Where to park your car, according to math - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2019-09-car-math.html <comment><USER2> I've never been called 'meek' before! But then I think I'm looking at the problem differently. I don't consider the walking time wasted, I don't mind the walk. I want to get the car parked as quickly as possible, not spend the least amount of time between entering the lot and getting to my destination. In fact, I will often park further away even when I can directly see that close up spots are free.

<comment><USER3> Walking can be nice, but in an indoor parking garage not so much, with all those exhaust fumes and cars driving by without a clear sidewalk.

<comment><USER2> Ah, yes, well for most indoor parking garages my usual strategy is to immediately head for the top (or bottom) floor. Almost nobody parks there unless they have to, so there's often lots of open spaces and much less traffic. If there aren't and good spots on the last level, then there likely aren't any good spaces anywhere in the garage anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> OK, I admit it. I use the meek strategy. Why? because I believe the parking spots that minimize walking from car to destination should be left empty for people who need them more than I do.

On the rare occasion where I need to minimize walking (because I have something heavy to carry, for example) I park to minimize walking even if I have to waste some time and fuel doing it. In that case it helps me when other people use my default strategy.

Optimization-theory work like this paper has a fundamental flaw: it assumes the actor is a classic "econ" \-- the ideal person (defined by classical economics) working to optimize purely personal utility. In fact, many people work to optimize community utility.

Studying that community-optimization model is harder. But it is probably worthwhile. Such large-scale systems as autonomous vehicles will require community optimization to succeed.

It's time to reread Kahneman and Tversky, and Richard Thaler.

<comment><USER5> Right.

I actively want the exercise. I take the stairs at work rather than the elevator when practical for the same reason.

I don't think it's fair to categorise being a decent person as "meek". If more people did that, we'd have a far lower need for things like disabled and family spaces because people would fill inwards.

<comment><USER4> Agreed, entirely.

But the social-science and system-science issues get confused by using ethically charged words like "decent." Modeling "decent" gets confusing without ways of measuring it. (I'll spare us a long digression on how slippery it can be to understand ethical / moral reasoning.)

Do I leave parking spots for other people because I'm a "decent" person? I like to think so -- I like to think I put others' needs ahead of my own when I can -- but that's my business. From a systems point of view I do it to help control parking lot congestion.

If I were a business owner and didn't leave convenient parking spots for others, I'd be deliberately adding to congestion near my business. That's a cost. What's the benefit?

Example: Van Jacobson's slow-start / exponential-backoff algorithm to help prevent TCP endpoints from saturating routers. It's certainly possible to explain this to a roomful of undergrads as a "be nice" requirement on web servers and other sources of large TCP streams. But it's more productive to model it as part of a large-scale system to control congestion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sounds like the Secretary Problem, which involves optimal stopping theory: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem)

The naive answer is 1/e (where e is the base of the natural logarithm). If you have N applications, reject ~N/e applications and choose the first applicant who is better than every previous applicant.

<comment><USER7> It's similar but not quite the same. In the parking problem you don't know how many free spaces there are to begin with, and the 'quality' metric of each space is just a linear function of its location. In the idealized problem presented, each space as you go along the line is strictly better than every previous space - you just don't know whether it is the last one.

The analogous secretary problem would be to be presented with a sequence of increasingly suitable candidates, but never knowing whether each candidate is the last one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> In multi-level car parks I believe people overestimate vertical distance and underestimate horizontal.

In the carpark I park in, I often just speed down to the level where there first begins to be car spaces and I can often get much closer to the stairs which lead back up to the exit on the ground floor.

Extra vertical distance is only 4-5m but saved horizontal distance can be 50m.

<comment><USER9> > Extra vertical distance is only 4-5m but saved horizontal distance can be > 50m.

Indeed, for the walking component. However having to drive up and then back down additional levels has time and hassle costs too.

<comment><USER8> This is true, the car park has a ramp system that is all in one corner of the car park but I guess most places make you drive to the other side to go up one

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Other factors: getting a bit of exercise, wanting to be away from the busiest areas to avoid your car being dinged.

<comment><USER11> I always try and park away from the busiest areas for the same reasons but, purely from observation, it's obvious most people don't since the area closest to the store entrance is almost always utilised the most.

I do often wonder why people are so lazy or so busy that saving on walking an extra few yards is so important to them?

<comment><USER12> When our baby was younger we tended to park as far away from anyone else as possible to give us room to put her back in the car. It's amazing how often we come back to find someone parked right next to us.

<comment><USER13> I've noticed this as well. If I park in the middle of the parking lot with no cars anywhere near me, very often I come back to find another car parked right next to mine.

My theory as to why this happens is that a parked car is a clearer indicator of how to park properly. If I try to park properly using the painted lines (which are often not very visible and go out of sight when you start entering your parking spot) I might miss the mark. However, a parked car that's more visible is a better indicator of whether I've parked correctly.

<comment><USER14> One of the reasons I back into parking spots. Back in, watch your mirrors, line up the lines using your mirrors or backup camera and continue going back. You will park perfectly in the middle every time.

<comment><USER15> For safety you should always park so you drive out of your parking spot. If you back out you risk that you don't see some kid walking right behind your car. Particularly if when you live a couple trucks/vans have parked next to you so there is no way to see if there is anything else coming and you have to guess.

<comment><USER14> Correct! And if we are listing reasons for backing up: Because you have to pass the parking spot before you back in, you can see if the spot is clear of debris, shopping carts and children.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> From the paper:

"However, if there a few meek drivers while the majority follow the prudent or optimistic strategy, then the meek strategy is not bad because meek drivers will park a distance λ from the target."

I am a 'meek' driver for this very reason. My assumption is that the majority of other drivers are either 'optimistic' or 'prudent,' and as such the parking cost of the meek strategy is much lower. Would be very interesting to test this in the real world!

<comment><USER17> There are a few parking lots at my workplace, and I park at one fairly close, at a time where the last spots usually fill up.

I haven't kept a tally, but there have been multiple times (after a few earlier experiences on the other end of the spectrum) where I've gotten the last spot on the far end of the lot, only to see the few cars ahead of me drive around and eventually end up going off to another lot.

In my case I'm the meek driver on a micro/lot level, but a prudent/optimistic one on a macro/workplace level. But in my anecdata it's probably saved me more time than any other behavior I could employ.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Of all the metrics in my life, optimizing for minimum car-to-store time is not important or even a consideration for me.

Unless it's pouring rain, I'll usually park near the back of the lot and take my time walking to the store. Even if it's raining, I won't usually opt for the spots closest to the store. I don't know _why_ that latter behavior exists, but it's what I do.

</comment><comment><USER19> I thought I had read this before. Here is the link to the original blog post from the institute that did the research.

[https://www.santafe.edu/news-center/news/where-how-park- your...](https://www.santafe.edu/news-center/news/where-how-park-your-car- according-math)

<comment><USER20> I had the same feeling. If memory serves, the problem of optimal stopping is discussed (using a parking lot as an example) in the book "Algorithms to live by"

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'd like to see a version of this that optimises for this problem more globally. Other people exist!

e.g. Park further away if you can handle it (arrived on time, and are in good health, and have little luggage). Then people who are struggling (arrived late, with kids, in poor health, with lots of luggage) have a higher chance to find a space closer to the entrance. This might invisibly make someone have a less shitty day, and reduce my own risk of running into an angry person later. It's more impactful to optimise for that, rather than save seconds of walking.

Any ideas for how to math this?

</comment><comment> andrew-v I am wondering how did the "meek" strategy look like in detail.

Because, if you try to occupy the very first spot available, then of course it makes very little sense. But I believe that a "human meek" would instead skip the whole line of unoccupied spaces and take the last spot in such a line. This "unoccupied line" does not even have to begin with the first parking space, but for example with the third. Though you need to assume that the line of empty spots is in driver's line of sight.

</comment><comment><USER22> This model assumes hiigh availability of spaces - and that's not what I see very often outside the wide open spaces of America. A better model would include time to find a free parking space. Searching and queuing time can quickly dominate under high utilization. Taking the first available space is very far from "meek" when you have to struggle to get it.

</comment><comment><USER23> Hmm - do non-mathematicians "optimise" their parking? I really doubt it.

I feel like the people trying to park right near the door/entrance to the shops are not "optimising" the time they're there - I feel like they're probably just being lazy and "optimising" for the smallest amount of energy exertion possible (consciously or not). After all, why walk when you have a car? They don't seem to mind spending time following people walking back to their cars, or just looping around and around, or trying to squeeze into spaces that are too small when it is clearly obvious that you can just pull straight into a space another 20-30m away without any waiting or tight squeezes, then spend 15-30 seconds more walking. They're wasting a lot more time trying to get close so it _can 't_ be time they are optimising for otherwise people wouldn't do it.

(some people of course can't walk distance but then there are disabled spaces, parent + child spaces etc)

<comment><USER24> There is not much difference between conscious and "non-conscious" optimizing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is great. Fortunately, at my work, if I just drive past the _main_ entrance, and enter the parking lot nearest our entry door, I can start my journey through the lot at the closest point. This obviously eliminates the need for guessing or betting or settling early.

I admit that at certain times I do enter from the furthest entrance...and I always drive past the first spot, and bet on that second one. Quite often there is a better spot as I'm walking in, but sometimes there's not. So when faced with the opportunity, I follow the prudent strategy.

Now at an unfamiliar location (walmart, movie theater, whatever), I always try to find a spot that butts up against a curb (preferably on one side AND the back of the spot as well) to lessen exposure of my vehicle to other motorists (doors, bumpers) as much as possible.

<comment><USER7> This actually suggests that there are interesting psychological implications to parking lot circulation design. If you design a lot so that people can explore it in an order that matches a monotonous decrease in the 'value function' they place on each space location, you reduce driver stress because they can take the simple strategy of parking in the first available space and know they could not possibly have done better by following a different strategy (ah - except for waiting by the entrance and holding up traffic til someone leaves, of course).

This assumes you can identify a common value function everyone (or most people) places on each space of course.

Making people follow the value function in increasing order - as in the example, where each space you pass is closer to the entrance and so 'better' - seems to force this strategy choice.

This suggests all kinds of analogies in user experience and organizational and game design problems...

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I park to optimize my exit from the parking lot. Pull-through spots to avoid reversing, avoiding needing to perform left turns, things like that. If I'm at the food store I'll also try to be near a cart return area, if possible.

</comment><comment><USER27> Curve-ball: the mall I visit most often has separate entrance and exits. The best spot equidistant from both. I've spent way too much time on this problem in my head.

<comment><USER28> Isn't the best spot closer to the exit, considering you probably have to carry stuff/push a cart there?

<comment><USER27> That usually doesn't matter because—when I do grocery—the mall has the option to have an attendant carry it for you for free.

With that in mind, I usually opt to carry the grocery out myself because I prefer it. But rationally, the cost disappears because of the option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Meanwhile in another study, "meek" parkers found to have lower blood pressure from all this "excessive" walking.

</comment><comment><USER30> I usually try to be prudent driver but its hard to tell when to stop looking for empty spots as you get closer to the exit.

<comment><USER31> I'm the optimistic driver and the childish enjoyment of finding that spot near the front when the whole parking lot is full is worth the back tracking when it fails. In reality the meek approach isn't really terrible in the grand scheme and you get more exercise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I go by hypermiler advice, optimize distance traveled by car.

Choose spot closest to entry-exit path of car park. Park closer to exit, and so that you don't need to reverse out, minimize inefficient slow/idle movement with cold engine.

And any additional walking is a bonus as mentioned by several people here.

</comment><comment><USER33> I may be meek, but I always get a parking spot!

</comment><comment><USER34> Or just park in a modern garage that tells you where the empty spots are and how many of them are each direction.</comment>


Readers' tales of extreme commuting - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25551393 <comment><USER2> Back on those halycon days where they'd actually let me leave the office before 11:30 PM, my salaryman schedule was hitting the last subway at approximately 12:05 AM to hit the last train at 12:30 AM, which got me into Ogaki at 1:05 AM and to my apartment at 1:30 AM. If I was able to eat in 30 minutes, that meant I'd get 5 hours and 20 minutes of sleep and still make it in by 9 AM the next morning.

That's when everything went right and I could actually leave nice and early at 11:30 PM, though. When our schedule was not quite so lax, I got to trade the commute home for a much shorter commute to one of the local business hotels. Unfortunately, even shaving an hour off the commute would very rarely leave me with a restful night's sleep.

Dear reader, if you are offered this schedule, _run screaming_. It _literally_ nearly killed me. By the end of my 3 years I was suffering blackouts on the return trip.

<comment><USER3> In the end, do you think the 15-16 hour work day was close to being as productive as two 8 hour work days?

I feel that in the end you will create more harm than good as more mistakes creep in during the later hours of the day which will then have to fixed the next day. (aside from your mental/physical health going to shit that is)

<comment><USER4> Better question: does working a 15-16 hour day, day after day, result in higher productivity than 8 hour days?

I suspect that there are no creative/logical jobs where that is the case.

<comment><USER5> I doubt there's _any work_ where this is the case. 8h to eat, wash and rest does not leave sufficient rest time for physical recuperation any more than mental, at least in the general case (I'm sure there are people at the end of the bell curve for whom it's sufficient).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> People spending 6 hours a day driving, I can't imagine that being good for anyone. I'm trying to find a way to say this without sounding obnoxious (it's their choice, after all), but the reasoning is so strange for some of these ("I drive 6 hours a day so I can run on the beach"? Just drive to the beach to run then?)

<comment><USER7> It's difficult to read "I've worked out that the travel is exactly the same as the cost of renting in London - so therefore a better option" as anything other than confused or deluded.

Living in London costs the same in terms of money but significantly less in terms of time spent per day?

<comment><USER8> It depends. If the commute is your "me time" then it can work out. My commute (by train) is my quality reading time for example. Some people like audiobooks. Of course there comes a tipping point.

<comment><USER9> Just have some "me time" at home?

<comment><USER10> There's something enjoyable about being on the train, for some people anyway. Seeing the countryside go past, and meeting a variety of people in an environment where socially it's ok to talk to strangers but also ok if you don't want to.

<comment><USER11> > socially it's ok to talk to strangers but also ok if you don't want to

I'm guessing you don't live in London, and if you ever visit, please don't start talking to the rest of the passengers.

:)

<comment><USER10> I do, actually. Even in London it seems like it's ok to talk to strangers on _trains_ (e.g. Thameslink), just not on the tube. Or the overground. It'll be interesting to see what becomes the standard on Crossrail.

<comment><USER11> Fair enough, I hadn't considered Thameslink: I'm more used to the tube, and would never, ever dare talk to anyone!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "I've worked out that the travel is exactly the same as the cost of renting in London - so therefore a better option."

If you don't factor in the fact that you would have 4-6 hours of extra time at your disposal every day. But what's time, its practically limitless right?

<comment><USER13> One positive is that you could rent/buy a much larger property outside of London for the same cost.

<comment><USER3> Or a nice car, because, lets face it, you'll be spending more time in your car than in your house.

<comment><USER14> There is no such thing as a "nice car" with respect to long distance travel. They're just not optimized for it.

Maybe when the cars drive themselves the situation will change a bit.

<comment><USER15> I disagree, the luxury and grand tourer segments are much nicer to spend extended periods of time in than say, a sports car with a heavy clutch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > I'd do the train journey in one and a half hours but it cost 250 euros > (£208) a day

That's certainly correct if you always pay full price (~90€ each way in 2nd, 140 in 1st), but not if you use frequent user programs. IIRC thalys has a "premium" pass between Brussels and Paris with a flat 30€/way (in 1st unless train full, so you get a fairly large seat, a meal, slow wifi and a ~100W 220V plug), specifically for commuters.

</comment><comment><USER16> As a bicycle commuter in an extremely bicycle-unfriendly city, I expected "extreme commuting" to mean something other than "spend 6 hours a day sitting in a 2-tons tin box polluting the environment"...

<comment><USER17> I wonder how much pollution is generated to make the bike. This is a genuine question, I don't mean to quarrel. I'm certain that car is polluting far more then bike of course.

There is certainly some from the paint and the tires (mostly oil right?). I wonder what else?

EDIT: The initial text was stating that a bike pollutes more then a car which is obvious shit. This is just my english at its finest. I'm sorry for this.

<comment><USER18> I'm not entirely sure what your point is here? The pollution generated by making a bike will be orders of magnitude less than the pollution generated by making a car.

Following on from that, the pollution generated from day to day upkeep will be less as well (when was the last time you had to change the oil on your bicycle?)

Lastly, the energy required to power the bike (the energy that you provide), is a bit of a sunk cost, you need to eat to stay alive after all, and while you _might_ need a little more, it's still not going to be equivalent to driving your car to work and back every day.

<comment><USER19> Orders of magnitude? Doubt it. Check out [http://bicycleuniverse.info/transpo/energy.html](http://bicycleuniverse.info/transpo/energy.html) \- while biking is typically more efficient than driving, it's not orders of magnitude. If you play with their calculator, you can find that driving a 50 mpg car and riding a bike really fast both have about the same carbon emissions. This is just from factoring in increased food consumption.

<comment><USER20> Thanks for sharing that link. It's interesting to think about this. I don't agree with the conclusions, though.

First of all, your metabolism isn't going to stop (assuming you're still alive), so it's not really fair to say that those calories you burned wouldn't have been burned if you hadn't biked. I exercise a few times every week. If I bike less, I just have to do more exercise, but i burn about the same number of calories.

Secondly, most bike trips are short and relatively low speed. Biking encourages you to explore your local area. Lower speeds mean lower wind resistances, and shorter trips obviously make the mileage considerations a lot less important. I really don't think I'd be willing to travel more than a few miles by mike, since I don't want to spend hours in transit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Home is where the heart is. Most long commuters I know do it because they have a significant other at home, and that seemed to be the case with many of the subjects in the article.

There are far fewer cases in the developed world of a long commute resulting from a disparity between rents at home vs near the job site. It's not unheard of however, as evidenced by the one guy who lived 3 hours outside the city and commuted in because the cost of renting in London is the same as travel (and presumably cost of living would provide additional savings, even at such a high opportunity cost).

My situation is a bit odd because I have a good job in the suburbs but I enjoy living in the city with my SO, so I reverse commute. It is cheaper and less crowded, but it still takes time, and combined with study, side projects, and enjoying life, it makes for long days, and I feel it beginning to wear me down after two years so I may look for other work. I feel like a wimp compared to the people in the article however however, as my commute is a mere 3 hours round trip.

</comment><comment><USER22> I commute 6 hours per day and don't want to move "because I'm a fanatical skier, I live half an hour away from a chair lift." I might have gone with: move 30 minutes from work, and then get to ski/spend an extra 22 hours a week with my family.

I can't believe people don't put more value into a short commute when buying their houses. Why do people say "I could get an extra 1000 square feet of house for my money" instead of "I can do what I want with an extra 10% of my life by living closer to work"?

<comment><USER23> Children can affect that decision significantly, particularly when it comes to finding good schools and a good neighbourhood in which to raise kids.

But in general, I agree with you. My current client's office (I'm a contract consultant) is 20 minutes walk from home, across the Thames[1] and I'm really the option of getting home before 6pm.

[1]: From my walk to work this morning: [http://twitter.com/JackGavigan/statuses/422671719145295872](http://twitter.com/JackGavigan/statuses/422671719145295872)

<comment><USER24> Children also like to see their parents from time to time, so the extra time works, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There was a study some time ago stating that there is a reverse relation between the time one spends on commute and happiness. The more time you lose in the commute, less happy you are. Maybe this is something you can do for an year or two, but I can't imagine doing it for 10 or 20 years.

On the bright side - maybe these people will be amongst the first to adopt self-driving cars. I even can go so far into the future to imagine that there is only one means of transport - self-driving, electrical, shared cars. You just order one from here to there, it comes from the parking lot nearby, takes you to your destination and finds another spot to a parking lot nearby. Clean, fast, reliable, able to schedule the travel in non-congestive way. Hm but the thing is that the buses/trains can have far more people per space, so maybe the electric, self-driving buses will be the answer to our needs in business districts on a weekday.

<comment><USER25> Personally I expect self-driving cars to solve the unsolved last mile.

Most mass transport today relies on the hub and spoke model. Get yourself to the nearest hub where there's efficient, speedy, and frequent transport to another hub, then get from the destination hub to your actual destination.

We've got the middle bit solved pretty well. Even the relatively slow, pokey commuter trains are plenty fast compared to driving. The main issue is how to get to/from such hubs.

Park and rides are one thing, but parking capacity is always the limiting factor. Park and ride lots fill up _fast_ during rush hour, and their physical space also creates a dead zone around the hub and inhibits local development.

The most common last-mile solution today are buses. They suck in a horrible way.

IMO in the "self driving cars are universally available" future, we won't see many long-distance trips with cars at all. Instead, the vast majority of trips will be to/from the nearest transport hub where you catch something much faster and much more efficient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I did maybe 4.5 hours commute a day for a few months (bike - train - bus). The worst part is, you leave so early and get home so late that you can never do any errands where you live. Especially when banks etc. are closed on the weekend. Also when you start thinking about how much time you're wasting per week it gets depressing. On the train I could at least browse the internet and play games and read. Sometimes do work but it's not really still the same as being home to relax for that time.

</comment><comment><USER27> I remember reading of a businessman flying his own Cessna from Atlanta to Houston every day, which seemed like a fine way to combine a hobby, living with family and friends, and an otherwise unbearable commute through a commercial airline.

<comment><USER21> Never been to Atlanta, however I couldn't help but think of this in the context of how impossible I've heard it is to walk anywhere in that city :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Consider the group (R,+). Now that's extreme commuting.

<comment><USER29> Well played, Abel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I once remember reading about a guy who commuted from Bridgeport or some other Connecticut city to Boston every day. It was about 3 or 3.5 hours each way in his pickup (this was in the era of cheap gas). Then I saw this article (1):

 _SIDNEY, Maine -- Boston commuters who grind their teeth during the patience- fraying gantlet of exhaust-shrouded traffic and bad etiquette should consider the case of Stephen Jordan. The way to work could be much, much longer.

Jordan, a retirement fund analyst in Boston's Financial District, commutes 340 miles a day, 1,700 miles a week, from a 15-acre spread outside Augusta that he praises for its proximity to nature and ultra-affordability.

But there is a price: Jordan spends nine hours a day on the road and the rails, leaving his house at 4:15 a.m. to drive 62 miles to Portland and ride Amtrak's Downeaster train to North Station. After an eight-hour workday and a long trip home, Jordan opens his door to greet his wife at 10:15 p.m._

Jordan's story is 10 years old, and I would be very surprised if he had managed to keep it up ... but he did note that he was able to get a lot of work done on the train.

1\. [http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2004...](http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2004/01/31/dont_like_the_traffic_try_this_340_mile_commute/) (Complete ungated text here: [http://www.urbanplanet.org/forums/index.php/topic/2082-340-m...](http://www.urbanplanet.org/forums/index.php/topic/2082-340-mile- commute/) )

</comment><comment><USER31> 8 hours sleep, 8 hours work and 2 hours leisure... I have no idea how people live like this!

<comment><USER32> Those two hours can probably be struck off. Getting ready in the morning and evening, eating, and maybe an errand and that's gone.

Makes me wonder if these people are running from spouses they don't want.

<comment><USER33> [http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-02-27/](http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-02-27/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I used to spend 3-4 hours on commuting per day, but I didn't consider this extreme, as many of my colleagues lived outside the city and spent up to 6 — this is unfortunately common situation in Moscow, especially for those who use their own cars instead of trains and subway.

Then I chose a small apartment in the city center instead of a bigger one on the outer rim. Now I live in 20 minutes walk distance from the office. If I'm running late, I catch a cab and get there under 5. I feel much more relaxed and have more energy; overall, I think it was one of the best decisions that I made in my entire life.

</comment><comment><USER35> Sadly enough, the average commute time in Sao Paulo (Brazil) is 4h daily.

10 million people live here after almost a century of chaotic, totally unplanned growth. Currently there are 7 million vehicles licensed in the city, with more than 1000 brand new hitting the streets daily (3.8 million considered "active").

At the peak hours, main streets look like parking lots - 500km of jammed streets is not uncommon on a typical day, worst if it is raining (and it rains a lot in summer). Public transportation is crap, so people prefer to suffer inside their own cars - at least they can sit, have AC and music (and even being forbidden, I see people watching television all the time). Sometimes after a big rain fall there are floodings and thousands of citizens can't even make home.

I'm lucky enough to telecommute (why do I live in such a hellish metropolis if I'm able to work from home is a very good question). Once or twice a week I go out for some meeting riding my Yamaha Tenere at 60km/h (40 mph) between the jammed traffic[1]. By average 3 motorcycle riders die daily splitting lanes like this, and yearly traffic kills are higher than the casualties at Bagdad and Afghanistan together (on both sides).

[1] [http://www.mundomoto.esp.br/wp- content/uploads/2013/07/corre...](http://www.mundomoto.esp.br/wp- content/uploads/2013/07/corredor31.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER36> My friend used to commute from Bristol, UK to Munich, DE. Wake up at 04:00 Monday, drive to Heathrow, fly to Munich airport, get a lift to work, in by 13:00. Then do it in reverse on Friday. It's no 6 hours a day, probably a bit better, but still seemed crazy to me... Not cheep either

<comment><USER10> I had an ex-colleague who did the same thing from Brussels to London. Not as crazy as it sounds - half-hour walk to the train station, 3 hours on the train, 20 mins walk to the office in London, and she had a 30-min commute over the week while staying in London, so a total of around 16hours/week spent commuting - less than if she'd had a 1 hour daily commute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> For around 3 months I had a commute of 5~6 hours a day. It involved bus, train, subway and a small part walking (~15-20 minutes) During the same time I was getting my driving permit, so I was adding time to attend classes, etc

It was pretty awful, I had to wake up to catch the 4:30 bus most of days to be at work at 7:30, and then got home at around 8pm

Once I had car permit, I was able to reduce it to 1:30 each trip (if you avoid traffic jams), which is also bad, but felt like a huge improvement.

After 2 years in that situation (with a lapse in another work at around 20m by car), I'm now able to walk to work in 30 minutes. It feels AMAZING :-P

</comment><comment><USER38> Several years ago Midas gave a Cisco engineer their "America's Longest Commute" award for his 372 mile round trip commute. [1] The craziest thing is that it seems he had been doing it for over a decade. I just can't fathom that. At some point an air taxi subscription or even a private pilot's license would become a worthwhile investment if you don't want to change the location of either home or work.

[1]: [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/04/13/cisco_commute/](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/04/13/cisco_commute/)

</comment><comment><USER39> Its an interesting puritan relic that commuting is bad / wasted but driving a service truck around all day is just fine.

I used to work directly with guys who spent well over 80% of their working day driving trucks full of fiber optic, SONET, and router gear all over the countryside. If you've got one guy assigned to maintain four POPs each a hundred miles apart, you can expect to log some serious windshield time. This does nothing good to mean time to repair if a tech can be working on one problem and get called to a new outage over three hundred miles away.

<comment><USER10> I think if someone's willing to pay you to spend most of your 8 hour workday driving around then more fool them (unless you hate driving). But spending your own time on a commute is a waste.

<comment><USER39> I was aiming more at the "my body parts fall off and I feel like death if I spend more than an hour driving" or whatever, because I know field techs who spend a multiple of those commute times on the road without any real problem.

I'm not enthusiastic about my one hour commute, but I flextime and although paycheck / 11 hours is less than paycheck / 10 hours, I'm still pretty happy with paycheck / 11\. With an hour lunch thats a 12 hour work day every day. The way to survive a decade or so of 12 hour days is to never work more than 4 in a row, with (at least) 3 off in a row.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> My commute used to be 3 hours if lucky, closer to 4 on average, and once took 6 hours. After doing for 2 years I ended up switching to a job where I'm a remote worker and my sense of wellbeing and overall happiness is significantly higher knowing that when I wake up I don't have a commute lying ahead of me. Spending 6 hours of your life just _traveling_ to make money at a job is as crazy as the people who think you need to work nothing but 14 hours a day, every day.

<comment><USER41> My commute used to be 'only' a little over an hour each way. Once I began my remote work, I became much healthier as well, both physically and mentally.

It's a shame not more organizations offer this option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Reading this just makes me feel all the happier that my usual commute it is a 15 minute walk along the Amsterdam canals. (Although currently that is extended with, the horror, a 10 minute tram ride.)

I gladly pay the price for that in terms of less space for more money. At least have the time to enjoy being home, and not be exhausted or asleep while I'm there.

</comment><comment><USER43> Doesn't this leave zero tolerance for incidents on the road? A 3 hour commute, could that not turn into 6 hours?

</comment><comment><USER44> I think I can do without the penis measuring contest and enjoy my 2m bed-to- desk commute.</comment>


A Basic Just-In-Time Compiler (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://nullprogram.com/blog/2015/03/19/ <comment><USER2> I thought this would be about a JIT compiler for the BASIC language.

Does such a thing exist?

<comment><USER3> Lennart Augustsson implemented a JIT for BASIC as an EDSL in Haskell using LLVM.

A blog post he wrote about it: [http://augustss.blogspot.com/2009/02/more- basic-not-that-any...](http://augustss.blogspot.com/2009/02/more-basic-not- that-anybody-should-care.html)

The JIT itself: [https://hackage.haskell.org/package/BASIC](https://hackage.haskell.org/package/BASIC)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any recommended reading to know more about JIT and stuff. Something along tutorial for writing JIT compiled language from scratch.

</comment><comment><USER5> My sleeping Forth system is about to wake up and have a different JIT added to it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Crazy how little code it is.

<comment><USER7> Well, it doesn't have any control flow, symbols, or system calls, so most of the work is in setting up a buffer and calling conventions. There's also no language intermediate representation or optimiser.

The W^X machinery bans self-modifying code in the traditional sense, but there may be situations where creating little specifically-optimised gadgets like this can benefit a program.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm always torn between my principle not to judge other peoples fancies and wondering what kind of actual progress talented people like this could make.

<comment><USER9> What do you mean by "actual progress"?

<comment><USER10> Being happy. And they do make real progress in this regards.</comment></comment></comment>


Keeping Passwords Secure - <AUTHOR> https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/03/keeping-passwords-secure/ <comment><USER2> At what point do we start imposing strict fines on companies that are found to have done this?

Granted, I guess we wouldn't be hearing about this instance at all if there was to be some sort of fine attached - it would have just been swept under the rug - so maybe that's not a good idea. I'm just tired of the "oops we stored your passwords in plaintext lol" from companies with engineers that should _clearly_ know better.

<comment><USER3> What if we stop thinking about fining or promoting sanctions against everything and start helping people do the right thing?

* Promote Multi-Factor Authentication * Promote public/private key usage * Speak out against password reuse ...

<comment><USER2> There's no reason why we can't do both at the same time. Companies, especially tech behemoths like Facebook, should be held accountable for egregious security oversights like this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > we found that some user passwords were being stored in a readable format > within our internal data storage systems.

Truly astounding to see this from a big tech company in 2019!

> This caught our attention because our login systems are designed to mask > passwords using techniques that make them unreadable. We have fixed these > issues and as a precaution we will be notifying everyone whose passwords we > have found were stored in this way.

Why not reset their passwords and force them to change it?

> To be clear, these passwords were never visible to anyone outside of > Facebook and we have found no evidence to date that anyone internally abused > or improperly accessed them.

That's way too confident to state like that. Depending on how long this system was in place, there may not even be logs to query and verify if any kind of unauthorized access happened.

> We estimate that we will notify hundreds of millions of Facebook Lite users, > tens of millions of other Facebook users, and tens of thousands of Instagram > users. Facebook Lite is a version of Facebook predominantly used by people > in regions with lower connectivity.

Hundreds of millions? More number of poorer people usually live in regions with lower connectivity. Why is that, coincidentally, poorer people always have to live with poorer security, poorer privacy protections, etc.? The difference in these numbers seems appalling...as if someone in FB decided that this segment doesn't bring in enough ad money and so solutions for it could be developed with lesser effort and no oversight or reviews.

There is no talk about security as a process in this post. Considering that Facebook hasn't had a CISO for quite sometime, this is a damning finding.

<comment><USER5> > Depending on how long this system was in place, there may not even be logs > to query and verify if any kind of unauthorized access happened.

An earlier article mentioned this has been happening since 2012 (from an anonymous source at FB).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The best time to get rid of passwords was years ago, but the second best time is now.

The lack of at least opt-in public/private keys is disheartening.

</comment><comment><USER7> The title 'Keeping Passwords Secure' only covers perhaps the second, not so interesting part of this article. It does not cover the actual news item in this article: Facebook stored passwords plaintext.

<comment><USER3> Back a decade ago, unfortunately, this was still commonplace.

We should be applauding them for their initiatives for protecting user accounts, like MFA, notification alerts, etc. instead of condemning them for making this awful mistake.

<comment><USER7> A little bit more than a decade AGO, but OK.

> We should be applauding [..] instead of condemning them

Why does it have to be either? We can condemn this mistake, while applauding their security efforts.

These efforts were already known. They are not the news.

The fact they felt the need to be as defensive as they are (with non news) is telling for me. Why apply damage control when there's no urge for it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "... is not a thing that we did"</comment>


One of the most popular YouTubers John Bain in the gaming world has died aged 33 - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.de/totalbiscuit-popular-youtube-games-critic-dies-from-cancer-aged-33-2018-5?r=UK&IR=T <comment><USER2> More comments can be found here:

* Totalbiscuit, one of gaming's most popular YouTubers, has passed away | Hacker News || [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17150221](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17150221)</comment>


Violent Video Games: More Playing Time Equals More Aggression - <AUTHOR> http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/violgametime.htm <comment><USER2> "Playing video games could be compared to smoking cigarettes. A single cigarette won't cause lung cancer, but smoking over weeks or months or years greatly increases the risk. In the same way, repeated exposure to violent video games may have a cumulative effect on aggression."

When are these bullshit sensationalist comparisons going to end?!

<comment><USER3> There's a theory that it actually _is_ one cigarette that gives you cancer -- the tobacco in that one cig absorbed radioactive material and triggers the cancer. That theory supposedly explains why a great number of smokers don't get lung cancer. I'd find a link, but I'm at work.

A more apt comparison for the article might be cigarettes & emphysema/heart disease. Not saying I agree with it, but it'd be a better analogy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "People who have a steady diet of playing these violent games may come to see the world as a hostile and violent place"

What type of fairyland is Bushman living in? The world IS in fact a violent and hostile place. Our origins are rooted in competition and blood.

<comment><USER5> Your username is not helping your case here.

</comment></comment><comment> B-Con I'm curious how much of these was simply being primed to be competitive. Were the test subjects competing against actual humans in the nonviolent video games? The violent video games add a form of personal feel to the game, regardless of whether you are playing against the computer or other people it certainly _feels_ like you're fighting other beings. I wonder if that prompts a higher competitive drive.

<comment><USER6> This was my thought as well. Competitive video games cause aggressive behavior, not violent video games. It's the adrenaline. It's something you get from a high level competition, but something you don't get slaughtering thousands of zombies with a virtual chainsaw.

<comment> B-Con Following from that, it would be interesting to see if competitive contact sports (football, basketball, etc) would produce a similar effect of aggressive behavior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The should have used Mario Kart as one of the non-violent games, that would have ruined their hypothesis.

<comment><USER8> Depends on what the criteria for violent is... Mario Kart is rather violent when you define it as injuring or impeding your opponent. Blood and guns don't make for a violent game although they are present as part of a violent game frequently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really hate studies like this. Their methodology was absolutely terrible, and absolutely does not support the conclusions they drew.

What they have shown is that exposure to violent fiction results in the production of more violent fiction, and nothing else. The researchers, like so many others, made the fundamental mistake of conflating fiction and reality. Fiction, however, is not reality. And naming violent acts to be incuded in a fictional story is not equivalent in any significant way with actual violence.

<comment><USER10> Since it's fiction, would it be ok if all villains were one specific ethnicity throughout all video games which had people in them?

Would it be ok if all the 'good people' were another entirely different ethnicity?

Could we project that to movies and TV shows as well? Would under-representing minorities in TV/movies be okay because it's fiction (barring reality shows, sports and news)?

I think the issue is more nuanced than "it's fiction, therefore it has no impact on real life". What the connection is and how much the influence is, I don't know. But I don't think one can say there is no bleeding through whatsoever.

<comment><USER11> It would not be 'ok'. But it also might not change behavior or attitudes, that's speculation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Students in the study then participated in a competitive reaction time task, > which is used to measure aggression.

Ok, if you have fast reflexes you are a violent person now?

This is extremely misleading.

<comment><USER13> RTFA please. The reaction time task was phony, there was no competitor. What they actually measured was the punishment that the "winner" dished on the non- existent loser. The punishment was allegedly more severe for the aggressive game group.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have a bias here. I love video games and I've never truly believed they have serious detrimental effects on mental health. I'm also not an expert of psychology, but I know of at least two psychologists that are studying this and coming to the conclusion that video games have positive results.

[http://www.ted.com/talks/daphne_bavelier_your_brain_on_video...](http://www.ted.com/talks/daphne_bavelier_your_brain_on_video_games.html)

<http://psych.utoronto.ca/users/spence/Research_Games.html>

Anyways, I tried to approach this study as objectively as I could. But I have some gripes with their methods and more importantly, their conclusions.

> Students in the study then participated in a competitive reaction time task, > which is used to measure aggression. Each student was told that he or she > would compete against an unseen opponent in a 25-trial computer game in > which the object was to be the first to respond to a visual cue on the > computer screen.

The loser of each trial would receive a blast of unpleasant noise through headphones, and the winner would decide how loud and long the blast would be. The noise blasts were a mixture of several sounds that most people find unpleasant (such as fingernails on a chalk board, dentist drills, and sirens). In actuality, there was no opponent and the participants were told they won about half the trials.)

So this study took people playing competitive, violent video games, and then measured their aggression by giving them another competitive, violent game? After three days, they say the students were choosing to deliver harsher and harsher sounds to their "opponents." But after three days, certainly these students had also been given their fair share of harsh sounds, and at that point it's not crazy to think that they were just "playing the game."

Another method they used to measure aggression:

> They were given the beginning of a story, and then asked to list 20 things > that the main character will do or say as the story unfolds. For example, in > one story another driver crashes into the back of the main character's car, > causing significant damage. The researchers counted how many times the > participants listed violent or aggressive actions and words that might > occur.

So after they played a violent yet fake video game that they likely found to be fun, you give them a fake story and they pick violent outcomes? They were likely still in the mindset of playing the game that they found fun.

None of this conclusively shows anything about their long term aggression in the real world. It seems to be using fake scenarios (with poor timing) to try and make real-world conclusions.

<comment><USER15> Since you've mentioned you're biased against the findings, what do you think it would take to convince you of their findings? What would they have to demonstrate for you that their conclusions were valid?

<comment><USER16> As a similarly biased person, I'd also like to see a real control group instead of just "violent" vs. "non-violent" games. Also, 70 people doesn't seem like a very large sample size.

If anything, this study seems purposely built to gain headlines and media attention.

<comment><USER17> I don't disagree with you, but 70 is a pretty large study for something like this. Many drug studies use fewer people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What about the link between sports and aggression? I've seen more fights at sports games than I've seen at lan parties.

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder what the setup for CoD was. Were they playing against each other whether it was public games. I'd say most people would get violent tendencies after playing CoD on public servers.

</comment><comment><USER20> Interesting way to study.

\- As long as they don't use this to make decisions on what games people should be allowed to play that is. I personally think there is a subset of people who would be a lot more productive if they raised their base aggression level a little. Example: Keeping a punching bag might help some people get their aggression out and other people to build enough aggression to plough through boring work :-)

</comment><comment><USER21> A few questions (which are potentially issues) for this study:

\- Doesn't this essentially test short-term reaction to a stimulus? This study doesn't simulate effects after doing this behavior for months, but 3 days. There's always the chance of a dropoff in effect here

\- Would one potential factor here be that the 'violent' games were very immediate twitch-based? And the non-violent games were all essentially racing? Racing games you're penalized frequently for harsh and sharp reactions, and rewarded for getting a smooth flow going and discipline (or at least this is how I play Gran Turismo). In FPS games, you're rewarded for a short, fast and harsh reaction to input stimulus.

\- I would be interested to see the comparison of these games and violent/non- violent non-interactive things (movies).

\- While it might have blown the 'cover' of the experiment, would it be possible to give the testers some other written test on moral-based decision making before/after?

</comment><comment><USER22> If I'm driving and I get stuck in traffic, I'm going to be pissed during the duration of that encounter and if it somehow affects any plans I have. Similarly, if I am having a couple of bad rounds in a game (or even if I'm doing well but my team isn't), I'm going to be pissed during the duration of that game. I will probably still be bothered by it if it somehow manages to manifest itself into my overall self-worth, just as if traffic made me feel bad for being late for something.

If you are constantly beating yourself up over gameplay the same way you're beating yourself up over traffic (i.e. things you can only control so much), you're going to be more aggressive. But at that point, it is an entirely different issue.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm not sure why this is surprising to anyone - it fits together perfectly well with the general concept of priming. Experiencing a higher level of an emotion over a period of time from _any_ source may very well lead to these same results.

I would expect these results for any consistent sustained exposure to any interactive activity, not just agression related.

The next experiment should substitute video gaming with say, sustained OKC or LinkedIn activity.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_(psychology)>

</comment><comment><USER24> The question is whether or not the games were changing the participants' nature/personality (long-term). It seems self-obvious that playing violent games would inspire a short-term effect.

</comment><comment><USER25> I work at Treyarch as software engineer. A lot of the QA people are located near to my office. I haven't seen even a bit of bad behavior from them, in fact they are one of the friendliest folk around. They have played, and still play (test) our game (Call of Duty: Black Ops 2) hours and hours, every day.

</comment><comment><USER26> "The study involved 70 French university students"

A sample size that small won't tip the scales on the debate.

</comment><comment><USER27> Equals is a word often used inappropriately by people who don't understand logic.

</comment><comment><USER28> Let me guess: the control group was playing Scrabble, not Cowboys and Indians.

<comment><USER5> The games used in the study are listed in the press release.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Were they Playing Demon Souls? I get pretty violent playing that game. Granted, I can easily kill every person in a far more violent game and frolic down the street. So I think the quality of the game, the users experience with games, the users desire to die 800 time in 12 seconds, etc... may also have an impact.</comment>


Ask HN: What's the hardest part about learning a new skill on your own? - <AUTHOR> I've never able to swim. 2 weeks ago I set myself a challenge to be able to swim in 7 days. By the end of the first day, I was able to tread water. By the end of 7 days of swimming, I was able to do a full lap of the pool[1]. My technique wasn't great but I'm still happy with my progress.
Looking back, there are definitely things that I could have done to learn even faster. This has made me curious about how other people learn new skills.
What do you find most difficult when learning a new skill? Are there any recurring things that help you learn new skills faster? Would love to hear your thoughts!
[1]I was rained out for 3 days in the middle :( <comment><USER2> Most new skills require you to get past the stage where you feel that no matter how hard you try you won't be able to learn. There's confusion, self dought and anxiety in addition to having to continue day after day. A very strong advantage of learning in a classroom is that even if you feel lost there's someone to help.

I don't have any magic advice but when I want to learn a new task I set a goal, allocate an amount of time for it each day and when I feel like quitting I self talk and say that I will do whatever for the next 15 mins and do that until I finish my allocated time for the task with the hope that I can get past the initial anxiety and sell dought.

Another tip is to set goals. So set daily goals and longer-term goals.

I hope this helps.

</comment><comment><USER3> It doesn't answer your question exactly..but for many things you should find help instead of learning on your own.

For example, take shooting; if you try to learn on your own, all you will do is develop bad habits that have to be unlearned later.

</comment><comment><USER4> Something I really struggle with is getting past the "things I don't know that I don't know" stage. Whenever I start learning something new, I try to come up as quickly as possible with a mental framework about how all the pieces fit together. However, sometimes I don't even know what pieces I might be missing for this framework. I just accept it takes time and is part of the process, but it is still something that I keep in the back of my mind.

</comment><comment> non-entity Currently, its that what I'm want to learn requires me to learn something else which in turn requires me to learn yet another, more fundamental thing and I really dont have the attention span or patience to do all that.

</comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me of a book that you might find interesting: "The First 20 Hours"</comment>


'US a police state, Obama consciously allows torture' –CIA veteran John Kiriakou - <AUTHOR> http://rt.com/usa/news/kiriakou-torture-whistleblower-prison-term-211/

<comment><USER2> > I would have hired an attorney before blowing the whistle

Seems like good advice if you're about to embarrass the government.</comment>


Microsoft LightSwitch being discontinued - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/lightswitch/2016/10/14/lightswitch-update/ <comment><USER2> That comment section is quite depressing.

To be honest I enjoy when customers/developers are kicked in the face like this, by big companies. It's a good lesson to learn and might even push people towards open solutions and formats.</comment>


The Gender Earnings Gap: Evidence from Over a Million Rideshare Drivers [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://web.stanford.edu/~diamondr/UberPayGap.pdf <comment><USER3> Here is the money quote:

> We can explain the entire gap with three factors. First, through the logic > of compensating differentials, hourly earnings on Uber vary predictably by > location and time of week, and men tend to drive in more lucrative > locations. The second factor is work experience. Even in the relatively > simple production of a passenger's ride, past experience is valuable for > drivers. A driver with more than 2,500 lifetime trips completed earns 14% > more per hour than a driver who has completed fewer than 100 trips in her > time on the platform, in part because she learn where to drive, when to > drive, and how to strategically cancel and accept trips. Male drivers > accumulate more experience than women by driving more each week and being > less likely to stop driving with Uber. Because of these returns to > experience and because the typical male Uber driver has more experience than > the typical female—putting them higher on the learning curve—men earn more > money per hour. The residual gender earnings gap that persists after > controlling for these two factors can be explained by a single variable: > average driving speed.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Furthermore, while Uber now allows riders to tip their drivers in-app, this did not become available until June 2017, which is outside the scope of our data. We do not believe that cash tips – which were possible before in-app tipping – had a material impact on driver earnings."

The study did not have any actual tip data for drivers. Tipping was always an option in Uber before June 2017, it just became mandatory for the app to ask a user after each ride. I really think the study is missing some crucial data surrounding tips.

<comment><USER5> Anecdotally, nobody I know ever tipped an Uber driver before tipping was introduced in the app, so there being a negligible tipping component would not surprise me at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is interesting. What interventions can be made to reduce this pay gap? With the reasons in the paper, should this gap be corrected (eg, force maximum speed, pay higher for slow drivers but only gender specific, etc etc).

<comment><USER7> Should interventions be made to reduce the gap?

<comment><USER8> what exactly are you implying? is it that it'll correct itself naturally (free market forces) or that it doesn't need to be corrected?

<comment><USER7> I'm implying that it doesn't need to be corrected.

<comment><USER8> why do you think it doesn't need to be corrected? you don't see how an equitable distribution of resources between the sexes is much more productive for the whole? nm the morality of it.

<comment><USER7> I believe strongly in an equal distribution of opportunity between the sexes. How would you propose fixing the gap that the paper describes? Simply paying women drivers 7% more? Would that be fair?

<comment><USER8> resources should be allocated to correct for this

>The second factor is work experience. Even in the relatively simple production of a passenger's ride, past experience is valuable for drivers.

i.e. women should be given training to compensate for the a priori difference in experience.

women should also be educated about this

>hourly earnings on Uber vary predictably by location and time of week, and men tend to drive in more lucrative locations.

the obvious question becomes why aren't women driving during more lucrative times. is it because those times are late nights during which it's potentially more dangerous for a woman driver. this is of course a systemic issue of a larger system. my point is that usually when someone claims "accidental/benign inequality" all one needs to do is expand the scope to discover the malignant root.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The entire point of the paper is to show that you can observe a statistical anomaly like wage disparity whenever you compare two different populations, even when you essentially control for job effectiveness and isolate out any influence from malicious discrimination. The Uber case is being used to crystallize an example where there exists a bias in the results, and yet it is clearly not due to prejudice. It is illustrating the point that just because there is a pay-gap doesn't mean the source of the pay-gap is employers who don't properly compensate their female employees. Non-malicious systematic influences can easily cause such an effect.

And yet you still have people in here wondering what we can do about this new problem, or how this just goes to show that it's really the SYSTEM that's biased, man. All I can do is shake my head at this point.

<comment><USER8> these two things are in such direct contradiction

>systematic influences can easily cause such an effect

>how this just goes to show that it's really the SYSTEM that's biased

that i have no idea what you're really trying to say.

> Non-malicious

no one cares if it's malicious or benign. ask a black person whether they care about the intentions of those they're being racially profiled by (for example). it doesn't matter. what matters if systemic inequalities exist - <USER2> here is proof that they do.

<comment><USER10> This is either some next level trolling, or really odd.

> The entire point of the paper is to show that you can observe a statistical > anomaly like wage disparity whenever you compare two different populations, > even when you essentially control for job effectiveness and isolate out any > influence from malicious discrimination.

<comment><USER8> >statistical anomaly

>systematic influences

>bias in the results

>SYSTEM that's biased

you really don't see that who i'm responding to isn't at all consistent in what they're trying to say? the first 3 aren't mutually consistent and the fourth makes no sense when contextualized against those prior inconsistencies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So the service can be unbiased, but the society/system it exists in will still be biased.

<comment><AUTHOR> My read of the study is that it more or less proves the opposite: the wage gap is the result of women having such powerfully different preferences that it shows up even when we know discrimination is impossible.

<comment><USER11> You are letting my point sail over you.

How do women come to those "powerfully different preferences"? Do we think that all women got together and decided to only drive at less valuable times?

Or is it more likely that there are systemic/societal reasons why women as a group pick less-valuable times to drive?

<comment><USER12> Can it be systemic yet not societal? Like biological origins?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >Overall, our results suggest that, even in the gender-blind, transactional, flexible environment of the gig economy, gender-based preferences (especially the value of time not spent at paid work and, for drivers, preferences for driving speed) can open gender earnings gaps.

Not sure this is the right conclusion to draw. If Uber driving is less safe for female drivers, it's hardly a "gender-based preference" that's driving the gap. If women are spending more of their flexible hours doing housework or caring for children than men do, this may not be a "preference". While the paper does a great job identifying factors correlated with lower income, does it really indicate an individual's "preference", or does it indicate that the situation they find themselves in either enables or prevents uber participation?</comment>


Why there should never be a "year of the Linux desktop" - <AUTHOR> http://www.gibsonandlily.com/blogs/77

<comment><USER2> The "year of the Linux desktop" is no longer relevant.

It works for me. It works for a lot of other people. That's all it needs to do.

The "year of the Linux desktop" being a viable choice was about 2006. Today people look forward to the "year of the Linux desktop" in the sense of it gaining massive popularity. But that day will not come without lots of marketing or the price difference actually being meaningful. Windows will never have solid DRM because the day the price conscious are ever forced to choose between free Linux and $200 Windows is the day Microsoft loses a massive chunk of market share. So masses of users comes down solely to marketing, and who would get into an advertising buying war with Apple and Microsoft trying to push something free?

Linux has a critical mass of developers, testers, and users willing to help others. As long as it fulfills their needs, it will continue to improve.

It is not a business where market share matters. It is not a business selling licenses on seats. It is a project that scratches some people's itch, and thats all it is. People derive great value from it, and that drives its growth.

I've used it at home for 4 years, and my company (30 people) has used it for 2.5 years. It does everything I need and my company needs, and costs a lot less in licensing and IT support. It might be different for other companies who came from Windows and have to deal with legacy systems/documents, but starting from scratch it is great. I'm happy to give back some bug fixes and support in exchange for what I perceive to be a better experience. That experience is derived solely from the number of developers and dedicated users, it has nothing to do with how many total users there are. A billion more users that do nothing to help Linux progress wouldn't do a damn thing for me.

So I believe that the "year of the Linux desktop" has long since past, and anyone still writing about it just doesn't get it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that was sort of the point of the article...

There is no "year of the linux desktop" because Linux and Windows should be looked to to fulfill different roles.

To me, windows isn't a "real" operating system. I don't use _windows_ for anything other than running putty or chrome. It isn't really doing anything.

Linux, on the other hand, is at the absolute core of the business that employs me. ALL of our servers (except one domain controller) run either Linux of OpenBSD.

If I had my way, all of the workstations would be running it as well. This is an okay solution for me, because all of my workstations have identical (or very similar) hardware. An install would be as simple as imaging a disk, running a few scripts to configure things like networking, and powering it on.

Naturally, I can't speak for everyone, but I _do_ have a considerably larger amount of experience with linux as a desktop than most. I also have a lot of experience with support. Supporting linux on a hodge-podge of hardware is definitely not something I would want to undertake.

Guiding my mom through Ubuntu would also not be something I would want to do.

I think a lot of Linux nerds (members of the church mentioned in the article), have a bit of a cognitive bias when it comes to how easy linux is to use. They _WANT_ it to be easy. They overlook the bits of tinkering they have to do to actually get it working correctly.

Like I said, this is all my own experience. YMMV. However, if you are having as easy a time installing and running linux as a desktop OS as you do with windows...please tell me what hardware you're using!

<comment><USER2> Old thread so hopefully you read this later. We use Dell's bought with Ubuntu pre-installed at work. If we have a problem we call up Dell and they fix it. If you are doing desktop Linux in an office it is the best way to go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> What a silly article - after all, Gentoo is the system where tying your shoelaces involves growing your own feet from scratch.

I love desktop Linux (or wanted to) but it hasn't really happened because there's a shortage of application development that suits the needs of early adopters with deadlines. You can use Gimp, for example, but most people want Photoshop. If you're editing audio or video then your options are more constrained, and none of the market leaders have Linux editions. I'm simplifying here, of course, but the reasons have been laid out in more detail time and again.

Round 2000 or so I was sure Linux was going to take over - I was running Gnome with enlightenment as my WM and people would come up and say 'wow, what's that'. And i could run Compiz right now and throw windows around, and people would still be impressed...but once you get past the eye candy, you hit this real functionality gap and have to make a choice between becoming a dedicated Linux hacker who runs experimental software all day, or going with the industry standard and running something industry-standard that you can show to your clients.

There isn't a truly compelling reason to move from Windows or Mac unless you're building your own system for most applications. This isn't a fault of Linux: there just aren't many end-user applications of which you can say 'this is the best, and you can only take part by running Linux', nor any 'holy shit where has this been all my life' for non-programmers.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have my macbook. I like the hardware, for the most part. However, I just installed ubuntu again on my desktop, and it's like coming back to an old friend. I love middle click paste alongside ctrl-V. I still can't get used to all the mac changes in software I already know. For me, Ubuntu just works. _shrug_

The linux desktop is mature as far as I've been able to see. The linux laptop, on the other hand, still isn't there and from what I can tell, may never be. They still can't get the power management quite right, last I checked. Suspend and hibernate still give it fits on some hardware. I think the only way that will be solved is if the vendors take responsibility to ensure compliance on their own hardware, and that doesn't seem to be happening.

</comment><comment><USER5> What in the world does this person's experience however many years ago compiling Gentoo have to do with "linux on the desktop"?

</comment><comment><USER6> For what it's worth, seven or eight years ago, it was a huge exercise in wizardry for me to get every piece of hardware working on my laptops under Slackware or Gentoo or Debian. If it wasn't the wireless, it was the sound, the graphics card, or the ACPI. Then I enjoyed the careful prospect of fiddling with X and window manager configuration files endlessly if I wanted any kind of pleasant GUI.

I just installed Ubuntu on my new Dell laptop the other week, for the sake of running a particular thing that isn't available on Windows, and the difference is eye-popping. Zero configuration for _any_ hardware. (For some reason, it didn't load the ATI drivers by default, having them in a "restricted" category, but it was easy to add them.) Wireless worked out of the box. No package management problems. Totally capable GUI configuration. 90% as usable as Windows 7.

Additionally, I didn't even have to repartition my drive to install it, which blew my mind. It installed into a disk image with a Windows installer, and modified the Windows bootloader to boot from the image. That's sure a big improvement from (to a newbie, extremely scary) disk partitioning and LILO/GRUB adventures.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been espousing this view for months. As much as we hate it, Windows "just works", and if you have a serviceable Linux box on your LAN, all it takes is a few PuTTY shells and you're in business. Keep a cmd.exe window open to pscp things that you're working on locally (like web graphics, for example), and things are pretty seamless.

<comment><USER8> >Windows "just works"

That has never been my experience. Trying to customize my Windows install to the point where I can actually do anything with it has uniformly been a long, painful, expensive process every time I have had to do it.

Er, not to mention having to go over to friends' houses frequently to try and get their "just works" Windows installs to _just work, already_ , when they run into problems.

Frankly, my last three Ubuntu installs (on an Acer Apire One, a cheap dual- core PC, and the old, decrepit PC that the cheap dual-core PC replaced) were faster, easier, and far less painful than my previous four or five Windows installs.

I had to do a bit of fiddling with the netbook to get wifi working (I had to install and configure madwifi-hal), but I had to do a _lot_ of fiddling to get wifi working on the default XP install, so tit-for-tat.

Suspend _just works_ , the low battery warning _just works_ , remote desktop _just works_ , multiple displays _just works_ , and I'm seamlessly connected to my home PC and the backup server in the basement.

That's not to mention the fact that I can browse easily to remote servers using the default file explorer (Nautilus) without having to muck around with an FTP program, which is kind of handy when doing web application development.

<comment><AUTHOR> What are you trying to do on a windows install that requires customization?

Also, fiddling with the wifi on *nix and fiddling with it on windows are...not quite the same thing.

I have no problem with it on linux (in fact, I have destroyed several keyboards in fits of rage while trying to get it working on windows.), but my mother would have absolutely no freaking CLUE how to even begin trying to get it to work.

<comment><USER9> >What are you trying to do on a windows install that requires customization?

Slipstreaming XP SP3 into a pre-SP1 ISO image, installing useful software (esp. Firefox), setting themes and desktop backgrounds, etc. I've done the first without too much pain, the second with some fiddling and mediocre results, and I don't even know if you can do the last.

<comment><AUTHOR> What percentage of users do you suppose are doing these things? Less than 1%? Less than .5%?

As far as setting desktop backgrounds...the process is the same in KDE as it is in Windows or Gnome. (FVWM, which is actually the WM I run on most of my machines with X installed is a bit different).

As far as themes...I'm not even entirely sure that windows _has_ themes. What do you mean by that?

<comment><USER9> >What percentage of users do you suppose are doing these things? Less than 1%? Less than .5%?

With 80+% marketshare, 0.5% of users is still a lot.

>As far as setting desktop backgrounds...the process is the same in KDE as it is in Windows or Gnome.

Sorry, I thought you meant _during_ installation.

>As far as themes...I'm not even entirely sure that windows has themes. What do you mean by that?

Really? Right-click on XP desktop->Properties. The first tab is Themes. Microsoft used to sell them, you can download a bunch from [http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/desktop/default...](http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/desktop/default.mspx) and there are lots of 3rd-party themes too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I suppose people push the "year of the linux desktop" meme since it generates buzz. I personally use Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows all in the same day, and feel great doing it.</comment>


What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic - <AUTHOR> http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html <comment><USER2> Personally I think one of the hardest things to wrap your head around is how it's power-of-two fractions that can be represented exactly, not power-of-10 fractions. In other words, 0.5 can be represented exactly as IEEE floating point, but 0.1 cannot.

This is not inherent to floating point; a floating point representation that was based on decimal digits instead of binary ones would not have this issue.

It's not too hard to understand limited precision and rounding; we deal with both all the time. The part that's hard to understand is that you have to perform rounding simply to put a number like "0.1" into a floating-point value.

Specifically, in 0.1 as an IEEE float is represented as:

      val = 0x3dcccccd
      sign = 0
      significand = 4ccccd (1.6000000)
      exponent = 0x7b (-4)

So 0.1 is internally represented as 1.6000000 * 2^-4, while 0.5 has the much more understandable representation 1 * 2^-1.

This is made even more confusing by the fact that rounding performed on output will make it _appear_ that 0.1 has been exactly represented in many cases.

So take a data type that can't exactly represent some numbers that look very simple in decimal, but that appears to represent them exactly when you print them out, but then compares not equal when you try to actually compare them. No wonder people get confused!

<comment><USER3> It's easier to explain that decimal 0.1 in binary is 0.000110011001100110011001100110011001100110011001100110011001100110011001100... It's impossible to present accurately with any combination of significand*2^exponent in a finite-memory binary system. Just like 1/3 in decimal system can't be written down accurately.

<comment><USER2> Sure, but it's not obvious what numbers can be represented exactly and which can't, and since the numbers get rounded on output to _look_ exact, you can easily be misled into thinking that 0.1 _can_ be represented.

<comment><USER4> Any rational number can be represented as a fraction p/q, where p and q are integers with no common factors (reduced fraction).

If that fraction is representable as an exact "decimal" number in base b that means that p/q = m/b^n = m * b^(-n), where m and n are integers too. For example, 3/4 = 75/10^2 or 0.75 in decimal, 3/2^2 or 0.11 in binary.

That means p * b^n = m * q. We said p and q have no common factors, so all of q's factors go into b^n. That means that q divides b^n, or in other words:

p/q is representable as an exact "decimal" number in base b if and only if q divides some power of b.

For example, 0.1 is 1/10. But there is no power of 2 which is divisible by 10, so 0.1 is not exactly representable in binary.

As another example, 1/3=0.33333.... because there is no power of 10 divisible by 3.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The D programming language takes the (so far as I know) unique approach that the implementation is allowed to evaluate expressions in the highest precision it wants to - the different floating point data types only represent storage formats.

The idea is that algorithms should be designed with a minimum required precision, but no maximum, and should not fail if higher precision is used.

I think this rule serves very well.

<comment><USER6> That seems a bit terrible. Now it's D so it's not like it's a real problem but: if I went from one "standards compliant" implementation to another and suddenly my numerical code started being shit because it turns out my first compiler was silently more precise... there would be much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

<comment><USER5> I have yet to see any algorithm, outside of a test suite, that gave worse results when precision was increased.

<comment><USER7> That 'other standards compliant compiler' need not be the one with higher precision.

Also, it might have higher precision in most cases but just not in that case where your code needs it most.

Real-world examples are x86 compilers that use the 80-bit floating point registers for intermediates, but flush them to 64-bit results (sounds stupid, but it is not; flushing typically is done to the bytes that hold the result variable). There, the register allocation algorithm used by the compiler can be the determiner of which operation sequences get done in 80 and which in 64 bits.

gcc: <http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/FloatingPointMath> (the 'Note on x86 and m68080 floating-point math' section), [http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-3.4.4/gcc/Disappointments....](http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-3.4.4/gcc/Disappointments.html) ( _"On 68000 and x86 systems [...] you can find that a floating point value which is not a NaN is not equal to itself"_ )

Microsoft's compilers: <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/e7s85ffb.aspx>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article seems to appear every so often on HN and Reddit. It used to be at sun.com. I'm glad Oracle didn't 404 it.

The title isn't accurate though. The article is mostly about using IEEE 754 to manage computational error, which is a pretty esoteric subject.

Most programmers spend precious little time using floating point and don't need to worry about computational error. Even among those who use it a great deal -- those doing numerical analysis -- computational error doesn't seem to be something they concern themselves with. My guess is that in most instances it's swamped by experimental error.

My thoughts on this article are:

1: It's certainly good that it's available online. It'd be better with a different title.

2: It's good that modern CPUs support IEEE 754 for the rare instance that people use it.

3: It's worth reading the first third or so of it, just to get an idea of what computational error is

4: The most important thing the "typical" programmer needs to know is that dollar values shouldn't be represented in floating point. Ideally they shouldn't be represented as integers either because the integer rounding truncates towards zero, which is not how an accountant would round.

<comment><USER9> It's perfectly possible to generate accountant rounding using integers. If the accuracy required is one cent then the system must merely multiply by 10 before calculating and then use dutch round to the nearest 10 before dividing by 10. I'm pretty sure you could do it with quarter cent accuracy rather than 10ths of a cent.

You just shouldn't calculate with 1 cent accuracy if the rounding methodology is important to your business, but truth be told most businesses have a lot more to optimize than the rounding methodology used.

<comment> daniel-cussen >> but truth be told most businesses have a lot more to optimize than the rounding methodology used.

Perfectly true. I can see exceptions being managing other people's money-- banks, accountants, and the IRS had damn well better get this right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the latex typeset pdf is much nicer to read.

<http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19957-01/800-7895/800-7895.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER11> The big thing I remember from my Numerical Computing course in college was floating point arithmetic is not commutative. Totally. Rocked. My world. You have to work hard to retain your significant digits throughout the computation.

<comment><USER12> Floating point addition and multiplication are commutative, but are not necessarily associative.

<comment><USER11> You are correct. I should have been more clear. Our expectation for addition to be associative is deeply ingrained and it's shocking to discover that's not the case when performing floating point computations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> [http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=Wha...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=What+Every+Computer+Scientist+Should+Know+About+Floating- Point+Arithmetic&sortby=create_ts+desc)

</comment><comment><USER14> After spending a week ripping out someone's poorly thought out floating point code, the lesson I learned is that you just shouldn't use floating point unless you really need to.

For example, if you're working with money, you don't need floating point.

<comment><USER15> Not that big a deal. Most floating point numbers are imprecise rounded values to the degree of precision that is being used. An imprecise binary representation of an already imprecise rounded value at the edge of precision really doesn't matter - and if it does the problem is that you probably needed more precision in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What Every Web Programmer Should Know About Floating Point:

0\. Do not calculate monetary amounts in FP. Businesses don't react well to being told about acceptable imprecision.

1\. Javascript is floating point.

2\. Do not calculate money amounts in Javascript.

There are decimal libraries for Javascript (eg [1][2]). Use those if you need to calculate monetary amounts.

[1] <https://github.com/whatgoodisaroad/Big-js>

[2] <https://github.com/dtrebbien/BigDecimal.js>

<comment><USER17> I'm assuming that storing $129.99 as 12999 and dividing by 100 when necessary would be preferable?

<comment><USER16> The problem is that every javascript number is floating point.

Even if you think you have integers ... sometimes you don't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A number of years ago the project I was working had problems in Ada because the conversion of floating point numbers from character string to internal floating point by the Ada compiler did not always produce the same values as runtime conversion. I had fun reconciling the two.

</comment><comment><USER19> What Every Programmer Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic:

<http://floating-point-gui.d>

<comment><USER19> Should be <http://floating-point-gui.de> \- sorry for that

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> What every Computer Scientist should be asking about Floating-point arithmetic: Why aren't there types for fixed-point/rational arithmetic exposed by your language and/or standard library?

<comment><USER21> Would also love 128 bit ints to be commonly available. And I even have a use for them: representing the size in bytes of some extremely large storage configurations (sparse ones -- as yet a fully allocated > 2^64 byte store would cost several billions).</comment></comment>


Go Slow to Go Fast - <AUTHOR> http://onticoren.com/go-slow-to-go-fast <comment><USER2> Only today I was thinking how agile "sprints" are the wrong terminology. No one wins a marathon by running back-to-back sprints. I know it's only terminology but I think it affects our approach and in practice can encourage a Continuous Death March instead of the intended manageable workload.

<comment><USER3> I wonder whether there's some hidden wisdom in the terminology. Agile "sprints" are (in the folk-wisdom) ideal for getting somewhere quickly precisely when you don't know where you want to finish. In this case a "quick sprint, rest, reorient, sprint again" metaphor seems appropriate.

On the other hand, long-running maintenance work with a stable goal over a year or more probably benefits much less from sprinting. I guess in this case we would need to know what "marathon" development would be :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Bad code is a time and money sink.

The biggest mistake most companies make is not rushing bad code out the door too quickly, that's hard to prevent entirely, but rather failing to take the time to fix or replace bad code quickly once it's obvious the functionality isn't throwaway.

<comment><USER5> How is that relevant to the OP?

<comment><USER4> The OP extols the virtues of releasing code "when it's ready" due to the hazards of rushing code out the door in an "unready" state. Unready means bad.

<comment><USER5> ah yes I agree

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In 2011 I started doing some independent consulting/dev work to supplement lagging employment income. I found that this works pretty well, that is, always having a couple of projects in the queue. If I get stuck on one or just sick of it I go to another for a while. I've not managed to avoid deadlines entirely, because my clients have deadlines of their own. But the pipelining concept is a good one.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Start slow to finish fast" has been my motto for many things. It helps me avoid making mistakes at the beginning that I have to go back and change everything to fix. It also helps me avoid missing details that would make life easier.

<comment><USER8> I find it very similar to the motto I follow when jogging (and also what I"m trying to apply to other things): keeping a steady pace. By keeping a pace, you don't burn out towards later stages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think there is an unbalanced amount of effort and enthusiasm spent these days on development methodologies: agile, waterfall, what-have-you. I think the thing that makes or breaks a product is the customers; and customers don't care if your product is well made, they just care that it solves their problems.

As long as you are moving forward (even if it is by inches) you are doing fine. A shipped working product that solves an important problem is better than a late unreleased one that tries to do everything.

</comment><comment><USER10> _A well developed cloud app allows for transparent updates without an acceptance loop from the customer._

This has a certain feel of spin about it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Great article.

Unreleased code is a liability and branches are a waste of time. If you're not deploying every day you are doing something wrong.

<comment><USER11> The best way to branch seems to be to release the code but hide it with a switch so that only developers can see it. This way, when you release the new feature, all you are doing is enabling it for everyone else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've found that, as a general rule, there's no such thing as actual deadlines. Or rather, actual deadlines are rarer than supposed ones.

One common excuse for a particular ostensible deadline is that it is due to some _other_ , downstream/outside deadline, perhaps on the customer or stakeholder's side of the fence. But even then, very often, that entity's deadline is not really a deadline, it is typically yet another date pulled out of thin air because it sounded nice, regardless of whether it was realistic. A guess added to another guess added to another guess which get summed up and padded and turned into an estimate then pegged to a date then ever after referred to as a "deadline" (cue ominous music.) We come up with deadlines because we like to have certainty and the myth of control over things where in reality there's quite a deal of uncertainty and quite a large number of things over which we have no control. Deadlines can be good as goal dates associated with certain milestones, but even then it's best to call them that and treat them as such. I've seen too many software industry deadlines where teams worked like keyboard slaves to ship a particular feature set by a particular date, and ALMOST ALWAYS in the cases where the date wasn't hit there were NO significant negative consequences, no heads rolled, no business lost, etc., just a pleasant _whooshing_ sound as the date flew past, and a quiet rethinking on the part of every developer who just took part in that "false alarm" march.

I've also noticed that, at least in the software industry, that deadlines are common when Project Managers are present. But PM's are, in my opinion, a bit of an anti-pattern themselves. Not that all PM's are bad -- because some of them are good and helpful -- but rather that if you're in a situation where you think you have to have a PM (or a deadline, or both) then that's usually a consequence of something else being wrong about your organization or process, and so you might be better off fixing those root causes instead.

<comment><USER6> In some situations deadlines, even if pulled from thin air, are at least something to focus on to get the project _done_. I've been on projects with no real deadlines, and they seem to meander forever and never actually get done. Finally someone will put a foot down on a date and magically everybody gets things wrapped up.

<comment><USER12> agreed! which is why I said this:

> Deadlines can be good as goal dates associated with certain milestones, but > even then it's best to call them that and treat them as such.</comment></comment></comment>


Funky bookmark app thing - <AUTHOR> http://hiveslider.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Just another one of my little web apps, some might find it useful or inspiring...

tom (APIHouse.com)</comment>