the ID, and then loads of keywords - anything relevant. Now I can find anything I want quickly by grepping that file.

* Update - that file is now on my home wiki so my wife can also put entries on it and search (using F3).

* Thought - the keywords turn the single mass into implicit "files", each item belonging to as many "files" as it has keywords, and each keyword giving a different "file".

* I do still have a separate filing system for things that have an obvious designation, and are frequently referenced or searched - like CC and bank statements.

Then I implemented the 43 folders idea, and put into that things like bills that needed paying, statements to check, etc.

Thirdly came the single "In box", and everything went into that. From there I try to apply the processing that GTD defines, although I still have some trouble. But now most things have destinations: Bin, Filing, Folders, "Other".

"Other" consists of two places at the moment. One is "Projects to Create" the other is "Read and File/bin". The "Projects to Create" folder is what I yet need to define and make more rigorous.

Next, I have a collection of lists in my PDA: On-line, Off-line, Email, House, Phone, Work, Today. On these go classic "To-Do" style notes. I don't adhere too rigorously to the "Next Action" mantra, but I do keep it in mind, and my work-style is mutating towards it. Thinking about it is helping, even though I haven't implemented it in its full glory.

Finally, ideas, results of on-line browsing, results from work, etc, all get a separate piece of A6 paper (scrap A4 cut into four) and put in the "In box", and so the cycle begins again.

The hardest part is forcing myself to use the lists as my guide, but the rewards from doing so are reinforcing the action. I am starting to get things done, and I can see that one or two of my projects are being turned into items on my lists, that become actions that happen, which progress the projects. My work-flow is mutating towards GTD, although it may settle on something different that suits me better.

I ought to write this up, but I've been reluctant to create yet another GTD zealot/derivative page.

Comments and questions welcome.

<comment><USER9> Some more reading around here on HN and checking on other people's recommendations has led me to this:

[http://lifehacker.com/software/feature/practicing- simplified...](http://lifehacker.com/software/feature/practicing-simplified- gtd-335269.php)

This actually matches pretty closely what I started with. My system has evolved a little further, and it seems I deal with more paper, but this is a better summary than I otherwise might write.

These are linked to and form a crucial part of it:

[http://lifehacker.com/software/geek-to-live/the-art-of- the-d...](http://lifehacker.com/software/geek-to-live/the-art-of-the-doable- to+do-list-270404.php)

[http://lifehacker.com/software/top/geek-to-live--empty- your-...](http://lifehacker.com/software/top/geek-to-live--empty-your-inbox- with-the-trusted-trio-182318.php)

The email advice is especially important to me. I do file things into reference folders, but I have scripts to do the donkey work on that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'll occasionally get on a to-do list kick, but the only thing that has consistently worked for me is to find things that are moderately productive while still being a little fun. Then whenever I feel like procrastinating, I do one of those things. It allows me to take breaks from the boring stuff without ever fully stopping.

As an example, this past semester I used this technique to switch between take-home tests (boring) and fun yet productive tasks such as programming assignments that weren't due for months or (non-school related) reading that I'd been meaning to catch up on.

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems one of the hardest, but smartest, things to do is get started on something. Sometimes, anything will do. But your idea of having things that are fun (easier to get yourself going) and somewhat productive make for a better change of success. thanks for posting Jacoblk

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Setting goals helps me get _other_ things done. It is as if I rebel against myself.

But I am more productive when I set goals.

Nowadays I set hourly 'goals' <http://smacklet.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> interesting about the rebeling part. Really like smacklet, thanks for mentioning it.

<comment><USER11> Thanks. Please email me if you have questions about Smacklet. I'll add more features like graphs etc if it gets many users :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I set goals and also use GTD. I have a constant struggle between setting lots of goals, spreading myself too thin, and then coming back to a small set of most criticals goals. Then, the cycle continues - I feel like I am not accomplishing enough, widen my scope, set lots of goals and spread myself thin again.

Over time I accomplish just about everything I set out to do, it would be nice to know exactly where my limits are. I've been getting better, but it is is still imprecise.

</comment><comment><USER13> Re: - how do you keep focus, avoid distractions, and keep attacking the goal?

Keeping focus researching/browsing often is for me the hardest thing (<http://xkcd.com/214/> describes it best). I built this mini-mini-mini webapp for myself called defumble.com to remind me of what it actually was that I set out to find.

</comment><comment><USER14> Keep them SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-boxed. <http://www.topachievement.com/smart.html>

<comment><USER15> SMART reminds me of performance evaluation at my last employer. In theory, it made sense, but in practice, the landscape often changed during the relevant timeframe and one was left retrofitting the goal to actual experience. Further, in practice the grunts were more subject to the SMART regimen. Management was free to (re)write their own definition of success; of course, they almost always succeeded.

If it's not too off-topic, I'd like to ask whether others have developed aversions to "goal management" based on experiences like the above? How did you separate yourself from the process? I hate B.S., and it was a constant struggle to make myself "give up" and "play the game".

I suppose the real answer is to get out of such a job. Perhaps my questions are more rhetorical that literal. However, one can't always immediately change jobs. Further, I wonder to what extent such experiences can negatively influence one's own mindset and behavior. Faced with such a lack of control, does one learn not to plan?

<comment><USER14> A performance evaluation has a much different context than that of setting your own goals. With performance evals you don't control the criteria for success (as you mention). With setting goals, you do.

If you're constantly retrofitting your goal to the actual experience, IMO it's your responsibility to figure out what went wrong and do something differently. Maybe your goal was too ambitious, maybe there were extenuating circumstances, whatever. But there's no reason to be afraid of yourself and try to sneakily convince yourself you met a (personal) goal when you didn't. There's no reason to be afraid of failing. Just learn and adapt.

Your post wanders around a bit. For example, your last paragraph mentions "the real answer is to get out of such a job", which confuses me. I don't know if you're talking about a job or setting goals. Hopefully this response helps, though.

<comment><USER15> Thanks for the response. I was debating deleting my comment, as it probably came in part from a poor frame of mind. But I'll leave it, now.

I was referring to getting out of a job that imposes such an approach. I've inhabited a number of corporate positions, and the goal-setting and attendant performance evaluation often follows the same pattern. In large part, your manager tells you what your goals are going to be. You may be responsible for "developing" them, or even "collaborating" on them, but you soon learn that what is really expected is to record what the manager tells you.

These goals are based upon: a) Assumptions (often overly aggressive or "rosy") as to what will actually happen; b) What your manager believes more senior management wants to hear.

During the course of whatever timeframe is addressed (typically a half-year or year), several significant variables change. Budget is found, or more typically not. Senior management changes and want to establish a new / its own direction. Estimates prove to be too low, and work in the pipeline takes significantly longer and/or consumes significantly more resources. Unanticipated support needs consume significant time and resources. Etc.

As a result: First, your goals were not really yours. I don't mean just or primarily what you "want" to do. I mean also, they don't adequately reflect or at least consider your expectation of what is realistically achievable or important. Second, the goals, which are -- despite all the corporate speak regarding continuous review and re-evaluation -- typically not visited again until near the end of the timeframe, become woefully out of touch with evolving circumstances.

In my albeit limited observation, higher levels of management seem to be more able to redefine their goals as circumstances evolve. If you are lower on the totem pole, you are at the mercy of your manager. They can agree to redefine things. This leaves the original goal seeming somewhat pointless; all the more so if/when you "fudge" the language of the evaluation to portray a successful outcome, instead of being open about what prevented its achievement. Alternatively, they can use your commitment to blame you, punish you, and/or manipulate you into a further course of action.

The communication occurs largely in one direction. You can't really "own" the goal; instead, it becomes a fence that constrains your behavior, typically towards a very conservative, corporate norm.

Perhaps my own goal management suffers more from personal issues such as possible ADD tendencies and the like. But I've observed in coworkers as well as myself not infrequently a "submissive" and/or frustrated attitude where the largest truly personal goal with respect to the job, however ill defined this goal's pursuit may be, seems to be to somehow leave the job and do something better.

So, I've been largely speaking of formal work goals as defined for a performance plan. SMART immediately reminded me of the heavy emphasis of this approach at my last employer. However, when each component of a goal could be redefined at will, it lost value and left a distinct distaste for the whole, corrupt process.

I think you are speaking more about personal goals. In my apparently long winded fashion, I'm asking whether experiences such as mine in corporate life, have put others off of the whole "goal" terminology. I guess the other question would be whether that environment is irrelevant and that, rather, the negative experience I describe comes from poor self-management.

I probably should not have followed up, as its becoming apparent to me that my post had more of an emotional basis than an intellectual one. I don't want to become the "vents about corporate life" troll, here. (Really, I don't. Note to self...)

But by way of explanation, I'll submit this clarification and then slink off to lick my wounds. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I write them _down_ , usually, I set my goals for the next day and write them down on a sheet of paper I'll see first thing when I wake up.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've heard so many times that writing them down (and reviewing them daily) is critical to success. Thanks for the post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I tend to write down every month large goals that I want to do. For example, I want to become a successful entrepreneur or I would like to win the world karate championships. After that I just focus on every day and see if my day matches my long term goals. I tried to plan too much in the past, I realized my time horizons are defined by now and my ultimate dreams.

</comment><comment><USER18> Not goal related directly; I've found this lecture by the late professor Randy Pausch regarding time management to be very interesting. I'm not sure I agree with his hands-free phone + bike use tip, but I think his talk has a lot of good points.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTugjssqOT0>

</comment><comment><USER19> I have never set goals. Not on purpose, I just am focused on going forward from where I am now that I let it work itself out. Might sound bad but it has worked so far.

</comment><comment><USER20> No.

</comment><comment><USER21> I work my goals in a variety of ways:

* very specific ones (e.g. x number of dollars of biz a month, 25-45 min exercise a day, doing y things for friends every week)

* semi-specific ones (my big thing for 2009 is to be self-sustaining with my web service/products by 2010, & to get healthy because I'm turning - gulp - 25 this year)

* really generic ones -- I used to write goals down as kind of an affirmation exercise. Not "Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better" kinda crap ( _retch_ ), but "I am a recognized authority, speak at cool conferences, and people laugh at my jokes." kinda thing.

On the latter, they sound totally frou frou Stuart Smiley, but there really is something to stating something out loud / on paper. Not that you have to stare in the mirror and say it every day. But the act of writing it down and thinking about it seems to prime one to recognize opportunities when they come.

I can't tell you how many times I've looked back on my old notes and seen goals written down like that, that I'd forgotten ever writing, but in the mean time, they'd come true. With lots of effort from me, of course, but I think that writing them down and thinking about them guided me & helped me grab opportunities when they arose.

<comment><USER22> Nit: I'm sure you meant Stuart Smalley (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Smalley>), not Stuart Smiley.

<comment><USER21> Right you are, I always mix up the fictional Stuart Smalley with the real Stuart Smiles, who wrote "Self-Help" in 1859.</comment></comment></comment>


Superconductivity Theory Under Attack - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2019-11-superconductivity-theory.html <comment><USER2> One of my great surprises coming into my masters degree in condensed matter theory working with superconductors was just how poorly we understand them.

We have these incredibly seductive theoretical frameworks for thinking about superconductors which we know are deeply flawed, but it seems nobody (myself included) has the vision to see an alternate way of looking at them.

The tyranny of the BCS theory of superconductors is real.

<comment><USER3> Do you think it's likely that the Standard Model cannot sufficiently explain superconductivity? Or alternatively, that it can be perfectly explained, but the actual analysis is just super difficult?

I find this interesting because pretty much everything else in day to day life seems to have been explained by the standard model minus gravity.

<comment><USER2> I would be extremely surprised if we needed anything beyond non-relativistic quantum mechanics coupled to classical electrodynamics to describe the next theory of superconductivity. If there is anything beyond that required, I would be absolutely stunned if it was more advanced than relativistic quantum electrodynamics.

The trouble with condensed matter physics has never been that the underlying phenomena are complicated. We've had a more sufficient grasp of the microscopic physics of materials since the 40s. I could write down the complete 'theory of everything' Hamiltonian for a condensed matter system in like two lines. The trouble, is not the fundamental building blocks, but how you take a mathematical description of electrons bumping into ions and then generalize that to 10^23 electrons and ions.

The game is to make an approximation that gets rid of the stunning complexity of the full theory without while still preserving the features that are relevant to the problem you're trying to solve.

Imagine trying to understand how a modern computer running a video game works, but all you understand is the basics of logic gates. Sure, in principal you could understand what's going on in terms of bit flips, but it's hopeless in practice. Interacting, strongly correlated quantum mechanical systems are very literally _exponentially_ more complex than a classical system like a computer.

<comment><USER4> >Imagine trying to understand how a modern computer running a video game works, but all you understand is the basics of logic gates. Sure, in principal you could understand what's going on in terms of bit flips, but it's hopeless in practice.

See "Could a Neuroscientist Understand a Microprocessor?":

[https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/jo...](https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005268)

(which is actually looking at transistor-level data, not gate-level, but the games examined are simple ones)

<comment><USER2> Yes, I was thinking of that article when I wrote the above comment. Thanks for the link!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really wish physics articles would talk about the actual measurements. It sounds like they are using shrunken gnomes to observe electrons. Is it spectroscopy? Simulation? I think the truth would be a lot less exciting than what the article claims, but if you're going to lie, might as well just write science fiction. Science journalism has never been great, but now it's intentionally misleading.

<comment><USER6> The article says they use UV photons to kick electrons off the surface, and then measure the trajectories of the electrons

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting to see this alongside "Physicists Have Identified a Metal That Conducts Electricity But Not Heat" which is talking about another material where electrons exhibit collective behavior, "moving as a fluid". Perhaps there are a number of situations where electrons coordinate within a metallic lattice, but something additional is required to produce superconductivity. Cooper pairs could be degenerate (or at least very simple) forms of this collective behavior.

Or maybe vanadium oxide _is_ a room temperature superconductor, it's just that any amount of current destroys the effect unless it's really cold, cold enough for everything to stay put.

</comment><comment><USER8> > ... at 4.2 Kelvin (4.5 degrees above absolute zero, ...)

Is my understanding wrong (or out of date) or the article bad at this point?

I thought the Kelvin scale was designed such that its base _is_ absolute zero so 4.2 Kelvin would be 4.2 degrees above not 4.5?

EDIT: Actually, looking at the num-pad on my keyboard, I'm now assuming that the "4.5" is simply a slip-of-the-finger typo rather than a mistake in understanding.

<comment><USER9> also,

4.2 K = -452.11 F = -268.95 C

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why would you need a quantum computer to simulate behavior that has to do with quantum mechanics?

<comment><USER11> Probably two things. On one hand, our theoretical understanding of quantum effects may not have come far enough to write a traditional simulation program. Or doing so would take years or even millions of years, or both.

Quantum computers can simulate things that are not possible with traditional computers. These problems are in the complexity class BQP. I want to point out though, that this is very likely a result of our limited understanding, and not something that is theoretically impossible.

<comment><USER12> How do you know the quantum simulation will match the actual phenomenon. There seems to be a leap of logic there.

<comment><USER13> How do we know that classical numerical simulation will match the phenomena... by experimentation.

<comment><USER12> Experimentation in the quantum world has this nasty habit of changing what you are trying to observe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why use a strong violent word - "Attack"? This kind of journalism bothers me. "New research questions Superconductivity Theory" should be sufficient. "Attack" is a poor word choice IMHO.

<comment><USER15> "attacking" a theory is a very common expression used in many scientific literature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So what scale of QC would be needed to do this work?

</comment><comment><USER17> This looks like it could be a huge turning point for the understanding of matter at temperatures we love.</comment>


How Googlers Avoid Burnout (and Secretly Boost Creativity) - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/googlers-avoid-burnout-secretly-boost-creativity/ <comment><USER2> Mindfulness meditation is an interesting and refreshing practice, but just like any "one weird trick" clickbait title (because wired can't help themselves) engaging in this practice alone and expecting a magical complete revival of your life is not only rediculous, but may sabotage any long term effort.

That said, I could see the average HN reader getting some useful skills out of doing nothing (literally) for a specific amount of time.

<comment><USER3> The title is a bit much. "...you won't believe how this one trick will change your life." :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't meditate, but I've found it useful to take some mornings or afternoons and go for 5-10 mile walks. I usually take a small notebook and some pens to write down ideas. If I don't have the notebook, I can still take notes on my phone or scraps of paper.

I've never counted the distance exactly, but I would estimate that I've walked a couple of thousand miles around Berkeley and surrounding towns. It's especially nice in summer in East Bay in some of the quiet neighborhoods.</comment>


New Features of Firefox Developer Tools: Episode 25 - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/08/new-features-of-firefox-developer-tools-episode-25/ <comment><USER2> The blackbox support seems like a killer feature. No more debugging minified JQuery! I also can't believe that CSS auto-complete wasn't there before.

I've been using Aurora for the last few months and have loved the experience. It's stable and I get to early access to great new tools. I highly recommend it for any developer looking to use the latest and greatest.

<comment><USER3> Oh man! Blackboxing is definitely a killer feature!

Also been using Aurora for the past few months and I like it a lot. Better then Firebug on most tasks (not all yet) and less resource heavy and less buggy.

CSS auto completion is really good addition.

Next thing to hope for is improved profiling tools. Still the best profiling tools are in IE. Even IE8 is better than Firebug.

IE11 Memory profiling is really sweet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a front end dev the only thing still keeping me with Safari/Chrome is the visual highlighting of paddings and margins when selecting or mousing over things in the Inspector (as opposed to the dotted border Firefox provides).

This is simply invaluable to quickly get to the bottom of layout issues. It's really unfortunate that they haven't built this in yet, Firebug slows down Firefox for me to the point of being unusable (switching tabs takes 5-10 seconds) so I'm stuck having either Safari or Chrome open together with Firefox just for that 1 thing.

<comment><USER5> We are working on that. We also plan on adding multi-highlight for when e.g. you are in a selector in the style editor and a bunch of other goodies.

<comment><USER6> Great work :) I also miss that feature. It's been good to see the steady work on the developer tools.

I still spend the majority of my time in firebug/chrome/ie8/safari though... but it seems the time will come soon when I will switch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The combination of being able to freely modify network requests before resending them and being able to execute javascript exactly where you want it seems perfect for debugging other people's websites with less friction. Or figuring out exploits, depending on your point of view. The former is going to save me a lot of pain - I've been running Aurora for a year or two now and it's been good to me, but I've slacked on following new features.

</comment><comment><USER8> Having the console finally work correctly in debugging sessions (execute in the current stack frame) is going to be great.

<comment> peter-fogg I'm currently using Firefox for browsing and Chrome for debugging, just for this feature. Now I can go back to one browser, a more sensible workflow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Gotta say, I'm finally now more comfortable using Firefox's Dev Tools rather than Firebug...mainly because Firebug has become a slow piece of crap and FF's now runs at more or less with the speed of Chrome's tools.

</comment><comment><USER10> Only a few minutes ago I was wondering why the variable value was undefined when I paused the execution in js. Now I found out why. I am actually surprised it was not there before. There are still 12 weeks for this to become stable. Black box seems really neat too.

<comment><USER11> This should actually already work if you are on Firefox 23. Please file a bug if it doesn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow, lots of great features. The progress on these tools lately is awesome. One little feature I'd _really_ like to see is F12 as a keyboard shortcut to open the dev tools, I'd like that consistency with Chrome & IE.

<comment><USER13> Can you wait till the next uplift? If not, hop on Nightly ;)

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=878412](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=878412)

<comment><USER12> Very cool :) Thanks for letting me know!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> When I hover a variable in the debugger, is the value displayed now? This missing feature is the main reason I use Chrome instead of Firefox.

<comment><USER5> We have a bunch of Object Inspector requests and we will get onto them when we get chance: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?component=Developer...](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?component=Developer+Tools%3A+Object+Inspector)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Edit as HTML would be nice.

So you can right click on the body or a table and edit the html in the inspector.

<comment><USER5> Yes, we also have plans for HTML editing that I think everybody will be very pleased with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Thanks to the dev tools team - these are some solid enhancements. Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER17> How one does search(CTRL+F) in DOM in Developer tools? Either I could not find such a feature or it is very well hidden?

<comment><USER18> At least in Firefox Aurora 25 there's a small search icon to the right in the inspector. But its search functionality seems buggy...

Edit: It only shows searches as a CSS expression, and it doesn't show the results in the DOM view, only by highlighting individual results on the page (like inspecting that element)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The ability to use the console in the current frame is also one of the killer features imo. Nice work Mozilla.</comment>


How to create content that works well with screen readers - open-source-ux https://accessibility.blog.gov.uk/2017/02/08/advice-for-creating-content-that-works-well-with-screen-readers/ <comment> open-source-ux By the way, the author of this blog post, Leonie Watson, is herself blind. She's well known in the accessibility field for her conference talks on accessibility (there are many on YouTube). A few years ago she wrote a personal piece on her blog describing how she lost her sight and how she came to accept such a change in her life. It's well worth a read:

[http://tink.uk/losing-sight/](http://tink.uk/losing-sight/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been lucky enough to work with Léonie and would echo that she's a massive resource of practical accessibility knowledge. The blog post above was on HN and generated some discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10324480](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10324480)

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> As someone with low vision, every time I try to read a long article (like this one) I have to make a text color white, a background color black, and text size bigger to make it easier to read. In lucky cases, Firefox's Reader View works rather well. (Although I needed to write a user style so that the contrast would be higher) In cases where Reader View doesn't work or I need to read other parts of a page, I have to write a user CSS with Stylish. It's so frustrating to do this for numerous times. My routine is like this: First, test if `body {color: white !important; background: black !important;}` works. If not, I would right click on a text, select Inspect Element, and look for the CSS rules affecting colors, after which I would write a user CSS to overwrite the rules found. Occasionally the CSS of a page is complicated and it would take me a long time to figure out which CSS rule I should overwrite.

Having done this for countless times, I started thinking as to why I need to do this (obviously given my condition). Why do I have to write a user CSS? Because like Firefox's Reader View, computers could do heuristics at best and when they fail a human has to tell computers which part of a page is text. Why does someone have to figure it out? Because HTML does not contain that information (except for pages that adapt HTML5 semantic tags).

I wish HTML were a bit more restrictive and a page couldn't be designed arbitrarily. For example, if the "Hyper Text" were a lightweight markup language like Markdown or reStructuredText rather than HTML, my life would have been much easier. Some people might say it would be too restrictive. But I have to point out that the standard way of transmitting text, which is by encoding a character to a code point with some character set, is already restrictive when compared with handwriting. We abandoned the freedom to draw characters arbitrarily for communicating machine- (and thereby visually- impaired-) friendly. Because we use character codes to transfer text, we can use any font we like almost everywhere with little effort. I just want the same thing to have happened in the Web.

<comment><USER3> Until version 12, the Opera web browser had a menu with a big list of CSS override styles that worked like Firefox's Reader View. Some were for page development/debugging, some emulated small screen devices, and a lot were there to improve readability. I have good vision and used the Opera CSS overrides and still use Firefox Reader View frequently because many web pages are poorly accessible even for people without disabilities. When Opera went to the WebKit rendering engine the CSS overrides were removed. I still miss them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The text-to-speech engine that I normally use with my screen reader on my PC, ETI-Eloquence, is surprisingly good at choosing the correct pronunciation in ambiguous cases. It got the handful of examples that she mentioned correct. I'm sure it's not perfect at handling these cases, but it does try. And that's a synthesizer that was implemented in the mid to late 90s and abandoned in the early to mid 2000s. I'm sure they could do better today.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you're looking for a quick summary about web accessibility best practices, my team put together a web accessibility guide: [http://web- accessibility.carnegiemuseums.org/](http://web- accessibility.carnegiemuseums.org/).

</comment><comment><USER6> Is <abbr> etc. Used by screen readers? I kind of thought that was the point...

</comment><comment><USER7> look at it with a terminal based browser like lynx.

</comment><comment><USER8> > So the best answer seems to be: don't write content that works specifically > for screen readers, write content that works well for everyone. Use correct > punctuation, spelling and grammar, use standard conventions for acronyms and > abbreviations, and use words that are appropriate for your audience.</comment>


Could the tech companies run *everything* better? - <AUTHOR> http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/02/tech-companies-run-everything-better.html <comment><USER2> Yes

<comment><USER3> No</comment></comment>


What are Linux containers and how did they come about? - <AUTHOR> http://bitmason.blogspot.ca/2013/09/what-are-containers-anyway.html <comment><USER2> In practice, containers are process groups with access restrictions.

In _theory_ , though, containers are simply an optimization of virtual machines, and are best understood that way. If you can use virtual machines to solve a problem--and your virtual machines are all generally based on a recent Linux--then you can achieve the same thing, using far fewer resources, by using containers.

<comment><USER3> I think we've used something similar some time ago (maybe XEN?) and had the following issues, how does Docker compare: \- what happens when one container changes the system clock? \- are iptables rules per container or global?

<comment><USER4> As far as I understand, the clock and such are tied to the base host. Typing 'uptime' in my linux container shows 5 days, the uptime of the base host.

<comment><USER5> In theory things like the clock could be namespaced too, if anyone found it useful.

<comment><USER3> That would be useful - sometimes you have to change the system time to debug some code, and if that trips up all the other containers, its a deal breaker for us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _the concept--and products based on that concept--has been around for almost a decade_

Closer to 6 decades, this is old hat for IBM mainframes.

For me the question is tho', why virtualize? And the answer I keep coming back to is that a) it is too hard to retrofit good manageability onto processes as the basic unit of applications and b) people are used to it, the idea of having 1 machine per app, when really it isn't cost effective to do that.

<comment><USER4> Segregate applications. If app one gets compromised, app two is off in another land. If my linode box gets hacked, without containers, all 16 websites will be compromised/go down.

Desktop virtualization using the NX protocol and Linux containers is also really friendly. Our company uses old Pentium D boxes for desktops. The performance gain from using a thin client + lxc + lubuntu is insane! I can actually watch youtube videos and draw in OpenOffice Writer. (Also great for disaster recovery scenarios).

<comment><USER6> But processes - theoretically - are segregated. Own address space, running as different users, bound to a processor set, etc. The use of hypervisors is because processes in practice don't really do what they say on the tin, so you need to force another layer of protection and manageability in, and just eat the overhead.

<comment><USER4> I suppose I was thinking from the 'lazy throw up apache, mysql and wordpress' mindset. If example.com is in its own container with its own mysql database, I do not have to worry about www.test.com getting exploited and example.com's mysql data getting leaked into the wild. I'm also from the days when buffer overflows were on every daemon. Unauthorized remote shell access was always a threat back in those days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article curiously fails to mention Linux VServer [http://linux- vserver.org/](http://linux-vserver.org/) which has done this since 2003 and unlike Virtuozzo has always been completely open source. We've used it with great success in a hosting product.

<comment><USER8> I probably should have mentioned it. Virtuozzo was much higher profile at the time I was closely following various workload separation technologies--in part because it was making a serious attempt to position itself as an alternative to VMware in the enterprise space. (Something it ultimately failed to do although it continued to enjoy considerable success in hosting.) The fact is that there have been lots of different isolation approaches, including OS virtualization, and Virtuozzo's implementation of OS virtualization--while hardly unique--was the best known along with Solaris Containers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can anyone please give a simple example or link of a use case of containers need?

I use KVM/Qemu VMs at home and work(dev box), I have a dozen always running VMs. However, I started to read more and more about LXC containers, and still cannot grasp their importance... for example, I manage a few VPSs too, each has it's own purpose (web server, database), how could LXC help me?

Thank you in advance.

<comment><USER8> Basically every Platform-as-a-Service uses containers. They're much more efficient than VMs (resources, spin-up/down times) and the underlying infrastructure is standardized anyway. They may not very well not be relevant to a couple of home systems. We're talking about large-scale infrastructures.

<comment><USER9> Yes, fast spin-up/down are an advantage.

Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is the current text:

> to change the text of this page send 0.1 btc to > 16JMNc3B5vCkuuPxNcNj388gmhP8UDKBuW

Well done, it didn't take more than 1 hour to someone find a loophole.

<comment><USER6> Isn't that $100? The mind boggles.</comment></comment>


Startups and Sincerity.  - <AUTHOR>

Last night, I posted about finding a builder for my concept (that link is below). I was pleasantly surprised to see how mostly receptive HN was, but I wanted to ask the masses for some help.
1. How can I prove sincerity and move myself beyond the countless flames, i.e. "I HAZ GRT ID$A!"?
2. I realize posting on a message board is not exactly the best option for finding a business partner, but I can reach a lot of bright people and vet ideas this way. I'm meeting with some people in person here in town and HN has been great help for letting me gauge response so far. That response has been, mostly skeptical with a nice chunk of positivity, and just a dash of flame.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1998572
Thanks in advance for any insight. <comment><USER2> Programmers like to see substance. Don't hide your idea. Give as detailed a description as you can. It's ok if you can't code, make some sketches. For the number of words you've written already, it's not clear what exactly you are trying to build or why it's new and amazing. Fill out the YC application to better understand and present your own business idea. Be concise. If you are really the business guy who can sell, make a video introducing yourself and describing the product. Do you write a popular blog? Why not?

[Edited to add]: At least fill out your HN profile details. How do you expect people to get in touch with you?

If you're really looking for a co-founder and not a code monkey, please don't ask them to fill out a form. It feels really condescending.

It's really great to have vision, but don't believe it too much until you have some traction. Even Zuckerberg didn't.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment. I could put the deck up on slideshare or something I suppose.

Dumbassery on my own part for not completing my profile though.

<comment><USER2> Link to deck here?

Don't bash yourself so much after every critical comment. Programmers like tough guys :-P

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't put it up yet, but I will. It'll have to wait until this afternoon, I have a client meeting here in a few and its not finished.

Self-deprecation doesn't mean I'm soft. I am just willing to admit I can sometimes have a "doh" moment. Asking people to contact you and not making your contact info available is pretty dumb, lol. I often find my dialog online is viewed as bullish or flame because I'm seen as an "Alpha." I try to throw in the self-deprecation to help show although I take myself seriously, I try not to take myself too seriously. Thanks for the comment.

<comment><USER2> Cool, following you on twitter now.

I just read in another thread that you know some HTML,CSS,jQuery. I strongly recommend getting a domain name and putting up a landing page for your idea. That's much more convincing to anyone than a wall of text. In fact, don't even waste your time coding it yourself. Just use this - <http://unbounce.com>. Start collecting email addresses.

I wish you good luck. Feel free to email me if you wish to discuss anything or want feedback.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


I Just Made My First Sale Woooooooooh - <AUTHOR>

I just made my first web script sale, http://motyar.info/draw/
Its the code to draw like on canvas like ms paint. User can download the drawing.
I placed the "Buy It for just $10" one week ago. Here are more statics from Google analytics:-
467 Pageviews
327 Unique Views
00:04:20 Time on Page
78.95% Bounce Rate
69.59% % Exit
I need suggestion to improve sales.
Thank you all in advance!! <comment><USER2> Contact the buyer, and find out WHY they bought it.

Personally I can't see why anyone would spend money on this (no offence intended), but perhaps they have a use case I (and possibly you) haven't considered. You can then optimize your marketing for this.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. Maybe the only reason for buying was to give some "kudos" to the author?

In that case, making it open source and putting a donation button on it (e.g. Flattr) might generate more revenue for the author.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I am just learning about sales and it was the fist thing, I thought I can start. FYI visitor come from above mentioned post from my blog.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What is _it_ that I can buy? I can guess, but you're giving me no clues.

<comment><AUTHOR> Visitors come from my blog post, from -> [http://motyar.blogspot.com/2010/04/drawing-on-web-with- canva...](http://motyar.blogspot.com/2010/04/drawing-on-web-with-canvas-and- jquery.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Other people have touched on your price and quality/usefulness of the app, so I'll ignore those.

You're conversion rate is around ~0.3%, which actually isn't that horrible for an unoptimized site. Between 0.25% and 0.5% is pretty average for newly launched app.

In terms of marketing and copy, you need to work on your message and audience. Who is going to use this? Probably not techy people who know how to use Photoshop/Illustrator.

Perhaps grandmothers wanting to draw something for their kids? Or kids drawing something for their grandmothers? Either way, neither of those audiences know or care about "jQuery". This is just one example of how you need to optimize your message.

With that said, I wouldn't put time or energy into promoting this further. There are a lot of great drawing/illustration programs, both online and offline, so its a pretty competitive market.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I am a developer and doing good with services. I just wanted to start learning about sales and I thought I can start with this script. Visitors come from Google to my blog with keywords like "Draw with jquery" or "Drawing on Canvas with jQuery" ect. (Here is the post [http://motyar.blogspot.com/2010/04/drawing-on-web-with- canva...](http://motyar.blogspot.com/2010/04/drawing-on-web-with-canvas-and- jquery.html) ) and from this post they come to this demo page, they can buy if they want to use the code in their own application.

Targeting a user group is good practice, and I think most of the visitors are developers. Thanks again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Try out <http://sellfy.com/> \- you can offer discounts for people who share your product with their Facebook/Twitter friends.

You can also setup freemium (in they sahre) - paid (if they want just buy) model.

<comment><USER7> Paypal also has a button widget for sending paid customers to download link. Of course Paypal takes its 3% taste of the kick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a pretty terrible canvas drawing app.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, But is a good code base to write your own drawing application with canvas and jQuery. Thank you

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Do you know your price is easily hackable?

Anyway I must implement a feature like this to my drawing app <http://drawbang.com>, cool idea!

<comment><USER10> What do you mean by "hackable price"? One can easily download the source code of course... He did wrap it in a frame or something to make it somewhat nontrivial.

<comment><USER11> I believe he is referring to this snippet in the source code:

<form name="_xclick" action="<https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr> method="post" > <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_xclick"> <input type="hidden" name="business" value="email@example.com"> <input type="hidden" name="image_url" value=""> <input type="hidden" name="cpp_header_image" value=""> <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD"> <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="Drawing with jQuery on Canvas Script"> <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="10.00"> </form>

<comment><USER12> PayPal IPN solves this by returning the transaction data to whatever IPN URL that you specify. You can then verify that the correct amount was paid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> That's pretty expensive for what you offer. You can't draw lines without moving the cursor slow enough for the dots to overlap. There is not even a brush size setting.

<comment><AUTHOR> I feel the same way!! But one who is going to code his/her own drawing application with canvas. Its a good code base. A lot of things to improve in code.

Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Despite what others say, getting people to pay you money is an achievement in itself. Keep improving the product using feedback you get from new visitors/users!

<comment><AUTHOR> I am agree with you "Getting people to pay you money is an achievement in itself". And if I can sell such a code ( someone said "terrible") I think I can do good in sales.

Thank you!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Congratulations!

Do you have any idea of people might be simply stealing the code? Any way to prevent that (I guess not)?

<comment><USER14> Someone who can steal it doesn't need it.

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure. Is there not a big difference between someone competent enough to copy-and-paste and integrate javascript snippets, and someone who can write decent javascript code?

And unfortunately, the difference incrases as you go. For instance, I made a rotating globe with clickable countries in js/canvas. Took me about 20 hours to build - including time to pregenerate the globe sprites. I'm pretty sure there's a vast swath of people who can integrate that code, but lack the skill and patience to build it.

Would I be able to make some [pocket] money off something like that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Bounce rate is scary high. You need something to keep them on the page longer.

And congrats on the sale!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. I think a long copy can help me on this point. Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> My suggestion: put it on the webOS App Catalog. You'll just need to package it up and it's ready to go. Easy way to get more money.</comment>


Restored - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jgc.org/2014/06/restored.html

<comment><USER2> It's good to see you back to blogging on your own. I read through your list of recent stuff, but I hoped to see something about any of your historic computing efforts?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have updated it to mention that Plan 28 is moving along despite the silence. There's a guest blog post coming about the work. Basically, there are two people (one is Doron Swade) working on interpreting Babbage's hardware description language (which is vital because a lot of the Analytical Engine is described using it). They are doing this using the language and the Difference Engine No. 2 as a "Rosetta Stone".

The work is being funded by a major donor and through a major university. I'll say more then I can.

Plan 28 still needs money. Mainly to extend work on the AE from two people, two days a week to at least two people full-time.</comment></comment>


Develelopment Tools: your productivity multipliers? - <AUTHOR>

What development tools have you adopted in the last 1-2 years that boost the productivity of some part of your work flow enough to become essential? Here are some tools that have become essential for me.<p>- Compass/Sass: A huge win over doing css by hand. This combo helps organization, factoring out common css, managing product display variations, making everything cross browser. Then everything can be combined and minified with one command.<p>- Rails like frameworks: When I started contracting, my first projects was Rails based. I was previously developing in Java for a CA based Internet Co (Alexa top 20) and, no exaggeration, I was easily more productive as a Rails newbee than the 10 person Java dev team I had recently left. There are a lot of Rails like, dynamic language based, frameworks out there, they are all quite good. I would never go back to Java at this point unless it was specifically requested by a customer.<p>- Virtualbox: I have a couple of base VM's that have all my essentials (git, emacs, java, ruby, chrome...) pre-installed. I use these as a starting point for each project. Keeping projects separate eliminates a lot of costly environment gotchas that are great for sucking up huge amounts of time, at the wrong time. Also VM's are great for transferring projects to new developers - also a potential time suck.<p>- Rake - I used to do all my build work in Ant (and Maven), I cant justify working with Ant anymore. As projects get more complicated the cost of getting Ant to do exactly what I want increases exponentially. Rake has been a lot more flexible for me. I have better build systems ,that take up less of my time, and that I can unit test as well.<p>- XMondad with a 27" monitor - any window manager with one extra large monitor is a nice setup. Now that I am accustomed to this setup, when I work outside the house (w/o my big monitor) my productivity drops ~75% and my frustration level goes up by about 25%.<p>Yours? <comment><USER2> Does not equal to a multiple monitor/huge monitor setup but maybe virtual desktops can ease your frustration a little bit.</comment>


Ask HN: Tool to Scan HTML Code of 100's of pages - <AUTHOR>

I need to scan every page on my site for an instance of the "Meta=revisit" tag. Screaming Frog, Xenu, and SEOmoz only scan predefined elements, where I need to search the HTML of every page.<p>Let me know if you've used or come across anything like this! <comment><USER2> Are you on a linux machine? You could use the command 'egrep -ri "revisit" * > occurences.out" This will search the entire content of each page, and tell you what files they're in, and what they say.

On a Windows machine, just use the Search functionality.</comment>


Disqus now compatible with Google AMP - angry-hacker https://blog.disqus.com/disqus-now-compatible-with-google-amp?utm_campaign=Disqus+Blog+Weekly+Newsletter&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=34764719&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--KrjQNORD9zP66wIVw74KAs62kxDfC8SV3PlDoCHbfvlDqQxeuNXPLN0ghLIB2fBEMNXnGFnaB8YSBAQbDRXwhVKLZ4g&_hsmi=34764719 <comment><AUTHOR> I think that one of the interesting features with AMP to get good performance is its free ("for now"[1]) caching system.

They also mention that " _Google has provided a cache that can be used by anyone at no cost, and all AMPs will be cached by the Google AMP Cache. Other companies may build their own AMP cache as well._ "[2], However I wasn't able to find any documentation on how could someone build its own cache, and how to configure its AMP pages to point to your own cache instead of Google's.

[1] [https://developers.google.com/amp/cache/reference/limits](https://developers.google.com/amp/cache/reference/limits)

[2] [https://www.ampproject.org/docs/support/faqs.html](https://www.ampproject.org/docs/support/faqs.html)

<comment><USER2> Even without AMP, Google caches pages for its search results and I frequently find the cached version both faster-loading and with less "fluff", especially the text-only option, than the actual page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Will Disqus still surprise site owners by suddenly inserting ads?

<comment><USER4> Maybe next they can figure out how to stop the spam posts that promote earning thousands while working from home.

<comment><USER5> It really is confusing to me why this problem is so hard to fix. 95% of their spam could be fixed with simple rules e.g. Blocking specific posted domains.

<comment><USER4> They just need to use that one weird trick to stop spammers!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I a not web developer, but as programmer who reads news regularly, it is quite horrifying how one company (Google) single handedly make everyone to use one technology.What about standardization?

Am I missing something? Isn't AMP for google? Now days I see every site switching to it.

<comment><USER7> Yes and no. The AMP project is by Google, but several of the big companies are playing in this space. Eventually they don't mind if some of the practices become W3C standards and the project is somewhat open being on GitHub for people to contribute to

Google has AMP Facebook has Instant Articles Apple has the Apple News Format

So AMP is Google's version, which is really stripped down HTML to make a page load faster. (Minimize requests, don't block things, etc)

The whole project is open and on GitHub. The easiest example I know off the top of my head is to replace www with amp on Guardian pages. For example [https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/22/canada- childre...](https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/22/canada-children- detention-immigration-solitary-confinement) shows how an article differs slightly than its non-AMPed version

<comment><USER8> //TODO: Abstract this out so its shared with the main GA tracking

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just get JavaScript out of the pages and they will be loaded fast, no need for AMP contortions.

<comment><USER10> ya because no one uses javascript for anything

good solution.

<comment><USER9> That is exactly the problem. Web 2.0 should never have happened, the browser should have stayed for iterative documents.

Luckily we do have the mobile OSes making it better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I hope this helps - I always get frustrated when on mobile I'm watching the disqus logo waiting for discussions to load. That can't be a good emotion to link to their brand.

<comment><USER12> There's an uBlock ruleset that blocks it. I've never seen anything worth reading in Disqus comments anyways.

<comment> le-mark What's really needed is a third party JavaScript comment system you can map to your own domain, which means the Comment api would have to be cors enabled, and support custom domains i.e. So you configure the service to serve comments from blog.mysite.com. uBlock surely won't block the same domain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Side scrolling keeps freezing on my mobile when viewing Google news. Reddit is easier to read, but slower to load.

</comment><comment><USER14> What does it look like?</comment>