Why I don't care very much about tablets anymore - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/staff/carthage/2011/02/why-i-dont-care-very-much-about-tablets.ars <comment><USER2> > Don't get me wrong: I'll always have a tablet in my life...

And how is this not a game changer? Would the author have said the before the iPad?

The iPad has replaced a laptop or desktop for all casual browsing (I typed this comment on mine) and a lot of media consumption. It's great for technical books. And I play games on it.

It is _easily_ the most cost effective tech purchase I have _ever_ made in terms of how much I use it. Buying the new version--pretty much _whatever_ it is--is almost a no-brainer.

Apple has sold 16M since launch with 40M+ expected this year. For a new product segment.

Sounds like a game changer to me.

What I am over is all the hype over Android tablets. Basically I'll believe it when I see it.

<comment><USER3> > The iPad has replaced a laptop or desktop for all casual browsing (I typed > this comment on mine) and a lot of media consumption. It's great for > technical books. And I play games on it.

I live in a large city in the UK, and throughout the past year I've only seen two iPad's. I wouldn't even remotely say that the iPad has "replaced the laptop" in any way, shape or form. When the iPhone was released it was near impossible to not see it outside, whereas the average iPad user will keep theirs at home.

Even if the figures are good I really cannot see the casual user deciding to ditch their laptop for the iPad, and I'd go as far as to say that the iPad has been a huge disappointment.

<comment><USER4> Which city? I've seen a whole bunch of people in London standing on street corners using their iPads.

Granted they do look pretty silly...

But I would certainly not say that the iPad has been a 'huge disappointment'; not for Apple, and not for the consumer. Or did you mean for you personally?

<comment><USER3> Bristol, although I do travel to Birmingham and Manchester quite a bit. I've not seen a single iPad in any of those places (except at the Apple Stores).

I think the iPad was always going to struggle because when compared to the iPhone it is less likely for someone to be seen using a tablet than a mobile phone.

As I said, the figures may be impressive, but I'd lump this in with Apple TV as being a good idea that will struggle to find a long-term market outside of the typical Apple users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I got to agree. I got caught up in the tablet fever like everyone last year, but in practice all the complaints that people had with the iPad release panned out. Tablets across the board are jacks of few trades, master of none. Terrible input, only so-so for web browsing/reading, and basically on par with a laptop for video and portability.

To quote a very smart man in 2003 [1], tablets are still only good for "a bunch of rich guys who want a third computer" (edit: relevant tablet talk is around 8:00-10:00). I have hope things will be better 3-5 years from now.

1: [http://video.allthingsd.com/video/steve-jobs-onstage- at-d1/1...](http://video.allthingsd.com/video/steve-jobs-onstage- at-d1/162F122B-2500-4BF8-8240-C8D1A603A816/)

<comment><USER6> In my unscientific survey, netbook usage far outstrips tablet usage in cafes. Moreover, the people who bring tablets don't seem to really _use_ them, they just glance at them occasionally.

An iPad just seems like a very expensive Kindle.

If Tablet prices get down to say, $50, they'd be great to hang in the kitchen and get weather and recipes from!

<comment><USER7> In my unscientific survey, MacBook Pro's outrank iPads, which outrank generic Windows laptops in cafe's.

Moreover, in a further unscientific survey, paperback books outrank hardcover books, who's usage surpasses the Kindle and Nook, combined.

And I live in San Francisco. Moreover, the people who bring any of these items don't seem to drink their coffee! _feigned shock_

<comment><USER2> I won't disagree with your observations. I will however point out one thing: the sampling is skewed because you only really see what people are doing in public.

I would guess that the majority of iPad usage is in the home and, to a lesser extent, in the office, so much so that I probably won't even buy the 3G version of the iPad 2 (I have the 64GB 3G iPad). Plus now I live in New York (rather than Australia, when I bought mine) and wifi is much more readily available here (Starbuck's for one) if I feel inclined to take it with me and need the internet.

One disappointing thing is that Apple seems to be doing the big CPU/memory upgrades of the A _n_ platform with the iPhone, not the iPad. This is annoying for two reasons:

1\. The iPhone 4 came out a mere ~3 months after the iPad. Are you telling me that this 3 month gap meant the iPad couldn't have 512MB of RAM like the iPhone 4? Presumably, the iPad 2 and iPhone 5 will be on a similar gap; and

2\. I'm more interested in processing capacity on the iPad than an iPhone.

<comment><USER8> Women especially love having the iPad at home.

<comment><USER9> If you're going to generalize like that, it's best to cite some evidence to back it up.

<comment><USER8> It comes from my admittedly small sample size. The women I know (friends, family) have always ignored tech purchases their significant others brought into the home.

But not with the iPad; they ended up being very active users. In bed, on the couch, in the kitchen, etc

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Another savvy computer user goes on the internet and declares that he prefers laptops to tablets ... shocking.

The ipad, isn't made with people like the author in mind ... they're made for people who generally find using laptops a PITA (yes ... there are Millions of people like this).

The other market is for the people who get tired of working on their laptops from time to time (and thats where the author seems to fit). What you'll find with this group is people who try to do things with the ipad but realize that they simply prefer being on laptops (probably a lot of us here on Hacker News).

And for everyone of those you'll have people like me ... the ipad has filled a great gap for me, which I'll call leisure computing ... sitting in my bed on Sunday mornings watching netflix movies, mindlessly browsing facebook and twitter ... responding to work emails before I hit the sack at night ... showing presentations, images etc during meetings instead of having to lug around my laptop.

I thought the ipad would fail spectacularly when it came out, but its success has made it clear to me that there is a world of computer users out there who simply do not view computing the way I do, and not only do they want a simplified computing experience they are willing to pay very good money for a for it ... we on HN would do well to not lose sight of that.

</comment><comment><USER11> I love my iPad. It's taken over as my mobile computing solution in most cases. I think there are more possibilities left to explore with tablets in general, and I think exercising more innovation will only lead to greater things in that arena. I use my tablet for reading, mailing, surfing, and communicating while not having to be tethered to a terminal. I honestly can ask this question now after having experienced the joys of this computing platform : Where has this been my entire life?

<comment><USER12> I think the author misses a key point of tablets: they're not for information production. I can't think of anyone who prefers tablets for writing or coding, but I do know a bunch of people who like getting stock quotes, reading the news, using Instapaper, and consuming content. The analogy with the scribe doesn't really work because the purpose of the tablet is to consume content, and actual user input is minimal.

<comment><USER13> I beg to differ on the production thing. I do some of my fiction writing on my iPad using a Bluetooth keyboard.

<comment><USER12> I guess I overlooked the keyboard addition. But would you say that a laptop provides a better interface? Or do you like the iPad more than a laptop for writing? I haven't actually used a keyboard with a tablet, so I don't have any personal experience with that.

<comment><USER13> I find my ipad with a dropbox compatiable editor is sufficient for my writing needs, but my laptop is certainly more efficient. For anything other then sustained reading or using a highly specific app my laptop is definitely faster and easier to use. I just find portability to trump efficiency in a great may suitations. If am at my desk I want my MacBook Pro with it's vastly superior sound card and my Grados. Anywhere else, I'll take my iPad and same earbuds if I don't have any programming to do.

Edit: fixing overly zealous iPad autocorrect

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've long argued that the reason we haven't seen tablets take off in general is because while nobody really wants to admit it, _nobody_ actually likes tablets. They just like Apple products.

<comment><USER15> This will be either proved or disproved when up to 20 new tablets are released by July. If you're right, it's gonna be ugly.

<comment><USER16> The Blackberry Playbook has some interesting ideas, like using the touch- screen real estate outside of the viewing area for 'meta-gestures' (my made up word sorry, some nitpicker will no doubt jump in and correct me, and then get 10x the karma for it but whatever).

But the overall execution is going to suck really really badly. Also, RIM are busy peeing in their developers porridge... kinda like Nokia and the QT debacle.

I think the problem is that Apple has been working on this thing for years and years and years. Rumours of a tablet have been much exaggerated since before the iPhone came along.

Now the other guys are scrambling to catch up. And they're finding that in order to poop something out in six months, you have to cut corners, and if you cut corners, then quality suffers etc. Not to mention that things move slowly at most large corporations (Apple included - heck, they might even be _worse_ than all the others, but because they fail in secret everybody thinks they magically just coughed hard one day and the iPad sprang forth from Steve Job's brow fully formed)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The thing is, nothing beats a tablet (well, I use an iPad) for reading.

Instapaper (articles, news), iBooks (pdf, ebooks), Reeder (rss), Safari (everything else) are all excellent. I can't lay in bed with my laptop or desktop, nor does reading on my phone cut it. The Kindle is nice, but it's black and white, and for me the lack of backlight makes it harder to read (esp. since I'm reading at night, and don't want to have a light on).

Not only is it the best way to read, but it also can handle emails (you get used to the keyboard quickly, just like people got used to touch-screen phone keyboards, but I can type at a reasonable speed on the iPad).

And it can play games…and a lot more.

So, I like it. I'll continue to buy tablets.

<comment><USER18> How is the ipad on the eyes? My eyes get tired from reading from a laptop screen at night. Is the ipad better?

<comment><USER19> It obviously is exactly the same because the iPad uses a laptop screen. (It has a higher quality IPS and not the usual TN panel [1] but I don't think that matters a great deal. IPS panels have better color reproduction and better viewing angles, that's the only difference to lower quality LCD panels.) The iPad screen has even a similar number of pixels per inch compared to current laptops. (A 15" laptop with a resolution of 1680×1050 has, like the iPad, about 130 ppi.)

As far as readability goes, it's probably currently the best color video screen you can get in the market [2], you can probably do better if all you need is grayscale without video.

[1] You can get laptops with IPS panels but they are pretty exotic and more expensive.

[2] As in: the best technology for the job (compared to, for example, e-ink), not the best LCD panel in the market.

<comment><USER20> Another thing that's better about reading on iPad versus a laptop or desktop LCD screen is that you can hold it almost any angle. To me, that's the best advantage. I read and write a lot on my iPad, and being able to sit with it at a more comfortable angle is a huge advantage to me. It definitely feels better on my eyes after looking at a desktop monitor for hours. That'd be subjective, though, but my experience is that the iPad feels easier on my eyes.

That said, I'm not sure if it's better on your neck versus a standard laptop in your lap. My neck hurts if I'm using a netbook on my lap too long, so I'm always using it at a desk or table. It never feels that bad typing in my lap on iPad, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The points he raises are the reasons I _never_ liked tablets. Sure, I respect the iPad, and I'd kind of like to have one, but for what? Productivity? Laptop. Web surfing? Laptop. Movies? Laptop or TV. Games? PS3. It simply isn't good enough at anything to make me want one. I still respect it, but I've never been able to get behind the idea of buying one. I've been counselling people to grab the Air, as it's a fantastic solution for some non-technical frequent travellers I know, but I've never told anyone to get an iPad. I simply just don't get the point.

<comment><USER22> Probably because there is no point once you peel back the layers of marketing and breathless fanboyism. I've seen two (2) of these things in the wild since they came out. I live in one of the top three tech hubs on the east coast and I've been to countless meetup groups, starbucks, panera and at least one international developer conference in that time.

Both of the people I saw with ipads where eager to breathlessly tell everyone around them how their shiny new $500 purchase had changed everything for all time. In both instances once the sales pitch was done the clunky gadget went back in the bag it came out of or sat unused on a conference room table.

<comment><USER23> Well I use it a ton every single week. I ride the train for about 3 hours per day (total), with connections. With a laptop the start/suspend cycle made it just not worth it to use on some of the connections. I can use the iPad any time I'm still long enough to justify taking it out of the bag. I've recovered most of my travel time for reading or watching movies now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I got an iPad in April, at launch, and gave it away at Christmas. I wanted a tablet to replace two distinct sets of physical objects that haven't yet gone digital: my moleskine/writing pads and my library of magazines and reference books. The iPad is useless for scribbling and the reading experience (the screen, the weight, the UI) is poor. The iPad doesn't autodeliver new content and I fear Apple has killed the inchoate market for digital newspapers, magazines and the like with the new heavyhanded rules for digital subscriptions. The iPad had great promise but it is unfulfilled.

</comment><comment><USER25> I think it's important to separate the advent of the touch screen interface from the form factor of a tablet.

I kind of agree that tablets are pretty poor for everything (unlike others I think tablets & the iPad specifically is a mostly poor device even just for consumption, mainly because it can't stand up by itself, and it's near useless outdoors). But I can see that the touch screen interface has revolutionized interaction with computers, most especially with very young and very old people. Touch screens are the real revolution that is going on now and while the form factor is a part of it I think it's secondary.

<comment><USER16> _"I think it's important to separate the advent of the touch screen interface from the form factor of a tablet."_

I think you're kind of missing the point then. Apple didn't invent touch screens, touch screens have been around for a loooong time.

You need to borrow an iPad and a 2 year old, and then watch the 2 year old interact with the iPad. Heck, I've seen 1 year olds playing with them. Now I'm not suggesting that a 1 year old is doing anything more than going "look at the pretty stars"†

Now imagine that you're using a touchscreen on your desktop Minority Report style. It's alright if you pretend to be Tom Cruise, I'll wait. Okay, now hold your arms out at maximum extension and move them around in little circles for a while. Now back and forth. Now up and down. Now go back to circles. Have you done 15 minutes yet? Liar! Do 15 minutes of that. Okay, now that your arms are on fire with pain, imagine doing that all day long. Yeah. Now you know why we're not gonna see touch-screens as a practical input method on a desktop for a while.

Conclusion: don't make the mistake of under-rating the form factor as part of the experience.

†Free upvote if you get the reference. :D

<comment><USER25> Ironically I have a 3 year old and a 8 month old and also an iPad. It's exactly from their use of the iPad, my parent's use of the iPad and my own and my wife's that I make these observations.

Re: form factor - I agree that these things are linked - but I'm saying the touch screen is the killer innovation. Yes, the form factor allows the touch screen to be used comfortably, but people don't really care about the form factor per se. Lack of a keyboard doesn't enable me to flick photos to browse my photo album, or to pinch to zoom on them, or to draw with my fingers on the screen - the touch screen does. A device with a slide out keyboard would do that just as well. It's just that there are significant design challenges in building such a thing so we haven't seen a convincing version of it yet. But we might.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think the author gets tripped up in the classic "all users look like me" cognitive trap. Just by mentioning OmniFocus, we know he is a power user of some type. Which means his article probably contains any number of very good points, but the title should have been "Why power users won't care very much about tablets soon."

For regular users, the list of use cases the author proposes should also include: To do all these things, I want to just press a button on my home screen. Anything else may confuse me.

Over Christmas, I told my 70 year old mother (who has never sent an email, seen YouTube, or looked up directions on Google Maps) that I had downloaded a quilting application on my iPad. And left it, powered off, where she could get to it. I returned 10 minutes later, and she was happily creating a complicated quilting pattern on the iPad.

While a macbook air would let some types of users create quilting patterns more efficiently, OSX is just too complicated for my mom and many others like her.

<comment><USER27> _I think the author gets tripped up in the classic "all users look like me" cognitive trap._

Um, no he doesn't. Did you miss the title?: "Why _I_ don't care very much about tablets anymore". This "all users look like me cognitive trap" line of yours is bullshit. The guy was only talking about _himself_ , his own uses.

Also, I'm tired of seeing people like you say, "the title should've been this"... "the title should've been that". This title was fine and more than appropriate. Besides that, he can give his article whatever title he damn well pleases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I like the point about hands being in the way. That was the first thing that turned me away from iPad when I tried typing an email. I still think tablets are best for information consumption such as browsing internet and simple tasks such as making an order at a restaurant. The best uses of an iPad I've seen are mounted in the dashboard of a car, back of the car seat, table in a restaurant, and magazine basket.

<comment><USER29> Agree. Hands-in-the-way bothers me on phones as well. Plus keyboard device users don't have to worry about the fingerprint-smear effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> My iPad has been in my bathroom for all of 2011 so far. Like this piece's author, I don't find the iPad to be a very useful device, because it really isn't better than a computer at very many things (and does not fit in your pocket, unlike its far more useful siblings).

But, for dukey-time reading, I must say that it markedly outperforms my previous system (which consisted mainly of musty back issues of the Economist).

</comment><comment><USER31> I think people are making too big of a deal out of all these tablets coming out. Android 3.0 looks like a great OS and I'd love to have a device that runs it, but I don't think they're as useful as people believe them to be.

The main reason they're becoming so widespread is because carriers are offering them with 3G data plans. People use them for tethering, etc. I have an iPad that I hardly use. The thing is useful sometimes, but it's just so rare that I actually take it out to use it when I have my netbook, desktop, and an Android phone that's more powerful...

<comment><USER32> Tablets are not for us, but they are for someone. I bought my wife an iPad and she _loves_ it, not for the gee-whiz factor but because it's well suited to how she use a computer at home.

<comment><USER31> I like my iPad a lot, too. And I have a feeling I'd use a Xoom more than my iPad. But it's more a novelty thing. You can't be extremely productive on it like you can on a cheap netbook. I'm not saying they don't have a market, but it looks like an artifcially created market.

I think tablets will be immensely more useful in a few years when you can do a hell of a lot more on them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I got in a lot of fights with Apple fans over this last year. :) My point is that tablets have _never ever_ taken off---even though various companies have been trying for _decades_.

Of course the argument that the iPad is different from every other device in history due to ubiquitous internet access and multi-touch. And I admit that I couldn't even convince myself entirely that those weren't game changers, but a year later it seems that the verdict is in: they're not.

PS: One of my Apple friends just bought a Macbook Air and was trying to sell his iPad to me last week. :)

<comment><USER34> > _a year later it seems that the verdict is in: they're not._

Not entirely sure what world it is you live in... how has touchable computing not been a game-changer? Just look at all the iDevice apps out there, and how frequently and powerfully the UI decisions there have changed desktop applications.

<comment><USER33> My argument isn't that touch devices haven't taken off, nor do I argue that ubiquitous internet isn't a huge deal for the pocket computing market. I love my new Nexus S for those reasons, and I'm sure if Palm had had those features ten years ago, we'd be in a different place today.

My argument is that---regardless of those features' importance for pocket computing---they haven't changed the game for tablet devices. Tablet devices remain wedged in that space where they're too big for the pocket and too small for the lap or desk. If you're going out, take your phone; if you're staying in, you might as well use your laptop and get some work done.

<comment><USER10> 15 Million Ipads sold in one year would seem to handily contradict whatever argument you're trying to make. People love tablet pcs, because they simplify computing for them ... a lot of people on hacker news don't get that, because using computers (in all their delicious complexity) is generally second nature for us.

<comment><USER35> $15 million impresses you?

Chump change.

<comment><USER10> 15 million iPads sold in one year certainly impresses me, that's 5% of the US population reached ... In one year.

<comment><USER36> The iPad was sold worldwide.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The thing is, most people aren't scribes.

The iPad isn't a good laptop replacement. It's something new. Developers are still in the early stages of figuring out what this means.

<comment><USER38> Rule #1 of entrepreneurship? Make sure your product solves an existing problem. If tablets don't do this then they fail.

<comment><USER39> An existing problem is not always codified through speech: rather, we may not understand the problem because it is such a part of the fabric of our life we cannot consider the alternative. It's possible that tablets and their rapidly evolving OSes have not been around to show us the distinction between digital data retrieval and desktop computing. This is not the same as a manufactured problem. Using digital data in the field has always been shitty, but it's been up until now that we've understood that computers must be in some static form, not a clipboard. Previous tablets most likely failed through latching an OS for sitting onto a computer for walking.

The same issue is in art: our modern idols are merely the most recognizable stop points in a continuous evolution of style and formality. In retrospect, it'll be easier to see the distinction between tablet and laptop five years from now.

See also: the faster horse in your garage or driveway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Using Wired's awful iPad app and its ludicrous 700MB downloads as an example of how magazines are bad on tablets is a joke.

Go try the Economist app and then come back and try to make the same argument. I hardly read my print copies anymore.

<comment><USER41> One reason content can look good in a tablet is that it's designed with UX in mind. Print design has always favored maximizing the content per page over actual usability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> My completely unsolicited experience: I didn't think I really wanted a tablet until I went out and bought a Nook Color and hacked the thing. Even in it's really rough state, it's become a constant companion. I really like the smaller (7" I think) form factor of the device. I tried an iPad and it was just a bit bigger than I wanted to tote around. A slightly smaller version fits me just right... with a proper case it's as easy to carry as a book.

I can't wait for honeycomb to hit AOSP, then this $250 device is just a steal.

</comment><comment><USER43> A lof of the author's point hinges on his affection for dead-tree media and television. If at all possible, I read pdf's on my laptop instead of books, and I kind of prefer watching TV on my laptop as well.

Of course, I love my laptop and can't see blowing my disposable income (of which there is not that much), on something which duplicates only the unproductive functionality of my laptop.

However, as an older and richer man, I could see myself having a desktop and a tablet instead of a laptop.

</comment><comment><USER44> I've been following this industry now since the "old days" and the author is essentially saying that a miniframe will never be quite as good as a mainframe. Or that a workstation will never be as cool as a miniframe. Or that a PC will never be as cool as a workstation. Or that a luggable will never be as good as a PC. It's really about the right tool for the right job. Once tablets cost $10 each you'll be forgetting that you own a few of them...

</comment><comment><USER45> Regarding tactile feedback. I recently just re-enabled audio feedback on my Chumby (resistive screen), and the combination of physical push + audible 'click' is sufficient for most of my need for feedback, and those of my 3-year-old.

I also have the vibrate feedback on my Nexus One, and find that for small capacitive screens a subtle vibrate executed on the exact click-fire to be extremely useful.

Neither of these will ever compare to old-school keyboard tactile response - something that laptop keyboards also fail to equal - but funnily enough I find the N1 input feedback more satisfying than a MBP keyboard.

We're a long way off programatically raised areas on low-cost touch-input devices. That said, Apple have a long track record of amazing UX and must be looking into these options. I suspect the tactile vibrate experience wasn't too compelling on the scale of the iPad, but it wouldn't surprise me if this feature appeared (localised in quadrants?) in future iPad versions to afford better feedback for typing and other operations.

</comment><comment><USER46> Because his hands are in the way? Really?

I guess he doesn't use a touch based phone either..

<comment><USER47> You think a phone is a good way to interact with a computer? There is exactly one reason why I love my phone: it fits in my pocket. When I'm in a location where a larger device is convenient, rest assured that I am not working on my phone. Tablets have always seemed silly to me: they don't do anything well and they don't fit in my pocket.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> > ... this separation of our productive workspace into display and input > planes has been with us since the dawn of writing, ... and it means that > multitouch tablets will continue to be novelty/entertainment items.

> So a new tablet will never be exciting the way that a new, luxury gel ink > pen will be exciting, or a new leather journal, or ...

This seems inconsistent to me. The way I interact with a leather journal, or a sketchbook, or a notepad, or any paper that I write or draw upon, is very much like a tablet: there's only one surface I interact with, not two. The author seems to enjoy this arrangement, as I do.

The author did specify multitouch, and I agree that multitouch seems better suited to simpler interactions and media consumption, at least based upon my experience with it so far. Even taking that into account, though, I think his diagnosis of the problem is wrong; for me, the problem is not having one surface instead of two, but the inability to use a precise stylus! An iPad or iPad-like device which could use a stylus with the accuracy of a Wacom tablet in addition to supporting multitouch would be a real game changer for me.

Fortunately, I don't expect to wait too long for this; the advantages are too obvious. When such a device is announced, I feel confident it will be more exciting than a new luxury gel ink pen, even for Jon Stokes.

<comment><USER49> "Fortunately, I don't expect to wait too long for this; the advantages are too obvious. When such a device is announced, I feel confident it will be more exciting than a new luxury gel ink pen, even for Jon Stokes."

There are already tablet prototypes with pen input, it does not have tilt and rotation like wacom does but normal ink pen have not either. I bet on Apple being the first to make it mass produced as usual.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Tablets don't excite me either, it makes me appreciate the tactile feel of a keyboard and the benefits of using a mouse (you can't hover like you can with a mouse with touch input on an ipad).

I use a hp touchsmart, which is an affordable laptop-tablet hybrid. It's a fantastic input device due to wacom technology (shame ipad doesn't excel at pen input), but using the touch screen with my hands is only really convenient when I'm laying back consuming content leisurely.

</comment><comment><USER51> Convenience and price is how disruption starts. Why did anyone buy a cell phone if they had a landline? It was worse in every way, except portability.

<comment><USER52> Yeah, but what one way are tablets better than other things? You get to use your fingers? I'm still wholly unconvinced that is 'better'.

<comment><USER53> One way? Simplicity.

My feeling is that the iPad is considered better than laptops and netbooks because the Big Three operating systems (Windows, Mac, and Linux) are too complex for the vast majority of users. Of course, a simple OS should be possible on a non-tablet, non-phone device, but there's just too much baggage to just start from scratch. The iPhone/iPad had a clean slate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I don't own a tablet, saw one in action for the first time a week ago and the owner and I basically came up with the same reasons why it's rather useless as the ones mentioned in the article. It's definitely nice to have for reading in bed or keeping up 'on the road' but overall it seems to be pretty reduced to 'consuming' instead of 'producing'.

One thing I like about tablets is that they made publishers reconsider how they can bring a better and more rich 'experience' to their readers (subscribers). But I wonder how long it will take until they notice that they should rework their web pages as well. I am so tired of (nearly) all web 'articles' ('features') just consisting of a headline and endless blocks of text, maybe an embedded video and some links, you could do so much more.

<comment><USER55> 'you could do so much more'

Could you elaborate on this? It is not immediately obvious to me.

<comment><USER54> Sure. When you look at a 'proper magazine' there is a lot more work regarding to the layouts, additional info graphics and such. And I guess the iPad app versions of current magazines have got all these plus animated graphics, timelines, better integration of video and all that.

I am not saying a daily news site really needs this but even in articles that are not time-critical you usually only see large chunks of text or paginated slideshows. Considering that you can basically do 'everything' on the web, it would be nice to see sites with a focus on content really take advantage of this.

I could also imagine today's sites 'borrowing' some stylistic devices from TV documentaries and the like. Sure, all of this needs some more work. But it seems to be possible on tablets, so why not on the web? I don't get that.

I hope it's a bit more clear now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> > _No tactile feedback_

That might be partially solved soonish, actually. [http://www.hizook.com/blog/2010/08/11/electrotactile- arrays-...](http://www.hizook.com/blog/2010/08/11/electrotactile-arrays- texture-and-pressure-feedback-during-robotic-teleoperation)

> _Instead, what all magazine publishers produced (Condé Nast included) was a > bloated, multitouch-enabled version of the exact same "new media" experience > that used to ship on a CD-ROM under the name "multimedia."_

Not surprised about this in the least. The vast majority will always do what never worked previously - we need people to make a few revolutionary improvements, _then_ we'll see better tablet content across the board.

</comment><comment><USER56> Finally, a classic Jon Stokes "get off my lawn" piece. It's been a while. Maybe the winter weather is getting to him.

Personally, the tablet is the ideal "sitting on the couch browsing the web during commercials or boring moments" device, for which my iPhone had served previously. That and maybe a few casual games or acting as a rich remote for other media center devices. I'd imagine once a front-facing camera is standard, it'll be a common Skype device as well. I really don't know what Jon would be contented with given his issues with tablets, other than a brain implant. As for me, I loves me some tablets, and I've bought my last laptop; it's all desktops and tablets from here on out.

</comment><comment><USER57> I think it's interesting that he mentions that monitor + keyboard is better than a tablet because it separates out the input from the output areas and the "hands don't get in the way". But if you take the total surface of the keyboard plus your desktop monitors, it's way bigger than the area of the tablet. Make a giant tablet that's 32"x32" or some such, and I think it could be superior to monitor + keyboard for some things. The tablet lets you mix what areas are input and what are output for various applications, and that's way more flexible than being locked into fixed proportions.

<comment><USER58> <https://www.microsoft.com/surface/>

All that's missing is a smug logo, and it'll be a hit!

(also mentioned in the article)

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> The point seems to be that it doesn't do all the things that the author wants it to do. And, it doesn't have to.

Anybody who knows what his talking about is not saying that computers are dead, and that tablets are the way forward. In the same way, nobody is complaining that smartphones are crap because it's hard to create content on them.

Obviously the use cases are different.

Now would somebody who mostly consumes content ditch the computer for a tablet? Possibly. Would somebody who creates content ditch the computer for a tablet or smartphone? Doubt it.

At the same time, this is not a zero sum game. People can own a computer and tablet.

<comment><USER54> The problem is that people who _should_ know what they're talking about have said things like 'the tablet will eventually replace other computer set-ups' a lot when tablets first came up. And I don't think it's a problem of 'adapting' if you claim that this won't happen.

At least I won't believe that until someone beats me in 'Typing Of The Dead', desktop versus tablet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I think the ipad is best of breed for pdf's and comics. Throw in a retina display or whatever hires equivalent you want to use and it's long form magazine nirvana. Sure it's a rich geeks toy...but what a toy.

</comment><comment><USER61> This actually a great idea, a display with a tactile experience. For example when you touch an icon, that portion of the screen could vibrate for a short time (let's say 200ms). Or when you're dragging something on the display there could be a persistent fast vibration (so that in reality is not a vibration anymore) on that specific area of the screen that makes you "feel" the dragged item on your finger.

</comment><comment><USER62> The killer app for tablets right now is Pulse. It allows you to consumer information probably 3-5 times as fast as any other medium. They do it by displaying a lot of information quickly about a lot of articles with a UI that is unparallel.

Because of Pulse alone, I use my iPad everyday. It's the FASTEST way to read news.

</comment><comment><USER63> > until someone comes up with a tablet that can do something unique and > special that nothing else in my life can do better...

I find that drawing and painting on the iPad is better than on any non-tablet devices.</comment>


Why First-Born Kids Do Better in School - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/10/birth_order_and_school_performance_first_borns_do_better_in_school_because.html

<comment><USER2> I read through this article expecting to agree with the findings, but surprisingly my experience was the complete opposite. My mother is a teacher and my younger brother is not a very good student. I found that as he struggled more and more, there was much less focus on my schoolwork. My mother focused more on cracking down on him and let me go my own way. While I stayed on more or less the same path, he recently just dropped out of college.

Surprisingly he also scored very well when he was tested for IQ (possibly close to my own scores, I do not remember).</comment>


What Is Real User Monitoring - <AUTHOR> https://sematext.com/blog/what-is-real-user-monitoring/ <comment><USER2> Is this site mobile friendly? Can't read it at all.

<comment><USER3> Just another ad for another service.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you manage your personal software projects? - <AUTHOR> I am a solo developer who loves to work on side projects in parallel his regular job.
I am REALLY struggling to manage them, I need some system that:
- does not require more work to keep updated than the project itself
 - it quickly gives me the ability to understand at what point of the project I am. Often pass days or week from the last time I have been able to work on the project, and I need something that helps me having the general view of the status I left the project last time and what are the next steps.
 - improves my ability to track the different aspects of the project. Whatever they are different functionalities or other more broad aspects as marketing strategies....
I know are hard requirements, but I am not looking for a tool suggestion, but a method or some suggestions to find the right path.
Developing software products has a lot of facets (technical, and not!), and I am losing among them, I need someone who can show me the way :) <comment><USER3> I use a notebook. One that I write in using a pen. When stopping for the evening/day/whatever I take 5 - 10 minutes to write in my notebook what part of the project is working, what has been changed, open questions, and a list of three things to do next. You can think of it like having a standup meeting with myself :-). When I go back to the project, I thumb back through the pages in my notebook until I find the last "log entry", read it, and them make a notation with a page number of the next open page in my notebook and an arrow to the right. Then I flip to the open page put the project name on it, and put a left arrow notation to the page where the previous update was.

By working this way my note book contains a bunch of doubly linked list of pages which are the log of a particular project, but the number of projects is not bounded. If I want to review a project from start to finish that is pretty easy to do, and the act of actually writing in my notebook affixes the information in my head more thoroughly than writing it into a computer file does.

<comment><USER4> The doubly-linked list is a really good idea! I'll have to start using it.

For no real purpose other than personal interest, I like to put a "NET" (no earlier than) date next to my page numbers in my notebook. Every time I start a new page, I write the page number and the current date (ex '#51 NET 21 Sep 2016') on the page.

<comment><USER4> As an aside, I really wish there were something that really, truly duplicated the experience of pen and paper, but were digitally indexable and searchable. There's just something really special about the tactile feedback. I also really like the way I can bounce between two arbitrary pages extremely rapidly with a physical notebook, or even look at two at once.

Plus, depending on how well you remember what, rapidly searching for a given entry is way faster if you flip to the approximate point in a physical book. That's my biggest complaint about my Kindle: random access is incredibly slow; in a physical book I've read within a year or so, I can reliably find a quote I was looking for within 30 seconds, but on my Kindle it takes _forever_.

<comment><USER5> Maybe you know about the LiveScribe SmartPen:

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00524DLZ0/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00524DLZ0/)

This was a really nice product, until the company decided to go for the "smartphone app" experience and changed everything about it drastically. I sought out and bought the older version (the second gen) because it actually had all the features I expected.

The concept is out there, but with the following improvements you can get the experience you seek: make the pen slimmer and more natural to hold, make the special paper look more like normal paper, and have a pen dock which does all the magic of syncing and creation of digital notes etc. Bonus if it were somehow possible to replicate the pixelation of the special notebook on a carbon-paper style sheet so that you can just use whatever notebook you wanted and insert this special sheet underneath.

Also about random access: I have always wondered why the eReader software never has a mode where when you scroll on the play head, it shows the current page, plus 2 pages before and 3 after (all displayed as smaller thumbnails, sort of like Netflix). Wouldn't that be at least a little closer to the flipping experience?

<comment><USER4> Stuff like the LiveScribe is close, but not quite, what I want. I think at the moment one of the most likely candidates is actually something with AR. Plus, it would just be really stupendously cool to have a blank notebook that is "full" of AR writing.

Talk about invisible ink.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I agree with the predominant two suggestions here: to use Trello, and to do a little more planning up front.

But it also looks like you are having some issues with getting back into the zone quickly, without too much overhead. A trick that writers use is to apparently write an incomplete line at the end of the draft. You can try something similar - depending on your project, this could be something as simple a quick note on something you can do in exactly 5 minutes the next time you set down with some detailed steps if possible (for additional context).

Its just a suggestion, which is unfortunately not backed by personal experience (I have faced other challenges with my side projects but not the one you mention).

<comment><USER6> Trello and writing a line are great; I have one extra comment about the line.

Instead of just "not finishing" something, I will do a minor brain dump of what I'm trying to accomplish into a comment or a Trello item in the details field.

 _Usually_ when I'm stopping it's because there's a thing that isn't easy to finish, and I've done a lot of thinking about _how_ to finish, but don't have the time to do it. So I write down all of my thoughts on the topic -- sometimes it can run to several paragraphs and sometimes a table or two.

But the next time I pick it back up, I can _totally_ get back into the right mental space quickly. The best part? After a break, even if I have a plan outlined in the comment, I often can immediately see a _better_ solution than the one I was working toward.

On a related point I've been keeping a journal with similar notes in it; I've found this to be extremely helpful for thinking through problems. You've heard of explaining your problem to a rubber duck? Having to not only put the problem into words, but writing those words down, is a great way to get the brain churning -- and a great way to leave a map for yourself later to get back into a project.

<comment><USER7> I can second this. It's like rubber duck debugging but "past you" is explaining it to "future you" who is in a different mindset.

Most of my biggest breakthroughs have happened because of something like this.

And if you aren't afraid to check these brain dumps into your source control in some kind of notes.md, it can also give you a bit more context on what problems you were facing at that time in the repo's life, and perhaps why you thought the solution at the time was a good one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Trello works pretty well for me.

I usually create a new board with 3 columns:

Backlog - Doing - <USER2>

You create any amount of cards in backlog and as you start to work on something you can leave comments on your status "Started working on live updates, trying to figure out if websockets are better than polling", etc.

You can easily forget to update cards so an alternative is to leave comments in your code:

```` def some_method

      User.where(email: 'aj # TODO: I WAS HERE, continue fixing the query!

end ```

By leaving this change open in git you can easily see it when you run `git diff`

For my one big side project I keep a notebook (moleskine) with thoughts and notes. I write down the current date when I make one and usually where I am.

<comment><USER9> I use Trello as well. It actually helped quite a bit launching my current endeavor, as I picked what as the MVP at the beginning. I had a "For Launch" column in addition to the ones you mentioned. It kept me focused when my brain would've had me work on other things.

<comment><USER10> I'm doing the same thing but with Asana just because it's what I use daily anyway, using their sections as the types. It's not great but like you said, laying it out in the beginning keeps the scope contained and I can list off bugs I find.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Personally I use TDD (or more precisely BDD) for this purpose. If I leave the project overnight, or for a week or a month, I can come back to it, run the tests, and the failing and/or pending tests tell me what I was doing when I last worked on it.

So I always leave an in-process development project with failing tests. If they're all green, I don't know what to do next!

<comment> daily-q This method also works for me. Usually the failing test left behind is something in the same space of where work needs to be done, but I like to keep the failing code trivial so that I can ramp up. 'Works great. A TODO file can also be used to accomplish this if TDD isn't your thing.

<comment><USER12> I think a TODO is preferable even if you practice TDD.

Failing tests used as a "start here" _are_ to-dos in this instance and are indistinguishable from legitimate currently-implemented feature tests if you've been away long enough.

I don't think it's good to assume it's okay to delete failing tests when returning to a project with new goals or when a bug needs fixing. For me, it's important to return to a project, run tests and have them all come back green. Then if I break something, I know it broke and isn't just an artifact from my pseudo to-dos.

Along those lines... I always try to run tests, check code coverage (including via mutation testing), and commit changes before calling it a day.

<comment><USER11> Typically the error messages that I include for my "this is where I left off" or "still to do" tests are like "page not yet implemented" or "haven't figured out the bug". No definitely don't delete failing tests! Make them pass.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have tried a lot of things and failed at keeping them up.

The two big tips that I think have worked best for me over the years, is:

\- Let your code repository do most of the talking. I don't stop a work session without committing what I have been working on, and therefore I work really hard to split any work item into small chunks. Also, given that I am sometimes interrupted in the middle of some work, it really helps to try to get the code committed after every few lines of work.

\- Keep the management tooling really simple, the more complex it is the harder it will be to manage. I have evolved into keeping 2-3 types of documents (in evernote): an operations cheat sheet (how to start the code, and manually how to do things especially if I have not automated it) and 2-3 types of todo lists preferable on one page (some which I need to do in an hour, others which would be good to do, and finally some which will revolutionize the industry :-) ).

</comment><comment><USER14> I know you said you're not asking for a specific tool recommendation but it sounds like you want something like Trello (trello.com). Basically you first need to come up with the individual tasks that are needed to complete the project. At first you'll likely miss things but as you're developing you can add new tasks. For each of these tasks you'll create a card. Then on the Trello board you'll have vertical columns called lists. A simple set of lists would be:

      - Backlog: Tasks that haven't been worked on
      - In progress: Tasks you're working on
      - Complete: Tasks that are finished

You can always add more lists if your workflow requires it (e.g. adding a "In testing" list). All your tasks/cards will start in the "Backlog" list. It's also a good idea to roughly order them in priority. You can then pick the highest priority task and move it into the "In progress" list. Once you've completed the task you can move the card to the "Complete" list. Then grab the next highest priority task from the "Backlog" and repeat the process over again.

When you come back from not working on the project for a while all you have to do is look at what task(s) you have in the "In progress" list. If that information isn't enough to figure out where you left off, the task is likely to broad and should be broken down into more detailed tasks. After doing this a few times you'll get more used to creating tasks at the appropriate level of detail--it's just something you have to learn from doing.

</comment><comment><USER15> I recommend putting a TODO file in your projects' root folder.

You will use this file to take a _snapshot_ of your current status. Be as detailed as wanted, you need this to recover the context you were in before walking away from it.

</comment><comment><USER16> I tried spreadsheets, bug trackers, self made tools...

But for a few years now I've been using Trello with the (open sourced) Agile SCRUM Chrome Extension

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/agile-scrum-for- tr...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/agile-scrum-for-trello- bo/njmflagahgdhopbcdilgahjlfiecakpe?hl=en)

It is a very quick methodology to manage all my projects as well as estimate timings and effort for everything. I set how many hours I want to work a week, estimate each task duration and priority and the extension can tell me how long it will take to finish each milestone and release dates.

Organizing boards on Trello:

I have one board with an overall view of all the projects in a Kanban style (To Do, In progress, Completed) and then one board for each project with their lists (To Do, In progress, Testing, Completed) and follow a loose non-strict Agile SCRUM methodology.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've ended up with two different methods of similar (over?) simplicity. The fun part of side projects is that there's less communication and priorities are based on little more than our own interest.

1\. A TODO text file on the project root. It's harder to get more natural that editing in vim or whatever you use. I keep different lists for features, tech debt, research, etc and slowly pluck items into the immediate todo list. What's the point of a commit? Check the line deleted from TODO

2\. Google Keep is surprisingly great. Every project I work on has at least one list there so I can jot notes down where ever I am. Even offline. Some projects are entirely in Keep.

Remember why you started a project. Is it for fun? Focus on the thing that interests you most right now. Profit? Focus on proving your biggest assumption.

</comment><comment><USER18> I use notebooks like this commenter: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12549098](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12549098)

Now, I've also researched this for a while. My latest approach was to develop a _git-like_ command line application (named nica) that allowed me to keep notes, track issues, and pretty much manage the project. It works by creating a hidden directory (like git) and the data is stored in JSON files (because I planned on doing web interface. The aim is to include everything related to the project inside the git repo. So you would not need to use a web interface to know the issues of a particular code base. You could do:

        nica issues

and it would print out a list of open issues. Then you'd do:

        nica issue -n 100

and it would open issue #100.

I built it to understand how to move away from commercial services like github while giving devs a way to host their project data online. There is a web server being developed that would provide the ability to pull/push nica data and a web interface. The only problem I had was with conflicts due to how the data was inside the git repo. But I have not spent any time solving it.

Note that I slowed down development because I'm working on another project (V2V, V2I, and V2S communication for automated cars). It is not a commercial or open source project (pure research). Its being written with python and click (library for command line apps by the team behind flask).

</comment><comment><USER19> There's a few different approaches to this:

1\. Set a deadline and go for it. This can take up a lot of your time and make you feel burned out. I'm assuming you want to avoid this.

2\. Assume it will take longer to release than you would like, but incrementally make progress each week.

I am currently #2 after trying #1 with a completely new stack. I eventually decided that it's better to workout with my significant other a day of the week to work on the project. We decided Sunday would work best for us. If this is your case I really recommend you keep your time flexible and be willing to "swap" days or switch to 1 hr each day after work.

Now that you established a schedule, you will need to maintain two lists. A short list is what you need to work on next. A long list is what you want to accomplish and release in the big scheme of things.

With your two lists, you will prioritize. If you get hung up on something, is it really that necessary? Can you live without it until after your "release".

Keep a rough estimate going, it will give you an ok timeline and help you further prioritize.

This strategy has helped me a lot, I hope to release my side project at the end of this year. :)

<comment><USER20> In project management you balance cost, schedule, and scope.

The simplest thing is to focus on scope, and make a checklist for when the project is "ready to ship". Add things as they come up, remove them, edit them, etc.

That kind of checklist is related to the "procedural" sort of checklist which is important also.

On top of that you can add practices such as "grouping projects into milestones", "estimating the effort involved in tasks", "forming a dependency tree between the tasks", "setting delivery dates for milestones", etc.

Checklisting is the basic practice. I was on the project from hell that we rescied where a real bully of a manager got us all, developers, testers, UX, ops, on a checklist -- I think estimates are a good thing but key people on the team would not play along so we did not do them.

It was not easy but we shipped.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It sounds like you're not really satisfied with the digital stuff.

So here's a crazy idea: you might benefit from having actual (real) folders for each project with scribbles in them.

Even though it feels like a waste of paper, for some reason it works better for me.

Maybe because I don't have to open an app for that, it's just like a second screen (without sacrificing your second screen).

</comment><comment><USER22> This is going to sound trivial, but I've always been a big fan of writing down whatever I'm worried about on a post-it and sticking it on my monitor.

If I have too many items and the post-its fall off, I'm being too aggressive. If I have two projects, I use two colors for my post-its.

The problem with any electronic or free-form system like pencil and paper is that it is far, far too easy to type things in than it is to accomplish things. Your goal is not to create a version of your mind. Your goal is to prompt yourself enough so that you're ready to begin doing the next important thing the next time you sit down.

So set your filter to maximum and only track the bare minimum you need to pick the work back up. Trust me, once you're back in it again, the next batch of things will come to mind -- and as you work, you'll work through both the strategic and tactical items, coming up with whatever the new batch of post- its will be before you finish.

</comment><comment><USER23> Here's what I want in my ideal personal code environment.

1\. Literate programming

I want to be able to write methods/functions in something like a Jupyter notebook, with text and section headings. This is a great way to both comment the code and to organize to-do lists. I want the text in these documents to have weak ties to the actual code (e.g. have method renaming apply to the text as well.) I should be able to toggle between "plain code" and "Jupyter style" views.

2\. Ability to share modules across projects

Did I write some code to make state machines for project A? I should not have to copy paste it to get state machines into project B, I should be able to share the code between them. Something like Visual Studio's shared projects, but less wonky.

3\. Audio recording

I suck at writing notes to myself, especially in exploratory code. However, I sometimes find myself thinking out loud. Why not allow recording of the thinking out loud, so I can hear what I was thinking later.

</comment><comment><USER24> I keep a journal using Google Docs. Whenever I make an entry, I have the date and a brief summary of any interesting thoughts related to the project, URL links, etc. I always keep a TODO list of what to work on next. This helps immensely when picking up the project again after a while to figure out what I was working on.

</comment><comment><USER25> If you're an emacs user, definitely check out org mode. Or if you've wanted an excuse to check out emacs, org mode may be a reason for you to make the move.

It's insanely powerful but not for everybody.

[http://orgmode.org](http://orgmode.org)

<comment><USER26> I use org-mode (with vim). It's low effort and anyone can see what I plan to do and submit changes with a pull request, without needing access to something other than the repository.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Use a project management tool (as though you were contracting things out to someone), then occasionally transfer things to it from a notepad or text file (or your memory).

Write down a list of todos or whatever you're trying to do, then write notes next to each as you progress. Usually, once you have a good sense of what you're trying to do (are clear on the details and on what's required to fully implement everything), then it all becomes straightforward.

I'm not sure what else to say, as I usually don't need any "outside assistance" once I'm clear on what I'm trying to do, and essentially just scribble notes wherever is convenient when I need to (when I'd forget otherwise).

</comment><comment><USER28> I used Trello for quite a while, and still use it for some things. In addition to the suggested "backlog, doing, done" columns, I have another "stopping thoughts" column, where I keep a few notes about what I was thinking when I quit working on the project for the day/week/whatever".

I've mostly switched to a self-hosted, local-to-my-dev-laptop-only jira instance, since I also use jira for regular job work. I've found that kan-ban type boards are fine for the tech side of a project, but I do like the other project management stuff that jira brings; and being the only user of it, I don't have to worry about the way I use it negatively affecting anyone else.

</comment><comment><USER29> On my side, I don't manage all of them quite well. But those I have the easiest to come back to are by far those where I spent time automating things. Either setting up a dev environment with docker, having automated tests, integrating with a CI platform, having added tickets on a tracker platform, etc.

I think the more the state is explicit, the easiest it is because I'm clearly not good at documenting stuff.

Btw, I try to keep all of those things on my local server. I have JIRA, Stash and Bamboo installed, a docker registry, and a few bunch of other stuff all behind haproxy doing the SSL termination. I like using a tracker understanding code that way I can seamlessly link from/to PRs, commits and branches.

</comment><comment><USER30> I am transitioning to gitlab. It's had issues, but a recent version lets you put them onto a board similar to Trello. I'm waiting on a screen replacement for my primary development laptop (from China, via slow air boat apparently) to really dive into it.

But I do agree with the "getting back into it" issue. I will go weeks or months between working on a project, and this is the biggest hurdle I'm facing. Some of the suggestions here are great. I'm thinking what I may do is try to leave a single issue under "Development" on the boards and make sure it is commented well enough to pick it back up.

</comment><comment><USER31> Usually before I start any project at all, I'll write a couple pages summary in a Google doc. I'll consider implementation, but I won't try to plan out the entire implementation since it always changes.

I keep a separate Google doc(or a Trello or Kanbanflow board) with a list of specific pending tasks. This is designed to be easy to grab tasks off of without having to think much.

If it's been so long since I last did anything that I don't understand any of the tasks, I'll take 30 minutes to update the summary and task documents.

</comment><comment><USER32> alias demo='vim "$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)"/demo.txt'

I have a bunch of these aliases for files I use for specific purposes. "demo.txt" holds a description of my next waypoint- I call it demo because it has to be something I can show. There are aliases for bugs, howto, etc.

I don't have to use an external tool, as I'm working on some code I can just type "bug" at the command line and enter some text. Not super high tech but easy enough that I actually use it.

</comment><comment><USER33> The best tool for this may be a paper notebook. Especially if you interleave it with something like the "pomodoro" 25 minute work units. Then spend a few minutes writing down what you did and what you expect to look at next, what unsolved problems you have, etc. before going back to the computer.

(I tend to do this at work with Notepad, but in the past I've found the medium shift to pen and paper useful in itself for changing mode of thought)

<comment><USER20> I use Microsoft OneNote for this. Searchability is fine, but if you write down the context of what you are working on, you can save minutes to hours picking up where you left off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I just have a folder of text files for each project. Even if it's trying out a git project, I'll record the setup process and TODO list as I go in case I need to re-setup the project from scratch at a later time. To maintain a decent SNR and keep my active projects grouped together, I'll have an archived folder and place a project in there when I'm no longer actively working on it.

</comment><comment><USER35> Trello works well for me. I make lists for In Progress, Today, This week, This month and Backlog/Icebox. Planning involves creating and organizing tasks in these lists. I move the tasks between the lists as I work through them. It gives me a good way to pickup where I left off. I use the Checklist feature to manage subtasks for each task.

It's been working well without any extensions/plugins.

</comment><comment><USER36> I use bitbucket right now as my version control. I was using trello to help me keep track of what I want to do, but I have found a simple TODO.txt file in my repository to be much simpler.

Make sure you commit frequently, use tags, and find a good way to handle dependencies with the language you are using.

I use a Makefile to build all aspects of my side project, and deployment is very straight forward on a vps I rent.

</comment><comment><USER37> I use pivotal tracker to record tasks and then prioritise them and work through them.

It's good in that, if I don't work on it for a month or two then nothing changes.

When I start working on something... everything changes and the estimates come forward and it auto-generates the idea of a sprint, spacing work out over coming weeks based on your velocity.

It's nice.

</comment><comment><USER38> I took the overall concepts from StrikeThru [http://striketh.ru/](http://striketh.ru/) but instead of using a paper notebook, I use OneNote. It works really well across desktop and mobile. Plus, since it is in electronic form, searching is very easy.

</comment><comment><USER39> I have a folder called Projects in my tasks app (Wunderlist), with each project listed as a to-do item, and their status listed as subtasks.

At the start of every week, I move one of these projects to my Inbox, update the subtasks to match current thoughts, work on the top few, and move project back at end of week.

</comment><comment><USER40> Estimate the time it will take you to complete a project, wait for a time slot like that to appear, hammer it out. Bug fixes after the initial stable release should be minimal, so should needed features.

Use your lack of time to promote good planning before a project is started as well as to prevent feature creep.

</comment><comment><USER41> I use issue tracking, having a list of 3-5 next features I would like to implement. With a detailed description of the feature and potential upcoming challenges, this works well to get back in the groove when having been away from the project for some time.

</comment><comment><USER42> I add compiler errors in bits that i suspect are half done before I leave a project for any period of time. On return its fairly obvious what I need to fix.

</comment><comment><USER43> The main thing I've found to help when juggling multiple side projects is to reduce the friction and the number of tools involved.

I live in the terminal with tmux, emacs, org-mode, and git. My projects get an _index.org_ in their base directory which describes the purpose and tasks involved. I've moved to (but this isn't essential to the concept of reducing friction) literate programming, and each source file ends up with its own org file as well [0], like _foo.org_ for _foo.c_. My _index.org_ contains a list of bugs, features, etc. as headlines. Each of those headlines contain notes on reproducing the bug, identifying where it occurred, specifying where the feature will be placed, etc. Specific things inside it become TODOs, which can be quickly found by (in org-mode) doing _C-c / t_ which will highlight all TODO tasks in the file. In _foo.org_ I use the same approach. I have an outline of the source file:

      * Purpose
      * Includes
      * Declarations
      * [0/3] Definitions
      ** TODO foo_bar: int -> int
      ** TODO foo_baz: char* -> int
      ** TODO foo_quux: void -> void

So now everything I need to know about the project is in one place. And by virtue of it all being in the repository (and hopefully backed up somewhere online like github or my personal server, when I had one), I can easily move between computers (modulo tooling, but mostly I just need emacs + git + tup + <compiler>).

I can also put a great deal of configuration information into this. What tools need to be installed, what are my dependencies (for packages/crates/etc.) and _why_ do I depend on them. As I'm starting to play with docker and containers, I can include all the steps needed to reproduce the environment and configuration.

So by reducing the number of places I need to look for information to a handful of org files, I've greatly reduced the effort required to resume a project. I can also do everything offline, which is great for me because an open web browser means I'll lose the evening's productive hours.

[0] I originally did one big org file that spit out files into _src /foo.c_ and _inc /foo.h_, etc. But that became annoying so I switched to individual files. This improved my ability to reuse code from one project to another (these being personal projects I'm not always spending enough time to justify producing a proper library). And it helped with make/tup because a change to _foo.org_ only affects things depending on _foo.c_ , where _index.org_ would affect many build rules because it produced so many files. Fine in a small project, annoying in anything big.

</comment><comment><USER44> I use Phabricator and Google Sheets.

</comment><comment><USER45> I use Todolist from AbstractSpoon

</comment><comment> UK-AL Personal Kanban

</comment><comment> git-pull I'll bite, but I actually authored two tools I use to manage personal / open source projects. So while I can't fit your question exactly, I'll share what's worked well for me over the past years.

Break your project out into open source components. This gives the community a library, which makes it possible (but not guaranteed) to share responsibility to it.

It also keeps things fresh, you can keep the core of your personal project closed, so there is less moving parts to track, and hopefully less dead code on it. I've many "personal projects" end up getting mothballed amounting to time wasted due to me just chucking all my code in one repo and not breaking out components / pulling in the right libs when I could.

I've participated on a lot of open source projects over the years, so I've developed a workflow to organize the minutiae. There are times where I won't re-open a project for a few months, so I need to be able to "snap back into" a familiar environment.

\- tmuxp [1], a session manager for tmux. It allows using a .tmuxp.yaml file [2] to load a project workspace in combination with a bootstrap file [3] to automatically launch a tmux environment with tests, documentation, etc. I mimic this workflow in all my other projects.

It has worked for me across OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. On local and ssh machines. No IDE required.

Passively, another thing I do is document very well. If its python, I keep docstrings, autodoc for API generation and sphinx everywhere. Even personal projects I do at work have sphinx docs for other developers to peruse. I'm consciously doing everything possible to be helpful to other programmers on the project. Give them API docs, examples, as much as you can.

\- vcspull [4] is a tool I use to declaratively manage projects in a yaml file [5]. When I want to update I just type 'vcspull project1 project2 project3'. What's nice is being able to pattern match projects I have, 'vcspull django-\\*' to grab django extensions.

On projects I patch, I add my fork as a remote to keep it in sync.

So the above are my taste. YMMV. Here are some other things:

For C/C++ projects / libs, stuff like CMake [6] for build systems is great. Gets me a build that finds libs on OS X, FreeBSD and Linux. I've ported windows only projects in SDL2 to work across all 3 easily thanks to it.

There are other mindset things, try to strike a balance between being opinionated in your own flow (as I am), because you're going to have another person who swears to Eclipse, then another one to Atom, you can't make everyone happy. Invest in things universally helpful (api documentation, tests, linting), they end up helping you in the end no matter where your project ends up: Even if you wrote stuff, if you don't document, you'll be at a loss when you wrote stuff a year ago "Did I really write that"? With other developers, they can't read your mind, they keep into the grind faster when you explained what your project does and what your code quality / expectations are.

[1] [https://github.com/tony/tmuxp](https://github.com/tony/tmuxp) [2] [https://github.com/tony/tmuxp/blob/master/.tmuxp.yaml](https://github.com/tony/tmuxp/blob/master/.tmuxp.yaml) [3] [https://github.com/tony/tmuxp/blob/master/bootstrap_env.py](https://github.com/tony/tmuxp/blob/master/bootstrap_env.py) [4] [https://github.com/tony/vcspull](https://github.com/tony/vcspull) [5] [https://github.com/tony/.dot- config/blob/master/.vcspull.yam...](https://github.com/tony/.dot- config/blob/master/.vcspull.yaml)</comment>


'Tooth repair drug' may replace fillings - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-38524566 <comment><USER2> This is insanely cool, and I imagine there is no need for me to explain how useful this would be in comparison to the current dental approaches today.

But is this technology ever going to be available to consumers? I remember reading about similar advancements almost three years ago and haven't heard anything related until now. Maybe I'm pessimistic, but I think we won't see this in practice for a Very Long Time™.

<comment><USER3> I actually find these articles depressing because it seems like nothing like this ever ultimately comes to fruition.

I'm guessing these "breakthroughs" have always been just around the corner. I recall having a conversation with my dentist almost 20 years ago about things that were up and coming that were about to make our lives a lot easier in terms of saving and strengthening and building tooth enamel but none of what he described ever came.

<comment><USER4> I remember reading an article about these scientists experimenting with blue light and the larger capacity to store data. ~15 years later blu-ray came out. All hope is not lost.

<comment><USER5> It takes a lot of time to turn a laboratory discovery into a reliably working prototype, then longer still for the industry to agree on standards and branding, and even longer to ramp up mass-manufacturing and get the distribution chain working.

We could discover teleportation tomorrow morning and it would be twenty years before teleporters were common-place. Everything takes time to be fully realized.

If you want to know what the near future holds look at what was discovered thirty years ago.

<comment><USER6> > We could discover teleportation tomorrow morning and it would be twenty > years before teleporters were common-place. Everything takes time to be > fully realized.

I can appreciate this example, though in the specific context of teleportation, there'll probably be a few decades tacked on to resolve the ethical dilemmas arising from the question of whether or not the person arriving out of the other end is in fact the same person.

(I'm of the position that it doesn't matter, but still... anyway, this entire thought was just a tangent off an example)

<comment><USER7> You say that now, but when you step up to the machine with the knowledge that you are about to cease to exist, while somewhere else a perfect copy of you gets to go about living your life, I bet you change your mind.

<comment><USER8> Exactly. What if there's a bug and when your "copy" is created at destination original is not destroyed? Would you agree to be killed, should your copy agree instead? Even worse, what if there's an anomaly in transporting data, original is destroyed and copy emerges disfigured, dead or something in between? Teleportation scares the shit out of me.

<comment><USER9> As in the quite ancient [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdxucpPq6Lc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdxucpPq6Lc)

<comment><USER5> Original NFB source: [https://www.nfb.ca/film/to_be/](https://www.nfb.ca/film/to_be/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I feel like I've seen how fillings would be replaced with drugs for about 25 years now -- I might not have any natural teeth left by the time it finally arrives! :-)

<comment><USER11> Don't worry, by that time we'll be growing teeth out of stem cells or something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The dissolving sponge thing reminds me of a video I watched years ago. They took a fully functioning organ (from a donor) and dissolved the material so that the only part left was the collagen scaffolding. Effectively, it looked like a transparent organ. They then flowed the recipient's blood into the organ and the tissue regrew around the scaffolding, yielding a fully operable organ with zero chance of foreign tissue rejection once implanted. Anyone recognize this and might have a link?

<comment><USER13> Is [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/419358/old-livers-made- ne...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/419358/old-livers-made-new-again/) what you mean?

<comment><USER12> Yeah that looks like it's the same research. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does anyone have good resources on non-behavioral factors that affect health of teeth?

Growing up, I never brushed and did pretty much everything a dentist advises against. I never have had a cavity. With seemingly no consequences, it was extremely hard for me to find any motivation to change my behavior. I've often wondered whether there was something genetic, and today I wonder if maybe I won some microbiome lottery.

I finally started taking care of myself due to (a) gum disease, (b) breath, and (c) yellowing of teeth, but I'm nowhere near as fastidious as some people I know who regularly get cavities and have to get all sorts of work done.

<comment><USER15> Were you a natural birth or c-section?

<comment><USER15> To the person who downvoted this: natural birth is associated with transmission of bacterial flora from the vaginal canal, acting as a seed for a different composition of gut and mouth flora.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Surprised no-one has chipped in here to say the same, but the top comment on Reddit calls bullshit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/5n14a9/a_way_to_na...](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/5n14a9/a_way_to_naturally_regrow_damaged_teeth_in_mice/)

</comment><comment><USER17> If there's one dental treatment I'd gladly pay for, it's enamel restoration to get rid of tooth sensitivity.

<comment><USER18> A few days ago I bought Sensodine with NovaMin. The NovaMin technology doesn't exactly restore the enamel, but does something similar. Here's how wikipedia describes it:

"Bioactive glass: Newer Sensodyne products contain calcium sodium phosphosilicate (brand name NovaMin). NovaMin sticks to an exposed dentin surface and reacts with it to form a mineralized layer. The layer formed bonds with the tooth, and is therefore strong and resistant to acid. The continuous release of calcium over time is suggested to maintain the protective effects on dentin, and provide continual occlusion of the dentin tubules. Sensodyne has removed the NovaMin ingredient from their US products"

So far I'm happy with this new toothpaste.

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

<comment><USER19> "Sensodyne has removed the NovaMin ingredient from their US products"

Any idea why? The cited articles don't appear to mention that.

<comment><USER20> I gathered from Amazon and other user reviews that the NovaMin patent holder, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), figured that it would make more money in the U.S. selling it as a prescription product rather than OTC.

IIRC, there may also have been some complexities regarding the FDA, and perhaps some cross-licensing issues, that figured into GSK's decision. The information is out there, it just requires sifting through the Google hits and piecing together the true story.

I buy European Sensodyne on Amazon for a family member with sensitive teeth, and only dug deep enough to satisfy myself that at least some EU sellers weren't scammers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > _heightened the activity of stem cells in the dental pulp so they could > repair 0.13mm holes in the teeth of mice._

Very cool. And happy to see some numbers posted in the article to measure the success. I now understand this is very PoC, but proof none the less.

</comment><comment><USER22> Let's hope there will be some real progress in dentistry. I am probably doing the field injustice but there doesn't seem to have happened much progress in the last decades compared to other areas of medicine. When something is wrong the usual response is to remove it, no healing.

I personally hope that one day we will be able to regrow teeth. With all my crowns it's too late to repair cavities.

<comment><USER23> Dental implants are a pretty big breakthrough over the last couple of decades. Wether replacing individual teeth, or permanently anchoring dental bridges in place, it's gotten pretty darn close to the experience of having real teeth.

<comment><USER3> Dental implants are really cool, but they are also incredibly expensive.

<comment><USER24> Well in most civilized places, including where I live, ordinary people don't have to deal with dental costs on a one-off basis.

You just pay your taxes (or the state pays them if you can't afford it) and you're provided with healthcare.

Seems pretty reasonable if you ask me.

<comment><USER3> In Canada our universal healthcare doesn't cover dental issues, and even private insurance that most people would have through work only cover what is essentially considered "necessary". I think an impant is probably considered a luxury and certainly wouldn't be covered through insurance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is the complete paper: [http://www.nature.com/articles/srep39654](http://www.nature.com/articles/srep39654)

I wonder why they almost never linked to the source.

<comment><USER26> Because it's easier to garner clicks for ad impressions by making bold claims about the amazing (unproven) future benefits of a minor scientific discovery than by presenting readers with the actual science.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Serious question: is there any evidence that seemingly disruptive dental treatments like this are being suppressed by the dental industry?

<comment><USER28> No.

Like any new technology there are barriers entry erected by incumbent technology/equipment providers, but there is also a flow of new dentists and practices eager to try the latest technologies. In my visit to the dentist just now I was reminded yet again at the astonishing pace of technology change in their industry.

(Have advised early stage (IP) players in the space)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Fusion, cheap solar cells, and this.

<comment><USER16> Battery tech - it's the next big thing that never was.

<comment><USER29> Ahh, except solar Is so cheap now it's driving fossil fuels out of business and utilities are replacing natural gas peaker plants with battery storage.

Y'all sleep through the last year?

<comment><USER5> That's the problem with exponential curves. At first nothing's happening, it's extremely boring, and slowly, ever so slowly, things start to pick up.

Then one day you blink and it's gone right past you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Q: does this sort of labor destroying innovation ever get blocked by lobbying groups?

<comment><USER31> I remember hearing about laparoscopic surgery and ultrasonic treatments for gallbladder and kidney stones while growing up. My dad was a surgeon and that was a large part of his "business", but he was really excited about the advances. However, the earlier surgery of opening up someone's abdomen often meant days of stress about your patient lying in the hospital and potential complications. It was a job where you were often working on people who first met you when they seemed relatively healthy, but with some pains, and were quickly getting worse. "Rounds", where you toured every patient in the hospital to check on their recovery, was a part of every day of the year, and it was nominally unpaid (though the time and attention was included in the "package" of treatment).

At things like holiday period cocktail parties I definitely heard, especially spouses, talk about how those changes would be dangerous since the surgeon wouldn't have a full picture of what was going on in the abdomen, etc. (Sometimes it's safer not to wear a seatbelt, too!)

Anyway, I think that at the same time that gallstones and kidney stones became less labor intensive there were so many new things than needed general surgeons than there was no impact on labor.

\--

Back to your question, there seem to be stories about curing caries as a phenomenon somewhat frequently, and they've appeared regularly for decades.

Is this, instead, like developing a good cross-platform IMAP client? Anything that is good enough to replace the large email providers' own apps and web portals gets aquihired. Clearly the programmers must have been skilled enough to handle a large number of arcane edge cases and understood users well, so they'd be great people to have work for them. Plus, there's less likelihood that they continue to keep IMAP access normalized, and then also happen to provide a really effective and easy drop in encryption service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> If this stuff can repair cavity holes, presumably it can replace enamel wherever it's been lost. If it could also extend enamel onto exposed tooth roots that lack enamel, that'd be great for us older folk with gum recession and vulnerable naked roots.

</comment><comment><USER33> There is a medical device, designed and manufactured in California, that generates O3 in such a way that a single tooth can be isolated and bathed in O3. The result is bacteria death within any tooth crack or cavity. Following that the calcium in our saliva naturally fills in any bacteria free cracks and cavities. This functioning, successful medical device is a "hit" everywhere on earth except the United States because the FDA declared O3 to be a toxic gas with "no known medical properties" and ban its use... I know one of the engineer developers that designed it, and he's wealthy from it. He says the US is fucked beyond repair...

<comment><USER19> Have you any references for those claims?

<comment><USER34> Its nonsense. Ozone therapy is a form of alternative medicine quackery that uses ozone generators and the FDA has cracked down on it because there's no evidence it works and the O3 gas is toxic. It is not banned by the FDA but marketing it as a clinical treatment is. In this sense all molecules that aren't approved drugs are "banned" by the FDA.

If it worked, the FDA would approve it as a Class III (high risk) medical device so my guess is that the OP's friend's company either doesn't have a working product or they just don't want to put in the work to get it approved (Class III devices are the most expensive to get through the FDA).

<comment><USER33> My buddy said they are making too much money with the rest of the world to care about kissing the bureaucrat's ass making unreasonable requests.

<comment><USER34> They're making "too much money" in the rest of the world, where most people are broke or covered by nationalized healthcare and price controls, to get their product approved in the _most profitable_ medical device market in the world? Again, nonsense. If that were the case, pharmaceutical and biotech companies would be lining up to license the technology and to take care of regulatory approval and compliance, even if it wasn't covered by patents.

Your buddy is exploiting vulnerable consumers in less regulated markets to sell snake oil. I wonder how many people will suffer immense pain or pick up a life threatening infection because they were convinced by conartists that oxygen was a viable alternative to proper dental care and treatment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Dentists are very conservative. About 10 years ago we did some compassionate use studies of dissolvable drug metering systems that would cause bone regeneration -- so that an implant would attach to the jaw just the same as your original teeth did (actually new bone would grow around it). The X-rays were amazing and folks who'd been in pain for decades due to wobbly tooth implants, bridges etc were thrilled.

Company decided not to go ahead with clinical trials after doing market research on dentists in the US. Went ahead with a different drug for a different indication instead.

</comment><comment><USER36> This—on a somewhat similar treatment from Japan, unavailable in the US—seems relevant: [http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/07/the...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/07/the- fda-versus-the-tooth.html)

</comment><comment><USER37> I recently got my wisdom teeth out because everyone said I should.

Now my jaw is suffers from paresthesia because of it. Most likely I will never get sensation back in that area. Spent money to become paralyzed...

I don't see the value in going to dentist for slightly less tooth pain so this sounds amazing to me.

<comment><USER38> > because everyone said I should.

Why? Wisdom tooth removal is still surgery, and you and your dentist should have been the ones to decide on whether it was necessary or not.

If the surgery went wrong because of other complications, that's a different issue, but you shouldn't get surgery just because other people are saying you "should".

<comment><USER37> Poor choice of words. Still had impacted wisdom teeth and was causing a decent amount of pain. I just would prefer pain over paralysis.

Also, I have had terrible medical assistance my whole life, so I have to figure everything out. Not the doctors/dentists. They're just the hired help I get to do the actual heavy lifting. I honestly don't know their purpose if I have to spend half my life doing their research

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorhexidine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorhexidine) toothpath/mouthwash prevents many tooth/gum diseases

</comment><comment><USER40> Anything that enables me to spend less time in a dentist's chair is awesome. I hate dental work and need nitrous oxide to get through even minor procedures (cleanings, etc).

</comment><comment><USER41> This is great news. Now what do you have for my shitty gums?

</comment><comment><USER42> It sounds like they're sticking something in a small cavity and covering it. Like a filling. Minus the drilling.

</comment><comment><USER43> Paul Sharpe, the same guy that had stem cells and created a startup to mkae new teeth grow.

Ten years ago.

</comment><comment><USER44> I feel like I see this headline every 2 years and nothing seems to change.

</comment><comment><USER45> I wish this become mainstream next year.

</comment><comment><USER46> so btw you don't want to inhibit GSK3. Likely an academic only finding.

</comment><comment><USER47> that would be a dream come true... most (all?) dentists are doing unnecessary x-rays that are a health hazard and this would of course help with that...

<comment><USER11> Just yesterday I saw a documentary on the dangers of atomic radiation, and one of the numbers I remember is that the dose of radiation from a dental x-ray is less than the average daily dose of background radiation. So, entirely negligible unless you're getting a dental x-ray every week or more often.

<comment><USER47> You are probably talking about the low radiation bite-wing digital x-rays... But some type of dental X-rays have orders of magnitude more radiations, like the Panoramic X-rays (those are very common in dental offices) or the much worst Cone-beam computed tomography (3D). I agree that there probably isn't much risk but they give them out like candies.

<comment><USER11> I checked Wikipedia for the different types, and apparently I had a panoramic X-ray made last year.

A quick googling finds [1] which puts the maximum dose for X-rays at 0.17 mSv. Wikipedia [2] puts the average background radiation around the world at 3 mSv per year, or 0.082 mSv per day. So while 170 mSv is indeed "orders of magnitude more radiation" than an X-ray of a single tooth, it's still roughly in the order of magnitude I estimated (around a day's worth of background radiation).

[1] [http://www.ada.org/en/member-center/oral-health- topics/x-ray...](http://www.ada.org/en/member-center/oral-health- topics/x-rays) (section "Radiation Exposure in Dentistry")

<comment><USER47> Next time you go to the dentist, try to ask the person taking the x-rays what radiation setting they used or how much radiations you will be getting from the x-rays... in my experience, they don't know... Also ask them why they cover your torso with lead but not your brain...

Also, I think that you confused some units and you forgot to include link #2 ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> As someone with continual dental issues due to an unhealthy high sugar diet and low calcium due to lactose intolerance, I'll be super excited if this becomes a thing.

<comment><USER49> If you want calcium from a dairy source, eat more hard cheese. Hard cheeses have very little lactose - just pick the one with the least sugar. Cheddar is pretty good. Parmesan too.</comment></comment>