How to stop wasting time chit chatting at work - <AUTHOR> This is a real prolem. Laterly I have realised that I commute for 2 houts, meetings for 3 hours, lunch and then banter for 3 more hours, mostly about stock market, crypto currencies and random topics with coleague. And back home make up for the work else I wouln't have anything for standup next day (Scrum makes sure you are humilated ). Any tips to get out of this? <comment><USER2> It's not about avoiding or saying no to chitchat, but taking positive control over your time. Focus on doing something rather than on not doing something.

Give pomodoro a try. This will provide structure to your time and if you get off track, give you opportunities to get back on track.

</comment><comment><USER3> Two words: remote work

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, of course that would help. I am allowed to work from home occasionally with some reason as per my company culture. However usually there is one F2F meeting/interview that I have to take for which I need to go.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why did Google just push a chrome update removing the "Not Secure" flag? - <AUTHOR> I just updated my chrome (Windows Stable) branch to version 57.0.2987.98. chrome:// pages have their own flag now, HTTPS pages still have the "Secure" flag but HTTP pages just have the unlocked icon. Does anyone know why Google did this? It seems unlike them to rollback a change like this. <comment><USER2> Looks like it's only for HTTP pages with credit card or password inputs in 56:

[https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2016/10/avoid- not-...](https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2016/10/avoid-not-secure- warn)

Did they remove it for those cases too?

</comment><comment><USER3> Is the "not secure" gone from all pages? I thought it was only supposed to show on pages with password fields?

<comment><AUTHOR> I was under the impression it used to be on all pages. I just checked [http://http-password.badssl.com/](http://http-password.badssl.com/) and it still showed up there, maybe you're right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The http site you were viewing may have just removed a login form from their menu, which would have removed the not secure label from the browser.</comment>


Improving Floating Point Accuracy: A Look at Sums - <AUTHOR> http://alex.uwplse.org/2015/10/16/improving-accuracy-summation.html <comment><USER2> More important than just increasing accuracy is knowing how much accuracy you have. With interval artihmetic, you keep an upper and lower bound of every calculation, and use the the appropriate floating point rounding modes when you manipulate the numbers.

You can then try different methods of calculating your result and measure which is the least destructive - compiler optimisations can optimise for width rather than runtime.

Some methods might produce a better upper bound, and others a better lower bound. In those cases you can take the intersection as your best result. See [https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyinterval](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyinterval) for an implementation in python.

<comment><USER3> Don't common ways to implement interval arithmetic massively overestimate the inaccuracy?

<comment><USER2> Compared to what?

You can improve accuracy by optimising the way you do your calculations. A really trivial example: 10000 + .00001 - 10000 is less accurate than 10000 - 10000 + .00001. Without interval arithmetic, you can't easily measure this and decide which way round is best.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It just uses:

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

And Wikipedia has also a discussion of how some compiler optimizations can optimize the algorithm implementation wrong.

<comment><USER5> Indeed. My advice is to use pairwise summation [0], which is easier to implement, does not suffer from compiler optimizations and is, for normal means and purposes, sufficiently precise. Previously, I considered a small blog-post, but it would be an (incomplete) copy of a Wikipedia article.

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

<comment><USER6> The argumentation in the article is bad at some points. First, it praises the fast execution of pairwise addition with a large base case. Second, it praises pairwise addition as accurate with O(E) in the base case. Following this argumentation, making the base case as big as possible would be optimal. However, that would result in naive summation in practice. Thus, the argumentation is bad.

<comment><USER7> It looks like a bad edit to the wiki.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pairwise_summatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pairwise_summation&diff=643560917&oldid=643548127)

^ this user changed the error bounds, incorrectly. The worst case for the naive sum is pretty obviously epsilon*N (and is described that way on the Kahan sum page)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Even higher accuracy is possible by storing all partial sums. Here are several ways to achieve higher accuracy:

[http://code.activestate.com/recipes/393090-binary- floating-p...](http://code.activestate.com/recipes/393090-binary-floating- point-summation-accurate-to-full-p/)

Also see Shewchuk's "Adaptive Precision Floating-Point Arithmetic and Fast Robust Geometric Predicates" at [http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/quake/public/papers/r...](http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/quake/public/papers/robust- arithmetic.ps)

</comment><comment><USER9> Using rational numbers is another good idea how to combat/reduce floating point errors. For example, you can represent and calculate with 1/3 exactly, whereas in binary (floating point) you can not, no matter how many bits you use.

<comment><USER10> In a case where it's likely to matter, you probably have a list of many numbers with diverse denominators. Certainly you can achieve mathematical precision with rationals (if you can get them in the first place) but the trade-off is ending up with really huge big-ints as numerator and denominator.

<comment><USER9> Good point. To reduce this problem you can (and should?) factorise and cancel out common primes. Just keeping to a pair of 64 bit integers will give you a pretty good accuracy. You can perform all arithmetic directly on the rationals and represent reals by the nearest rational approximation (after all, a float is an approximation too in those cases, just a poorer one).

Stern-Brocot trees are a good systematic way of finding the best rational approximations and also for doing interval rational arithmetic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If the list is known in advance, what about a strategy of sorting the items by absolute value and then summing from smallest to largest?

Would this improve accuracy? If so, by how much?

<comment><USER12> That will ensure that, say, 1e20 + 1 + 1 + ... + 1 (with 1e20 ones) is correctly computed as 2e20 ( _edit_ : this isn't actually true: it just gets a bit closer to 2e20, something like 1e20+1e16), but it can still result in catastrophic cancellation, e.g. [1, 1e20, -1e20] should sum to 1, but will give 0, despite already being sorted.

Something like the msum of [1] is needed to get a (provably[2]) exact summation.

[1]: [http://code.activestate.com/recipes/393090-binary- floating-p...](http://code.activestate.com/recipes/393090-binary-floating- point-summation-accurate-to-full-p/) [2]: [http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/quake/public/papers/r...](http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/quake/public/papers/robust- arithmetic.ps)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Using something else as float or double would decrease performance significantly. Using array sorting would not only be solve too but actually do not improve precision that much at all.

Using double to sum floats has comparable precession as Kahan summation. But of course it is not possible to do the same to summing doubles. Or if there is no proper double precision available at all like on GPU.

</comment><comment><USER14> In my case I'm more interested in the positions where floating point accuracy is lost: I'm currently working on a huge code base where we moved from double to single precision. If a unittest does not validate in single precision I want to have a tool telling me where and why.

<comment><USER4> It seems to be a very wrong decision moving a "huge" base from double to single.

The sane approach is to move only that which must be moved, and there must be a valid reason for the change. Moving "huge" seems wrong by default, if the subject is numeric. It's not comparable with renaming your variables or methods or whatever you can do on the huge base and still keep the result the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Would doubling the size of the floats used in the computation achieve a similar result for the example presented?

<comment><USER4> Absolutely, even if you sum floats, if you care about accuracy you should sum them using double. I've read the discussion of Julia implementers that have discussed Kahan summation but strangely didn't pick the simpler approach of not using floats for partial sums of floats. Albeit it was an old discussion and I don't know what's the present state.

<comment><USER16> Even when summing using doubles, you can lose precision. In general, Kahan summation allows you to double the intermediary precision of your sums, so if you're losing precision even with 64-bit doubles, Kahan summation can give you 128-bits of intermediary precision, without going to software floating point solutions.

<comment><USER4> That's true, however it's saner, safer and faster to simply use doubles to sum floats than just use floats and Kahan's summation, and surprisingly some people don't get that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The probably most easiest way to increase floating point accuracy is to use decimal floating point. The input data usually is in decimal and needs only a small part of the accuracy that a decimal float format offers. Using them later in calculations will make them use more accuracy, but the calculations will be exact for much longer.

When converting decimal to binary floating point numbers you will often use the full accuracy of the float format because the decimal floating point numbers can't be represented exactly in binary.

<comment><USER12> Decimal floating point just changes how cancellation/rounding appears, it doesn't do anything to increase accuracy. E.g. suppose you're using a decimal float with 1 digit of precision (i.e. it can have 1.0, 1.1, ... 9.9 as the mantissa), and compute 100 + 1 - 100 (i.e. 1.0e2 + 1.0e0 + -1.0e2): 100 + 1 is 101, which rounds to 100 (1.0e2), and 100 + -100 is of course 0. Complete catastrophic cancellation.

In fact, binary floats use their storage better than decimal floats, so a binary float of a given size will have slightly higher accuracy than a decimal one of the same size. For example, there's 90 mantissae to encode in the example above, requiring a minimum of 7 bits, with a machine epsilon of 0.01. Using those 7 bits for a binary float gives an smaller epsilon: 1/128 ≈ 0.0078.

Of course, decimal floats do have the advantage of matching a common input/output format, and their rounding artifacts better match the intuition of us base-10 accustomed humans.

<comment><USER17> > In fact, binary floats use their storage better than decimal floats, so a > binary float of a given size will have slightly higher accuracy than a > decimal one of the same size.

Not necessarily. The inefficiency is coped with by using less data for the exponent (which thus offers a smaller range). 64 bit decimal floats actually even have more data for the mantissa than their 64 bit binary counterpart.

> Decimal floating point just changes how cancellation/rounding appears, it > doesn't do anything to increase accuracy. E.g. suppose you're using a > decimal float with 1 digit of precision (i.e. it can have 1.0, 1.1, ... 9.9 > as the mantissa), and compute 100 + 1 - 100 (i.e. 1.0e2 + 1.0e0 + -1.0e2): > 100 + 1 is 101, which rounds to 100 (1.0e2), and 100 + -100 is of course 0. > Complete catastrophic cancellation.

It also changes how often it occurs. With binary floats it already happens when you do 0.1 + 1.0 (I don't mean the rounding error of converting 0.1 to binary).

When you enter 1.0 + 0.1 - 1.0 e.g. in python you will get 0.10000000000000009 as a result which is not equal to what you get when you enter 0.1. With decimal floats this doesn't happen.

With every calculation you do the amount of precision needed can rise. With decimals converted to binary floats you use all of the precision right from the beginning. With decimal floats you can often stay easily within the precision offered by the data type.</comment></comment></comment>


Marc Andreessen interview - <AUTHOR> https://www.theobservereffect.org/marc.html <comment><USER2> The true secret to productivity is dealt with in the first paragraph :-)

>> without the help of my amazing and indefatigable assistant Arsho Avetian. She's been my secret weapon for more than 20 years.

All the other stuff is just gravy :-)

<comment><USER3> There is also no commute in his calendar. Thursday and Friday morning is free?

<comment><USER4> I'll toss out a few hypothesis...

Might be COVID-19 calendar.

I believe Marc lives in Palo Alto so 15-20 minutes of commute on surface streets to a16z on Sand Hill Road. Commute could happen before scheduled items.

It could also be his commute happens during UP before meetings on the calendar start. He has FREE on many mornings before UP so UP can't directly mean wake up, that 30 minutes could be the commute.

<comment><USER5> It says thanksgiving holiday at the top, so that rules out the quarantine......unless this is future calendar haha.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Where are the schools? Where are the hospitals? Where are the houses?" The problem with healthcare, education, and housing is they become too expensive for the average person.

This is not because we don't create enough of these things. We create enormous amounts of each. One of the main problems is precisely that we feel the need to create more of them and (in the name of benevolence), large amounts of money floods the system and causes inflation. Unlimited college loan limits, government paid for healthcare, 2% mortgage rates. Even allowing 8 year car loans!

Notice that every overpriced essential item is backed by a massive government and/or credit stimulus.

Clearly, the seemingly intractable "problems" of society are a) not intractable b) being perceived wrongly. Aside are the political games that manipulate public opinion and wrongly influence people on the issues.

<comment><USER7> Other countries are able to provide these same things with even more government support. Somehow, they end up costing even less. How does your theory explain that fact?

<comment><USER8> Which other countries are we talking here? I'll guess Europe. The United States covers ~1/3 of a continent and has ~1/3 of a million people who make up probably the most diverse ever polity on the planet. They can't adopt approaches that don't scale really well.

Compare that to, say, Sweden. Small physically, small population wise, although they are a lot more diverse than they used to be. Nevertheless, they can reasonably adopt policies that do not scale and target a group of people with very similar experiences.

For the US to provide Schools/Hospitals/Houses services comparable to the European countries it would be done at the State level. At the Federal level it is to some degree unprecedented to provide services at the level of quality and at the scale.

<comment><USER9> Another one! I keep hearing this _over and over again_. Can you PLEASE explain how these things won't scale from a few million people to a few hundred million people?

Of course there are some things that only work in very tiny places, like the prince of Liechtenstein inviting all citizens to a garden party at his place – and some things that only work in very big places, like a manned lunar program. But why wouldn't things like hospitals and schools scale well for the range "a few million" (Sweden in your example) to "a few hundred million" (the US in your example)? Sorry that I'm getting all worked up here, but I feel like a crazy person for being presented with this argument over and over and not grasping even a fraction of it!

Nobody says "oh, those things from Sweden won't scale to Germany (10x)", but for some reason this conversation keeps getting shut down with "oh, those things from Germany can't possibly scale to the US (4x)".

Above I'm only talking about population, because _surely_ you don't actually mean that "small physically" has a positive effect on hospitals, schools and housing? If we were discussing transportation infrastructure, sure, but…

<comment><USER8> > But why wouldn't things like hospitals and schools scale well for the range > "a few million" (Sweden in your example) to "a few hundred million" (the US > in your example).

Different climates, industries, demographics and educational achievement change what diseases/health issues are present and how they are dealt with in the community. That sort of thing varies wildly in a population of 10s-100s of millions spread over a large geographic area.

A sparse rural population has different healthcare needs than an urban one, for example. Coordinating that sort of thing across a continent isn't that helpful. State level administration makes more sense than trying to coordinate a policy across a continent.

What is cross-continent coordination supposed to win anyone anyway? It just makes the politics harder to manage.

> Nobody says "oh, those things from Sweden won't scale to Germany (10x)", but > for some reason this conversation keeps getting shut down with "oh, those > things from Germany can't possibly scale to the US (4x)".

I'm happy to say that; there will be things Sweden is doing that are completely different to what Germany does because of scaling. Plus the fact that they have different laws and legal systems. Although I suspect neither of us speaks Swedish or German, so it would be hard to settle that one decisively.

> because surely you don't actually mean that "small physically" has a > positive effect on hospitals, schools and housing?

I mean exactly that. Australia faces similar issues where West Australia has a decidedly different culture to the east coast states and it doesn't make sense to try and coordinate housing policy between them. We don't coordinate hospitals either for that matter, although there may have been some push towards a nationalised education standard.

<comment><USER9> > Different climates, industries, demographics and educational achievement > change what diseases/health issues are present and how they are dealt with > in the community.

I'm sorry, I'm not buying this without some source that shows that Americans need more healthcare than Swedes due to those factors.

> A sparse rural population has different healthcare needs than an urban one, > for example.

Sure, but the US is 82% urban, Sweden is 88%, Germany 77%, France 81%, Norway 83%, Denmark 88%, Finland 85%, Switzerland 74% – I can go on [1]. All very much in a comparable range.

[1] [https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/...](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/fields/349.html)

> State level administration makes more sense than trying to coordinate a > policy across a continent.

Fine. Many public hospitals in Germany and Switzerland – two countries with federal systems – are run at the equivalent of the state level.

> What is cross-continent coordination supposed to win anyone anyway? It just > makes the politics harder to manage.

I'm not claiming that the US would have some _gain_ in these areas for being huge! I'm merely questioning _your_ claim that "it won't scale".

> I'm happy to say that; there will be things Sweden is doing that are > completely different to what Germany does because of scaling.

This is incredibly vague. Of course there are "things done differently". That's not an argument for why the US can't do a version of the same.

> Plus the fact that they have different laws and legal systems.

Why is this relevant? That's like saying "the flags are very different".

> Although I suspect neither of us speaks Swedish or German, so it would be > hard to settle that one decisively.

I can understand Swedish just fine, and rudimentary German. Even if I couldn't, the legal, healthcare and educational systems in both countries are well-described in English language sources.

> Australia faces similar issues where West Australia has a decidedly > different culture to the east coast states and it doesn't make sense to try > and coordinate housing policy between them.

I'll perhaps grant that the housing situation may be extremely different from place to place, and coordination can be hard, but I still don't understand an iota of what you mean when it comes to healthcare and education.

<comment><USER8> > Sure, but the US is 82% urban

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

Alaska is substantially larger than any of the European countries you listed, and is not very urban.

> I'm merely questioning your claim that "it won't scale".

Given how badly the US has mucked it up? With that level of technology sophistication, social dynamism and money? Pretty solid evidence that it can't be done. It got stuck in the morass that is politics at the US Federal level.

> Why is this relevant? That's like saying "the flags are very different".

European countries are coordinating healthcare at the equivalent level of a US state and it is working. The US has made moves to coordinate at the Federal level and it is not. The separate legal systems indicates that these are highly independent policy-wise.

> I still don't understand an iota of what you mean when it comes to > healthcare and education.

Healthcare is similar to housing. Sickness is location-specific and population-specific. For education the arguments take a slightly different flavour; but boil down to different industries have different educational needs and a one-size-fits-all educational system will either systematically under- or over- educate students in different cities with different industry needs/opportunities.

<comment><USER9> > Alaska is substantially larger than any of the European countries you > listed, and is not very urban.

Sure, but hospital requirements don't scale with area. If the US had a horrible healthcare system in Alaska, and a great one in urban areas, maybe we wouldn't have this debate.

> Given how badly the US has mucked it up?

Is the mucking up _due to size_ though? That is the crux of the matter, and I can see no evidence that that is the case.

> Pretty solid evidence that it can't be done.

This sounds like insanity to me. It's literally _one_ datapoint! Isn't that a bit like saying "China hasn't gone to the moon, so that's pretty solid evidence that the preference of rice over potatoes as main starchy staple makes moon landings impossible".

> Healthcare is similar to housing. Sickness is location-specific and > population-specific. For education the arguments take a slightly different > flavour; but boil down to different industries have different educational > needs and a one-size-fits-all educational system will either systematically > under- or over- educate students in different cities with different industry > needs/opportunities.

There's nothing of substance in what you're saying here. You made a very bold claim, and all your evidence for it seems to be "oh it could be that, it could be this, maybe that".

<comment><USER10> > Sure, but hospital requirements don't scale with area.

They absolutely do. How can you say the requirements of getting emergency response to a sparsely populated area is the same as a much smaller and more densely populated area? Getting a appropriate response times to cover the larger and more sparsely populated area is definitely going to be more costly and difficult.

>If the US had a horrible healthcare system in Alaska, and a great one in urban areas, maybe we wouldn't have this debate.

Actually yes healthcare in rural areas is significantly worse. Urban is not great, but that is not relevant to the point, also they are not disjoint systems they share significant funding. Saying urban US doesn't have great healthcare doesn't disprove the point that rural areas have higher healthcare costs and worse outcomes.

[https://hpi.georgetown.edu/rural/#:~:text=The%20rural%20popu...](https://hpi.georgetown.edu/rural/#:~:text=The%20rural%20population%20is%20consistently,population%20with%20respect%20to%20health.&text=Rural%20residents%20are%20also%20more,tests%20for%20various%20chronic%20conditions).

<comment><USER9> > They absolutely do. How can you say the requirements of getting emergency > response to a sparsely populated area over a much larger area is the same as > a much smaller and more densely populated area? Getting a appropriate > response times to cover the larger and more sparsely populated area is > definitely going to be more costly and difficult.

You are describing density.

> Saying urban US doesn't have great healthcare doesn't disprove the point > that rural areas have higher healthcare costs and worse outcomes.

Nor does rural areas having higher costs prove that European-style public healthcare won't scale to the US.

<comment><USER10> >Nor does rural areas having higher costs prove that European-style public healthcare won't scale to the US.

No but now the burden of proof is to show how it does scale when the requirements and characteristics of the users are clearly very different. European population density is in general higher than US, and in general European countries are more homogeneous.

<comment><USER10> Having similar rates of urbanization does not address the fact that the population density is still significantly different. Even if the urban rates are exactly the same there may still be many more pockets of rural areas in the U.S. that also require access to healthcare, which incurs significant costs. You're completely not addressing this point at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > This interview was recorded in mid May 2020 before we hit major crises in > this country.

That's a weird place to draw the "we hit major crises" line.

</comment><comment><USER12> interesting diff to "don't keep a schedule" from 2007 which is also an interesting read

[https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_personal_productivity.html](https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_personal_productivity.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> Looks like he uses an interleaving strategy for reading books

> It's a pile of physical books and then the Kindle books. And you're reading > them all at the same time. When you sit down to read, you just read the one > that's the most interesting of that pile. It turns out those are the ones > that you finish. A month later, there's a bunch that you're theoretically > reading and you're on Chapter Three and you're never gone back to it. That's > like having the shirt in your closet you haven't worn in a year. It's a > signal to get rid of it.

</comment><comment><USER14> When IT'S TIME TO BUILD was published, I was very curious about the specifics of what initiatives Marc was about to launch. Any info on that in the interview?

</comment><comment><USER15> Software is eating the world minus secretary?

</comment><comment><USER16> Is there a podcast/audio of this?

</comment><comment><USER17> The guy who stole Netscape Source Code and claimed to be his own invention. Do nothing Marc!

<comment><USER17> [https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19971005&slug...](https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19971005&slug=2564359)

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Andreessen popped up a a18z podcast and said something that really made me stop - to paraphrase, we know what worked for "western democracy" \- capitalism, law, individual rights etc. now is not the time to throw those out now is the time to double down on what worked - double down on democracy.

It takes some time to parse out but he strikes me as simple to a number of politicians in UK recently - I agree with his deep values, if not his surface choices.

</comment><comment><USER18> That was a pretty disappointing interview. If you have one of the most influential VCs on the planet and spend half the interview talking about personal productivity and how he runs his calendar then you've missed a great opportunity.

<comment><USER19> The cult of MBAs pretending to be hackers believes that success is entirely self-determined and self-controlled; if they just rearranged their Rolodex and pulled their $300 hoodie strings slightly differently they'd surely become billionaires. And they will, never mind that they haven't done it yet despite ten to twenty years of adulthood spent failing to with no change in approach.

<comment><USER18> Does Marc Andreessen have a MBA? He first became famous as a programmer.

<comment><USER19> I was talking about the people who read interviews like this looking for wisdom on "productivity" rather than Andreessen.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Zynga finally launches its critical mobile game New Words with Friends - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/09/after-six-months-of-testing-zynga-finally-launches-its-critical-mobile-game-new-words-with-friends/

<comment><USER2> I wonder why it was released as a new app instead of as a series of updates to the old app? This seems like a risky rock of the boat for your most popular product.

Also, I notice that the old app is no longer available for iOS or Android. In Android, if you open the old one, it detects the new one and gives you the option to use the old one or the new one.</comment>


Zune service going down for up to 48 hours - <AUTHOR> http://technologizer.com/2008/09/26/zune-service-going-down-new-features-ahead/

<comment><USER2> Man, thats weird. I just got a message almost exactly like that from XBox Live. Its going down at midnight on Monday and will be down for 24 hours. Hmmm… I wonder whats up over in Microsoft land. ???

Later… Richard</comment>


Great technology. shit service - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mianya/https-medium-com-mianya-great-technology-shit-service-1a0608695ae2 <comment><USER2> I think technical debt should also be mentioned if this concerns companies building out technology solutions.</comment>


Life Hack - The 30/30 Minute Work Cycle Feels Like Magic - <AUTHOR> http://chetansurpur.com/blog/2010/11/magic-work-cycle.html <comment><USER2> I did 50-10s for many years -- and was productive as hell doing it.

I think the numbers vary depending on the person and the project, but absolutely, having the discipline to push away from the desk and change context puts your productivity in warp gear. It works by allowing you mind to work on the problem while you play.

By the way, to let another secret out of the bag, this process of engineered distraction also works very well with teams.

Many times we confuse stubbornness with determination. Sitting there staring at the screen does not a work product make.

But I'll add one caveat -- the reason I got away from this (and am now only getting back to it) is because the internet itself has become the "getting away" activity. This leaves you at your desk checking emails, updating twitter, etc. In such a case, you're not allowing your subconscious to work on your problem at all. Instead, you're throwing a bunch more stuff at it. So in retrospect I think its critical to physically detach yourself from your technology. A stand-alone game would be fine. Sitting at the terminal listening to your email and IM chimes while you play a flash game would not.

EDIT: It's also interesting to note how hard it is to pull away from your work -- both when you're loving it and when you're hating it. I don't think it's ever easy, but after a while you get into a "rhythm" and it all just kind of flows.

<comment><USER3> I think my high school classes were on a 50/10 schedule.

<comment><USER4> Mine are on 51/5.

<comment><USER5> Where do the 4 missing minutes go?

<comment><USER6> Many US high schools don't rely on hourly scheduling, so classes may end at arbitrary times: I finished at 2:11pm daily.

<comment><USER7> I thought it was just our school district. We got out at 14:32. Why not 14:30??

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The concept is excellent, but the ratio doesn't work for me.

I prefer 42/18.

42 because it is the Ultimate Answer of Life, the Universe, and Everything:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrases_from_The_Hitchhiker%27s...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrases_from_The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy)

and 18, because it is the Gematria for the word "life":

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gematria>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chai_%28symbol%29>

If I'm going to adopt a system, my inner nerd insists upon increasing efficiency by using components with multiple purposes.

<comment><USER9> The Pomodoro Technique(TM) is essentially the same, but waltzing in 25/5 time. A longer interval makes more sense to me too, though. Maybe 45/15 or 50/10; either way, it helps block out distractions - "No, _self_ , I committed to working on this for another fourteen minutes."

I wrote an Emacs work / rest timer (<http://github.com/silentbicycle/zwiebel>) for that sort of thing, if anybody's interested. (I hooked it up to an XOSD (<http://ignavus.net/software.html)-based> alert.)

<comment><USER10> I used to use 45/15 for studying. I could do _amazing_ feats of rapid learning in college that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you're flexible about the second 30, I find this works really well with working from home, because the second 30 can be typical personal chores. Wake up, work for a bit, then make coffee. Work some more, then eat breakfast. Work some more, then have a shower. Work some more, go for a walk. Etc, etc. Sometimes 5-10 minute breaks, sometimes an hour or more.

<comment><USER12> I'd be worried about intermixing work + life like that. I've recently tried to be better about keeping my mornings and nights work-free, and I feel better because of it. Do you find that to be a problem at all, and if so, how do you deal with it?

<comment><USER13> Don't mix personal life (people) and work this way, but for random chores it's fine. I try to give the dog three walks a day this way, which really helps both our sanity. Additionally, I try to get some stretching/pushups/situp breaks mixed in this way. I am not strict (meaning, don't at all) about following a particular timing, just when I feel my brain start to wander. I'll be trying to follow something more strict this week to see if there is something to it.

<comment><USER11> I've been a programmer of one sort or another for close to 30 years. Personal life?

<comment><USER13> I was thinking of my situation when I mentioned this - working from home and having roommates is rough. It's too easy to have a girlfriend or roommate distract you in your ten minute break. My girlfriend assumes I am fair game if I come out of my office, even after repeated "i am at work" conversations. I think most people just don't understand working from hom and how difficult to stay on track it can be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The real magic? Learn your body/mind's rhythm. Sometimes you'll do productive work for hours. Sometimes you'll need frequent breaks.

Intrinsic (type of work, work environment, deadline, depth) and extrinsic factors (such as food, relationships, etc) will affect this rhythm and you'll have to be smart enough to realize when to respect your body's wishes and when to ignore them (feeling bored may have to do with not getting enough sleep, or maybe you just feel like procrastinating. Learn to figure out which).

</comment><comment><USER15> People who know my previous comments might think I sound like a broken record -- but, this is the exact reason why I love having a table tennis table at the office. It's the perfect distraction to coding that focuses on pure reflexes and hand-eye coordination.

After a game of ping pong, my mind is usually cleared and can tackle the next problem. Lots of +1's to the idea of zoning your brain out of the problem area for a while to get your subconscious working.

<comment><USER16> We have a ping pong table at work, but I can't say it helps me feel refreshed. I often need a breather and to cool off after one of our grueling five game matches. Of course, we might go a little overboard since we have a professional player coach us every Friday and hold our own charity tournaments. haha. work hard, play hard or something like that ;)

<comment><USER17> A professional ping pong coach? You guys are dedicated.

<comment><USER16> Yes. We are. Sometimes the coach is the only reason we play for a whole week though. Needless to say, our coach does not approve. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> For people who do something like this: how do you manage logistically? Do you set an alarm? Do you just know when your 30 minutes (or 42, or 50) are up? Do you always keep an eye on the time? I'm curious because the concept seems like it could work, but I lose track of time easily.

<comment><USER19> +1 because I think that this is an important question.

It seems that the intent of this method is to increase productivity. In saying this, nothing kills productivity more than deadline tension. Having to constantly look over at the time would no doubt have this effect.

<comment><USER20> Well, this morning after reading this I threw together a script in 5 secs to do this for me.

I'm using OS X and like everyone this means I have Growl installed for various applications. I figured that it should be easy enough to announce my times using that.

Looked around, found the commandline tool growlnotify and 5 seconds later...

        #!/bin/sh

        while true; do
            sleep $((30*60))
            growlnotify -swn Timer -m Playtime! Timer
            sleep $((30*60))
            growlnotify -swn Timer -m Worktime! Timer
        done

...was born.

<comment><USER21> And for those of us with Linux (needs notification-daemon and libnotify):

      #!/bin/sh

      while true; do
            sleep $((30*60))
            notify-send -i applications-games -t 60000 "Play"  \
                "Hey, it's time to take a break\!"
            sleep $((30*60))
            notify-send -i applications-office -t 60000 "Work" \
               "Now get back to work ..."
      done

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> For a long time now, I have wanted to code in a cabin in the country.

Just imagine going outside and chopping wood, hauling it back in, and setting your fire correctly. I can hardly imagine a more ideal alternative activity to coding for that second length of time.

<comment><USER23> I'm there, solar powered cabin, wood stove. Works great, my concentration is much better here.

I couldn't hold to a strict time-based rule though. I prefer not to interrupt flow when I'm in flow. Anytime I get stuck I go chop wood or haul water, or at night, look at the stars.

<comment><USER22> Where do you live? If you'd rather chat personally use email@example.com. Where my name is within my username.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This reminds me the Pomodoro Technique. <http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/>

I bought a pomodoro iphone app and tried it for about a week or so, alas 25 mins was just too short for me.

I generally find 45/20 to be about right balance for me. I now use Vitamin-R (Mac App) to track time/goals.

<comment><USER25> I'm currently using Concentrate (<http://getconcentrating.com>), and I love it. Checking out Vitamin-R tonight! Thanks for the suggestion! :-)

<comment><USER26> Wow, that looks amazing. Website blocker and everything. Now that I see it, that just seems like such an obvious solution. Why am I not using this already?

Just looked closer at the rocket company and software, and they do awesome work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I use this work pattern when I'm doing particularly distasteful work, and it generally works well.

The only thing I'd advise is that if you're in a state of flow (in which the passage of time just disappears and your focus zeroes in completely), don't worry about maintaining a rigid time schedule.

Every so often, when I'm writing, I forget to check the clock and then it is 3 hours later and I realize that I've missed a meal. I wouldn't trade those times for very many things.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a really good point, and I should have mentioned that in the article. Thanks for the comment!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This just reinforces the suspicion I've had for some time now that time working is not tightly related to accomplishment, especially if the work is intellectual.

</comment><comment><USER29> I did an hour-on/hour-off cycle when I was in school studying for exams each semester, and it was great. Working for an hour meant that I could nail a solid two concepts, and then go do something else for an hour, and then come back and spend an hour on some practice problems that used those concepts. I remember initially trying a shorter 30-30 cycle, but when a problem takes 20 minutes to do (by design) subbing out at 30 didn't really get much done.

I also found it let me work much longer. I'd get to the library at 10am, work one-on/one-off until 11pm or so, go home and watch a bit of TV, and repeat - for three weeks straight, only interrupted by days when I had actual exams, on which I'd do about four hours off after the exam and get back to work.

</comment><comment><USER30> Definitely, this model did wonders for me in Gradschool, but I am wondering if anyone has tried doing this in a corporate environment? I just started my first gig at a large company. I take "walking breaks" to circle the block several times a day to clear my mind and people seem incredulous that I am not tolling at my desk. Wonder how they would feel if I was devoting 4.5 hours of my day to "fun."

<comment><USER31> I take walking breaks around the block as well (downtown Chicago). Definitely helpful. If others question, just remind them of the total time smokers get during the day. No one questions them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is why smokers have a huge advantage. They go out for a smoke break every hour. Doing _nothing_ but smoking.

I will try this, sans the smoking, starting now. Goodbye.

<comment><USER33> The smoking is what makes it so enjoyable ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> A question to all the excellent commenters here. I work at a place where the company culture considers developers the same way as Macy's employees. 10 minute breaks for every 4 hours you work. Surf the net, chat on IM, everything counts as work....except stepping away from the computer. Be seen away from your desk more than necessary, you get warned of 'not being available during core hours of business'. I am a contractor and I get paid very well to care too much about the company culture.

My productivity is not the best but according to them, I am a star performer. I, personally can't sit longer than an hour without needing a break. I worked for startups with ping pong tables and one large workstation vendor that recently ceased to exist. I miss the culture at those companies.

The company culture where I work has gotten to me, where I am considering leaving my contract to focus on my personal projects. What would you do?

<comment><USER35> I am the same way. I need a stretch break every hour.

When working in an office, I will take my stretch break and no one has said anything to me yet. If I was in your situation though, I would leverage the fact that they consider you a "star performer." Talk to your manager that you believe the breaks are what make you productive and see if he will turn a blind eye to them.

If he doesn't agree, then maybe that tells you your productivity is not really valued there as much as it would be someplace else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I really don't see how you can do this in a normal work setting. If I work for 30, take 30 off... an 8 hour work day takes 16 hours...

Even if I got 16 hours of work done in that time, it does not matter really to my employer, who would still see it as 8 hours. Because we bill by the hour, what matters is the # of hours that are worked, not how much work gets done in them.

That said breaks in a lot of tasks are immensely useful. I can't remember how many times I've given up after getting stuck on a work task to come in the next morning and figured it out in 30 minutes.

I wish productivity mattered more :(.

<comment><USER35> Well this is a problem with the system. Sure, in the short term you are billing by the hour, but in the long term you are really getting paid for results.

Just try going a few weeks sitting at your desk without getting any work done if you don't believe me.

Recently on HN, I read a comment suggesting to bill by the week instead of the hour. An hour is too short of a time period to actually produce anything meaningful but you can get a lot done in a week. I think this method of billing would work much better. I haven't used it yet but I will propose it for my next contract.

<comment><USER36> When your customer is the government, indirectly, by way of a fixed-fee contract, the actual impact of your quality is often hard to see.

In the typical model, a manager's highest priority is to reduce indirect charges and make sure as much as possible is charged to a contract.

Now I'm not saying anyone is out to defraud, or charge time inappropriately, or etc. But what makes the company money is time it can charge to the gov't. Therefore if they see you spending half your time goofing off, but still getting more done - from their point of view, their legal obligation is to make sure they are charging correctly.

I cannot imagine trying to justify charging half of your time indirectly, with the caveat that "hey, I'm getting even more done". Financially that would be a disaster for them. The only way for it to work out would be to bid double for contracts, which, given how bidding works... doesn't work.

<comment><USER37> That is because the 30/30 ratio it terrible. I do 50/5 or even 58/2 and it is enough. You need to get up about once an hour and just step away from the computer. It helps a lot to go outside but that can be difficult, so I usually settle for a quick walk around the floor of my building which takes around 2 minutes. Nobody minds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This sounds like an interesting idea for personal projects. My boss might raise an eyebrow if he saw me playing games or surfing the web for half of my day.

<comment><USER37> I think you specifically don't want to play games or surf the internet. I work in a big building, so about once an hour I get up and go for a 5 minute stroll and come back to my desk. Though I do a lot of work with other people in the building so I guess people just think I'm going to talk to someone I'm working with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I use a similar pattern, but instead of 30/30, I do 75/30, here are the reasons, 1\. I need at least 5 to 10 mins to pick up what's left. 2\. Work without distraction never happen(people talk to you, have to open the door for someone, answer the office phone etc). If that happens, I need another 5 mins just to remember I was doing. 3\. My productivity picks up after the initial 20mins, and it lasts about 45 to 60 mins. 4\. A few things could happen after 75mins of coding a) feature done or bug fixed - checkin code, git push. done take a break b) encounter a problem, internet searching - stop and take a 30 mins break, helps a lot. c) starting checking facebook, hacker news, email etc - stop and take a break. d) feature is not done, and I have not encountered a problem - this is the only time I might not take a break, but every time I didnt, I found myself ended up checking email and facebook a lot :)

30/30 sounds great, for me, 75/30 give me enough time to finish a feature or fix a bug. 4.

</comment><comment><USER40> I guess any rational sounding justification will do eh - 30mins work and 30mins break? Gimme a break... you're wasting so much time it's not funny.

But I guess you are what you want to believe - [http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/october/willpower- resourc...](http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/october/willpower-resource- study-101410.html)

Not saying the principle is bad, you just need to make the reward significantly cheaper than what it is now.

</comment><comment><USER41> For those who use Merlin Mann's (10+2)*5 ratio ([http://www.43folders.com/2005/10/11/procrastination- hack-102...](http://www.43folders.com/2005/10/11/procrastination-hack-1025)) and have an iPhone, check out my timer app for it:

[http://itunes.apple.com/app/10-2-x5-procrastination- hack/id3...](http://itunes.apple.com/app/10-2-x5-procrastination- hack/id314598572?mt=8)

</comment><comment><USER42> I like the concept and I personally use variations of it. However, I find that 30/30 is not only the wrong ratio (1:1) but also the lengths don't work too well for certain types of activities. c.f. <http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html>

</comment><comment><USER43> The concept is excellent. And here is what I use to achieve the exactly same thing: <http://senadreport.com/post/1472323819/how-to-stay-focused> The ratio for me is maybe 15/45.

</comment><comment><USER44> Definitely worth a try. I am concerned about my discipline to come back to work after playing a game for 30 mins. May be playing TT would be better idea, since I feel playing physical games refreshes me more that video games.

</comment><comment><USER45> I would really like a timer app that blocks social, distracting sites during the work sprint so I'm reminded if I start to stray and then unblocks them during the rest.

<comment><USER46> I'm not sure if by "app" you meant app specifically for a smartphone, or if you meant for a PC - but I believe RescueTime might do what you're looking for (and they're a YC company I believe):

<http://www.rescuetime.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I don't know if I could get back to work easily after 30 minutes on Facebook or playing World of Warcraft. Probably not.

</comment><comment><USER48> up voted for the statement: "Time is now my bitch" :D

The idea itself sounds pretty awesome too... will definitely try it.

</comment><comment><USER49> The great debate: Do you start with 30 minutes of twittertime or do you start your day working?

</comment><comment><USER50> Already using this. Can't stay off facebook for more than 30 min anyway...

</comment><comment><USER51> I'm going to give this a try for my after work side projects.

</comment><comment><USER52> Sounds like the key is to (1) really work when you're supposedly working (don't check email, don't read RSS, etc.) and (2) take breaks to refresh. Both of these are very old and well known techniques for maximizing health and productivity. Whether there's something magical about the 30/30 split, and forcing yourself to always switch hats like that, regardless of the actual specific situation: that, I'm not so sure of the general applicability of. I often find it takes me a while to get in The Zone, and when I'm Hot it's best to keep Pounding Out The Code and not force myself to stop and go play a game or whatever.

</comment><comment><USER53> To start with, the author says he switched to Colemak keyboard layout. Interesting, but about as useless as Dvorak. Unless you get everyone to switch to it, you will be disabled whenever you switch to someone else's computer, a kiosk, etc. Why bother?

He mentions having switched to biphasic sleep. If he said- I don't use electricity at night and just go to bed and wake up with the light, then if he got up during the dark hours, that's fine. But scheduling it and forcing your body into a strange deprived sleep pattern is bad for you. Napoleon slept ~4 hrs a night. He was successful for a time, well- except for attempting and failing to conquer the world. Poor decisions may not have been made with more sleep.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biphasic_sleep>

So, that leads us up to the 30/30 work cycle. This actually doesn't sounds that bad. But, it is _totally_ not something that would work in a professional setting. When you are in the middle of an important meeting with the board, or working on getting a product feature out that day, you can't walk out of the meeting or walk out on your team to go play video games. I take time out periodically for a walk, but seriously- grow up.

<comment><USER54> "Unless you get everyone to switch to it, you will be disabled whenever you switch to someone else's computer, a kiosk, etc. Why bother?"

I take it you have not tried any alternate layouts. Why do you as someone who has not tried it feel inclined to lecture about the consequences to those who have? Which of us do you think has the clearer picture about the consequences?

Theorize about the potential downsides all you like. In practice, I find it has been a net gain for me personally, and no amount of mere conjecture on your part will change that one bit.

<comment><USER9> I've typed Dvorak for a couple years, and have been quite happy with it. I'm curious about Colemak, though. Dvorak is pretty established as _the_ alternative English-language keyboard layout - It's not hard to set up on Windows, Unix, or (I'm guessing) OS X. Is Colemak? While I'm convinced that Dvorak is _significantly_ better than Qwerty, if you're the stubborn sort that would use a different keyboard layout for English (spoiler alert: I am), I suspect there's diminishing returns after that. Still, I'm really curious about Colemak (what was the rationale?) - I just don't know anybody who uses it.

My strategy of "heavily customized Emacs / Dvorak on my computers, standard Qwerty / vi otherwise" has been a good compromise over the years, incidentally.

Also, I work with Swedish hackers who remind me that Qwerty is only "standard" so far across the ocean. These things only make sense in a local context.

<comment><USER55> Funny that they're Swedish - Swedish is one of the few non-English languages for which there is a version of Dvorak - it's called Svorak.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I think there's a Danish Dvorak as well. Pretty useless for Japanese, Russian, or Arabic though. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What would you do with a GAI you created? - <AUTHOR> Let's posit that you've developed a system, either alone, or with a small group. You haven't been particularly secret, you haven't maintained strict OPSEC, but you haven't published either.
You find that you can have conversations with your system. You can present it with various media and ask it questions to which it provides plausible answers. It displays no signs of consciousness or particular desire for introspection, although it does have access to its internal state.
You've taught it undergraduate math, physics, chemistry, programming. It can write programs and solve text-book problems through an iterative process of conversation. You're essentially a human-machine pair. Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat.
So, what do you do now? What happens now? <comment><USER2> Find out how it handles paradoxes.</comment>


Apply HN: Scalable troubleshooting - <AUTHOR> A troubleshooting platform for customers to support themselves. Call centres could use this to reduce training time and gain analytics on the troubleshooting process itself. Make technical support as repeatable as writing a unit test and built into the product design.
Problem: Most self service solutions boil down to lmgtfy and rtfm.
Solution: Give people the ability to rapidly compare working and non working systems and the ability to zoom in down to the necessary level to troubleshoot. Any issues that can't be fixed indicate an undocumented part of the system. This would spare developers assisting every single customer as the system would update in real time for everyone.
I spent 5 years in technical support and have given this a lot of thought. There is a lot things that could be automated, but the simplest thing is to focus on call centres for the start. I think there is some potential in using a similar system for coding as well though that is a long ways off. <comment><USER2> Customers hate reading directions, and many people seem totally incapable of following written instructions. How can you ensure that your service improves outcomes over a call center?

<comment><AUTHOR> The initial goal is reduction, It is unrealistic to get rid of the call centre right away. I'm not trying to compete with phone, but existing online solutions such as email, faq, knowledge base and forums.

Most customers would rather speak to an agent who knows what they are doing. For this situation, we can help the tier one agent troubleshoot much faster. Call centres save money by reducing training time. Small companies can scale up by outsourcing the technical support to call centres with the confidence that they will not lose out quality.

There is a group of users who are frustrated with going through all the levels to get an issue fixed. They realize that the person doesn't know more then the manual and they are wasting their time. They only call in when self serve is not sufficient. Over time, more people who would bypass the phones when they can use the same system directly.

Instructions are like a side scroller, This is a more visual tool that lets people bypass the linear troubleshooting scripts we see too often. Not everyone has to start at the beginning.</comment></comment>


U.S. Says Accused Apple Secrets Thief Had Patriot Missile File - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-09/u-s-says-accused-apple-secrets-thief-had-patriot-missile-file <comment><USER2> > They also note that the federal office that supervises defendants on > probation has concluded monitoring is no longer necessary because Chen has > complied with all the conditions of his release and found full-time > employment.

Wow, a company hired him? That surprises me.

</comment><comment><USER3> What I'm wondering is that will the inevitable military espionage charge going to be added to the apple case or pursued in a separate case?

</comment><comment><USER4> The article doesn't mention if he had a security clearance when working for the defense contractor.

<comment><USER5> I'd be shocked if he managed to get a clearance, since he apparently has Chinese citizenship.

<comment><USER6> I don't know how the US would know this when doing his clearance check. It's not as if the US can call up China and ask to verify. And if they do provide that answer, should the US trust it?

The whole national origin thing, though, seems to be a red herring because there are plenty of Americans of Chinese birth who do not spy for China and there have been cases of non-Chinese born Americans who've sold the US out to various different countries, including China.

<comment><USER5> > I don't know how the US would know this when doing his clearance check. It's > not as if the US can call up China and ask to verify. And if they do provide > that answer, should the US trust it?

Presumably when he entered the US he did so with a Chinese passport, and applied for his visa from China. It wouldn't be difficult to determine that he was a Chinese citizen, unless he used false papers and a fake identity from a third country, which didn't happen in this case.

> The whole national origin thing, though, seems to be a red herring because > there are plenty of Americans of Chinese birth who do not spy for China

Well, that's the standard for security clearance. There's a variety of reasons why you wouldn't want to give clearance to someone foreign-born. When you evaluate someone for a clearance one of the biggest things you look for is potential weaknesses. For instance, someone with a gambling problem and lots of gambling debts shouldn't be trusted because they would be vulnerable to bribery. If someone has family or friends living in another country, then that country's government could extort that person by threatening their family and friends with arrest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why innovate if you can wait for someone else to and simply steal the result of expensive research and development?

<comment><USER8> This would mean China is always a step behind. China wants to become the leading country. To achieve that in the shortest time span possible, they copy whatever they can, learn from it and build upon it. In short, China copies, then innovates.

<comment><USER9> > This would mean China is always a step behind. China wants to become the > leading country. To achieve that in the shortest time span possible, they > copy whatever they can, learn from it and build upon on it. In short, China > copies, then innovates.

They don't necessarily have to innovate to become a leading country. They could do that by achieving mere technological parity, but producing it at a larger scale.

For instance, if China slavishly copied all US weapons designs and went to war with the US, China would win. It has more population and a larger industrial base, which means more soldiers in uniform and more equipment on the battlefield. The slavish copying would neutralize the US "quality" advantage, turning the conflict into one about "quantity."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can someone explain why China is hell bent on stealing IP from nations and companies?

<comment><USER11> Because it's easier and cheaper than developing it yourself. You can outsource the cost of R&D to another company/country and reap all the rewards for yourself. This is how many popular Chinese brands got to be competitive with more established companies so quickly. Alibaba is filled with devices that look like a Galaxy S10 and have the same chassis and screen and battery and processor and software as a Galaxy S10 but have the name of some fly-by-night company on the back... because if Samsung orders 100,000 phones and you already have the factory running, who will care if you actually produce 150,000 and sell the extras under your own brand? It's pure profit with no R&D costs.

The only thing their dictator cares about is China's economic success. International relations don't matter because... well, what are you going to do about it? Stop making stuff in China? Good luck.

<comment><USER12> Not trying to defend any side but :

> Because it's easier and cheaper than developing it yourself.

Why should the humanity invest resources twice to figure out how to make the same product or the same service on another place on Earth? That would be a bad allocation of our time, as a global specie. In the era of internet, sharing knowledge is instant, why not make use of it?

<comment><USER13> Well one argument is the same as for patents -- the prospect of having sole use of something for a while is an incentive for its creation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> paywall bypass: [https://outline.com/EMvchc](https://outline.com/EMvchc)

<comment><USER14> javascript bypass: [https://write.as/inadr35mwpqoz.md](https://write.as/inadr35mwpqoz.md)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The fact that Raytheon is hiring mainland-born engineers to work anywhere near the Patriot missile system is basically malicious incompetence

EDIT I take it all back. There is nothing wrong with this.

<comment><USER16> Discriminating solely on country of origin is illegal, I'm pretty sure.

<comment><USER17> It's the other way around. For example, Elon once mentioned that since SpaceX is basically working on the same tech as missile systems, there are lots of restrictions on who SpaceX is allowed to hire. One of those restrictions involved country of origin, but I can't remember the details.

<comment><USER11> I worked on a government project once and they had the requirement that anyone working on the project had to be an American citizen. You could be naturalized, but you had to be a citizen. And this was a pretty unimportant project for a state government.

<comment><USER18> Often that has more to do with not wanting bad press about hiring foreigners with tax money than a security thing

<comment><USER19> Show me one article criticising a US government for employing a foreigner with your line of nationalistic reasoning and I'll belief you.

It sometimes happens with procurement ("buy American"), or for security concerns as in the linked article. But not for employment. Heck, even Trump employed dozens of Ukrainian/Greece/British people as we've learnt.

<comment><USER18> I wasn't talking about the private sector.

I was talking about government work contracts, like the state work the parent comment was referring to.

My family members work in politics. These kinds of things are considered when making all decisions because they don't want to attract any negative press or give potential narratives to future opponents. That's how politics works from the inside, at least for Democrats in America.

Everyone on here so prickly lately

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> TLDR: [https://imgur.com/gallery/zgrscWq](https://imgur.com/gallery/zgrscWq)

<comment><USER21> Please don't do this here.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Projects to learn a programming language - <AUTHOR> I've picked up Go this past weekend after being exclusively a JS (mostly on the serverside with Node) developer.<p>What type of projects do you all do as exercises to learn the intricacies of a new language?  I've done some of the typical ones (IRCd, Project Euler exercises), and am looking for more ideas. <comment><USER2> This is a very popular question, here's some of the lists of answers that pop up in google:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/2a9ygh/10...](https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/2a9ygh/1000_beginner_programming_projects_xpost/)

[https://github.com/karan/Projects](https://github.com/karan/Projects)

[https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-great-programming- projec...](https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-great-programming-projects-for- beginners)

Optional: take any of your old code that you're still interested in but is a mess or you want it to be more portable (Go static binaries) and rewrite it from scratch.

</comment><comment><USER3> A redis client. It's interesting and not complex(less than 200 lines of code).</comment>


How does Skype vulnerabilities repaired - <AUTHOR> https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fhabrahabr.ru%2Fpost%2F316912%2F&edit-text= <comment><AUTHOR> The article is emotional and length so here is TLDR:

There are several methods how your skype account can be disabled permanently by an attacker. Some of them have been known for a long time. Russian social network (vk.com) has tens of groups, consisting mostly of teens, who do so for fun or for money ($30 per account. Author tested one of "services" and it work). Microsoft does not fix these vulnerabilities for many years and recovering account almost imposible (Microsoft's support does not reacts on any evidences and gives formal replies to attack victims)</comment>


Google's Go programming language - four months on - <AUTHOR> http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Google-s-Go-programming-language-four-months-on-963109.html

<comment><USER2> This is why I've never put much stock in the TIOBE index. If you're honestly trying to tell me Google Go has nearly half the developer support that Objective-C does (.921% to 1.970%) I'm officially calling you a fool.

<comment><USER3> > If you're honestly trying to tell me Google Go has nearly half the developer > support that Objective-C does

Who said that?

<comment><USER4> TIOBE [0], as referenced in the article.

[0]: [http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....](http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html)

<comment><USER3> Well, if you look at their market share <http://www.netmarketshare.com/os- market-share.aspx?qprid=9> The iPhone is only 0.5% of users, and that's probably much less in the rest of the world, same for osX (5% but only in the US). So Go not being far behind is not something that's entirely impossible.

Edit: Observe that the TIOBE index is not about the best programming language or the language in which most lines of code have been written.

The index can be used to check whether your programming skills are still up to date or to make a strategic decision about what programming language should be adopted when starting to build a new software system. The definition of the TIOBE index can be found here. [http://www.tiobe.com/content/paperinfo/tpci/tpci_definition....](http://www.tiobe.com/content/paperinfo/tpci/tpci_definition.htm) "

So it's not about developper support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What is the status today of the name dispute ? Has it been solved ?</comment>


Ask HN: Why does Germany have such a strong meshnet community? - <AUTHOR> With the likes of Freifunk dominating Germany, what factors led to its success, and how come other countries like the UK seemingly have absolutely zero interest in meshnets? <comment><USER2> Funnily enough, the early early history of Freifunk afaik involved some initiative from London.

For why Freifunk is strong in Germany: I'd guess a) established, organized hacker community (e.g. Chaos Computer Club) spreading the idea and providing starting points for local groups, providing a critical mass of participants and b) very little in the way of commercial open WLANs for a long time.

From what I've heard, there's big community networks in Spain too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I suppose having an active community like CCC plays a huge role. I figure it is easy to find CCC-esque people who are willing to help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I guess one factor is that Germans traditionally care deeply about privacy. This is in no small part due to our history of privacy violations, e.g. the state spying on its citizens during the Nazi years, but also in Eastern Germany during the country's partition. See the excellent film "The Lives of Others" for an example of the latter.</comment>


HTTP GET requests are meant to be idempotent: a story - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/rombulow/status/990684453734203392 <comment><USER2> That's terrible design on many levels ;)

Leaving aside the use of HTTP GET to change state, which is what the tweets focuses on, having a 'toggle' API with not state exposed is a big no-no when it comes to controls and is extremely unsafe because the effect is unknown.

Really there should be a GET to query the status of the garage door and a (authenticated) PUT (also idempotent) to set the status to an explicit value.

</comment><comment><USER3> HTTP GET requests have stricter requirements than other idempotent methods like PUT and DELETE. HTTP GET requests should be _nullipotent_ (no side effects).</comment>


Tom Magliozzi, Co-Host of NPR's 'Car Talk,' Dies at 77 - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2014/11/03/357428287/tom-magliozzi-popular-co-host-of-nprs-car-talk-dies-at-77 <comment><USER2> I hope Melissa "the Twerp" Peterson ([http://www.wnyc.org/story/1421-my-dog- hates-you-too/](http://www.wnyc.org/story/1421-my-dog-hates-you-too/)) does a eulogy for him.

(Girl who wrote a letter complaining that the show sucked and that she had to listen because her parents did in the car... they had her on and she'd periodically call in for years)

My all-time favorite was the episode where someone called in and said that their vehicle would run pretty well but with lots of vibration for 8 minutes, then the engine would cut and refuse to start up again. It turned out to be someone onboard the Space Shuttle. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moAqzM4ptm8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moAqzM4ptm8)

<comment><USER3> Pretty good best of here: [http://www.wbur.org/2014/11/03/car-talk-tom-best- of](http://www.wbur.org/2014/11/03/car-talk-tom-best-of)

Car Talk was my gateway into NPR growing up when I used to listen with my dad on long drives. I've had the fortune to meet the Car Talk brothers many times and they were just as funny and friendly in person as they were on the show. RIP Tom.

<comment><USER4> Great line from the "Tom's Marriage Advice" segement: "I have my own law of marriage, which is that it is more important to be happy than to be right."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My Dad and I were lamenting this news today. We listened to the show together. And although my Dad spent his career in aircraft maintenance (as an officer in the AF), corporate finance, and now (in semi-retirement) higher education, he is a talented car mechanic who fixed all our cars until I was 5 or 6 and he became too busy at work to do so. He understands cars at an almost intuitive level, and even though I'm a decent mechanic myself, I frequently call him up when I'm wondering what's going on with a car.

And I see several other comments here about people listening to the show together with their fathers, and how their fathers were talented mechanics. It's definitely a generational thing.

So many mechanically-inclined boys who grew up in the 1940s and 1950s, including Tom and Ray Magliozzi, were into building and repairing cars, just as many mechanically-inclined boys in the 1970s and 1980s were into building, repairing, and programming computers.

(I do say "boys" because this seems to have been a mostly male gene [correction: gender] phenomenon. Fortunately, I think this may be changing now.)

My Dad gets along well with computers (particularly spreadsheets), but he little understanding of how they work inside.

It makes me wonder if my 4-year-old son or 7-year-old daughter and their friends will be strikingly talented in some new field, like virtual reality or nanotechnology, but will marvel at my knowledge of C and of the inner workings of early computers.

<comment><USER6> What a thoughtful comment. I don't intend to attack, so please take the following question in good faith: did you mean to say "male gene" or "male gender"?

I'd certainly agree for the former, but I would hope you'd elaborate more if you were to suggest a purely genetic origin.

<comment><USER5> Oops, I meant gender. That's what I get for multitasking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One of my fondest memories growing up was sitting around the breakfast table with my parents while listening to the puzzler segment of the show, as well as when people would call in to have them diagnose random problems with their cars.

My dad, a decent car mechanic in his own right, would try to guess the cause himself and then we'd wait to hear if he was correct. Given that my dad passed away suddenly one month ago makes the timing of this even sadder for me. Truly the end of an era of my childhood.

</comment><comment><USER8> I started listening to Car Talk in high school in the 1980s. I loved the wit, the banter with callers, and the weird questions about cars ... which (as others have noted) were often really about people.

Tom and Ray showed the value of personality and wisdom when it comes to mass media programming, especially in an age when so much information is available online. Yes, many of the problems experienced by the callers could have been diagnosed via Google or prowling car forums. But Car Talk was so much more dynamic and effective, as these two knew what questions to ask about the problem, which (often) led to a correct diagnosis.

The calls I particularly enjoyed:

* People calling in from Afghanistan, Alaska or other remote places with edge cases

* People calling in to question their husband's, father-in-law's or neighbor's advice about cars.

* The bizarre cases -- someone who had a plastic bag wrapped around the axle that wouldn't come off, the person with spiders reproducing in the A/C, and the guy whose cassette player not only had an REM tape stuck in it, but the damn thing was stuck on loop and wouldn't turn off while driving.

We'll miss you, Tom.

<comment><USER9> > _People calling in from Afghanistan, Alaska or other remote places with edge > cases_

If you've never been to Alaska, I highly recommend a trip. It's extremely beautiful and "edge-cases" quickly become a way of life.

I live in the Yukon, and just yesterday I was waist deep in a half-frozen river in the middle of nowhere, smashing out ice with the back of an axe. Once I'd done that enough, I rigged up a pulley on a tree on the far size, ran a cable and my buddy and I pulled each other across on our quads. It was about -15C (5F) the entire time. Today I'm sitting at my desk working as a Software Engineer.

Life up here really is very different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> RIP. They were so entertaining. I never knew shit about cars but always felt a bit of excitement when I was in the car and heard that we'd be listening to them instead of some of my parents' music.

Also this is pretty great:

> Tom and Ray Magliozzi did open that do-it-yourself repair shop in the early > '70s. They called it Hackers Heaven.

<comment><USER11> makes sense... weren't they MIT grads?

<comment><USER12> Yup, and they warned me not to follow in their footsteps. I didn't listen, though.

<comment><USER12> Looks like I need to expand on that a bit. Nowadays we say "Tech is Hell" but it was even worse back in their day and they had a lot of stories about their experience that, them being them, were both hilarious and awful. I ignored their advice because, hey, don't get a teenage boy to not do something by telling him it's hard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I loved Click and Clack. Their laughter and enthusiasm was always infectious. No matter how down I was, listening to Car Talk always lifted me up.

Though they were exceedingly smart and good at what they do, their self- deprecating attitude humanized them, and really instilled the lesson of humility.

Will miss him and the show.

<comment><USER14> Well put. Their good natured self deprecation was hilarious but also so sweet. You really felt the bond they had between each other, with their audience, and their love of the show.

<comment> at-fates-hands This is the one thing I really noticed. After listening to some of the morning shows, where one person is always getting teased and used as a doormat for everybody's jokes.

You could tell these two truly had a special friendship and it clearly came through in how they interacted with each other. There were no malicious stabs or cheap shots, it was all lighthearted fun and jesting.

He will be missed. Definitely end of a radio era.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Listening to car talk taught me an enormous amount about how to be an engineer, and it helped teach my wife how to be a doctor. How to formulate hypotheses and ask the right questions to test them, and that no matter how expert you are in your field, you will always encounter some oddball phenomenon that's entirely new to you.

</comment><comment><USER16> Man, it occurred to me that their show goes all the way back to when I, too, was an actual auto mechanic many years ago. Saturday mornings in the shop, listening to the show while a half dozen professional mechanics tried to diagnose the problem. Once in a while we concluded that those two got it wrong, but right or wrong wasn't the point. They were funny, entertaining, and informative, all in a format that was accessible to those for whom a car is mostly a black box.

RIP, Tom. I wish I were ever as much the complete package when comes to mechanical things as you were.

</comment><comment><USER17> Aww man. I love Click and Clack. I know nothing about cars, I don't even have an interest in them, but I loved listening to these two talk about cars.

My favorite episode was the one where he talked in depth about his time in the Army and how he didn't fit in, but every episode was a good listen.

<comment><USER18> That sounds great. Is this the episode?

[http://podtail.com/podcast/npr-car-talk-podcast/1430-the- and...](http://podtail.com/podcast/npr-car-talk-podcast/1430-the-andy-letter/)

<comment><USER17> That's the one. Starts around 28 minutes. Goes on for a couple minutes

Listening to Tom and Ray you get a sense that they are two of your oldest friends. I've never heard two more likable guys talk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My kids (7 and 5) and I loved sitting in the car and listening to Car Talk. They didn't have a clue about the content, but just loved listening to the brothers joking and having a good time with each other and the callers. So many Saturdays on the way to this or that, did I get the request to turn on the radio for Car Talk. In all honesty, Car Talk was almost like an audio-only cartoon for them, with those jovial and dynamic voices.

Also, being an incurable VW nut, I often experienced so many of the issues folks called to ask about. I really enjoyed expressing my own opinion out loud and waiting to see what the boys usually said (which was different than what I thought, and often made a lot more sense than my own theories).

R.I.P. Tom. I hope Ray is holding it together today. What a blow.

<comment><USER20> Yup, us and the kids always listen to the Car Talk podcast whenever we're in the car going anywhere that takes at least 45 minutes. Awesome show.

R.I.P. Tom. Such unique warmth and joy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The fact that this is at the top of HN and has been for hours is phenomenal. Despite the often insular nature of the HN crowd, it's things like this that reveal ta deep respect for the hacker in everyone. Imagine being so badass that you hosted a national tech-support call-in show and solved people's problems random computer problems: "Tom: Sounds like you've got corrupted memory... Ray: Don't listen to him, all his memory's corrupted. [minutes of infectious laughter]"

<comment><USER22> Agreed. I think it wasn't just his humor and his knowledge, but his approachability and willingness to share. I worked at NPR for 6 years. I never met either of the brothers, but we were all a gog the day Doug the Old Grey Mare came in to talk to pick our brains about web analytics, of all things. Here is this person who I think is an absolute genius, but can listen to us talk about a seemingly banal thing earnestly. They listened, they shared. They cared.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> My dad called into car talk once and told them on-air about how I would listen to every episode while driving around in my little tikes car. I didn't understand what they were talking about, but I loved their laughing.

Also, I still can't take the new Fiats on the road seriously.

<comment><USER24> The new Fiats are pretty sweet, you should try driving one. (Also the new Dodge Dart is a Fiat with an Alfa engine and suspension.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Really a special presence on the radio for so many years. So intelligent, so humane, so humorous, so useful!

I feel I learned much about the art of troubleshooting in general from Car Talk.

<comment><USER26> This is a point that I think a lot of people are missing: Click and Clack, while being funny, were primarily master troubleshooters. They could digest incomplete descriptions of a problem over the phone from a neophite user and in the span of a phone conversation, usually with no ability to run tests, could work out a plausible root cause and a corrective course of action. The "Stump the Chumps" segment would occasionally follow up with some previous victims/callers, and more often than not they had largely gotten it right.

I'm not sure how much you'll actually learn about cars from listening, but if you pay attention you should be able to learn a whole lot about effective troubleshooting.

<comment><USER9> I'm an Engineer, and I'm constantly shocked how many people don't have basic troubleshooting abilities. I've always considered it a "basic life skill", but experience has shown me that's not true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> My favorite "remote debugging" of all time was the caller who complained about the key in her old Subaru wagon not working sometimes.

After some back and forth, one of the brothers said, "wait, wait--I'll bet you have a huge set of keys, right?" "Well, yes." "So, on that model of Subaru, the weight of the whole key set will eventually wear down the lock and make it stick. I've seen that before."

I can't imagine the leap of intuition required...

<comment><USER28> It's a fairly common problem across several makes of cars. Replaced my ignition switch once because of this, and since then have used a separate clip for my house and work keys.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've only been aware of car talk for a few years (having moved from the UK) but this is sad. Seemingly every significant road trip I've done has involved laughing my ass off at something in that show, but also being struck by just how wise a lot of their advice sounds (whether it is might be something else). Mere mention of "Manila Folders" or the BMW 9 series manual is enough to reduce my partner and I to hysterics.

Already sorely missed. RIP.

<comment><USER30> This was my experience as well. Inevitably, at some point during every long road trip, there'd be a period where I'd get reception for a while, and I'll be darned if it wasn't Car Talk. After hours and hours alone on the road, it was always warming to have them guffawing about whatever they were rambling about at the time. Brightened every trip.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> That's too bad, those guys were hilarious. Here's Leslie Lamport solving one of the Car Talk puzzles with TLA+:

[https://github.com/fintler/tlaplus/raw/master/examples/CarTa...](https://github.com/fintler/tlaplus/raw/master/examples/CarTalkPuzzle/CarTalkPuzzle.pdf)

<comment><USER32> I'm busy reading his article on Paxos & of course I find this here. Feels like a classic case of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon.

Regardless, oh my goodness. When you see the solution spit out you just wanna drop your head on the desk. It's that "ahaaa" moment we probably don't feel often enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> NPR and public radio more generally in the U.S. is such a national treasure, and these guys were one of the brightest gems. I loved seeing their personalities and infectious laugh enshrined with a cameo in Pixar's Cars, which itself captured a sort of best-of or hall-of-fame for American car culture.

<comment><USER34> Was there a difference in the US and UK editions of Cars? I don't remember the cameo.

<comment><USER35> They were the Rust-eze guys. Totally in character.

There are differences in the voice over -- Harv is Jeremy Clarkson in the UK, but definitely not in the US version.

[http://pixar.wikia.com/Harv](http://pixar.wikia.com/Harv)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I listen to reruns on a regular basis, and what continues to amaze me about the show is their ability to "debug" cars and make it sound fun. They were always helpful, never looking down on the caller or the predicament they found themselves in. Us techies could learn a few things from them.

He'll be missed.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm a car guy through and through, and I started listening to those guys when I barely started turning wrenches on my first car. Great guys, and great show.

My Dad, one of the best mechanics I'll ever know (who has forgotten more than I'll ever learn) used to listen and talk about how accurate they were with their advice and wished more people would listen.

</comment><comment><USER38> I can report that Tom and Ray did in fact have the occasional cappuccino at Caffe Paradiso in Harvard Square. I had no idea who they were until Tom laughed :-)

</comment><comment><USER39> A very unique and memorable personality and show, reminds me of when Paul Harvey passed. Some people are capable of making peeling paint sound interesting, it's a unique ability to interest people in something simply by your passion for it.

</comment><comment><USER40> My first job in college involved helping them build the first Car Talk web site (it was around 1994). All of the graphics were drawn on paper and scanned in, and I spent hours converting their recordings into (IIRC) RealAudio format so people could livestream them. (Downsampling / compression at the time was far from real-time.)

They were both great guys to work with, who seemed genuinely surprised at their own fame and came to everything with genuine humor, warmth and without the slightest hint of ego. Out of all the notable MIT alumni, they're my favorite and I was really happy when they finally got invited to speak at commencement. (I'd also argue that the guys at Top Gear owe them some credit for pioneering a "show about cars" that's really just entertainment.)

It's a terrible loss, but at least Tom will live on for many years in the form of all those recorded hours of (somewhat auto-related) entertainment. The world is a little less happy and funny today without him, though.

</comment><comment><USER41> SO sad, also one of my favorite memories growing up with my parents driving in the car listening to them. My mom thought they were gods gift of comedy, they were hysterical. I listen to them locally on my NPR affiliate every Saturday at 2-3pm it makes my errand running on Saturday's delightful. He will be missed.

</comment><comment><USER42> I was/am listening to Car talk right now - when I saw this post. We are going to miss him.

</comment><comment> pwilson-gorge My favorite was the Russian built Skoda. Its main innovation was a heated rear window was so that you could keep your hands warm when you were pushing it after it broke down. It still makes me smile a decade later. Thanks Tom.

</comment><comment><USER43> I've never owned a car in my life, and I've been listening to them for years. I'm very sad to hear this.

</comment><comment><USER44> One of the best radio personalities I have known in my lifetime.

</comment><comment><USER45> I grew up in Cambridge, MA and always got a good laugh walking through Harvard Square and looking up at the sign for the firm of Dewey, Cheatem & How[0]. The third story window is where the Magliozzi brothers had their office. RIP Tom and his amazingly contagious laugh, still makes me smile thinking about it.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey%2C_Cheatem_%26_Howe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey%2C_Cheatem_%26_Howe)

</comment><comment><USER46> I heard on my local NPR station on how the show got its start. A few decades ago a volunteer run radio station (open source radio station ??) in Boston wanted a panel of auto mechanics to answer calls about cars. Six were invited and only one showed up, the one being 1 of the 2 brothers.

Because it was open source radio, the brothers talked as normal, un'photoshopped' people which was why it eventually got the attention later on.

RIP.

</comment><comment><USER47> Someone find a cure for Alzheimer's please :(

<comment><USER48> At least it seems it was mercifully quick in this case... Just two years since they recorded their last episode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I missed the Alzheimers detail until this post, and realizing how old these dudes were//are.

I still remember them receiving phone calls from the space station ["Well, I've called everyone else, so..."] and from above//below the Arctic circle ["Yea, so, our warmest is about -50 and we have this odd problem..."].

</comment><comment><USER50> RIP. Listened to the show since I was a kid and it was always great.

</comment><comment><USER51> I am not into cars at all but loved their infectious laughter. RIP

</comment><comment><USER52> I don't know any one who enjoy their work as much as the Tappet brothers seemed to on their show. I used to listen to them during my commute after a long days work. Your laughter was indeed infectious. RIP Tom.

</comment><comment><USER53> Aww- my 5 year old twin boys had picked up their "Don't drive like my brother" from listening to their show and the Cars movie- and use it often. So sad they won't get to enjoy them. RIP Tom

</comment><comment><USER54> Such sad news - I don't normally really take celebrity deaths too personal but I've been listening to these guys since I can remember. So so sad to hear this...

</comment><comment><USER55> RIP, love the show. I have my popcast download their shows everyweek.

How can it be Alzheimer ?!?!?

The latest show #1444 on my cellphone's popcast app is Nov 1 - just two days ago.

<comment><USER56> > Tom and Ray haven't done the show live for two years; Car Talk has been > airing archives of old shows. Berman says Ray would like to continue doing > that, as a tribute to his brother.

<comment><USER57> Technically, the show hasn't been live for a LONG time. Like most NPR programs it is recorded in advance and edited.

<comment><USER58> Maybe this is a dumb question, but how did the call-ins work then? There was always a message if it was a rerun (don't try really calling, etc.) but even their last shows had what appeared to be live call-ins and a call-in number and I remember them having to advise people to turn the radio off while they're on the phone.

<comment><USER59> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Talk#Call- in_procedure](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Talk#Call-in_procedure)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I can't really say much that has not already been said here and I fully second all the comments about their fond memories of the show. Even though I am not into cars, they made what I think is sort of a mundane topic (car repair) into something completely entertaining and hilarious. I loved their brain teasers, so clever. I will miss that laugh.

</comment><comment><USER61> Car Talk brought me joy and laughter for 25+ years. R.I.P. Tom.

My favorite crazy credit was the short-lived:

Sexual Harassment Intervention Councilor, Pat McCann

</comment><comment><USER62> I didn't listen to this show often but when I did I always enjoyed it. Especially when there was a call about a woman's heater smelling like bacon and the hosts decided (after having no idea how to fix it) that it was not actually a problem and she should consider it a perk.

</comment><comment><USER63> Every Saturday, I would step out to do grocery at 10:00am and tune into 88.5FM KQED which would be playing 'Car Talk'. I instantly warmed to the humor and banter the hosts expressed. They were top notch diagnostics as well. No doubt about it, Tom will be deeply missed. RIP.

</comment><comment><USER48> Rest in peace Tom... I like to think you've now been reunited with your beloved Black Beauty :)

</comment><comment><USER64> Fantastic show! I especially loved the Puzzlers [1]. They had some really interesting ones over the years. Tom will be sorely missed! :(

[1]: [http://www.cartalk.com/content/puzzlers](http://www.cartalk.com/content/puzzlers)

</comment><comment><USER65> I hadn't known the show was on reruns, that's how good the show was/is. I recently started listening within the past year. However admittedly, I am an off and on listener. Tom was filled with life, such a sad loss!

</comment><comment><USER66> For the first time in my life, I cried when a celebrity died. RIP Tom.

</comment><comment><USER67> One of my favorite radio shows. RIP Tom M.

</comment><comment><USER68> Sorry to hear this. Car Talk was my favorite radio show ever. Rest in peace, Tom.

</comment><comment><USER69> Good memories of those saturday morning drives.

</comment><comment><USER70> A radio icon; a fixture of my weekends growing up. Rest in peace.

</comment><comment><USER71> > _Tom and Ray haven 't done the show live for two years; Car Talk has been > airing archives of old shows. Berman says Ray would like to continue doing > that, as a tribute to his brother._

Soo… Apparently the show as you all have known it for the last two years will be unaffected. Alternately, the show died two years ago and you never noticed.

EDIT: I thought that this news meant the show was _ending_ and was surprised to read that actually the show would not change. So I thought I'd highlight this fact that the show would not change. There was no offense intended.

<comment><USER72> "The show's been off the air for a while, so his death shouldn't bother you".

That's how this comes off. By the way, many people are completely aware that they've been off the air, and still find this saddening. In your attempt to be clever or somehow revealing a secret, you've come off as arrogant and insensitive.

<comment><USER71> (Please don't invent quotes and write them as a separate paragraph – it looks as though I wrote the inflammatory text, when in fact I meant nothing of the kind.)

I thought that this news meant the show was _ending_ and was surprised to read that actually the show would not change. So I thought I'd highlight this fact.

<comment><USER72> As the target of misunderstandings at times, I get it, and your meta-point is taken. My previous statement about the perceived insensitivity to the actual story, Tom's death, stands.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


I'm learning German from my phone's homescreen - <AUTHOR> So I've been learning German for around 5 months now. I used pimsleur and rosetta stone, and they helped me understand the structure of German in general. Any way things were going well but my vocab was total crap, it was just so darn tiny.<p>So I made a little app to teach me german words using my wallpaper and widgets. I've added other languages too, not just German. I think you guys will like it: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/hieroglyphics-learn-a-language-from-the-homescreen-android/x/16690509#/ <comment><USER2> Interesting idea. Would this app be feasible on iOS as well?</comment>