There's no glory in overworking, it's just imminent burnout - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mianya/theres-no-glory-in-overworking-9df03d54088c#.ykqb37793 <comment><USER2> In the menagerie of death marches I've been a party to throughout my ~20yr career. Every single one of them was predicated on a team that was, in aggregate, a low-performing team, so we were all having to work so much to make up for the lack of ability and/or preparedness of others, and those others were having to work so much to compensate for not being particularly good at their jobs, and taking on way more responsibility than they should have. Earlier in my career I'd sometimes be one of those "other" people too.

On high-functioning teams with half-way decent product management I've never once experienced a need for consistent, unrelenting "overworking".

My advice to anyone who finds themselves in a situation of constant overworking is to step back, realize that this is only happening because one or more people are in way over their head (could be anyone from ICs up to Execs), and try to figure out who it is. If it's you (even if you're CEO or CTO), then you'd do literally everybody (including yourself) a huge favor by finding a way to extricate yourself from the situation and figure out a more suitable set of responsibilities that you can execute on in a timely and predictable manner.

It's not easy to be that introspective and honest with oneself and one's peers about the team dynamic, but if that kind of meta-analysis can be adopted and exercised, then you'll end up enjoying your work a whole lot more.

<comment><USER3> Not always so simple though, a lot of places have a pattern of overwork that goes a bit more like this.

Someone somewhere up the chain overpromises on something without consulting the people that will do the work. Then the team is forced to burn the midnight oil to do that, because they are a talented group, who like the work and don't want the company to look bad, they manage to actually hit the date or miss it just by a little bit, by working themselves nearly to death.

Management, who thought the date would never be hit, based on the engineer complaints at the outset, is effusive in their praise for the team, buys them lunch or some other banal expression of thanks/recognition for their sacrifice, and now feeling justified in their estimation "skills" because they were bailed out by the engineers, proceed to do it again, and again ... after behaving for a little bit, or letting the engineers set dates for less important projects.

<comment><USER4> Yep. I've seen this happen a lot. A company that is serious about fixing it can do it simply: just provide compensation and/or time off to people who have to work overtime to meet company goals.

The usual response is "Well, we couldn't afford to do that!". Which means "our business model depends on our employees shouldering some of our costs" if you think about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I agree, overwork is bad. But this part struck me:

"Clarity struck me at a management meeting when a colleague asked my opinion on a project. I shrugged lightly and said it didn't matter to me, my team would be able to support whatever decision that was made. It was a somber, sobering realization: I didn't care."

Now maybe this was one of those internal realizations, which is totally legit. But not having an opinion is okay too. I almost feel like part of the friction in tech is that everyone must always have a strong opinion all the time, even when it is unrelated to their work. Overall, I wish I had more times where people said "either of those sound fine, they both get the job done." Usually people who are "passionate" are actually prescribing details they have little insight into, vs the person who's doing the actual work / designing.

<comment><USER4> I've had more problems in the other direction, actually: people who weren't that opinionated executing on really bad plans. They could be really terrible plans, even. Like cutting corners here or there, but they just didn't want to make an issue out of it.

<comment><USER5> Well if someone is executing a bad plan, they either know it's a bad plan, or they don't know it's a bad plan. If they think it's a great plan, it's usually hard to convince them it's not if they aren't willing to listen. But if they have less of an emotional investment, usually I find it easier to convince them of whatever I think needs to be changed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some death marches are out of desperation and some are for show to investors or boards. Desperation marches usually come from undemocratic process from the start. When engineers are treated as vassals it hides the true costs of the project. When you're trying to get to an MVP it takes compromise and listening to engineers. Do the design before you hire engineers don't interate on code and design at the same time. Get your design process complete, find out about current best practices so you can evaluate framework choices. Separate out the design process from engineering, the tools are available to get your ideas down solid before you spend a lot on engineering.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yeah fuck any place that wants you to work 90 hours a week. Stay only until you can find a better job.

<comment><USER8> Even that might be too long in some cases. Living out of a car and eating only dog biscuits while you work on portfolio pieces and find a better job is a preferable option for some fraction of people without families. No joke at all.

<comment><USER9> There's a ton of work at high income - it may not always be in the perfect location, or be "sexy", but for every developer who is still at the office at 11pm, someone else, using the same language, getting paid the same amount, is going to bed after being home for 4 hours.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow! Takes courage to act and even more to tell the world about it. I believe many of us can relate to the internal self-guessing voice that makes us think we're not qualified or good enough and that keeps pushing us over the edge. Sometimes, even the most experienced of us can fall in that trap and end up burned out.

</comment><comment><USER11> Judging from the Glassdoor reviews, it sounds like the main problem here was mediocre management.

[https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/LEVEL-Studios- Reviews-E235...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/LEVEL-Studios- Reviews-E235464.htm)

</comment><comment><USER12> Overworking is a problem only if you are underpaid.

80 hour weeks for a year if I get paid 1 million dollars? Hell yeah. "Monk Mode" all the way.

<comment><USER13> Then get another job where you are paid 1M a year and don't have to overwork.

<comment><USER4> Do you know about some of these? I'm available on those terms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't think overworking is a bad thing from time to time.

If you're changing to a more lucrative career or trying to make a dent at a company, you'll probably need to do more than what's expected of you. (How else can you demonstrate that you're capable of doing your job AND the job of the role above you?) If you're working somewhere where long hours are practically institutionalized (investment banking, legal, etc), then you've gotta put in the time.

But balance is key. Take days/weeks off every so often. Make sure that the work is 100% aligned with your goals. Make sure that you HAVE goals and are keeping track so you can look back and see progress."

</comment><comment><USER15> Have any of you come across recent research papers on this from STEM engineers and medical professionals inside and outside of academia?

<comment><USER16> Yes. In the case of MDs there is contradictory evidence. On one hand, a popular form of hazing is to make junior members work insane sleepless hours (like 24 hours straight!). On the other hand, the transfer of care from one doctor to another is a common source of errors.

PhD is a whole different story because cut-throat competition, the 996 work habits, and oppressive Confucius culture are hallmarks of the student's native lands.

tldr;

Doctors are like frat boys while PhD students bring the cultural norms from their home countries.

<comment><USER17> Surely the answer would be to improve the transfer of care process. Transfer is probably even worse after someone has worked 24 hours.

<comment><USER18> Maybe a Remote First (document /everything/ proactively as if someone else might have to pick things up the very next moment) work style would improve that situation.

There were discussions about that in the past, but I don't recall any of them having made the connection that it being brought back up in this context provided me...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think I have been feeling the same way the author felt during employment at the company. The scary part is leaving only to find it succeeds after I have left. But the main thing is that in startups we just want a place to belong, a chance to be a part of a bigger thing. With this obsession comes the tendency to do anything to achieve that goal.

<comment><USER20> > The scary part is leaving only to find it succeeds after I have left.

It could be that an exodus of employees is what triggers actual reform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> All work and no play will eventually burn most people out as it's very unbalanced. At 90 hrs a week there couldn't have been time for much else.

<comment><USER22> Ah, but what if your work _is_ play for you?

And what if family stuff occurs like _work_?

I worked 90 hour weeks sometimes in grad school. But otherwise, only when I've billed by the hour.

<comment><USER21> I have yet to see a job that would be entirely play. There is always some amount of boring/tedious stuff that comes with it. I think the people trying to tell me a job is play are trying to sell me something. Family stuff could be work to someone, it's just work you're not paid for.

<comment><USER22> True. But say you bill at $200 per hour. You can subcontract the boring stuff. You can pay for cleaning and yard work and stuff. But boring family stuff you can't subcontract, like hanging out with boring relatives, or going to the opera. And when that prevents you from having fun at $200 per hour, it's doubly frustrating.

<comment><USER23> If you're billing your full rate after 32+ billable hours, you are ripping off your customers. I don't often accept pull requests from coworkers after that. They tend to be full of subtle bugs that are hard to spot.

<comment><USER22> True. But if a client is pushing me with rush work caused by their own poor planning, it's not my problem. Indeed, it's not unheard-of to bill _extra_ for rush work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I see that the author of this post is a woman. I wanted to write something about overworking and burnout as a result of our normative (but toxic) masculine archetypes (disclosure: I am a man; I have a wife and a step- daughter; I have burnt out twice in the past two years, the first time was really bad).

Last year, around this time of the year, I read "Tantra Illuminated", which changed how I view work (and overwork), and play. Tantra is not really that accessible to most people though, and it takes a long time to explain.

This year, personal crisis led me to the book, "The Trickster, Magician, and Grieving Man". Unlike "Tantra Illuminated", the book is very accessible, though it might evoke significant emotional resistance in men who attempt to read it. The book is a critique on the normative archetype of masculinity, and has a powerful way of explaining why overworking and burnout is appealing.

The book starts with the first chapter on the shadow archetype of unacknowledged pain. The rest of the first half of the book explains the consequences of the unacknowledged pain, with the latter half of the book explaining three additional masculine archetypes. Although the book covers a lot of ground, I'll narrow it down to just overworking and burnout.

Pain is the experience of something in the world imposing on your sense of self. The normative masculine archetypes is such that, we try to chose our pain (by being a hero). The reality is that we cannot control and master all that we see. Each of us is connected in a complex intertwining of relationships, both physically and emotionally. In order to achieve the perceived ideal of being untouched, and untransformed, the classical male archetypes tends towards deadening ourselves towards pain and cut ourselves off from the connections that pain is signaling to us. That pain doesn't really go away, and instead, accumulates as a rejected shadow-side of our psyche.

One of the things that happens after that is to the taking on of the burden of the world as a proxy. The strain of upholding something is substituted for becoming present to the pain we carry. It brings with it thrill, the exhilaration. We tell ourselves narratives such as, "I am doing this for you", but it is just another way of avoiding the pain.

Taking this to its extreme leads to violence and war, drawing in others into the maelstrom of rage in a fit to avoid that pain.

Burnout happens when you can no longer avoid the pain. It looks like external stress, but what it really is, is the accumulation of unacknowledged pain of living. It's not something you can move past (which was what led to that accumulation in the first time). Being present to that pain, and just letting it be, letting it speak, letting it unfold in its own time is the only way to recovery.

This whole thing goes deeper than that if you want to avoid the cycles of overworking and burnout.</comment>


What is your stimulant of choice to keep you working through the night? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> If I _need_ a stimulant to keep me awake, I go to sleep.

Pulling an all-nighter when I'm already in sleep debt only produces code that sucks. The next day, I'm too tired to be functional and I've got a bunch of code that needs to be thrown out and rewritten. Sleep is a better use of time.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I don't even drink or ingest any stimulants. Keeps my sleep much more regular.

<comment><USER2> Oh, I have no objection to stimulants in general; I like my tea and my coffee. It's just that if I _need_ the stimulation to stay awake and working, I'm already in false-economy territory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> No stimulants, just polyphasic sleep. I get the jitters if I try caffeine...

<comment><USER5> The knowledge that if I go to sleep, it will take me hours to get back in the zone again.

<comment><USER4> Try limiting your naps to 20 minutes. This prevents you from entering the deep phases of the sleep cycle which is what causes you to be drowsy.

If you are really hardcore you can go all out and convert to the Uberman polyphasic sleep cycle. 6 20 min naps, every 4 hours apart. Once adapted you can code for 22 hours a day its awesome...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Definitely coffee. I don't drink much of it so I'm not that resistant to caffeine. If you're a regular coffee drinker than those caffeinated candies or energy drinks might be a better choice.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I enjoy a nice mix a Vault energy soda while listening to the Chemical Brothers - Come With Us album.

<comment><USER7> my combination exactly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There seems to be stereotype that high performance geeks rely on caffeine drinks to stay alive. In reality only regular sleep cycles and adequate exercises can keep you at your peak performance over the long term. Meditations can help you to control your focus and weed out distractions, so you waste less of your time when the environment doesn't fit you.

If you really need to pull a few all-nighters, consider taking something on a measurable dosage, so when you decide to rehabilitate, you can adjust your intake on a decay curve.

</comment><comment><USER9> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kratom>

Kratom is a great stimulant. If you take too much, you don't get jittery, you just get really happy.

<comment><USER10> Wow, something that's legal in the US but not elsewhere. Don't see that too often.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If I told you I might get arrested

</comment><comment><USER12> Tea, Earl Grey, unadulterated.

</comment><comment><USER13> Jasmine tea and Led Zeppelin.

</comment><comment><USER14> A very important question... Celestial Seasonings Fast Lane tea.

</comment><comment><USER15> A strong tea, like Irish breakfast or lapsang souchong.

</comment><comment><USER16> Rockstar Juiced or Coffee but not the two mixed

</comment><comment><USER17> Tazo Chai

<comment><USER18> Chai is good. If you have free time it's fun to experiment with making your own. SpecialTeas.com has a variety of cheap black teas that work well, and the other decent site is uptontea.com, which is actually based just outside Boston. Then the rest of the ingredients you can get from the supermarket. There are a bunch of decent recipes online; I usually use the one from the rec.food.drink.tea FAQ

<comment><USER2> I buy black tea with chai spices in it already, and mix it with vanilla, honey, and milk myself. The preparation is as important to the experience as the beverage itself.</comment></comment></comment>


What is the Google query returning more results?   - <AUTHOR>

What is the google query that returns more results than any other possible query ? Is there a limit in the number of returned results? If so, what is the query that reach this limit ? <comment><USER2> Not sure, but I'd guess something like 'www' would be near the top -- unless Google do something smart with that.

Looks like 'www' gets 'About 25,270,000,000 results', so there's a good starting point, or a good indicator of the limit of what Google will display.

<comment><USER3> Searching for 1 or 0 gives the same number of result. Probably this is the number of pages indexed by Google.</comment></comment>


Violence will rise as climate changes, scientists predict - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-climate-change-conflict-20130802,0,3466600.story

<comment><USER2> I believe so. Any changes in our environment also affects our mood and behavior.</comment>


Ask HN:  What type of headphones do you use at work? - <AUTHOR>

Tired of my in-ear things, looking for a pair of headphones for under $150.  Any advice? <comment><USER2> I had a pair of Sennheiser HD570. I bought this back about 7 years ago and they still sound amazingly good. List price at the time was about $150, but I got it off Ebay for around $80.

My friend had a pair of Bose (the collapsible $150 one) that has noise- canceling, but sound-wise my Sennheiser headphone beats that Bose stuff out of the water.

I'd recommend any mid/high-end Sennheiser headphones. They are totally worth the money. Especially when you like listening to music with lots of layers and bass. You'll feel the difference right away.

Good hunting!

</comment><comment><USER3> I use a pair of skull candy titans at work(they are ear buds, but some of the best I have tried.) They do a good job of passive noise cancellation and have inline volume controls.

The nook ear buds are also really good(they come with 5 different size covers if the reason you don't like your current ear buds is fit.)

At home I use skull candy Hesh headphones which I rather like, but I wouldn't bring them to work as they are a bit garish.

</comment><comment> mark-r Grados are old-school ugly, but they sound fantastic and don't completely block out the world. I have the SR60.

</comment><comment><USER4> I use a pair of Sennheiser HD201 headphones at work. They are unbeatable for $20. My ears do get a bit sore after 6 hours, but it's a good excuse to take a break.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have bought headphones from Deal Extreme. Everything you buy will be a rip- off, but prices are very cheep and shipping is free (from Hong Kong).

</comment><comment><USER6> Sony MDR 7506s

Truly awesome headphones IMO. If you have a bit of time, you can probably catch a deal on them.</comment>


Q&A with YC Partners at Startup School [video] - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ycombinator.com/qa-with-yc-partners-at-startup-school/ <comment><USER2> Nothing really new here for folks that have read PG's essays. Could be valuable for those who haven't. Appreciate links to specific questions.

</comment><comment><USER3> shameless brag - I've developed a chrome extension that creates immediate summaries from long video talks - Brieftube.com. I used it myself on this talk and found the major topics in a few seconds.

<comment><USER4> Interesting. Is it automated, or is there some sort of human intervention in creating the summaries?

<comment><USER5> If it were me, I would just use YouTube's automatic captions as the body of text to summarize. More info on fetching captions here (in the blockquote): [https://www.quora.com/Is-there-a-way-to-extract-the- automati...](https://www.quora.com/Is-there-a-way-to-extract-the- automatically-generated-subtitles-in-YouTube)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask News.YC:  Best Online Incorporation Service? - <AUTHOR>

What has anyone used, what have your experiences been?  What are the best? LegalZoom? Active Filings? The Delaware Company? Something else?  <p>I just need a quick Delaware LLC setup. <comment><USER2> I've used the Company Corporation in the past. I haven't used any other services so I can't compare but it was a pain free easy setup. Paid a small fee online, everything arrived in the mail a few days later and the deal was pretty much done.

<comment><USER3> I've been very happy with them as well. Corporate.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, you can always look at what others have done.

For example, I had no idea what DNS hosting service to use, so I looked up which one ycombinator.com used and went with that (EasyDNS). Not scientific, but what the hey.

Similarly, you can look up any company registered in California here and find out who they use: <http://kepler.sos.ca.gov/list.html>

</comment><comment><USER5> Do it yourself. Seriously. Any online incorporation service is going to give you the same caliber boilerplate document that you can find online for free.

<comment><AUTHOR> The benefit that I see in these services is the free year of registered agent service and the other side features. I would do it myself if I thought I could find comparable prices on the individual elements if I did it myself.

Its not for a startup, I just need an entity to test some projects out and have some liability protection. If I was doing a startup I'd go with a lawyer no question..

<comment><USER6> If you aren't doing it to make money, and are just doing it for the liability protection, in court that liability protection would be found to not apply to your non-corporation posing as corporation.

<comment><AUTHOR> to clarify, it would be to make money. Just a small bootstrapped development house where I can try a lot of ideas and have them either succeed or fail quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Most law firms use CT or CSC. The important part of incorporating is not just being recognized by a state, but everything else that goes along with it when you do it properly (bylaws, ownership, etc.). If you are at the point where you need to incorporate, you need to do this other stuff too and should probably talk to a lawyer that works with small companies regularly.

</comment><comment><USER8> we did most of ourself; [http://www.nolo.com/resource.cfm/catID/BAAE1B67-F54A-41B4-91...](http://www.nolo.com/resource.cfm/catID/BAAE1B67-F54A-41B4-91943A51F56C3F79/111/182/245/) then paid our lawyer to go over it. It was really successful process.

</comment><comment><USER9> You can get most of the Nolo books on eMule for free.

<comment><USER10> Would it be considered ironic to steal legal documents?

<comment><USER9> Only in the Alanis Morissette way

<comment><USER10> I was thinking about it a bit more, and I would consider it ironic (real irony, not Alanis Morissette irony). A legal document binds someone to legal obligations, so breaking other legal obligations to get the document has to somehow be ironic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really like LegalZoom. They have a very good and professional online application process vs some of the other services.</comment>


Announcing Women 2.0 Labs -- this summer in SF - <AUTHOR> http://www.women2.org/announcing-women2org-labs/

<comment><USER2> Open to BOTH men and women, this is an after-hours rapid-prototyping program. Meet your future founders and moonlight on your venture with Women 2.0 Labs.

This is a new 5-week program for engineers, developers, biz dev folks, and marketing mavens to develop high-growth technology ventures in San Francisco, CA.

This Women 2.0 program is open to both women and men.</comment>


Carbon dioxide captured from air can be directly converted into methanol fuel - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2016-01-carbon-dioxide-captured-air-methanol.html <comment><USER2> Instead of concentrating CO2 from the air to use, I imagine you could even more easily use the (pre-concentrated) CO2 released as a waste-product from an organic oxidation process, no? Throw decaying matter into your bioreactor, get ethanol out one end, methanol out the other.

<comment><USER3> Yes, good thinking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What is the energy cost of driving the process?

<comment><USER4> I don't know but the catalyst Ruthenium is exceedingly rare, only the 74th most abundant element in Earth's crust. It usually occurs as a minor component of platinum ores; annual production is about 20 tonnes.

You can make urine into fuel with platinum and not create CO2 in the first place.

[http://www.technocrazed.com/scientists-make-urine-powered- fu...](http://www.technocrazed.com/scientists-make-urine-powered-fuel-cells- to-drive-cars)</comment></comment>


JD Power: Battery, hybrid-electric cars are overhyped - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2011/04/27/jd-power-electric-car-overhype/ <comment><USER2> I agree to that. With where battery technology right now, it's simply impractical to have a all-electric car: way too many strings are attached right now, starting from few hours required to charge (vs. few minutes for gas) and to the very first traffic jam that will drain the battery in no time. Granted, the hype will move the progress in these shortcomings forward, which is good. I'll wait until I could have a nuke car though.</comment>


Python Practices for Efficient Code: Performance, Memory, and Usability - happy-go-lucky https://www.codementor.io/satwikkansal/python-practices-for-efficient-code-performance-memory-and-usability-aze6oiq65 <comment><AUTHOR> > Use format instead of + for generating strings — In Python, str is > immutable, so the left and right strings have to be copied into the new > string for every pair of concatenations.

It isn't always faster to use string formatting.

        $ python -m timeit -s 'a, b, c, d = "1234567890", "abcdefghij", "ABCDEFGHIJ", "0987654321"' 'a + b + c + d'
        10000000 loops, best of 3: 0.181 usec per loop
        $ python -m timeit -s 'a, b, c, d = "1234567890", "abcdefghij", "ABCDEFGHIJ", "0987654321"' '"{}{}{}{}".format(a, b, c, d)'
        1000000 loops, best of 3: 0.447 usec per loop
        $ python --version
        Python 2.7.13

<comment><USER2> On Python 2.7.10:

        In [2]: %timeit a+b+c+d
        The slowest run took 6.66 times longer than the fastest. This could mean that an intermediate result is being cached.
        1000000 loops, best of 3: 247 ns per loop

        In [4]: %timeit "{}{}{}{}".format(a, b, c, d)
        The slowest run took 6.37 times longer than the fastest. This could mean that an intermediate result is being cached.
        1000000 loops, best of 3: 709 ns per loop

On Python 3.6.1:

        In [3]: %timeit a+b+c+d
        355 ns ± 18.5 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each)

        In [4]: %timeit "{}{}{}{}".format(a, b, c, d)
        630 ns ± 38.3 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each)

        In [5]: %timeit f"{a}{b}{c}{d}"
        21.8 ns ± 1.4 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000000 loops each)

Edit: that last %timeit made me suspicious, so I dug a bit deeper with the dis module:

        In [8]: import dis

        In [9]: def f1():
           ...:     return a+b+c+d
           ...:

        In [10]: def f2():
            ...:     return "{}{}{}{}".format(a, b, c, d)
            ...:

        In [11]: def f3():
            ...:     return f"{a}{b}{c}{d}"
            ...:

        In [12]: dis.dis(f1)
          2           0 LOAD_GLOBAL              0 (a)
                      2 LOAD_GLOBAL              1 (b)
                      4 BINARY_ADD
                      6 LOAD_GLOBAL              2 (c)
                      8 BINARY_ADD
                     10 LOAD_GLOBAL              3 (d)
                     12 BINARY_ADD
                     14 RETURN_VALUE

        In [13]: dis.dis(f2)
          2           0 LOAD_CONST               1 ('{}{}{}{}')
                      2 LOAD_ATTR                0 (format)
                      4 LOAD_GLOBAL              1 (a)
                      6 LOAD_GLOBAL              2 (b)
                      8 LOAD_GLOBAL              3 (c)
                     10 LOAD_GLOBAL              4 (d)
                     12 CALL_FUNCTION            4
                     14 RETURN_VALUE

        In [14]: dis.dis(f3)
          2           0 LOAD_GLOBAL              0 (a)
                      2 FORMAT_VALUE             0
                      4 LOAD_GLOBAL              1 (b)
                      6 FORMAT_VALUE             0
                      8 LOAD_GLOBAL              2 (c)
                     10 FORMAT_VALUE             0
                     12 LOAD_GLOBAL              3 (d)
                     14 FORMAT_VALUE             0
                     16 BUILD_STRING             4
                     18 RETURN_VALUE

        In [15]: %timeit f1()
        415 ns ± 30.7 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each)

        In [16]: %timeit f2
        31.4 ns ± 1.45 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000000 loops each)

        In [17]: %timeit f2()
        727 ns ± 43.9 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each)

        In [18]: %timeit f3()
        344 ns ± 27.8 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each)

My understanding: in the %timeit f"..." example, a constant value for the expression must have been calculated before the execution of the timings. When wrapping things around a function, I'm forcing the interpreter to actually evaluate the f-string on every call, so it's a more apples-to-apples comparison. With the dis module I also verify that there is no constant expression fixed on every function.

Timings are now closer, but the f-string is still a bit faster.

Edit 2: (final edit?) still for string concatenation, "".join(...) is the king:

        In [19]: %timeit "".join([a, b, c, d])
        365 ns ± 39.1 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each)

        In [20]: l = [a, b, c, d]

        In [21]: %timeit "".join(l)
        229 ns ± 21.5 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each)

Notice that in [19] %timeit is also measuring the time to build the list in the first place, which is why I also tested with a prebuilt list in [21]. Building the list in the first place is a cost you have to pay, so it's not entirely free.

Still, all this optimizations make more sense for really long strings and fragments (substrings that you want to join). Extreme case of 256 1-long strings:

        In [43]: %timeit l[0] + l[1] + l[2] + l[3] + l[4] + l[5] + l[6] + l[7] + l[8] + l[9] + l[10] + l[11] + l[12] + l[13] + l[14] + l[15] + l[16] + l[17]
            ...:  + l[18] + l[19] + l[20] + l[21] + l[22] + l[23] + l[24] + l[25] + l[26] + l[27] + l[28] + l[29] + l[30] + l[31] + l[32] + l[33] + l[34] +
            ...: l[35] + l[36] + l[37] + l[38] + l[39] + l[40] + l[41] + l[42] + l[43] + l[44] + l[45] + l[46] + l[47] + l[48] + l[49] + l[50] + l[51] + l[5
            ...: 2] + l[53] + l[54] + l[55] + l[56] + l[57] + l[58] + l[59] + l[60] + l[61] + l[62] + l[63] + l[64] + l[65] + l[66] + l[67] + l[68] + l[69]
            ...: + l[70] + l[71] + l[72] + l[73] + l[74] + l[75] + l[76] + l[77] + l[78] + l[79] + l[80] + l[81] + l[82] + l[83] + l[84] + l[85] + l[86] + l
            ...: [87] + l[88] + l[89] + l[90] + l[91] + l[92] + l[93] + l[94] + l[95] + l[96] + l[97] + l[98] + l[99] + l[100] + l[101] + l[102] + l[103] +
            ...: l[104] + l[105] + l[106] + l[107] + l[108] + l[109] + l[110] + l[111] + l[112] + l[113] + l[114] + l[115] + l[116] + l[117] + l[118] + l[11
            ...: 9] + l[120] + l[121] + l[122] + l[123] + l[124] + l[125] + l[126] + l[127] + l[128] + l[129] + l[130] + l[131] + l[132] + l[133] + l[134] +
            ...:  l[135] + l[136] + l[137] + l[138] + l[139] + l[140] + l[141] + l[142] + l[143] + l[144] + l[145] + l[146] + l[147] + l[148] + l[149] + l[1
            ...: 50] + l[151] + l[152] + l[153] + l[154] + l[155] + l[156] + l[157] + l[158] + l[159] + l[160] + l[161] + l[162] + l[163] + l[164] + l[165]
            ...: + l[166] + l[167] + l[168] + l[169] + l[170] + l[171] + l[172] + l[173] + l[174] + l[175] + l[176] + l[177] + l[178] + l[179] + l[180] + l[
            ...: 181] + l[182] + l[183] + l[184] + l[185] + l[186] + l[187] + l[188] + l[189] + l[190] + l[191] + l[192] + l[193] + l[194] + l[195] + l[196]
            ...:  + l[197] + l[198] + l[199] + l[200] + l[201] + l[202] + l[203] + l[204] + l[205] + l[206] + l[207] + l[208] + l[209] + l[210] + l[211] + l
            ...: [212] + l[213] + l[214] + l[215] + l[216] + l[217] + l[218] + l[219] + l[220] + l[221] + l[222] + l[223] + l[224] + l[225] + l[226] + l[227
            ...: ] + l[228] + l[229] + l[230] + l[231] + l[232] + l[233] + l[234] + l[235] + l[236] + l[237] + l[238] + l[239] + l[240] + l[241] + l[242] +
            ...: l[243] + l[244] + l[245] + l[246] + l[247] + l[248] + l[249] + l[250] + l[251] + l[252] + l[253] + l[254] + l[255]
        27.9 µs ± 2.07 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000 loops each)

        In [44]: %timeit "".join(l)
        3.71 µs ± 197 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100000 loops each)

<comment><USER3> The reason join is fast for these cases is because join basically converts all iterables to a list first and figures out how much it has to join exactly.

<comment><USER2> It walks the iterables (no need to convert them to lists), but its main trick is actually knowing how much memory it'll need for the end result, so no re- allocations happen, simply a one pass (through multiple iterables) copy.

<comment><USER3> No, it really converts all iterables to lists (there is a utility function in the C API to do just that, because it's kinda hairy to do by hand. PySequence_ToList or so). Otherwise it would not be possible to calculate how much space is required beforehand, since iterables cannot be walked twice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think they're really good to be aware of, but think it's overreaching to advise "Use slots when defining a Python class."

I'm surprised there's no mention of exceptions. Constructing, throwing, catching, and discarding an exception can be relatively slow (especially in a tight loop). My usual advice is "exceptions should be the exceptional case."

In general, get familiar with inspection tools so your code is easy to measure so you can clean up hotspots. Trying to optimize code without inspecting it often makes code harder to read and may not address the slower-performing parts. Maybe everyone needs to spend hours trying to speed things up just to realize the slow parts were in a different part of the code and now it's harder for the next guy to reason what's going on.

<comment><USER5> > exception[s] can be relatively slow

That really depends on your hit rate. Say you have a generator returning objects and you don't know if they have an attribute. You can use hasattr(..) to check or just try to use the attribute and catch the AttributeError.

One-on-one the exception _is_ slower, but there comes a point where the exception is rare enough that actively checking every single item is slower. Eg if only 1-in-1000 doesn't have the attribute, just mop up with an exception.

<comment><USER6> Out of curiosity, is there any overhead to the python exception mechanism if you don't hit an exception (ie just by wrapping things in a try block)

I come from an embedded background, where in some c++ projects, we would disable exceptions for various reasons, including the memory overhead, which is why I ask..

<comment><USER3> Exception handlers in CPython work by having an instruction store the offset to the start of the handler code which is stored on a stack attached to the frame (iirc). So the cost of a "try:" block is pretty low (for Python, anyway).

The handlers themselves are pretty basic, an "except SomeError" pretty much translates to "if isinstance(exc, SomeError):".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Its 2017. After python 3.6, I hope the debate btw python2 vs 3 is put to an end.

<comment><USER8> I can't believe this is still a discussion, python 3 already practically every python 2 library

[http://py3readiness.org/](http://py3readiness.org/)

<comment><USER4> In general, Python 3 should have been what you start with for the past few years. In visual effects most of our apps have an embedded Python runtime. Those apps have a lot of internal code built around Python2 in addition to clients that have a decades worth of Python2 infrastructure. Everyone needs to move at the same time (and it's been hard even with minor versions of Python).

As an industry, we're only now talking about migrating to Python 3 in 2019: [http://www.vfxplatform.com/](http://www.vfxplatform.com/) Looking around, most people I worked with just do what they're told and have probably never seen Python3 yet. The past few years the industry has pushed off Python3 because of other large changes requested for third-party apps: new versions of C++, gcc, boost, Qt.

It's actually been kind of tough to use Python 2 for the past couple years. I noticed the PyCon talks are a lot less relevant because they're all Python 3 oriented. Python bindings for Qt are a lot more difficult because of the old compiler used for Python 2 on Windows.

I wonder how many other industries are similarly stuck?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > _Multiprocess, not Multi-thread_

or Gevent - which is built on libev and provides constructs like queues, etc to make your multi-processing life much better.

<comment><USER10> I still find it terrifying monkey patching all the internal functions with Gevent; to be honest it caused a loads of weird bugs with celery that were impossible to debug. I'm pretty sure given my experience I'd choose to avoid it in future.

<comment><USER9> for standalone programs, there is simply no better multi-processing library than gevent. Forget the libev performance thing, the api is super pleasant... even more so than asyncio.

When you use gevent to run explicit green threads, you do NOT monkey patch - you call the library functions. You only monkey patch if you want stuff happening for free. Which also works pretty well in production with gunicorn.. and yes with celery.

gevent is officially supported by celery - [https://github.com/celery/celery/tree/master/examples/gevent](https://github.com/celery/celery/tree/master/examples/gevent)

[http://docs.celeryproject.org/en/latest/_modules/celery/conc...](http://docs.celeryproject.org/en/latest/_modules/celery/concurrency/gevent.html)

<comment><USER11> Curious if you have tried or evaluated stackless in production. One doesnt hear a lot on stackless python these dsys. BTW this is for my education only, not advocating one over the other.

<comment><USER9> Not really. I'm really going with the community here and the recent community is huge.

Gevent works in production with celery and even newrelic works with pretty OK (not perfect)

When we are talking about production systems, I need the whole ecosystem to work. So I'd rather use vanilla Python with few libraries like gevent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> > On the other hand, you may find a lot of packages that only support Python2, > and Python3 is not backward-compatible. This means that running your Python2 > code on a Python3.x interpreter can possibly throw errors.

I've never found this situation, though I've found the inverse (Py3 but no Py2 support).

<comment><USER12> Apple's coremltools[0] are only available on Python 2.7

0: [https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coreml/converting_...](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coreml/converting_trained_models_to_core_ml)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The Numba JIT function decorator called with (nopython=True, nogil=True) is very useful for small functions with heavy use of NumPy. Often faster than Cython.

[https://numba.pydata.org/](https://numba.pydata.org/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Big fan of using Cython for things where you need significant performance optimization.

<comment><USER9> how do you develop in cython - doesnt the compile, load and test cycle break your flow inside IDE ?

<comment><USER2> You can either compile-before-run (as you would any compiled language), our you can leverage Cythons compile-on-import mechanism. Which does exactly the same, but you don't have to think about having to compile.

Compile time is usually down to a few seconds (or less), so it's not really a burden.

<comment><USER9> hey - thanks for this. what do _you_ personally use ? It is more interesting to learn from someone who has been using it for a while.

I'm especially concerned about IDE support, debuggability and testability.

<comment><USER2> For IDE support, I'm totally in love with PyCharm and been using it for years, first community and then I upgraded to Pro for Cython support. PyCharm Pro has syntax highlighting and does inspections (linting) on Cython code, so it's a wonderful tool, totally worth its price.

Can't really recommend any other IDE because I haven't used another one for over 4 years, though a friend uses (loves) Sublime Text and has high praise for it too. It has Cython syntax support, but there's really no linter for Cython -- what's more, you may have to turn off warnings if you're using a Python linter because it'll complain about cdefs and such.

As for the day to day use, I don't do that much Cython really, ocassionally to speed things up. I start from a Python function, then make a .pyx (or bunch of .pyxes) files and replicate what's needed. Compile, load both versions (Py and Cy) and compare outputs and speed from IPython or with benchmark scripts.

I did use a lot the Cython functionality to create the HTML view of the source source at the beggnining, though you get the hang of what transpiles well with time and use it less and less. Still, sometimes it's useful.

<comment><USER9> why did you not choose to use numba ? because the performance in a lot of cases is faster, and most importantly the IDE/debugging integration is seamless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> 'Use static code analysis tools' is missing a mention of mypy and pytype.

</comment><comment><USER16> hint: switch to scala, or jython.

<comment><USER17> Skip straight to assembly</comment></comment>


Nodejitsu (Hosted Node.js platform) Raises $750K from East/West Coast VCs - <AUTHOR> http://www.betabeat.com/2011/04/20/nodejitsu-raises-750k-from-east-and-west-coast-vcs/

<comment><USER2> "I/O has been done wrong for the last 30 years," he said, referring to the fact that Node.js allows servers to react to specific events."

This statement shows how hype-oriented this team is. Node.js hasn't invented anything new. On top of that, it reimplemented 30 year old concepts _badly_.

I don't want to start a language war, but a simple comparison of Erlang (which is 20 years old) and Node.js will send this point home:

1) [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3887433/advantages-of- erl...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3887433/advantages-of-erlang-over- something-like-node-js)

2) <http://journal.dedasys.com/2010/04/29/erlang-vs-node-js>

<comment><USER3> I think Node.js is neat but could someone tell me how it's so awesome.

When Rails came it was truly awesome because the language it used and the framework was so much easier to work with then Java or .Net and some would say better designed then Perl or PHP.

I don't see how Node.js makes developing so much easier than say Rails (unless of course you have a crazy high IO kind of app, which most don't)

<comment><USER4> Node.js _isn't_ easier than Rails, at least for the things that Rails is good at. Node.js is good for apps that require high I/O concurrency, things like chat servers, but much much worse than Rails for pretty much everything else. I see Node.js only being useful for special types of applications, it is not the next Rails or anything like that. Unfortunately I foresee that people will (ab?)use Node.js as some kind of Rails replacement.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the insight

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks like a very popular new business model for the startups. Take any existing or upcoming langugage/framework like php, RoR, django, node.js etc. etc. and start creating a dedicated hosted platform for that a la Heroku. And start counting the money flowing in.

<comment><USER6> Just doing a "git commit; git push; cap deploy" on your own app and feeling confident in the outcome is not an insignificant amount of work. I can't imagine what it would be like to take an upcoming environment and create a platform around it to let anyone deploy, run and be backed-up without thinking.

So, if you can pull this off and make it look easy, then take my money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> With the permanent stream of Node related stuff I have to ask is this what hacker news was like a few years ago with Rails?

(I am aware node and rails are not direct substitutes)</comment>


36,000 Missing Deaths: Tracking the True Toll of the Coronavirus Crisis - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html <comment><USER2> Excellent data charts in this article. Really well done.</comment>


Memory transfer between snails challenges view of how brain remembers - <AUTHOR> https://www.statnews.com/2018/05/14/memory-transfer-between-snails-challenges-standard-theory/ <comment><USER2> > Glanzman's experiments — ... — involved giving mild electrical shocks to the > marine snail Aplysia californica. Shocked snails learn to withdraw their > delicate siphons and gills for nearly a minute as a defense when they > subsequently receive a weak touch; snails that have not been shocked > withdraw only briefly.

> Ryan knows Glanzman and trusts his work. He said he believes the data in the > new paper. But he doesn't think the behavior of the snails, or the cells, > proves that RNA is transferring memories. He said he doesn't understand how > RNA, which works on a time scale of minutes to hours, could be causing > memory recall that is almost instantaneous, or how RNA could connect > numerous parts of the brain, like the auditory and visual systems, that are > involved in more complex memories.

It sounds less like the standard definition of "memory", and more like RNA stores/caches the response mechanism of a pain receptor. Thoughts on that interpretation (I'm a layman on these subjects)?

<comment><USER3> Its not just caching. This stuff seems to survive generations too by some as yet unknown magic. Google "inherited PTSD".

<comment><USER4> There is also a lot of activism masquerading as science in the field of epigenetics, enough so that the journal Cell issued a warning about it: [https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(14)00286-4](https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674\(14\)00286-4)

<comment><USER5> There have been interesting animal experiments which perhaps avoid that eg

>Perhaps the most intriguing animal paper so far is a study published online in the winter of 2013 that appeared to show that fear memories can be inherited. Researchers from Emory University trained male mice to associate an odor with an electrical shock, so that they would get startled simply by smelling the odor by itself. Surprisingly, the scientists found that the smell also startled the next two generations of mice. [https://www.vox.com/2014/8/18/5927269/epigenetics- definition...](https://www.vox.com/2014/8/18/5927269/epigenetics-definition- cancer-diet-explained-inheritance-DNA-methylation)

<comment><USER6> Did they rule out learning the behavior from the parent mice?

<comment><USER7> Yes, by raising pups with surrogate parents. However, the study was criticised for other reasons (lack of statistical power, no explanatory mechanism) and, in the intervening years, nobody has successfully replicated this experiment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The larger hyphothesis, if I understand correctly, is that RNA (and possibly DNA?) is the seat of long-term memory and has some hereditary or otherwise physically transferable component, while synapses would be our short-term memory, as well as the expression or "cache" of the former.

This, as well as the worm-eating-worm-acquires-its-memory research, if true (a big if) would vindicate so many theories, findings, and "magic" traditions from around the world.

From Carl Jung's Collective Unconscious: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_unconscious](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_unconscious) to many old cultural traditions of eating certain animal/human parts in order to acquire their psychological properties such as courage.

I, for one, am looking forward to my injections of foreign languages and musical instrument playing.

<comment><USER9> > This, as well as the worm-eating-worm-acquires-its-memory research, if true > (a big if) would vindicate so many theories, findings, and "magic" > traditions from around the world.

We don't have the same digestive metabolism as worms. I don't think the RNA is going to make it from your stomach to your brain.

<comment><USER10> I don't think so either, but that's not science. I haven't checked, and apparently neither has anyone else. _yet_

Further study is required. Facts must be established.

<comment><USER9> I mean if the RNA is going to dissolve in the stomach acid. Then there is no way it is going to make it to the brain? And does the RNA transfer through blood on its own? That's science.

The only possible explanation is that they picked up something else along RNA that does affect memory and they are not aware of it.

<comment><USER11> I'm by no means educated about ways how RNA could get from food into your own cells, but saying "RNA is dissolved by stomach acid" is a bit too easy. HCl peaks only after a big meal with protein, and some people generally have low stomach acid. Then there's the mucosa of the mouth and esophagus, through which some food is absorbed before it even hits the digestive organs (even bypassing the liver AFAIK). It might still get dissolved as soon as it hits your bloodstream, or destroyed by antibodies, etc..

<comment><USER7> > some people generally have low stomach acid

Not to the extent that you (and many others) believe. The stomach is _always_ very acidic (pH 1–3), and this acidity is tightly regulated. Contrary to what you've said, the pH is raised (and hence acidity lowered) when consuming food (because HCl is used up in the digestive process). That said, much of the digestion of RNAs happens through enzymes, not acid, so the point is moot. It's known that the human GI tract is highly efficient in digesting oligonucleotides. Very little (and of that, only small fragments) has a chance of being taken up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Would this be similar to past studies[1][2] in how stimuli responses (e.g., fear to smell) can be inherited between generations?

The question is if we can ever transfer complex structured memories (knowledge, past experiences) or if these transferable memories are limited to basic emotional responses to specific signals?

I thought more complex memories were spread across many cells in the brain, in a seemingly random structure when compared to another brain, making transfer between brains incompatible.

[1] Worms: [https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(16)30207-0](https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674\(16\)30207-0)

[2] Mice: [https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.3594.epdf?referrer_access...](https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.3594.epdf?referrer_access_token=13Y364MbUlYxwFlwbk8OuNRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0MLhU4y4LZkONbbyIJwg8aPE0a1CCLmPmXJKFoyJaXxxaLY7RGhRQ9FdNDfwJ4apxIigJuQ54uRTkEl2Q2P0XKxvMb54h0QK8VvqSlDqBdgJPNXAyiH0jwIDJmBbsDXHWgHUVeWTevx9KEAco7GZSPrAdsfyhHXLGtF0JCacqmyIE8pcR9shg0hKG_RRrq6PMC9IY6yGVHeqMwq9_RvONKg&tracking_referrer=www.scientificamerican.com)

</comment><comment><USER13> It says that the snails retracted only briefly as a baseline, but learned to retract for longer periods of time to avoid the jarring electrical stimuli. I'm totally unfamiliar with this stuff, but it seems to me that injecting a snail with RNA would also be a jarring stimulus. Therefore, wouldn't it be learning from the injection itself to remain in its shell for longer at a sign of human touch?

<comment><USER14> They injected the other snails with control RNA from snails which were not subject to the shocks. In other words, they did control for this.

<comment><USER13> I missed that - thank you for clearing this up!

<comment><USER15> may be the control injection doesn't hurt as much as the rna injection?

<comment><USER16> Control was also RNA, but _from_ unschocked snail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if environmentally ambient RNA could impact gene expression in humans. RNA directly impacts gene expression: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2612776/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2612776/)

Say we swap some bacteria by using the same public restroom paper towel dispenser. Your bacteria happens to carry some tragic memory of stress encoded into some miRNA that formed when traveling to somewhere with very cold temperatures. Certainly gene expression wouldn't be affected by a small bacteria colony, but maybe if there was repeated exposure, every day in the same place or with the same people, would I think twice about visiting Alaska?

I have observed how places like cities tend to affect people's 'look' in semi- coordinated ways. How spending sustained time with a group of friends really does change a person in subtle ways. Is there any way that ambient miRNA could be a part of that process? Is there a way we can be sure that it isn't a factor?

<comment><USER5> It's going to be hard for enough RNA to do anything to get in to your nervous system from the towel dispenser. I'd put peoples looks changing that way down to peer pressure and the like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I suppose we could call this effect "snail mail" :-)

More seriously though, while I understand the basic method they used for their experiment, where is the theory about how the brain can catalyze the RNA into understanding in millisecond times rather than days.

Or is it perhaps an epigenetic marker that signals "danger" ala the learned muscle memory 'flex' from negative stimulus?

<comment><USER19> >where is the theory about how the brain can catalyze the RNA into understanding in millisecond times rather than days.

Maybe the brain often serializes memories from neurons into RNA and vice versa often in order to replicate the memories throughout the brain. The RNA injection caused some memories to be deserialized into the snail's neurons, and the memory now in the neurons is what is affecting the snail's reaction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Let's not forget that it's also perfectly possible to have multiple mechanisms for remembering things; there seems to be a false dichotomy being presented here, either RNA or synaptic strength or synaptic topology. There are different modes of memory too: the way you remember something as muscle memory, vs short term memory, vs associative memory, etc.

<comment><USER21> The possibility that different types of memories are stored in varying places or ways based on unknown criteria is highly intriguing. If there is more than one way to store/trigger a memory, that means a larger 'attack surface', and therefore the process should be easier to hack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Maybe someone can take a second look at the paper. I couldn't find the published version, just a manuscript[1] (kudos to the authors for making it available under CC license). But... The only reference I could find about the sample size says:

> "To prepare a single RNA injection, the pleural-pedal and abdominal ganglia > were removed from 4-5 sensitization-trained animals—or from 4-5 untrained > controls—immediately after the 48-h posttest"

4-5??? I really hope that I'm missing something here, otherwise I find truly depressing how low the bar is for scientific journals.

[1] [http://www.eneuro.org/content/eneuro/early/2018/05/14/ENEURO...](http://www.eneuro.org/content/eneuro/early/2018/05/14/ENEURO.0038-18.2018.full.pdf)

<comment><USER7> Figure legend 1D says: "Control RNA (5.4 ± 3.9 s, n = 7) and Trained RNA (38.0 ± 4.6 s, n = 7)"

That's a relatively low n but it might be sufficient. However, they don't explain how the number was reduced from ~30 donor animals to 7 test animals. This might be entirely reasonable though (I know nothing about working with Aplysia).

</comment></comment><comment> loa-in-backup Transfer of fluid in fluid based capacitors at different level of charche would basically also exchange circuit response times (in specific cases) so I'm not too keen on making ut memory transfer. What if they transfered a snail equivalent of cortisol ("stress hormone").

<comment><USER23> This was my first though too. Something happened, but it was not memory transfer.

However RNA and biological indicators like hormones could (and probably do) have a big effect on learning, in terms of how fast we learn, how aware to be, feedback mechanisms, triggering long-term memory formation etc.

The idea of storing memories in genetic materia has been really popular for a long time, but imo this is mostly due to either hope/belief for immortality and romantic trans-generational memory transfer, or new age trends.

Of course it's not impossible, but it's very unlikely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I was surprised to find so many studies regarding the relationship between long-term memory, an enzyme (PARP-1, usually associated with DNA repair and inflammation), and RNA. Seems relevant to Glanzman's research, but not cited.

In 2004 the enzyme PARP-1 was linked to long-term memory in Aplysia[1]. In 2009 another study claimed that PARP-1 was also required long-term memory in Mammals[2]:

"Previous results linked the activation of PARP‐1 with long‐term memory formation during learning in the marine mollusk Aplysia (Science 2004, 304:1820–1822).. Mice were tested in two learning paradigms, object recognition and fear conditioning.. These findings implicate PARP‐1 activation in molecular processes underlying long‐term memory formation during learning."

Another study of mice "demonstrated that augmentation of the stability of pro- inflammatory mediator mRNAs presenting a regulatory mechanism of PARP1 in gene expression at the post-transcriptional level".[3]

[1] [http://science.sciencemag.org/content/304/5678/1820](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/304/5678/1820) [2] [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1471-4159....](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1471-4159.2009.06296.x) [3] [https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14632](https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14632)

</comment><comment><USER25> I think this was proposed back in the 60s with flatworms. There are some recent experiments, again with flatworms, where they studied this.

Flatworms can regenerate heads. So they trained a flatworm to avoid a certain type of light and cut the head off and allowed the tail to regenerate back a new head. I think they claimed that the newly regenerated animal exhibit the same behavior.

<comment><USER26> >> _I think they claimed that the newly regenerated animal exhibit the same behavior._

As directly referenced in the article, flatworm experimenters (James McConnell in the 50's and 60's, and Michael Levin in 2015[1]) definitely claimed regenerated flatworms exhibited the same behaviour.

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2015/3/18/8225321/memory- research-f...](https://www.theverge.com/2015/3/18/8225321/memory-research- flatworm-cannibalism-james-mcconnell-michael-levin)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It would be interesting to see a "diff" on the injection samples. With brute forcing we could figure out how to program these sequences. Biological robot snails!

<comment><USER7> That's probably the next step (the authors raise the question of the identity of the implicated RNA). Transcriptome profiling (which this is) has become extremely routine recently. In fact, it's highly unorthodox that this analysis isn't already part of the original paper (to clarify: it's completely fine, but quite unusual, to leave it as a follow-up study).

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> > It is generally accepted that long-term memory (LTM) is encoded as > alterations in synaptic strength.

> RNA from a trained animal might be capable of producing learning-like > behavioral change in an untrained animal.

Why did the author jump to the conclusion that RNA == LTM, when that RNA is most likely just the driver for modulating synaptic strength? Whatever RNA they extracted could easily just encode for various synaptic proteins.

<comment><USER29> But wouldn't that still inevitability lead to the conclusion that rna is where memories are stored and synaptic strength is just how memory gets expressed in a way our brains can interact with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think, on the positive side, it'll make people reconsider that genetics and race affect intelligence (and maybe gender?). We are too stubborn and politically correct to discuss it. I kinda think it is true because my dog (a german shepherd) is definitively a lot smarter and dexterous than the other "normal" dogs. Hopefully, we'll be able to inject the intelligence DNA and everyone can get a fair share of intelligence.

> He said he doesn't understand how RNA, which works on a time scale of > minutes to hours, could be causing memory recall that is almost > instantaneous, or how RNA could connect numerous parts of the brain, like > the auditory and visual systems, that are involved in more complex memories.

I was puzzled by that too. Also, it is not like they go pick a fork and select the RNA. I wonder if they "picked up" something else along the way?

<comment><USER30> Isn't it likely that training has a significant effect on the apparent "intelligence" of different dogs?

<comment><USER9> No. The german shepherd picks up very fast comparing to other dogs. It also has dexterity. My dog figured out how to open various door by just watching us come and go. The opening mechanism required some dexterity and manipulation. No other dogs did that before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Maybe there's a transitive relationship between the environment before and during transcription and the resulting RNA that in turn can affect its environment. It would be difficult to identify in vivo because the environment is already synchronized with the changes that may have been introduced from the RNA, but in vitro maybe the effects of the altered RNA would become apparent in an unmodified environment. Vice versa, if you could measure enough samples of RNA from the same organism and source DNA I wonder if there'd be a quantifiable difference when the environment was subject to the same sort of changes that occur when memories are formed and an unmodified environment.

Really cool research!

</comment><comment><USER32> So synapses are like a fast cache for memory stored in neurons nucleus?

<comment><USER33> Maybe. Maybe there was a problem or it will fail to replicate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Finally a childhood dream of the many can be established through this alleged innovation: Learning math, physics, etc. through simple injection, information pills, etc.

<comment><USER35> Not sure how good this would be, deviations in learning creates further developments in the fields. A child prodigy's idea of some odd physics occurrence might one day grow into some completely new field of science.

I suppose I'm a memory conservative, I think I'll prefer the good old way, no matter how cool that scene from the Matrix is

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Interestingly, L. Ron Hubbard put forth the notion of cellular memory a long time ago -- it is part of the premise of Dianetics. I think Gene Roddenberry may have believed this too. I recall an early Star Trek NG episode where Data told Geordi that's how human memory works, contrasting it to how his positronic brain worked.

</comment><comment><USER37> A lot of creatures reduce contact with something that just caused them a lot of pain. I'd have asked if they ruled out whether the snails also withdraw a bit after someone stabbed them with a needle. The subsequent test on Petri dishes lends more credence to the theory, though, that the reaction is stored and moving.

</comment><comment><USER38> > "It's as if we transferred a memory," Glanzman said.

No, sorry. They did not transfer "memory", they transferred some specific RNA which modulates some specific neuron activity. "Memory transfer" is a gross misinterpretation of what they actually did there. Ugh.

</comment><comment><USER39> I know this will be an unpopular comment, but I've had a long-held theory that past lives / reincarnation is a real phenomenon with a biological mechanism that is as-yet unknown.

The theory being that trauma at time of death is somehow encrypted for the next generation and passed on shortly after death, particularly if a corpse enters the water or food supply.

The basis for this is a little embarrassing.. I had memories of being a bridge engineer, frequent dreams of falling off a very specific truss bridge in my head in childhood. To this day I'm terrified of certain types of truss bridges, which are coincidentally quite common upriver of where my parents lived when I was born, and where our water came from.

This theory would also explain why river burial is commonly associated with reincarnation. Committing the tissue of a deceased person into a community water supply would increase transfer of memory.

<comment><USER40> It doesn't seem physically impossible, but this would mean "past lives" can only be from your direct ancestors.

But regardless, there's no evidence to support it and even this snail experiment is a far cry from proving memories can even be transferred to humans, let alone inherited.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> The RNA can turn off and on production of proteins no? If so, then surely the ratio of proteins can affect the touch response sensitivity?

After all, it's not like he transferred memory of a complex maze.

</comment><comment><USER35> "It's pretty shocking," said Dr. Todd Sacktor, and giggled internally

</comment><comment><USER42> My guess is that their RNA solution also contained neurotransmitters

<comment><USER7> Even if: neurotransmitters are _extremely_ short-lived, and almost completely unspecific: they're either generally excitatory or inhibitory, they don't encode complex messages. They experimental setup sufficiently controls for that due to the duration of the wait between the RNA injection and the stimulus exposure.

<comment><USER42> "neurotransmitters are extremely short-lived, and almost completely unspecific"

That's the assumption that I think needs to be further validated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I wonder how this relates to Slime Molds. There was a Science Friday segment on them and, if I remember correctly, they showed memory and memory transfer too.

</comment><comment><USER29> layperson's question:

Since rna is gets information from the dna and is involved in the expression and regulating of genes, does this mean that memory somehow becomes encoded in our genes?

</comment><comment><USER44> offtopic but, I find this "magazines" that use to appear on HN interesting

Which ones do you guys recommend and what's the best way to be subscribed to them?

</comment><comment><USER45> I for one welcome our new hive mind snail overlords.

<comment><USER46> So sad to know that this will be downvoted to oblivion. I would like to subscribe...

<comment><USER47> But /. still flourishes on hot-grits and such, so don't be sad, just go there. Not all communities need [devolve] to be the same.</comment></comment></comment>


How to Use Attribute Directives to Avoid Repetition in Angular Templates - <AUTHOR> https://volosoft.com/blog/attribute-directives-to-avoid-repetition-in-angular-templates <comment><AUTHOR> In this post, I will show you how attribute directives in Angular provide a way to adapt UI elements to your components and services and setting default values to them.</comment>


Which are the best technology forums? - <AUTHOR>

Right now I mainly go to Hacker News and reddit.com/r/technology. Are there any other good ones, or 'secret' in-groups? <comment><USER2> Reddit does have many technology related forums that are more specific for Android Dev, iOS Dev, Python etc... you just have to look for it. <http://metareddit.com> is a good place to look for them.

</comment><comment><USER3> I find the reddit crowd isn't as helpful as HN and kind of rude. Not sure if it's just me... But they have crazy traffic.

Is Quora considered a forum?</comment>


Ambient Reality - <AUTHOR> http://www.roughtype.com/?p=3809

<comment><USER2> I think I get it. So, you are talking to a potential hookup at the bar and a small drone drops off a bottle of anti-biotics. Awkward! But thanks for the not so subtle warning!

Will the non-existent middle class get an ambient income to go with this ambient reality?

For anyone poor who hates seeing unexpected charges on their bank statements, this future sounds like hell. Or what about those people who see a future where they don't want to accumulate a bunch of junk?

Would retailers take advantage of this? Would I arrive home after the first day of opting into this system to an apartment filled with stupid gadgets that I didn't know I needed? Maybe my blood pressure sensor would realize that somebody screwed up and send a drone to take all that crap back. ;)

On the other hand. I'm hungry. I'll be expecting my cheeseburger to arrive any minute now.</comment>


Glyphs.co – TypeKit for SVGs - <AUTHOR> https://glyphs.co <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, co-founder of Glyphs here. We're trying to make SVGs much much easier to use. The SVG format is in a similar place to where font-embedding was years ago when TypeKit was founded (somewhat complicated, multiple best-practices based on usage scenario, etc.) and we think there's a big demand for SVG that works for anyone.

Our app hosts SVG content for you, has a library of our own SVG imagery and icons, and delivers everything via cacheable JS-injection served through MaxCDN. Basically: add one line of code to your site and you have all of the benefits of SVG, one cacheable http-request, and 99% browser compatibility (we have a PNG fallback built-in).

I would absolutely love to know what you guys think.</comment>


Ask HN: Are Paid RSS Feeds Possible? - <AUTHOR>

I am wondering if it is possible to offer paid rss feeds, where a user has to pay to subscribe to the feed.  Not being a hacker myself, I am wondering if this is technically possible to manage?  I don't think there are any services that allow for this functionality, however I just don't know if that is due to some technical aspect of stopping pirating or if just no one has found a use for the service? <comment><USER2> Daring Fireball does this. See:

<http://daringfireball.net/members/info>

</comment><comment><USER3> _"... I am wondering if it is possible to offer paid rss feeds, where a user has to pay to subscribe to the feed. Not being a hacker myself, I am wondering if this is technically possible to manage? ..."_

Bend the idea slightly & use the feed as (everyone else does) to disseminate (title, summary & word count restriction) & restrict the access to the document at the server. Unless of course the feed is time sensitive?

</comment><comment><USER4> You can use HTTP authentication for feeds, which will allow you to enforce some sort of payment scheme. However, not all readers support authenticated feeds.

</comment><comment><USER5> I implemented a little prototype of this. This is very doable. The beauty is that it didn't use HTTP-Auth, which meant that a user can be using Google Reader or another third-party browser, and still get access to the paid content only if they authenticated correctly, but this still happens from within the feed reader, without clicking back to the website.

<comment><USER6> I presume Google Reader only fetches a feed once for its many users. So how did you control access? (IFrames?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> there are feeds and sites that work like this and provide the functionality. i've subscribed to several pay-based podcasts that have done authentication in several ways and/or through services.</comment>


Where many of the clothes you throw away end up - happy-go-lucky http://www.bbc.com/news/business-40352910 <comment><AUTHOR> Considering I usually end up wearing them beyond recognition and what anyone else would wear, I throw them in the fireplace. Conversion to heat energy!

<comment><USER2> Unwearable textiles can be recycled. In fact, that's what this article is about.</comment></comment>


Poaching Tesla - <AUTHOR> https://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2018/9/6/poaching-tesla <comment><USER2> There are some errors here:

> The dramatic shift to SUVs in the U.S. is driven by consumers caring less > about traditional car value metrics such as performance.

The cause of this was exactly the opposite -- the CAFE rules classify SUVs as trucks and allow them to fall into a less stringent fuel economy standard. The result allows SUVs to be mass-market gasoline-powered large vehicles with powerful engines, which is no longer possible for things classified as cars. That factor is primarily what caused (big-engined) SUVs to replace station wagons and large performace sedans in the market, and the small car market is as strong as it ever was.

He also calls Ives a visionary more than once, but that was Jobs. Apple has done well under Ives because of his management ability, not his ability to develop new product markets as Jobs did.

Project Titan is a huge gamble. They're essentially trying to buy their way into a market where their competitors have a head start. Apple has the cash to potentially succeed doing that, but they could also spend billions and have it come to nothing, and it's not clear what they're adding that Waymo or Telsa or Uber doesn't already have. It seems to be some combination of "Google is doing it" and the fact that Steve Jobs saw that Telsa was onto something -- but there has been ten years of progress between then and now.

And the speculation that Apple will focus on personalization is odd. Their model is walled-garden, curation, single USB port on the MacBook, everything soldered and nothing modular, any color you want as long as it's black. If anything vehicle personalization is going to become _less_ prevalant with autonomous vehicles as it makes it easier to share vehicles if they can show up at the location of whichever part-owner needs it at a given time, or be leased out for ride sharing when not in use.

<comment><USER3> > Project Titan is a huge gamble.

Titan is not a gamble. It's a hobby. And from the eyes of a Trillion Dollar Company, it's not even an expensive one.

What's the worst that can happen? They spend a few more years on it, poaching talent from Tesla and other car companies and from internal teams, and end up with nothing. Sure, they might spend a few billion in the process, but they already did that building a spaceship, and spending at that level doesn't hurt their books at all.

iPhone on the other hand, was a huge gamble at the time. It had the potential to ruin the company by cannibalizing iPod sales, diluting the brand, and destroying morale of top engineers who were at the time the "best" employees they had.

What's the best thing that can happen? They launch the equivalent of an iPhone in the auto industry, figure out how to scale, and change the way people go from point a to b. They are recognized as the company that pulled off something Tesla couldn't, and Tim Cook / Jony Ives get to put their names on a revolutionary product that changed the world again.

So it's a low risk high return situation for them to work on it. Can they pull it off? I would say much more likely than "traditional" auto companies but less likely than Tesla. But again, it doesn't really matter to them (part of why chances of success are lower), and competition is a good thing. As a shareholder of TSLA, I don't want to see Elon Musk smoking weed on YouTube anymore. Somebody please take away his Twitter account too.

<comment><USER4> > As a shareholder of TSLA, I don't want to see Elon Musk smoking weed on > YouTube anymore.

Much ado about nothing. One puff when it was offered to him. So what? He was much more affected by the whiskey, but curiously no one has a problem with that. He even made it clear that he doesn't use weed because he feels it affects his productivity. All you're upset about is a nonsensical stigma.

Furthermore, the actual content of the interview was interesting.

Stop trying to turn Elon into a yet another fake CEO.

<comment><USER5> smoking weed is not the problem

the problem is, he said he doesn't smoke weed because it decreases productivity, and then smokes weed anyways.

Nothing he said makes sense anymore

<comment><USER6> He took one puff of weed on a casual podcast at ~11 p.m. local time. Not certain this is the canary in the coal mine some people are making it out to be... but I guess volatile stocks will find reasons to be volatile?

<comment><USER7> The problem is that most of the people who run the economy and the Government are still from a generation that views cannabis consumption as dangerous, anti-establishment drug use not appropriate for people they consider as "proper". This view has been codified into law by Marijuana ban laws, and as I realized just today, into banning it from being used by anyone with a security clearance.

As far as we've come with legalizing marijuana and shifting societies perception about cannabis, the vestiges of the old order still exist.

<comment><USER6> You're absolutely right; but I have a hard time believing this depresses stock valuations with so much smart money out there (by ~20% no less!).

Otherwise I think there's a serious market opportunity to be exploited.

<comment><USER8> This is not smart money fleeing, it is old money.

Why would all of today's young engineers, who collectively consume marijuana and concentrates by the ton, suddenly take issue with one of their foremost peers partaking in the same activity? It makes more sense that the older investors who are making a bet on this generation's promising stallion, in their eyes, are seeing what is to them, aberrant behavior. Given how often and well honored the theme of "older generation not progressing with the times" is, seems much more likely especially when thought in the same context as Occam's Assertion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Even acquisitions that included consumer-facing products like Beats, Beddit, > and Shazam (pending approval) were ultimately about the technology behind > the products.

I doubt the Beats acquisition is about the technology behind their headphones, especially with their questionable acoustics engineering [1]. The music service sounds more plausible, but then it wouldn't be about technology either.

[1]: [https://www.designnews.com/gadget-freak/beats-dre- teardown-w...](https://www.designnews.com/gadget-freak/beats-dre-teardown- weak-engineering-meets-strong-marketing/113333861745594)

</comment><comment><USER10> Financially, it doesn't make sense. Getting into the car business would pull down Apple's stock. Apple is in a high-margin business. Autos are a low-margin business. When a high-margin company buys a low-margin one, the return on investment declines.

That's the reason Apple can't acquire other large companies. Few companies have Apple's margins. Most acquisitions would drag them down. Even if they're profitable.

<comment><USER11> In a world where Apple chooses to invest scarce cash in A or B, with B being low-margin, and then choosing B.

Not in a world where Apple's cash isn't so scarce that it has to choose either, but can choose both.

The real question is, do investments in the car space get it a better return than whatever the return they had on their cash, which was likely quite small, too, and with no upside.

<comment><USER12> Apple can always use that cash to buy back its stock. Spending it on Tesla has to get better returns than buying back itself for it to be worthwhile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > This lack of fresh perspective in automobile design is one factor likely > fueling the growing interest in bikes and scooters in high density areas

Cars suffer from a tragedy of the commons, even if you have the best Apple iCar in the world with self-driving, you will still get stuck in traffic because of all the people who don't.

If Apple wants to improve the experience of cars they need to start a political party because that is a local governance problem not a design problem.

</comment><comment><USER14> Why do people insist on using the word "poach" when referring to people who were offered and accepted a new and usually better job or pay by a competing firm? It gives a negative connotation to a happy event for someone.

<comment><USER15> You answered your own question. It's used to recast the employee as property of their employer, and the act of offering them another job as dishonourable.

<comment><USER16> The deck is already so stacked against workers - we shouldn't be perpetuating these terms

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Once cars are shared and autonomous they're going to be like riding a private bus, plane or train (or an Uber without a driver). You'll be staring at your phone/laptop/iPad for the whole ride and will not be personalizing anything but the sound playing over the speakers.

An Apple Care would be as if Apple wanted to get into the house market. HomeKit+devices, Apple TV, HomePod etc. are analogous to what Apple could achieve in the car space. I can't see them releasing anything better than a fully autonomous Tesla that allows you to AirPlay to the center screen.

It almost saddens me to see them poaching talent from Tesla when Tesla has so much momentum right now. I don't see Apple achieving anything Tesla won't in the long term. Instead, they're just going to delay how long it takes Tesla to get there.

</comment><comment><USER18> > Even acquisitions that included consumer-facing products like Beats, Beddit, > and Shazam (pending approval) were ultimately about the technology behind > the products.

Err, _Beats_? Their technology was shit, Apple bought a millenial brand.

<comment><USER19> Yup. I wouldn't give up my three K141s for a truck loaded with Beats phones, but try asking to any teen out there.

<comment><USER20> I remember someone tearing down fake beats and finding more expensive drivers in them than in the original thing beats are garbage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have a feeling that:

a) Elon is having a mental breakdown

b) Titan will die because of design by committee

<comment><USER22> Nothing is designed by committee at Apple. That isn't how they work.

<comment><USER23> Which, ironically, seems to be one of the big issues now with many of their products. Division going into them seems to be a little _too_ singular.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Apple entering the space would benefit consumers, but if Apple can't deliver a simple power mat (Airpower), it is hard to believe that they would be able to develop a car. Doug Field left Tesla probably because he couldn't scale the manufacturing plant for them. Apple doesn't build the hardware themselves but hires third-parties to do it, like Foxconn. It would be hard to imagine a company designing cars and letting third-parties build for them

<comment><USER25> Actually, it's more common than you think for a major brand to design a car and outsource the building to a third party or even to outsource the whole design and development of a model entirely.

For example, Magna Steyr builds the E-Pace for Jaguar, the Countryman for Mini and the G-Wagon for Daimler in Graz, Austria. It also developed several cars on behalf of manufacturers such as the Audi TT, Fiat Bravo and Peugeot RCZ[1].

There were even rumors in Graz that execs from Cupertino have flown here to discuss the possibility of Magna building a car for Apple.

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

<comment><USER26> Apple won't outsource its products design to someone else. That's not Apple

<comment><USER27> The comment you're replying to doesn't say anything about outsourcing design.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Performance... Style... Price...

 _Reliability_.

Reliability is not just a part of performance. When it comes to cars, reliability is its own category and it's every bit as important as the others. How many cars are great performers but are rendered impractical by their lack of reliability? For many people, reliability trumps all other considerations. Personally, I'll pay extra and put up with a slower, clunkier vehicle if _just works_.

Apple no longer produces particularly reliable software or hardware. Tesla is having problems doing that themselves. The marriage of the two? It would take a _lot_ to make me trust a vehicle made by these two companies in partnership.

If anything, Apple needs to acquire or partner with a proven auto company with a track-record of producing reliable designs. Quite frankly, Tesla would benefit from doing the same. Their vehicles are exciting in terms of their performance, but the reliability just isn't there yet.

<comment><USER29> > * Personally, I'll pay extra and put up with a slower, clunkier vehicle if > just works.*

Toyota Camry is the car with the track record for reliability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I don't understand what they mean when they say that "personalization" is the most important thing for customers when buying cars.

</comment><comment><USER31> I never thought I'd miss station wagons. Even classic car collectors/restorers avoid them.

</comment><comment><USER32> Apple has run out of steam. What do we have to look forward too; the iPhone 20?

<comment><USER33> A trillion dollar market cap can support the production of a hell of a lot of steam.

I can't stand Apple's products of the last ~7 years, but I wouldn't bet against them in nearly any regard. They have the resources to weather any storm.

<comment><USER32> I should have said innovation. At this point they are more like a utility company.

<comment><USER34> I'm not sure if you're trolling. Have a scroll through this article and say that again;

[https://www.bloomberg.com/features/apple-iphone- guts/](https://www.bloomberg.com/features/apple-iphone-guts/)

There's certainly a dearth of groundbreaking category defining new products, but you have to be blind to what is actually going into the intervals of each successive iPhone model to claim there's no _innovation_ happening.

Personally I think the level of expertise, technology, and craftsmanship which has gone into the iPhone line is astounding. They have absolutely mastered the form factor to the point where you take it completely for granted.

<comment><USER35> Who could ignore such innovation as the removal of the headphone jack?

<comment><USER34> I've missed it on occasion, but once I added a Bluetooth adaptor [1] to my old QC15s I haven't given it a second thought. And now my QC15s also pair to the Apple TV which is great for watching late night Netflix while the family is sleeping.

But my point isn't at all that you have to agree with every outward design decision. My point is that the _internals_ reveal an incredible amount of engineering prowess of their own right. The stacked circuit boards in the X, along with the FaceID suite of sensors, and I'm particularly fond of how well it all integrates with the secure element, for example.

Also have to mention the camera — the "portrait" mode pictures are so beautiful and _easy_ — all my favorite photos were shot on iPhone while my EOS collects dust.

Edit: I should add — it was removing the _Home_ button which actually is my favorite part of the X. I love swiping all around the phone and not having that clunky button to click, or worse, double click.

[1] - [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0786VF6PS/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0786VF6PS/)

<comment><USER23> AirPods are an amazing feat of technology. Incredibly tiny, easy to use, and they sound great. They almost never cut out for me (a problem many Bluetooth devices are supposed to have).

There was nothing close to them on the market when they came out. You either had to have terrible battery life, much larger headphones, or pay a TON more money.

I'm with you on the camera. If Apple made a camera I'd buy it in a heartbeat. The responsiveness and quality they can get out of that ridiculously tiny sensor is extremely impressive. Imagine what they could do with an APS-C or Micro 4/3s.

You already mentioned some of their other amazing tech like Face ID. The role they've been on with the A-series chips since they started taking the designs in house has also been pretty incredible.

<comment><USER34> If only they stayed in my ear!

I bought these [1] which lock them in perfectly but defeats their ease-of-use because you have to remove them to fit them back in the charger-case of course.

Some people have had luck with hole-punch sized waterproof tape [2] which I haven't tried but has the advantage of not interfering with the case.

[1] - [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019BREFE4](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019BREFE4)

[2] - [https://lifehacker.com/keep-your-airpods-in-your-ears- with-t...](https://lifehacker.com/keep-your-airpods-in-your-ears-with-this- hack-1821187020)

<comment><USER36> I despaired over which bluetooth earbuds to buy. I don't like either the Jaybird or Beats form factor. And especially not the Airpod/Earpod style.

I greatly prefer the Shure line (style) of earbuds. The shape works great for my ears. But I had grown weary of the tethered cable. (And the jack is going away.)

It took me way too long to figure out the MMCX connector allows me to mix & match. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMCX_connector](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMCX_connector)

There's a few different styles and mfg of bluetooth audio cables. And of course a zillion earbuds.

Here's the low-end Shure SE215 [http://a.co/d/39g7Mbr](http://a.co/d/39g7Mbr)

Here's one of the cheapo ($20) cables I bought Luxray [http://a.co/d/8ux9eg7](http://a.co/d/8ux9eg7)

The Luxray is meh, okay. Fantastic for $20. But I'd like something more modern, full featured.

A generic MMCX & bluetooth & codec base cable would be a great kickstarter project. I'd happily pay $200 for something that was robust, (firmware) upgradeable.

I envision the same base electronics available in different form factors, eg Jaybird-style necklace, Bose-style neck horseshoe, lanyard-style dangly thing.

When comparing bluetooth cables, be mindful of the codecs supported. The cheapos I bought support AAC, allegedly best (preferred) for my Apple gear. I've read that aptX (and later) is best for Android.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> > _Accordingly, some have concluded that Apple should acquire Tesla as a way > of quickly jumping into the transportation industry._

I produce salty remarks. McDonald's produces salty food. Therefore McDonald's should buy me out as a way of quickly jumping into the HN snark industry.

<comment><USER38> To be fair, if McDonald's did want to move into the HN snark space, buying out existing contributors would be an effective way to go about doing it.

<comment><USER37> I will stand by for the screenshot of my smiling mug on _Our Incredible Journey_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I have been given a job offer with a car company to work in their research division in which they plan to develop more electric vehicles to take on Tesla.

I am still on the fence but the job sounds interesting, its just that its a big corporate and I am skeptical they will be able to take on Tesla's monopoly on electric vehicles.

<comment><USER40> In January, Nissan passed the 300,000 unit mark for deliveries of the Leaf worldwide. Tesla reached 300,000 deliveries across all models a month later. No one has a monopoly on electric vehicles.

<comment><USER39> Ok I think I'll take the job then

<comment><USER41> You should go for it. Don't bother to think about Tesla, it's a small company that doesn't even have a presence outside the US. They just enjoy nice news because the David vs Goliath archetype sells in media.

Any major manufacturer can roll out an equivalent car globally anytime and get in front of a Tesla in a heartbeat. I bet your new company will give you anything you need to do just that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Humanized  Weblog: Command Line for the Common Man: The Command Line Comeback - <AUTHOR> http://www.humanized.com/weblog/2007/02/24/your_grandmothers_command_line_the_command_line_co/ <comment><AUTHOR> The part about 30boxes and Google Calendar's quick add features brings the point together: "The quick-add feature doesn't even really feel like an interface, which is the highest compliment an interface can get: the better an interface is, the less it's noticed."

Clearly many tasks will be more efficient if you can convince people to type instead of clicking around a bunch. The trick is setting it up in such a way that what they have to type is completely intuitive. Almost as if they are typing out what they want done in natural language.</comment>


Calculate time based on city - <AUTHOR> https://www.gettime.live <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all.

I've implemented small React based app (without using classes), which calculate time based on city you provide.

I would like to know your opinion.

Here's the repo: [https://github.com/pito- svk/gettime](https://github.com/pito-svk/gettime)

Thanks, Peter</comment>


Airbnb SRE Challenge - <AUTHOR> http://markbarger.tumblr.com/post/47774068723/airbnb-sre-challenge

<comment><USER2> These questions are pretty sysadminny. Just "how do you configure these open source tools to set up and monitor a service". Not representative of what Google SRE technical interviews are like. I wouldn't feel confident that somebody who had passed just this part of the interview would be a good oncall during an emergency.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed that it's challenging to determine from an interview how someone will respond to a site outage, but site reliability engineering involves more than just being oncall--it's about the decisions you make in setting up interoperating services and the infrastructure you put in place to allow for straightforward scaling.

In general I'm a big fan of this sort of interviewing because the work the person did on the server can give you great insights into what sort of systems administrator they are--do they give you a good insight into how the system has been altered from the default install? Do they document the "why" of any changes they made? Were they able to craft a readable shell/python/ruby/whatever script to cover any automated processes they had to hack together?

I don't know what Google SRE technical interviews are like, but I can't imagine a one-on-one giving as many useful insights for an entire team as the artifacts left behind by someone setting up an entire server from scratch.

Not to mention the ability to weed out people who don't have the basics in place--when someone can't even figure out how to ssh to the server, you know pretty readily that they're probably not suited to the work.</comment></comment>