Mike Replies To A Slightly Offended, Not Very Enthusiastic Scout. - <AUTHOR> http://www.mikeroweworks.com/2010/06/mike-replies-to-a-slightly-offended-not-very-enthusiastic-scout/

<comment><USER2> _Given your excellence in school, your commitment to physical fitness, and your desire for higher education, that confession strikes me as a bit out of context. I mean, why would a guy who's so passionate and deliberate about everything else in his life invest his time doing something for which he has so little enthusiasm?_

Damn, can't you do anything just for fun anymore? Enthusiasm for an activity has to manifest itself as enthusiasm for earning the highest possible certification?

 _My advice? Quit Scouting today. Or, quit pretending not to care. Because the short answer to your question goes like this – You can be plenty successful without becoming an Eagle. But you'll never get anywhere by doing things half- way._

People do all kinds of things halfway. It's inevitable. You're going to cook halfway, dress halfway, play sports halfway, appreciate movies and art and books halfway, train your pets halfway, and blog halfway. Sure, you can pick one or two of those and do them in a fully-assed way, but what about the rest? Are you just going to give them up?

Or are you going to hide behind the fact that nobody has instituted a system of ranking and achievements? Well, did you know you can be tested and certified on your ability to taste wine? Better stop drinking wine! Better not teach your dog to sit unless you're committed to earning the highest AKC obedience titles. Not only would you be half-assed, you'd have a half-assed dog, too. (My question: can you keep the dog as long as you don't train it, or does just having a non-obedience-certified dog make you half-assed?) American tennis players, did you know that the US Tennis Association sorts amateurs into numbered levels? Better stop playing tennis unless you're committed to maxing out! So you like to go hiking on weekends? Uh oh, there's adventure racing and orienteering... you'd better go indoors. You're doing the outdoors half-assed.

Well, maybe he'd agree with me on that one.

<comment><USER3> "The most valuable lesson I learned in Scouting, was not merely the importance of trying things I didn't enjoy, it was the ability to learn how to enjoy those same things."

Yes, we all do things halfway, but when you are fully committed to a task, a project, or a cause, so much more can be accomplished.

I am an Eagle Scout and I certainly hated a lot of the scouting requirements. They seemed silly, and time-consuming, and frivilous--how many 14 year-old's spend hours weaving a basket?! However, I know a lot of people who got so close to achieving an Eagle rank but chose not to. Did it materially change their life? Obviously not, but a lot of them reflect back on it and think, 'I was so close, why didn't I try just slightly harder?' You don't have to have been involved in Scouting to know that feeling. "I was so close, if I only I had tried harder" is a feeling that sucks and that's what Mike Rowe is trying to tell this Scout.

<comment><USER4> _Obviously not, but a lot of them reflect back on it and think, 'I was so close, why didn't I try just slightly harder?'_

Because (in the hypothetical case of Scouting) those were goals that someone else picked for you.

To the extent someone convinces you to jump through various hoops to win their approval, that person is controlling you. And yes, it might even be for your own good. But more than likely, it's for the hoop-holder's benefit.

<comment><USER5> In this case, the hoop holder is a group dedicated to preparing teens for adulthood. I think the hoops are not designed benefit the BSA -- seriously, they don't get much from forcing a 16 year old to weave a basket or shoot archery. I think instead those silly hoops my be meant to emulate something else.

Lets take a dirgression: I have a friend who owns a bike shop. He absolutely loves fixing bikes, setting up bikes, and helping people get into biking. It is a passion and he does good at that stuff. He absolutely hates inventory, book balancing and changing flat tires (well all menial bike maintenance tasks). Those maintenance tasks are a big part of the regular revenue stream, and the other things are just necessary for business. He can't afford to hire someone to do the stuff he doesn't like, it would cut too much into his profits and he would have to take a second job to live. Those can probably be argued as hoops he chose for himself, here are some he didn't: rent, sales tax accounting, business licensing, fire code compliance, insurance rules, and so on.

Had my friend taken your advice and not learned how to jump through hoops (and fucked the man in the process!) he would be fixing bikes at a loss.

Perhaps the overall goal and fun level in becoming an eagle scout is enough that putting up with the hoop jumping is worth it? Maybe that thing they are emulating is "real life" where sometimes you just gotta do crappy stuff before you can do the thing you really want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR>
      If your strategy in Scouts (and Life) is to avoid those
      activities and requirements that you don't enjoy, you will
      have a difficult time transcending any definition of
      mediocrity. That's not a criticism -- merely an observation.

<comment><USER6> What if your strategy in life is to pursue whatever arbitrary goal is placed in front of you by some authority figure despite the complete lack of tangible rewards for doing so?

This sounds less like a recipe for producing a successful and resourceful man of the world and more like a recipe for a guy who spends his spare time trying to get all the achievements on Grand Theft Auto 4.

<comment><USER7> That sounds like a false dilemma.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps, but then again so is "Become an Eagle Scout" vs "be a loser your whole life".

<comment><USER8> Is that how you read Mike's response? Because I thought he took pains to clearly not tie those two together.

<comment><USER9> Somewhat crassly stated, but Mike's argument is equally false, even if more polite. Basically, Mike's argument was "either you're afraid of failure and you need to suck it up, or you need to quit because you don't belong in scouts."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I had no idea Mike Rowe was this engaged with the Boy Scouts. He has a really interesting life story. And _Dirty Jobs_ is one of the very few decent arguments for paying for cable. Follow the link to the form letter he sends Eagle Scouts; it's just as good as this post is.

</comment><comment><USER11> So, my question is, what is the problem with enjoying an activity as a social activity rather than a goal-achievement activity? If he chooses to spend his social time in a softball league rather than Scouts, is he doomed to mediocrity for not training to become the best softball player he is capable of? Why didn't this conversation end at "sounds like Eagle Scout isn't for you, just make sure to be really good at something else"?

The ultimatum of "Eagle or quit" is nonsensical to me. This person clearly has dedication to other parts of his life, and Scouts is just a soical outlet. Why should he give that up, how does that imply impending mediocrity?

<comment><USER12> I completely agree. I hate when people ask me if I am an Eagle scout because I feel like they consider me a failure, or at least that I gave up, when I say no. But I don't feel that way myself. I had different priorities and different goals within scouting.

For example, I could have done an Eagle project the summer after high school, but I left immediately to be a camp counselor at the church camp - something I had dreamed of doing since the third grade. Had I stayed home, I would have had the time to go through with a project. But I had different priorities.

I wasn't in scouting for the Eagle. I was in it for the friends and for the adventure. I hiked, biked, and canoed. I helped my troop become more scout- led. I didn't do it halfway.

<comment><USER13> _I hate when people ask me if I am an Eagle scout because I feel like they consider me a failure_

That's weird. I don't think I've ever been asked if I'm an Eagle Scout (I'm not; I dropped out at Life, a couple of badges and a project shy of Eagle) in the nearly two decades since I quit. I must not hang out with the kind of people that care about Boy Scout ranks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Every time I see something from Mike Rowe I'm always impressed. From Dirty Jobs, his TED talk, this email correspondence, and even his early days as a QVC presenter, he has always exuded a sense of class and gentility.

<comment><USER15> It's okay. You can say it. You have a man-crush on Mike Rowe.

Don't worry, so do I.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> One of the biggest regrets I have from my childhood was leaving the Boy Scouts when I had to make a hard choice between attending the annual week of summer camp (was made mandatory for advancement when I became a freshman in high school) and hell week for football, both of which occurred at the same time every year (late August two weeks before school started.)

I owe a lot of my character today, particularly my mental toughness, to what I experienced playing football, but I still regret making the choice to abandon Scouting and never reaching Eagle. I suspect I'd regret not playing football had I stuck with Scouting instead. Oh well, life's about choices and their consequences.

<comment><USER4> Or, you know, you could move past both Scouting _and_ high school football.

<comment><USER17> If "move past" means learning nothing from your life...

<comment><USER4> Which it doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As someone who dropped out after 2nd Class (probably would've kept on to 1st but we moved), I'm with the kid. It took me forever to make 2nd Class because I had other commitments on Saturdays. But I had a bunch of friends in the troop.

G.K. Chesterton somewhere wrote that "Everything worth doing is worth doing badly." I'm with dkarl on this one.

</comment><comment><USER17> Eagle Scout does not manufacture a committed, resourceful individual; it recognizes one.

<comment><USER19> As long as you aren't gay, atheist or agnostic. If you are, the BSA doesn't want anything to do with you.

<comment><USER13> It makes me really sad that the BSA has chosen their current highly politicized position.

When I was a scout nearly twenty years ago (holy crap, that's weird to say; getting old is funny), I was already agnostic, leaning atheist, and my troop had a quietly but openly gay member, and our scout leaders knew it. The only time religion ever came up was during summer camp at Camp Old Indian in the mountains in South Carolina...there was a non-denominational meeting on Sunday morning in an old chapel. Attendance was encouraged but optional.

I don't know if my troop was just a really open-minded one (in small town South Carolina, that seems really unlikely!), or the policies of the BSA have changed dramatically. I do know that a friend's little brother joined the same troop several years later but with different leadership and did not find it enjoyable and quit within a couple of months. The troop had moved its meetings out of the old train car it used when I was a scout, and into a Southern Baptist church, and apparently the mood of the troop changed with that move.

It's depressing because I'd always assumed that when I had kids, they'd have the same scouting experience I had, and that I'd participate as a volunteer scout leader. It was a wonderful experience for me, and I wish all boys could have those kinds of male role models in their lives, as well as that kind of camaraderie with other boys. But, given the way the organization seems to have changed into a tool for promoting a hate-filled agenda, I guess it's just not going to happen. Even if my kid did happen to be the "right kind" of kid for the BSA, I wouldn't want him being exposed to that kind of backward thinking and I can't support an organization with that kind of agenda.

<comment><USER17> The rules were probably the same or worse when you were younger. Open-minded local leaders have considerable lattitude.

Consider: refusal to participate and let youth see your good example hurts only the boys. And really helps no one.

<comment><USER20> Refusing to aid bigots only helps children by demonstrating, amongst other things, the value of civil rights, integrity, and principles. Your strategy of letting bigots slide because they don't hate you does the opposite.

<comment><USER17> Rufusing to help bigots is invisible to children. You're not there, helping kids grow and learn leadership. Yes, the gay boys too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Everybody-Gets-a-Trophy" part is particularly rich. I still think the biggest problem with it is that children will not find what they are really good at / really enjoy because they are not allowed to fail and success is cheapened.

</comment><comment><USER22> This ain't the MikeRoweSoft kid?! I wasted my time reading a letter from the guy from Dirty Jobs? I was kinda wondering why people were writing that kid letters.

</comment><comment><USER23> My headline would have been different:

Mike Rowe arbitrarily defines success, denounces otherwise high achieving boy for not meeting it.

<comment><USER24> Blogger writes post requiring complete reading to understand; HN reader TL;DRs and does not.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Automated macOS dev setup - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tylucaskelley/setup.sh <comment><USER2> I posted [mac-dev-playbook]([https://github.com/geerlingguy/mac-dev- playbook](https://github.com/geerlingguy/mac-dev-playbook)) (an Ansible-based solution) a few weeks back, and this shell-script approach is in some ways a foil to a more heavyweight setup like the one I'm currently using.

Definitely not saying one way is better than the other, but as I've gone deeper into _needing_ to use more than one Mac, it's been easier to manage things with Ansible (which helps me maintain idempotence and uniformity between machines more easily). But if I were managing one Mac, I would probably lean further towards the simplicity of a script like this one.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, as my project grows i've been thinking about re-writing in Python or Ruby to make project structure and testing a lot more straightforward; as of now this thing requires a lot of manual testing

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Looking for feedback! It's something I've been working on for a long time and would love to hear from people who use it and find any issues or want to see changes / fixes

<comment><AUTHOR> for those running macOS 10.12 that have read through my script and want to try, paste this into the terminal:

curl [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tylucaskelley/setup.sh/mas...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tylucaskelley/setup.sh/master/bin/setup.bash) -o setup.bash && caffeinate -i bash setup.bash</comment></comment>


The Famous Ethics Professor and the Women Who Accused Him - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/yale-ethics-professor?src=longreads&utm_term=.ffwo67e6O#.jlMmoRloe <comment><USER2> If Yale really tried to silence an accuser with an NDA and a cash payment, they are co-conspirators in an attempt to cover up a possible Title IX violation. Not a good look.</comment>


The Case for Billionaire Philanthropy - <AUTHOR> https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/29/against-against-billionaire-philanthropy/ <comment><USER2> I dont trust anyone advocating against billionaire philanthropy. Definitely seems a little too convenient. Do we want them to keep their money? They ought to spend it. They ought to so capital actually re-enters the accessible economy. Money just goes up and stays up. Down here, the pool all of us are playing in, keeps getting smaller. That scares the 1% into becoming philanthropists - they give, or we'll eventually take. Very few are being generous.</comment>


Ask HN: Looking for Haskell Type Classes relationship diagram - <AUTHOR> Example, I want look at any type class, and immediately derive from diagram which type classes it encompasses:<p>... Apply => Applicative => Monad <comment><USER2> See [https://wiki.haskell.org/Typeclassopedia#Introduction](https://wiki.haskell.org/Typeclassopedia#Introduction)

[Generally you'll get a better response to things like this on Haskell Reddit "Hask Anything" threads, or maybe Stack Overflow.]

<comment><USER3> On the contrary, I don't think there is a better response to this question than a single comment with that link!</comment></comment>


Heroku for PHP - Private Beta Signup - <AUTHOR> http://phpfog.com/

<comment><USER2> I don't think there's a huge market for what Heroku does in the PHP world. With Rails, you want to run it as a long-running process. The amount of time to spin up a (Thin|Mongrel|Unicorn|etc.) is too long to do it based on a user request for a page and it's why Rails isn't run as a CGI.

PHP is a bit different. The language is typically embedded in the server and then the individual files are parsed and run. There's little configuration other than uploading the files since the server can just interpret the files ending in ".php".

Heroku needs to be able to put your application code on multiple servers and know which servers are responsible for your application. When one of your Thins isn't working, they need to kill it and spawn a new one, potentially on a new server and make sure they update their routing table. It's a tad complicated.

PHP Fog doesn't have to do much. Heroku is running around 65,000 applications. Assuming that applications are under 30MB (for the hard drive), a RAID-1 with 2TB drives on every server they have would do the trick with a simple load balancer sending requests to a random server would do the trick. Your code is resident on their 15 app servers, a request comes in and gets routed to a random one, it parses your PHP and returns a response. The application isn't in memory as a long-running process like it is with Rails. Heroku already just has shared or dedicated database servers. There's no fancy process monitoring that you need since you only have to ensure that Apache is still going strong.

But that's also why PHP Fog won't do as well. They aren't taking on as difficult a challenge as Heroku. They don't need to run something like god or monit to monitor lots of user processes. They don't need to pre-spawn application servers. They don't need fancy routing to keep track of what domain is being requested, what application belongs to that domain, and on what server that application is located. Because PHP doesn't usually involve long-running processes, it's taken care of for them. In fact, there are services like this already such as Rackspace's Cloud Sites (which puts your PHP or ASP code on multiple boxes, has a shared database, and loadbalances it). The same situation exists with Media Temple's Grid Service. Media Temple says, "hundreds of servers for the price of one". That's possible because the application code takes up such little space and can be easily replicated since it doesn't store state. Rails and Django users on Media Temple have to buy a "container" which comes with a certain amount of RAM on a specific box - because they need to keep the application in memory.

Rails deployment will get a lot more people on board because it's more difficult to do. You have to manage application processes. PHP deployment is already seen as something that "just works". And if someone is going to argue that this "just works" a little better, wait until different users are expecting different php.ini stuff - or they expect to be able to save to the local filesystem because that's what the code they downloaded does or do a highly insecure cross-domain require or all of the various things that can't "just work".

They could still be a very good webhost, but they aren't solving the same problem as Heroku and others (including Media Temple and Rackspace) have already gone the multi-server, auto-load-balanced and managed failover route for PHP (just not using git).

<comment><USER3> i disagree, somewhat. yes, this won't provide truly comparable services to heroku. clearly. the languages and stack don't work the same way.

but i think the point of this is to communicate the fact that they're abstracting out the server and scalability details. i'd pay to not have to worry about all that stuff and just work on the app.

if this thing will handle the server for me, keep it secure and up to date, provide me with a database that will scale with my app like amazon's RDS, provide me with meaningful data and metrics about my server/application/database, and provide me with things to make common tasks easier (deploying), then imo, it is worth me paying for it, or paying a small premium on top of what i'd be paying amazon or whoever. but then again, i'm a solo bootstrapper. the more time i have to develop, the better.

"heroku for php" might not be a great choice of a tagline from a strategic perspective, but it is a decent one if you want to consider SEO and organic search results.

<comment><AUTHOR> This wholly encapsulates the philosophy we are bringing to PHP Fog... let us deal with the plumbing and you deal with development.

<comment><USER4> So, it's basically a PHP shared hosting with source control(git)? I would try it.

<comment><AUTHOR> It will let you seamlessly grow from shared to dedicated hosting (and back again) as needed for either your application serving or database needs.

<comment><USER5> this is pretty much what Mediatemple.net already offers with Containers for their GS (shared hosting). They don't have PHP Containers but they do have MySql Containers that are automatically instantiated if traffic spikes. I think you could really make a difference by offering killer features on demand, like isolated memcached instances, redis, cassandra/mongoDB and RabbitMQ.

edit: email submited

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _like Heroku, but better_

Somehow I doubt that, but the service looks interesting. I wonder if there is a market for high quality PHP hosting.

<comment><USER7> "Like Heroku but for PHP" would have been a less arrogant slogan IMHO.

Actually a lot of top tier websites are built in PHP (Facebook's front end is a good example) and so I don't doubt there is middle tail in there that might jump on a Heroku-style managed black box hosting platform.

<comment><USER6> The only reason they can use PHP in the front end is because they have a lot of different backend and frontend services to compensate for it speed-wise. Facebook uses HipHop, backend services written with C/Java/etc(?), and lots of interesting frontend JavaScript stuff to speed up page loads. Wikipedia has literally hundreds of Squid servers to cache requests, so most visitors never touch code that was just generated with PHP. Needless to say, this would be unlikely to be possibly using PHP Fog. (This comment sort of turned into a PHP is slow argument, oops. My point should still come across though)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Put in my email for an invite, its going to come down to pricing.

My initial skepticism is that deploying PHP apps is easy, and Fantastico already gives us 1-click installs for stuff like Drupal and Wordpress. So you'll have to provide all the value on the sysadmin side.

However, we do have a couple of apps that require load balancing. I'm pretty happy with the dedicated server and load balancing prices we get from WiredTree already, but I'm always looking for new opportunities.

<comment><USER9> The benefit here is the git integration. I'd also assume that the control panel is going to be thousands of times easier to use and more efficient than Cpanel/Fantastico (which is pretty gross in my opinion)

I also dropped my email address in out of interest, but I agree this is definitely something that isn't needed for PHP. The web that we have right now was built for PHP. 99.9999% of hosts support it out of the box, and offer one click installs. If you're running your own app, it's just as easy to get that running with PHP.

What we really need is a Heroku for PYTHON! And Google App Engine is NOT the answer.

<comment><USER7> Why is Google App Engine not the answer for Python? Is it "the man" element or is there something at a technical level you don't like or missing?

<comment><USER10> Google limits you to using their own key/value store instead of a regular, relational DB. This makes it hard to migrate to and from GAE, so there's a fair bit of vendor lock-in.

A Heroku app can run anywhere else, out of the box.

<comment><USER11> BigTable is not a motherfucking key/value store. It's a sorted tuplestore with built-in multidimensionality. Hypertable is a direct clone, HBase and Cassandra use the same style of API but have slightly different storage backends.

Just because it isn't a SQL database doesn't mean it's non-relational or key/value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interesting idea! I'm curious to see what exactly this service provides (considering PHP deployment isn't exactly hard, as others mentioned). I would certainly love to see such a setup for Python frameworks...

<comment><USER13> Doesn't Google AppEngine solve this for Python?

<comment><USER14> It mostly does, except that the environment is restrictive enough it's not like normal Python, everyone who uses App Engine really writes _for_ App Engine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If all you want is the git deployment workflow it's incredibly easy to do on any host that give you SSH access (including shared hosts):

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/279169/deploy-php- using-g...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/279169/deploy-php-using- git#327315)

I've been using this on my personal site and it works great.

</comment><comment><USER16> The details are minimal in regards to what happens between pushing changes in git and the source code being updated in the cloud. Could you elaborate?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey fellow hackers, would love your feedback for making this a killer service.

<comment><USER17> Prefer scp/sftp over git. Am I supposed to publish site assets like 20gb of images in git? You can still trigger server-side actions when a file is pushed if you allow ssh.

Other than that, more details on the service would be nice. How do you scale MySQL for instance? I'm a technical guy so low level details are an important aspect for me.

<comment><USER18> With Heroku, you'd store those 20gb of images on S3. Then you have thm in development as well as production. And once they're up, you don't have to move them around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This will be very popular. Proof: [http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/list?can=2&#...
I briefly considered making this, and the Python equivalent. Warning: I have worked extensively with PHP internals, and you are going to have a very bad time making this safe and secure.
I would suggest you add an option to use HipHop, the Facebook compiler, as an option. That would be a great selling point.

</comment><comment><USER20> since rails has so much convention, you can write a system that scales it as long as peopel follow that convention.

PHP is a free for all. Different frameworks do things differently and need to be scaled differently. Lots of people don't use frameworks. I think it will be hard to write a "one size fits all" infrastructure solution for PHP, like what Heroku did for Rails.

</comment><comment><USER21> this feels very similar to Fantastico?

</comment><comment><USER22> Anyone know of a django/python set up like these?

<comment><USER23> See if maybe <http://kutoken.com/> fits the bill.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> the problem that PHP doesn't have is configuring the environment to run it. You just install a few pkgs and boom!

Even plugins come in php itself and aren't seperately pkged. There's no gems, no seperate server to serve the ruby backend. Just upload/push your code and it'll run. And any cheap host would do it. The _only_ advantage I see here is that I can increase my resources for the app (if it's like heroku) just with the click of a button without restarting the server.

But I can't wait to be proved wrong. All the best guys :)

</comment><comment><USER21> also no screenshots, no video, no hands on? boo.

</comment><comment><USER25> Seems insane and rude to say its better than Heroku, the service which clearly inspired yours.

</comment><comment><USER26> Someone needs to build a Heroku for Clojure.</comment>


Wi-FM listens to FM signals to determine best times to send and receive data - <AUTHOR> http://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/news/articles/2015/11/using-fm-to-improve-wireless-networks.html <comment><USER2> The article is somewhat confusingly worded (the actual paper it links is more clear: [http://networks.cs.northwestern.edu/publications/wifm/icnp20...](http://networks.cs.northwestern.edu/publications/wifm/icnp2015-flores.pdf)) and I initially thought it was describing something like Microsoft's White Spaces project where devices would automatically transmit over unused spectrum. In reality, the idea is that the devices all automatically select timing relative to an FM Radio Data System transmission and then can infer each other's chosen timing without actually communicating (or they "implicitly communicate" in the words of the paper's author as quoted in the article).

<comment><USER3> So a transmission time slot selector seeded by FM signals. I haven't read it yet, but is there a good summary for how it handles varying loads? As the number of users and packets go up, you have to select smaller timeslots from the same FM signal seed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Paper [http://networks.cs.northwestern.edu/publications/wifm/icnp20...](http://networks.cs.northwestern.edu/publications/wifm/icnp2015-flores.pdf)

> We show that the digital signal that accompanies broadcast FM radio has > sufficient structure to enable effective scheduling relative to it. It thus > provides a common reference for neighboring devices to harmonize their > transmissions, yet without requiring any explicit communication among them.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The link to the paper provide more detail. The basic idea is to use the FM radio RDS sub-channel as a sort of control plane or control channel. One of the things that differentiates LTE for example from 802.11 (WiFi) is that LTE has a control channel that coordinates the activities, when to transmit an on which channel via a control plane and hence achieves a higher spectral efficiency. Wifi uses CSMA/CD to sense and detect collisions. But sensing when they happen is not as good as just avoiding it all together. But to do that you need a control channel. The idea of using something as ubiquitous as the RDS sub-channel as a control channel has a lot of potential applications beyond Wifi, it could also be used for white space control to open up vast amounts of un-used spectrum potentially.

</comment><comment><USER5> Doesn't the WiFi standard already do this for devices running in the same channel? I.e. if 3 devices are on Channel 1 they will talk to each other to avoid conflicts. Hence why you should only use one of 3 channels (the only 3 which never overlap)

<comment><USER6> That is the popular wisdom, but in my experience it's not universally true. I have had good results in an apartment building by choosing channels between 1, 6, and 11. Signal strength sometimes went up quite a bit.

For example, if there are 3 APs on each of the three non-overlapping channels, using a channel between those channels may provide better results than directly competing with 3 other APs for the entire channel.

However, it also depends on the observed signal strength for each of the competing APs. For best results, you should probably test your equipment.

But if you really want decent transfer rates between devices, just use Ethernet. I've given up on ever reaching even 50% of rated speeds on wifi. With competing APs, walls, distance, etc, it's just never going to happen.

<comment><USER7> I think this is a bad idea... to use non-standard channels. See: [http://superuser.com/questions/443178/is-it-better-to- use-a-...](http://superuser.com/questions/443178/is-it-better-to-use-a- crowded-2-4ghz-wi-fi-channel-1-6-11-or-unused-3-4-8)

<comment><USER6> You should read the links you cite before you cite them. Among the answers found on that page are these:

"The 1-6-11 recommendation contained in Cisco's whitepaper about IEEE 802.11 deployment in the corporate environment certainly does not apply to all circumstances! For example, in moderately congested neighbourhoods, one stands a very good chance to benefit from not sticking to this proposed scheme."

"the situation usually gets worse when one voluntary abides to the 1-6-11 non- overlapping channel scheme. Doing so will expose your devices to the IEEE 802.11 RTS/CTS/ACK (Request to Send / Clear to Send / Acknowledge) of alien devices, effectively silencing your devices and hence forcedly lowering your bandwidth. This problem is known as the exposed node problem. In a corporate setting this problem can be solved by synchronising the nodes. In the wild, this is not readily achievable."

"In big corporate networks it's common practice to use channels 1,6 & 11 because it is fairly straightforward (at least on a diagram) to design non- overlapping cells of coverage. As a home user you don't have the same constraints so it makes sense to experiment and look for the best channel."

"I am a Ham Radio operator. I have done extensive testing. On my Actiontec or ZyXcel, channel 1 is abysmal! Channel 11 is a close second to the death of channel 1. ACTUAL power readings put 3 and 4 as the strongest signal output and throughput. Channels 6 and 9 are the standard preset. so actually avoid 1,6,9,11. I am a DSL tech also. I have walked people through changing channels from 9-10-11 to 3 or 4. They are amazed at the doubling of the wifi signal on all devices across the board."

"Hence, I call for actually measuring one's own signal-to-noise level...The Quality value takes into account noise from overlapping channels."

The bottom line is as I said: test your own equipment in your own environment and find what works best for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is this still a problem for 5Ghz wifi?

</comment><comment><USER9> Url changed from [http://phys.org/news/2015-11-wi-fm- fm.html](http://phys.org/news/2015-11-wi-fm-fm.html), which points to this.

</comment><comment><USER10> There is a MAC you know...</comment>


Abolish Silicon Valley – Wendy Liu - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/07/abolish-silicon-valley-by-wendy-liu-review-rebooting-our-reality <comment><USER2> The article recycles a lot of the familiar excesses and removed-from-reality tropes of Silicon Valley, as I'm sure the book does at points, but doesn't focus nearly enough on the author's prescriptions. It's really a missed opportunity to understand what makes the book unique, what better world the author wants to build.

> "open protocols and decentralised services", and wants secretive competition > between developers to be replaced by "democratic oversight and open > collaboration"

Sounds not too far removed from the activism of groups such as the EFF, and even the FOSS movement in general. How they fit on the political graph is complicated. They are civil liberties oriented, but often in a more right- libertarian (or perhaps center/apathetic-libertarian) than a left-libertarian way, much less libertarian socialist. Pirate politics, as the Europeans call it. Not libertarian in the Californian ideology utopian neoliberal sort of way, but in a more anti-authority radical form of libertarianism.

And some of these proponents still end up working for some of the large corporations like Google. Which _really_ complicates things further when free flow of information as ideology blends into freeing information for the sake of furthering the bottom line.

> Liu's blueprint for a "socialist media system" may still sound impractical, > but her emphasis on public space and the public good have an eerie resonance > at present: who knows what changes might come when we creep out of our > enforced solitude and reconstitute a functioning society?

Intriguing idea, great question, totally nonsense in this context as this review does not bother to explain the former, nor expand upon the latter. SF tech workers stepping over the homeless is not "enforced solitude", it is both lack of empathy and the sign of a failed political and economic system. What solitude separates these juxtaposed segments of society?

> In Einstein's day, the pioneers of the new physics thought they were engaged > in "world-building"; Liu similarly remarks that designing a website opens a > hole in the universe through which we can study its inner mechanics. Her > experiments in coding would, she believed, confer on her "a kind of > immortality".

Sidebar: I've long-wondered if software developers have a propensity to fall prey to the "engineer's disease" more than other STEM disciplines because so much of our form of engineering exists only in the abstract. (Mechanical engineers and civil engineers, for instance, know that they are at least bound by basic laws of physics- and stay humble.) But through hardware and integrated physical systems, we're able to control and influence the real world, potentially in world-changing ways. So when choked on a suffusion of our own abstraction, we imagine we know everything, deriving everything from first principles.</comment>


The best web hosting provider? - <AUTHOR> I am looking for the best web hosting provider that support python 3 <comment><USER2> I recommend including [WebFaction]([https://www.webfaction.com/](https://www.webfaction.com/)) as a candidate.

</comment><comment><USER3> Lowendbox has tons of good deals.</comment>


Ask HN: Being Highly Sensitive (HSP), can I find fulfilling work in tech? - <AUTHOR> »A highly sensitive person (HSP) experiences the world differently than others. Due to a biological difference that they're born with, highly sensitive people are more aware of subtleties and process information deeply. This means they tend to be creative, insightful, and empathetic, but it also means they're more prone to stress and overwhelm. Although being highly sensitive is completely normal — meaning, it's not a disease or a disorder — it's often misunderstood, because only 15 to 20 percent of the population are HSPs.« [0]
»Do you get rattled when you have a lot to do in a short amount of time? (...) Do you make it a high priority to arrange your life to avoid upsetting or overwhelming situations? (...) If you notice everything, you are naturally going to be overstimulated when things are too intense, complex, chaotic, or novel for a long time.« [1]
After my studies I have worked for 2 years in one of The Big Five. I take this as a proof that I have sufficient intellect for the field, but the time has also pretty much burned me out and badly damaged my professional confidence. Because I'm accurate but also kinda slow, sorting through the load of corporate e-mail alone I found overwhelming. Add a demanding environment, with time pressure, peer reviews and the like, and you have enough to brake me. Later, I co-founded a start-up and participated in another, both as a tech lead, and I enjoyed that time and role — but both companies failed. Since then, I have the occasional freelance work and earn a ridiculously little amount of money. I find it depressing that I tried different types of work (corp., start-ups and freelancing), and none seem to be able to provide a sane environment combined with appropriate income.
Now I wonder whether I have chosen the right industry. As an HSP, can one be a good fit for the tech world? If yes, what would be a fitting environment or role?
[0]: https://highlysensitiverefuge.com/
[1]: https://hsperson.com/ <comment><USER2> I'm not terribly familiar with the language and framework around HSP, but I can identify with many of the traits listed here: rattled by pressure, accurate but quite slow, having to steel myself very deliberately to get through PR reviews, etc. I've been doing a lot of work with the Enneagram (highly recommend it, it's about understanding the trap and coping mechanism that is your personality and transcending it to get to your true self) and I definitely come down as a 4.

You can succeed in tech. Tech is so, so vast. There are so many areas and facets to it that have nothing to do with FAANG or the Big 5 or whatever.

What's worked for me, and what may work for you, is to stay away from "sexy" tech. I'm at a relatively unsexy tech company in an office on the east coast, and I've found a group that's working on cool stuff without the pressure and ego of stereotypical SV ("move fast and break things"). The environment and culture is rigorous but much more relaxed, and my team places a lot more value in correctness and runtime speed over development speed.

Not everyplace in tech is pressure cooker. Not every person is ego driven. Even though I'm in a relaxed environment, I still struggle with comparing myself to my colleagues and dealing with feelings of inadequacy, but because I can recognize that tendency in myself I can do things to address it. Many of those things end up being spending my time away from work _truly_ away from work and finding my identity outside of my job. That might be antithetical to running startups, or it may not.

My emotional intelligence is ultimately a benefit to my team if I can keep it in check, just as the drive to get things done from one of my colleagues is a benefit if kept in check, and the cautious nature of another if kept in check, and the devil-may-care optimism of another if kept in check, etc.

We all need the strengths of each other, and your sensitivity, if kept in check, will be a benefit in the right environment.

<comment><USER3> I agree with this, there are a lot of businesses which do interesting things without the pressure and stress big 5 bring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > I'm accurate but also kinda slow

Quality or speed you cant have both, there is lots of work in the tech world for people that can produce quality. You also talk about wanting to be organised, lots of work for organised people in the tech world. All of your personality traits that make you feel overwhelmed are probably your greatest assets if you can find work that makes use of them.

You have tried a lot of different types of work in the tech sector but there are more still, lots more. Try smaller businesses and other less corporate overlord tech companies.

In my experience there is more shitty work than there is good work, keep trying shit until you find something that works for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for instilling some optimism. Of course you're right, one has to keep looking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You haven't yet tried a university system which may be a good fit for you. They typically operate at a slower pace, are much more detail oriented, and accommodate a wide range of employees.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion! That would be something in the context of either education or administration, right? Ironically, I always had the idea that people end up in the university system if they're »not good enough to work in the real world«.

<comment><USER5> You'll probably want to look for research engineering related positions, a lot of universities have associated research laboratories that do R&D work for various organizations. Regarding the quality of people, I have one friend who just went from a university position to Google and another that went to Apple.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Because this devastating condition is biologically determined, as has been scientifically determined and the causative genes identified, you should be able to apply for disability.</comment>


Quantum Computing Is Real, and D-Wave Just Open-Sourced It - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2017/01/d-wave-turns-open-source-democratize-quantum-computing/ <comment><USER2> TL:DR They open sourced a software library for encouraging "Not familiar with quantum physics" programmes to get started.

</comment><comment><USER3> If it is real now, why can't we do the following:

1\. Take a problem that is impossible to solve with classical computers (e.g. from combinatorics, number factorization), but whose solution can be verified easily.

2\. Solve it on their quantum computer.

D-Wave keeps saying they have a quantum computer since 5 years now, yet they have not produced any proof of quantum speed up achieved with their machine.

<comment><USER4> For a long time it was controversial whether D-Wave's systems even used quantum effects - but now the consensus is that they do. D-Wave's systems implement some (restricted) kind of adiabatic quantum computing/quantum annealing. Even from a theoretical perspective it is up to now hardly understood in what sense quantum annealing is more powerful (in terms of better possible running time opposed to classical annealing combined with specialized algorithms). So you cannot simply implement some well-known quantum algorithm as Shor's on D-Wave's systems.

<comment><USER3> Yes I understand that quantum annealing is different, but the whole point of having a quantum computer is that it is able to solve interesting mathematical problems, or at the very least is able to simulate other quantum systems efficiently (beyond nearest-neighbor Ising models). To my understanding, the D-Wave system has demonstrated neither of these things so far.

<comment><USER4> > but the whole point of having a quantum computer is that it is able to solve > interesting mathematical problems

> To my understanding, the D-Wave system has demonstrated neither of these > things so far.

There are different opinions whether D-Wave's quantum computer is able to solve _interesting_ mathematical problems. Here are some - decide for yourself whether you consider them as interesting or not (I'm personally on the side that it is not the kind of application _I_ am interested in, but can imagine that there might be people for whose these might be useful):

> [https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-cool-possible- > applicatio...](https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-cool-possible- > applications-of-the-D-Wave-quantum-computer)

Here D-Wave's marketing about applications - read them with a grain of salt ;-) :

> [http://www.dwavesys.com/quantum- > computing/applications](http://www.dwavesys.com/quantum- > computing/applications)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They still can't get their gate fidelity anywhere close. Nice PR move ...again

<comment><USER6> Heh, I would be really surprised if it would work "now".

Maybe in five or ten years though

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm wondering why people think that the argument that because the Dwave system can only solve 1 problem or in fact only 1 subset of a problem disqualifies it from being a quantum computer is valid. Last time I checked a conventional computer only solves 1 problem at its core. Are quantum computers measured with a different stick?

<comment><USER3> But what problem can it actually solve?

<comment><USER7> Well there is the salesman example in the article for one, I find the checker board problem much easier to wrap my head around. On a checker board you have 64 squares, half are red and half are black, everywhere a red touches a black square is a junction point. How many junction points are there? Now that you know how many junctions there are how many different ways can you lay out those red and black squares to make that same amount of junctions? What if 3/4 of the squares were black? My understanding is that the Dwave system will produce a number of answers that are close to correct, and a majority that are correct (probably). Things start getting really tricky when you make the squares into cubes and run the problem again, or if you want to get really bent add a fourth dimension to the problem.

<comment><USER3> Yes but even for the traveling salesman problem (which in most variants is NP- complete) there is -to my knowledge- no experimental or even theoretical proof that an adiabatic quantum computer could outperform a classical one.

The fact that the D-Wave computer is a computationally complex quantum system does not automatically imply that the dynamics of the system can be harnessed to solve computationally complex problems, because we usually don't have sufficient control over the system. Given the ability to control individual degrees of freedom of a given system with arbitrary precision almost anything can be turned into an exponentially powerful classical or quantum computer, even a simple hot cup of tea. The problem is that we often don't have the means to exert the required control over the system, and this is the core problem with all current approaches to quantum computing, adiabatic or not.

So, yes, you can encode the solution to many problems in the ground state of the Hamiltonian of a coupled qubit system, but reliably keeping the system in this ground state while transforming it into the target state turned out to be impossible in any real-world system so far, as even the tiniest thermal fluctuations will trigger state transitions during the annealing process and ruin the whole thing.

So if D-Wave really claims they have a working quantum annealer on their hands I want to see proof, and if they can muster it I'm pretty sure they'll get a nobel prize in return. Show me the data!

<comment><USER7> Wow, blind me with brilliance or baffle me with bs, you are obviously much smarter than me and I conside to you. All that I ask is that you use your knowledge to help what I feel is a pioneering company with an idea that even the smartest minds...including yours have had to concede that these guys have something. They have pulled up their skirt and offered you an opportunity to make something great and you want to bicker over their har color.

<comment><USER7> I must apologize for that last comment as I phrased it in a demeaning context..the truth is we (humanity) need your help and rather than fight over Synaptics I emplore you to focus your valuable experience and knowledge to pursue this area of computer science in the direction of achieving the greater good rather than a geekisH slap fight that gets us nowhere. You seem like a smart guy, fix the issue by creating something great and make america great again.

<comment><USER3> No worries, my critique is not aimed at you but at the way D-Wave is doing PR, as I think it does serious damage to all other companies in this field and will hinder progress in quantum computing. I understand that you need to do some marketing as a tech company, but there is a difference between being optimistic and visionary about what you want to do, and simply telling people that you already did it without handing over any proof. After what happened with Theranos I really wish tech journalists would be more careful when reporting about supposedly revolutionary technologies like these, especially if there is no independent evidence available to back any of the claims made.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


2013 Entrepreneurs - Innovators Under 35 - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/lists/innovators-under-35/2013/entrepreneurs/ <comment><AUTHOR> Also, a list of visionaries - [http://www.technologyreview.com/lists/innovators- under-35/20...](http://www.technologyreview.com/lists/innovators- under-35/2013/visionaries/)

& Inventors - [http://www.technologyreview.com/lists/innovators- under-35/20...](http://www.technologyreview.com/lists/innovators- under-35/2013/inventors/)

Some of the stuff is pretty amazing specially in medical technology.</comment>


Ask HN: Is it viable to enable employees to diversify their stock compensation? - <AUTHOR> Just a shower thought.
What could be the challenges to the concept of a fund where Start-up employees can pool in their stock compensation?
What I am talking about would work something like this:
Someone who "knows about evaluating startups" would create a club of say 20 Seed/Series A startups, employees of which could  trade in their entire/portion of stock compensation for units of a consolidated fund to enable diversification.
I could see several pros and some cons of such an approach but then I have never been involved in a startup for significant scale and am definately not considering everything here.
What are your thoughts on this? <comment><USER2> I assume you're talking about stock options, not actual stock.

Most stock option grants don't allow any transfer of ownership without at least the approval of the company who issued stock options. So given the current rules for stock options such trading is not possible.

Were the rules to change, it would still be highly problematic because you're essentially creating a stock exchange and those are highly regulated by the government (since without oversight they are great avenues for fraud).

</comment><comment><USER3> Yeah that's borderline insider trading. The legal fees needed to ensure this works correctly outweigh the benefit.</comment>


Xi-editor – An editor for the next 20 years - <AUTHOR> https://xi-editor.io/ <comment><USER2> Some key initial thoughts from a potential user that might be interesting in using Xi because he loves tinkering with new stuff:

* What is Xi? The name reminds me of Vi/Vim, so what makes it better than Vi/Vim?

* Is this a fully-fledged text editor or is this a tool in the CLI (like Vi/Vim)

* Why should I use Xi? What immediate benefits does Xi give me over say, vscode + vim extensions?

Hope this helps, didn't get much further than the first page and clicking around a bit on the website, then left.

<comment><USER3> [https://xi-editor.io/docs.html](https://xi-editor.io/docs.html)

<comment><USER4> The docs page doesn't show any list of features and doesn't seem to show any visual examples. It doesn't entice me in any way to try out the editor.

Why would I want to use Xi editor? I'm unclear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh, it's actually 'zigh'. What's wrong with 'ksee'? Don't tell me Vi is not pronounced 'vee'...

Very interested in Xi and especially in Druid. That old talk about it was very promising. Too bad there's not much activity surfacing from the project.

<comment><USER6> That pronunciation help confused me even more. So, does rhyme with high?

<comment><USER7> yes[0].

[0]: [https://youtu.be/4FbQre9VQLI](https://youtu.be/4FbQre9VQLI)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some previous discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16267202](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16267202)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17109930](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17109930)

</comment><comment><USER9> He only has 16 years left :)

<comment><AUTHOR> And it is, maybe, in 11 years usable if the current speed is maintained.

So we have for 5 Years a really good editor-backend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not much activity recently - why share this now?

<comment><AUTHOR> i have discovered it and wanted to share it :)</comment></comment>


Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule - <AUTHOR> http://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html <comment><USER3> This also speaks to why Makers tend to be somewhat noctural: the default for night-time that it be uninterrupted. Not just interruptions by other people, but by our own notions of what we "should be doing", i.e. going to the post office when it's open, doing laundry, following the news, etc.

Similarly, those people who have figured out that showing up to the office at 7am (or earlier) increses productivity are actually carving out Un-interrupted Time. I've found that early mornings are often a good strategy for being more productive if other things in your life conspire to deprive you of Un- interrupted Time.

<comment><USER4> The problem I've had with coming in early is that most of the people I work around are procrastinators. So if the business day is 9 to 5, they will push off most of their work to close to 5. If I come in at 7am and expect to leave at 4 it is nearly impossible because that is the busiest time of most peoples days. It is a let down if I leave "early". I end up working 7 to 5 and then can't do my usual nighttime distraction-less work because I need to get up early the next day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think another reason why meetings are an extra burden on Makers vs. for Managers is that for the Managers, the meeting _is_ their work. Their job is to meet with people, get ideas exchanged, organise people and settle conflict, which you achieve by having meetings. In many cases, when the meeting is over, the Manager's work is done: 1 hour of meeting equals 1 hour of work.

For makers though, the meeting can be _additional_ to their main work, which is "making" something, and the meeting is really just a distraction, even if it is somehow related to what they are creating. When the meeting is over and the decision is made or the idea is communicated, the work still has to be done but the meeting time is now gone: 1 hour of meeting equals -1 hour of work, so 2 hours need to be done to catch up.

<comment><USER6> That's a weird bit of reckoning at the end. If you're short an hour of work, an hour of work is all you need to catch up.

<comment><USER7> I don't think the reckoning is weird at all. Being interrupted for an hour in the middle of your work costs more than an hour in all but the most ideal cases.

If you could somehow save your brain state in an instant, teleport directly to the meeting for an hour, teleport back, and then reload your previous brain state as you returned to your work, it would take exactly an hour to catch up.

The fact is, it takes a bit of time to change gears for the meeting and then quite a bit more time to get back in the creative zone. Aside from just remembering all the details of what you were working on, it takes quite a bit of time for your body, including your brain, to get into a state of "flow".

<comment><USER8> Tell it. In intensely focus-based knowledge work, the economics of human task switching - to borrow Joel Spolsky's term - is a formidable and intriguing science that managers who look at time as an interchangeable commodity or a cluster of cells on a spreadsheet simply don't grasp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Paul Graham can be hit or miss, IMO, but this one is a direct hit. I don't mind meetings per se - in a good company, they have merit - but their effect on the work day can be disastrous. If you don't work somewhere that understand that programmers need large uninterrupted chunks of time, well, you're not at a developer friendly place. There's few worse problems. And non-makers often don't have any idea that it's not just the standard 'coders are cranky' going on. (We, as a group, _are_ cranky, mind you.)

<comment><USER10> I work an odd job. It is approximately equal parts system administration, programming, and tech support. Can you guess which part I dread most?

I relish the days I can lock myself in a basement laboratory and hide out with my code. Some days I just give up on getting non-support work done because I'm getting interrupted every hour with a 5-minute fix or to reboot a fax machine. I've toyed with the idea of shifting my schedule to only overlap with the rest of the office half the day. There is no way I can really schedule much active work (as opposed to reactive tech support) in a chunk less than about three hours.

I'll move on when I can, but right now I've got one perk I don't want to trade for anything.

<comment><USER11> I have a similar job + management duties. I've found the guidelines in the book Time Management for System Administrators ( <http://my.safaribooksonline.com/0596007833> ) pretty good.

The strategy where you have a fellow team member act as your shield is effective. Every other day you rotate the role of shield, aka as the secretary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Students, take this advice to heart as well. Are all your classes grouped together? They should be. I'd go so far to claim that you should take a less interesting set of classes in order to group them all together. I'm taking Distributed Systems this semester instead of Data Mining for this very reason. Am I more interested in Data Mining? Yes. But I'll wait until next semester. Distributed Systems are pretty cool too, and even the most amazing class is not worth adding several hours of dead time to your week.

(Interesting note for anyone familiar with Randy Pausch: he mentions this very phemonena in his lecture about time management.)

<comment><USER13> Counterpoint: While I agree, I have found that when I have a little spacing between classes per week (say one hour between lectures on Mondays) I face less administrative hassles in the long run.

This is because there's nothing productive that can be done in that hour except administrative work. Submitting forms, replying to emails, returning library books are all things that otherwise fall by the wayside to your productivity, but this way I don't get into trouble or waste "good" time doing them either.

<comment><USER12> Good point. Another option (as Randy mentions in his talk) is to schedule a "fake" class during the dead hour. Just go to the same spot in the library every day and work on the same class. Office hours are useful for this purpose as well.

<comment><USER10> I sort of did this during my undergrad. But instead it was essentially 9-5 minus whatever classes I had. I would just spend any time not in class during the work day to work on class work unless I had every assignment done. It helped me get ahead and then I could just relax in the evenings because I knew I'd have time to work on things later in the week.

In many classes it's much easier to do productive work in an hour than at most programming jobs. Programming jobs tend to be structured in terms of large projects/milestones, while classes tend to have smaller goals or problems on the problem sets that can be done in < 1 hour. And if all else fails, reading a text book for an hour can be quite productive, and it's nice to let the information settle in your brain before applying it anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Brilliant article and spot-on.

The hardest jobs in software (IMHO) will be the engineering leads that have to be an interface between management and their engineering team. They are also asked to "make" at high quality but can't escape the management schedule overlap. So the only other option is to work themselves to death at night when no one can interrupt.

I think some managers have also begun to require (or encourage) semi-constant instant messaging which can hurt a "maker's schedule", too. I've been guilty of this even recently. Perhaps the continual overhang of the interruptive IM can make them feel that anxiety of not being able to work on any hard/long problems for fear of being interrupted?

The best "makers" have adapted to this in their own ways, of course.

<comment><USER15> I agree, the problem (and the solution) lies with the people who are the interface between makers and managers. The job description for these people varies but you know who they are - project leader type people.

Here's what we try to do: all meetings known to involve lots of people are all scheduled Thursdays. The people who only have to attend one meeting don't care, and the people who have to attend multiple ones just cross off Thursday from being a "real work" day. Yes okay, it's a cost, but at least it is only a 20% cost.

"Emergency" meetings involving senior management (you all know why the sarcasm quotes are there): the interface person should take the hit. In my experience there is rarely a technical issue raised in a senior management context that cannot be adequeately fielded (!= implemented) by a good project lead. Actually, I regard this as one of the major contributions of the leader: take all the crap on so that your guys can be left alone to do their work. I realise this opens a whole different can of worms in discussing what kind of person should be a project leader.

If you have a shop with people working mixed hours (ie when everybody is not on a 9-5 schedule) you should have "core hours" to allow for meetings anyway. This at least stops meetingitis from creeping throughout the day.

IM is a bigger problem I agree, but not necessarily in this category as it is a maker-to-maker disruption source as well as manager-to-maker one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> My solution is to simply follow my old student cycle - "lecture time" from 9am to 1pm, lunch break from 1-2 (if you want a hot lunch as I do, it always triggers an interrupt regardless). Since lectures are almost never contiguous, you can slot meetings and speculative meetings between them. I often meet people for lunch (the equivalent of "for coffee") and put important meetings at 2pm - 3pm (so that they stand out in my schedule, but still don't break my contiguous day.)

Everything important happens at 2/3pm onwards. I often go for a run at 6/7pm (hint: exercise is important) but I usually do a lot of thinking while on the treadmill, so it counts more as "retreat and reassess time" than an interrupt. Peak time is 8/9pm onwards, since the run provides time for reflection and restrategizing. I view the next few hours as a "runway" in that it provides a time for loading things onto my mental stack. If by midnight things aren't flowing, I wind down and get to bed by 1am to prep for the next day - but if things are in flow, I unleash and never stop until I'm exhausted (anywhere between 3am - 8am) and crash. (This is why important meetings are kept for 2pm, so that recovery is still possible without constraining the runway)

</comment><comment><USER16> To echo pg on this- another trick that i was taught early on was to book out a day or half day per week for meetings. Slot them in, try and get people to come to you (helps if you have membership to a club or some such :)) and then keep people to their time slots. If they need to follow up - email or reschedule based on an action point.

One other point: agile standups seem to work well even for makers because they're bound tightly to the start of working sessions and last for a short time. They enable everyone to feel connected to each other on a team, but allow them to disappear back into their office or cube to work for the rest of the day.

<comment><USER17> > agile standups seem to work well even for makers because they're bound > tightly to the start of working sessions and last for a short time.

I think there's another thing going on too. Most meetings that developers go to have some specific purpose of importance. They are tactical, so as a developer you need to prepare (mentally and/or more concretely) for them. Standups - being recurring events - don't have this aspect to them. This makes them much less stressful.

<comment><USER10> The problem with the meetings PG is talking about is they tend to be in the middle of productive blocks and they are long.

The idea of an Agile standup is usually it is right at the start of the day, when people are still drinking their coffee and waking up, and they are short (the standing is deliberately to keep it short and to the point). Sure, you might have a 10 minute standup at the start of the day, but that's only 10 minutes off the beginning of your 3-hour productive chunk. They can also help you get into the flow by getting you thinking about work.

<comment><USER18> That only works if everyone starts their workday at the same time.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, XP is kind of predicated on people working in the same place at the same time.

<comment><USER18> Agile does not necessarily imply XP.

<comment><USER19> Isn't that's where the standups come from, though?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Although the comparison of schedule types is interesting, the application to YC's schedule makes no sense.

An investor may use the manager's schedule for his work-day where he meets with prospective investments, meets with current investments, "grabs coffee"s, etc. When he goes home, he does not spend an hour with his wife, an hour with his kids, an hour reading "the brothers karamazov", and an hour of sleep. He goes home and has the maker's schedule.

Similarly, PG mentions that YC operates on the maker's schedule. But what he means is: if he grabs coffee it will cost him half a day's _making_ work, not a half a day's YC _managing_ work. PG, I'm assuming, writes essays, writes code, etc, not for YC investment management but for other projects. YC _does_ operate on a manager's schedule: he mentions that Office hours are scheduled, interviews are in timely segments, etc.

So really, YC spends less time on investment management than other investors. There's nothing wrong with this. That's great. But let's not suggest that management is better done on a maker's schedule.

<comment><USER21> Strangely enough, management may actually be better done on a maker's schedule. It's certainly no worse done. Office hours seem to work fine for all the startups who want to talk to me. And in addition, compressing them all into the shortest time means that a group that shows up for an appointment during office hours is likely to meet several other groups of their peers while they're there. They invariably talk, and often end up helping one another.

Plus you're assuming that doing making work doesn't affect the quality of one's managing work. But that isn't true. Actively working on webapps myself makes me a much better advisor to startups doing it.

<comment><USER22> "Management on a maker's schedule" is a powerful idea. Imagine the world under that paradigm. So much quieter.

Unrelatedly, for some reason I'm leery of terms like 'office hours'. They seem ... infantilising. I guess 'office hours' _is_ a precise description, though.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, I don't love the term "office hours" either. It's not even correct, since people have actual appointments; they're just clumped together. But I got into the habit of calling this thing office hours, and it is probably too late to change now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've found a way to partially counteract a manager's meeting schedule: splinter my work into extremely small pieces, and write them down in a TODO list. These tasks must have a clear DONE/NOT DONE boundary, and shouldn't need to be revisited. You should also break it up so that every time you finish something, you should be able to check something off of your TODO list. If it's not already there, add it, and then check it off.

For instance, if I had to write code to read data from a GPS unit, I might break it up like this:

* Find data spec on new GPS unit. * Look up current GPS interface.. if none, write an example and design an API around the example. * Write out header file (We use C++... that's another story :D) * Write function 1. ... * Write function n. * Procure GPS unit. * Debug.

I always feel some personal inertia against doing a task like "Write class to load data from the new GPS unit", but it's pretty hard to look at each subtask and say "err, I guess I should organize my inbox." Which I would probably do otherwise.

I have trouble finding tasks that are indivisible, but they exist! Designing and implementing custom data structures is one that I've run into recently... it has an ambiguous up-front design cost that makes it hard to divvy-up work.

<comment><USER24> Yes! Microtasking is the enemy of procrastination. When I feel like procrastinating (99.99% of the time?) and nodding off, I just tell myself, - I'll go play this game but first I'll let myself know what exactly I'll do after I get bored with procrastination. And so I write something like:

1\. Pull init code from old repository.

2\. Find function that accepts the data.

3\. Insert init code into the class.

4\. Debug and see if it works.

5\. Write callback for accepting data from TCP.

6\. Link callback to init.

7\. Refactor.

Then, as I have successfully broken down the huge (2-4 hr for me) task into 20-30 minutes tasks I go and run, or swim, or play 3d shooters (love Tribes 1). Interestingly, while I do that, my brain subconsciously works on the stuff from todolist and when I get back and look at the tasks it's extremely easy to get started, plus, I got a chance to think of a better way (if exists) to do stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is exactly why we have a Don't Bug Tom (my co-founder) Rule.

</comment><comment><USER18> I've actually found that I can't get into top "people mode" form without a warm-up. This means that, not only does a random meeting deprive me of a half day's worth of intense "maker" concentration, but I'm not even at my best for the 30 or 60 minutes of the meeting, because I've not warmed up into "people mode".

In my ideal world, I'd be in maker mode all but one day every workweek. I'd spend that remaining day doing nothing but meeting with people. I'd be in better form for both "maker mode" and "people mode", and I'd get more of both done.

</comment><comment><USER26> The other problem is that a 2 hour team meeting takes 2 hours for the manager 2*n hours for the team, even before considering the disruption.

<comment><USER21> One way to prevent 2 hour meetings is not to let people sit down. We had an unofficial rule to that effect at Viaweb.

I remember once passing by a room and noticing a bunch of people sitting around a table. I must have raised an eyebrow or something, because one of them jumped up and said "We're not having a meeting! We were just talking."

<comment><USER27> One of the better practices from the world of "agile" software methodology is dropping the team's weekly status meeting and instead having morning "stand-up meetings" every day. Same thing - you don't let people sit down. It completely changes the tone of the conversations, because no one wants to stand in a meeting room for longer than 10 or 15 minutes.

<comment><USER8> Not to mention that when the status meetings - or, even more significantly, other kinds of meetings (design meetings, planning meetings, etc.) - <USER2> spaced that far apart temporally, every meeting just becomes mostly a rehash of everything forgotten since the last meeting. The "agile" folks have the additional insight that reporting early and often is good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Thank you.

I just forwarded this to my latest ex-girlfriend to help her understand one of the major causes of drama while we were dating. :)

<comment><USER29> Get yourself a musician next time. Mine is in hackmode more often than I am :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Really, really interesting. Totally agree. As activity around Woobius has picked up recently, I've been struggling with exactly this problem. My cofounder happily schedules meetings with various potential clients or contacts or other useful people to meet, and they tend to break up my day in disastrous ways. I do indeed find that often, a meeting in the early afternoon (say 1-2pm) can blow up my entire day (at least in terms of turning a day that could have been chock full with super-productive work into one that only contributes a few bits of real work here or there).

I like the tip about working from dinner to 3am, too, but doesn't that blow away any chance whatsoever of social life? If you have a significant other, I imagine that's a clear no-go. Also, if you plan to attend the odd networking event, you won't (or at least, a networking event will basically cost you a whole working day, which seems pretty disastrous). How do you deal with those sociable activities when you're on the dinner-3am schedule?

<comment><USER8> It does blow away a social life and is antithetical to a significant other. PG clearly states elsewhere that he had neither for all but a very short part of the time that he was working on Viaweb, and implies or states in numerous places that this kind of dedication is necessary to achieve startup success.

The theory goes that the financial reward of a startup is a highly dense, compressed version of what you would otherwise be collecting through decades of salaried work of some sort, but is risky and always close to the margin of failure. So, the account goes, it requires a level of commitment that pretty much necessarily precludes a "healthy work-life balance."

<comment><USER30> Hey, I'm not suggesting "it gets in the way of a healthy work-life balance". Going out for drinks or to networking events is often a part of work. A lot of business success depends on who you meet, and how you get on with them, rather than how well you build your product. If you're totally anti-social, you'll probably miss out on a lot of potential business contacts that could make or break your business, no matter how good your product is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Another problem this poses for companies is that conference rooms are a scarce resource. Not everyone can schedule all their meetings so they're not in the middle of an uninterrupted work period.

<comment><USER18> Penny wise and pound foolish, on the part of such companies...

<comment><USER29> It's a nightmare for me to lug two laptops and for a meeting just to spend the whole time fighting with others over power outlets and waiting for the last person to get online.

Lately, I do all my "meetings" on GoToMeeting or Skype, and reserve face to face meetings for the beer relay and bonding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Or sacrifice Tuesdays, for example, to the suits; one meeting might fuck up a day, sure, but eight meetings would fill it, possibly usefully.

<comment><USER33> Not so good if you have a great idea on Monday night and want to stay up to work on it.

A "regular schedule", for me, is the worst possible thing for productivity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> pg, was this done on etherpad? mind sharing? I am sure, many over here share my thoughts of watching you write.

<comment><USER21> No, unfortunately, I forgot. I hadn't written any essays for a while because I'd been working on Arc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> A very interesting article. As a manager, I always tried to schedule meetings with my people first thing in the morning for precisely this reason (though I could not have articulated it in these terms before.)

One other option for his dilemma about "grabbing coffee" is simply to reschedule. It may not always work, but you can often minimize that interruption by pushing it to the end of the day or having it coincide with lunch where there is at least some small interruption anyway. It is hardly a perfect option, but it may often be the best.

</comment><comment><USER36> This really hit home! Having transitioned from maker to manager over the past couple of years, I was just commenting to a co-worker yesterday that I find it almost impossible to finish the maker-like tasks on my to-do list (mostly writing and reviewing long documents). I've been feeling a lot of guilt about this, but I couldn't see a clear way out. After reading pg's post, I'm thinking about blocking off some afternoons for maker activities. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER37> GREAT essay-- I wish everyone would read it.

Curious question to PG: At this point, you can have any darn schedule you want-- I imagine your schedule is a combination of personal preference and habit... But do you think that YC (and YC companies) would be more successful if some/all of you adopted manager's schedule?

<comment><USER21> I can't quite have any schedule I want. In 2003 I could. Now I have a wife and a kid and YC.

I don't think YC would be more successful if one of us switched to the manager's schedule. VCs like to meet with one another all the time to learn about tech trends and hot deals. But we don't need to rely on other investors for either of those. The only people we really need to meet with are the startups we fund, and office hours seem to be ideal for that.

I'd gain nothing by switching to the manager's schedule, but I'd lose essays and hacking, both of which I think help me do YC better. So it looks like it would be a net loss.

<comment><USER7> I wouldn't even have heard of YC if not for the essays. I'm sure the same is true for others, some of whom have probably applied and been good investments for YC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I set the policy early on in my company (we follow very complete Agile and XP) for all engineering related meetings: immediately after lunch or not at all. Standups, Iteration planning and review, Manager 1-on-1s, you name it.

Lunch interrupts everyone and people are rarely doing their most incisive thinking while food digests...if we're going to be unproductive anyway, might as well have a meeting.

I put in this policy for the same reasons PG talks about, and feel like it pretty completely handles the problem. Do people agree or disagree? Is there any reason I shouldn't be treating 1-2:30 as talking time, and the rest as coding time?

</comment><comment><USER39> Our take (similar, just more concise): <http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch07_Meetings_Are_Toxic.php>

</comment><comment><USER40> I find it interesting that you (pg) schedule the office hours for the evening, not the morning. I find that if I have something scheduled at a fixed time immediately after "making" mode, I'm less productive just by knowing I can't tail off naturally. I therefore try to schedule "stuff" as the first thing in the morning.

Or is it tricky to get the founders you're advising to agree (with you, and among each other) on a common definition of "morning"?

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm really surprised nobody has mentioned Peopleware ([http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects- Teams-S...](http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Teams- Second/dp/0932633439/)). It's full of stuff about creating an environment that minimizes interruptions so you can get into the flow (or zone or whatever you want to call it).

</comment><comment><USER42> One thing I'll say about this essay, which was great btw, is that its comforting to hear that other programmers feel the same way in terms of actually not starting work if they have a meeting coming up, and how having their day sliced up kills productivity. I've always felt this way but also kind of suffered in silence - so thanks pg for putting this out there

</comment><comment><USER43> I'll see this point and raise it: particularly ambitious projects often need weeks, even months of uninterrupted time to really get going. This means that a short mid-week trip, a conference or two, and a little contract work can clobber several months if you're not careful. Try blocking out two months with no interruptions and see what you can do!

</comment><comment><USER44> This is nice validation to have. For a while now, I've been wondering if I'm just a bit precious for asserting that I absolutely need full focus and no interruptions otherwise my productivity dies.

Still, makes me wonder how on earth I'm ever going to successfully grow the business, while I've still got development work to focus on.

</comment><comment><USER45> "Grab coffee" meetings can be particularly bad (in terms of time lost) because of the extra cost in getting to and from the cafe. When I had a normal job, getting to a meeting meant putting my shoes back on and walking down the hall. Now I have to consider which bus I'm going to take...

</comment><comment><USER46> It's odd for me that PG is the source of this essay. I have a lot less trouble working in shorter bursts now that I'm using a Lisp dialect all the time. When I worked in C, long stretches were essential. I would think working in Arc would make short stints productive as well.

</comment><comment><USER47> Can relate entirely... and I've been talking with my boss about "sequestering" myself, perhaps even regularly. Something like half-day Monday, half-day Friday, then a full "I don't even open the email application" day on the weekend. Might work, haven't tried it yet.

</comment><comment><USER48> Great article. I'd this analysis is about 70% of whether I'll be productive or not in a particular day.

Anyone solve this by setting aside a few half-days each week for manager stuff, and reserving the other time for maker stuff?

</comment><comment><USER49> How true.

And it has been said many times, too. Perhaps this iteration will be more successful: people may want to listen to pg more than some random guy.

</comment><comment><USER50> pg, thank you so much for writing this!

"All we ask from those on the manager's schedule is that they understand the cost."

YES! I was just saying this the other day: how a meeting for a programmer has a different cost than a meeting for a manager. I will be sending this link out to many people.

</comment><comment><USER51> Office hours for non-founders? Maybe in a coffee-shop nearby to YC -- maybe once every 2 weeks?

</comment><comment><USER52> Why don't you just schedule "Grabbing Coffee" during an open office hours slot?

</comment><comment><USER53> This is not some new insight pg just came up with. In fact it is pretty common knowledge, as Joel and many other has written countless times before, that interruptions are costly for software developers. Slapping new words on a well known and well understood problem, is not insightful.

</comment><comment><USER54> I just forwarded this to my team at work and I hope they read it.

</comment><comment><USER55> pg, you nailed this one. nough said.

</comment><comment><USER56> I love this man.

</comment><comment><USER57> What about an online meeting? On an IRC channel? Can a hacker working on a project multitask and attend the IRC meeting while simultaneously coding (perhaps he has 2 monitors, he codes on the larger one and IRCs on the other one) ?

I'd like to hear some thoughts on this.

</comment><comment><USER58> that's why more people should be on ROWE (<http://www.culturerx.com/>) then their manager's schedules would be MORE efficient :)

</comment><comment><USER59> "Meetings suck." Preaching to the choir a bit? I'm not impressed. Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM|Microsoft|flavor du jour. No hacker every got shot down for saying meetings suck.

<comment><USER60> > _"Meetings suck."_

Is that really all you got from this? Did you actually read it?

The thing I find about PG's essays isn't that his points are revelational, unexpected or intrinsically new, but that he so often manages to explain _why_ these things are true, in such a way that I find myself nodding along with (nearly) every point. And he doesn't say "Meetings suck." He says:

        > Those of us on the maker's schedule ... know we
        > have to have some number of meetings. All we ask
        > from those on the manager's schedule is that they
        > understand the cost.

And that's the difference between PG and so many others. He explicitly recognises that it's not a binary "Sucks" versus "Doesn't Suck". Meetings are essential, but costly. KNowing why they're costly is of enormous value.

I'll be pointing my co-directors at this.

<comment><USER61> I think that there is a simple way to look at it too.

If you're a manager, you're supposed to think & act with people as a priority. U're supposed to operate from 'Social Intelligence'.

But if u're a programmer, u're supposed to operate from 'Technical Intelligence'.

Since these two are very different and will result in different thinking & acting so the schedule will obviously be different.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Doc.pm – adds your message to the links you share - <AUTHOR> http://doc.pm/?sid=shn

<comment><USER2> This is fantastic.

Maybe I just missed something, but I've never seen a link shortener like this and that surprises me. This seems like the kind of thing that should be on all SEO "Must-Use" resource lists.

</comment><comment><USER3> How is this not 100% rip of [http://snip.ly](http://snip.ly) ?</comment>


Nigerian Solves 156-year Knotty Maths Hypothesis, Wins $1m – DailyPost Nigeria - <AUTHOR> http://dailypost.ng/2015/11/16/nigerian-solves-156-year-knotty-maths-hypothesis-wins-1m/ <comment><USER2> Copying my comment on a similar submission yesterday [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10576562](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10576562)

\---

Source is incredibly dubious. Contains the following sentence:

      Dr. Enoch had previously designed a Prototype of a silo
      for peasant farmers and also discovered a scientific
      technique for detecting and tracking someone on an evil mission.

A Dr. Enoch Opeyemi is indeed on the schedule for ICMCS 2015, but the title of his talk was just "A Matrix That Generates the Point Spectral of the Riemann Zeta Function": [http://computer.conference- site.com/program.docx](http://computer.conference-site.com/program.docx) I haven't been able to find the contents of that talk.

The CMI page for the problem hasn't been updated yet: [http://www.claymath.org/millennium-problems/riemann- hypothes...](http://www.claymath.org/millennium-problems/riemann-hypothesis)

I haven't been able to find anything about a new proof of the Riemann Hypothesis in any of the usual places. (math.SE, etc)

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems not: [https://www.quora.com/Has-the-Riemann-Hypothesis-been- solved...](https://www.quora.com/Has-the-Riemann-Hypothesis-been-solved-by-a- Nigerian-professor)

</comment><comment><USER4> "He also once designed the prototype of a silo for peasant farmers and discovered a scientific technique for detecting and tracking someone on an evil mission."

I would be very curious to know how someone can detect that another is on an "evil mission". Or more specifically what his criteria for evil was.

</comment><comment><USER5> [http://aperiodical.com/2015/11/riemann-hypothesis-not- proved...](http://aperiodical.com/2015/11/riemann-hypothesis-not-proved/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Please stop upvoting these stories until more can be verified.

As of now, it seems to be a hoax: [http://www.nairaland.com/2739995/opeyemi- enoch-not-solved-ri...](http://www.nairaland.com/2739995/opeyemi-enoch-not- solved-riemann)

There are regular announcements to solutions of the Riemann Hypothesis (see arxiv). It's really not worth paying attention to until major mathematicians or the CMI itself says something.

</comment><comment><USER7> Here's a short BBC audio interview with the Professor who claims to have solved the hypothesis. [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03891wc](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03891wc). I still have my doubts though.

</comment><comment><USER8> This shouldn't be on the front page of HN. In order to get a million dollars for one of the millenium problems one needs to have one's proof accepted by a peer reviewed journal and remain unchallenged (for two years I think). This clearly hasn't happened here.

</comment><comment><USER9> Yesterday the same post without a source showed up.. What's going on lol? I don't believe this is real until I see a more trustworthy source.

<comment><USER10> Not sure if this [0] is more reliable, but it says, "However his solution to the problem has not yet been revealed."

[0] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianoce...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/nigeria/12000314/The- Riemann-Hypothesis-solution-found-by-Dr-Opeyemi-Enoch.html)

<comment><USER11> Even BBC fell for it! [1] Now there are enough "reliable" sources to include it into the Wikipedia article! And then everyone else looks up the Wikipedia article and assumes it's true. Can a problem be considered unsolved if most people think it is solved?

[1] [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03891wc](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03891wc)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> To get the $1.000.000 (one million dollars) he just has to send a small amount of money to cover legal and administrative costs.

(sorry, it's good to hear (edit: if true...) that science is going strong in Nigeria)

<comment><USER13> It's not. The evidence points fraud.

<comment><AUTHOR> Read again, you're not getting the joke.</comment></comment></comment>


Top 500 supercomputers by processor family - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercomputer#/media/File:Processor_families_in_TOP500_supercomputers.svg <comment><USER2> Can I just point out how much I hate those sand charts? You can only tell what the bottom most variable is doing. How big is the AMD segment when intel was rapidly rising? You can't tell because slope hides line width. Want to know the trajectory of the other small players? Too bad.

Don't use sand charts kids.

<comment><USER3> _> Don't use sand charts kids._

And what would you use as an alternative? It would take a LOT of bars to display this information during the 90s as a grouped bar chart.

<comment><USER4> > And what would you use as an alternative?

Non-cumulative line charts. As usually is the answer to that question.

As a bonus, you can break line charts by line, and you can zoom parts of it.

<comment><USER3> _> Non-cumulative line charts._

I suppose. But a chart with 23 different lines is quite difficult to read in my experience.

I.e., visually distinguishing that many lines from each other is not easy.

<comment><USER4> A chart with 23 different series is hard to read in any format. That's why being able to break it down by line is good.

<comment><USER3> I can see all 23 trends in the sand chart at least. 23 lines on a line chart would be nothing but visual noise to me. I can barely parse the line charts on TIOBE which have only 10 lines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Any Wikipedia engineers here? Being linked, on desktop, to this file represents an exercise in futility.

I want to read the full article we were linked to. My click targets, in order:

'x' \- 'x' closes things. Can I close this modal to see the full page? No, it closes and redirects back to this page on HN.

'more details'? No, it brings me to a details page about the graph image. Cool, it's used on some other pages. Useless as a reader.

'black space' around the image? Not a clickable target, why would I click there?

Can I zoom in? No, the image auto-resizes but the image viewer chrome zooms in — making the image smaller??

Am I just a bad Wikipedia user?

<comment><USER6> Agreed, I went through a similar flow.

Direct link to the image: [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ef/Pr...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ef/Processor_families_in_TOP500_supercomputers.svg/2560px- Processor_families_in_TOP500_supercomputers.svg.png)

Article: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOP500](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOP500)

<comment><USER7> The linked article was actually [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercomputer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercomputer)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is missing a big portion of the picture: GPUs and other heterogeneously attached accelerators.

<comment><USER9> For more detailed information visit [https://www.top500.org/](https://www.top500.org/) instead of the wikipedia article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if the x86 dominance has declined slightly since 2015 - I know the #1 supercomputer is currently a POWER machine, and there have been some Chinese supercomputers that use their own manycore cpus with what I think is a MIPS- inspired ISA

<comment><USER11> It has begun to, in favor of AMD64 - with the Epyc processors which appeared in mid-2017:

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

they've been generally competitive (probably much more so when you factor price in). Now, with Rome having come out, their market share is supposedly increasing quite rapidly, since apparently it trounces Intel's Xeon offerings.

<comment><USER12> GP said "x86 dominance" not Intel x86 dominance, for what it's worth. AMD64 is x86-64.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Note that statistics tend to be different if you focus on the top 10 or top 5 systems (not represented in the linked chart).

</comment><comment><USER13> That color scheme makes my eyes bleed. Whoever thought black-on-dark-blue was a good choice?

I'm viewing this on a 99% sRGB screen and none of the dark blue boxes in the key are discernable

<comment><USER7> Anecdata, but I have a calibrated screen with about 95% AdobeRGB coverage, and the dark boxes and lines are very clearly distinguishable. Is your screen calibrated? Is something off with your contrast setting? Maybe a very bright backlight ruins the contrast ratio at the darker end?

(I agree, however, that it's not a very attractive color scheme, and not a terribly informative graph anyway. A simple X-Y plot would be better.)

<comment><USER13> These screens are factory calibrated (supposedly, but they included a colorimeter report in the box) and they're all consistent several years later so I'm guessing so. Maybe its gamma? Or maybe you're on OSX? (IIRC apple devices use gamma 2.2 by default and Windows does 1.8? I think?) Our difference could totally be because of default gamma.

<comment><USER7> I'm on Linux, and my gamma is calibrated to 2.2. 1.8 sounds way too low, I think! sRGB is roughly a 2.2 gamma curve, and a lot of professional media is done for screens expected to have a gamma of 2.4.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Do you think ARM will ever make it in this list?

<comment><USER15> Given that the future of at least a subset of HPC is spreading out super parallel calculation to lots of GPUs via fast interconnects, it is certainly conceivable that ARM based systems can do that as well as x86 system.</comment></comment>


Retiring SRFI - <AUTHOR> http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.lisp.scheme.srfi.announce/116 <comment><USER2> The headline is misleading. SRFI isn't retiring. The current editor and maintainer is retiring. The process is only being retired if nobody steps up to take over.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, however i shared it with the same header from author. Hopefully someone will continue the process and provide the infrastructure</comment></comment>