Solo founders: how do you stay emotionally efficient? - <AUTHOR> There's a great online book called "The Hacker's Diet" (http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/www/hackdiet.html)  which is a no-bullshit dieting/fitness book written by an engineer with the assumption that the reader is fairly smart and rational. He even has some nifty Excel charts. I lost 50 pounds with his approach. Self-help books are usually total drivel with no respect for the reader, so I wish there were tons more written like this one, but on other topics.
But I figure starting a discussion about a problem I have (and others here might) could be a good idea...
Anyway, as I've worked on my business in my spare hours, I've  gradually refined my methods for planning projects and getting work done.  I'm more productive than I was a year ago, but there's kind of a blind spot that maybe other folks here don't have.
I've noticed the biggest bottleneck stopping me from efficiently accomplishing the tasks I've set up for myself is just my mood. I'll have a clear definition of what needs to be done, full confidence in where I'm going with things, and I'll sit down and just think "aw, damn, I feel like shit." Then I'll generally waste time until it's 1am and I need to sleep. This happens 1-2 nights a week.
I'm looking for news.yc folks to try to get some rational insights on on the irrational problem of keeping your mood in check and focusing on what matters, when you're just one guy.
How do you guys deal with emotional problems?
How do you avoid ruminating on things in your day that have pissed you off? This is my biggest issue.
What kind of non-computer things can you readily do to get away from it? What kind of breaks do you take, and what do you do?
What time of day do you work on your own stuff? Do you ever forgo sleep to hack into the night if it's going well, or do you always get your eight hours? Which is better in the long run?
These might seem like goofy or stupid questions, but I think discussing them in a nifty forum like News.YC might yield some good insights.
My thinking is that while some emotional problems are complex and difficult, a good number of them can be solved simply. I've noticed, for instance, that about half of the time I feel like dying, the trifecta of a shower, a nap, and a bowl of chili reverses the feeling 100%.
I had a few thoughts and suggestions around things that have worked well for me, but this post is long enough, so I'll leave this open. Thanks! <comment><USER4> Writing is much like being a single founder. I find the single most important thing is to be aware of how motivated you are, and to adjust the work accordingly. If you try to work on hard stuff when you're low, you'll just procrastinate. But if you start working on easy stuff, getting something done will put you into a better mood, and you'll be able to move on to harder stuff.

Hemingway used to leave something easy unfinished in the evenings, so he had something to start with in the mornings. That works for me too, with both writing and hacking.

<comment><USER5> The Hemingway reference was a tasty infobyte, anyone else have a favorite 'inertia management tip'?

<comment><USER6> A trick I sometimes use is to leave something broken (or unfinished) when I quit working. It's easier to get back up to speed by picking up where I left off than by starting something new from zero.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So, i'm by no means a master... but i have a few thoughts.

1\. I've found recently that when i don't want to code, it's because i don't understand something. I've been picking up a pencil and paper and just working out things i'm nervous about a lot more often lately. it's been a nice productivity boost.

2\. avoid crap that will piss you off to no good effect. I read reddit.politics from time to time and lose an hour just grumbling over some comment. huge waste of time.

3\. i like running. i don't do it often enough... but a couple of miles will really turn down the volume on the rest of the world. very nearly a reset button for me.

4\. by all means, stay up late and hack. However, for me, more than once a week is very detrimental. Sometimes, it's worth being a little slow the next day.

<comment><USER8> #1 is key for me. Once I have the problem and course of action in mind, I can plug away easily. Otherwise I kind of flounder around, unless I purposefully focus on figuring out what I need to do next.

Also, I'd say 99% of advice is useless. People don't usually need to learn more effective ways of doing things. What they really lack is motivation and that's usually because they're trying to force themselves to do something they really think is pointless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As often as I can, I try to work on the thing that I'm most interested in doing at that very moment, even if it's not the most important. Experience has taught me that an hour on the wrong task is better than an hour wasted procrastinating the right one. Eventually my motivation will return to whatever it was that I _should_ have been doing, and at least then there's not a pile of stuff that's accumulated.

As for frustration ... dancing. Seriously. I tend to go out dancing once a week and just shut off my brain, chat with my friends and forget about everything productive for a few hours. It just helps me reset.

<comment><USER10> > Eventually my motivation will return to whatever it was that I should have > been doing

How do you do to keep a coherent direction, then? My problem is precisely this, and I am so driven by motivation that I end up doing a kind of Brownian motion, in retrospect... ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> To state the obvious, the lack of motivation, feeling like shit and the ruminating you mention are common "symptoms" of depression or dysthymia or chronic sadness. Pessimism about one's future is another "symptom".

I struggled with chronic sadness most of my adult life, and tried many things to get rid of it. For example, I tried about 9 different prescription antidepressant drugs. The best cure for me is to have face-to-face interaction with someone early in the day. 2 hours of f2f interaction in day seems to energize me more than 1 hour, but 1 hour is enough to keep most of the sadness away. The energizing effect seems to manifest the day _after_ the "face time". This works very well for me: much better for example than any of the prescription drugs. I got this idea from <http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/facedepress>.

(That page and the others I read about this "face cure" say that watching video of faces works just as well as f2f interaction: I have not tried that yet.)

By the way, this antidepressant effect of face-to-face interaction is one reason I want a cofounder or two.

Good luck, and feel free to contact me privately if you have a followup question.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> One last thought: Just about every night when I'm about to fall asleep, I'll notice the logical inconsistency of my own thoughts and think something to the effect of "Wait, what exactly do kangaroos have to do with zeppelin pilots anyway? Oh, awesome, I must be about to fall asleep. Freakin' finally. ZZZZZ..."

I'd love to be able to do this more when fully awake. Sometimes I can -- I'll realize the influence of my emotions on my thoughts when considering them. But not as often as I'd like.

I liken it to a kind of metacognitive exception-throwing. Have you guys found ways to put a few more asserts() in your thought process?

<comment><USER12> _what exactly do kangaroos have to do with zeppelin pilots anyway_

Hilarious. The strange thing to me is, _while_ you are in this state, the connection makes perfect sense. It's only when you snap out does it become inconsistent. Maybe it has to do with certain portions of the brain relaxing before others.

<comment><USER13> What you describe is more like my experience when half-awoken in the middle of the night. That's when I'll hold adamantly to some complete bit of nonsense ("Really, this does make sense!") while my wife smiles and nods and tries to get me to turn over and go back to sleep. I often remember the event afterward and can't think why I thought I was making sense.

In contrast, when I'm falling asleep (and I assumed this was more what the parent was talking about) I'll suddenly realize that there have been one or several strands of nonsense running in my head for what seems like some time. Sometimes the strands seemed like reasonable trains of thought until I attended to them, sometimes they're just imagined dialog of other people (experienced as mentally overheard instead of consciously imagined) or something else.

But to become aware of them (and to be aware of them as nonsense) in the falling asleep case isn't to snap out of the state. The state continues often until I'm asleep, and a kind of metacognition appears over it with the realization that my thoughts don't make any sense and drawing the conclusion that I'm in the process of falling asleep. Except the original state is probably better described as semi- or sub-cognition.

It's nice to know a couple other people have similar experiences.

I'm not aware of any connection in myself between throwing an exception when almost asleep and being mindful of my emotional state and its effects while awake. (Except perhaps the correlation that I'm more mindful generally now than a few years ago, and the going-to-sleep thing _might_ be a last-couple- years phenomenon. I don't remember it for sure before then.)

I do find that using programming metaphors (e.g., throwing an exception) for my mental processes is almost always misleading.

<comment><USER8> I think this metacognition is starting to bleed over into my dreams:( or :)

Also, I don't think it is just nonsense. These strange thoughts seem to have two levels to them. The more syntactic level, i.e. being part of a video game and fighting giants doesn't make any sense. But, it is the intuitive meaning behind these images that does make sense.

So, my theory is that I'm not necessarily thinking nonsense, but thinking on a different level. A level switch causes that meta-cognition of "nonsense" to occur.

This is similar to reading good literature. Often, great books make use of complex imagery that doesn't make much literal sense. But, focussing on the intuitive impressions that the images bring seems to convey some kind of deeper meaning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> You might consider getting a co-founder. It's likely your moods will be out of phase, so that when one is down the other can be the motivating force and vice versa.

Also accept the fact that doing a startup is an emotional roller coaster - <USER2> day you will believe you are about to take over the world, the next you will wonder why you are wasting your time. Just accept these short term variations and focus on building a great product :)

</comment><comment><USER15> As many people have said, exercise is key. Besides just clearing my mind, I find that going for a run or a bike ride actually helps me focus on what I need to be working on when I get home.

My #2 problem after procrastination is prioritizing what I should be working on. Whenever I go for a bike ride for a few hours, I have a lot of time to think about the direction of my project, which really helps me focus and get right to work when I'm home.

Also, a girlfriend helps, or at least set aside time for dating. Balance is key, or you'll burn out quick.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm most productive when I'm training for a marathon. Amazingly when you spend 2 hours running, you end up with more time in the day. I don't know how it works either, but it does.

Martial arts training is good, too. Classes are at a specific time (which can be good and bad) and it's much more social (which is almost entirely good).

<comment><USER17> Maybe you're running against the rotation of the Earth, thereby causing you to go back in time. It worked for Superman.

<comment><USER16> No, even if I was Super-fast it would do no good, as I run a Hamiltonian cycle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ze Frank made an interesting comment related to this: <http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/12/121906.html>

</comment><comment><USER19> I have two points to make here:

1\. Your general mood - I don't think you can control it and so you might be better off going along with it rather than trying to fight it. I also work on my stuff part time, and many days I sit down with the intention of doing something and I realize that I just can't do a damned thing. Forcing yourself to do stuff at this point is likely to make you unhappy and produce no code, so it's kinda useless.

I don't know about you, but I don't know when exactly I am in the good/bad mood, so I sit down and try to get some work done. Some nights I end up working 6+hrs straight into the wee hours and other nights I close down the editor and play CS or watch TV.

2\. When you're working on new stuff sometimes its hard to get started since there may be several ways to do it, and they all seem equally valid. Instead of trying to plan out too much, just start implementing one of them. Even if you chose wrongly (you can reverse it later), it'll both motivate you to work further and give you a much better idea of what it is that you actually want/need to do.

I tend to do a good amount this kind of programming and it works out well in the end (if I compare some of earlier check-ins for my current project with the latest ones, there'll be very very little in common)

As awesome as the Hacker's Diet is (I use EMA weight chart to keep track of my weight), I don't think you'll find something quite like that for emotions ;)

<comment><USER20> Regarding 2:

I struggle with this all the time - I always start working on something one way but as soon as I come to a realization that there may be a problem with the one, I switch to the other way. It leads to a lot of thrashing.

This is never a good approach, fully implement one way and make it easy to swap at a later point and document problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> On dieting...

I've always had a problem with weight. After extensive research, I tried the Hacker's Diet and lost 60 pounds over 7 months. The big problem with HD is that it doesn't emphasize increasing your protein intake. As a result, I lost some muscle mass as well as fat. I kept the weight off for two years but eventually gained most of it back. Another criticism of HD is that you lose your energy--had I been working at the time I couldn't have pulled it off.

I'm currently doing a medically supervised diet called a Modified Fast which does emphasize increasing protein and virtually eliminating carbs. One of my board members recommended the clinic and they claim they can do 15-20 pounds a month with no muscle loss or decrease in energy. I'm ahead of schedule but I'm only a couple days in so it doesn't really count. (The first 10 lbs are water weight.) I also take an appetite suppressant called phentermine during both diets.

Here's the Wikipedia link (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet>) for something similar to my current diet. They call it the Ketogenic Diet. (The whole point is to kick your body into a state of ketosis where it rapidly burns off all your fat. The protein is to make sure it doesn't also burn off muscle.)

<comment><USER22> there is no healthy way to lose weight fast. period. it is stressful on your body. the way to lose weight is to change your habits so that over time your body can accustom itself to new conditions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I rarely get pissed off at other people; for me that's usually a sign that I'm insecure about something and unwilling to admit it. But I do get tired and unmotivated now and then.

When I catch myself procrastinating, I just say "OK, I'm going to procrastinate for the next 30-60 minutes". Then I set the timer and goof off without guilt. When the timer rings, I go back to work.

Minimal exercise is really important: some stretches/calisthenics in the morning, occasionally pushups or pull-ups as 5-minute breaks.

My social life is limited, but I see my girlfriend every day and that helps a lot.

</comment><comment><USER24> Not working on the same problem for all hours of the day usually helps. For example, instead of spending all day coding, break up the day by swapping your focus to an entirely different aspect of your startup, like finding potential customers or planning your pitch to a top blogger. Coding in the morning, strategy in the afternoon...and both should be done while drinking as much water as possible.

If you can't bring yourself to focus on a different part of your startup, write down exactly what is causing you to be angry (let's be honest - it's usually something to do with the code you've written) and list the possible solutions underneath it. Choose the best solution on gut instinct, and move on asap. Too much thinking is bad.

p.s. I'm really, really glad to have come across this post; I now know other people are experiencing the same ridiculous mental state!

</comment><comment><USER25> This is very nice, sensitive post. I've got lots of coping mechanisms, and I've worked alone a long time. Don't be alone unless you want to be.

If you are looking for a sustainable solution to competing and coping in the world, it is to find a good team. It might be some one just like you, or some one who seems opposite.

Low hanging fruit so there is measurable progress, a clear plan so there are attainable goals, and a team to share the journey.

</comment><comment><USER26> Motivation is tricky so here's what works for me:

1\. I have a short paragraph that I wrote telling myself why certain things are important to me and my eventual goal.I read it whenever I'm feeling down.

2\. I always have a 4 item to do list. Why 4? It just works for me. It's short enough to accomplish and long enough to feel I actually got something done. Doesn't mean once you accomplished all 4 you have to stop, anything extra would just be bonus.

3\. Turn into a morning person. It has dramatically improved my productivity. Rising early gives me plenty of energy and keeps me mentally fit.

</comment><comment><USER27> having an online audience that gives feedback is motivating. even better if your friends (cheerleaders!) are your first users and constantly give you reallife feedback.

if you don't have cheerleaders, try to find some. even better, find projects you can cheerlead for too. starting stuff without an audience gets depressing real fast. if someone takes notice of what you're doing it's a lot harder to bury yourself if things get tough.

it's all about building structures that force you to succeed. put yourself on rails, and make sure it's really hard not to stay on course.

</comment><comment><USER28> Exercise helps.

Music I like can also help me focus when I'm procrastinating too much.

There are times when I'm at an energy/focus low, and can't get anything done, which just lowers my energy/focus more, which can lead to a downward spiral. If I can push through it and get something done, that might pick me up, but more often it's a signal that I need to take a break and get off the computer (things like reddit or stumbleupon don't count as a break, they just turn my brain into mush).

</comment><comment><USER29> Several years ago, I discovered a way to manage my emotional state as a byproduct of something else I was trying to do - relearn Russian for an overseas project. I had read in several places that you can 'replasticize' your brain for learning by doing neurofeedback and sought out a local practitioner.

He stuck tiny gold sensors on my head with a conductive paste and hooked me up to his PC and told me to 'make the beeps come'. I laid back and tried to clear my head and think of nothing. Every once in a while I'd hear a beep and then I'd _try_ to do the same thing and no beeps would come. After a few times, my mind would wander and one day I thought about when I was playing with a puppy earlier and I smiled to myself and suddenly there were lots of beeps.

Between weekly sessions, I'd practice for 20 minutes daily. Did it help my Russian? Maybe, I really don't have a way of getting the data for it. I think it might have, but also being in daily email correspondence with a real live Russian and having my livelihood dependent on writing in Russian contributed as well.

One of the things I noticed was that on days that I 'meditated', things magically got done with a lot less resistance and internal drama and that I was far more productive. How much more? Well, in true Hacker's diet tradition, I made a spreadsheet and tracked it. While I didn't have a numeric scale, and therefore couldn't apply a weighted moving average, I was able to look at the todo lists and see what kinds of things got crossed off and what didn't and make a qualitative evaluation that I got about twice as much done on days where I laid down and connected with my inner puppy in the morning. This is after tracking for three months. It was obvious that it was beneficial before I started tracking, but I was very curious as to how beneficial and the three months tracked over two different kinds of projects - one creative and one analytical. I think the meditation also helped the transition between the two - which usually takes some time if I'm changing disciplines.

I explored several other forms of meditation and eventually had success with the thinking of nothing for twenty minutes. There was one with counting to ten over and over that felt like training wheels and I didn't like. I kept coming back to that puppy and found that it was the most effective.

This is a fascinating question and one that I'll follow. I'm very glad you asked it.

</comment><comment><USER20> I have, like everyone else in here, experienced the same thing. I certainly go through periods of lesser motivation.

Things that I find help me get through it: A) Momentum. Once I get started I don't stop for as long as possible, including working late into the night. Sometimes momentum can carry through to the next day if you maintain focus.

B) Deadlines and dependancies. I just wrote a project for my brother in about a week of my spare time. If that was a personal project, it would have taken a month of time. I had someone else relying on me, and had a ridiculously tight deadline, and it pushed me to ignore all problems and just do it.

C) Mental health. It is an issue we ignore - almost everyone has discussed physical activity, and I believe this is certainly important in mental health - but not many people suggest focusing on the mind. There are many things you can do to temporarily improve mental health, like travel, meet new people, exercise, etc; improving mental health fundamentally is very difficult. I won't go into too many details, but essentially you need to understand yourself, your passions and desires, your faults to really know why you act in certain ways.

All that being said, I suffer the same issues on a regular basis.

</comment><comment><USER30> I highly recommend meditation. I have a steady practice of sitting for 20-30 minutes every day at around the same time, and find that it helps a lot with the various problems you've discussed. It feels great to have small period of time each day to work on steadying the mind and all its incessant thought loops.

Meditation is obviously not a panacea, and doesn't give much in the way of immediate results -- which unfortunately makes it easy to abandon. But after sticking with it for a while, I think you'll find that you'll have fewer emotional peaks and valleys, and will therefore be a bit more productive (amongst other things).

I'm glad you had some good luck with the Hacker's Diet. I too have been following the methods in that book for a couple years now, and have steadily lost a good amount of weight. I think the main thing that I took away from it was how important awareness is. Just recording my weight each day and plotting a moving average gave some insight that I never previously would have considered. And I think the same is true for meditation. You'd be surprised what new kinds of awareness about your own emotional state arises when you are just sitting with nothing but your mind.

</comment><comment><USER31> I have started waking a few hours earlier to work before going to my full time job and putting in less time in the evenings. A day at my full time job seems to drain my motivation sometimes. Also, often a problem that has me stuck in the evening is solved the following morning on waking. I changed my work pattern after noticing this.

</comment><comment><USER32> I find I work more consistently on a day if I have exercised on that day; a jog, or maybe a session of pilates or something. Often I will work quite well in the morning when I know I am going to go for a run at lunch time, so it seems to benefit me both before and after strangely enough.

</comment><comment><USER33> take up some form of martial art as a hobby. i suggest this because it involves a lot of important aspects that you won't get as a full-time solo hacker: gets you physically fit, helps to relieve stress, gets you to clear your mind and focus on something different for a while, and puts you in a social environment away from a computer.

</comment><comment><USER34> Somehow surprised, it seems a lot of us are solo founders. Nice bunch of good solutions, I see.

Max

</comment><comment><USER35> I clean my desk and make it clutter free. I tend to accumulate everything from printouts to coffee cups over time.

</comment><comment><USER36> I have worked on my startup for over a year. I hired someone in India as my developer as I did/do the web design and business stuff....

Through my experience and something I recommend all startuppers have is a thick skin and a crazy, insane drive! If little things piss you off now, how would you handle negative comments made about the work you have slaved over? The negative actually should be viewed as constructive criticism, though also learn to decipher the vicious with the constructive!

When I want to get away from my work I will go and hang out with friends.

</comment><comment><USER37> In my experience, emotional pain is as much a signal as physical pain - <USER3> you are paying attention. Research shows that sleep is an important factor in mood and overall productivity - so don't skimp on that. It also shows that friendship and social interaction is important to mood - in fact, talking about issues/being heard prevents ruminating. And, taking breaks is very important for creativity. Your emotions may be messaging a need to be a bit nicer to yourself. We all relate - hope that helps.

</comment><comment><USER38> If i had to pick one thing, I'd say to keep promises to yourself. Being aware of the fact that you might, say, procrastinate is huge. So, make a promise to yourself that you will follow your clear defn, etc and code for 10 minutes or whatever you can to get yourself going. Then, once you get going you're 90% of the way there. But again, keep those promises and you'll build momentum and self esteem which will drive you forward.

</comment><comment><USER39> "The Calm Technique" by Paul Wilson is an excellent beginner's guide to meditation.

Meditation, for programmers, is like circuit training for athletes. It's the time you put in to train and build strength in you mind itself - not knowledge of the game, not skills in the craft - but actually building and maintaining the structure of the mind itself. For whatever reason, it tends to help stabilize emotions too.

</comment><comment><USER40> I have the same problem, but what gets me through is, when I am in a good flow, i try and not break focus for many hours, PG mentions in one of his essays how long hacking sessions work really well. So I try to get up early and work non stop for as many hours as I can, I find I am most fresh and productive before I get in contact with the "outside world".

<comment><AUTHOR> I've found this too. Lately this week, I've been getting up several hours before I have to go to work and spend some time hacking on my own stuff. I think this is a more reliable way to keep that time free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Maybe the emotions come for a purpose. I think they try to wake you up into realizing that you're not a 100% efficient coding/working machine and if you expect yourself to go to work and then work on your business (as I understood by your reference to "your spare hours" and to "(emotional) problems"), you're trapped by your own expectations. Maybe doing the emotion track for at least a couple of days a week would be a good thing.

I sometimes don't get anything done, sometimes I get so much done. I've myself just learned to not expect much when I'm not in the flow and lacking the motivation and gut feeling to actually do the work I want to do. Things come, things go -- maybe I'll learn the following day that what I tried to do was eventually not needed. Or the following day might bring me the energy to start working on it, if it's the right thing to do at the time. If I tried to just execute through every single day, I'd be saturated with frustration by now.

</comment><comment><USER42> To get myself into my code I usually have to remove all distractions, including the internet. Either unplug, block specific sites with your hosts file or use 8aweek.

When I have your problem I usually wish I were coding, but its easier (and seems quick) to check facebook, twitter etc.

Remove all of those distractions and a computer actually feels really productive.

</comment><comment><USER22> "so I wish there were tons more written like this one"

i've been thinking about this. the best thing about engineers is that we have very low tolerance for bullshit. every time I've seen an engineer apply himself to a problem outside of engineering you wind up with a very nice, no bullshit, stripped down explanation of said problem.

</comment><comment><USER43> You don't. Seriously, I strongly recommend against it. I tried. After about 18 mo. I finally broke down and brought in someone I really liked as the CEO and it's a world of difference.

I would never again try to do a startup the sole founder.

</comment><comment><USER44> Fundamentally: be conscious of your mood and the things that affect it, and work with your mood rather than against it.

The suggestions here are good examples of this philosophy. I would add: don't try to change your mood by force of will alone.

</comment><comment><USER45> I do 2 hours of surfing everyday (10km of running every 2 days in case of flat days), and I don't think it helps much on the morale side. So I force myself to work even if it's slowly and in bad mood, it's better than nothing.

</comment><comment><USER46> Don't try to fight the stuff head on. Recognize when you aren't going to be productive in front of the computer, and walk away. Figure out something else to do, ideally something that gets you in a better mood, or feeling more productive, or helps clean away all the things you're worrying about. Sometimes that means cleaning the house or running some errands. Sometimes it means playing a couple hours of Halo 3 with your friends. Often for me, a trip to the gym will do wonders. After my post-workout shower, I feel like I'm restarting the day.

</comment><comment><USER47> I would also ponder the possibility of dopamine/serotonin levels and the like. For some people, it makes a difference, whence it becomes less of something you try to deal with, but something you live with.

</comment><comment><USER48> similar to programming is martial arts. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miyamoto_Musashi#First_duel> "If you try to wield the long sword quickly you will mistake the Way. To wield the long sword well you must wield it calmly. stage1: only when happy are you calm. Feel the force, Luke SkyWalker. stage2: calm at all times, whether angry or drowsy stage3: minimizing emotion; just aa game stage4: harnessing emotion; Music Composers write when they are in love stage5: emotional and concentration peaks bio-rhythym.

many car accidents from Americans driving drowsy, inattentive. ADD? writing boring, routine, same old, same old code? are you driving drowsy?

Why is tennis champion champion? Because only on the 'critical match point' shots he wins. Difference in percentage between loser and BIG winnner is very small. 270 baseball batter and 320 batter difference is 50 points. 1/4 second - OLympic gold medal swimmer.

a possible good way (controversial) introduce the competitor's star team of programmers and comedy writers to 'fashion models', 'drama queens', inject an overload of emotion.

Can you concentrate on writing critical code after have your face slapped by a girl friend or even her friend?

</comment><comment><USER49> "Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements, and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping. We see our past achievements as the end result of a clean forward thrust, and our present difficulties as signs of decline and decay." -- Eric Hoffer

</comment><comment><USER50> >How do you avoid ruminating on things in your day that have pissed you off? This is my biggest issue.

Try Buddhism. Most of the things you ruminate on are probably worthless, and a religion may help you to see that better and earlier.

On the other hand, it may develop qualities in you that are not favourable for an entrepreneur.

<comment><USER51> Zen would be a much better suggestion. More focused, and less religious. You can be as easely zen atheist or zen christian as zen buddhist.

<comment><USER52> Actually, Zen is simply one path to Buddhism. You have to check out the sects so you don't get into one you consider strange, but, for instance, vipassana is another path that (as far as I know) doesn't make claims to worshipping deities. Steve Hagen writes well on this, as does Gunaratana.

Remember, the Buddha was agnostic. He simply gave advice. Follow it if it works for you. Buddhism doesn't address faith, but reality.

<comment><USER6> Both this and the parent comment strike me as very much a Western and modern spin on Buddhism. It's one I happen to be sympathetic to. But I'm also skeptical of what happens when such traditions are taken far out of their historical and cultural context.

<comment><USER52> This is a great comment. I read folks I think are grounded in both contexts-- modern and historical. Try "What the Buddha Taught" by Walpola Rahula for background.

<comment><USER6> Speaking of modern variants, did you ever run across "After the Absolute" by David Gold? It's about the author's experiences with a hillbilly Zen teacher from the back woods of West Virginia. There's no historical connection to Buddhism (or even Zen for that matter) but it's a vivid story. The guy in question was a volatile character who half the time would share profound spiritual insights and the other half would pull a gun on you.

<comment><USER52> Sounds interesting. I'll have to check it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Go for a swim or read some story about some successful entrepreneur who had been through this phase.

</comment><comment><USER54> whooooooooooo nice replies cant read them all :) ...

anyhow, as as engineer I understand what you are talking about. I have same problems.

#1 Solution ( that works for me ) : HAVE SOME FREE TIME for yourself. I do this my simply getting up early ( some days around 5:00am ), then do great training ( walk, running, martial arts, swimming, dog walk...). Then healthy breakfast and you are ready to go, energy for all day. Good sleep, friends ( NO WAY TO DEVELOP WITHOUT FAMILY&FRIENDS ), and important thing is to RELAX sometimes.. Daily spend min 45mins in nature and always remember to look at the sky&stars&moon...

And don't waste time on PC. Get the work done and simply fuck off from it :) forget the games, the movies, the web..

all you need is love ^_^

</comment><comment><USER55> I enjoy watching a good movie to get me in the mood. Rocky or Rudy usually does the trick.

</comment><comment><USER56> Extreme sports is very useful here. A couple of hours ride around the city on in-line skates usually solves all my emotional problems. If that does not help, I switch skates to my SUV and go to mountains for snowboarding :-).

</comment><comment><USER57> Lately I just go through my emails and find requests and do them. I would like to do a big project but sometimes making incremental improvements at least moves you forward when otherwise you might not do anything.

</comment><comment><USER58> What separates the boys from the men is:

Take a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal), Break it up into small reusable pieces and accomplish over a long period of time making measurable progress every day. Easier said than done.

</comment><comment><USER59> do something outside

step away from the keyboard

meet girls get laid

<comment><USER60> i agree. close the macbook.

meet girls.

<comment><USER61> don't forget to bring your iphone for your date though!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Eat, drink, exercise and sleep correctly. Have a routine. These will help a lot.

</comment><comment><USER63> i use twitter to rant when i'm in a bad mood. cycling helps. but what helps the most is when your users talk back to you and you figure out ways to improve your product/service.

</comment><comment><USER64> daft punk

</comment><comment><USER65> 1 - Keep a sporty life. Exercise releases endorphines -pleasure hormones- , refreshes your mind, and fine-tunes your vascular system.

2 - If you have a girlfriend/boyfriend, you not only have someone to talk to and bounce ideas to, but also someone to synchronize with. It will help split your day into large chunks, erasing away long hours of slipping through half dozing over a keyboard.

3 - Make sure to get a few minutes of sunlight straight to your face every day. Keeps your internal clocks in synch, and refreshes you.

4 - Wake up early, even if you go to sleep again at midmorning. The dawn fresh air also resets your internal clocks.

5 - When in doubt, stand up and go for a walk/exercise/house-cleaning frenzy etc. Remaining doubtful in front of the keyboard is not constructive. Accomplishing small tasks will tune up your mood as well.

</comment><comment><USER66> > a great online book called "The Hacker's Diet"

It's a lot more complicated than calories in, calories out. Nutrition is a complex topic involving the interplay between nutrients and the endocrine system and sleep, and differing kinds of exercise. If he just said "Eat less, exercise more" then he'd be right. But everything else he says is wrongheaded.

> I wish there were tons more written like this one, but on other topics

There are way too many books like this. Some intelligent guy blathers on about a complex subject of which he doesn't really know much.

</comment><comment><USER67> Your not a machine. Hacking is hard, it taxes us like not many other jobs. I read here a long post about sleep problems, hackers get all excited whenever the sleep topic comes up (seems many suffer). The point is hacking too late into the night can upset my sleep, thus starting a vicious cycle. I'd suggest stepping back, don't push too hard, if your working during the day then maybe hack for yourself at the weekends of for only 1.30 a day.

</comment><comment><USER66> > How do you guys deal with emotional problems?

I'll smack you in the face and scream at you to "Pull it together man!" Or would you prefer a hug?

> What kind of non-computer things can you readily do to get away from it?

Sports are important. _NOT_ going on runs, or "working out", or bike rides, or a friendly co-ed softball league. Men need physical athletic competition. Personally, nothing puts me on an even keel more than getting punched in the face. Real adrenaline rushes put all stress in perspective.

<comment><USER8> I agree. I always used to play fight with my friends when younger, and I've always enjoyed combative sports like wrestling and martial arts. I like having a fighting spirit!</comment></comment>


State of the Keybase.io Website - <AUTHOR> https://yarmo.eu/post/keybase-website <comment><USER2> I'd be very interested to read a similar analysis for Keybase core, the command line tools and what they're built on.

I've been using Keybase for a few years but since the Zoom takeover, I'm in a wait-and-see holding pattern.</comment>


Twitter to decentralize something - <AUTHOR> https://www.manton.org/2019/12/11/twitter-to-decentralize.html <comment><USER3> The problems with P2P is not problems of tech, they're problems of incentives. The tech exists and it's mostly solved — it's just that anyone who is capable of building such a thing is not incentivised to do so, because that work could be spent in more productive (i.e. money-making) endeavours than what will by definition be incapable of making money since it explicitly decentralises the concentration of power.

So if Jack wants you to come build it, and you're a P2P person, you should go work for him in even if you don't like him, because he has both the willingness to pay for it, and the broadcast power to make it mainstream. And those are the main problems that needs to be solved, not tech.

I know this because I'm going through the same thing myself — I work on Aether ([https://getaether.net](https://getaether.net)), which is close to what I think he is talking about.

If we want ourselves to solve this, and not rely on _@jack_ s of the world, we need to find a way to make P2P into a viable business. For me, in the end I decided to create a Pro version for use within companies, so that the P2P version can be fully free of monetisation concerns.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the great project, it fixes the most egregious problems with bulletin boards - which reddit and hn are just fancier guis for.

There's a lot to unpack about the issues of p2p monetization. Probably a few books worth.

Before we get into the social issues I think the original sin of the internet was that IP did not negotiate payments as part of the fundamental protocol. Every layer above that suffers from the same.

This made sense in a government/corporate/university environment where the protocols were invented, but not for the wider world. I'm not going to try and give solutions because all of them are flawed in some way, but better than the current system where only surveillance advertising and altruistic services are viable business models.

<comment><USER5> > Before we get into the social issues I think the original sin of the > internet was that IP did not negotiate payments as part of the fundamental > protocol. Every layer above that suffers from the same.

That isn't really what causes the problem. Payments don't need to be inside the network layer of the internet.

The problem is that a digital payment system that works like IP routing doesn't exist _at all_ , even independent of the internet. Existing banks could implement it trivially -- you walk into the branch with $100 in cash, give them the money and they give you a secret passphrase. Then the banks talk to each other so anyone anywhere in the world who walks into another bank and has the correct passphrase can get the money.

Except that there are laws against that. Know Your Customer laws that require them to know who you are and know who the person you're sending the money to is, even if what you're paying for is both legal and private. "Consumer protection" laws that require them to allow you to reverse the transaction, which means they can't just give the money to the other party, they have to sit on it for a while.

The effect of these laws is to make small transactions between random individuals incur prohibitively high transaction costs and subject honest people to capricious denial of service attacks by risk-averse financial institutions without effective recourse. It also makes people afraid to pay for things they don't want an official record of them consuming, which _specifically_ applies to political speech when your views don't align with the party currently in office -- or the party who may be in office next year.

In other words, it interferes with people actually paying people for creating content on the internet. That leaves the creators with only advertising to support them, which implies central control by the ad network.

Fixing that requires a way to anonymously, irreversibly send small payments with low transaction costs. Which is currently de facto prohibited by law.

<comment><USER4> No there are no systems that can deal with the $1e-10 you will need to pay for the usual packet. You don't care if someone scams you a thousand times, you do care when someone scams you a few billion times, or when you're talking to millions of people.

The cost of getting it wrong is so low on the internet that you can use the most blunt statistics to still come out ahead.

<comment><USER5> > No there are no systems that can deal with the $1e-10 you will need to pay > for the usual packet.

You don't need packet-level accounting. You need, for example, to be able to charge $0.02/view for a video while getting to keep almost all the money, so that a creator with 10,000 views/day can make a decent living. Then you offer viewers a deal -- no charge if you host the video. Only a small fraction of the viewers take you up on it ($0.02 is not a huge incentive), but a few have unlimited data and are happy to get any price for something that costs them nothing, or it makes them feel like good supporters to be distributing your work, and that's all you need in order to have unlimited scalability and negligible hosting costs.

> You don't care if someone scams you a thousand times, you do care when > someone scams you a few billion times, or when you're talking to millions of > people.

This system isn't supposed to be a savings account, it's for small transactions. If there's significantly more money in your account than you typically spend on small transactions in a month then you're doing it wrong, and the amount in your account would be the upper limit on what you can get scammed out of.

People would still keep the bulk of their money in a traditional financial instituion that knows their name and can reverse transactions. But a payments system that works differently than that should be able to _exist_.

<comment><USER4> >You don't need packet-level accounting.

You absolutely do.

What you don't need is accurate and global accounting of packet transactions. A simple cryptographic local ledger between each pair of routers will be more than enough. The routers can then decide how the data is charged, or if the balance isn't closed somehow, just start dropping packets coming from that link. We are not talking about people doing videos - a largely vapid and useless form of entertainment only propped up by legacy add platforms like google because video adds are much more effective than text based ones - <USER2> are talking about people running routers in the center of the network. Once we have decentralized the lowest levels of the internet then we can start thinking about the higher ones.

After all the choice between lord Google or lord Verizon isn't much of a choice.

> Only a small fraction of the viewers take you up on it ($0.02 is not a huge > incentive), but a few have unlimited data and are happy to get any price for > something that costs them nothing, or it makes them feel like good > supporters to be distributing your work, and that's all you need in order to > have unlimited scalability and negligible hosting costs.

So again, the main business model is altruism with no way to actually monetize the transport layer. Replacing the kings of layer 4 with the kings of data is not a victory. It's just a different tyranny. One I don't see being much better than the current one.

Only when you can make money in each layer of the network can the internet truly be free (as in freedom).

>If there's significantly more money in your account than you typically spend on small transactions in a month then you're doing it wrong, and the amount in your account would be the upper limit on what you can get scammed out of.

Yes, that's why you shouldn't do it that way.

You don't spend 'money' you have agreements with your peers over how much data they are willing to receive from you. The clearing process is completely independent. Cash, cat pictures, happy feelings, revolutionary zeal. All are acceptable currency if the owner of the router agrees with you.

<comment><USER5> > The routers can then decide how the data is charged, or if the balance isn't > closed somehow, just start dropping packets coming from that link.

At this point you're essentially arguing that network neutrality is bad and what we really need is the opposite of that.

Realize that in your system, it's Verizon and Comcast who have all the power. They're sitting on millions of customers who have no other network path to them, so they would get to charge monopoly prices to anybody who wants to communicate with them, and the customers themselves have no other choice because the incumbent ISP has a local monopoly (or the sort of totally inadequate competition that DSL is now putting forth against cable/fiber).

And if you're paying for sending data but not for receiving it, it would give ISPs all the more incentive to keep doing and increase doing the things like selling highly asymmetric connections that upload much slower than they download, which make it harder to create competitive P2P networks.

> So again, the main business model is altruism with no way to actually > monetize the transport layer.

How is the network not already monetized? Is there some alternative to Verizon and Comcast where you're paying no monthly fees, short of building your own network like Google does? Even then you still have to pay for it, you're just paying for land, labor and equipment instead of service.

You pay your ISP to get you to a peering point. That's monetized. The other endpoint pays their ISP to get to the peering point. Also monetized. What's left? The peering link? The actual cost of that is such a small percentage of the total that you can round it off to zero, and people only really try to charge for it when they're rent seeking because they have a monopoly path to a large number of customers.

> Yes, that's why you shouldn't do it that way.

Because occasionally people who make bad security choices will be encouraged to do better after suffering an uncovered loss of something like fifty or a hundred bucks? That seems like a small price for having a payments system that has low transaction costs and protects privacy.

> You don't spend 'money' you have agreements with your peers over how much > data they are willing to receive from you. The clearing process is > completely independent. Cash, cat pictures, happy feelings, revolutionary > zeal. All are acceptable currency if the owner of the router agrees with > you.

How is that any different than it already works? Anybody can configure their network to accept traffic or not from whoever they like. What's missing is an efficient method for clearing small payments -- but that's a general problem, not anything specific to internet links.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Submitted title was "Micro.blog founder on Twitter's bluesky project". That's good information! but the place to add it is as a first comment in the thread, not in the submission title.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22level%20playing%20field%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks I didn't know that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm suspicious of motives here as much as anyone, but I think the issue of policy enforcement (and policy itself) is very important here. It already occurred to me that Mastodon and Gab were, despite being worst enemies, together inadvertently creating a reasonable content meta-policy. Some people want freedom of expression, some people want protection from objectionable material. With ActivityPub, you can choose your gatekeeper, and still more or less exist in the same social universe.

<comment><USER8> > Some people want freedom of expression, some people want protection from > objectionable material.

You make things sound far too benign. Where do death threads fall in this classification, are they "free speech" or "objectionable material"? Where do disinformation bot armies fall? There's a _lot_ more to content moderation than just "that person doesn't want to see boobies or the f-word".

<comment><USER7> Presumably most people don't want their life threatened so almost nobody will pick an instance that allows that to happen. The few people who are interested in posting death threats can go ahead and make a rogue Gab instance or something, and every other instance will block them. They'll be their own silo where super sketchy things go on until the feds decide it's time to step in (since death treats are legally actionable). Such silo websites are already possible without the fediverse (and by some accounts already exist), so my model doesn't change anything here (assuming blocking is effective). (BTW even Gab dot com would block that; they ban people for death threats and porn and maybe even Doxing).

Disinformation campaigns? Well again, if you don't want to be misinformed, pick your gatekeeper. Probably all the better. If somebody's going to protect me from being misinformed, I want to know what their biases are. I don't trust Twitter or Facebook; it's not a simple and objective task.

I think your point that this stuff is complicated is exactly my point. It is complicated, and people have different preferences. No one company can be the gatekeeper that satisfies the entire planet's preferences (at least, not under the current models).

<comment><USER8> Good points, thanks! I understand your point now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> They are dedicating 5 people to this project... I mean... full 5 people... this is not a project, this is a charade.

<comment><USER10> Five people is pretty large for the first phase of a research project. If they come up with something good Twitter can add more people later.

<comment><USER11> It's bigger than the size most startups being with.

<comment><USER9> Except they are a multibillion-dollar public company with almost infinite resources and reach.

<comment><USER12> And this team of 5 would surely have access to those resources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So like... Doesn't the open web exist? We have RSS feeds for subscription.

I guess we need a way to share things we've liked?

Retweets should be representable through RSS entries.

Hashtags are just searchable text.

<comment><USER14> The IndieWeb ecosystem is already doing this with microformats2 + webmention to support decentralized replies, likes, reposts, etc. with HTML blogs.

See [https://aaronparecki.com](https://aaronparecki.com) for an example and [https://indieweb.org/friendly](https://indieweb.org/friendly) and [https://indieweb.org/Webmention](https://indieweb.org/Webmention)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> They should just use ActivityPub. Sure it has problems, but federating with their biggest decentralized competitors would signal that they are serious. Improving the protocol can come next.

</comment><comment><USER16> Blockchain is probably not the best (or maybe even the worst) solution for decentralized messaging.

<comment><USER17> The blockchain isn't a messaging hub, it's more about identity management

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The want to keep ad revenue and outsource moderation.

<comment><USER19> Isn't Twitter ad revenue actually super low compared to the infrastructure costs?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Open Source has generated $Trillions in value creation over the last few decades.

Twitter is fighting to stay relevant, they dropped to Top 35 website from Top 14 in last several months.

This is an opportunity for them to become a global standard, and that is worth it.

The most important piece is that they can scale when they pull it off. I've been working on decentralized tech for a while (I run [https://github.com/amark/gun](https://github.com/amark/gun)) and can say it takes a lot of attention that most projects (dare I say "blockchains") have no scaling abilities at all.

</comment><comment><USER21> > If Twitter is hoping to outsource curation to shared protocols,

I don't think they would ever do that. It would be really dangerous to implement and would possibly expose an unfiltered stream of partially illegal content.

I mean, can you imagine "validate if this is an unsolicited dickpic", or "verify if this is a dox attempt", or "verify this is cp"? This is one area that can never be exposed to non-employees.

<comment><USER22> It's almost certainly done by non-employees now, through contracting arrangements. While it's possible the unfiltered stream never leaves Twitter's premises or Twitter's computers, and the individual contractors sign an agreement directly with Twitter, it's only one step removed from just sending your stream to the service and getting back an annotation.

<comment><USER21> Yes, they have contacts/agreements with the parties that get access. Whether that's full time employees or contractors, I don't think that changes the main issue. They will never expose that information to the public.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What's wrong with NNTP? At least as a starting point?

<comment><USER24> There's nothing wrong with NNTP. It's exactly what they'd need. Trouble is developer memory: people don't read back on technology, and thus, no trendy dev remembers NNTP in the container era.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I have a question, what is it about blockchain that's so attractive to every new idea nowadays?

New social network? Blockchain!

New news platform? Blockchain!

I get what blockchain is. I get how it's used in cryptocurrency transactions. But will someone please explain why it's being incorporated into industries that always have done (and IMO can continue to do) just fine without it?

I skim through this [1] list, and see no clear benefit to incorporating blockchain into most/all of these? Most of them seem to be using it as 'secure database' or something.

[1]: [https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/04/11/20-real-world- uses...](https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/04/11/20-real-world-uses-for- blockchain-technology.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER26> What you really need is an open database.

That is all.

As long as data is stored in Twitter managed database, it would never work.

<comment><USER27> can you define "open"?

<comment> code-is-code mongoDB with default credentials

<comment><USER28> Dang beat me to it

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's an experiment to explore a distributed Twitter. People read way too much into those tweets. It seems clear that they will evaluate existing projects, and technologies and make their own decisions.

More competition in this domain is a very good sign IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER30> Twitter to embrace and extend a decentralised system and bend it to their own will using their incumbent position.

</comment><comment><USER31> This seems right. Twitter is not engaging in this in pursuit of real openness, and the end result--if anything--is unlikely to be better for twitter users.

</comment><comment><USER32> Attempts to decentralize are so decentralized. Still only TOR and Eth are somewhat functioning.

Let's see what Telegram Open Network will offer.

</comment><comment><USER33> People want "the cloud" so they don't want to be responsible for things. Is this the same thing?

<comment><USER34> People want the cloud so that they can be responsible for things at the right level of abstraction. Nobody wants to maintain a server with a message bus and a bunch of individual applications that communicate on it.

Just set up AWS EventBridge (or Azure EventGrid), or any of a dozen other options that don't require you to administer a server. And then use AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, Azure Logic Apps, Zapier, etc, etc. Don't maintain a server that runs a bunch of apps.

We care about what we're managing, and care about being responsible for it, we just want to manage it at the right level of abstraction. Let the cloud provider manage and be responsible for the hardware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> No mention of ActivityPub, Mastodon or Pleroma?

</comment><comment><USER36> How has IPFS evolved lately?</comment>


Elasticsearch is a great example of a modern monolithic application - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/dvassallo/status/1169798034110025728 <comment><USER2> Except by itself it does little? Something needs to add documents and something else needs to search indexes. A typical ELK deployment has logstash and kibana as well. ES is a component.

But yeah...having used similarly designed apps(including a lot of apache project apps),it is a good design but only because of the specific use-case. Full blown apps (like ones that would use ES as a backend) might need to be non-monolithic.

Curiously,does the author consider docker-deployed apps monolithic?

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. The "monolith" I'm describing is an application-level characteristic. The deployment container, whether it's a bare metal server, a VM, or a Docker container doesn't matter.

I admit that my definition is not necessarily universal, but IMO the characteristics I listed are all highly desirable. I pushed for this model when I worked at Amazon (an AWS service as 1 monolith) and I've seen it work great even at large scale (close to 10K hosts, millions of requests per second, etc).

<comment><USER2> Interesting,thanks for clarifying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Pretty much all databases are like that? And a ton of other things. Pick a random example: cockroachdb. Has all these properties.

I guess I don't understand what the author's point is.

</comment><comment><USER4> Aren't most things like this? mysql, for eg.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hmmm - couldn't you also say that Elasticsearch is a great example of a modern microservice?

<comment><USER6> It's not really `micro` is it though?

<comment><USER7> Microservices aren't necessarily small, at least by definition if not name. They are discrete services modeled around a business domain which are independently deployable and scalable. As such a "microservices" can get pretty big in terms of code and functionality.

<comment><USER8> Pardon my ignorance, but isn't that just a "service"?

The "micro" part just seems to cause confusion in every conversation I have about service based architectures.

<comment><USER7> Yes, it does cause confusion and can cause people to create an architecture that is too fragmented, resulting in a higher than necessary overhead in support for all those tiny services. I suspect a lot of people who don't like microservices are suffering from this problem.

Some people's definitions of microservices are that they are separated business domain, with each development team focusing on their business processes. Therefore they can reflect reflect Conway's law. Those teams develop autonomous services which communicate with the services of other teams (e.g. the invoicing team build services to interact with the sales team).

In smaller companies a single team, or indeed each team in a larger company, can have multiple microservices, but there are some qualities that would be needed to truly fit the microservice definitions.

If you haven't read Martin Fowler's article on Microservices then it's a good start: [https://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html](https://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html) There's a side bar on that which asks "How big is a microservice?"

Of course Sam Newman is also a great resource for microservice principles: [https://vimeo.com/131632250](https://vimeo.com/131632250)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's interesting, I always thought there was at least a database layer running separately.</comment>


Want a big idea? Solve the Plastics Problem: disrupt the packaging industry - <AUTHOR> Where are the startups working on solving "The Plastics Problem"?
Our society is PAYING plastics companies to create a seemingly infinite quantity of garbage that we throw into the sea and our land based environment.
The company(s) that solve The Plastics Problem stand to become gigantic because packaging is a vast industry.
Here's the best idea I have - it's yours free: standard sized, reusable packaging
- Imagine a future in which we do not create single use packaging.
- Instead, society uses a small range of standard package types.
- These packages can be cleaned and reused.
- A deposit is paid for use and return of each of these reusable standard sized packaging items.
- The reusable packaging is made from some extremely durable material such as for example Gorilla Glass.
The goal being to end the "garbage creation" industry - also known as the "packaging" industry.
Someone needs to solve this - the world is filling up with plastic single use packaging garbage. <comment><USER2> There was once a product for this known as PPM Primary Packaging Material. Researched it while banning polystyrene togo containers in Seattle. I believe ESHELL was their ticker symbol. Maybe a dying patent out there for the right mover/shaker.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Recycled paper packaging 2\. Origami folding techniques aided by AI 3\. Shame gross user of plastics packaging 4\. Awareness campaigns 5\. Ban form factors that harm wildlife (encircling rings, entrapment shapes, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER4> Myco packaging (mushrooms) that easily decomposes. Already technically proven, just needs scale and economics to be slightly improved to make it compelling for a lot of applications.</comment>


How I succeed in delivering every project on time - <AUTHOR> https://vavingo.com/work-better/13-lucky-steps-on-how-to-manage-a-design-project <comment><AUTHOR> These are the steps I've used for some 17-years to deliver projects on time and have the client complain less during the project. It's done wonders for me.

Hope it resonates with you.

Let me know if I'm missing something.</comment>


Threat modelling case study: bicycles - <AUTHOR> http://calpaterson.com/bicycle-threat-model.html <comment><USER2> The battery powered angle grinder gave thieves the advantage, but you'd think bike owners would have the advantage now that a battery powered transmitter can be tiny and easily hidden on a bike. People could (if police isn't interested in provoking crime which is illegal in some jurisdictions) plant nice looking bikes with transmitters, wait for them to be stolen, and follow the bike to what's presumably some kind of stash of stolen bikes. Repeat for a few years until thieves feel it's too dangerous.

<comment><USER3> > People could (if police isn't interested in provoking crime which is illegal > in some jurisdictions) plant nice looking bikes with transmitters, wait for > them to be stolen, and follow the bike to what's presumably some kind of > stash of stolen bikes.

Number One Rule of Internet Legal Advice Forums: "No, that isn't entrapment."

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

Those bikes would be equivalent to bait cars, which are well-established tools to catch car thieves. The car doesn't do anything except sit in a "bad" neighborhood; everything else is entirely the work of the would-be thief. It's about as far on the good side of entrapment as you can get without someone's actual car being lifted. The reason police don't do it for bike thefts is because police have (or think they have) better things to do than hunt down someone's Huffy.

> Bait cars are not considered entrapment because they merely afford criminals > the opportunity to steal the car; entrapment, on the other hand, constitutes > law enforcement persuading or encouraging a person to commit a crime that > they would not have committed otherwise.

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

> Entrapment is a practice whereby a law enforcement agent or agent of the > state induces a person to commit a "crime" that the person would have > otherwise been unlikely or unwilling to commit.[1] It "is the conception and > planning of an offense by an officer or agent, and the procurement of its > commission by one who would not have perpetrated it except for the trickery, > persuasion or fraud of the officer or state agent."[2]

"But officer, the bike was just sitting there!" doesn't rise to the level of persuasion.

<comment><USER4> [https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/seattle- bike...](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/seattle-bike-bait- sting-netted-a-lot-of-homeless-people-but-few-convictions/)

In Seattle, if you are "homeless" you won't be prosecuted for crimes, and guess who most of the bike thieves are?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Lock Picking Lawyer discusses why he uses a thick chain lock for his cheaper bike. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpVOTEOMRuE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpVOTEOMRuE)

<comment><USER6> This is kind of my approach. I figure, nothing will defeat an angle grinder, but a piece of chain will defeat a wire cutters if there's a nicer bike parked nearby. Riding a sub-$100 jalopy completes the picture.

<comment><USER7> Over the 30 years I've been commuting by bicycle, I get a bike stolen once every 3 years or so. My bikes cost in the neighbourhood of $1k each. It costs me about a buck a day to travel by bike, which is really cheap relative to other transportation options. The cost of replacing a stolen bike seems to be less of a concern for people than the feeling of having been violated and taken advantage of.

<comment><USER6> That's certainly the case for me. I think I value my bikes more than my car, though most of my bikes were assembled from piles of old parts. But a bike is a bike, and a car is just an appliance. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _" This prevents opportunistic theft but if this space is shared with others (apartment blocks and offices) it in fact serves to increase the economies of scale for prepared thieves who break into your storage area late at night with a van. It's not uncommon for office bicycle stores (with many fancy, expensive bikes inside) to be emptied out completely overnight by professional thieves."_

At the shop I used to work at, we had some guys back a pickup truck through the front window of the store, load the pickup with five or so $8-10K bikes, and then drive off. We got it all on security camera and it took less than a minute. They made off with more value than most small banks keep in cash.

<comment><USER9> That's a bike shop, right? I assume that means the bikes weren't locked to anything, or even locked at all.

Where I live, to get to my bike you'd need to:

1\. Pass a keyed electric door.

2\. Enter locked floor-specific cage (think datacenter cage, but more heavy- duty)

3\. Cut lock attaching bike to bike rack.

All while being watched by about 5 cameras. The best part? It's student housing!

I'd expect any appartment block or office building to have similar or better security. I have literally never heard of that kind of smash-n-grab happening. It's just too much risk for way too little reward.

<comment><USER10> My previous apartment building was secured by electronic badges, several camera, and security sitting 50m away (they didn't have a direct line or sight though). No one stored their bikes longer that 4–6 months there before getting theirs stolen. Thieves would go behind people when the door was being operated and in the case of the parking garage used a van and just fit the rack off, or for the upstairs bike room cut the locks and loaded the bikes in their van just outside the back.

It took very little time, it was all on camera, the police never did anything. I'm actually pretty sure it was the same thief hitting the building every time because the MO was the same. It was actually safer to lock your bike anywhere else than these purpose built bike rooms.

Cameras don't do anything at all, and neither does the police. Thieves know it.

But a stolen car? The police will be very interested and keep looking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "What about bicycle insurance? It's fairly expensive here in the UK, usually 10-15% of the bicycle's value annually and insurers typically only pay out when the whole bicycle is taken (so if if your front wheel is nicked, you're on your own) and when you can demonstrate that it was locked to their standards. Often these standards require that it is locked up indoors which means you're chancing it whenever you park away from your home or office."

None of that is true. I founded a UK bicycle insurer (not your usual one though).

Our price is locked in max at 10% per year but it's less if people claim less in our collective. On average people have been paying 6.5%.

We settle partial and full theft claims. Stolen handlebars are more common than stolen wheels.

It makes no sense to have customer prove to you as an insurer that the bike was properly locked beyond asking "was it locked to an immovable object?" and "did you own a lock of a certain standard at the time of theft?". It's almost impossible to prove and by that you could always reject a claim.

I haven't heard of a specialist bicycle insurer which requires you to lock a bike inside all the time. Why would you buy theft insurance? A lock of certain rating is enough, depending on insurer between 24h-48h - after that you abandoned your bike in the eyes of many insurance contracts.

Last note.. of course this article focuses on theft but you'd also be covered for damage which can be the bigger risk depending on your use case (e.g road cycling or mountain biking).

<comment><USER8> For damage, how do you handle things likely caused by poor maintenance? I used to work as a bike mechanic, and there were plenty of times where a customer's bike got completely trash if they had just learned how to do some very basic routine maintenance and had brought it in to the shop once a year. Thinks like riding the bike when the the headset or bottom bracket are obviously loose, or riding on wheels that are very noticeable out of true.

<comment><USER11> Maintenance is indeed tricky.

Our way out is probably that the minimum bike value has to be £500 but the average customer has a multiple of that value and bikes at home. Passionate cyclists buy into our concept.

We are looking into how we can institutionalise maintenance a bit more because there is a strong case to drive down cost further for everyone if a decent mechanic sees your bike at least once a year.

My personal top tip are chain catchers. It's a matter of time until the chain drops and if the front mech is not well adjusted. And if you get unlucky and have a carbon frame you might rip a hole into the frame.

<comment><USER8> Yep, I've seen that multiple times. Just knowing how to check your limit screws occasionally would save a lot of people some future headaches. It would be cool if for a certain price range and kind of bike you could get insurance that would cover certain routine maintenance costs. Maybe something that would help cover annual suspension services on high end mountain bikes, or that helped cover routine tune-ups. As a mechanic I'd hate to have to navigate that kind of system in order to get paid, but as customer I'd love it.

Most people just don't realize that they'll save money in the long run if they just put some money into their bike every year. We had customers that would buy an S-Works every year or two because they just pounded out miles but never wanted to pay for maintenance. If they put $500-1000 into the bike every year they could have kept it 5-6 years instead of the 1-2 they were getting out of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have had two bikes stolen, both of which fit into the "bike shaped object" category. Your bike can still be a target even if it is cheap, the main difference is that you have less to lose.

> Backing up your important data ...

If only I could run an inexpensive piece of software to restore my bike to the condition it was in before I put several thousand kilometres on it!

</comment><comment><USER13> Even cheap bikes are being stolen by crackheads, it is not a deterrent.

I recently brought a 4500€ e-mountain bike, and my solutions are :

\- a 20/20 motorcycle U-lock from Abus

\- a 15/15 bike folding lock with a vibration alarm from Abus

\- a LoRaWan GPS and movement/vibration tracker hidden in the bike

\- only keeping it in my secure parking at work, inside my house or a few minutes at the grocery market.

<comment><USER14> I think the best solution is to assume theft. Even with the GPS position, not much you or law enforcement will do once its in a homeless encampment with 20 other bikes.

Buy a cheap lock to deter walking off with the bike, and buy insurance. I pay $8 a month and if my $1k of bike is stolen, I pay nothing more to get a brand new one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I built my bike (as in assembled it - i didn't build the frame or the wheels). It cost something like £2000, or would have cost about that if i'd bought it ready-made. I chose all the parts to fit my needs as closely as possible - nice frame, nice but off-brand wheels, cheap bottom bracket because that's all you need, handlebar and stem reused from an old bike, decent headset, wide gear ratio, etc.

Because it's built from a random assortment of parts, all of which are now filthy and scratched, it looks horrific. I do lock it carefully, but i don't worry about it. Nigel the junkie won't get through the lock. Nor will Rupert, and he won't see anything he can sell on (except maybe the saddle). Percy knows perfectly well it's not worth his time.

Having said that, of course, it will get nicked next week.

<comment><USER16> Any resources good for learning bicycle assembly and maintenance that you could recommend by chance? There're so many available, but if you have started doing this more or less recently perhaps you remember which would help a beginner the most?

<comment><USER8> The Park Tool youtube channel is good at explaining things in a lots of detail without being convoluted. It should cover 95% of what you'd need to learn. The hardest part is trying to figure out what components are compatible with what. There are more standards for bottom brackets than there are for character encoding.

<comment><USER15> The Park Tool videos are phenomenal.

I particularly like the Tech Tuesday videos, partly because Calvin Jones is so fun to watch (although he's not just a pretty face [2]), but also because, for example, this is the first explanation i ever heard of how hydraulic brakes self-centre that actually makes sense:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQXFFgRButo&vl=fr](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQXFFgRButo&vl=fr)

[2] [https://www.probma.org/blog/calvin-jones-more-neednt-be- said](https://www.probma.org/blog/calvin-jones-more-neednt-be-said)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My favourite solution would be something like this:

[1] [https://duckduckgo.com/q=japanese+underground+bicycle+parkin...](https://duckduckgo.com/q=japanese+underground+bicycle+parkingbicycle+parking)

</comment><comment><USER18> I recently bought an expensive ebike to commute, and I decided to get a kryptonite lock. The primary reason was because of their anti-theft offer:

[https://shop.kryptonitelock.com/atpo_landing_pages/register-...](https://shop.kryptonitelock.com/atpo_landing_pages/register- for-anti-theft-en.html)

I bought a lock that would fully insure the bike, so if it does get stolen I would at least get the value of it back.

<comment><USER6> Note that you need to recover the broken lock in order to make a claim. Now I can't think of why the thief would take your lock after defeating it, but I don't understand the criminal mind.

<comment><USER13> Having bikes stolen 3 times, I have never found the broken lock at the bike place. Thief take all because the owner will lose time trying to remember if it was the correct place, it leaves no clue if a police car happens to pass a few seconds later after the bike is stolen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My ebike was stolen. It had a good lock, and was on street with significant passersby. It seemed like there was nothing I could do to prevent that from happening again.

My solution was to buy a foldable bike that was half the price, and half the weight of my ebike.

I didn't even buy a bike lock because I never leave the foldable bike parked on the street. Wherever I go I bring it inside.

</comment><comment><USER20> I am very impressed by this electric bike that optionally comes with a theft insurance that will simply return your bike or otherwise replaces it: [https://www.vanmoof.com/en-US/peace-of-mind](https://www.vanmoof.com/en- US/peace-of-mind) (not affiliated)

<comment><USER21> I would expect the justice system in SF to come down _hard_ on those bike hunters. Wonder how they get away with it.

<comment><USER22> Curious - is there something illegal in the way the system works?

<comment><USER23> I would imagine there would be similar pitfalls to what you see in places with legalized bounty hunting

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> My summary from the article: take down the fence — the middleman criminal who provides a market where thieves can sell their stolen bicycles — and be especially ruthless about it.

This is an option only really available to the police. Perhaps there's a reason for law enforcement to tolerate fencing though? Maybe there are nuances downsides to society if we eliminate the black markets?

Do fences act as some kind of lubricant to the underclasses? Do we allow fences to exist because, if we didn't, the desperate / evil thieves would resort to violently extorting cash instead of non-violently stealing bicycles?

Imagine a future, for example, where the black market for stolen goods is quashed. It is much safer to lock bicycles up outside, but ATM knife extortions go up tenfold.

<comment><USER25> My wife finds it hard to believe my tales of how things in the US would grow legs if left unattended, and how sidewalk cafés there would lock the tables to the pavement and bring the chairs inside at night. (caveat: the "big city" where I lived when I met her is 30k, hers was 80k)

So I do believe rampant petty crime is a deliberate societal choice, but as to whether it serves a purpose or why it would be tolerated, I have no clue. All I can say is that in at least some jurisdictions, lack of bike theft does not translate into increase in mugging.

Tangentially related (education instead of petty crime) but I still find it darkly amusing that people who call _Brave New World_ 's five colour-coded castes a dystopia voluntarily sort themselves by five-digit ZIP code: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24269640](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24269640)

"I'm really awfully glad I'm a 94301"

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Worth reading to the very end:

>When threat modelling, a good starting point might be take your attackers "needs" and then instead of striving to 'surprise and delight' you instead strive to "bore and frustrate".

</comment><comment><USER27> > No thief is going to bother cutting my locks when there is a Campagnolo on > the next rack.

Exactly, lock your bike close to a better one with a similar lock. The thieve will start from that one and could have no time left for yours.

<comment><USER28> This reminds one of this old joke about two people running away from a bear. One of the guys says to the other: why are you running? You'll never outrun a bear! And the other says: I don't need to be faster than the bear. I only need to be faster than you.

<comment><USER29> Although the National Park Service officially recommends not pushing down friends when running from a bear, or otherwise using friends as bait or sacrifices.

[https://m.facebook.com/nationalparkservice/photos/a.74409236...](https://m.facebook.com/nationalparkservice/photos/a.74409236388/10157206218381389/?type=3)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think this in point. "[Treat] the attacker user personas with the same primacy as those of the customer user personas — [put] them on a wall in the office and [have] everyone conversant in their "needs".

Another solid piece that goes into more of the details of threat modeling: [https://increment.com/security/approachable-threat- modeling/](https://increment.com/security/approachable-threat-modeling/)

</comment><comment><USER31> >"Powertool Percy" will be kept at bay by:

> Nothing, save ensuring that your bicycle doesn't look valuable enough to be > worth his time this probably means keeping its value down below a few > hundred pounds

There actually are a handful of products that will successfully defend against power tools, such as the SAF lock: [https://altorlocks.com/products/saf- lock](https://altorlocks.com/products/saf-lock)

<comment><USER14> At what point does the thief just cut your frame? They want scrap metal, functional bike be damned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> My insurance policy (renters or homeowners) covers bike theft. Yes, there is a $1k deductible, but my bikes range from $3-5k each. Is this not a thing in the UK/EU?

<comment><USER9> The Netherlands here. Homeowners insurance usually only covers bike theft when the bike is actually stolen from inside the home or garage, and there must be entry damage to prove this.

If you want to to insure against bike theft, you need a separate form of bike insurance. They generally have no deductible, though.

But it's usually not worth the effort. Daily-use bikes are too cheap to worry about, and expensive racing bikes / mountain bikes never leave your line of sight while outside your home.

<comment><USER33> Is bicycle theft taken seriously in the Netherlands? Meaning, do the police work to stop it? I've wondered since there's such a strong cycling culture there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I think this is a good list of things to consider for the first two personas. As for the last persona "Powertool Percy", there are a few tactics you can deploy. Especially for folks in dense urban areas.

* If have an expensive bike don't ride it for errands, get a junker that rides well but looks worthless.

* Remove the branding or make it camouflaged with stickers.

* Ride dirty. Obviously keep the components lubed, but let your frame and wheel stay dirty

<comment><USER9> The overall idea is to make it not worth the effort.

Making your bike look shit will decrease the perceived value. Other nearby bikes will look comparatively more valuable, and are thus a more attractive target.

Using overkill locking will make it too much effort to steal. When choosing between bikes of similar value, the one which is easiest to steal will be choosen.

Make it hard to offload. Giving it a shitload of stickers or a weird paintjob will make it too recognizable. It will be too obviously stolen to sell, again making other bikes more attractive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I don't usually support the death penalty, but for persisting bicycle thieves, I do wonder if, like street-mimes, the pit of snakes is the best option?

<comment><USER17> I seem to recall that in former times caught horse thieves in the plains and the "wild west" were quickly hanged. Understandable, as the owners usually depended on them for their livelihood.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Why not create a bicycle whose frame is itself the lock, such that if you cut the lock, you are destroying the bicycle itself.

<comment><USER37> Thieves often cut the frames anyway, because it takes only seconds to cut tubular frames with a pipe cutter and the rest of the bike is still valuable as parts.

<comment><USER8> Yep, the most expensive components on an ebike are the battery and motor, you can cut the top tube and pull those components out and sell them for 500+ a piece on the used market. The batteries usually have a lock that is supposed to keep them from being stolen, but even on the high end brands they can just be shimmed open with a credit card in a second. I used to work as a bike mechanic, so learned all the tricks of the bike theft trade just from the stories from customers coming in after they had their bike stolen or stripped.

If I was a bike thief I wouldn't even be bothering stealing full bikes, you can just walk around with a set of allen wrenches and a chain tool and make off with a nice derailleurs, carbon wheelsets, full stem and handlebars mounted with expensive shifters. You will look less like a thief and more like a guy working on his bike, and if you're afraid of someone questioning you, just stuff a card with your name and information on it in the seat-tube while your stripping it, and if anyone ask you can just pull that out as 'proof' that the bike is actually yours.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Takeaways:

1\. Make attacker user personas part of your threat model.

2\. Create the threat model openly inside your organization. Get input from knowledgeable people. Help people to get familiar with it.

</comment><comment><USER39> I live at a uni campus, and use a pretty good bicycle. But it's in a sufficiently bad shape to pass as worthless.

I almost never lock it, but use a fixed rear wheel lock that I put in an almost-locked position sp that it looks locked.

The only time I lost it was when it was confiscated by the school due to bad parking during clearing of snow. I found it in a nearby locked yard a couple of months later. I won't describe in detail how I got it back.

</comment><comment><USER40> Mostly for the hilarity... How much would it cost to make a bicycle lock out of Inconel?

<comment> GuB-42 If want to have it machined for you, several thousands. If you just want a chain, maybe $100.

I don't think it is a good material for a bike lock anyways. It has excellent heat and corrosion resistance but for strength, I think you are better off with regular hardened steel.

If you are looking for an unconventional lock, the one I found the most interesting has a sheaf made of loose Kevlar fibers that fouls angle grinders.

To defeat grinders, some locks contain ball bearings and ceramic inserts. Ball bearings spin with the cutting disc preventing abrasion and hard ceramic insert quickly wear off tools. I've never seen these on bike locks though.

<comment><USER9> The kevlar fibers don't really work in practice. Turns out you can just use a pair of shears or a boltcutter.

Examples:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7ah3RA0Alo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7ah3RA0Alo)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-On0DGcDlc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-On0DGcDlc)

<comment><USER41> [https://altorlocks.com/products/saf- lock](https://altorlocks.com/products/saf-lock) sounds more like what the parent was referring to. It's a good example of clearly addressing a specific threat model: it doesn't try to be impossible to cut (although the marketing material says otherwise...). Instead it's just _so thick_ that a 5" angle grinder can't reach all the way through it in a single cut, and the coating material is specifically designed to be slow to cut through so that it takes a long time and requires multiple batteries.

Of course, it still has the obvious problem that the thing you're locking it onto is probably a lot easier to cut.

<comment><USER33> Holy cow, 6.2KG!! That's almost as much as a good bike weighs, and enough weight to seriously feel it lugging that around.

I guess if you really have to leave your bike locked in public for long periods of time it could be worth it, but wow, that would not be a nice or convenient thing to lug around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> recent comments, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24340190](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24340190)

<comment><USER42> We invited the submitter to repost that one but didn't hear back, so I told calpaterson it was fine if he did.

<comment><USER5> I can see why.</comment></comment></comment>


Number26 Is a Bank Designed for the 21st Century - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/20/number26-is-a-bank-designed-for-the-21st-century/ <comment><USER2> If I understand correctly, Number26 is not a Bank.

It's a Berlin based FinTech Startup, that is building an app for a partner (german bank). This app integrates your MasterCard, and using an API it can track your Transactions. While this is really cool, it's not really new. There are other banks doing similar things in Germany.

Also,it will always take two days for transactions to show up on the statement of both parties of a transaction, as long as one of them doesn't have some sort real time transaction processing. It's not done if only one side has the disruptive technology.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am curious to know how well this works here in cash-centric Germany. Many businesses won't accept debit cards, and even less accept credit cards, while at the same time withdrawing cash from an ATM may be a hassle since, depending on your card, you might be charged a fee for withdrawing cash from an ATM that is not part of your bank's network.

So, I definitely wish them well, I think the German banking system require becoming more friendly to customers.

<comment><USER4> Which business where you regularly spend more than 10€ doesn't accept debit cards?

I found the tc article rather funny. They are complaining about the banking system in europe, when in my experience it's the US banking system that's archaic. People are still dealing with cheques regularly! I haven't touched a cheque in years.

<comment><USER3> Media Markt and Saturn are two businesses that I'd expect would take credit cards but they don't. Many restaurants (where you can spend more than €10 if you are more than one person, even here in Berlin) only accept cash. Most of the cheap Supermarkets don't take credit cards but will take EC (debit) cards, which I don't think Number26 offers - judging by going through their website. Nevertheless less, I applied for an invitation.

I don't know anything about the banking system in the US, but having moved to Germany from Britain four years ago, I thought the German system is archaic. When I moved, many online retailers wouldn't take credit cards or PayPal but you would have to transfer money to them from your account. Most everyone I know carry around large amounts of cash because if you are stuck without it, you will have to look for a cash machine that won't charge you. You can get cards that allow you to withdraw money without fees, I have one, but those are still rare.</comment></comment></comment>


Refit QuickBooks with Levion: Web Access to Desktop QuickBooks Anywhere - <AUTHOR> http://www.levion.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, my team and I have been working on this for months. Our objective is to reduce the pain of using QuickBooks for Windows. Let us know what you think.</comment>


How to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment - <AUTHOR> http://monetate.com/2011/10/infographic-shopping-cart-abandonment-and-tips-to-avoid-it/ <comment><USER2> I get my back up a bit when people talk about reducing shopping cart abandonment like its somehow this lost revenue. It's not lost revenue until you get a sale and the customer returns it. Until then, you are just speculating.

There's too much focus on the real-world customer where they somehow abandon a full grocery cart and leaving the store. This doesn't fully correlate on the Internet.

People abandon shopping carts all the time:

\- they get disconnected from the internet.

\- their browser crashes.

\- Windows/OSX decides it needs to restart after an update.

And sometimes people, me included, just like to store stuff in a shopping cart as a way to "favorite" items while I'm browsing a site like Amazon. It's like bookmarking a product, without committing it to a Wishlist page (like on Amazon).</comment>


The mysterious death of a live-streaming gamer - happy-go-lucky http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-39232620 <comment><AUTHOR> I know I'm a boring middle-aged old fart and therefore completely out of touch, but my brain just refuses to even begin to comprehend why people would want to watch other people playing video games. I can think of almost nothing I would find more indescribably boring.

Even more incomprehensible is the fact that the 'spectators' are willing to pay money to watch other people play games, so that folks are actually making huge amounts of cash from this.

But, when I think about it a bit more, I suppose it's not that much different from people paying to watch other people play sports [which I also find an oddly pointless past-time] and I suppose computer games are increasingly replacing real physical activity for the obese generation. So it's probably inevitable people will want to 'tune in' and watch, just like they'd do with a football match, or athletics event.

...and don't get me started on the people who earn big money on YouTube from having people pay to watch them opening boxes. I already feel like I need to stick my head in a bucket of ice!

As regards the "mystery" [in the headline] of such people occasionally dropping dead while taking part in these 'marathons', it's not that surprising.

Anyone who spends 12 hours a day for months on end, sitting on their arse indoors, without getting a breath of fresh air or any exercise ––and probably existing on sugary drinks, junk food and cigarettes, is not likely to be in the best of cardiovascular health to start with.</comment>


NXT 3D scanner - <AUTHOR> http://philohome.com/scan3d/scan3d.htm <comment><USER2> Isn't there some kind of cheap laser distance detector component available that would make this faster, more reliable and more silent?</comment>