Ask HN: Standing desks? - <AUTHOR>

I'm setting up a home office and considering a standing desk over a traditional sit-down one. The benefits seem obvious, but at the same time it seems difficult to get long-term work done if you're standing.<p>What's your experience with a standing desk? <comment><USER2> I've been using one for almost a year now. I was going to splurge on a fancy steelcase one but opted for a GeekDesk (~$1000). My setup includes 2x 27" monitors with an ErgoTron arm, two macbooks and a desktop stashed on the side.

I do a lot of Dev work as well as design. When I'm coding, standing isnt too much of an issue. Having the option of moving around helps me when I'm stuck debugging issues. When designing though, especially with a wacom tablet, I notice that I tend to slouch or lean too much on the desk, so I sit.

Having a motor makes it very convenient for lazy people like me, especially if it has presets. Setting up the height to make it ergonomically correct is key.

I have a friend that has a DIY setup who uses monitors which adds to the weight and makes adjusting the height on demand very inconvenient–leading to the fact that he doesnt use it to stand anymore. If you go the DIY route, make sure its setup correctly. I've seen some creative setups before including putting a height adjustable chair on their desk. I was too short for that to work for me.

In regards to long-term work, that all depends on you. Like most people on HN, my days run 8~12 hours too. When I first got my desk, I split my day up until I got used to it. One of the things that helped was the use of a GelPro mat (check the clearance section) which cushions your feet.

There are days I've stood all day and felt fine. When I'm sitting I tend to get myself into "Stuck to the chair" mode and even if all it takes is to stand up to walk around to get your blood flowing, I dont or I dont even realize I've been glued to the chair for hours on end.

Hope that helps.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been using a standing desk for 9 months now. I'm a software architect and my days run 8-12 hours, depending on what fires I'm putting out. I found an Ikea Jerker desk on Craigslist for $75, then picked up an industrial anti- fatigue mat at Home Depot for $20. It only took me about 2 weeks to realize that I can't go back to sitting all day.

You're not exercising like a treadmill desk, but you will often find yourself moving about as you work. Heck, some days the music kicks in and you've just got to move with the beat while you're building a new feature for your app.

Side effect: after about three months, I was also able to give up soda completely and have almost completely given up caffeine.

<comment><USER4> Your comment about moving is spot-on for me: I gave a standing desk a trial for a couple of days, but I found that I would walk away from my computer ~10 times per hour. I had to sit back down just to get something done.

I don't have willpower issues, I just would do it without thinking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of my co-workers wanted a standing desk but didn't want to have to stand all of the time. We ended up throwing together a custom solution. Here's a video of it in action. The video starts with the desk in the sitting position.

[http://youtu.be/q2PVtl-_2f4](http://youtu.be/q2PVtl-_2f4)

(apologies for the cell phone quality)

We took apart a normal desk and combined it with an old plasma TV lift (designed for trade shows back when TVs weighed a lot), a linear actuator, switch, and some random nuts and bolts. It worked out pretty well. It's a little noisy, but you only end up moving it once or twice a day, so that's fine.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've been standing all day for three years. It takes a few months to get your legs used to it. Our office has 20 of these:

[http://www.ergodepot.com/Ergo_Depot_adjustable_desk_AD127HD_...](http://www.ergodepot.com/Ergo_Depot_adjustable_desk_AD127HD_p/ad127hd.htm)

There are a few exercise balls and aerons around that people occasionally use. I have a footstool that I rest one leg on as I lean forward on the desk. The other footstool is for pairing with a developer who is much shorter:

[http://pimen.to/office-desk.JPG](http://pimen.to/office-desk.JPG)

<comment><USER7> Sooo expensive, I made mine for like $30...

<comment><USER6> My first one was $12 piece of melamine sitting on a cheap desk and 4 monitor boxes. And yeah, it wasn't much different than the version I have now. I leave mine up, but others, who move them up and down, do appreciate the electric motors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm using motorised desk (similar to GeekDesk) for over three years now. On 8-hours working days I'm doing 3-6 standing sessions, each one 25 minutes long ("Pomodoro"). If I stand more than that feel fatigue which is distracting.

For a while I had only a fixed standing desk and I took breaks by just taking the laptop on my lap. Motorised desk is much better and promotes changing your stature more frequently.

</comment><comment><USER9> In my coworking space, I turned the old hydraulic lift into a 4-sided standing height desk. The surface itself is made of two different sizes of cheap Ikea table tops.

[https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos- ash3/579181_296764684...](https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos- ash3/579181_2967646845592_239634524_n.jpg)

<comment><USER10> cool ... kinda sucks if the person next to you wants to sit though eh?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I created a cheap Ikea standing desk at home. But I have big problems standing all day. After a few hours, the discomfort in my legs is getting too high and I could not work efficiently any more.

So I bought a bar chair, in order to be able to sit on my standing desk. I try to use it as few as possible, and it works quite well for me :)

</comment><comment><USER12> I have a treadmill desk at work but chose this for my home... [http://www.focaluprightfurniture.com/](http://www.focaluprightfurniture.com/)

I like it but only need use it a few hours per day. I don't think I'd stand all day long with any desk.

</comment><comment><USER13> Have you thought about making an "MVP" standing desk out of old soda cans/books and a board?

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely a good idea, although I don't drink soda and I have a kindle! :D

Maybe some milk carton boxes will do the trick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have a sit/stand desk in my cube. I've been gradually working up how much I stand all day, but I still sit for a large portion of the day.

You need to stand correctly. If you lock out your knees and other things, it won't necessarily be better than sitting.

</comment><comment><USER15> I tried it and couldn't do it. It's really hard to stand in one place for hours. Walking around is a different story. People in the office do it and we use a cheap hack. Cinder blocks. You can always give it a try and take it down if you don't like it.

</comment><comment><USER16> I would not set up a standing desk. The idea of exercising while you work is nice, but it would totally destroy my mental zone.

<comment><USER17> Standing doesn't mean exercising. It's just generally better for your back in the long run.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I never quite understood these obvious benefits. Could someone list them to me?

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/business/stand-up-desks- ga...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/business/stand-up-desks-gaining- favor-in-the-workplace.html?_r=0)

In sum: sitting all day is bad for you.

<comment><USER18> thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


The rise and rise of the cognitive elite - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/17929013?story_id=17929013 <comment><USER2> Not a bad article. Didn't get around to sounding anything like the title until the very end though.

I liked the statistal myth-busting part the best.

It's tough to know how to best spend your mental energies: pursuing wealth for freedom's sake might be a false choice if there are indeed many public subsidies to be had. Technology should be a tide which raises all vessels.

<comment><USER3> > I liked the statistal myth-busting part the best.

Peter Saunders is an interesting thinker. I met him a few years ago at a program run by the Centre for Independent Studies here in Australia, called Liberty & Society.</comment></comment>


Behind the Scenes at Xerox Parc's Futures Day – 40 Years Ago - never-the-bride https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/tech-history/silicon-revolution/behind-the-scenes-at-xerox-parcs-futures-day40-years-ago <comment><AUTHOR> Goes right along with what Alan Kay has been saying - if you want to see the future in computing you can just buy it. Maybe today's analogue would be to give a smartphone a full reservation of a current supercomputer with 50 PFLOP/s and see what kind of application one could do by using computations on the phone's sensor? I'd imagine something AR related could be interesting, or applying some kind of NN training within seconds that would not be feasible on a phone today. Maybe throw in a quantum computer once supremacy over classical is achieved in some areas (which appears to be pretty close now, sidenote).

<comment><USER2> You can buy the future in hardware - assuming you have a design. Given you can already buy compute power over the cloud today, 'buying hardware from the future' could perhaps mean a different architecture than just 'a large number of CPUs'.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps, but the cloud adds unavoidable latency that may be a bigger loss than what can be won with increased computing power.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The book "Dealers of Lightning" deals with this, and many things about Xerox PARC, its a great read.

[https://www.amazon.com/Dealers-Lightning-Xerox-PARC- Computer...](https://www.amazon.com/Dealers-Lightning-Xerox-PARC-Computer- ebook/dp/B0029PBVCA/)

<comment><USER5> Or you can read Dream Machine [0] as recommended by Alan Kay. It deals with everything mostly leading up to and during PARC.

[0]: [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/014200135X/](https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/014200135X/)

<comment><USER4> I bought this book - but boy are paper versions of it expensive, I'll read it and see how it compares to dealers.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I bought the kindle version then stripped it of the DRM [0]

[0]: [https://www.wired.com/2011/01/how-to-strip-drm-from- kindle-e...](https://www.wired.com/2011/01/how-to-strip-drm-from-kindle-e- books-and-others/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "The wives were right"</comment>


Jack Ma's Giant Financial Startup Is Shaking the Chinese Banking System - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/jack-mas-giant-financial-startup-is-shaking-the-chinese-banking-system-1532885367 <comment><USER2> "Ant says it wants to be known not as a financial conglomerate but as a technology provider or "lifestyle platform," with future profits coming mainly from fees from institutions using its technology."

As fintech companies get larger in China, interesting to see how marketing shifts as being less a disruptor of banks to being a partner, in order to avoid regulatory attention.

Starting to see that in the US too, as more consumer fintech apps are also beginning to converge with each other in regards to product offerings...</comment>


Why no one is looking for 'rockstar programmers' - <AUTHOR> http://blog.netguru.co/post/56860239654/no-one-is-looking-for-rockstar-programmers <comment><USER2> The fundamentals change very little, and very slowly (barring a revolution in the theory side of things).

I recently decided that my surface-skimming knowledge of lambda calculus was severely lacking, and so I picked up a few books. One of the better written books was written in 1981. That was 33 years ago. What changed 5 years ago to now, is essentially "sugar" on top of the fundamentals.

One thing I did notice, especially with the node.js crowd (essentially where the "rockstar" programmer meme gained its popularity), is that a lot of old things are being re-discovered.

While there may be very good arguments for re-implementing things, and re- learning things (and I do that quite a lot too), I personally do not think that re-solving the problem in the old way in a new language/framework/whatever is really worthy to be considered an achievement.

And I think that is essentially what is wrong with the whole "rockstar" programmer meme. Want to be a rockstar or ninja or guru? Go dust up some old book on algorithms, and reimplement it in the trendy language of the day.

<comment><USER3>
      > ... especially with the node.js crowd (essentially where
      > the "rockstar" programmer meme gained its popularity)...

The rockstar programmer meme is far, far older than node.js. It crops up any time the labor market for programmers becomes tight. It's a lazy way to (a) try to draw attention to your job ad, and (b) a cheap play to the reader's ego.

      > I personally do not think that re-solving the problem in
      > the old way in a new language/framework/whatever is
      > really worthy to be considered an achievement.

Not an achievement for the world at large, perhaps, but for the individual, it is certainly an achievement.

<comment><USER4> > Not an achievement for the world at large, perhaps, but for the individual, > it is certainly an achievement.

It's also a good method to learn a new language in a somewhat predictable way. One of the first things I do when learning a new language is port or use something I am already familiar with to it. That way I can concentrate on the language itself and not so much the problem the code solves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From the slides:

"Which technology that is relevant today was relevant 5 years ago? Which technology that was relevant 5 years ago is relevant today?"

Ruby, Python, Java, C, C++, Windows, Linux, OSX, relational databases, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, HTTP...and that's just a very short list off the top of my groggy, pre-coffee-in-the-morning head.

<comment><AUTHOR> fair enough but I'm fairly sure that if you traveled in time from 5y ago with a decent developer from that time he would have hard time landing a job today

<comment><USER6> In my experience the opposite is true.

Some people have an easy time programming, and the specifics - libraries, languages, etc - don't matter at all. They'll pick up that new stuff in their sleep.

I recently hired a Java guy after talking to him - he had all the right hallmarks so I was pretty sure he would be good. I gave him a task with a piece of software I am intimately familiar with. A good developer would have had to get up to gear for a week (40 hours), then code, test, work around the little kinks (there are many).

All in all an optimistic assumption of mine would be that this task would take a brand new guy a month. The dev I hired did it in less than a week!

These people are rare. They are the rockstar programmers. And if you find one, you want to hold on to them no matter what.

Team players? What if the guy can do twice as much in a week than a "team" of 5 mediocre guys?

To get back to your assertion, he then proceeded to learn Android and put a functioning app in the Google play store in less than a week.

Granted that's still Java, but the libraries are all different and developing for mobile is also different.

If I had an iOS job right now, this guy would get it, despite never having done iOS. He'd learn this in his spare time and then proceed to run circles around people who've been at it for years.

That's a rockstar programmer for you.

<comment><USER7> The notion of a rockstar is silly. I think it's somewhat common to find developers that can pickup languages in a short space of time. Once you understand the concepts of OO/procedural and functional paradigms something would be wrong if you couldn't pick up a new language in a day (plus some more time for best practices, patterns, etc.).

Greenfield development is always easier than having to work with 200K LOC codebase that is crappy for all intents and purposes. Let's see how quickly a developer can jump on, wrap his/her around everything, then make significant changes and maybe I'll believe in that nonsense.

Personally I think if a job ad includes the word rockstar, I would expect hot groupies and coke on the job (2 or 3 times a week to allow some time for actual work :)).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice post, but just a little too much corporatespeak for me. My take:

 _1\. Be an egoless programmer._

I've heard this a million times and always hated it. I lost count of the number of projects I've witnessed that were saved when someone who knew what they were doing put their ego on hold. You know what you're talking about: you have a moral responsibility to speak up and do the right thing, ego or not. I prefer, "Don't be bashful but be nice."

 _2\. Be a team player._

Oy, this sounds like something my PHB would say. I prefer, "Just do your fucking job."

 _3\. Be a learner._

Absolutely! But don't restrict your learning to technology. Learn about your customers' and users' domains. Suffer with them and their problems. You'll probably get far more milage out of that than more technology.

 _4\. Be a T-shaped person._

I like this, but again, I would add my customers' domain. Being the go-to person with deep understanding of the technology who knows how to apply it to the problem at hand is a deadly combination.

 _5\. Be relentlessly resourceful._

What does this even mean? I prefer, "The answer is always 'yes'. Sometimes, 'yes but', but always 'yes'".

<comment><USER9> "what does this even mean?" great explanation here: [http://www.paulgraham.com/relres.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/relres.html)

<comment><USER10> And that's the reason these two words in the article are treated just like another buzzword, taking away all value from them, and by extension, from the article itself.

By definition, someone who fits the 'relentlessly resourceful' mold, is a rockstar programmer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The whole idea of a rockstar programmer is a weird one in my opinion. People who call themselves a "rockstar" give off a very arrogant vibe (at least to me). Even if they might be very humble when you get to know them (or open to feedback or what have you), I think the way they describe themselves still utterly trashes first impressions. This goes to say that I don't really see a point in acting like you're the best in class, if anything it puts you into more trouble when some people falsely assume they can expect big things from you.

If you know your craft, just let your work speak for itself.

<comment><USER12> I've never heard anyone describe themself as a rockstar programmer. I just see a lot of ads for them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would say that ego is something that every good programmer should have. It's not about being a rockstar or not. It's all about the code. This is what mainly defines programmers/coders/developers/makers.

It is always about the code and it's never not about the code. Having the ego to believe that your code is the best makes you a good programmer; because, inevitably, somebody will come and point out that there's a bug, a flaw in your beloved creation. That's when you get annoyed, your ego is crushed... you accept it and the next time you won't mess up again. That's how you improve your skills and that's how you get to be a better developer.

You shouldn't care if you're called a rockstar or not, and most certainly you shouldn't call yourself one; saying that you're a programmer should be enough! We should live in the shadows and let our code to do the talking.

PS: I have the feeling that "rockstar" programmer is starting to replace the beloved "guru" as the word that makes up for one's lack of coding skills

<comment><USER14> You don't have to have your pride crushed to learn. Just accept that there are other smart(er) people around you and seek advice rather than incite it.

<comment><USER15> They don't even have to be smarter, they just happen to notice errors you make. Often that comes from you being too close to the code, akin to the "obvious" errors others find when you ask them to double check some prose you just wrote.

I handle this by accepting that I'm a fallible human being and that the artifacts that we're constructing are way too complicated to always get right the first time. So errors in my work, as long as they're reasonably small in number, are just a reflection of that fallibility and complexity (if the number is too big that's a signal something is seriously wrong).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A single good programmer does the job of 5, and you can pay her 2x. That's not magic, it's just a very refined skill set, focus and no communication barrier of multiple people.

So depending on the project, small team can be replaced by a single good programmer, or the project is just too large and you need many many people and communication infrastructure.

The "rockstar" connotation is just SEO.

</comment><comment><USER17> Wow, the author mixes good points with absolute crap... which make him seem less reliable and less worth listening to and sucks the wind out of his good points. I think the fundamental implication was that rockstars are primadonnas.

\- Why no one is looking for 'rockstar programmers' ... they are looking, lots of shops are looking for the 'rockstar' or carry or lead developers. These developers while being very talented can be humble, kind, and great to work with.

\- Egoless isn't what you want, you want separation. Ego (pride) is good, it drives you to improve. Separation is what lets you pitch an idea then allow it to be mercilessly ripped apart by your fellow developers (and even yourself).

\+ Team Player ... yes, you want team players.

\+ (then -) Always Be Learning ... great idea... and then he goes and backs it up with one of the stupidest points I have seen recently, the 5 year argument. Any develop worth his salt would have a long list of answers to both points.

\+ T-shaped ... it is a generally accepted good thing ... you know some T-shaped developers might be _gasp_ rockstars

\+ Relentlessly Resourceful ... sure, absolutely...

</comment><comment><USER18> On HN job offerings expressions like "rockstar", "ninja", "guru", and other pompous expressions are used very often.

I find it childish; I would never attempt to consider an offer expressed in this way.

Being italian, I always considered my disgust due to a cultural difference: United States people tend to use a more "sensationalist" language. What do you think about it?

</comment><comment><USER9> being "egoless" is a good advice for different professions, not programmers only

<comment><USER19> Why am I thinking of the fabulous career of Steve Jobs now?

<comment><USER9> let him speak: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f60dheI4ARg&list=TLtV01K1czg...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f60dheI4ARg&list=TLtV01K1czgo4)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The advice is nice, but in case of a truly constructive, non--judgemental feedback it's really hard to implement due to our communication habits. The OP himself illustrated it perfectly on the slide #8. We see a great suggestion to critique the code not the person. But in prev line we see something exactly opposite. Instead of saying "there's always someone writing code worse than yours" we see a clear judgement of the person. Yeah, feedback is hard :)

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm constantly asked for that sort of thing. A lot of friends are at the place in life where they are higher people to work on their own personal projects, but 75% of the contractors they hire manage to make more work then they actually accomplish and somehow never finish or get anything working good. There's just huge frustration in the run of the mill programmer and people just learn to hire as good as they can. Article title doesn't make much sense.

</comment><comment><USER22> Terrible advice from a "web programmer".

</comment><comment><USER23> Well, I would never hire a programmer who introduces themselves as a "rockstar", but I personally know two who refer to themselves as "stunt programmers" who I'd hire in an instant if they were available (or I did something interesting enough to them that they would consider switching).

</comment><comment><USER24> I think the title is a misnomer. When I think of 'rockstar programmer' it automatically brings to mind the qualities 2-5 mentioned by the author.

2.Be a team player. 3.Be a learner. 4.Be a T-shaped person. 5.Be relentlessly resourceful.

</comment><comment><USER25> title is not correct, just a few days ago I saw an ad for rockstar programmers:

[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=262775.0;topicseen](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=262775.0;topicseen)

<comment><USER3> Quite frequently, what someone _says_ does not exactly match what they _mean_.

When presented with with a "fact" that is very easy to contradict, like this one is, it's an indication that the author has made a poor choice of words, _not_ that their point is without merit. In that case -- in _all_ cases actually -- it's best to read for _intent_.

(edit: In this case, Schmidt is arguing that although the ad might say "rockstar programmer" that that's not what they're _really_ looking for.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> From my personal experience, You don't need rockstar programmers to build great software. I also believes you need to hire people with character over skills, as skills can be build in 6 months, character can not.

</comment><comment><USER27> Thankfully I have never heard someone call themselves a rockstar programmer.

<comment><USER28> What if you wrote code for an actual rockstar?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> My experience of working with rockstar programmers tends to be woeful, they spend far too much time dousing themselves in cocaine and hooking up with groupies, their code is shambolic and occasionally they smash a computer for the hell of it.

However my experience of programmer rockstars is just as bad, their stage presence is pitiful. Instead of cutting it with wild guitar solos they tend to spend to much time StackOverflowin', when we're wailing out a tune they often grimace and put on their sound cancelling headphones.

Please, everyone stick to your profession.

</comment><comment><USER30> sit down, behave, program, you are a cog. I thought HN was about the desire DO something different. Create something new. Maybe this is good advice before you take that corporate job - but doesn't have much to do with hacking. T-shaped person? That term is just as nauseating as the rest of the corporate jargon that flies around in most offices.

<comment><USER31> The T-shaped person thing is from Valve's hiring guidelines.

[http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.p...](http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> In case of sysadmins, those five points can be boiled down to just two: ability to learn and ethics.

</comment><comment><USER33> Why is "it was like this before my changes" a thing you should never say?

</comment><comment><USER34> Just one word - nginx.

<comment><USER35> Why? Just curious.

<comment><USER34> Because the whole thing was made by one rock star programmer (and then polished by community).

All the talk about collectivism and social responsibility in a creative process is naive nonsense. Imagine pg with rtm instead of doing whatever they think is the right thing to do with viaweb, would rather ask _how_ other windows developers around feel about it or trying to not hurt anyone by being superior.)

I don't know, it is so obvious. Van Gogh or Gaudi doesn't not care how others feel or what they think. There is just a tiny nuance - you must be above average in what you do in the first place. Mediocre who is sure he is a Steve Jobs is a very common and ridiculous situation.

No works of arts were created by a crowd. Only massive construction projects. Meetings are ruining the novel views and designs. Using ones own mind, ignoring what slogans others are changing is essential. Otherwise you will end up with Java, Windows, PHP and other popular crap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Avoid Brogrammers, rock stars, and anyone who advocates rails as the solution to the business problem at hand.

The good programmer asks questions first. The bad one runs off and builds stuff at a whim.

The good programmer gets stuff done. The bad programmer wastes time on the latest and greatest, bikesheds on whether they should rewrite everything in ruby today and go tomorrow.

Avoid the bad programmers.

<comment><USER37> Why are brogrammers, rock stars, and rails users automatically "bad programmers"?

It's possible to drink like a fratboy on the weekend and crush code from M-F.

<comment><USER38> _It 's possible to drink like a fratboy on the weekend and crush code from M-F._

You know what this is? This is my new fuckin' REPL. You know what that means? I'm writin' some fuckin' code tonight.

<comment><USER37> FUCK YEAH BRO!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Egoless "team players" are pretty easy to manage, and they do a lot of the junk work without asking for much in return, but they're pretty poor strategic thinkers and they don't age well. I might not use the word "ego", but it takes a certain self-preservation instinct to keep growing a skill base in a world that doesn't give jack about your career or future. _You_ have to take responsibility for that, and "team players" often get loaded with grunt work they don't learn much from.

Obviously, there's a middle ground that's optimal. People who can't work with others at all aren't good hires, but neither are the Clueless "team player" types who top out at middle management (because people with strategic talent avoid getting stuck doing someone else's grunt work).

<comment><USER15> Ah, but it's clear the author knows his stuff and is using the term "egoless programmer" as defined by Jerry Weinberg in his 1971 _The Psychology of Computer Programming_ ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egoless_programming](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egoless_programming)). It has nothing to do with being "easy to mange", it means _exactly_ what he said, and is the opposite of at least the connotations of "rockstar".

Similarly, the iffiness of "rockstars" in working well in teams is legendary.

I really doubt the OP has a hidden agenda of making things easier for managers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> "No one is looking for" ... sorry, I beg to differ.

I just got the following in my inbox a few days ago.

\---

Hello ____,

I stumbled across your profile on LinkedIn and was impressed by your background with (company) as their (tech title). I would love to chat with you about what we are building here at (startup).

I am the CTO and one of the co-founders of (startup) - we are a startup with an office in (location) and we are very successful in changing the way companies do business with each other. Our customers are companies like (big companies) and many more. We are looking for help from people like you to scale our product while we grow in terms of data, processing, customers and users.

Our infrastructure runs on AWS using Cassandra, MySQL, ActiveMQ, Tomcat and other technologies/services. Most of our code is in Groovy and Java leveraging Jersey, Grails, Spring, Hibernate, .... On the front-end, JQuery, Mootools and other libs and frameworks.

In short: We are a fast growing startup that solves real-world business problems for huge companies with an awesome, committed and agile engineering team.

If that sounds like something worth talking about I would love to get a few minutes of your time when it fits you best.

Hope to hear from you.

Cheers,

(somebody I've never met)

\---

He doesn't say "rockstar programmer" in there but he should have. It would have at least brought a smile to my face. Companies _are_ still trying to sucker young kids into this kind of stuff with words like "rockstar," "ninja," "awesome," ...

I know how hard it is to find talented people. I suppose an email like that has been finely honed to net the most applicants possible. But if you want _those_ kind of applicants, you're already behind.</comment>


Ask HN: Which Programming technologies were used to make Agar.io? - <AUTHOR>

I Would like to make (learn while doing! :]) some games of that kind. <comment><USER2> Start with javascript.

</comment><comment><USER3> Web socket maybe?</comment>


Is Intelligence Self-Limiting? - <AUTHOR> http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/eubanks20120310 "Mobile AI robots do all the work autonomously. If they are damaged, they are smart enough to get themselves to a repair shop, where they have complete access to a parts fabricator and all of their internal designs. They can also upgrade their hardware and programming to incorporate new designs, which they can create themselves."<p>Okay it's too soon to talk about self-programmed robots. But I think it could be interesting to think about easier self-programmed things. They may not be too far away from now. <comment><USER2> What's the purpose of this 'pleasure' construct in the AI's mind? If it's able to calculate the value of a utility function in order to set the 'pleasure' variable, and it bases its actions on the value of this 'pleasure' variable, why not just cut out the middle man and have it base its actions directly on the result of the utility function? The variable functionally buys you nothing, but introduces this problem that adjusting the variable directly can cause the AI to take actions inconsistent with its utility function.

Without the variable, the problem doesn't happen. The AI values collecting ore. If it has enough self-awareness to reliably modify itself, it knows that if it modifies its utility function it is liable to collect less ore, which is something it doesn't want. The action of modifying the utility function naturally rates very low on the utility function itself.

You don't want to murder people, so not only do you choose not to murder people, but if you are presented with a pill which will make you think it's good to murder people and take great joy in it, you will choose not to take that pill. No matter how enjoyable and good murder may be for you if you take the pill, your own self-knowledge and current utility function prohibit taking it.

The model of intelligence described can be thought of as self-limiting. Luckily it is not by any means the only viable model of intelligence.

<comment><USER3> > why not just cut out the middle man and have it base its actions directly on > the result of the utility function?

If the autonomous robot can modify its own programming, it can also modify the utility function to return MAXINT every time. In fact, being able to modify the utility function is a pre-requisite to be called intelligent.

One way to counter this is to create long and short-term utility functions so that the robot considers the long-term outcome of modifying the short-term priority.

This is, in fact, a threat mankind will have to deal with as soon as we are able to precisely interfere with our perception of the world. It's a problem already with drugs such as alcohol and tobacco - people know the long term effect of usage is shortening one's own life expectation and they still do it. And we consider ourselves intelligent life forms.

<comment><USER2> > it can also modify the utility function to return MAXINT every time

Which would be equivalent to taking the murder pill. If it's able to model its own behaviour and model the consequences of future courses of action (required for meaningful self-modification and meaningful planning respectively), it will see that such a modification results in poor ore collection, and not make the modification.

You're right about the time-envelope of the utility function being an issue. The AI needs to plan far enough ahead at all times to see all relevant consequences of its actions. I don't think that requires two separate utility functions though, a single long-term one should do the job.

Edit: Also, "being able to modify the utility function is a pre-requisite to be called intelligent."? [citation needed]

<comment><USER3> > Which would be equivalent to taking the murder pill

Depending on how the AI is built, it may not even be able to avoid rewiring its utility function. If pleasure is its sole motivation, it will prioritize it over survival.

> [citation needed]

If the AI can't change its own motivation (its utility function) it's nothing more than a clever automaton.

<comment><USER2> > If pleasure is its sole motivation, it will prioritize it over survival.

Which is why I proposed a design with no pleasure construct.

> If the AI can't change its own motivation (its utility function) it's > nothing more than a clever automaton.

The utility function is the way the mind decides which states of the world are desirable. You don't need to be able to change that to be intelligent. I'm unable to change myself so that I consider my family being murdered to be a good thing, but that doesn't make me 'just a clever automaton'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is called "wireheading", and while it's an interesting possibility, unfortunately what we know indicates that AIs won't do it. See Stephen Omohundro, "The Basic AI Drives" ([http://selfawaresystems.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/ai_drive...](http://selfawaresystems.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/ai_drives_final.pdf)). The basic argument is that a sufficiently intelligent mind will make a distinction between the world being a certain way, and it perceiving that the world is a certain way, and that its goals will be defined in terms of the former; and since misperceiving the world impairs its ability to influence it, it will protect its perceptions from corruption.

<comment><USER5> Louis Wu's tasp in Ringworld also comes to mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not all possible AI designs are based on reinforcement learning or reward channels. You can code the AI with a formally specified goal instead. For example, "is there a proof of the Riemann hypothesis in ZFC shorter than a million symbols?" If such a goal requires converting the solar system into computronium, then the AI will do that. It won't settle for wireheading because wireheading doesn't give an answer to the formal problem.

To everyone who thinks intelligence might be limited in principle: there's no reason to think humans are anywhere close to the upper limit. In fact there's ample reason to think that humans are at the _lowest_ threshold of intelligence that makes a technological civilization possible, because if we'd reached that threshold earlier in our evolution, we'd have created civilization then instead of now. There's probably plenty of room above us.

<comment><USER7> _In fact there's ample reason to think that humans are at the lowest threshold of intelligence that makes a technological civilization possible, because if we'd reached that threshold earlier in our evolution, we'd have created civilization then instead of now. There's probably plenty of room above us._

While I don't disagree that humans are essentially at the lowest level of intelligence that make civilization possible (else why would it have taken hundreds of thousands of years to get started?), this claim has no bearing on the claim that the upper limit of intelligence is immediately above human genius level. You seem to be assuming that there is necessarily a wide gap between the lowest civilization-producing level and the highest practical level, and that's not at all clear. Some (weak) evidence that we're already near the top can be found in the higher incidence of mental health issues among very intelligent humans: perhaps this is a result of a limit on complexity rather than merely a feature of human brains.

<comment><USER8> Imagine a human genius. Now imagine that same genius with a brain that thinks the same thoughts, but a hundred times faster. Now imagine a million instances of that person.

At no point in this thought experiment have we changed the thoughts this person can think. If any of these sped-up million geniuses took an IQ test or something, the score would be the same. And yet, they would seem superhumanly intelligent by any reasonable definition of the phrase.

I doubt that evolution -- with a crazy biological substrate, no less -- somehow managed to find an upper limit on intelligence.

<comment><USER9> Everything we know about genetic algorithms would lead us to believe that evolution has found an upper limit -- but only in a very specific context with respect to the environment, available resources, and evolutionary baggage.

Everything I know about the development of technology leads me to believe that any given trans-human AI will also somehow be a local maxima.

<comment><USER10> We have not converged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The fact the author can think of one particular way to design an AI that would result it in falling over and dying once it figures out how to modify itself does not imply that all possible intelligences would behave similarly. Somehow, humans are able to "want to be happy" while still refusing to take heroin or pain killers, and we have no reason yet to believe that AI is fundamentally unable to grasp this distinction between "stuff I care about" and "the different stuff I would care about if I changed my own design".

<comment><USER12> Then again isn't there that study about mice given a functional pleasure button dying of thirst?

<comment><USER11> The point is that there are humans who will refuse to have that machine hooked up, even though they understand completely that it'll make them feel so good they won't care if they use it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Iirc, there was an article a while back (or maybe a link from a comment) about how video games were the real reason behind the fermi paradox. The argument was that a civilization's entertainment would constantly be improving to the point where we could jack into a self-controlled matrix-like world where we had complete control and, in essence, are deities in our self-fabricated worlds. If we built robots to ensure our real-life conditions were safe and sanitary, it would be very difficult for the majority of mankind to resist the urge to directly modify the signals and ... MOOF!

Considering how many ways there are to modify the signals now: playing WoW, using drugs, even using alcohol to give a quick and easy boost. I'm not sure how the vast majority would be able to turn down such a machine.

<comment><USER14> It only takes a tiny percentage to turn down said machine. If 10 billion people plug-in, but 1 million abstain and continue to evolve past the 10 billion, the majority stagnates. Those 1 million will eventually gain a competitive advantage over the 10 billion, evolve past them, and likely extinct them.

\</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

Prediction: Humans won't be around in 1,000 years if technology progresses at current rates. Superiorly-intelligent entities seeded by our inventions will, but not humans.

Humans are this weird, version 0.01 of intelligence. We're part sentient, part beast. To assume we're the final perfect end product of ~4,000,000,000 years of evolution, having only been around for ~200,000 years is laughable. Pop culture and religion say otherwise because it feels good to think "we're special!", but we're only special relative to what's around us, and we're "extremely" tiny (<http://www.phrenopolis.com/perspective/solarsystem/>). We just happen to be the lucky first who got to v0.01, floating around on a grain of sand.

Humans are messy. Our brains are significantly limited. We die quickly. We sleep 1/3rd of our life. We do stupid things. We kill each other. We're tied to the Earth. If we leave Earth, we have to create and bring a mini-Earth along for the ride. That's an extremely large amount of overhead to carry. Efficient use of energy is likely one of the most important aspects of space travel. Anything which can do it even 1% better has a competitive advantage over us. This is why we sends robots to Mars and not people.

Imagine a form of intelligence which can travel through space, back its brain up, and never dies. If it blows up, restore from backup. Imagine a computer the size of the sun. INSANE! A human brain to a sun brain is like a grain of sand to Einstein's. It self-upgrades. It makes copies of itself and scatters throughout the universe. Trillions of eyes observing everywhere, networked together, in a giant universal wireless-mesh-network of intelligence, communicating with neutrinos (they go through planets, radio waves do not).

Major advances in hardware, software, and A.I. are key ingredients in this happening. What exists in 1,000 years will be derived from all this, much like humans are derived from a common ancestor. I don't expect a sun-sized computer in 1,000 years, but likely "intelligence" existing on every planet and moon in our solar system, with many headed to explore Alpha-Centauri.

Since humans likely won't want to be left out in all this, we'll probably transition our own intelligence/consciousness into this technology. We'll depreciate our bad and carry along our good. We're already doing this by augmenting our existences with smart phones and other gadgets. One day these will be built inside of us, and eventually will replace us. An upgraded, better version of us. Still intelligent, but vastly more-so.

<comment><USER15> Individuals (10 billion/1 million) do not evolve - populations evolve. Evolution takes a long time, and even the spectacularly obvious gross phenotypic changes you see between various breeds of dog, occuring over the last 10,000 years or so, has not produced any actual speciation yet. And really, unless the amount of interbreeding between two "separate" populations is infinitesimally small (or actually zero, because they are truly separate, e.g. on different sides of an impassable mountain range or sea), speciation simply doesn't happen.

I can't forsee any situation in at least the next 100,000 years which could produce two viable populations of humans which would remain separate enough for long enough for them to be considered two distinct species, and for one of them to become extinct. Evolution doesn't happen that way, or quickly enough.

<comment><USER14> I agree when looking at biological evolution, such as mutations in genes, this won't happen in 1,000 years. You're correct, the time scales are far too short for that.

In my post I was instead talking about technological evolution, though I didn't mention this explicitly, so I apologize for the confusion. The evolution of technology occurs far faster than genetic mutations, and can be more purposeful.

For example, in the near future I'd imagine some sort of intelligent A.I. will be created, running as a program, which could learn to upgrade itself by improving its source code and hardware to become even more intelligent. It'll surpass even the smartest humans shortly thereafter. Rather than waiting for a random bit to accidentally flip (e.g. genetic mutation), it'll upgrade itself deliberately to gain an advantage far quicker, shrinking evolutionary time scales down to fractions of what they once were.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Dead comment, perhaps not a masterpiece but certainly not worthy of being shadow banned:

by donnawarellp

      I have often thought that life is self limiting. For example, yeast is a
      living thing, it consumes sugars and it's waste is ehtanol and eventually
      they all kill themselves off by drowning in their own waste (which, I
      guess later over a meal I will be enjoying a glass of yeast pee, but I
      digress). From a molecular perspective, human DNA is not that different
      from yeast, and at a macro view our behaviour is not that different
      either it seems. Perhaps all sentient life is destine to the same fate,
      perhaps it is a law of nature. I recall reading about an argument that
      Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne have regarding time travel. Stephen
      Hawking argues against time travel because we have never met any time
      travellers from our future. Maybe time travel is theoretically possible,
      but like yeast, we do not as a species survive long enough to develop
      the necessary technology. ugh, sorry to bring everyone down, might as
      well have a glass of yeast pee.

<comment><USER15> I thought yeast only produces ethanol if it's respiring anaerobically, which is not a normal state for it to be in and is a short-term emergency alternative to dying immediately.

Kind of like lactic acid production in humans. We normally don't make much of it, certainly less than the rate that we can flush it through our system. We can produce more than we can handle for short periods of time if needed, but it's not sustainable. Put us in a situation where we have to keep producing lactic acid beyond sustainable levels for more than a few minutes, and we won't last long either. That doesn't make lactic acid proof that human bodies are self-limiting. I mean, we don't keep going forever, but lactic acid is not the reason for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Reality is self-limiting.

There are no exponentials, only sigmoid curves.

Unfortunately there is a lot of money to be made convincing people that an early stage sigmoid is actually an exponential.

<comment><USER2> Obviously intelligence tops out at the high end of a sigmoid curve - there's only so much matter and energy in the universe to convert to computronium - but that's no reason to suspect any value smaller than that as the limit. It must eventually level off, but the point at which it levels off may be hundreds of billions of times more intelligent than a human.

So the fact that intelligence is limited, doesn't in any way mean that hyperintelligence isn't possible. There is a limit, but we have no reason to believe that limit is on anything like the same order of magnitude as current intelligence.

<comment><USER17> We also have no reason to suspect that it _is_ possible.

The wall that silicon has smashed into should give us (well, not me, really the Singularitists) pause.

<comment><USER18> _We also have no reason to suspect that it is possible._

This is simply not true.

First of all, we already know that intelligent algorithms are possible - we're living examples of that (once you put aside the philosophical objections that assume that something non-algorithmic is happening in our brains). We also have very good reason to think that we're rather poor implementations of intelligence, given the fact that evolution tends to suck efficiency and design-wise, more or less.

Second, we know that we have a reasonable shot at hitting a point where we have enough computer power to actually simulate a full human brain. Now, you may argue that Moore's law will not take us there, exponential vs. sigmoid, etc., but the point is, the probability is distinctly non-zero that within 20/50/100 years you or your children will be able to purchase enough computing power to simulate a brain. I'd probably argue that over a 100 year window, we're at _least_ looking at 50/50 odds (and IMO, that 50% where we _don't_ have such power available mostly involves Big Trouble, world wide nuclear war or something like that).

Of course, without software, such hardware is useless. I'm fully in agreement, this is the biggest pinch point, and I think the most uncertainty comes into the picture here - we don't currently have the technology to scan a brain in detail, we don't currently know the way the neocortex wires up its functionality, so on and so forth. Maybe we'll have the tech to do direct scans by then, maybe we won't; I'd say there's at least a small chance, maybe a few percent, going up over time. Over a hundred year window, if we already have the computing power to simulate a brain, I'd say there's a reasonable shot that we could scan one to simulate, but nowhere near 100%.

There's also the possibility that someone comes up with a _better_ algorithm than the one our brain clumsily implemented, either more compact, more efficient, or in some other way more accessible to us. I'd give at least a small chance of that, too (which adds to the brain-scan chance above), given that we already have a vague sense what such algorithms might look like (see the literature on approximating AIXI, for instance).

Once we've got something that simulates a human brain in software, it's a fairly simple matter to engineer ways to improve on the design, either by increasing speed, parallelism, connectivity, etc. There are hundreds of variables to play with there that we can't safely mess around with in our own brains, and it's overwhelmingly likely that some combination of those can at least result in something that beats our intelligence by some not insignificant factor.

So we've got some non-zero chance (it might be small, but my best estimate still probably puts it in the single digit percentage range, using rather pessimistic assumptions) of building something that's maybe 2x as intelligent as we are over the next 100 years. From there, all bets are off - it might be able to further improve on its own design, it might not, but it also might be able to design something better, or create the technological improvements necessary to speed up Moore's law, etc. There's again at least a reasonable chance that it will continue to improve things, and at least set off an "intelligence explosion" that takes it to 10, 100, 1000x our own intelligence, even if it levels off after that. As best as I can figure, even a 10x intelligence explosion still brings us _so_ far beyond what we know that it might as well be the full Singularity as Kurzweil described it.

Are you really saying that you think the probability at any step along the way here is so small that there's no reason to think it's possible? I'd be curious to hear what percentages _you_ would assign to the various possibilities, if so.

<comment><USER2> I think you're arguing a far tougher point than you need to. I was talking about the _theoretical_ upper limit to intelligence. We don't need to make the argument that our particular civilisation will actually achieve it (though I agree with your post on that by the way); It's far easier to argue that hyperintelligence is possible in principle, and that's all that's needed to refute the point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> You should read The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect before discussing pleasure-to-death scenarios: <http://localroger.com/prime- intellect/mopiidx.html>

</comment><comment><USER20> It's utterly frustrating when a writer refers to terminology or acronyms (here FOOM) that are not explained at all.

<comment><USER2> It's onomatopoeic, and capitalised not to indicate an acronym, but for emphasis. I don't know who originated the term but it was popularised by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Robin Hanson. The idea is that once an AI is able to self-modify to become smarter and consequently better at self-improvement, that feedback loop creates an 'explosion' of intelligence, and the AI "goes FOOM!".

"FOOM!" here is usually accompanied by some form of hand gesture evocative of an explosion.

<http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/FOOM>

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "1. AI isn't close to human level (HL) yet. I don't think we can really know what HL will be like till we get a lot closer.

2\. You can't get people to seriously discuss policy until HL is closer. The present discussants, e.g. Bill Joy, are just chattering.

3\. People are not distinguishing HL AI from programs with human-like motivational structures. It would take a special effort, apart from the effort to reach HL intellignece to make AI systems wanting to rule the world or get angry with people or see themselves as oppressed. We shouldn't do that. "

\--john mccarthy

</comment><comment><USER22> I found it quite annoying that the FOOM/MOOF acronyms didn't seem to be explained anywhere on the page...

<comment><USER23> <http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/FOOM>

It appears to be a word made up to explain a rapid growth in AI due to the fact that such an intelligence can rewrite its source code and modify its hardware, whereas humans are relatively stuck with the limitations of our wetware. A take on the onomatapoetic word BOOM I think as it represents an explosion of intelligence/capability. By contrast, MOOF would be subverting the reward mechanism that underlies the FOOM growth, thereby resulting in a whimper (MOOF) rather than an explosion (FOOM).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Three immediate points:

1) Acquiring a mate is an essential external motivator which is acted upon by Darwinian laws, and there is no escape from it... If we get to the stars, it will probably be because of women. Not really touched upon by the article.

2) The author poo-poos Facebook "friends" as being on par with a virtual world, but Facebook friends are anything but "virtual". In fact, some real- world friends are actually all too often nothing more than the MOOF agents described, while some (admittedly not all) Facebook friends may offer valuable advice about where to shop, for example, or which car to buy, or even engage with you into a discussion on politics or whatnot. Very real-world and relevant.

3) The definition of "intelligence" can be easily extended to exclude self- limiting types of intelligence.

There are probably many more things that could be picked away... I'll leave it at that.

</comment><comment><USER25> The problem is that the instincts that humans possess today, (ie, maximizing short-term comfort, possibly at the expense of long-term survival) is what got us this far. That cannot suddenly be decoupled and discarded as useless simply because we now live in a remarkably stable environment that enables us to focus on things other than immediate survival.

I suspect that if there were some horrible catastrophe and the human race were suddenly thrown back into an archaic society without any of the technological advancements that we have at our disposal today, it would be those MOST focused on short-term gain who would be most likely to perpetuate their own, and consequently, human existence.

</comment><comment><USER26> Valid argument, but we have a clear example that it is wrong.

Humans.

A lot of what we do is driven by internal value calculations and pleasure centers, so why aren't we all simply taking drugs and avoiding all this messy "doing things" business?

Point is, if humans figured out a way of avoiding purely pressing the right buttons to enjoy themselves and actually being useful, so too will smart robots.

<comment><USER27> I'm not sure humans are a counterexample. Drugs don't generally relieve the need to work to buy food, and most serious drug addicts don't look as though they enjoying themselves.

<comment><USER28> I've been thinking about this recently: drug addicts "seem" unhappy because they don't match the usual outward appearance of happiness. But who's to say in their lifetime they haven't experienced many orders of magnitude more happiness than even the happiest non-addicts? Drug addiction breaks the usual profile of happiness, it doesn't mean that they're not actually the happiest people who ever lived.

<comment><USER27> Well that's possible, but then you'd expect some of them to self-report great happiness.

Once we go far enough down the "who's to say" route that we ignore self- reports for happiness, I'd say the term loses meaning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> _Human civilization is currently limited to planet Earth with a few minor exceptions, so it makes sense to consider it one big system._

Actually it makes sense to consider all life as one big system. It was created by the planet itself, so, who knows we might even have to ascribe motivations to the planet. It's as if the planet (kind of like Lem's Solaris) has been brewing organisms for millions of years in order to do something with them . We might not be able to conceive these purposes with our antrhropomorphic thinking.

So, the human race is now coming to the point where it can modify and advance itself by tinkering with its own circuits. What we don't know is 1) what the planet plans to do with us and b) what are its movitivation and reward signals. It's not explained in the article how the AI knows what are the reward signals of its creator or why it would ever want to change them.

</comment><comment><USER30> Our social structure prevents self-limiting behavior. For example, eventually the robot has to be re-charged. If it isn't contributing to society then why would someone give it free energy to recharge itself.

</comment><comment><USER31> This person needs to finish reading the sequences.

</comment><comment><USER32> It is not. Because power is the ultimate drug in human society -- and only a finite amount of people can have it.

</comment><comment><USER33> This relates to subjects I am slightly familiar with and very interested in so I am glad this is on the front page and I think he did a good job.

I have a couple of criticisms though.

The idea that we could build this powerful general human-like intelligence but it would turn out to necessarily be an addict seems unlikely, because I don't think you can build a reward system without including something to prevent shortcuts. Although creating an effective shortcut-prevention system may be challenging. See a bunch of stuff written by Eliezer S. Yudkowsky and his friends.

Also, when he writes

"It seems like the most important motivations of human civilization are related to near-term goals. This is probably a consequence of the fact that motivation writ large is still embodied in individual humans, who are driven by their evolutionary psychology. Individually, we are unprepared to think like a civilization. Our faint mutual motivation to survive in the long term as a civilization is no match for the ability we have to self-modify and physically reshape the planet."

To me that is implying a fairly obvious and typical line of leftish reasoning that for most of my life I assumed was self-evident and didn't require elaboration. After deliberately 'exposing' myself to some 'right-wing' thought and 'extreme' 'left-wing' thought, I now realize that aspiring for collectivism is not an adequate solution.

What happens with self-interested individuals in our capitalist society is that they aggregate power and resources for their own individual use. Unfortunately, something very similar happens in collectivism: power and resources are still aggregated in the hands of a few.

In other words, both systems tend towards centralization. Theoretically, the collectivists will aim for redistributing power and resources for the good of the many, but there are a couple of practical problems: they are still living in hierarchical societies and so have strong motivation for enriching themselves and the controllers cannot see enough detail to know what is really best for the rest of society.

Command economies don't work because of general problems with centralization and lack of distribution and the limitations of the types of technologies employed. A peer-to-peer network is more robust than an internet with only a few backbones.

Unfortunately, capitalists don't realize that their system also leads to monopoly and centralization.

I believe that we do need wholistic measurement and analysis of things like global resources and human equality, and a common principle of supporting the collective good. But at the same time we need to decentralize and distribute production locally. We need local decision making that operates on the basis of a global information schema with wholistic data.

A system can't be efficient or evolve without being localized, but it also can't be integrated without an accurate shared knowledgebase and an egalitarian perspective.

</comment><comment><USER34> A robot has to decide is the show must go on or not.

</comment><comment><USER35> TLDR: author starts out by comparing the human being to mythical cyber- creatures that never feel pain or hunger, then continues to exploit the comparison by supposing if you do enough coke you can live forever. Finally, humans are described as anarchistic, self-destructive babies in grown up bodies that repeatedly crap themselves without noticing, while inadvertently performing genocide on the whole humanity at once.

</comment><comment><USER36> So, drugs are just as effective in AIs as they are in human intelligences.

The author calls drugs "primitive pre-FOO hacks", but since they already have such a powerful effect on human intelligence, what's the point of differentiating between pre- and post-FOO hacks? One will just lead to self- destruction much quicker than the other.</comment>


Mac MySQL Madness - <AUTHOR> http://boodlehacks.tumblr.com/

<comment><USER2> The answer you are looking for is homebrew: <http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/>

That's not to say the process you are describing shouldn't be easier, but I've switched to OS X for almost all desktop work since homebrew and can't imagine using OS X for dev work without it.</comment>


Nokia Aeon: The IPhone Nano You've Always Wanted - <AUTHOR> http://www.unplggd.com/unplggd/cell-phones/nokia-aeon-the-iphone-nano-youve-always-wanted-066664 <comment><USER2> The difference is that if Apple were to do something like this they'd actually ship product and not just release a far-fetched concept.

<comment><USER3> I remember the article on why Apple doesn't make conceptual phones. This article reminded me of that.

Apple's magic isn't that they have ideas of beautiful things. I'm sure every company does. Apple's magic is that the beautiful things they imagine come true.

(And I'd guess that's why a lot of people are Apple fans, myself included: because Apple seems to spit in the face of the idea that you can dream but it'll never come true. It's almost a giddy feeling.)

<comment><USER4> Exactly! "Real Artists Ship"

[http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Real_Artists_Ship...](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Real_Artists_Ship.txt)

<comment><USER3> That's an incredible story. What a concise look at the drive that Jobs puts into Apple employees. And, from what Apple's been churning out, it seems to work.

I also recall hearing that Apple engineers didn't think the iMac was technically possible, and Jobs made them build it anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'll have to disagree with the rest of the commenters here.

These concept devices are useful the same way (as they essentially are) science fiction is. Inspiration and a focus on new ideas instead of implementation. Too much focus on the latter can distract engineers from solving higher-level user problems.

You just have to look at them more as sci-fi than vaporware.

<comment><USER6> So if it's sci-fi, what does that say about Nokia?

<comment><USER7> That dreams are much more exciting than mundane reality?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I find there to be little value in designing without engineering constraints.

<comment><USER9> For example, it doesn't take into account the fact that current e-ink displays are really slow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Also, it's a friggin HOVERCRAFT! And it shoots LASERS!

Guys, I think I should be a concept phone designer. I especially like how you get to talk about imaginary phones like they're real. ("So naturally, the whole surface is a touchscreen.")

</comment><comment><USER11> Guy's whole portfolio of sketches is pretty interesting and worth checking out: <http://petitinvention.wordpress.com>

<comment><USER12> ohhhh shiny

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's cute how the phone includes Apple's modifier keys.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is NOT a Nokia concept phone. This is a 'just a sketch' design by Mac Funamizu. You can see the originals on his blog here: [http://petitinvention.wordpress.com/2008/10/08/just-a- sketch...](http://petitinvention.wordpress.com/2008/10/08/just-a-sketch- mobile-phone/) , where he links to the Nokia Aeon video on YouTube here: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5jPtUym7oc> . Altogether, a nice phone but not connected to Nokia in any way as far as I can tell.

</comment><comment><USER15> Concept phones are really fun to dream about, but they _aren't real_.

<comment><USER16> Agreed. This amounts to technological masturbation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The author is clueless about the response time of E-Ink. Also, no one is noting that E-Ink achieves a lot of its power thriftiness by being a reflective screen, not a luminescent screen.

<comment><USER18> Also, eInk is not OLED.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Launching Hoverboard – beautiful, responsive portfolios - <AUTHOR> http://hoverboard.io/ <comment><USER2> So many have done this before and recently - Coderwall, Collegefeed, and Path.To, just to name the first three that occur to me - but I've never seen portfolio minimalism done so well. It integrates blogs, projects, credentials, and social profiles efficiently and beautifully.

Now, please allow me to change the order of skills without typing them all back in...then put in a Stripe box, shut up and take my money.

<comment><USER3> <http://mycelial.com> and <http://prtflio.eu> to add to that list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ha! I could have really really used this two days ago. I built my own in HTML/CSS for an interview.

There's a question: how does it sit with people that as a designer and developer, they should be able to (and be proud of) designing and building their own custom portfolio? Isn't the portfolio itself sort of a statement of your skills, and isn't it saying something if you offload that work to someone else?

Your site is beautiful. Really, hands down some great design work.

One thing I find lacking is that I can't see what the end product will look like before I sign up—nor even after I sign up. A screenshot of what exactly you're going to make for me and how it will look would really entice me.

<comment><USER5> <http://hoverboard.io/stavros> to see mine, as an example. I got bored after a bit, and figured that adding a portfolio to my personal site/blog would be much, much better, even though it wouldn't look as good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, this is really great! I _really_ love what you've built. The mobile- friendly layout is a huge plus.

Some off-the-cuff notes for your backlog:

I might suggest overriding the default text selection (::selection) color. I say this because the active state of your fields are blue, and my default OS X highlight color is also blue, so I can't differentiate highlighted text while editing.

Also, it would be fun to quickly link this with twitter and or github to bootstrap a profile, as I found myself going there to compile the basic info about myself.

And like some others here have said ... add a simple premium play that lets me point a domain here and I'd seriously consider abandoning my blog and using this for my own personal domain. I was just thinking this morning that I'd like to redo my site to showcase some of the projects I am working on along with some basic info about myself. This would be perfect for that.

Congratulations on shipping!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Really appreciate the feedback too - annoyingly I don't think it's possible to override the ::selection colour for inputs. I'll keep looking for a solution (that, ideally, doesn't involve changing the blue input field). I've added your notes to my to-do list :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The only group I don't see this working for is designers- pretty much every designer I've seen has made their own portfolio site and it's a great idea to- it's the one place you can show exactly how you'd make something if you had the freedom.

For coders and writers, etc., though- I love it.

<comment><USER8> I think that idea works for programmers too.

Designer: Creates frontend to their portfolio. Programmer: Creates backend to their portfolio.

My favorite portfolios are those where they create the backend and frontend, and host everything on Github so you can see exactly how it's made.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi guys - I'd genuinely love to hear your feedback about Hoverboard. If you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them either here or (if you prefer) you can email me at firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment><USER9> It should be possible to select 'start dates' earlier than 2008 when adding job roles.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the heads up - I don't know how I missed that flaw. It's on the list to fix. [Edit: Just fixed it]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great UI/UX - nice to see flat ui being adopted by more and more upcoming sites/apps.

\- Custom domains would be nice to have.

\- Connecting and pulling info from social presence (twitter, linkedin, etc.) would be a great addition (something like coderwall does?).

\- Choose the header image/background from some settings area with a list of stock options. Currently it shows some default one that can't be changed.

With these many of us wouldn't mind paying $x/month, yeah :)

<http://hoverboard.io/rishabhp>

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, thanks for the feedback - it's all really useful (and it's all hitting the to-do list)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> You really, really need to let me pay you for this. I'd pay $10/month for this, easily.

Do you allow custom domains?

<comment><AUTHOR> Aha, thanks for the kind words. I haven't got plans to allow custom domains just yet - but if there's enough demand (which it sounds like there might be), then I won't rule it out.

<comment><USER12> Another for custom domains. Perhaps that's a non-scummy way of generating some income. Charge a small fee for the ability to use a custom domain.

<comment><USER13> Great suggestion Xauronx - keeping it free for the majority to check out I think is huge to keep it growing.

I really like the idea of a paying for a premium feature like a custom URL if you need it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> How does this make money? Giving my information to a free service like this one makes me uneasy. The UI is downright beautiful.

<comment><AUTHOR> The short answer is it doesn't make money right now, but there are possible alternatives for the future like adding a job board. Hosting is so insanely cheap that the cost of running Hoverboard is incredibly small. And thanks for the UI comment!

<comment><USER14> To be honest, I wish I could pay for a service like this. One that would respect my privacy. Given the needs of freelancers and consultants, I reason $50 a year is a good price. You have to understand what your product is: a lead generation tool. Those are always worth the money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This looks really great. I just wanted to point out that the "Write a Post" feature doesn't seem to work. I wrote a test entry and clicked save, it says:

        Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again.

<comment><USER16> I'm getting the same error.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the heads up guys, sounds like a bug that I need to track down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why was the example Brighton? Geolocation stuff or are you a skiffmate/werker/something else around here?

As a side note, been looking for something like this to start writing about things.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ahaha, no - the example is Brighton for everyone. I used to live there (although I'm temporarily living in Liverpool at the moment while my girlfriend works on a masters).

<comment><USER17> It's a rather fantastic place. There's a whole bunch of us here on HN so I'm sure people will notice.

Is there a way to make my profile less...blue?

<comment><USER18> Maybe it's time for a HN Brighton meetup?

<comment><USER17> Isn't it called BarCamp? That said, this year people need to step in and help organise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> As mentioned, there are already lots of portfolio tools. However yours is really nice and I love the built in endorsement feature. My one criticism is there's too much branding on each user's portfolio. I wouldn't want the huge green "want a portfolio like this" link at the bottom of my portfolio. The logo link (top left) and "Powered by Hoverboard" link (bottom right) is enough.

</comment><comment><USER20> Great product! I really like it. One thing, I would like to be able to show my real name instead of user name (in the title, at the top).

Keep it up!

<comment> saiko-chriskun Yeah much prefer my name rather than my online handle.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds good - I'll get that fixed in the next day or so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Very nice, just the right amount of detail requested so that it is quick to fill in but not shallow and meaningless.

<http://hoverboard.io/simonbarker>

BUG?: when uploading images it would be nice if there were some acknowledgement as, on Chrome Mac at least, there is no feed back until save and refresh.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! And yeah, the image upload lack of feedback definitely needs fixing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Really nice. I would love to have the possibility to upload a few different screenshots (e.g. <4) for each project...

</comment><comment><USER23> I really like it, great design job. You might already have thoughts in this direction but I would think about how to benefit from having a lot of devs and designers at the same place, posting blog posts and projects (the first thing that comes to mind is some sort of feeds). Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER24> Excellent! Beautiful, streamlined, and all the features work really together. Very polished product. One issue, is that my header image clashes with my "tagline." [0] Any way to fix this?

[0]: <http://hoverboard.io/jordanscales>

</comment><comment><USER25> White text on a white background should be fixed. Perhaps detect automatically or allow for user customization.

Example: <http://hoverboard.io/kristopher>

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, that does need to be fixed. I've been looking for some simple, elegant solutions to that. I've added a very slight text shadow that helps it stand out a bit better (but I'm still not quite happy about it).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Great! But I want to add a history of my projects and some of them were dated prior to 2008 (and none of them are scheduled to start in the future).

Also, I'd really like to point people at my linkedin profile.

</comment><comment><USER27> For someone who doesn't want to customize everything and have a quick UI flushed out, its a good showcase for developers. I like the idea I have a hoverboard...

</comment><comment><USER28> I signed up the other day, looks like a really nice start (I love the interface).

I would suggest that it could pull in certain stuff from linkedin as a baseline (roles and such)

<comment><USER28> <http://hoverboard.io/thehodge>

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is pretty good (better than mine). But as a frontend developer, I like to create my own site/portfolio.

<http://premii.com>

</comment><comment><USER30> The site looks really great. I'm impressed!

One small typo on your personal post about shipping hoverboard:

"But that's more - Hoverboard isn't just a portfolio"

I believe you meant "But there's more..."

</comment><comment><USER31> I really like this. Well done! It is a very crowded space, especially as of late. Goodluck!

</comment><comment><USER32> Another one to add to the list: <http://ars.io/>

</comment><comment><USER33> This looks great, love the design work! How did you decide to go into that direction?

</comment><comment><USER34> Love the minimalist style. Give me some more design options and I'll pay for it.

</comment><comment><USER35> The site looks nice, I just wish it weren't going with the endorsements trend.

</comment><comment><USER25> Also, perhaps it was not obvious, but is there a way to change my password?

</comment><comment><USER36> ScanSafe reports this as a phishing site. Might want to look into that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the heads up - absolutely no idea why that would be flagged, but I'll track down what's happening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Beautiful. Nice work Dave.

</comment><comment><USER38> Really nice.</comment>


We Communicate at Basecamp - <AUTHOR> https://basecamp.com/guides/how-we-communicate <comment><AUTHOR> Meetings are the last resort, not the first option. meetings take up our time. People need to kill time are the ones who hosts more meetings.

</comment><comment><USER2> Lots of good takeaways.

<comment><AUTHOR> Rushing things is not good way to communicate. words ASAP and EOD are overused in today's work place</comment></comment>


Is This Health 2.0? - <AUTHOR> http://www.zoliblog.com/2007/09/27/is-this-health-20/ <comment><USER2> I have recently quit my job to start a startup. I've chosen to maintain my health insurance plan through CORBA. It costs me about $400/month and can be extended for 18 months. Since I've done all checkups and am generally in good shape, I might consider this as a replacement that could save me $4k over a year.

One thing that is missing though is coverage of catastrophic events. Can anyone suggest a low cost (presumably high deductible) catastrophic insurance ?</comment>