How to travel around the world for a year - <AUTHOR> http://blog.alexmaccaw.com/how-to-travel-around-the-world-for-a-year/ <comment><USER3> As an alternative perspective... (absolutely nothing against the original post)

Consider picking just one country, and _living_ there, instead of travelling around the world. Learn the language, get a job (teaching English?), get a boyfriend/girlfriend, travel locally.

I know a lot of people who have done both (travel around the world, or live abroad). Travelling around the world can be utterly _exhausting_ \-- absolutely exhilirating, but the endless work involved in finding accomodation, food, etc. can wear people down faster than they think. Also, the lack of any constant companions, that all your human relationships last only a day or a couple of weeks at best.

Setting down some kind of "roots" in a place can be very rewarding as well, and can be more deeply educational as well -- what you see about a country in the first few weeks, versus what you see about it after a year or two, can be strikingly different. But, it all depends on your goals and personality of course!

<comment><USER4> How can this be done when the average tourist visa lasts for anywhere between 15 to 90 days? If I can only make a pick out of the countries that offer a working holiday visa, that cuts out a majority of countries. Or is there any other way to get around this?

<comment><USER5> Getting a job teaching English can provide a work visa. Easier to do in some places than others, though.

There's also a middle ground I might consider ideal: choose 4 places to go to, and spend 3 months in each. You can't pick up everything a city has to offer in 3 months (let alone a country!), but it gets you much further than the 3 days here, 4 days there strategy. Cuts down on travel and housing costs, too, both monetarily and temporally.

If you want more extended trips than that, you can often go on a day-to- weeklong vacation to a neighboring country and return to where you were before, bringing it to a 6 month stay in a city. I'd almost argue that if you want to be there longer than that, you actually should pick up a local job, not just to fund yourself (which is probably a minor point for most of us) but because it deepens your experience in a place.

If you're pretty well-off, at least some countries will offer you an "investment visa" if you can prove you have hundreds of thousands of dollars in liquid assets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice summary, but this looks like a writeup of somebody doing this the first time. There's lots of room for improvement.

First off, there's way too much planning going on beforehand. Having done several of these trips, my pre-planning now involves booking a single flight and letting things work themselves out from there. Dates on the calendar are really really bad to have, since they force you to move faster or slower than you want to. Avoid them at all costs.

And, of course, he overpacked. 90 liters is way too big. 40 liters is probably still too big, but at least realistic. You want to be able to fit your full pack on your lap on a crowded chicken bus without drawing angry looks from the locals. One complete change of clothes is plenty. Most of the stuff you think you need, you don't.

Beyond that, there's a lot of good stuff here. Sounds like he had a fun trip.

<comment><USER7> Alex here from the post. I absolutely agree with both your points now - when I do it again I'll change those.

However for the first time, a round the world flight was great. It gave me a taste of each country, and then on the second time I'm planning on going back to my favorite and really immersing myself in them.

<comment><USER8> I just wanted to thank you Alex. About 8 months ago I started freelancing full time (after doing it part time off and on) and traveling. I moved to FL, TX, AR and some places in between. I have a 1-way flight to Europe in 4 days and don't know when I'll be back or what exactly I'll be doing there. These actions are very much inspired by this blog post and your "Traveling, Writing and Programming" post. Thanks!

[http://old.alexmaccaw.com//posts/traveling_writing_programmi...](http://old.alexmaccaw.com//posts/traveling_writing_programming)

<comment><USER9> Is t it illegal to freelance in many countries without special visas?

<comment><USER8> I'm sure there are ways to do it legally. I only work for US based companies. I'll let my accountant handle it.

<comment><USER10> Life is too short to worry about every single detail. If you worry about everything, you will never experience anything.

I think you're doing the right thing, and as long as tax is being paid, you will more than likely be fine IMO.

Good luck and enjoy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I spent 2 years driving a little Jeep Wrangler from Alaska to Argentina, because I wanted to.[1] I'm a Software Engineer, and did some freelance stuff while on the road.

For the entire 22 month, 65,000km (40k miles) journey through 16 countries, I spent $27,300 [2]. That's only $1200 a month, which is barely more than I was spending to live in a city and go to work every day.

I'm extremely happy to answer any questions or help anyone that has an interest in traveling like this. WikiOverland [3] has tons of the logistical information you'll find helpful. The FAQ [4] is a great place to start for anyone new to driving themselves around continents or the world (called Overlanding)

[1] [http://theroadchoseme.com](http://theroadchoseme.com)

[2] [http://theroadchoseme.com/the-price-of- adventure](http://theroadchoseme.com/the-price-of-adventure)

[3] [http://wikioverland.org](http://wikioverland.org)

[4] [http://wikioverland.org/Overland_Frequently_Asked_Questions](http://wikioverland.org/Overland_Frequently_Asked_Questions)

<comment><USER8> This awesome and inspiring! I leave for backpacking through Europe and freelancing in a few days :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Spent a year away (2011-2012) on a budget of about €13K, itinerary was: Turkey, Iran, India, Nepal, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Brazil. Best decision I ever made!

Edit with more details:

Choosing where to go: get a big map and an imagination!

Flights: Just booked mine as I went and that seemed to work out well costwise. In any case try to overland as much as possible, it's more interesting.

Packing: Bring as little as possible, I had a 50+10L backpack and it was more than adequate. Every litre extra you pack is more and more hassle when moving.

Visas: This obv depends on where you're from and where you're headed. I sorted visas for Iran and India before leaving home (Ireland). Generally what the article says is true, it's usually possible to throw some money at the problem and get visas while on the move if necessary. Some visas run from time of entry, some from time of issuance (particularly India) - pay attention to this!

<comment><USER13> How did you find things in Iran? We've been tempted to go but I wasn't sure how much hassle it was.

<comment><USER12> It was great! People are really friendly, mostly you can find someone who speaks English in any given situation, and it's pretty cheap - I'd highly recommend going. People often stopped us on the street just to say "Thanks for visiting Iran"! We just had a two week visa, original plan was to take the train from Istanbul - Tehran. Alas we could only buy tickets in person and they were sold out (lots of Iranians holiday in Istanbul before Ramadam). So instead we flew Istanbul - Tehran. Spent a few days in Tehran, then Isfahan (our favourite city there, the bazaar and square are just beautiful), Yazd (amazing mud architecture) and Shiraz (best spot to visit Persepolis from), then flew on to Mumbai.

Hasslewise: I was traveling with my partner, she had to wear the hijab (hair covering) at all times while outdoors which was a bit of a challenge (try keeping it on with the wind blowing out of the metro in Tehran!). People are very accommodating though, a huddle of women would sometimes form around her to set things right if it was slipping off! This was exacerbated by the time of year (midsummer), you'd be better going sometime cooler. Only other thing I can think of is that the banking system is totally cut off from outside (no ATMs which accept foreign cards, very few places accept western credit cards), so you need to carry in as much cash as you need for the trip. Definitely intending to go back in the future with more time on our hands - there's just endless places to see and visit - it truly was a unique experience.

We've got some blog posts here that might help: [http://www.sarahandniall.com/2011/08/iran.html](http://www.sarahandniall.com/2011/08/iran.html) [http://www.sarahandniall.com/2011/09/traveling-as-woman- in-i...](http://www.sarahandniall.com/2011/09/traveling-as-woman-in-iran.html) (I have blog posts written but not published for the rest of the trip - <USER2> must get them up!).

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the links to the blog postings - they are great!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Another traveller chiming in, I've just started working after taking off for 8 months to travel South America (top to bottom), Antarctica, and Europe. I've been working now for almost 2 months.

Regarding packing: My wife and I each carried a 40L backpack. This is pretty small, but I'd highly recommend it for this kind of trip. They were a godsend on buses in South America.

Cost: Over the course of the trip we spent almost 40k ($165/day), if you exclude Antarctica it was a much more reasonable $92/day. Last minute deals for Antarctica DO exist, I recommend them highly (we saved somewhere in the neighborhood of 20k).

Transport: As with others in the thread, we bought as we went and opted primarily for overland travel. Tips for 30 hour bus rides: carrots to snack on and Harry Potter audio books.

My most recent post [1] was a wrap up after being home for some time. You can check out the blog for more on packing, budget, etc.

Happy to answer any questions.

[1] [http://orofino.me/](http://orofino.me/)

<comment><USER15> I also travelled through central and south America over 6 months. My trip is journaled here: [http://blog.benpowell.co.uk/search/label/backpacking](http://blog.benpowell.co.uk/search/label/backpacking)

The third best thing I ever did (after getting married and starting a family).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> A few related thoughts:

Travel guides: buy Lonely Planet or similar books as dead trees, not Kindle which is almost useless for this. Buy them in the US if it's convenient, because they definitely aren't cheaper in many other places.

Visas: US passport is usually good, but may increase the odds of being asked to pay someone off. In Cambodia specifically, better to get a visa in advance via the official website; some of the border stations are well-known for various schemes to get extra cash from those seeking visas on arrival. Make sure your passport starts out fairly empty--some visas take a whole page each. For US passports, extra pages are free initially, expensive to add later.

Room and board: if breakfast is free, great. But don't buy it in advance if it's not included, unless you're in the middle of nowhere.

Transportation: hitchhiking can be easier in poorer areas where many people do it, harder in places where everyone owns a car. For regional flights not every country does things online, and some smaller airlines do not charge a lot for last-minute tickets.

Packing: a 50 liter pack is enough if you don't have many gadgets. Take thin clothes that dry quickly, avoid jeans, wash a few items in the sink each night and enjoy perpetual clean clothes for free. An ultralight daypack like Marmot's Kompressor ($35) is useful, or get a cheapie abroad, e.g. $7 in Bangkok.

<comment><USER14> I agree about the kindle version being useless, not just because of the device, but because the formatting of their books on these devices is awful.

We used mostly wikitravel on an ipad, made notes, and used our notes while moving about cities.

<comment><USER17> +1 for wikitravel on iPad (or wikivoyage - I don't know which fork has more info these days)

The new offline support in Reading List is really a godsend for this. Just hammer cmd+shift+D on the laptop/desktop while browsing along the wiki, and the iPad will have it all available when you need it.

<comment><USER18> Wikivoyage has been taken on by the Wikimedia project, and most of the editors of wikitravel jumped ship around the same time that happened.

I used the offline reading list so much for wikivoyage also - it was amazing!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Whenever I read these blogs, and the comments that follow, I'm amazed at how much money people spend doing this!

Has nobody heard of www.couchsurfing.com?

Why travel all the way around the world to pay money and sit in a hotel room/private apartment?

I've done travelling and couldn't recommend it enough. It's a fantastic experience but by far the biggest benefit, and most memorable moments, were from the people I met (even though I'm not really a 'people' person). Couchsurfing allows you to stay for free with a local host.. think AirBnB but FREE and where you can actually speak and interact with them. Most of the hosts in the more remote countries are fellow American's doing Peace Corp. It's interesting to hear their different perspective on their host country, and they enjoy the contact with another 'westerner' too. Lots of other hosts will happily invite you sailing, climbing, hiking, BBQing with them or their mates too.

If you're happy to sleep on the floor occasionally (rarely in my experience) then I highly recommend any travellers (particularly solo) give it a go.

If you're really adventurous, or want some even more amazing, serendipitous encounters with incredible people, stick out your thumb ;-)

<comment><USER20> As a former couchsurfing host, i implore you, couchsurfing is great, but do couchsurfing because you want to meet new people and have cultural interactions. Do NOT use couchsurfing just to save money - that might be a nice side effect, but that shouldn't be your primary goal.

The worst guests are the guest who treat it as a free hotel and/or are so cheap that they aren't willing to go out for a pint of beer with their host or do anything that requires a few dollars. And if you are working working while travelling, then that is a sign you both less willing to interact with your hosts and that you can easily afford a hotel.

<comment><USER21> That's the main reason I used airbnb instead. I like meeting the locals, but I don't like the uncomfortable feeling of being in their debt or feeling compelled to hang out with them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm doing this now(1), almost 300 days into it. Currently have lived in 13 countries(2). I work as I travel so haven't done too many crazy places, but definitely have learned a lot of things I would do differently now. Finishing this in October, going to be a long story to share. Was worth every single stress-minute.

[1] - [http://juokaz.com/blog/living- homeless.html](http://juokaz.com/blog/living-homeless.html) [2] - [https://twitter.com/juokaz/status/348036931214524416](https://twitter.com/juokaz/status/348036931214524416)

</comment><comment><USER23> Here's a tip : Become a Belgian citizen, get a job, use a 1 year time credit, let the government pay you € 1,000 a month, travel the world for 1 year and still keep your job.

You do need the company's permission. But no wonder our country is getting deeper in debt. I don't know that many people but I do know 5 people who have done this.

<comment><USER24> 1000/month is a bit of an exageration, more like 400 if you work less than 5 years for your employer. You also need to work at least 2 years for your employer.

Oh, and don't be so eager to jump on the neo-liberal thought wagon. Some people travel, most use it to raise babies.

Source: I've done it.

<comment><USER23> Those I know were getting around 1000 a month. All 5 of them. I'm not against time credit (babies need their parents, sick people need help) but some abuse the system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I spent last summer travelling in SEA, funded entirely by freelance. Well thats a lie I came back to the UK for one week inbetween (it was a good party, worth two 13 hour flights).

I had a very good client for whom it didn't matter where I was, I worked on the relationship with the travel in mind and noted from day one. This ment I was about £300 a day less than my normal London day rate for two months for them. However, even down by three hundread I was travelling like a king, well king of economy travellers.

It worked well, but I had one massive disadvantage, I had to ensure good wifi whereever I moved. SEA is mostly 6 hours ahead of London, so keeping London time isn't hard, 11pm is the latest your expected to be online.

The main problem I had was due to a staff change at the clients end. The people I had been dealing with before quit on mass over a pay dispute. The placements, they were a little bit bottom draw (think where is the defintion of this 'web service', I don't want a WSDL, this is a web service, this isn't good enough types).

That is where we come to the crunch. Would I do it again? No.

It was a bit of a pain really, my friends I'd met up with along the way were off having fun, but I was stuck still chained to a laptop. Given that I'd taken a substaintial rate cut, I would have been better off just working full time as normal for half a year, saving, and taking time of normally.

The digital nomad traveller isn't all its cracked up to be. However working remotely from a fairly fixed base is great. It's very easy to get a 6 month tourist VISA to say Thailand, which has great food, and a great countryside. Rent a place for duration, make sure it has reliable good internet, and working remotely isn't such an issue when your not moving around. Now I type this I realise it was the moving around that was the issue. If working say 40hours, you either move round at a snails pace, or miss really interesting things.

I am actually looking to buy a condo in the mountains of Thailand as a bolt hole, my girlfriend and I could just run and hide there for a month or two, still work if need be, but have a change of scenary, weather and society.

<comment><USER4> How do you get a 6 month tourist visa to Thailand?

I thought you could only get a 30-day visa that's valid for a 6 month period, and spend a maximum of 90 days in Thailand within than 6 month period if you count re-entry. Going for visa runs very four weeks can't be that fun.

<comment><USER25> Without knowing your nationality its hard to advise.

I'm British, so maybe its easier. You can get a 3 month tourist visa, with a 3 month pending extension from the London embassy.

Failing that you can do a 'border run'. I quite like being near Chiang Mai or Pai. From there its about a 3/4 hour drive up to Burhma. I did it with a mate of mine for a day out.

<comment><USER25> Hmm, well there is the thai visa forum, which is probably the best place.

However, everything can be bought there.... Everything.

You can get your 90 day without too much hassle, I would recommend this lawyer firm, as I have used their Chiang Mai branch and found them good, however they are a big firm, so YMMV. [http://canada.siam-legal.com/90-Day-Thailand-Visa- for-Canadi...](http://canada.siam-legal.com/90-Day-Thailand-Visa-for-Canadian- Citizens.php)

I would have thought that the worst case would be a 5 day gap between two of these, obviously, check with the lawyer.

If you want to spend 5 days in a nearby nation you are spoilt for choice. Myself I like Vietnam, the food is really good, friendly people, stunning, stunning scenary.

<comment><USER4> Meaning you can stay for 90 days, fly off to HCMC for 5 days, and repeat indefinitely? That sounds like a pretty good deal...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I saw the author used wikitravel a lot - I used to also.

But now, wikivoyage is probably the preferred route. They've been adopted by Wikimedia after some drama with the company that owns wikitravel. wikitravel is now covered with ads and most of the editors abandoned ship for wikivoyage.

It's a great resource though! I have _never_ owned a travel guide.

</comment><comment><USER26> This link has already been on HN once, and yeah, it helped me to make decision to follow my dream and do a 6 month travel to SE Asia. Thanks Alex! Cheers from KL :)

<comment><USER27> I seem to recall the last time this was posted I commented and said for people to do this! If you wait and you get baggage, it makes it much harder to do. But I took some of my own advice and just last week I spent a week in Nicaragua working in a camp for the youths of the surrounding cities. Best thing I've done in a long time! I can't wait for my trip to Thailand in October. BTW, I'm doing this with a soul-sucking enterprise IT job with a wife and 2 kids. So if I can do it, you can too (albeit scaled back a bit).

<comment><USER28> Do you mind if I ask a few questions?

How do you find traveling with kids?

Do you keep the same soul sucking enterprise IT job, or save up, travel and then find a new one when you return?

What do you do about maintaining a permanent base at "home"? This one's the biggest struggle for me; how do you travel without having somewhere stable to come back to? I'd have to be bringing at least £1.7k/month just to cover rent/mortgage and fixed costs for a house in the UK on top of what it would cost for the traveling itself. I don't think finding a new place to live every time I come home would work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> About cost: I did 9 months in Asia for 12K$ and never felt stressed for cash. My main problem on the go was motivation for side projects. It is so easy to get caught up in meeting locals, doing activities that it can fill up your whole day. There are so many interesting distractions.

If I wanted to travel and get work done now I wold probably revisit some of the same countries.

</comment><comment><USER30> Re cost: My girlfriend and I managed to travel South East Asia for 3 months for £1200 between us. Flights to Malaysia were £350 return each from the UK. That included travel, accommodation, eating, activities, etc...

We had a £10 a day budget.

<comment><USER31> I guess it could be done. I was there for 6 months and working, but I easily burned through $2.5k per month. Most of it on really nice accomodation though.

<comment><USER30> We usually spent 40-60% of our budget on accommodation. Our target was 30MYR in Malaysia, 250THB in Thailand, and 3USD in Cambodia. Singapore was too expensive for us to do much, so we only stayed a week, and used our whole budget every day just on a bunkbed in a hostel...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I just skimmed this, does he mention how old he is? Pretty rare circumstances to be able to make 22k in a month consulting and then be able to take a year off of everything to travel. Sounds like a dream to me.

</comment><comment><USER33> Those photos would make Thomas Kinkade blush.

The Taj Mahal one isn't terrible. As far as I can tell that's because there isn't much in the foreground. The HDR used makes the others appear uniformly flat / without depth, like an old chinese woodcut (e.g. [0], in which perspective is flattened).

[0] [http://lifeasahuman.com/files/2011/12/P14-Old-Chinese- woodcu...](http://lifeasahuman.com/files/2011/12/P14-Old-Chinese-woodcut- Pingyao-Shanxi-Province-China-2008-c-Vincent-Ross.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER34> Don't fly, travel overland, that's the most interesting part of the trip, especially the remote areas near borders...

The worst is to book this round-the-world ticket, where you have to decide in advance how long you'll stay at each point. We travelled around the world for 1 year and ended up staying as much as one month in one place where we'd planned to stay 1 day, or literally flee out of countries like Malaysia after 2 days.

<comment><USER35> I traveled around the world on an RTW, and while we did have to pick the cities in advance, the dates could be adjusted at any time. So we used the flights to create the backbone of the trip, and found local* transportation along the way. And we adjusted the dates quite a bit.

*by which I mean within one continent

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Props for earning 20k in a month. I love the rest of the post but that part always strikes a chord with me.

</comment><comment><USER37> Alternative adventure idea: Instead of travelling the world for a year, spend that year travelling within 50 miles of your home (or, if you're starting in Silicon Valley, like this author, anywhere that Bart reaches). Get to know the immigrant communities spread throughout your area (the Thai community, the Cambodian community, Peruvian, Bolivian, etc…) They are all there, practically in your back yard (maybe literally in your back yard—ask your gardener where he's from), living in ways that are culturally different from yours, and yet when you get to know them, hang with them, drink and dance with them, you'll learn that we're all people and we're all fundamentally the same living, loving, learning, lonely scared human beings.

You need only travel 1, 5, 10, 15 miles from wherever you are right now to find entire communities that are outside your techy echo chamber. Meet them, and you will get some perspective.

Best of all is with this alternative plan is what you won't do. You won't waste many many days (weeks? a month?) of your life either in airports, flying between airports, travelling to and from airports, or recovering from jet lag. Most importantly, in my opinion, you won't be burning 250 to 500 gallons of gasoline, and releasing 2.5 to 5 tons of carbon into the atmosphere.

</comment><comment><USER38> don't forget guys, remember to pack your colour-saturation-level-adjusting glasses. travel abroad isn't the same without them.

more seriously, having travelled much, and now living "abroad" i think it's way over-rated. people are fundamentally the same. the ways in which societies differ are in the rituals people are accustomed to - and dealing with that gets old quickly.

<comment><USER39> It may differ for you, as an experienced traveler. For someone who hasn't gotten out of the country, ever, it could be a highly instructive experience. Both in terms of mutual understanding with the wider world, and in terms of independence and experience. Traveling by oneself forces one to become more independent, more confident in navigating difficulties without a large support network. I think it's an extremely beneficial experience.

<comment><USER38> i guess it's difficult for me to know about other people. i was wondering if it's a difference between europeans and americans (since for europeans, "abroad" is much closer). but isn't america a varied place with different cultures in different states?

maybe another way of making my point is that the kind of people whose mind is most likely to be be broadened by travel are already aware of the kind of issues you might think they would learn. while those so closed they don't get it, won't - travel or not... your argument only seems (to me) to apply to the lucky few who are closed-minded at home, but open-minded enough to suddenly change when the food is different or the people don't react the way they're used to.

<comment><USER40> There are a lot of different cultures in the U.S., but I think the biggest differences aren't the regional ones, and imo hard to get a feel for just by traveling. The lives and cultures of people living in rural areas vs. urban areas, wealthy vs. poor areas, nearly-100%-white vs. nearly-100%-black areas, etc., etc. are all very different, but they aren't primarily state-to-state variations. For example, I found living in Houston and Chicago to be not that different: I lived in a middle-class suburban area in both, and their culture was more "middle-class suburban American" culture than any kind of distinctively Midwestern or Texan culture. I think there's some of that in cities, too: SF and Portland and parts of Manhattan have more in common with each other than with some places that are geographically much closer to them.

Living in a different one of those cultures can be very educational, but it's somewhat hard to break into unless you have some organic reason to be there or social connection. People are often resentful of "lifestyle tourism", the stereotypical one being an upper-middle-class white kid who moves to a poor minority neighborhood as a cultural experience. Small rural communities can also be quite closed as well, in terms of being able to really join the culture (vs. just visit the town).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> If you're thinking of traveling (even if it is just in persistent day dream mode), spend some time looking at:

"WorldHum" [http://worldhum.com](http://worldhum.com)

"Brave New Traveler" [http://matadornetwork.com/bnt/](http://matadornetwork.com/bnt/)

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm curious, how much of an issue is language when doing a trip like this? This is something I'd like to do, but I'm only fluent in English and have a basic proficiency in Spanish.

<comment><USER43> In my opinion, travelling is more fun and so much easier if you speak the language, even if only a little bit. My Spanish is shit, but I managed well when I was in Argentina. Had some good conversations, met cool people. I found that having a good vocabulary is far more important than having proper grammar. Lucky for us they speak Spanish in so many places. After that trip I went directly to Brazil, where I encountered a sharp language barrier, and had a much worse time. Now I feel like I should at least know the basics before travelling somewhere. As soon as I got home I started studying Japanese.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Im always impressed by folks who can keep on the road like this.

I myself prefer to stay in an area long term and marinate the local culture and language. I studied abroad in Beijing for one year in undergrad, and taught english in Japan for 2 year. You discover many subtle things by staying somewhere for an extended period of time, and learn a new way of living. Definitely want to do it again.

But before I die, I'd like to try this method too.

</comment><comment><USER45> How does one make $22k a month doing consulting work? The most I ever got doing side consulting was $80/hr, and that was just a 2 week gig.

<comment><USER46> Charge $100/hr and work 55 hours a week. The easiest way is to do something like network engineering or "oracle financials" for a huge corporation. iOS consulting also pays that much but finding the work isn't as easy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> It's quite a large scale-up to go from the typical week or two vacation to travelling for a whole year. I wonder how many people get tired of it after a couple of months? I've met some pretty damn jaded world travellers in hostels, the kind who talk about "the same bullshit hostel conversations every day."

<comment><USER24> I felt that after 4-5 months, you get "used" to the travelling, you're not as excited anymore. The best thing to do then is either take a longer break in a nice place or simply start travelling in a different way. Another option that seems to work is to switch continents, everything is new then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I've done 4 week trips every year, but this year I'm looking at going away for a year or longer.

A question I have: Does anyone have any experience being a landlord while traveling abroad? What's it like?

I was thinking that investing in an apartment before I leave might be a great way for me to get some low-maintenance income while traveling.

<comment><USER49> Find a reputable property management company. They can handle scheduling maintenance, bad tenants, etc.

<comment><USER48> Any experience on what are good rates?

<comment><USER49> I think they are in the realm of 10%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Just did 10 countries in 10 months, most of them in Asia.

Vietnam and China visas I wish I had known about before. For some passports, China is something you should get even before leaving your home country.

Otherwise, I definitely agree that travelling over land is much more interesting.

</comment><comment><USER51> Just wanted to link to the old HN discussion about this article when it was first posted a yea ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3476016](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3476016)

</comment><comment><USER52> I was planning to do something like this.

My problem is, If I get to a place that requires no VISA but I have no return ticket because I plan to buy the next hop while I'm there, won't this make getting into the country more complicated?

<comment><USER21> I thought this might be a problem, but I was only asked for a return ticket in one place - Hong Kong.

<comment><USER52> And what happened?

<comment><USER46> I was asked for a return ticket in Japan. I had to buy a return ticket in the customs lobby before I was allowed into the country.

<comment><USER52> Ouch! I take it was much more expensive than usual economy tickets.

What if you planned to buy a train ticket to leave? I don't know about HK but in China it's a mess since it can only be done a few weeks before the travel date and might not even have been possible to do prior to entering the country.

<comment><USER46> Actually, I didn't have to buy a ticket to leave immediately, I just had to prove I had a return ticket. I just bought the cheapest one close to the date when my tourist visa would expire. I think it was around $600.

There is no train that connects Japan to another country that I know of.

<comment><USER52> Sorry, I confused your post with crdoconnor's and he had mentioned Hong Kong.

Thanks for the info. Very usefull since I was thinking of going to Japan and had this lingering in the back of my mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I loved this the first time I read it and I loved it now again. This is definitely a dream of mine and when I finish university, I'm gonna find me some work and collect some money to do this.

I mean, who wouldn't want to see the world?

</comment><comment><USER54> Nice! I admire you for being able to travel and do all this stuff. I'm travelling for 7 months now and after the 1st month I realized I couldn't do both things. Keep moving! :)

</comment><comment><USER55> Solid article. If you like that, you should read Four Hour Workweek. He outlines a full plan for how to stay productive while globetrotting for months at a time.

</comment><comment><USER56> >So the net cost for the trip was about $22k. I paid for the vast majority of this with one month's consultancy beforehand.

Wow. Consultancy that pays $20k+ still eludes me.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'd love to hear some perspective from people doing this with small kids. Almost all of these posts are from people young free and single!

<comment><USER57> My kids aren't that small, but I moved to Africa with them two years ago (they are now 7 and 9). We are actually living abroad, not really "traveling" as in the OP, though it has provided some interesting travel opportunities as well. We don't homeschool, so any travel is tied to their school calendar as well. Even without side-travel, I feel like we have a better connection with the place we live and for that it will always be a part of us. There's no way you can get that in 90 days.

It depends on where you go, but we live very well on far less than we did in the US and it's been a great experience for our entire family in many, many ways.

I always used to read posts like this jealous of those who are unattached. While it's a different experience doing it with kids. and takes a bit more planning, it's got its own rewards (such as the impact of your children living first-hand in a different culture).

<comment><USER58> Please write a blog post about this!!

Like how you found a job, how you found schools, how the kids are liking it etc

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Is anyone else amused by the idea of choosing your travel destinations according to an HDR photoblog? It seems somewhat absurd to base your travel destinations on some doctored photographs, and to ignore the cultural and historical context of all of the places you're planning on going.

<comment><USER48> I mean... I don't think there's a right way to pick destinations for everyone.

It sounds like cultural and historical context is important to you. It may not be for another traveler.

Traveling is about living in the moment and doing whatever makes you happy :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> This thread is making me want to travel again. To that end, now I'm thinking about changing my major from engineering to programming...</comment>


Blogging Platform with awesome UI - <AUTHOR> http://jux.com/

<comment><USER2> I gave up trying to figure out what, exactly, this is.

Having to click through slideshows is a poor way to quickly explain value.

My best guess: this is a tool to make slideshows. Not sure what that has to do with blogging.</comment>


Show HN: Easy self-made OS X context menu file uploader - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/xarem/9f2751f5da40b59a31bf

<comment><USER2> This is very nice, thanks!

Could you come up with another service that would create an "empty.txt" as well?

</comment><comment><USER3> Very handy indeed - thank you.</comment>


How to Avoid the Curse of Vision Overload - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2008/07/20/fr-how-to-avoid-the-curse-of-vision-overload/

<comment><USER2> sounds like he read every Paul Graham essay and then decided it was a good idea to do the exact opposite of everything in them.

<comment><USER3> Your comment isn't fair. Creating a great product is a delicate balance being sickly perfectionist and crazily pragmatic. You have to make things as simple as possible, but no simpler. And if you want to feel at all inspired by your own product (which is kind of necessary to inspire others, e.g. users), you need to believe that you are building something great.

It's a very complex dynamic and it's very easy to find yourself giving in to one side or the other. Even after having learned the lesson, it's still very easy to fall back into it time and again.</comment></comment>


Lying about salary to recruiters? - <AUTHOR>

First of all, disclosure: New account to protect identity.
For a while now I've been poking around and seeing what other opportunities are out there for me. For the last few years I've been with a company that notoriously underpays it's developers. In the last few months, I've been held back from promotions and working / planning new projects.
For these reasons I've decided that it's probably time for a change. However, I've been stuck at this lower salary now for quite some time. In past discussions with recruiters about positions, I've disclosed my salary and only got offers that were a little bit better. Nothing ground shaking, but still not enough to ditch the few perks that I still have where I am.
So I decided to try something new. When asked by recruiters what my salary is, I first try and dodge the question. If they persist, I tell them my salary is what I feel I should be making instead of what I actually am. I usually raise this number by around 25 - 35% more than what I am making now. After doing this, I am getting interviews for positions that are willing to pay me between 50 - 70% more than what I am currently making.
My questions to everyone is this:
1.) Do you think this is unethical?
2.) Have you ever done this? (If Yes: Have you ran into any issues after doing so?)
3.) Am I stupid for not doing this sooner? <comment><USER2> I haven't done this, I've been lucky enough to get out of being underpaid by getting poached for much higher figures. That said, agencies have two conflicting incentives. One is to get a person landed for the highest possible salary, since they get a percentage fee, the other is to place someone who is capable of doing the job. I think they mostly ask you for your current salary as a gauge for your current level of experience or capability. Since you're underpaid, that gauge isn't entirely accurate, so I think it's perfectly understandable to want to tell them what you think you are worth. It's not totally honest, but then again the agencies are also not totally honest with you either. I would do it. I don't think this will come back and bite you at any point. Most people never have to negotiate business deals, but they have to negotiate a salary, and many people are bad at that. There's a certain level of bluffing involved, and you should try to do it without having to lie.

If you want to be totally squeaky clean on this in your conscience, then it would really be best not to disclose your salary in the first place. This is sometimes a good strategy too, since people feel compelled not to insult you with too low an offer. Only sometimes.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the way that I feel. I feel that when disclosing salary, even when saying I feel I should be paid more has put me at this exact disadvantage.

I don't really care about my conscience. That is a pretty easy thing to get over. I do worry, only slightly, that it may come back to bite me if my current employer discloses my salary. I'm not overly concerned by this as the one recruiter I'm working with has made mention that she just wants a ball park of what I want to make. So I'm happy about that.

My biggest angst is that a lot of recruiters will undersell just to fill a position. I'm trying to avoid that. Especially if I go full time at said position. I don't want to try and fight my salary up again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think this puts you at an unfair disadvantage. Who wants to hire someone who lies? What will you say AFTER a good interview then your future employers start to do a background check?

Be honest with the recruiters and tell them you wouldn't bother interviewing for a job that is not in your target range.

</comment><comment><USER4> IMO To say my current employer is paying me X when there not is not right, I would have said it doesn't matter what there paying me now, this is what I want to make if I change jobs.

That way you didn't lie and you made your point about future salary requirements.

I think it never hurts to shop around, if nothing else it keeps your current employer honest.

</comment><comment><USER5> I would simply state "That is considered confidential information at my current employer. I would consider an offer in the ballpark of /x/."

2 Things - It shows that you take confidentiality seriously even when looking at leaving your current company (and its likely the policy there anyway). Secondly, it is truthful.</comment>


Ask HN: What are ways to improve public speaking? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> You will reach your audience best if your tone communicates competence and humility in equal measure.

If you've ever been an athlete you know how much energy you receive from the spectators. The same is true of public speaking, though it doesn't seem like it at first. Even after a few times out you will discover that the audience makes your mind sharper and your talk better. That's why rehearsing your talk to a friend by way of practice often backfires -- that one person can't replicate the energy of a full audience. That's why I do a mental rehearsal rather than speaking it out loud.

Let your enthusiasm be contagious, but don't adopt a gee-whiz "Isn't this amazing" TED talk persona.

Don't aim for JFK gravitas unless you're speaking at a funeral or maybe your daughter's wedding. Watch Pete Buttigieg speak in the Democratic debates. He is overall an excellent speaker and a master of tone.

Be sure to totally master your intro; that will give you confidence and get your audience on board. Remember, they WANT you to succeed because it is almost as painful to listen to a floundering speaker as it is to be a floundering speaker.

</comment><comment><USER3> I benefited from a public speaking course in college, and I've heard that ToastMasters is great.

Somewhat surprisingly, I discovered in that course that it's far easier to talk about something I know and care very little about. Not sure what to make of that.</comment>


Why Women Still Can't Have It All - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-still-cant-have-it-all/309020/?single_page=true

<comment><USER2> This article is acting like men can.

Except that pretty much every guy I know who has a really high ranking job could give me a litany of family sacrifices he's had to make to get there. Missed recitals, sporting events, and just generally being absent from quite a lot of family life.

If women - people in general - want to opt for that path, I completely support them. But don't act like you're doing as much for the company as the person who makes the opposite choice - that you're on equal footing with someone willing to make those sacrifices - if you do.

I agree that there are lots of things in society that can change, and perhaps people would be happier if they did, but the idea that you can split your efforts and still deserve to be at the top seems silly to me.

(And there's at least one full generation of men who have had a serious look at the balance guys typically face between family life and professional life that aren't satisfied with the current status quo, which this article seems to be largely ignoring.)

<comment><USER3> The available evidence shows that for ordinary jobs output turns negative once you start working more than 40 hours a week or so. I personally doubt that decision making by executives is an exception to this rule: quite the contrary in fact.

Unfortunately career development can often be an arms race: those who put in the longest hours are perceived to be more committed and effective and are promoted in preference to their colleagues who may be just as effective but are "only" in the office 40 hours a week.

Arms races are pernicious things that benefit nobody, but can be very difficult to eliminate unfortunately.

<comment><USER2> I completely agree that it's not necessarily a good thing; I was just pointing out that it's am arms race that impacts both genders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a pretty old article, which has seen a ton of discussion already.</comment>


Everything you never wanted to know about file locking - <AUTHOR> http://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=201012#13 <comment><USER2> Every BSD system I'm aware of has something called lockf, which may or may not be layered on top of flock (or the other way around).

Note that all of these locking schemes fall down hard on NFS, depending on client and server, regardless of what any man pages say about support. Homework question: How does a stateless protocol like NFS remember when one client locks a file and a different client tries locking it?

The failure mode on NFS can vary from "lock always succeeds, regardless of actual status" to "lock always fails, hanging forever", or my favorite, "locks work, unless your process crashes, and then you can never lock that file again until you reboot the NFS server".

<comment><USER3> I had discovered this the hard way. Replaced with Apache Zookeeper, which now is much more stable than at the time. It is meant to be a port of Google's distributed lock server Chubby.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Worth reading all the way to the bottom; the Python stuff made me giggle.

</comment><comment><USER5> Good article. I don't quite understand this part, though:

 _Still not convinced_ [that you shouldn't use mandatory locking] _? Man, you really must like punishment. Look, imagine someone is holding a mandatory lock on a file, so you try to read() from it and get blocked. Then he releases his lock, and your read() finishes, but some other guy reacquires the lock. You fiddle with your block, modify it, and try to write() it back, but you get held up for a bit, because the guy holding the lock isn't done yet. He does his own write() to that section of the file, and releases his lock, so your write() promptly resumes and overwrites what he just did._

If you're going to read some data and then potentially write modified data back over what you just read, shouldn't the first step before you even read it be to get a lock on the file or that range? Or, if your calculation might take a long time, at least get a lock right before you write it back, verifying first that you're writing over data that hasn't changed while you were off calculating?

<comment><USER6> That was my first intuition too. It sounds like a classic race condition, in which case you would simply acquire the highest level of locking (exclusive) before reading the data, to make sure all your accesses to the shared data are synchronized.

But I'm pretty sure I'm misunderstanding what the author was trying to say.

<comment><USER7> He is talking about mandatory locks, where if I lock the file and do things properly, you cannot do operations on it, even if you disregard the locks. In other words, it's a "convenience": I can structure my program in such a way as to "guarantee" that I will have the exclusive lock on the file and even your "buggy" code won't be able to overwrite it despite the fact that your code does not acquire any locks. Seems like the perfect solution, until the madness described in the OP ensues.

Also, mandatory locks are used in Windows. Ever try to delete that virus.exe while it's still running? Yeah.

<comment><USER5> I think I understand that, but it's still not clear to me how the _type_ of the lock is the cause of the problem: the problem as far as I can see it is that the hypothetical programmer isn't acquiring a lock (regardless of type) before starting their operation and then holding it until completion. Mandatory locking certainly has its issues/annoyances, but in terms of the situation I quoted, if used properly [1], it works fine and there is no risk of unexpected results due to races.

[1] acquire lock for maximum level of operations you might need and hold it all the way through to completion, _or_ to avoid holding a lock on the object for too long, get and release multiple locks verifying as needed that the data hasn't changed each time

<comment><USER2> Mandatory locks lead people to believe that they are safe. Advisory locks come with no implicit promises, so people know that they only protect against well behaved apps (generally other instances of the same program) and adjust program behavior accordingly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This excellent writeup inspired me to publish some old dotlocking code I had lying about - <https://github.com/jaysoffian/dotlock>

</comment><comment><USER9> So it turns out only one sentence near the end really matters:

"I guess lockfiles are the answer after all."

Yup. Don't use the locking APIs. Just use lockfiles be done with it.

I'd actually go a step further and suggest only using lock _directories_. Using lockfiles assumes O_CREAT|O_EXCL works properly everywhere (which is probably a safe assumption, but...). mkdir() will return EEXIST if you fail to acquire the 'lock'.

</comment><comment><USER10> Cool writeup!

 _This is apparently because some versions of Windows don't understand shared locks_

Which versions? It seems even the Windows 95 had FILE_SHARE_READ and FILE_SHARE_WRITE which are effectively shared locks (it just didn't have the FILE_SHARE_DELETE)

<comment><USER11> The author is referring to the LockFile API call, which only supports exclusive byte-range locks, vs. the LockFileEx API call, which does support shared byte-range locks, but is only available on the Windows NT variants (NT 4 and above), not the Windows 9x variants (95, 98, and ME).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> [http://www.beej.us/guide/bgipc/output/html/singlepage/bgipc....](http://www.beej.us/guide/bgipc/output/html/singlepage/bgipc.html#flocking)</comment>


Chrome and Firefox Developers Aim to Remove Support for FTP - <AUTHOR> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/chrome-and-firefox-developers-aim-to-remove-support-for-ftp/ <comment><USER2> Unfortunately FTP is still used by a concerning large number of support sites with file stores (think manufacturer driver downloads). Personally, I don't mind using a different application to handle FTP as long as the application handling works fine (ie Chrome/FF hand off the URL to an external application like mailto: links, rather than showing you an error page of some sort).

However, I feel like this change has little to do with FTP itself; rather, it might be coming from Chrome's desire to remove the protocol from the navigation bar.</comment>


Where's My Fucking Polling Place? - <AUTHOR> http://yourfuckingpollingplace.com/

<comment><USER2> "Your fucking address here"

Virgins don't get to vote it seems.</comment>


Randomized TSA screening is stupid - <AUTHOR> http://blog.erratasec.com/2013/07/randomized-tsa-screening-is-stupid.html

<comment><USER2> This is a stupidly wrong article.

If you have a deterministic screening procedure, then would-be terrorists can simply do a dry run to figure out whether they are going to be caught in the screening. As long as they can find enough white extremists (like the Boston Marathon bombers), they can guarantee getting through.

Random is trivially better than that. It has a chance of catching them. (If the plot involves many terrorists, the chance of catching someone becomes surprisingly good.)

<comment><USER3> The 2002 "carnival booth" paper by Strauss and Chakrabarti is a good analysis. There's a summary here with some quotes from Hal Abelson [http://tech.mit.edu/V122/N48/48secure.48n.html](http://tech.mit.edu/V122/N48/48secure.48n.html)</comment></comment>


Why WordPress Should Not Have Won the Open Source CMS Award - <AUTHOR> http://www.vancelucas.com/blog/wordpress-and-the-open-source-cms-award/

<comment><USER2> The author wants an event calendar:

<http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/events-manager/>

and a contact form

<http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contact-form-7/>

and a photo gallery:

<http://codex.wordpress.org/Photoblogs_and_Galleries>

Wordpress does all that with simple plugins or built in functions. Perhaps it is a CMS.

</comment><comment><USER3> Another area WordPress wins is in upgrades. A few years ago I was burned by a Plone upgrade that failed. That made me stop upgrading the site because I couldn't figure out how to move forward. I finally pulled the plug on the site. I have a bunch of WP sites and upgrading may be a pain because of having to disable the plugins, it's always worked (knock on wood!).

WordPress also has an understandable database structure (it may make any serious DBMS person gag, but it's simple and malleable) and there's enough info out there that you can learn how to do just about anything if you look hard enough.

Unfortunately, I'm about to need something more CMS-like than WP for some upcoming sites, so I have to figure out what to do.

<comment><USER4> I've heard about easy Wordpress upgrades, but never experienced them. Here's my cheatsheet:

      * download latest.tar.gz and rename
      * untar
      * mv wordpress ../wordpress-x.x.x
      * cd wordpress-x.x.x
      * cp wordpress-current/.htaccess . [only if wordpress is in site root]
      * cp -r wordpress-current/uploads/ .
      * cp -r wordpress-current/themes/ .
      * cp wordpress-current/wp-config.php .

What am I doing wrong?

(Also moving from a development install to production is also ugly. I have to search and replace hostnames in the mysqldump of the database!)

<comment><USER5> Well, you could turn that into a shell script...

But what I think you are missing is the upgrade option that pops up in your dashboard. Yeah, there are some downsides, like security. I just chown the file tree to the webserver user for as long as it takes to do the upgrade and then back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Good point, but crappy title. "Real" CMS packages could learn a thing or two from WordPress.

<comment><USER7> 'Absolutely'. As the author notes usability and ease of use matter. They are the number one feature to the end user. There is one more and this is more for developers, wordpress database is made up of ten tables! Within these ten tables they have managed to slot in a multi-blog feature. This compares to over 50 for Drupal for example. As a developer, I can get into the internals of WP and make modifications fairly easily - in most cases there are plugins to assist as a starting point.

Overall WP has managed to carve a sexy niche in the hearts of users and developers even if the code is not so beautiful and sexy, not to mention the language!

<comment><USER8> You could argue though that having a table like wp_usermeta can actually be more confusing that having explicit tables for things. I guess it's all a trade off, personally when hacking away at it I'm not a big fan of how wordpress is laid out internally but I do have to say it's a lot better than something like Joomla

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was really impressed with the overall usability of the RadiantCMS software, but most of the features beyond having simple static pages were provided by 3rd-party plugins... many of which were out of date with the core software by the time I tried them, and failed to work in mysterious-to-newcomer ways.

<comment><USER10> I like Radiant's simplicity. A PHP port of it is FrogCMS. I don't see myself using Wordpress as a lightweight CMS again, Radiant/Frog are easier to setup and maintain, and the code is well organized so they're hackable too. Every time I need to dive into the PHP of Wordpress I get frustrated with it's spaghetti-ish ways.

<comment><USER11> I've been working on a large-ish Radiant site and grabbed a few plugins. So far all have worked as expected, except for one for page-level user access control.

The problem with that one was that the author did not account for having thousands of users and a hundred or so pages. I added pagination for the user list, and created my own plugin to handle page groups so I could assign page permissions en masse rather than one by one.

It's _way_ nicer than having to poke into any PHP I've dealt with. Biggest complaint so far is that I often cannot find docs clear and complete enough to help me understand something before I go and hack my own solution.

But the upside is that when I later realize I should have gone another way it's easy to refactor, and using rspec and selenium tells when when things break.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> But the award is just a popularity contest. WordPress is merely the best blog platform. Blogs are the most common use case for a CMS. So more bloggers means more WordPress users means more votes. Doesn't have much to with how capable or useful it is for a general CMS.

<comment><USER13> But, as the author says, it's still the best general CMS, even though it's a good blogging platform.

<comment><USER12> He claims that it's the best general CMS but the only information he offers in support of that contention is the fact that it won this year's popularity contest. Last year Drupal won. Was Drupal the better CMS last year and WordPress the better CMS this year? They've both improved but the relative differences between the two are much the same.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, WordPress has improved leaps and bound this year while the public release of Drupal has remained fairly stagnant. WordPress has a new dashboard look and feel, automated system upgrades, automated upgrades for plugins, etc. Many things that make it super easy to use for non-techies.

<comment><USER12> Well, if your only criteria for a CMS is making things super easy to use for non-technies, then I grant your point

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Previous winners of the Overall category are not eligible for the Overall category in 2009. Previous winners compete amongst one another in a separate Hall of Fame category designed specifically for them."

This is ridiculous. Since all products evolve, we need to recognize continued dedication/improvement in the products. Also, once you've done these awards for 4-5 years, you will end up awarding the top prize to ridiculous entries. Its not that WordPress is the best CMS. its that the award is flawed.

</comment><comment><USER15> WordPress is awesome! It's very simple for inexperienced users learn and simple for geeks like me to dig into the code and make it do all sorts of things that if I had to create from scratch would have taken me weeks. I've used Drupal and it's ok but not nearly as user friendly as the WordPress dashboard. I know PHP is the red head step child in the minds of the Rails develpers - but when you take into account PHP's simplicity and then add in the WordPress code ex, it becomes a very powerful combination...

</comment><comment><USER16> Drupal should have won. It should win everything.

Drupal can create boring blogs like wordpress...but what about it's power to create something like...umm...a SaaS Business Social Collaborative Application?

<http://www.officemedium.com>

100% Drupal Goodness

</comment><comment><USER17> You can now embed the WPμ engine within a Joomla 1.5 install via a plugin. No iframes. In our case, users are all authenticated through the university LDAP server. Joomla + WPmu within one consistent skin is very, very nice. Yeah, it's php, but it works.

</comment><comment><USER18> How does Textpattern

<http://textpattern.com/>

compare as a CMS? I know at least one webmaster who vastly prefers Textpattern to WordPress, and the website I manage that is run on WordPress is far, far from being easy to use.

</comment><comment><USER19> reminiscent of kanye: [http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2009/09/13/k...](http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2009/09/13/kanye- west-storms-the-vmas-stage-during-taylor-swifts-speech/)</comment>


Ask HN: Windows server hosting for memory heavy rendering application? - <AUTHOR> Does anyone have any good suggestions of affordable decent Windows Server hosting with 32GB+ RAM?  All the obvious hosts charge a ridiculous amount and can't seem to keep up with the demand either.
Perhaps I'm being unreasonable?  I run a service that needs to render lots of videos using After Effects and Media Encoder and so far I've not been able to find a server under $200/m that can keep up with 6-9 renders going on at the same time.
Would I be better off having many small servers running 1-2 instead?  I've recently taken over this service and this is the main bottleneck so any suggestions would be much appreciated. <comment><USER2> Various VPS and dedicated server providers have servers with 32 GB RAM for <100$/month, a windows license should add around $30 (or you might be able to bring your own, if you have one). First example that comes to mind would be Hetzner.

If you want something with lower granularity (e.g. booked by the hour), your going to end up at the typical cloud providers, which of course charge more.

<comment><AUTHOR> Herzner do look good, thanks for the suggestion.

Any thoughts on distributing the renders across multiple smaller servers compared to one large one?</comment></comment>


People Lie More in Emails than Face to Face - <AUTHOR> http://web.hbr.org/email/archive/dailystat.php?date=011612 <comment><USER2> Is this surprising to anyone? It's so much easier to lie in a message. You don't need to worry about facial cues or consequences being as severe.</comment>


Contest Rules? - <AUTHOR> http://www.makegameswith.us/contestrules/ <comment><AUTHOR> This following paragraph doesn't sit well with me.

You agree that if your game is selected, it will be published under this agreement. If you are a minor, your parents must consent to your submission and consent to your game being published under this agreement for minors. In short: MakeGamesWithUs will take the first $1000 in post-Apple revenues to recoup certain fixed costs. You will then receive 70% of post-Apple of revenues thereafter.</comment>


The grandmaster diet: How to lose weight while barely moving - <AUTHOR> https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/27593253/why-grandmasters-magnus-carlsen-fabiano-caruana-lose-weight-playing-chess <comment><USER3> > Robert Sapolsky, who studies stress in primates at Stanford University, says > a chess player can burn up to 6,000 calories a day while playing in a > tournament

Citation, please.

I see him making this claim in a number of articles and talks, but am having trouble finding an experiment verifying this.

<comment><USER4> I would love to see this as well. That's more than 2x what most people burn running a marathon. Hard to believe but would be really interesting if that's true.

<comment><USER5> I also doubt it, though it's not quite 2x. The number they cite is "6,000 calories a day", which presumably includes the ~2,000 calories one burns just by staying alive. A marathon runner burns ~2,600 calories on the race itself, totalling ~4,600 for the day. So it's about 1.3x rather than 2x.

The numbers all have very wide error bars, so it puts 1.3 in the range closer to 1 than to 2. Still hard to believe, but I'd consider "comparable to a marathon" far more likely than "twice as much".

<comment><USER6> If you're going to be pedantic, you subtract out the baseline, and the alleged caloric burn from chess would be 1.5x the measured burn from running a marathon.

But in any case it still astounds me the human body can run that far on just 2,000 calories (2.3kWh).

<comment><USER7> Something you learn when you're trying to lose a lot of weight: The human body is disgustingly energy efficient.

<comment><USER8> It's more about how light the body is than how efficient it is. Consider: the Tesla Model 3 has a range of 350 km, and a battery capacity of 50 kWh. That's a little more than seven km per kWh. So, less efficient than the human body, right?

Well don't forget that its curb weight is 1,611 kg. If we assume that the marathoning human weighs 100 kg, then the Tesla weighs 16x as much. So to compare the performance pound for pound, we need to imagine the energy use of sixteen human runners (36kWh for 42km, or just a little more than 1kWh per km). Also, it would be travelling that range at a much higher velocity. Of course, its coefficient of drag is probably lower than that of sixteen human runners, but considering the humans are running at 15 km/h or so, and the Tesla would be travelling at closer to 100kmh, the velocity factor of the drag calculation would be 40x higher for the Tesla than the humans. So, even if you factor in the unfairness of having skin and hair and clothes, the humans are actually a good deal less energy efficient than the car.

I just found this analysis interesting. Our machines are after all quite a bit more efficient than our bodies (for certain tasks, of course). But that doesn't detract from your point that the body is definitely more efficient than you want it to be when it comes to losing weight!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I did tests for weight loss. I found that you don't lose weight until you sleep. (stay up all night and weigh your self repeatedly, in the morning, no loss, but after you sleep and wake, your weight goes back to "morning weight")

I found that if you don't sleep well, you don't lose as much. If you eat too late before going to bed, you don't lose as much.

If you adjust your diet (however you want is my experience) to always be hungry for around an hour before every meal, you will lose weight. (no exercise at all)

What these guys are doing seems to be actual "work", I don't think stress alone makes you lose weight. With the anecdotal data I have observed over the years "stress eating" is more common that "stress based weight loss".

Maybe the activity that causes the stress directly relates to it's effect? And not all stress is equal in this way? (tournament stress vs paying the bills stress)

<comment><USER10> I hate to be blunt. But this is as much pseudoscience as the anti vaxers. Losing weight and gaining weight is simple physics. There is also a big difference between losing weight based on water weight and losing real body mass.

I sweat like a pig anytime I work out. I use to teach two hour fitness classes and even now after the end of a workout, I've "lost 5 pounds" but that's pure water weight. I'm burning around 1000-1200 calories during that time. If I rehydrate and drink lots of water afterwards, I'll "gain" 3 pounds.

If you are "losing weight" by being hungry or by limiting when you eat, you are losing weight because you are consuming less calories.

The same was cited in the article. The chess players are forgetting to eat.

<comment><USER11> I never understood this point of view. It's like people who didn't believe in washing hands until bacteria were discovered.

Yes sure calories in calories out. But metabolism has so many variables. It can be revved up and burn a lot of calories. It can become quiescent when you are in starvation mode. What causes it to start using the fat reserves is definitely more than a univariate analysis. If there is a catalyst that starts breaking down fats faster it won't matter that you are eating more.

Some people are naturally skinny and others put on weight quickly. This is already well known and shows that there are complex genetic inputs as well as other ones. We have to discover what those are. So saying it's just calories in/out, stupid... nope!

<comment><USER10> It is still just calories in and calories out. Some people naturally have a higher metabolism and a higher basal metabolic rate. It still doesn't change the equation.

Yes, it's a well known fact that if you eat too few calories, that your metabolism slows down - and you burn less calories. That doesn't make anything that the original poster said scientifically valid.

I saw all sorts of crazy crap that people believed would help them lose weight and tone when I was a part time fitness instructor like excercises that would help them spot reduce (no such thing) to people who tried to come into my classes wearing those plastic bags because they thought it would help them lose weight. They reported me to management plenty of times for not allowing them to come to my class like that and I would budge.

<comment><USER12> > It is still just calories in and calories out.

The problem with this line of thinking is the "just".

Sure, physics says it's calories in and out, and we all agree that mostly makes sense.

But -- how do you measure how many calories are going out? Sleep is known to have an impact on weight. How does one translate their sleep quality or sleep issues into a better "out" measure? How do you know how many calories are going out during all of the other things you do during the day? What about the thousands of assorted complex processes going on in your body that you aren't really aware of?

For the "in"... ok, so you studiously track everything you eat. What's the efficiency that your body absorbs all of the calories from the food you ate? How many of those calories pass through and aren't actually consumed? Is eating 1000 calories of lettuce really the same thing as eating 1000 calories of pork?

If fixing this for people was just about "the equation", weight loss would be a lot easier to solve.

"Calories in, calories out" is one of those things that sounds great, but is not nearly as practical for people to actually implement as people like to imagine.

<comment><USER10> Sleep only has a second order effect on weight. Almost all of the reasons that lack of sleep affect weight loss is due to overeating (calories in) and lack of exercise (calories in).

[https://www.topfitnessmag.com/lifestyle/sleep-important- weig...](https://www.topfitnessmag.com/lifestyle/sleep-important-weight-loss)

This is just like all of the studies showing diet soda causes weight gain.Diet soda doesn't actually cause weight gain. Diet soda gives people the license to overeat and it may cause some people to crave real sugar more. I'm sure we've all seen people order a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese, a large fry and a Diet Coke.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Eat less, lose weight. I read long ago that if you want to maintain weight, eat until you're a little bit hungry. If you want to lose weight, eat until you're still pretty hungry.

I've been following the latter on and off over the years, and have been doing it again for the past 8 weeks and have lost a pound a week. I've found it to be much easier than calculating BMR/caloric rate then calculating calories and setting up portion sizes, etc.

<comment><USER14> I've found that to be true as well. One thing I do is I eat before dinner (especially when going out for dinner). If I'm really hungry I'll order the largest thing on the menu and overeat. If I have a banana before going out I'll make a wiser choice.

Losing weight is all about hunger management. Eat free foods like fruits and vegetables when you're hungry. Eat 3 balanced meals a day. That's it, that's all it takes.

If you turn losing weight into a job by counting calories and doing meal planning and whatnot you'll quit because you already have a job. So just use some basic common sense judgments and make sure you're never too hungry because that's when you'll make mistakes.

<comment><USER15> Fruits are not free food in terms of dieting, as they have a lot of sugar (fructose). Bananas in particular are very rich in sugar so are best avoided when on a diet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I track my vital metrics religiously. Last week, I interviewed at three companies who have intensive technical interviews (Dropbox, Google, Apple).

The morning after the second interview, at Google which was intensive, I was my lowest weight ever in several years (dropped three to four pounds from five days before)

I gained the weight back after a week. But it was interesting to observe the physiological effects from interviewing. I'm not surprised to read about such physiological effects from long, mentally intensive activities.

(I thought I did well enough in my interviews but I didn't make it past the hiring committee at Google, or Dropbox)

<comment> half-pixel-off I was going to ask: actual weight or water weight? Because I do tend to dehydrate myself in new/unfamiliar places, especially when forced to do things to someone else's schedule and without my favorite things to drink on hand.

But a week seems too long to gain it back unless you weren't measuring very often.

I'd love to track blood pressure, pulse, and weight religiously but it's hard to remember to do any more than highly irregularly, and the app I use for bp and weight can't track pulse.

<comment><USER16> This included water weight. My body's water weight during that time, if my scale is to be trusted, was between 52.0-53.0% during that week of interviews. It is consistent with levels before my interviews.

I was wearing a HRM tracker for two of the interviews, but I didn't turn it on any activities to track frequent metrics. Heart rate was elevated for the entire interview, like I was briskly walking. In my hardest Google interview, my heart rate was at its peak.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Most people don't realize that a huge amount of their basal metabolism goes into operating the brain. Just "keeping the lights on" in the average person accounts for around 20% of your total daily energy expenditure! 6k cals/day is highly suspect, but anyone who has spent all day thinking hard can attest to how tiring it can be. That big brain of ours eats a lot of calories.

The other thing is that stress causes the body to produce cortisol - <USER2> catabolic hormone which makes it easier for your body to break down tissue into energy. Naturally, this causes our body to respond with an instinct to take in energy. In many folks, this prompts overeating, which is why stress is often blamed for increases in fat, but if you don't adjust your diet at all, it can accelerate energy expenditure.

</comment><comment><USER18> I first wrote this as a reply in this thread and now I'm looking at it, I think it's relevant to the article as a whole -- sugar, insulin, calorie reduction, stress, fitness in general. I believe that the "diet" mentioned in the article is in effect a calorie-restriction one.

> Losing weight and gaining weight is simple physics. > you are losing weight > because you are consuming less calories.

This is only true in the first up to 6 months of a calorie-restriction diet. Then, body adjusts its metabolism (lower body temperature, making you feel more lethargic to keep you from exercising, etc) and your weight begins to slowly climb back up, sans any further calorie restriction. At this point, it's easy for a dieter to blame himself of lacking willpower: "it worked, and it stopped working now, I must've been not strict enough!".

The same thing happens if you force someone to overeat even if they're not hungry. They will gain weight -- for up to 6 months. Then, the body increases its base metabolic rate and adjusts to the new food intake level.

As Dr. Jason Fung meticulously explains in his book Obesity Code, there seems to be a weight set point. He then argues that the root cause of obesity, and the body's set weight point, is insulin resistance.

The books hails your grandma's advice: "Cut back sugars and starchy foods. No snacking."

This is from the last part (The Solution):

1\. Reduce your consumption of added sugars. 2. Reduce your consumption of refined grains. 3. Moderate your protein intake. 4. Increase your consumption of natural fats. 5. Increase your consumption of fiber and vinegar.

The author also stresses the importance of fasting.

Everything the book asserts seems to be pretty well backed by science, go check for yourself.

Source: Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung. Read it, it's not only a brilliant weight loss book, but also a wonderful book about how the wrong incentives for companies have led to the obesity epidemic in the US.

<comment><USER19> > _This is only true in the first up to 6 months of a calorie-restriction > diet. Then, body adjusts its metabolism (lower body temperature, making you > feel more lethargic to keep you from exercising, etc) and your weight begins > to slowly climb back up, sans any further calorie restriction. At this > point, it 's easy for a dieter to blame himself of lacking willpower: "it > worked, and it stopped working now, I must've been not strict enough!"._

> _The same thing happens if you force someone to overeat even if they 're not > hungry. They will gain weight -- for up to 6 months. Then, the body > increases its base metabolic rate and adjusts to the new food intake level._

This is pseudoscientific garbage. There is some amount of adaptation that the body experiences in response to a caloric deficit or surplus. It varies by person but is generally not a _major_ effect. A few hundred calories is typical and is largely attributable to changes in NEAT.

This is also not an unbounded effect. It won't prevent continued weight loss if the starting deficit is greater than the adaptation nor will it prevent continued weight gain if the surplus exceeds the adaptation. The many obese people in the world are proof that the "natural set point" does not place a cap on weight gain.

There is also definitely nothing magic that happens at the 6 month mark and the absurdity of this should be enough to make it clear that this is garbage.

<comment><USER20> >It varies by person but is generally not a major effect. A few hundred calories is typical and is largely attributable to changes in NEAT.

A few hundred calories is ~10-16% of the daily necessary caloric intake of many people, I daresay most? It is most certainly a major effect and considering that people become obese most often by consuming a small daily surplus, a few hundred calories extra, over many years, a swing of 100-300 calories can easily make the gaining weight much easier or much harder.

<comment><USER19> I wouldn't consider 200ish calories "major", in part because the typical weight loss plan includes a deficit of at least 500 calories/day, but mostly because it's straightforward to turn a 500 calorie deficit into a 700 calorie deficit to accommodate the adaptation. Adaptation isn't meaningless but it's also not offsetting large deficits the way many people think it is.

As for obesity happening due to 100-300 extra calories per day, yes, but also not really. If a person's intake is 300 calories per day over what's necessary to maintain a healthy weight, then they will put on weight until TDEE (which increases with body mass) catches up with their intake and they land somewhere above their healthy weight. It's not an unbounded growth unless caloric intake is also growing continuously. I would imagine it's quite common to see obese people eating 300 calories over their current TDEE but also to be 1300 calories over their healthy-weight TDEE.

Also don't forget that the 300 extra calories is _after_ the metabolic adaptation from eating a surplus. So if an individual will increase TDEE by 200 calories in response to a surplus, then they'll need to eat 500 calories above "real" TDEE to see a 300 calorie effective weight gain.

All this is to say that obese people are generally eating quite a bit more than just 100-300 calories too much per day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I was 175 and have been trying to lose 5 pounds for 8 years. In the last 2 months Ive lost 10 pounds. I hit as high as 180

I started doing brazilian jiu jitsu about 7 hours/week. My body was sore for the first 1 month. I also did a low carb diet (moderate adherence)

Keto generally reduces my hunger so I would skip dinner because the exercise would kill my appetite. I would then not be hungry until lunch the next day. This ended up turning into intermittent fasting.

I hit 170 after about 1.5 months which was a huge milestone. The intermittent fasting was really easy (which was strange) to the point where I am only eating 0 or once every 24 hours. This last week I started losing about .4-.5 pounds/day and so I lost another 4 pounds in the last week.

I believe it was the keto which kills hunger spikes, the massive exercise in the evening which killed nighttime eating which transitioned me into fasting.

If you had asked me if a year ago if I could easily not eat for two days I would have said no way. Once your body is burning fat, then it is easy.

<comment><USER22> After letting myself go a bit last year, I've been (with the exception of a vacation or two) strictly keto and time-restricted (at least 18:6) feeding daily. Currently 20 pounds down from my peak, and I got as far as 25 down before I spent two weeks in Europe mostly visiting biergartens. All that with not much exercise, though I'm starting to incorporate resistance training.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> After 30, one should seriously evaluate breakfast. Three meals per day becomes just too many calories to burn. Two meals for an adult is plenty. Coffee in the morning suppresses hunger, so one can go until 12-12:30 before getting woozy.

At some point I noticed that I was force-feeding myself lunch if I ate breakfast. Hunger is a normal feeling - embrace it.

<comment><USER14> Change what you eat, not how often you eat. A yogurt and some fruit is fine for breakfast.

<comment><USER24> Not if you want to limit your eating window, which is a great way to make your body burn its fat reserves.

<comment><USER14> If you have the willpower to ignore your body telling you its hungry, then yeah fasting will work for you. Most people can do this for only a little while though, and then revert to what they used to do.

<comment><USER23> Diets fail because people view them as "temporary struggles". Something to get through and then it's over. It's obvious why that doesn't work. It has to be a way of life.

<comment><USER14> All I'm saying is fasting doesn't work if you make up the calories during non fasting hours.

<comment><USER24> If you control for calories, when you eat does actually have an impact: [https://www.uab.edu/shp/nutrition/news/168-time- restricted-e...](https://www.uab.edu/shp/nutrition/news/168-time-restricted- eating-can-help)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I was a competitive chess player as a kid/teenager, and distinctly remember being _exhausted_ , both physically and mentally, after the games.

It was the sort of full exhaustion that I've only experienced in sports where rapid strategy-making is deeply important; in hockey, for example. I've never gotten the same feeling from a more endurance or strength-based workout, like running or biking. I haven't done much rock climbing but I imagine it's akin to chess.

</comment><comment><USER26> I experienced this "diet" when I was having a tough time at work. Turned out for me that stress eating calories added up to way more than what the insomnia and nervous thinking burned. Your results may vary.

</comment><comment><USER27> I went to a lot of chess tournaments as a kid, and I never noticed this phenomenon. I can only name a few GMs that were on the fat side, though.

Not eating is, I think, part of it. Usually a tournament with 40/2+1 time control spaces rounds 6.5 hours apart, and a single round could take close to 6 hours. A full 6-hour game is unusual, but 4 hours of only staring at the board, drinking water, and walking around looking at other games is normal.

I can't remember if food was even allowed at the table; I only remember one time seeing food: at a scholastic tournament, my opponent ate a clementine before the match. Technically, 40/2+1 gives you enough time to drive to Taco Bell (even on your move), but I've never heard of anyone doing it.

If you ask my mom, she'll remember seeing kids from out-of-state wandering between rounds: "have you eaten lunch?" "No...?" like they hadn't even been thinking about it. Just total space cadet stuff, sometimes. (she drove the kid to McD's, I think)

</comment><comment><USER28> I lost 10kg in 90 days. I didn't follow any fancy diet. Just counted calories.

Yes, I know, I know it's flawed, but many of you are reasoning your way into eating what you want and the problem is discipline.

I ate ice cream along the way. I too ate what I wanted, but I just tracked everything (I used lose it) and never overate my budget.

The first diet that ever really worked. Nothing can replace discipline.

<comment><USER29> Diets fail because people make them something you do rather than something you are. You can stop a diet. A life change is permanent.

I'm down 42 pounds from my max weight and am at a healthy bmi. I too eat whatever I want I just eat less of it. It stuck when I stopped calling it a diet. It is just how I live now. I feel tons better and my knees stopped hating me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've never seen an overweight person who exercised regularly and ate decently well. I'm not talking about hitting the gym 6 days a week but a healthy amount of daily activity be it walking, running, surfing, hiking. It is not and never has been complicated to lead a healthy lifestyle.

</comment><comment><USER31> The "wealthy friend" referenced in the first sentence would have to be Rex Sinquefield, aka the billionaire patron of American chess, based in Saint Louis. I wonder why Sinquefield would want to remain anonymous for this article. He goes out of his way to plaster his name on everything, not just his chess championships ("Sinquefield Cup") but apparently professorships ("Sinquefield Professor of Economics") [0].

[0] [https://unewsonline.com/2018/09/06/sinquefield-donation- caus...](https://unewsonline.com/2018/09/06/sinquefield-donation-causes- controversy/)

</comment><comment><USER32> Most comments so far seem to focus on the weight loss part, but I don't think that's very interesting.

What's more interesting is how he is able to manage mental exhaustion and performance with this regimen. I think everything here applies to other mentally exhaustive work such as software engineering as well.

Maybe there's a need for more systematic approach for exercise and diet for software engineering. Not for weight loss, but better sustained performance in the job.

</comment><comment><USER33> I used to play a lot of all day Magic: the Gathering tournaments where the only option was overpriced convention junk food. 12 hours of stressful competition was enough to keep off hunger and I lost weight from this.

</comment><comment><USER34> The ESPN targeted ads provider requires "several minutes" to "process" the opting out of tracking.

Blacklisted ESPN and Truste.com from my forum. Blah.

</comment><comment><USER35> So how long before it is possible to 3D-print a brain-sized, person-specific artificial organ, composed primarily of brown adipose tissue, blood vessels, and "skin", connect it to the blood supply with sterile tubing, and refrigerate it in a portable plug-in cooler, to create a 6000 kcal/day energy deficit?

Lose 100 pounds in 60 days without surgery. Some infection risk. Grid power required.

</comment><comment><USER36> >Today's players have begun to incorporate strict food and fitness regimens to increase oxygen supply to the brain during tournaments

Is there really such a possible variance when it comes to getting oxygen to the brain? Why don't they just take hits of O2 then?

<comment><USER17> Absolutely. The difference in VO2 max (essentially, efficiency of oxygen uptake) between trained and untrained individuals is stark and substantial.

Hits of pure O2 produce a euphoric high, which probably isn't what you want during intense mental competition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> This reminds me of the ordeals depicted in Sangatsu no Lion, a manga about professional shogi.

</comment><comment><USER38> I lost 35 pounds in about 45 days without working out (coding all day) by fasting for 3 to 5 days at a time.

I got a lot of keto flu tho, and would always eat after that, or try to minimize it by drinking a ton of (no sugar) vitamin water and/or 1 egg.

</comment><comment><USER39> To lose weight, eat fewer calories than you expend.

To gain weight, eat more calories than you expend.

It's that simple. This is basic physics, weight gain and loss is not complicated.

</comment><comment><USER40> Your body needs fuel (nutrition) to sustain its activity.

If you take in more fuel than your activity requires, your body will convert it into excess fat.

If you take in less fuel than your activity requires, your body will burn fat.

What else is there to discuss? I honestly do not understand how we have these convoluted discussions. The only other thing worth considering is how you can make it easier for yourself to cope with the feeling of hunger, so that you don't give in and eat more than you need.

<comment><USER41> > how you can make it easier for yourself to cope with the feeling of hunger, > so that you don't give in and eat more than you need.

It took me about 6 months to learn the portion of food that will fill me up, so that I can stop eating well before my stomach takes it's sweet-ass time telling my brain it's full. Best thing I ever did for myself.

<comment><USER40> Had a colleague who went from near-obese to slim in about 6 months. One tip was to eat small amounts throughout the day, and stuff like bread that fills you up, not stuff like salad that will leave you feeling empty.

From my own experience I think being well attuned to your own appetite patterns is helpful, like you say. That's going to be hard if you have a volatile and busy lifestyle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> How to get a high metabolism as a kid, a theory: play chess.

</comment><comment><USER43> what's the purpose of not moving to lose weight?

</comment><comment><USER44> At 7:30 the next morning, he pulls on gray Mizzou sweats and matching running shorts, rubs the sleep from his eyes and TL;DRs to those who tired of a journalismatic narrative:

Chess players have stress on tournaments and may lose 7+ kg per hard game. It is not healthy for them.

</comment><comment><USER45> Is it a long term coma?

</comment><comment><USER46> Sounds like amphetamine abuse to me. Presumably de rigeur in chess.

<comment><USER47> Did you read the article? It's about diet, exercise, and the energy burnt playing chess.

<comment><USER46> Did you read between the lines? The article is indeed about those things, but they're almost certainly BS.

<comment><USER48> Since we're on the topic of making things up not described in the article, I think it's secret gastric bypass surgeries the competitors are undergoing, not amphetamines.

<comment><USER49> While they were playing chess no less!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> The author is in my opinion and (whatever little it may be) experience spot on. More people, have a starvation issue, they are eating carbohydrates, where the body makes them on it's own. Before we had 'food' on every corner at each gas station, we hunted, (being physical) until we scored that game. Not three or six meals a day, not chemically processed 'food stuffs' that shock the endocrine system and break the very nature of how our systems function. I say starvation as in , when food is scarce, the body somehow knows, and stores what is taken in, for future use. Yea, were all horders by nature.</comment>


The Gates of Hell Just Opened In Guatemala - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5551916/the-gates-of-hell-just-opened-in-guatemala <comment><USER2> This is among the scariest things I've ever seen.

</comment><comment><USER3> If only they could divert the oil to this hole.</comment>


CoinLab Attracts Venture Capital for Bitcoin Projects - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/04/24/coinlab-attracts-500000-in-venture-capital-for-bitcoin-projects/ <comment><USER2> I think this is newsworthy and awesome. Happy to answer questions here if anybody has them.

<comment><USER3> What are your views on the bubble and crash that bitcoin went through a few months ago?

What about competing crypto-currencies?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Factfold – Clojure library for flexible and correctness-prone software - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/notduncansmith/factfold <comment><AUTHOR> I posted this a few days ago and since have significantly revamped the README to (hopefully) better explain what this library is about (allowing you to express your program design directly as data, in a style that's portable to most programming languages in use today) and how it adds value (neatly separating bunched logic into discrete data structures that are near-trivially implemented, debugged, and parallelized).

The wider implication being that hopefully, with this library, the architecture of connected (including web) applications can be dramatically simplified. Specifically, I want to rapidly develop and deploy efficient, reliable applications that don't rely on databases, caches, message queues, or other incidental complexity for small-to-medium-data projects. This library is the first step towards that, with the next being some demonstration of reliable, efficient persistent restart capabilities for event processing.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you use the Safari Developer tools? - <AUTHOR>

I just updated to 4.0 and just now I started to toy with it, loving how it is breaking down the loading times of the sites I have built. I'm not yet sure what the true power of it is though, I'm about to start googling but in the mean time I was wondering how _you_ use the tools, if you have any tips, etc. to share... <comment><USER2> I use it for the Javascript debugging tools. I've found that the user- interface is nicer than Firebug.</comment>


Ask HN: Any Open Source Project in Need of UI Help? - <AUTHOR> To celebrate the launch of our new service (http://fairpixels.pro) where we offer unlimited UI and Brand design to Software Companies, we wanted to help one or two OSS projects for Free. No strings attached. Which OSS could really benefit from a UI and branding upgrade? Who do we contact? <comment><USER2> Hi :),

I'm part of a team that spent the last two years organizing job fairs. The thing we've noticed is that while they're a great way for recruiters to reach out to candidates looking for jobs, these type of events didn't get the digital love they should deserve.

We want to make organizing job fairs as easy as drinking water. We've recently launched a GitHub org and intend to make everything out in the open ([https://github.com/fairplanner](https://github.com/fairplanner) for more details) because we believe that open-sourcing our ideas will lead to a better product for our end costumers.

As you know, launching a start-up can be hard at the beginning, and we desperately lack marketing/branding skills. It would be awesome if you could help us out ;).

Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER3> Pick something your going to use and pitch them.

UI, Make sure after you get the changes green lighted you stay and implement them as well.</comment>