Ask HN: As CTO of an early-stage startup, how do I utilize my time well? - <AUTHOR> With a reasonable amount of funds at our disposal, how I use my time is very important. I would like to be more effective with my time and output.
Being interested in multiple different things, I get into the low-level details of any problem that I look into. While it is educationally satisfying for me, my company does not benefit from me working on smoothly scaling fonts for a responsive marketing website.
Should I involve myself in low value tasks like website edits (that may only take up < 5hrs a month for experienced developers) or focus only on high value projects?
Should I work at a higher level, overseeing other engineers or get into the development (our core product is a mobile app) myself?
I built the initial versions of our app, website, backend before we raised funding and hiring developers. Due to my broad interest and explorations, I am above average in multiple technologies but not an expert in any of them. Hence, my worry of slowing down the team by being involved in development myself. <comment><USER2> (have been a CTO/VPE/HoD for 20+ years, made many mistakes, am often wrong, now coach CTOs)

I think it depends on how many developers are there. I tell all coachees they should invest 50% of their time in developing their team. If you grow, don't hire team managers too late (or whatever you want to call them), or you'll get into burn out territory and you'll neglect developing people. Don't manage more than 5 people. As a CTO you should be the bridge between business and tech. Explain business to developers (marketing isn't stupid), explain tech to the CEO/CMO, support the CEO strategy with your specific tech knowledge. Spend time on explaining things and aligning people. You're the tech spokesperson and developer representative on the board.

If learned, although often being the best developer overall, with only a small percentage of development time I know much less about the architecture, domains and edge cases of an application compared to other developers. So I did drop developing in the end (but do it in my spare time to keep up with the state of the art).

Otherwise focus on the things that are fun to you, you're in for the long run which doesn't work if you don't enjoy the things you do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the very well-put advice. At what stage of a company do you recommend getting coaches such as yourself? Do you coach early-stage CTOs as well?

<comment><USER2> I coach everyone who thinks he needs coaching or who wants coaching (and after getting to now each other I thin I can help).

I got into coaching because for years as a CTO I wanted to talk to a peer open and about everything, stuff I could not talk to my team or my boss about and was left with on my own and a lot of pressure.

The topics are different for everyone though. A developer freshly promoted to the CTO role has different topics (how can I do X) than an veteran CTO (who might want to get the sense, why and fun back into the job and discuss what she should do next).

I often start with consulting (talking about things, how to do X, what I'm thinking of Y) and migrate to coaching (talking about the person).

<comment><USER2> "know each other and I think I can help"

Sorry for the missing characters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Its depends if you product is tech, or if your product uses tech. I.e. if you main risk is business risk and the tech is easy, vs if you main risk is tech risk and you business is easy.

If you main risk is business risk (I.e. most money go to marketing/ad), then you go shallow, and make sure that everything go smooth.

If your main risk is tech risk, than you should lead the way. I.e. to lead in a tech risk startups, you must be versed in the most risky tech, other wise, you will not be able to judge the technical decision, which might lead to your ruin.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a brilliant perspective! There are parts to our business that are tech-easy and there are certain strategic tech possibilities that may or may not work. Makes sense to oversee the product development while actively working on the moonshots no?

<comment><USER3> No. Do not work on a moonshot, unless the business is about the moonshot. When your a CTO, and specifically after you have taken investor money, your goal is the business not the tech.

As a startup you simply do not have the long term horizon for strategic projects. It would take all of your time to cover regular fires.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Above is great.. but your role as a fiduciary also requires you to NOT allow development and deployment costs to get out of hand.

You are personally responsible for ensuring underlying technical costs don't undermine the viability of the enterprise.

Many CTOs just say, "we'll cloud everything", and are "shocked" when they get a $500k monthly bill from AWS because a developer wrote errant auto-scale rules.

Development and deployment should always be costed using both on-premise and cloud solutions, weighted with the associated risks of hacking, cost, and time.

My strategy: budget cloud, implement on-premise.

Nowadays, you can simulate AWS using docker-swarm or kubernetes, and that will give you a reasonably accurate scaling cost for your deployments.

My two racks at a datacenter cost me $2k/mo all in with 1gbps bandwidth. The cost of clouding, which I check regularly, is over $18k/mo. I can always scale TO the cloud, but it's an order of magnitude (or more) harder to de-scale to on-premise as developers take liberties with AWS provided shortcuts that they really should learn to deploy locally.

De-scaling will cost time, and developers who prefer cloud may leave as a result, requiring costly re-hires and schedule slips.

Ultimately, the CTO's role should include: inform and educate, minimize technical debt, and maximize the company's return on investment in technical staff and capital expenditures for computing needs, all while understanding the risks of the associated decisions to the bottom line of the company, financially, legally, and in terms of time-to-market.

As a 35 developer with 35 years experience, I can tell you that if you let the development team decide, 95% of the time you will lose control of the costs very quickly.

My suggestion to keep development costs low is to buy 10 used or new Dell servers and rack them on-premise, and use that for your development "cloud".

Having physical limits on capabilities will force devs to think "lean", and gain personal experience building the supporting technologies they need to run whatever they develop.

Your development team will be better, and your shareholders will appreciate your thriftiness.

You can always scale up.

Cheers!

<comment><USER4> Almost forgot... if you make the early choice to use a walled-garden solution to create an MVP, you need to make sure you can develop it with off-the shelf systems to ensure that vendor-lock-in doesn't screw you in the long run should the vendor raise their prices, get acquired, go out of business, or have a huge outage or hack that puts your customers looking for a new solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here are a few ideas:

\- It'd be useful to curb the belief that you have a reasonable amount of funds at your disposal. Think like a pauper startup or you will go back to being one.

\- You are a living book of the product and you need to communicate the product arc and vision, and the rationale of your decisions. One way to speed things up is with a "This is what I think, and here is why I think it" because then, other members can send in pull requests to your thinking.

This is especially true because you built the initial versions of the app, therefore, some scar tissue has formed and those initial conditions have influenced the current state of the application, whether the stack, the architecture, etc. Why things were implemented the way they were, what were the constraints at the time, what were the hypotheses. The rationale of things must be documented somehow and shared, because then it can be "diffed" and people can send in pull requests. Sure, dreamer7 has implemented this part like this because at that time, there was poor bluetooth support, but now X has a new driver so we can just change X and have 40% less battery usage.

\- Aligning the team: emails that go to all on the direction of the product, the different parts, how they play with each other, what would be a good outcome, things that you're looking into, desirable state (integrations, extensibility, API, etc). How it relates to the job to be done, how it relates to the segment, sector, ecosystem. i.e: also from a top view where your company is just an actor in the world, and not the world. What does it add to the global system.

\- A very useful thing to do is to scale yourself and the team: record video calls and put them at the disposal of the team. Even when you have a one-on- one call with a member to discuss implementation details on something. All the members can go back to that call and get a detail they forgot, and it documents product building as it happens. You're scaling yourself. You can use Open Broadcaster Software to record your screen, so anyone watching the video gets the context. This is useful because often times, you'll have a discussion, and are digging through source code, cloning repositories, and writing code on the fly to test things. People can witness problem solving. New hires can just consume that content and _learn_ how product gets built at that shop, so they can improve it and adopt elements from it. They also get context on a particular part of the project. This also means documenting things like meetings, or discussions, or contribution guides, or on-boarding documents, etc.

\- Describing goals: you can focus on edits and you will do it often. At some point, you'll notice similar things happening and you're editing similar things. This prompts you to find an abstraction and encapsulate what you're trying to do. For example, you might go over pull requests and suggest a contributor make certain parts addressable with API calls. And then do it another time. And another time. At some point, you may want to abstract that away and have a direction such as: "Anything you can do with point and click must be doable with an API call." That sets the tone and people can auto- review their pull request against that.

\- Aligning the team: (yes, I said it twice). A good habit to have is to send a periodic email and blast it to everyone (colleagues, investors, advisors, board members) that recaps what you all are working on, and why you're working on it, and the beliefs and data that lead you to working on it, and the parts you're unsure about, and what shifts you are noticing in the field. You can then go back and forth answering questions because people will say "I thought it was X".

In that email, you can expose top down a few ideas. Everyone must be able to understand it, so you can present an idea from different angles.

Run it through something like [https://github.com/shivam5992/textstat](https://github.com/shivam5992/textstat) to get your text scored. Tweak until you have good scores for readability.

\- Proofs of concepts: Here's a way to balance your exploration/details with leveraging the team. Your team members are busy working on implementing features, or fixing bugs. You can help fleshing out issues. You can also take an issue that is important and non trivial, explore the space, and write a prototype, a proof-of-concept that you push to a branch. You can make sure to document things in the issue, your thoughts about the design, etc. The team member who will pick up that issue in the future will have a starting point, an initial implementation. If you do that for the issues you consider important, it will kickstart development.

\- Paying attention to the ecosystem: you have a backlog with issues for features and bug fixes. Similar to a garden, you have to tend to those. You can go over them, one by one, and re-think their relevance, doability. Some issues were opened 5 months ago with a "state". The state 5 months ago is different. What has changed that can help close this issue by either fixing the bug or implementing the feature.

Part of it is going over things every week and ask yourself: what was valid a week ago that is not anymore? Or what has changed with respect to this problem? Maybe a new paper came out that even if it doesn't solve your problem, brings you closer to a solution. So you add that to the issue, with your thoughts on how it can play out.

Any contributor who picks up the issue will have a huge context, links for resources, a thought process, experiments that were made, and can choose either to ignore them because it looks trivial to them, or start from there.

Sorry I wasn't more concise.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm glad you weren't concise. This is a gold mine of great advice!

Do you have a blog on this topic? If not, I would strongly urge you to share this in a blog so as to reach a wider audience. Such valuable thoughts and ideas should not end up buried in an inconsequential HN post.

<comment><USER5> Thank you. I've had blogs dedicated to specific topics (electronics, student lab reports, etc), and blogs on different topics (natural language learning, electronics, "cognitive abilities enhancement").

I eventually will compile content about operations and product, but most that exists is internal as I had started doing that during the first weeks of taking a role as an individual contributor: I work really hard to make my role either obsolete or commoditized so that there is a set of actors that can do it. Actors include people at the company, code, a document, a video, a commit hook, a CI/CD pipeline, or sharing views with others about product. And it has paid a _lot_. One of the best compliments I have received from someone taking over a codebase after I had asked them if they needed my help was them saying: "It's pretty well written and documented, even config files are documented. Thanks".

The underlying objective function is being able to disappear without the team being impacted other than maybe missing my lousy jokes.</comment></comment></comment>


White Space: How to Get it Right - <AUTHOR> http://thinkvitamin.com/features/white-space-how-to-get-it-right/

<comment><USER2> Noted in the footer - this article is a chapter from his book Five Simple Steps: A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web.

<http://www.fivesimplesteps.co.uk/>

I highly recommend it for any programmers that want to get either get into the basics of design or interface better with designers. I used to recommend The Non-Designer's Design Book by Robin Williams and still do, but Mark Boulton's book is a PDF that you can download right away.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this the same article as this?

<http://www.alistapart.com/articles/whitespace>

<comment><USER4> ALA allows its authors to republish their work providing they wait 2 months to do so. Mr Boulton obviously ran out of fresh ideas for thinkvitamin this month ;)</comment></comment>


Spry Metrics - <AUTHOR> https://sprymetrics.com <comment><AUTHOR> Spry Metrics was built from the ground up to give you easy access to your website or app analytics. Track anything at anytime, and get instant feedback and metrics from your users in real time.

We're looking for beta testers and feedback, so if you're interested in becoming a would-be adopter, we would love your help and thoughts on our new product.</comment>


Announcing tromboone))) for business - <AUTHOR> http://tromboone.com/!/business

<comment><USER2> _Only cup and paste the code provided in your website._

I think you spelled copy wrong ;)

Otherwise, neat idea!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the heads up Dave.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm the creator of tromboone. Feedback? Questions?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have a special plan for startups. If you are interested to put a webchat to talk with your visitors in your website, let me know.</comment></comment>


Rails Assets (Bower proxy for Bundler) - <AUTHOR> http://rails-assets.org/

<comment><USER2> Hey. We're glad we're on Hackernews, but this site it not yet to be released. We have critical fixes to be done. It'll be available in about a week.</comment>


Design of Lisp-based Processors (1979) - <AUTHOR> http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/5731 <comment><USER2> There's a person devoted to basically (as I take it) re-designing the Lisp Machine (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_machine>) from the bottom-up on modern hardware (in the "let's design (say) a microcontroller using modern hardware assemblage/etc. tools/knowledge" sense) - the blog is at <http://www.loper-os.org> ; from the blog:

\- posts tagged under 'Hardware': <http://www.loper-os.org/?cat=7>

\- posts tagged under 'LoperOS': <http://www.loper-os.org/?cat=11>

\- the 'About' page (an interesting read, but not sure if it's the most concise/on-topic expose to the project; but it presents the author's frame of mind / angle of approach I suppose): <http://www.loper-os.org/?p=8>

<comment><USER3> His project seems to be dead by now, no updates in a long time.

<comment><USER2> That might be (though if you browse under 'Hardware' or 'LoperOS', you'll find relatively recent posts; his updates are generally scarce throughout in any case) - I'd say this is one of those really long-term (indeed, vaporware as of now) projects that might not make it, but hey. In any regard, I'm quite sure the author himself sees this as a really long-term affair and treats it as a free-time-after-work kind of thing. [0] I mean for what he's set out to accomplish, it's a _huge_ undertaking. Perhaps an over-ambitious overkill, but I for one try to follow his (frustratingly infrequent) updates because (1) it's a really interesting idea and (2) I like his perspective and I think some of the people here might share a subset of his views (it's not difficult to spot them, as he rants relatively often;).

[0] <http://www.loper-os.org/?p=562>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reminds me of the Reduceron[1], a processor designed for Haskell. You can do a lot of optimizations in hardware if you have certain guarantees about the software running on it.

[1]<http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/fp/reduceron/>

<comment><USER5> Similarly, you can do a lot of optimizations in hardware if you can make the assumption that it is used correctly.

I hate to sound like I'm arguing against this. I believe it is entirely plausible more progress is made where more work is done. I have not the knowledge to say if more progress is possible on either. Nor do I want that to limit the ideas pursued.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very interesting, I was thinking about how to implement lisp hardware wise just this week. Will read in detail.

The idea that this single document gives you the capability of fully understanding a computing system is insane. If you're patient enough I imagine you could even try building it.

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.aviduratas.de/lisp/lispmfpga/index.html>

<http://opencores.org/project,igor>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Actually I was reading the interview of Ken Thompson on ` _Coders at work_. He said about Lisp machines:

All along I said, "You're crazy." The PDP-11's a great Lisp machine. The PDP-10's a great Lisp machine. There's no need to build a Lisp machine that's not faster. There was just no reason to ever build a Lisp machine. It was kind of stupid.

I don't know much about the topic, but I thought Lisp machines were about enabling a programmer to code in a language that's high level enough to do powerful things, but in the same time that can access to all the low levels components of the machine. Can somebody explain me what I am missing?

<comment><USER8> Permit me to disagree with the distinguished Mr. Thompson. There wasn't quite "no reason".

First off, the notion of a personal workstation was just getting started back then. It was entirely reasonable for the MIT AI lab to want to build some workstations for its researchers, who had previously been sharing a PDP-10. There wasn't, in 1979, any off-the-shelf machine with virtual memory and bitmapped graphics that you could just buy. The original PDP-11 had a completely inadequate 16-bit address space. The first VAX model, the 11/780, was too expensive to be a single-user workstation. The 11/750, released in October 1980, was cheaper, but I think still too expensive for the purpose (though a lot of them were sold as timesharing systems, of course).

In any case, workstations started to be big business in the 1980s, and through the 1990s. Apollo, Silicon Graphics (SGI), and of course Sun Microsystems all enjoyed substantial success. The fact that DEC didn't own this market speaks clearly to the unsuitability of the 11/750 for this purpose.

Also, the extreme standardization of CPU architectures that we now observe -- with x86 and ARM being practically the only significant players left -- hadn't occurred yet at that time. It was much more common then than now for someone building a computer to design their own CPU and instruction set.

None of that has to do with Lisp specifically, but it does put some context around the AI Lab's decision to design and build their own workstation. If they wanted workstations in 1980, they really had no choice.

And the tagged architecture did have some interesting and useful properties. One of them was incremental garbage collection, made possible by hardware and microcode support. We still don't have a true equivalent on conventional architectures, though machines are so fast nowadays that GC pauses are rarely onerous for interactive applications.

Another consequence was a remarkable level of system robustness. It soon became routine for Lisp machines to stay up for weeks on end, despite the fact that they ran entirely _in a single address space_ \-- like running in a single process on a conventional machine -- and were being used for software, even OS software, development. The tagging essentially made it impossible for an incorrect piece of code to scribble over regions of memory it wasn't supposed to have access to.

Obviously Lisp Machines didn't take over the world, but it wasn't really until the introduction of the Sun 4/110 in 1987 (IIRC) that there was something overwhelmingly superior available.

If Thompson had said simply that it was clear from the trends in VLSI that there would eventually be a conventional machine that was so much faster and cheaper than it would be possible to make Lisp Machines -- simply because conventional machines would be sold in much greater volume -- that Lisp Machines would be unviable, I would be forced to agree with him. But that had not yet happened in 1979.

EDITED to add:

One more point. The first CPU that was cheap enough to use in a workstation and powerful enough that you would have wanted to run Lisp on it was the 68020; and that didn't come out until 1984.

<comment><USER4> When Moore's law eventually runs out of steam it might be once again practical to have that sort of specialization.

<comment><USER8> I think it's actually a matter of having better CAD tools. When we get to the point that an entire billion-transistor CPU can be laid out automatically given only the VHDL for the instruction set (or something -- I'm not enough of a chip designer to know exsctly what's involved), then it will be much easier to experiment with new architectures.

<comment><USER9> The barrier to entry is low, now, and getting lower.

Prototyping your custom instruction sets on FPGAs and then commissioning a run to stamp them to ASICs isn't prohibitively expensive, or hard.

In part, it's lack of imagination that has led us so far down the complicated, twisty path into x86 hell.

Just because your chip _can_ do it doesn't mean it's good at it.

<comment><USER10> This is very interesting. I always thought that making an ASIC was prohibitively expensive except for the largest companies. How much does it really cost?

I would really enjoy playing with a Lisp chip. It might not be good for performance computing, but it would be great for writing GUIs. The paper suggests having a chip with a Lisp part for control and an APL part for array processing - I think the modern equivalent would be a typed-dispatching part for control and some CUDA or OpenCL cores for speed.

<comment><USER9> > I always thought that making an ASIC was prohibitively expensive except for > the largest companies. How much does it really cost?

Full custom is still quite expensive.

But you can go the route I'm talking about (prototype on an FPGA, then get in on one of the standard runs at a chip fab via MOSIS or CMP or a similar service) for ~10,000 USD for a handful of chips.

<comment><USER11> I'm sensing some kind of universal price point for bleeding edge fabrication.

Adjusting for time, etc. that's pretty what in cost in 1991 to have a handful of custom boards and firmware built about the TI DSP chips of the day in order build a dedicated multichannel parallel siesmic signal processing array for marine survey work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why don't we have tagged memory in today's architectures? Is nobody getting inspiration from the LISP machine or Burroughs (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_large_systems>) architectures? Is it because of the failed Intel iAPX 432?

<comment><USER13> Languages that need tagged memory can implement this in software, and on current arch they will still run as fast as in a CPU that had that trick implemented in hardware. More likely faster, because the software solution enables much greater flexibility (e.g. look at Javascript VMs, they have various ways to represent values, and that's a single language). Also because compilers can often optimize out _all_ value-representation overheads (by unboxing etc.). Stuff implemented in the CPU decoder (or even in microcode) can never afford to make that level of optimization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is fantastic. I've always heard about lisp machines, but the subject always felt foggy and intimidating. This is a excellent read.

Can you imagine a paper like this written about a language like Ruby or Scala?

</comment><comment><USER15> A colleague of mine worked in the fab, (South building on the Richardson campus), that developed TI's Lisp chip. Years later we found a complete Explorer system including documentation in a local surplus warehouse, bought it and sold it to a collector the next week. Yet another indirect benefit of the whole Lisp system era...

</comment><comment><USER16> Very good introduction to Lisp, as well.

</comment><comment><USER17> Regarding other kinds of evaluation, like evaluating graphs, this is a bit the idea behind XLR (<http://xlr.sf.net>). In that case, evaluation by rewriting parse trees.

Example: a factorial is defined as

        0! -> 1
        N! -> N*(N-1)!

An if-then-else statement as:

        if true then X else Y -> X
        if false then X else Y -> Y

The core operator is the rewrite -> which means: rewrite the parse tree on the left into the parse tree on the right. There are of course rules about binding and stuff, and the type system is a bit of a challenge. But the idea may be intestto whoever is still hanging around this thread :-)

</comment><comment><USER18> This is a joy to read. I'd love to get some tips for other good academic papers like this.

</comment><comment><USER19> What's the point in bringing this here? To make a few people even mode sad?

<comment><USER20> It's a very interesting paper

<comment><USER19> It is 30 years old, and those who could appreciate it know where to find AIMs.

<comment><USER7> Well, some people (the youngest ones) hear may never have heard of LISP machines, but checking the article might make them interested in it.

<comment><USER21> Yes.

Leaving this here so that one can cry how advanced IDEs were on those days and what we have lost.

Kalman Reti, the Last Symbolics Developer, Speaks of Lisp Machines: <http://www.loper-os.org/?p=932>

Additionally

[http://www.sts.tu-harburg.de/~r.f.moeller/symbolics- info/sym...](http://www.sts.tu-harburg.de/~r.f.moeller/symbolics- info/symbolics.html)

<http://www.loper-os.org/?cat=10></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Categorized List of All Java and JVM Features Since JDK 8 - <AUTHOR> https://advancedweb.hu/2019/02/19/post_java_8/ <comment><USER2> Thank you for posting this!

Like many enterprises, we are a Java shop, and some of our more… How shall I say it? Traditional developers and managers think that there is no real benefit in to higher cost to even think upgrading decade old JVM requirements…</comment>


Scope advance gives first look through all cortical layers of the awake brain - <AUTHOR> https://news.mit.edu/2019/3-photon-microscope-advance-reveals-first-look-brain-cortical-layers-0111 <comment><AUTHOR> paper: [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-08179-6](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-08179-6)</comment>


OS X Mavericks forces use of iCloud to sync Contacts, Calendar & Mail Accounts - <AUTHOR> https://discussions.apple.com/message/23478393#23478393

<comment><USER2> With Mavericks, you can't sync via USB anymore. But you can still sync with your own server through CalDAV, ActiveSync, etc. You're not forced to use iCloud.

<comment><USER3> Any idea what (self-hosted) applications can be sync'd with? I'm sure that Exchange (via ActiveSync) is on the list but if you know of popular open- source web apps that it will work with I'd love to hear about them.

<comment><USER2> Apple's Calendar and Contacts Server, which is part of the $20 OS X Server package, is open source: [http://trac.calendarserver.org/](http://trac.calendarserver.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> TIL people still use a USB cable to sync their calendar and contacts. The last time I did that was with a palm pilot. :)</comment>


Rate my startup: oyoLive - Real-Time Mouse Tracking and Live Chat - thomas-st http://beta.oyolive.com/accounts/register/?invitation_key=hn

<comment> thomas-st Hi HNers! My name is Thomas and I study computer science in Switzerland. Today I am launching the oyoLive private beta. oyoLive is an analytics tool that allows you to see mouse and keyboard actions of your website visitors in real- time. Combined with a live chat, you can offer support for customers currently on your site. The beta is free, and I'd like you to test the software on your websites and also let me know what use cases you see for using it. Looking forward for your feedback!

<comment><AUTHOR> A point of worry. You mention tracking keyboard actions. Does that include as they're typing into text and password fields? If you're trying to avoid capturing that kind of data, how can you be sure you're filtering out, e.g. custom JS-driven text widgets?

<comment> thomas-st Right now it captures any text field. I am planning to implement a filter so the website owner can choose which fields they don't want to capture. An idea would be also to specify an entire area of the page that shouldn't be captured.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is it plausible to turn off all text capture, or use an 'opt-in' approach to fields and hooks, rather than an opt-out?

(edit: On the part of the site administrator, I mean.)

<comment> thomas-st Planned (no capture for password fields and an opt-out for other text fields). An option might be also to just display stars on regular input fields, so you could see that users are typing, but not see what they actually type.

<comment><AUTHOR> And it doesn't capture keyboard input except from known text widgets? My paranoia rests with pagewide onKey* hooks and the like. I'm not a JS guy, though, but I'd assume those are possible. That's why I was curious about total opt-out of key trappings.

<comment> thomas-st Currently it only captures known input widgets, i.e. no global key strokes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> This looks very cool! My one concern would be popping up a chat window to a customer and saying "Hi, it looks like you're having trouble with our site" which could come across as creepy. But maybe they'd have to initiate the chat and I'm not understanding this correctly..

<comment> thomas-st Chats can be initiated both by the website visitor and the website owner, so the website owner has the freedom to choose whether to initiate chats. It looks like sites which use the chat actively have improved conversions though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Thomas, really nice job. Looks the resolution for mouse tracking isn't as precise as I'd like it to be. I'm not using the chat feature, but see this as a great way to do remote usability testing.

It's critical that it not slow down our site, so I'll keep an eye out for performance issues.

Feel free to hit me up directly for more feedback. avand at avandamiri dot com.

<comment> thomas-st Thank you for your feedback!

Regarding the resolution, there is room for improvement as the server is currently located in Europe and the website visitor only sends new mouse positions when the previous request returns from the server (in order to avoid multiple requests that may be stuck).

oyoLive should not slow down the site, as it loads asynchronously, but tell me if you notice any slowdowns.

I'll contact you soon to hear more feedback from you. Thanks so far!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I finally tried it and really like the mouse tracking and some of the other insights, like resolution.

1) Is there an easy way to share mouse recording videos w/ colleagues?

2) Small Bug: Links to external sites recorded in the movie, namely Paypal, make weird things happen in new tabs.

Once again, great job, I'd like to try the chat in the future, too.

</comment><comment><USER5> We've seen a few of these sorts of services pop up lately. Do any of them (including this one) fall back to XHR long-polling, etc. when WebSockets aren't available? I'd like to see data for _all_ my visitors, or at least most of them.

<comment> thomas-st WebSockets are only used for the admin panel, and there is a Flash-based fallback in case the browser doesn't support them.

Visitors send most data using simple GET requests (and use long-polling for the chat). This works with all major browsers. So there is no need to worry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting app! What's your data storage policy? Do you store recordings forever -- I am sure recording data eats up data at a breakneck speed. Also do you store recording data on an external site such as S3?

<comment> thomas-st There is no storage policy yet for the beta. I was thinking of storing the visits for a certain period of time, with the ability to save selected visits forever. The beta will give me an idea on how much storage I should anticipate. I am currently storing data in MongoDB's GridFS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This looks very nice. Is there any way to play back recordings of user activities? I generally don't have time to watch my users in real-time, and sometimes there might not be anyone online.

<comment> thomas-st Yes, of course. You can use the Recording tab to play back older visits at any time. Also, you can play a visit from the beginning and it will automatically switch to real-time mode if that user is still online.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just signed up so I will see how it goes over the next few days. Definitely looks like it has potential.

</comment><comment><USER9> This looks like a nice project, but what's with all the 1-hour-old accounts leaving comments down below?

<comment> thomas-st I invited some of my developer friends to support my project. I didn't know who has a HN account and who doesn't, but these are all real people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It doesn't look like you can change your password on your account after setup.

<comment> thomas-st Try <http://beta.oyolive.com/accounts/password/change/> I'll place a link to this page on the account page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow - now that could be a seriously powerful ordeal!

</comment><comment><USER12> Looks very interesting. Can't wait to use it!

</comment><comment><USER13> Cool! I'would like to see that on live too.

</comment><comment><USER14> Great product. Already installed it.

</comment><comment><USER15> Fantastic idea! love it!

</comment><comment><USER16> great webapp Thomas! I'll definitely sign up for the beta.

</comment><comment><USER17> that's neat! does it affect site load speed?

</comment><comment><USER18> this looks super cool!!! nice job...</comment>


Show HN: Crowsnest – API for the Real World - <AUTHOR> https://www.crowsnest.io

<comment><USER2> I don't get it. API (i.e. standardization; XKCD #927 issues aside) part is understandable - except it's not really a standard at this point. But… why would one need an intermediate party who would merely act as a proxy? Or I'm not understanding what kind of service Crownest provides? Intro pages are quite scarce on real technical details on how the whole thing works under the hood.

Sorry for skepticism, but I'd say it's certainly a better to invest the same money in making the same RPi (or alike device(s)) globally-addressable and accessible from the Internet. Indeed, this approach loses all fancy cloud buzzwords, but it brings much more practical value.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps this is just rephrasing ianawilson's reply, but it seems that if Crowsnest eventually supports fifty different cameras (or switches or thermostats or what have you), then (via the tumblr demo):

        crowsnest_data = request.json
        image = base64.b64decode(crowsnest_data['files']['image']['data'])

would be an abstraction layer over the internal functions of all of the cameras.

That way, if I wanted to, say, build an app that does mood lighting depending on how many people are in a room, I could use Crowsnest as my middleman, and then my app would support fifty different cameras and fifty different switches (hypothetically), instead of the one of each that I happen to own and test on. That way, I could swap out devices or distribute my code to others, without having to worry so much about hardware integration. That sounds valuable from my personal perspective.

At least, I think that's how it works, from browsing the site and demos. Feel free to correct me, ianawilson. :)

<comment><USER4> How would that work? Would there be a set of standard drivers that Crows Next interacts with, that you need to have for your devices?

It would be nice if this turned out to be the "VLC Player" of home hardware, where you could fire it up and expect it to work with most devices.

That would take a ton of work on Crows Nest's part though.

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea is that Crowsnest organizes what devices can do into capabilities, and anyone can build a plugin for anything using our device integration framework. A plugin maps between what Crowsnest knows as capabilities and the actual calls that need to be made to the device. Of course, we can't build something for every device, so this framework will be open source with the idea that anyone can use plugins already created for existing devices, and hopefully we can engage the community to contribute and maintain these for devices as new ones are created. As soon as we release this, we're going to seed the community with a handful of integrations that we'll maintain. And if there is anything of particular interest to our users, we'd love to support that.

We've also been toying with the idea of using some device discovery so that devices can tell Crowsnest what they are capable of without needing to build a formal plugin for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> These seems very much like Skynet.IM, except Skynet is opensource and you can host it yourself.

[https://github.com/skynetim](https://github.com/skynetim)

<comment><AUTHOR> Skynet provides cloud infrastructure for IoT applications, but Crowsnest is aiming to have a few additional things on top of that:

        - a rich ecosystem of device integrations,
        - a framework for quickly creating new integrations, and
        - an API that abstracts these devices into organized classes with
        their capabilities

We are actually strongly considering Skynet as a core tool of our backend to manage all of our machine-to-machine messaging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Really brilliant idea and I can definitely see this taking off. We built something like this at Cisco for physical security purposes so there's definitely a use case but I can see many more use cases for this.

My only gripe is that this service sounds more geared towards businesses as the pricing model for consumers seems expensive. Nonetheless, I'm rooting for you guys and can't wait to see what happens.

</comment><comment><USER7> Can someone clarify the value-add? Is it a polyfill for APIs?

If the device already has an HTTP interface over the network, I don't know if it makes sense to pay per device for translation of your API calls... Also, this kind of thing, I would hope was free -- working towards adoption of a standard (i.e. if you make a jquery-level standard that unified so much functionality, at some point, people will forget the semantics of the lower levels and hopefully go to one standard)

<comment><AUTHOR> Not exactly polyfill, although the idea is related.

Crowsnest is trying to help reduce boilerplate for IoT / device-driven applications. Crowsnest provides cloud infrastructure, two-way communication with your devices that works across a NAT, and an ecosystem of plugins for devices that will work out of the box. Interacting with all of this is abstracted into an API where all you need to know is that "it is a light" and you can use the cloud API to "turn it on." Crowsnest takes care of the NAT traversal and the actual calls to the light on the local network, so that you can focus on building your application, rather than maintaining device infrastructure and integration.

As pointed out in another comment, it's hard to compete with existing standards, but we hope to act as a super set as much as we can, making use of existing standards in our implementation.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the clarification

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Projects like this will be important going forward. Making a robust API that can interface in a simple manner with all of the new types of fancy household gadgets (philips hue, lockitron, etc) as well as devices which are of practical business concern like alarm systems and cameras, is a sound goal. Anything that makes fidgeting with proprietary UIs of various household devices closer to a thing of the past gets a vote from me.

</comment><comment><USER9> So I need an RPi (finally, a reason to use mine...) and a supported video camera? What other devices are you adding and when? Any other examples other than this: [http://crowsnestdemo.tumblr.com](http://crowsnestdemo.tumblr.com).

Really cool idea, good luck with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> We started out with cameras because they are pretty rich devices, and we wanted to start with just one device. We are currently working on an open source plugin system with the intention that anyone will be able to add IP devices to Crowsnest. We're aiming to have this out in about a month.

When we release the plugin system, we're also going to release a handful of integrations made using it, including things like the Wemo outlets / switches, Philips Hue, Nest Thermostat, and Libelium's air quality / water quality / smart agriculture sensors. We want to build things that the community and our customers need, so if there are things that would be particularly useful or interesting, we'd love to work on those first. We're always looking for feedback and ideas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What protocols do you support? BACnet? Modbus? ZigBee? LON? X10? Does it integrate with SCADA systems? Home automation is a messy area with a dozen "standards".

<comment><AUTHOR> The device integration framework is currently Python running on an RPi, so if you have Python libraries to talk on any of these protocols, we're trying to make it easy to build plugins that will support devices that talk via these different protocols. Because the integration framework is open source, we hope that developers will contribute these projects back to the community, so we can support as many of these as possible. And when we release the plugin system (soon!), we plan to seed the community with a handful of integrations to get it started.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is it fully open source e.g. can I run my own crowsnest server for free, fork etc? And is there anything around federation and discovery?

<comment><AUTHOR> Our API / cloud service is not. The device integration framework (which runs locally on the RPi) is going to be open source, so that anyone can create plugins / integrations for any IP device.

Although we don't have it specced out yet, we have been talking a lot internally about using some kind of discovery protocol so that devices can report their capabilities and get up and running without an explicit integration plugin.

If you have any ideas or best practice thoughts for doing the discovery, we'd love to hear them.

<comment><USER11> Not meant as anything but constructive observation - but not open sourcing the core means it could be seen as another closed platform play, with open source plugins being used as a way of getting free features. My guess is that if this idea is compelling enough to get traction, a FOSS version would emerge in any case - for reasons of privacy, price, technical roadmap ownership etc. and the real money would be in offering services and products around that (I'm thinking Wordpress/Automattic). It's an obvious pov and I could be completely wrong of course :p (I guess IFTTT is the counterexample)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, releasing parts of Crowsnest as FOSS is a hotly debated topic internally. We would certainly be interested to talk to anyone who has experience running a business with a core product that is open source, especially if they were able to raise capital.

<comment><USER12> At Singly, we raised about $9mm of VC with 100% of our code open source. We saw that as absolutely essential in creating an ecosystem and it was a huge benefit in reducing customer concerns around lock in.

I like what you guys are doing and would be happy to chat if it's helpful!

<comment><AUTHOR> If you're available, we would love to set up a call or video chat to hear more about your experience! Send me an email: ian at crowsnest dot io

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> or you can use an open project with more support

[https://github.com/dandroid88/webmote](https://github.com/dandroid88/webmote)

could use some api help though i suppose

</comment><comment><USER14> are they charging $5 per device connected to the RPi, or per RPi? Is it monthly? Website is not clear at all.

<comment><USER15> We're currently charging $5 device per month that you've registered through the RPi. The first two devices are free.

Granted, we're still getting a feel for what our pricing structure should be, do you have any feedback about our pricing structure currently?

<comment><USER16> So, if I built out 10 RPi based thermometers, that would be $40/month just to get a quick API?

If I added a humidity sensor, that would add another $50/month?

That's pretty steep. Granted, you could be targeting corporate and this starts to make some sense. That kind of pricing really does make it impractical for home users. You're already targeting an audience with some tech savvy and it doesn't take much to write a Python app to serve an API.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, this is great feedback. We are considering a community tier of pricing aimed more at hobbyists to suit what you're talking about. We're currently targeting startups who are building creative IoT apps and want to iterate quickly and for whom enterprise platforms don't make sense. We're trying to help them move as fast as possible while they optimize their product/market fit.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lattee: Add some milk to your Coffeescript - <AUTHOR> http://haithembelhaj.github.com/Lattee/

<comment><USER2> More CoffeeScript consoles are always welcome, but this one isn't very intuitive. The minimalism goes too far; you have to mouse over the logo just to see the instructions. Also, isn't CTRL+X spoken for (as "cut") on non-Mac systems?</comment>


The Asus ZenBook Pro Duo is an extravagant laptop with two 4K screens - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/27/18641211/asus-zenbook-pro-duo-announced-specs-computex-2019 <comment><USER2> As one of many people looking for a Professional laptop to replace the Macbook Pro, I really hope this thing delivers.

If the second screen is just recognised as a second monitor in Linux, this could be awesome.

</comment><comment><USER3> A 4K display on a laptop is a gimmick. Or, at least, for the aging eyes of this developer. Just bought one and had to exchange it for a 1920x1080 display. Much more comfortable.</comment>


People with Depression Use Language Differently - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/people-with-depression-use-language-differently-heres-how-to-spot-it-90877 <comment><USER3> My wife has depression, and for the first several years of our marriage it was undiagnosed and untreated. Her use of language is, to this day, the single biggest thing I remember about that time.

She used absolutes a lot. Things were "terrible" or "horrible". The house was "a disaster". It was never partly clean, or messy. It was either clean, or a disaster.

But the biggest issue was that her perception of the world, including her perception of what people were saying to her - what _I_ was saying to her - was utterly skewed. Anything I said to her, she took in the worst possible light. A compliment that could be shaded negatively, was. If I told her I liked her dress, that was taken as my not liking her other clothes. If I told her I appreciated something she did, that was taken as my not liking anything else she did. Every once in a while I managed to figure out how to say something that was so clear that it couldn't be misinterpreted, and when that happened it was as if I were speaking Greek. The statement literally did not make any sense in her mind. It was fascinating to watch; there was actually a discernible lag as she processed, and figured out how to misinterpret, anything I said.

It was as if she had her own private version of English, with her own definitions, which were more black and white (and shaded towards the black) than the vernacular version everyone else spoke. In order to speak with her I had to become conversant in her version of the language.

After a while it really felt like she was gaslighting me. Anything I said or did, she took in the worst possible way, and then blamed me for it. It took an enormous amount of emotional fortitude to keep reminding myself that this was fundamentally not my fault. I feel tremendously lucky that I didn't become depressed myself.

Happily, she eventually did recognize that something was wrong and got help, and is tons better today. Bit what they say about depression is completely true: your mind is lying to you. I watched it happen. And the even more fascinating thing is that, although she now recognizes she was depressed, she still doesn't remember those times the way I do. Her memories are still skewed.

If you are suffering from depression, please seek help. And if you are in a relationship with someone suffering from depression, find emotional support. It isn't your fault.

<comment><USER4> I have seen this pattern multiple times in various people, most recently in people who work under me. In those cases, I am not confident that I can suggest that people seek help. Marriages are (hopefully) different in that they are built on a foundation of love and trust (i.e. oh yeah, why did I marry this person again? I really did love and trust this person, right? Maybe I can still trust him/her?).

As a new manager who came in to manage a new team, I was completely clueless about many of my team members' very personal emotional baggage (everyone had different stories, but the key point is that everyone often made very negative assumptions and interpretations). It would require immense effort to earn their trust, but I had no idea at first. By the time I realized this baggage existed, I was already the enemy, the horrible evil manager who just wanted to fire everyone at the first opportunity; the only reason I hadn't succeeded is because of insert-reason-here.

In that frame, if I were to suggest that someone seek help, I think it would only be taken as a significant attack and increase the conflict? It's taken me a few years to get to the point where my team no longer believes I'm trying to fire them. I've been able to understand that they've all had various traumas in their lives (it slips out when they're emotionally upset about things).

I'm glad that your wife was able to get better, and I hope that she'll continue to get better. I wonder if anyone has any suggestions for how to make the suggestion to seek help when you're the boss of the one who needs help. Because I'm certainly no psychiatrist.

Similarly, random strangers who need help, perhaps they just needed that one person to nudge them. But too scared of creating unnecessary drama instead of having a positive impact. I guess the only easy thing to do is try to be kind to people and let it go if it backfires. It's better to say it's not my job, or it's better to be the Good Samaritan?

It doesn't help that my EQ is quite low (though it's higher than it used to be at least).

<comment><USER5> I suggest that you talk to a lawyer and/or HR before making any mention of other employees's medical conditions to anyone.

Also, remember that you're a manager, not a doctor and not a friend. Getting emotionally invested beyond your job role will hurt more than it will help. There is only so much of you to go around, and without proper training in handling this sort of problems you will run out of your own sanity in short order.

<comment><USER6> 100% agree, and there are legal ramifications given that you're their manager. As always, the universal answer to everything in the workplace, "talk to HR".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> man-and-laptop Taleb claims that most psychological studies suffer from methodological flaws like p-hacking. One should be very sceptical of these kinds of studies and how you interpret them (correlation vs causation).

Psychology has recently experienced a replication crisis. More than half of studies have failed to replicate, and those that have, have had lower effect sizes.

Also, remember that there are lots of factors in a person's immediate situation that affect how they act. You end up with a "curse of dimensionality" problem, where it's impossible to isolate a general cause that's not specific to a certain situation.

By the way, I'm not saying the result is wrong. I'm only urging caution. Don't just believe something because "A study says..." or "Scientists say..."

____________________________________________

I noticed they did their study by comparing mental health forums to other types of forums. That's an awfully specific situation. Let's say I had cancer, and I were writing in a forum full of cancer sufferers, clearly I would use more first-person pronouns, because _I 'm the cancer sufferer_.

<comment><USER7> Do you have any recommended books or resources by Taleb or another author on how to identify or avoid methodological flaws like p-hacking, understanding correlation vs causation, and more?

I'm currently taking a data science course on Udemy and learning about chi squares, regression, and decision trees, but I'd love more information on best practices especially for experimental design.

<comment> man-and-laptop Taleb's book The Black Swan has sections comparing heavy-tailed prob. distributions with thin-tailed prob. distributions. The thesis is that you can't tell whether a distribution has fat tails until a fat-tailed event happens (which he calls a black swan). Also goes into the flaws of using induction, the flaws in ascribing causes when there are "silent witnesses", and so on. I don't think there's any specific practical advice. It's more "If you work in economics and other areas, your research may well be doomed." Taleb's advice is often "Don't do this", instead of "Do this".

I'm reading Anti-Fragile now. Can't off the top of my head give you advice on experiment design or statistics. [EDIT] It's more about designing systems that benefit from the unpredictability of the world, instead of building systems that are harmed by unpredictability. [EDIT] It's an important companion to his previous book, because it gives positive advice on how to make decisions in a world that isn't amenable to understanding because of complexity. It effectively gives positive advice, instead of just negative.

There's also SITG that I'd like to read. And there's a "Technical Incerto" which looks like a work-in-progress, but involves concrete statistics.

[edit] He's also tweeting the contents of a new Data Science course he's teaching at NYU. Be warned that Taleb is a bit of an arsehole on Twitter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So was their analysis of depressed people purely based on post/comments on mental health forums? To me, it makes sense that if you were going to one of these forums for the express purpose of getting help, of course you'd be using first person pronouns and negative-words, I imagine a lot of the posts would have something to the tune of "I've been feeling sad lately". Likewise, they compare this to formerly-depressed people on a forum explicitly for positive encouragement and found they used more positive-sounding words. The study seems to me to be analyzing whether people stay on topic in these forums more than saying anything about depressed people in general. While this would be much more difficult to accomplish and probably isn't realistic, I think it would be way more helpful to analyze how depressed people post on social media or via text or other "normal" conversation rather than how they interact when they go somewhere to talk about depression/being depressed.

</comment><comment><USER9> > "More interesting is the use of pronouns. Those with symptoms of depression > use significantly more first person singular pronouns – such as "me", > "myself" and "I" – and significantly fewer second and third person pronouns > – such as "they", "them" or "she". This pattern of pronoun use suggests > people with depression are more focused on themselves, and less connected > with others."

Which raises the question: Is depression a symptom? The root "disease" being the inability to connect / feel connected to others?

I suppose futher studies might be able to track language (as a proxy) over time and shed light on correlation vs cause, etc.

<comment><USER10> When you're unwell the focus is naturally more on the self than others.

Vitamin D does wonders.

<comment><USER11> >Vitamin D does wonders.

Except in studies, where it is still inconclusive.

For general supplement research, I tend to look at:

[http://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/snake- oil-s...](http://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/snake-oil- scientific-evidence-for-nutritional-supplements-vizsweet/)

<comment><USER12> Interesting site. I generally read what Examine.com ([https://examine.com/supplements/vitamin-d/](https://examine.com/supplements/vitamin-d/)) has to say about a supplement.

<comment><USER5> More specifically [https://examine.com/nutrition/vitamin-d-and- depression/](https://examine.com/nutrition/vitamin-d-and-depression/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Regarding the pronouns: what I notice within myself is that when I nudge myself to be more altruistic, in a giver's mindset or care more about others then I feel often more good as opposed to when I think about myself.

I think it's because it's easier to get anxious about oneself compared to anxious about someone else.

<comment><USER14> I work in tech am i am depressed. I am unable to move and think, negative thoughts amplifying in my mind till i lose my ability to think. I've no motivation and energy, i don't even feel like eating.

Want to imagine how it feels? Think like a tube with end point A and B forming a closed loop with amplifier between these points and negative thoughts are injected into this closed loop, they amplify each time they pass through the loop and after suddenly nothing makes sense.

No talk therapies, workout, yoga doesn't work in this case! I tried all these popular cures fo depression.

I don't have any underlying trauma or abuse, i am not poor (who is poor in tech?) with fulfilling life and my life doesn't suck! I've a boyfriend who takes care of me, listens to everything i say and supportive family yet i couldn't get myself out of it.

I've tried amphetamine, it works for me but i figured amphetamine works by reving up the supply of dopamine and Norepinephrine.

I was sucidal, i overdosed on Amphetamine and nearly died.

Back from the hospital, i realized using amphetamine is a shotgun approach to my issue.

Since the probability of two things happening, like Norepinephrine deficiency and Dopamine deficiency is less than probability of one of the happening.

I went forward with my best guess that I've NE deficiency and i started taking selective Pure norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (NERIs)

I managed to take enough dose to bridge the dificiency gap then using a spreadsheet, slowly lowered the doses over a span of 3 years in a hope that body would increase its own supply to normalize the level.

Now, i am no longer depressed.

This is after a depression lasting a decade. And local health authorities seem like they don't really wanna help you.

<comment><USER15> it's sad that this is a throwaway because i hope you see my comment. i suffer from the same every day and my life doesn't move. i want to die every day. please reach out with some sort of contact. im in toronto, i have no idea what clinics or doctors or what to visit, i've never been to a doctor. email is in profile, if anyone has any info i'd love to hear it.

<comment><USER16> I recommend that you first see any psychiatrist who has experience treating depression (ask your primary care provider for a referral or find one online). Think of depression like any serious medical condition; if you aren't satisfied with a given provider or approach, then explore others.

<comment><USER15> >if you aren't satisfied with a given provider or approach, then explore others.

part of the problem is determining this

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> One explanation is poor evaluation of evidence in their environment and matching their past to their present environment. CBT deals with this. A black and white way of thinking will lead to poor reasoning and misguided emotions for their environment. Like a conspiracy theorist will distort evidence and confuse the probabilities of unlikely events. They will take weak evidence and deduce distorted statements about the world

<comment><USER18> Actually evidence shows that depressed people are more realistic about the world than non-depressed people. The converse is true as well: people with unrealistically high ambition tend to do far better than those with realistic views.

<comment><USER19> Depressive realism is still a strongly contested theory. There is also a lot of evidence that depressed people rate themself worse than warranted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> One methodological issue that I can detect in this article is the choice of forums used to draw their conclusions:

> We predicted and found that anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation > forums contained more absolutist words than control forums (ds > 3.14). > Suicidal ideation forums also contained more absolutist words than anxiety > and depression forums (ds > 1.71).

I have no knowledge of this field of research, but I'm trouble understanding why its a significant result that self-oriented forums (like "anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation forums") have more self-oriented words and absolutist words than the control forums (of which 'MumsNet' and 'StudentRoom' are mentioned in the article). In the case of 'MumsNet' at least, you'd almost certainly have a prevalence of second person pronouns.

<comment><USER21> I'd agree with you, but you are comparing apples and oranges.

The selection you quoted focuses on absolute language eg always, never. But the comparison you're making is on pronoun choice eg I, you, they.

You do mention absolutist words but the selection you quoted doesn't mention pronouns so your critique shouldn't either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Yes. All-or-nothing, black-and-white thinking appears to be a cognitive simplification that discards nuance in order to model the world more simply. Being depressed takes more effort to think and do almost everything that would/could be routine when not depressed, coupled with a mental fog and internal disorganization that makes it more difficult to function normally. This introduces both more errors and a propensity for drama in cases of being wrong, which also often introduces an inflexibility, which leads to more conflict with others. Overall, I'd say depression reduces critical thinking, multi-model thinking and prioritization by making it easier to focus on edge- cases and catastrophication (cognitive distortions).

</comment><comment><USER23> Back in the 1980's Martin Seligman analysed the speaking styles of baseball team members to determine if their optimistic/pessimistic attitude correlated with success on the field. In his book "Learned Optimism" he claimed that this kind of analysis had some predictive power in who would win the game.

<comment><USER24> Cause or effect though? If you realise the other team are better than yours you could talk realistically about the result and people might interpret that as being negative. Et cetera.

<comment><USER25> There's a phenomenon in sports and competitive environments that you rise to the level of your competition. In those cases you could win with some luck or strategy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I can't wait until our internal email or chat flags me as depressed and I'm forced to go on leave. Can you imagine? And then I call the bank and their phone system decides I'm depressed and locks my accounts to protect me. And then the men in the white coats come. There could be a Black Mirror episode in this (if there isn't already).

<comment><USER27> Sounds like some low hanging fruit for an API or SaaS product.

I'd hope the buyers would be healthcare professionals-- but like you've noted the real markets might be a bit more unpleasant...

<comment><USER28> "Hi, I'm Clippy! I noticed you used a lot of negative and absolute words in your paper, here are some recommended psychiatrists near you... "

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Not meaning to demean anyone's hard work with psychology, but last year I changed my diet and my depression went away almost completely. From routinely wishing to be dead -> to walking a part of the camino trail in europe and being able to hold a job. Turns out, that all symptoms return when I eat carbs or fiber. But even after the depression gone away there are still some issues in thinking and moving slowly, which could be addressed by therapy. But I'm kinda mad that no doctor ever told me about diet and gut-brain connection.

<comment><USER30> I have a similar experience. When I start eating carbs (including fiber) I start feeling sad, desperate, inactive etc. I did not stop eating carbs though because I like experimenting with food (I spend months eating different diets) and I don't think not eating carbs is healthy (even though it makes me feel bad). So I still eat e.g. broccoli. Whenever I eat _any_ carb, I experience an inflammatory response which I can tell from my skin being inflated, and I feel ants and needles on my skin. [1] I did see doctor for these symptoms and since they're very mild they usually say "meh, it's probably nothing". But I do correlate it with eating carbs (e.g. I do not get the same response when I eat chicken breast, or it's milder when I eat avocado).

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

<comment><USER10> Same for me. Cutting carbs, dairy, and alcohol and I FEEL AMAZING. I think vitamin D supplementation is also a big factor for me.

<comment><USER31> Sometimes that helps, but also consider whether cutting all those food sources is actually putting you into a caloric deficit, and that's having the positive effects you see (assuming you don't have a lactose intolerance of course).

Caloric restriction reduces inflammation, and chronic inflammation is a big problem in the first world.

<comment><USER30> > putting you into a caloric deficit

No? I still eat the same amount of calories (~3000 calories a day, I'm a male who works put regularly). There are more than enough non-carb sources to get calories from (lean meats (chicken breast, turkey breast, pork), sea food, avocado, nuts)

<comment><USER31> > There are more than enough non-carb sources to get calories

Sure, I just meant that most people are too quick to attribute causation when they notice a correlation. Sounds like you track your calories, so that could rule out caloric restriction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Cognitive Behavioral Therapy puts much emphasis on identifying and pushing back against the "black and white" thinking behind such "absolute words". Getting stuck in a false dichotomy of extremes is one of the more damaging thought patterns.

</comment><comment><USER33> Note this is relative to an older specific analysis technique (LIWC) and on Internet forums about depression/anxiety. Hard to interpret much about how this generalized to, say, text messages to friends.

</comment><comment><USER34> It would be then interesting to see if there is a scientific correlation between changing one's language habits and depression. I've always considered the "start talking positive and things will go well" advice as shortsighted and oversimplistic, but maybe there is indeed a correlation, and a positive reinforcement through language is possible. Mantras and chants can have a strong influence on our brain waves, so maybe there's a way to leverage positive language and repetition to ignite a change in the way we feel and the way we think.

<comment><USER35> My personal theory is that an absolutist vocabulary of thinking ("always", "never", "very/extremely") diminishes the possibilities / opportunities perceived by the person. This leads to a feeling of helplessness, which leads to a lack of motivation, which in turn becomes a self-fulfilling vicious cycle.

It's amazing what people go and achieve when they don't know it's impossible...

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I also noticed use of passive voice more than active voice. Not sure if it even has a correlation with depression or lack or control. Just noticed it.

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

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

</comment><comment><USER37> That's basically the original observation of NLP (no, not that one) - <USER2> people often literally express their mental state through language on a non- trivial level, and IMO still one of the better things which make it worth studying.

Just find yourself a trainer who has a similar propensity for metaphysics as you (which can range from 0 to all-in-new-age) since the field has diverged into various interpretations.

</comment><comment><USER38> "This pattern of pronoun use suggests people with depression are more focused on themselves, and less connected with others."

I believe this is more of a symptom of excessive isolating behavior (an arguable cause of depression) than it is a predisposition towards selfishness.

</comment><comment><USER39> This reminds me of the first agreement in The Four Agreements by don Miguel Luis.

"Be impeccable with your words."

The words manifest into thoughts which turn into physical form. The book described words are akin to black magic.

</comment><comment><USER6> Describes my speech and internal monologue patterns before I got medications and therapy perfectly.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm basically currently losing my shit over my intractable personal problems and the ways in which sexism help keep them intractable. So I don't think I can be rational or socially acceptable at the moment.

 _However, we don't know whether these findings reflect differences in attention or thinking style. Does depression cause people to focus on themselves, or do people who focus on themselves get symptoms of depression?_

My belief based on first-hand experience is that social factors drive some people to this.

I'm very socially observant. I've apparently been casually announcing that _the emperor has no clothes_ since I was about three years old. I often don't realize I know someone's "secrets" that they imagine they have covered up very successfully. When I casually remark on such things, it gets me hated on. No, I will never ever ever ever be forgiven for it.

So, over the years, I have gradually worked at saying less about other people because it's such a mine field. Talking about me and only me as much as I can convinces other people I'm a narcissist, but it's less problematic than me casually asking "The emperor? You mean the deluded naked guy whose delusions everyone is feeding by going along with his bullshit claim that he has some amazing new wardrobe? Is that the guy we're talking about?"

This is backed up by data. I mean, the fact that I only talk about me and everyone hates me for it -- or, more accurately, everyone hates me and identifying this habit is one of the excuses they use to justify it. When I was on Metafilter, if you checked their infodump, I used "I" vastly more than any runner up. And I was hated on, which was just a thing Metafilter chose to do to certain people because the site has serious issues. When I joined, it was policy for the mods to pin the drama on one person, blame them, tell them you shut up and stop commenting and then let other people continue attacking them under circumstances where they would get in trouble if they came back to defend themselves. I quickly got on the short list of people where public bear downs by multiple people were not only the norm, God help you if you tried to defend them because that could mean you're next.

Depression is often a female issue and, on average, woman tend to be (perceived as) more social. We get tasked with doing emotional labor and get dismissed a lot and can't make as much money for the same job, etc. It's a very crazy-making situation and it's common for therapists to offer women medication instead of advice on how to stop being victimized.

I think most men don't really mean to victimize women, so it goes bad places when women point fingers and blame men who are part of the problem. They feel wrongfully accused. Doing so just makes the problem more intractable.

But trying to find the right words before you can speak to the problem winds up being a silencing mechanism. It makes it extra hard to try to solve it at all.

When every door slams shut in your face no matter what you do, it's hard to not start thinking in absolutist terms of "always" and "never."

Even so, I think the absolutist terms are more likely linked to wonky brain chemistry.

I have a medical condition. On bad days when I'm feverish, etc, I engage in more absolutist language and I'm not rational.

My sons have learned to "not engage the crazy." I say something extreme and irrational, they say "Mom, are you hungry? Are you thirsty? Are you warm enough?"

Most of the time, when I'm irrational, getting me fed, hydrated and warm results in me falling asleep in short order. Trying to argue with me about crazy stuff I'm saying just puts out the fire with gasoline. Insisting on only engaging me constructively is more effective.

They do sometimes rebut my irrational remarks, but they don't get dragged into arguing it with me. I say "I have no friends" they say "That's not true." They rebut it,but they dont get tired in it.

That seems to be a best practice that helps keep me grounded in reality without pissing me off, fueling a sense of hopelessness and despair, etc.

Getting healthier and making my life work better has proven to be the best solution. My mental health has gradually improved.

I still have days when the bullshit in the world that makes it seemingly impossible for a woman to get anywhere just makes me postal. I'm there right now. The past few days have been terrible in terms of my head space.

But most of the time, I'm overall more rational.

Most depressed people have serious intractable personal problems that no one knows how to solve. Medicating their feelings ends up de facto being dismissive.

Think of it like if Susan B Anthony were put on Valium and told "Women don't need the vote. You're merely crazy. Here, take this. You'll feel better." No, that's not going to figure the myriad problems that grow out of being disenfranchised and disempowered and having no real say in your own life.

I think social factors fuel the use of first person pronouns. I think social factors and brain chemistry fuel the use of absolutist terminology.

Both get better when the social factors driving it improve. The second seems to also be helped by addressing physiological factors, like exhaustion.

/2 cents

</comment><comment><USER41> Some people, who are diagnosed, sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER42> What most people, including researchers, don't get is that depression causes distorted thinking. Black and white thinking is merely a symptom of the disorder. CBT's approach to depression is wildly inaccurate and damaging. If you can change how you feel by changing your perspective you are NOT suffering from clinical depression. You are at worst morose, lethargic, and unmotivated. Depression includes those, but is much more; it calls itself apathy, but is actually a survival mechanism unlike any other. Think of bipolar disorder. Their range goes from -20 to 30 in terms of emotional intensity instead of 0 - 10 for normal people. Except our nervous system can't really handle that kind of intensity, so every manic episode MUST be followed by a depressive episode, otherwise they would die. Or think of post-partum depression, a state in which a mother's body has been pushed to the extreme (8 on the pain scale, easily). The body returns to a depressed state to survive until it has recovered. Distorted thought patterns, lack of motivation, and sense of lethargy are merely symptoms of this state.

<comment><USER25> While interesting ideas, is there any evidence for any of your claims? In the meantime CBT has been shown in clinical trials to be as effective as drugs although not necessarily as fast acting. CBT has also been shown to last longer.</comment></comment>


Coronavirus: Early estimate of epidemiology and epidemic predictions [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.23.20018549v1.full.pdf <comment><USER2> report appears to be as of jan-23, key findings:

We are still in the early days of this outbreak and there is much uncertainty in both the scale of the outbreak, as well as key epidemiological information regarding transmission. However, the rapidity of the growth of cases since the recognition of the outbreak is much greater than that observed in outbreaks of either SARS or MERS-CoV. This is consistent with our higher estimates of the reproductive number for this outbreak compared to these other emergent coronaviruses, suggesting that containment or control of this pathogen may be substantially more difficult.

We estimate the basic reproduction number of the infection (𝑅𝑅0) to be significantly greater than one. We estimate it to be between 3.6 and 4.0.

We estimated that the ascertainment rate in Wuhan is 5.1% (95%CI, 4.8–5.5), reflecting the difficulty in identifying cases of a novel pathogen. Given the generally good accessibility to healthcare in China, this suggests that the majority of infections may be mild and insufficiently serious for individuals to seek treatment. However, it is worth noting that a number of identified cases have died (Centre for Disease Control and Prevention 2020) and that the true case fatality rate has yet to be estimated accurately. We also estimated the size of the epidemic in Wuhan at the time of the market closure to be 24 individuals (95%CI, 22–25).

We estimate that only 5.1% (95%CI, 4.8–5.5) of infections in Wuhan are identified, indicating a large number of infections in the community, and also reflecting the difficulty in detecting cases of this new disease. Surveillance for this novel pathogen has been launched very quickly by public health authorities in China, allowing for rapid assessment of the speed of increase of cases in Wuhan and other areas.</comment>


As Genoa Inaugurates New Bridge, the Feeling Is Bittersweet - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/02/world/europe/genoa-Morandi-bridge-replacement.html <comment><AUTHOR> Does anyone know if they made sensible improvements to the onramps/offramps in the new construction, such that there was a silver lining the the rebuild to make significant logistical gains?</comment>


Exquisite Corpse, the Surrealist Drawing Game (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-explaining-exquisite-corpse-surrealist-drawing-game-die <comment><USER2> Someone on HN recently showed off their own mobile-app version of Exquisite Corpse: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22777768](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22777768)

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh,we used to play this at high school. We tried to be as nasty and bizzare as possible, and when unveiling the result we would usually break out in hysterical laughter. Later I once played it at a Christian party - people were not amused...

</comment><comment><USER4> a nice element of this game is that it can be played over time/doesn't have to prevent other socialization at a party. If everyone understands how to play, you can set down/pick up the drawing at any time. Even if it's an hour later, it is fun to see the results.</comment>


The first recollection of the day I found my dad's dead body - <AUTHOR> http://brendanmcdonnell.com/blog-post-1/

<comment><USER2> I'm done with the internet for today</comment>


David Cohen – Don't go dark - <AUTHOR> http://davidgcohen.com/2016/11/20/dont-go-dark/ <comment><USER2> I've invested in a number of companies via AngelList and I'm disappointed with the communication from most. I know I'm a small investor and I don't want anything personalized but I'd like to see yearly updates and would prefer quarterly.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've invested in past employers (exercised options) and never get any communication, except backdoor communication from former coworkers. I know there are few obligations to common stockholders, but it would be nice to hear _something_...</comment>


Designing Medium: Crafting Link Underlines on Medium - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/7c03a9274f9

<comment><USER2> What I appreciated here was the attention payed to the performance aspects of the proposed changes, in addition to the aesthetics. I think designers and other related professionals often get a bad rap for ignoring these issues, but I've worked with quite a fee that are supremely mindful.

I know many aren't fans of the content (or sometimes the cover images), but I do think that medium looks beautiful and is very readable.</comment>


Nuclear accident in Russia or Kazakhstan sends radioactive cloud over Europe - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/10/nuclear-accident-in-russia-or-kazakhstan-sends-radioactive-cloud-over-europe <comment><USER2> [https://www.bfs.de/SharedDocs/Kurzmeldungen/BfS/EN/2017/1003...](https://www.bfs.de/SharedDocs/Kurzmeldungen/BfS/EN/2017/1003-ruthenium-106.html)

Actual measurements, though not very specific on where this was measured: "a few microbecquerel to 5 millibecquerel per cubic metre [of] air."</comment>


New Evidence Points to Icy Plate Tectonics on Europa - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/new-evidence-points-to-icy-plate-tectonics-on-europa-1820990213?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_twitter&utm_source=gizmodo_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow <comment><USER2> Europa Report is a great sci-fi movie. Some people don't like its low- budgetness, but it's very much worth checking out.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2051879/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2051879/)

<comment><USER3> I would have much preferred if the alien life had been positive and friendly. Why are all the movies these days about hostile aliens?

<comment><USER4> Arrival has non-hostile aliens.

BTW, if anyone liked Arrival, the older film Contact is really good as well.

<comment><USER5> There's another film "The Arrival" that's a year older than Contact.

<comment><AUTHOR> That one feels like a failed series pilot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really wish we'd get off our asses and study Europa et al, but instead we're stuck building this stupid-ass rocket so that congress looks good for making jobs. Just how much evidence needs to be pile up before we take these lines of inquiry seriously?

<comment><USER7> We're on it: [https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/europa- clipper/](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/europa-clipper/)

Instruments were selected early this year, and specific designs and instrument contractors are being chosen.

<comment><USER6> I dunno, the vague "2020's" timeline is depressing. If we directed even a fraction of the SLS budget into this it could probably launch in late 2018 or 2019.

<comment><USER7> No, 2018-2019 is not possible. The instruments are not built yet!

There's a limit to what money could do to accelerate. Engineers are doing trade studies literally right now - here's an informal progress report given in October to the Space Studies Board of the National Academies of Science: [http://sites.nationalacademies.org/cs/groups/ssbsite/documen...](http://sites.nationalacademies.org/cs/groups/ssbsite/documents/webpage/ssb_183287.pdf)

Hopefully that is reassuring that it's not just an academic exercise! Earliest launch date is listed there as 2022 (page 3).

These studies are needed to be sure that agreed-upon science objectives would be met by the instruments. Here is an old Europa STM (science traceability matrix) that lays out the measurement goals ([https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/europa/docs/Clipper_Trace_Matri...](https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/europa/docs/Clipper_Trace_Matrix_V2.2_140609.pdf) \- compare around page 16 of the above presentation). The current STM will be _much_ more elaborate.

The trade studies and experiments now underway are directed at checking these off or saying why they are not attainable. In particular, note (pg. 14/15) the multi-pronged approach to assessing the moon. One of the pieces is the plumes that are emerging from the surface; how do you locate and sample from one of the plumes? Do you need some on-board software to find them? If so, what sensors does it need?

<comment><USER6> Well hey, good luck! I withdraw my concerns (but maintain that SLS sucks).

<comment><USER7> All interest in solar system exploration is welcome!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Inquiry: if we do find some form of life in Europa, what does that tell us about the probability of life existing in the universe? Does it necessarily increase the likelihood that life is actually _highly_ common in the universe, and a very regular outgrowth of nature?

EDIT: Specifically just life in general, not necessarily "intelligent life"

<comment><USER9> Isn't "intelligent life" just a function of time of "life"? I am reading the book "Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness" currently and the book makes the case that intelligence and/or consciousness has evolved separately in mammals (humans) and cephalopods.

The more I look at diversity and evolution of life on Earth, it seems like "intelligent life" as we know it is just a inevitable consequence of evolution, given enough time, perhaps.

<comment><USER3> Well adapted life is a consequence of evolution. Intelligence is not necessary to survive. I am not sure who the master of the planet is: us or ants? Both are incredibly successful but with totally different strategies.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Intelligence is not necessary to survive

It's even debatable whether it is an asset.

<comment><USER10> In fact, it can be argued that intelligence leads to low birth rates and population decline that extrapolates to eventual extinction.

<comment><USER3> Or it leads to avoiding overpopulation and depletion of resources. I think the intelligent thing for us to do would be to limit ourselves to a certain population size and stop growing.

<comment><AUTHOR> It would be lovely, but this hypothesis is not confirmed by our observation.

<comment><USER3> Ssems we are not as intelligent as we think :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Either that, or intelligence is overrated.

<comment><USER10> Intelligence is overrated because non-intelligence lacked the faculties for contributing any offsetting negative ratings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What is a realistic timeframe when mankind will set foot on Europa (if ever). 2200? Is there any way to predict? I'd love to visit, ain't gonna happen I guess :/

</comment><comment><USER12> >> Excitingly, this same process could be delivering important minerals to the ocean below, heightening the moon's status a potentially habitable world.

Ok, so the surface ice is being pulled down. But that means that there should be a correspondingly steady flow of deep water onto the surface. If that water is full of life then we should be able to see evidence of it in the surface ice. I'm not looking for frozen giant squid on the surface, but shouldn't we see some chemical evidence?</comment>