Judea Pearl, big brain behind AI, wins Turing Award (Nobel Prize in Computing) - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/031512-turing-award-257288.html

<comment><USER2> Pearl won the Turing Award for his work applying Bayesian analysis to machine learning, among other accomplishments.

For HNers just out of college, it's important to note that Bayesian analysis has not always been as popular as it is now. In fact, even as recently as the 1990s, it was regarded with suspicion by many statisticians, who strongly disliked the idea that prior and posterior distributions are meant to represent subjective states of belief. I was fortunate enough to have a very progressive statistics professor in undergrad in the 1990s, who was interested in Bayesian analysis. It's my understanding that most upper-level statistics and probability coursework avoided doing much Bayesian analysis until around the turn of the millennium. (if you went to university in the 1990s or earlier, was this your experience?).

For those interested in learning more about this topic, an excellent book on the history of the Bayes theorem controversies was recently published by Yale Unviersity Press: _The Theory That Would Not Die_ by Sharon Bertsch McGrayne

To be fair to Judea Pearl, I do see that he wrote an essay entitled, "Bayesianism and causality, or, why I am only half-bayesian". Nonetheless, much of his work appears to involve what we now know as Bayesian analysis. So like many (all?) scientists who make major breakthroughs, Judea Pearl was going against the accepted understanding of probability by pushing Bayesian analysis in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. It's good to see his daring rewarded.

<comment><USER3> Part of the reason Bayesian analysis was avoided was because, prior to Pearl's work, inference was impractical in non-toy examples. A major contribution of Pearl's work was to make it feasible, by structuring the probability distributions as Bayesian networks that limited the possible dependencies, coupled with the belief-propagation algorithm to do approximate updates.

I don't see Pearl as primarily interested in the Bayesian v. frequentist debate himself, though, but rather in how to efficiently do probabilistic reasoning in non-trivial problems in general, with a heavy tilt towards questions of representing causality. Methodologically his work over the years has used all sorts of things from various camps; for example, he was also an authority in the early 1980s on heuristic search.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It saddens me a little to see the " _(Nobel Price in Computing)_ " in the headline.

This is HackerNews! People here are expected to know what the Turing Award is; if they don't, they can find out for themselves.

<comment> k-mcgrady I don't see what the problem is in helping people who don't know what it is. There's no harm in saving people from having to do a search to find out.

<comment><USER5> The problem is that the headline is wrong and the Turing Award isn't a Nobel Prize. It may be similar in prestige to a Nobel, but it is awarded by different people.

Maybe there is no harm in saving people from having to do a search, but there is harm in being misleading.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> His work on causal inference was featured recently on Michael Nielsen's blog: [http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/if-correlation-doesnt- impl...](http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/if-correlation-doesnt-imply- causation-then-what-does/) [http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/guest-post- judea-pearl-on-...](http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/guest-post-judea-pearl- on-correlation-causation-and-the-psychology-of-simpsons-paradox/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd like to see some comments on his contributions to AI. Wikipedia says his work is applicable to cognitive modelling. Anyone want to comment?

<comment><USER8> You've probably heard of Hidden Markov Models. They're widely used in many machine learning applications. An HMM is just a simple, easy-to-compute Bayesian inference network.

The idea of Markov chains predates Pearl. His work was a demonstration of the accuracy and power of Bayesian inference networks. He revitalized that idea at a time where programmers were just beginning to have the data and processing power to apply machine learning.

The rest is history.

<comment><USER8> PG's old spam filter (<http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html>) is another example of applied Bayesian inference. Not directly related to Pearl's work, but he basically deserves credit for the wider renaissance in Bayesian techniques.

<comment><USER9> > Not directly related to Pearl's work, but he basically deserves credit for > the wider renaissance in Bayesian techniques.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc? The success of naive Bayes classifiers for spam filtering must have improved popular perceptions of Bayesian techniques, but let us not go overboard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Congrats to Professor Judea Pearl! Though I did not take any of his classes when I was at UCLA, in chance encounters he gave me a very good impression - nice, intelligent, and unassuming. I ended up using a lot of his materials (Bayesian analysis) after college in my projects... Here's a Tagxedo I made of today's announcement in the shape of UCLA's logo: [http://daily.tagxedo.com/march-15-uclas-judea-pearl- named-20...](http://daily.tagxedo.com/march-15-uclas-judea-pearl- named-2011-winner)

</comment><comment><USER11> For those who don't know he is also the father of Daniel Pearl</comment>


Bird One - $1299 - <AUTHOR> https://shop.bird.co/index.html <comment><USER2> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19859632](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19859632)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think electric unicycles are superior to electric scooters in most of the ways. If you're thinking about buying an electric scooter I'd recommend you to consider a one-wheeler instead. Once you learn how to ride, which takes about a week, it's much more comfortable and mobile than a scooter. You can take your wheel with you to a mall or a cinema and be on the go whenever.

<comment><USER4> Would it be easier to learn if you already know how to ride a pedal unicycle?

<comment><USER3> I don't know. Probably -> riding pedal unicycle seems crazy difficult compared.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Successful pivoting from service to products isn't common. I'm guessing their financials on the rental model aren't panning out.

This is an attempt to Tesla/iPhone the scooter market. Let's see what the consumer appetite is. I'm guessing the Bird brand is already tarnished with adjectives like "cheap" and "broken" so this may be an uphill battle.

<comment><USER6> If they stocked _n_ -thousand of these scooters, why not see how many people are willing to buy them (at 600% markup)? They already have whatever economies of scale for stocking the scooters for their rental business.

<comment><USER5> Yeah why not? Just charge a price and see what happens. Willingness to pay is based on value perception and that's a hard thing to gauge.

I'm not seeing a rosy path to victory though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I bought a Xiaomi Mi scooter on Amazon last year for $499. This is the same scooter Bird started with.

So far it's been great. There's a "Mi Home" app that shows you remaining charge and an estimate of miles left, plus total miles driven. It's also got a charge indicator on the scooter itself.

The owned scooters go a bit faster than the rental ones, and the battery lasts about 15 miles total.

So far it's been useful to eliminate short drives or Lyfts (coming back from dropping off the car to get new tires is one example; going to local restaurants is another.) It folds up easily and can lock to a bike rack or stow under a table at a restaurant.

We've put 110 miles on it so far, which doesn't sound like a lot, but considering most of our trips on it are far less than a mile, it's been worth the money.

At $1299, though, I can't see why this Bird scooter would be worth so much more than the Xiaomi. This landing page doesn't help; it seems to assume the people reading don't know about $500 scooters. Perhaps that is their target market, but in that case, I don't think this will sell that well.

</comment><comment><USER8> Part of me thought this is parody.

<comment><USER9> It's a practical joke and the punchline hits when you find yourself $1299 and tax lighter struggling to maintain 10mph with buses and rideshare cars whizzing past you and the curb.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Won't people steal this?

<comment><USER9> The rule is anything with 2 wheels will get stolen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> 20 free rides maxed at $5 per ride. They raised prices recently to around 0.25$ a minute.

Terrible incentive. Why be so cheap? Should be incentivizing purchase of a $1200 scooter with way more free rides.

<comment><USER5> I'm guessing their investors had them over hot coals and this was a negotiated number.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is this going to be $800 better than the cheapo Aliexpress scooters?

<comment><USER13> nope

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Please choose an informative title.

</comment><comment><USER15> With all costs factored in, I wonder how many hours you would have to save on rented birds to start saving money?

Weird move for a rental company imo.

</comment><comment><USER16> > The owner of this website (shop.bird.co) has banned the country or region > your IP address is in (KR) from accessing this website.

Wonderful.

</comment><comment><USER17> Are there specs anywhere? Some of my questions:

\- Range on a charge

\- Max hill slope with 150lb person

\- Ground clearance

<comment><USER9> All 3 are going to be far worse than a 2-stroke powered scooter that costs 1/6 the price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Marketing copy for scooter company selling a scooter: "This isn't a scooter"

Insert eye-roll here. Honestly this is so bad it feels like an April fools joke or something.

</comment><comment><USER13> rather get a onewheel instead</comment>


Olympus quits camera business after 84 years - old-gregg https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53165293 <comment></comment>


NASDAQ:ZNGA - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3Aznga

<comment><AUTHOR> Can anyone explain this? Down 13% so far from when FB started trading. Maybe investors are switching holdings from ZNGA to FB - I mean why hold ZNGA when you can hold FB instead?

<comment><USER2> no. Facebook IPO so far is disappointing. 2% up on the open? Even in Germany they tried to stir a shit claiming someone is asking $70 to buy it, valuing FB at $200B.

Zynga, as you know from Sec FB filing makes over 10% of FB ads revenue. So they are co-related. They always will be, until one is de-listed (sooner or later, IMHO [1]). So obviously traders that are dissapointed with FB performance so far are selling out Zynga stock.

[1] Im only trading since 2001.

edit: sorry, FB 0.01% up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems like trading in ZNGA may have been suspended.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow, down 13% the same day Facebook jumped 5% on IPO. What's going on?</comment>


How to use bathroom time effectively - <AUTHOR> http://productivity.stackexchange.com/questions/3729/how-to-use-bathroom-time-effectively Do geeks take time and productivity a little too seriously? Seriously?! <comment><USER2> Umm, the whole point of bathroom breaks -- especially those, you know, much "longer" ones -- is that they're tremendously _ineffective_ compared to the ruthlessly efficient standards of that absurdly hypermechanized, functionality-obsessed, and generally speaking, hopelessly hung up and inverted society "out there."

They're about quality time between you, and that one tender, capricious, profoundly sensitive ring of muscle... and _nothing else_.

If you can't use these short, precious, and deeply personal moments to fully and utterly detach, zone out, and get off the damned grid... then woah man, you're in trouble!</comment>


Aubrey de Grey: scientist who says humans can live for 1,000 years - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/238cc916-e935-11e6-967b-c88452263daf <comment><USER2> Great. You get to retire when you are 965 year old.

</comment><comment><USER3> Paywall</comment>


Launchpad programming with Linux - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2010/08/11/how-to-launchpad-programming-with-linux/

<comment><AUTHOR> For information on what Launchpad is, see:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1452105></comment>


Ask HN: How does Amazon work? - <AUTHOR>

I've read a number of articles on the internet about how amazon works, but most of them use tricky financial terms to describe how Amazon works. In simple terms, how can a company like Amazon, which has reported a quarterly loss of $574M still function? Where does it get its money from? Who invests in the company? <comment><USER2> This is an enormously complicated question, and a good answer requires knowing a bit about your background and what you already understand about business.

As for some high level answers to your three questions:

1) They lost a lot of money, how can they function? Well, it depends on your definition of "a lot". Look at [http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=amzn+Balance+Sheet&annual](http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=amzn+Balance+Sheet&annual) and you will see on the top line, at the end of 2013, Amazon had about $8.6 _billion_ in cash. $574m is only about 6% of that.

2) Where does it get money? There are two main sources. The first is selling goods (books, etc) and services (Amazon Web Services, etc). The second is investors. Amazon owns a lot of it's own stock and if it wanted, it could sell that stock to get more cash.

3) Who invests? Lots of individuals and groups. You're not going to be able to get a list of literally every person who owns a share, but you can easily find out which groups/people own large chunks: [https://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=AMZN+Major+Holders](https://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=AMZN+Major+Holders)</comment>


MySpace coding legacy - <AUTHOR> https://news.codecademy.com/myspace-coding-legacy/ <comment><USER2> OMG. It was really fun to read — thanks for sharing. Remember MySpace as something wild while growing up. Imagine modern networks to add this custom pages. lol</comment>


Show HN: Test your SEO with Google Home, talk to Doctor Search Marketing - <AUTHOR> https://wordlift.io/blog/en/entity/doctor-search-marketing/ <comment><USER2> Very cool!</comment>


What if you had bought Apple stock instead of that iPod? - <AUTHOR> http://www.kyleconroy.com/apple-stock.php <comment><USER2> Or Jobs health situation could have been worse, the company could have died, the iPod could have ended up blowing up in peoples pockets.

What if's are always interesting in retrospect. I invested in apple last year at around the same time, made a small chunk of cash after a month, got out and never looked back. Had I left it there I'd be driving a bmw, assuming history would have unfolded exactly as it did.

<comment><USER3> Thats the reason I tend to avoid tech stocks. Its not possible to say if a product will work. Yahoo was doing so well till Google came along. I wouldn't invest in Google though (for the same reason) even though its a great company and I love the innovations they have brought in. I tend to stick to boring stocks like soaps, car batteries, paints etc. Its worked well (with buy-and- hold) so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Adjust for inflation (2.8% mean for 1997 to now [1]) and the $330k value of a PowerBook goes down to $230k in 1997 dollars.

[1] [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=US+inflation+from+1997+...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=US+inflation+from+1997+to+2010)

<comment><USER5> Yeah, but you wouldn't have those dollars in 1997, you would have them now, after the stock has appreciated. Inflation is rolled in to the stock price in this comparison.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just as an idea: what if YC companies all offered stock to HN users as a complete, or portion of their next investment round. So if 15 users put in $5000 each, that's $75000 - enough for another 6 months runway at least, and they could probably set the valuation higher than they would with a VC. Also, these could well be value-added investors because of the skills, feedback and experience presented.

<comment><USER7> Yes! Why we haven't done this yet?

<comment><USER8> Offering stock to members of the public is an "initial public offering", which in itself costs millions of dollars just in regulatory costs. Yes, we're still members of the public, except for the millionaires among us.

<comment><USER6> No, it's bootstrapping from friends and acquaintances who are known within this online community, both in readership and interaction.

It really does make sense for hackers to support each other in this way.

<comment><USER9> No, it isn't. As others have mentioned, most HN readers and YC founders are not (yet) wealthy enough to be accredited investors. If you were to try to treat it simply, you would wind up in serious legal trouble, and possibly in prison. Selling shares to any non-accredited investor, who is not a founder, requires dealing with a lot of legal issues, and potentially opening yourself up to significant liability.

The side effect of this law intended to protect people is that the average person can no longer participate in the highest growth sectors of the market. The rich get richer, and the poor don't have as much choice in their investments (and once a company has gone public, its astronomical growth is probably over; it's very rare for a company to be as successful as GOOG or AAPL, and even those, if you'd owned stock pre-IPO, you'd be incredibly wealthy today).

I would _love_ to be able to invest in some of the YC companies, other than my own, but I don't have that ability yet. But, the first few rounds of YC companies have produced some accredited investors already, so the circle of available investors who "get YC" is getting wider.

You _could_ get a personal loan from friends and family, and then roll the money into the business, but you can't sell shares without dealing with the extra paperwork and liability.

<comment><USER6> Being an accredited investor to invest less than $10,000 in a small web startup sounds ridiculous to me, especially if one has good knowledge of the startup's business environment and a rapport with the founders. If it's the law, so be it, but there'd have to be a legal workaround for hackers to connect with another hacker's startup financially.

This must be Deja Vu, I remember having a conversation with you about Barack Obama after his election win in a thread where I lost over 60 points.

\-- I wonder how bpick is able to invest legally in this case, because I don't think he fits with the accredited status but is still looking for investments.

<comment><USER9> Yes, it is ridiculous that you and I can't invest in our friend's companies without significant enough hassle that no small company would be interested in such investment (I wouldn't take money from non-accredited investors, even if we really needed money). I'm _sure_ I'd do better investing in Dropbox and Weebly and Wufoo than I would investing in the stock market in general.

I don't recall a conversation about Barack Obama, but I talk a lot, and I don't remember everything I say, so it could have happened. Anyway, I think it'd be a great reform of our investment law, if normal people _could_ buy stock in small companies, without all the hoops and craziness required. This is particularly true now that IPOs are so much less common; it takes years before normal folks have the right to invest in a new company. SOX has eaten up even more of the extremely rapid growth curve of new companies, from the perspective of regular people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> On the other hand, if you opted for the Nomad back in 2001, you definitely made the right choice vs. buying stock in Creative Labs.

<comment><USER11> Ha - I replaced my 32MB Diamond Rio with the whopping 64MB Creative Nomad as soon as it came out. I remember trying to solve the knapsack problem manually, just to squeeze as many total seconds of music onto the thing as possible. On reflection, I was probably a slightly strange 13-year-old.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The thing you learn in stock trading is that you never rue missed/mistaken investments. Otherwise you will spend all the time doing this :)

<comment><USER13> I guess the point of this comparison is showing what's smarter: investing or buying junk.

<comment><USER14> Buying junk, clearly. I'm guaranteed to get considerable value out of a computer, whereas $2000 of Apple shares could well have been worthless.

<comment><USER13> Try squeezing considerable value out of your iPod. It's much more likely that it will squeeze value out of you. You are still better off with 0 dollars in worthless stock.

<comment><USER12> I think that's disingenuous; and is the same point pg makes when he explains that wealth != money.

Take me for example; my nano has barely left my side for the last 2 and a bit years - I work best with music around :) it's _worth_ a lot.

<comment><USER13> And the beer I drink also improves my coding skills, and the coffee and the nicotine.

Stop trying to pass your costly and possibly damaging addiction as something that improves your life and brings you value.

I guess I'm asking to get heavily down-voted but I'm not all that into music. I know some coders that can't work without radio but radio is a torture for me when I try to concentrate. I even read about one guy that thinks that he codes best when he has TV on (spidweb guy, you have to give it to him that he makes amazing stuff all by himself, but I personally think he would have no problem concentrating with pack of buffaloes running over his body). I tried once coding with TV on and I lasted a minute before It drove me nuts. I can bear songs if they are in language I don't understand.

I know that some people have better or worse resistance for distractions but I can't believe that some people concentrate better with distractions than without them.

<comment> Tuna-Fish You are generalizing from one example -- because this is how you are, this is how everyone else must be. This is fallacious, for obvious reasons.

> I know that some people have better or worse resistance for distractions but > I can't believe that some people concentrate better with distractions than > without them.

Why can't you believe that? I personally find myself completely incapable of concentrating in silence. You think the music, or tv, or whatever is a distraction, yet for me it's sorely needed to drown out my own diverging thoughts. I need the constant distraction, or I will very soon find myself thinking about or designing something completely different from what I was supposed to be doing.

What kind of environment you need to be able to work is, however, is not really that important. Much more important is learning not to generalize from yourself. I am utterly dumbfounded that this is not taught in schools at an early age -- I find understanding that you are not me to be one of the crucial life lessons needed to turn people into decent human beings.

Please read at least the 10 first paragraphs of <http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/> , it won't take that long, and for a lot of people I know reading it has been a real life- changing experience.

<comment><USER13> I agree that generalization from one instance is wrong. But you can't assume that every case is different because if you did that then science could not exists. If you would assume that each subsequent item would fall different way there would be no point in searching any universal law of falling.

You construct theory about something with the data you have, and try to gather more data and see how it fits. Especially you look for the data that doesn't fit.

As I live my life I gather data and construct theories. I shared with you with one of my theories that seems to check up so far.

Namely: Music helps you the same way that glass of whiskey helps some doctor, cop or worker of printing press to deal with dull and stressful job.

In my opinion it creates an illusion that it's beneficial for you, same way as you feel better after drinking coffee or alcohol.

You get accustomed to music, listening to it makes your brain addicted to such stimuli and when you abstain from it you have trouble concentrating. That's why you have such trouble concentrating without music.Music gives you value. It only satisfies your addiction. You can argue same way that nicotine gives you value.

<comment> Tuna-Fish > I agree that generalization from one instance is wrong. But you can't assume > that every case is different because if you did that then science could not > exists. If you would assume that each subsequent item would fall different > way there would be no point in searching any universal law of falling.

Yes. But plural of anecdote is not data. How you use music is simply not good enough to base such a huge "theory" on.

> Namely: Music helps you the same way that glass of whiskey helps some > doctor, cop or worker of printing press to deal with dull and stressful job. > In my opinion it creates an illusion that it's beneficial for you, same way > as you feel better after drinking coffee or alcohol.

This would assume that I need the constant distraction because my job is particularly dull or stressful, and I need the pleasure derived from music to be able to bear it. But how does it compute into your theory that 1) I don't need it to be music, or in any way pleasurable. Anything that contains more parseable data than the A/C hum is good enough -- when I still worked in an office, the constant background "chatter" was good enough to keep me sane. 2) This does not apply to me just at work, but on anything and everything I do. To take a very extreme example, I am not able to derive pleasure from sex without something keeping me distracted enough to stay in my mind.

> You get accustomed to music, listening to it makes your brain addicted to > such stimuli and when you abstain from it you have trouble concentrating. > That's why you have such trouble concentrating without music.Music gives you > value. It only satisfies your addiction. You can argue same way that > nicotine gives you value.

This assumes that what I want is music -- but this is not just true. I'm fine with anything I need to spend some thought on parsing. A lot of the distractions I commonly use to keep myself grounded are in fact in no way pleasurable.

Now you have been provided with more data, please update your theory. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is almost depressing. As a freshman in college, I bought a PowerBook. If only I had bought the equivalent value of Apple stock, I could have afforded my entire college education.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, but it's always easy to do this kind of number crunching assuming you know exactly when you will sell the stock.

Of course, that's never the case in real life. Imagine the time you would spend worrying about your investment and analyzing when it will go out or go down or when to exit, etc. If you convert that into money say $20/hr, is it still worth it to invest as suppose to buy the PowerBook?

Better yet compare it to the efficiency you have gained by having a PowerBook, or if you are a hacker, how much more you'd have learned by having a computer then. How would you even go about quantifying that?

<comment><USER8> Thought experiment: Imagine a stock market with active participation by time travelers. Would surprises and risk be eliminated?

<comment><USER16> would the observer [participator?] effect make a time traveler's stock market even more vulnerable to manipulation?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> One trading "strategy" that I use is that I buy the stock of companies whose products I find myself buying or using a lot. AAPL, AMZN, etc.

<comment><USER18> Using a service often does not always translate into that service generating spectacular, analyst beating results.

Looking at businesses that you are familiar with is a good starting point, but is -no substitute- for analyzing the numbers generated by the business. It's better for scuttlebutting, that is, visiting the stores and seeing how customer levels fluctuate. Are there more people visiting the Apple Store this year than last? That kind of thing.

A good case in point - I visited a hamburger chain, tasted the food and hated it. I thought the food was mediocre and the prices were too high. But, I decided to keep the stock anyway. Why? They had a new 32 year old investor who fought his way onto the board of directors, fired members of the old management team, made himself CEO, and cut expenditures to the bone. The result? They company steered clear of bankruptcy, became debt free, generated a 10% free cash flow yield, and has so far generated me an 80% return.

The thing is - had I just visited the restaurant, I probably wouldn't have noticed this. Red dots being removed from styrofoam cups (cost cutting), a picture of the new CEO in the restaurant (change in management), and sliced rather than cherry tomatoes in the salad (cost cutting) may have been indication of some change; but not enough to tell me about the big behind the scenes changes without the company's financials.

<comment><USER17> Actually, it's paying attention to the choices you make (for example, continuing to buy Macs over PCs) in domains that you are knowledgeable.

I actually know a great deal about trading, having done it professionally for a while. I only occasionally trade stocks now; I prefer angel investing...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm still optimistic about my conservative, iPad-based portfolio.

<comment><USER20> You may want to unlaod those iPads sometime soon. As soon as Apple announces the next generation they are going to go down significantly in value.

<comment><USER21> I think he means a portfolio of investments in companies involved in the manufacturing and production of iPads, i.e. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipad#Manufacture>

It sounds like it would be a good idea, but you'd actually have to take a look at each of the companies, and figure out exactly how much each contract with Apple is going to bring in relative to their current revenue streams.

<comment><USER22> I think that he may also just be joking that an 'iPad-based portfolio' is not exactly 'conservative.' (I mean it's a brand-new product, it's still risky no matter how hot it looks to be in the market)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Nicely done! If you were inspired by this thread -- <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1291809> \-- a shout-out would be nice. Glad to see the detailed implementation, either by inspiration or independent- invention, in any case.

But: only back to 1997?

What if I hadn't bought that Powerbook Duo 230 in late 1992? (~$2200 from Whole Earth Access in Berkeley, if I remember correctly.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that comment actually was the inspiration behind my post. I am adding a shout-out right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> If too many had done that then perhaps the stock wouldn't be so valuable today. :-)

<comment><USER25> No, it would have been more valuable: the more people buy, the higher the price is.

<comment><USER26> True. But ironic.

<comment><USER27> I seriously doubt tens of thousands of geeks buying AAPL stock instead of their products would have changed the valuation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is very cool to see. However, you shouldn't have accounted for the splits like you did (I think you had it right the first time you did it). Prices you find in databases/charts for stock prices are already split adjusted.

For example, Apple PowerBook G3 250 (Original/Kanga/3500): Price stated at $5700 released on 11/10/97. On 11/10/97 AAPL closed at $18.37/share. If you spent all $5700 you would have 310.3 shares (assume you can buy partial shares). On/around 6/5/2000 the stock split so you would now have 620ish shares. On/Around 3/28/05 stock split and you would have 1240ish shares. Multiple this by the stock price ~$270/share and you have ~$330,000. As someone already pointed out, you should not take into account inflation because the $330k is the amount you have have in the bank TODAY if you had bought the stock back on 11/10/97.

If you look at the stock chart you will see the price reports on 11/10/97 for AAPL is $4.59/share, this accounts for the split (It was actually $18.37 on that day, but divide by 4 because of the splits and you get $4.59). You can see [http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=AAPL&a=10&b=1&c=...](http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=AAPL&a=10&b=1&c=1997&d=11&e=26&f=1997&g=d) for details about this (You will notice a "close" column and "adjusted close" column. The "adjusted close" is what you will see on all the charts, but "close" was the actual close that day. This is done to avoid massive jumps on the charts that would make them less useful.

Hope that helps, and once again, this was a really cool thing to see, it really puts some things in perspective.

</comment><comment><USER29> How much did Microsoft lose by divesting itself of Apple stock prematurely?

<comment><USER30> Microsoft invested $150 million into Apple on August 5, 1997 (convertible preferred nonvoting stock which ultimately converted into 18.2 million shares of common stock). Bill himself appeared on satellite link at Macworld (1997!). 18.2 million shares today is $4.9 billion (split-adjusted).

I can't find when exactly Microsoft sold their shares, but it was sometime during 2003. Wolfram Alpha calculated the mean price of AAPL in 2003 was 9.26 (max 12.41 min 6.56), which is split-adjusted. The real price then would be 18.52 (mean). One split would have happened, so 36.4 million shares were owned by MSFT at the time of sale, so they sold for a mean of $674 million.

Someone check my math? It's 5am. It's difficult because a lot of the sources I used don't denote whether a price is split-adjusted or not, and Microsoft converted portions of stock at different times. It's a mess.

<comment><USER31> Great analysis. I will note that however much money MS lost or made on the deal, the value of maintaining a customer platform (for Office) and keeping a competitor alive (at a time when the antitrust thing loomed) was probably priceless.

Maybe at the time Microsoft saw Apple as a dying company that would never recover from their early to mid-90s blunders, so throwing it a bone would have seemed like a no brainer at the time.

<comment><USER30> Absolutely. And now Microsoft MacBU makes a killing from developing Mac software (some estimates put it at $350 million [[http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/06/24/microsoft_expa...](http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/06/24/microsoft_expanding_mac_team_ahead_of_new_products.html) ]). (Thanks, by the way!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I wish they had the original Mac 128k I bought in the fall of 1984. I painted all summer to be able to buy that.

</comment><comment><USER33> What if you had bought Apple call options instead of AAPL stock?

If you bought AAPL April $200 Call on Feb. 1 (at $10.20), you would made around 370% return. But obviously trading options is more risky, because you have to get both the direction and timing right.

</comment><comment><USER34> Would be really neat if there were a few of the earlier models too, for comparison

<comment><USER22> The cost of an Apple IIe in inflation-adjusted terms vs the same amount of stock back in the day... vs the price of an original working Apple IIe on ebay now?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> See, if you and me and all of us would have buying Apple's shares instead of its products, Apple's shares would have never being making this tremendous performance.

I think it is a paradox every shareholder face from time to time.

</comment><comment><USER36> Can you also include transaction costs to give a truer picture. This will be more relevant for the smaller gains. Also remember these are pre tax.

<comment><USER37> what about sales tax?

<comment><USER20> Considering all of those, you might as well also include capital gains tax.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I only wish this chart reflected reality. I'm looking at my Fidelity statement for the AAPL stock I bought in 1999 and 2000. In actual dollars, my original investment is now worth 11x what it was back then. Your chart shows stock bought nine years ago is worth 35 times the original investment. Maybe I should ask Fidelity if they've made a mistake...

<comment><USER28> The table takes splits into account incorrectly, so some of the numbers (pre 2000) split show up 4x too high and pre 2005 split show up 2x too high.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Reminds me of a 'Rich dad - Poor dad' seminar I attended on my trip to Philippines.

In my case, I would have saved just a few hundred dollars, I got free AppleCare with my MacBook in 2008 and Apple has already replaced too many things, from my battery to fan to what not.

</comment><comment><USER40> If I hadn't bought that iPod zillion years ago, I would not read the question today^^ All kudos go to iPad buyers, all money to Apple designers.

</comment><comment><USER41> Can you add annualized return for each entry?

</comment><comment><USER42> Wait I would have made 10% on my money just by putting it in Apple shares and not the bank for the last week or two?

<comment><USER30> Yeah. The catch is you could have also lost 10%. or 20%. or more.

<comment><USER42> Doesn't seem a bad risk going on these figures though. I had no idea solid companies had decent share return rates.

<comment><USER8> But look at what could go wrong. Steve Jobs' health for one--one skinny guy with a history of cancer and a used liver gets another life threatening illness and your investment is worth bananas. (As in, you would have been better off buying banana futures.)

<comment><USER43> October $210 puts are $4 a share. A bit pricy, but that would protect you from the catastrophic downside.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> What current tech company (other than Apple) has this kind of potential?

<comment><USER37> Palm had this potential a few years back. Netflix is one, you could have bout one of their shares instead of the monthly subscription and would have had 10 times that now. IMAX is another, so will be Facebook when and if they go public.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> super cool.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I'm glad you like it. I am thinking about possibly updating the code base so that the prices are generated in real-time, based off Apple's current stock price.

<comment><USER46> [http://www.google.com/finance?q=aapl&output=json](http://www.google.com/finance?q=aapl&output=json)

I believe it is item "l"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Time to sell AAPL? =)

<comment><USER48> don't know if you are serious in this question, but I would be interested in people's honest opinion.

Is apple over valued(or i guess i should say over priced) at its current market value. would you expect apple's value to go down relative to the market over the next year or so?

<comment><USER49> It's a tough question. The problem is that AAPL makes a lot of their money off hype/fad products (and don't flame me on this, they make some nice products, but the AAPL marketing machine is genius and could sell the Brooklyn Bridge right now). Not that this is a bad thing, but fads can change on a dime. Remember how cool the RAZR used to be?

Rightly or wrongly AAPL is seen as a personal extension of SJs will. What happens when he leaves?

AAPL has also just had a HUGE run up. I'm not saying it's going to drop anytime soon, but you don't want to be the last one on the train.

AAPL makes premium products at premium prices. Has the overall market (jobs, financials, housing) really recovered enough that people in general are okay with spending again? Some statistics say no, but recent earnings say possibly.

All these are questions you need to answer for yourself. I would be a little gun shy today (either buying or shorting) because I think there are easier/less risky investments to be in right now.</comment></comment></comment>


Indian Coders Found Cheating in Google Code Jam? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nextbigwhat.com/indian-developers-accused-of-cheating-in-google-code-jam-297/

<comment><USER2> There's an extensive discussion from an earlier submission here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5658400>

Interestingly, for me, the link there currently doesn't load, whereas this one does. The other is an "https" link, and I'm speculating that that's related.</comment>


Did Google shutdown _________ yet? - <AUTHOR> https://didgoogleshutdown.com/ <comment><USER2> Looks slightly outdated. Stating that Nexus is dying and that it may be replaced by Pixel to be announced in October, which has clearly already happened. If they could crawl news articles and auto update statuses then there may be more interest in this.</comment>


Elite Dangerous - Mac Version Stretch Goal - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1461411552/elite-dangerous/posts

<comment><USER2> Title misleading?

"If we reach £1.4 million in funding through the Kickstarter project, we will release a Mac version of the game around 3 months after the initial Windows PC release."

£989,339 pledged of £1,250,000 goal

<comment><AUTHOR> I suppose I should have used "Elite Dangerous to get Mac support within 3 months of PC launch if project funded and stretch goal met", but it wasn't very catchy!

<comment><USER2> "£500.000 Still Needed for Elite Dangerous for Mac"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Currently it looks like they aren't going to reach their goal of £1.2 million (<http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/1461411552/elite-dangerous/>). Maybe they are trying to get the mac crowd on board in order to push it over the line?

<comment><USER4> There is always a last minute surge at the end which this doesn't take into account [http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showpost.php?p=29887&postco...](http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showpost.php?p=29887&postcount=31)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If I have to fire up a Windows 7 VM to play Elite: Dangerous, I will, but certainly, I'd be even happier with a native version.

The project's funding trend has nosed upwards lately, despite Christmas, so perhaps word will circulate regarding the possibility of Mac support, as well as the newer pledge levels, if people feel inclined to nudge their existing pledges upward.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you want to see what the original Elite games were like, check out:

<http://www.eliteforever.co.uk/downloads.html>

Or this Elite-inspired open source version:

<http://www.oolite.org>

<comment><USER4> Some other Elite inspired open source games. <http://www.eliteforever.co.uk/games.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not pledging anything 'till there's a Linux version - I mean, FFS, loads of people are making Linux versions of stuff now, it can't be _that_ hard unless they use DirectX or something silly.</comment>


Housing.com, CEO fired. Board says enough is enough. - <AUTHOR> http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/no-more-resignations-housing-com-says-enough-is-enough-fires-ceo-rahul-yadav/articleshow/47893423.cms

<comment><AUTHOR> It was bound to happen sooner or later.</comment>


The deepfake artists must be stopped - <AUTHOR> https://nationalpost.com/opinion/jordan-peterson-deep-fake <comment><USER2> Wishful thinking, the genie is out and it's not coming back no matter what we do.</comment>


Going for the 5 hour workday - <AUTHOR> http://code.krister.ee/going-for-the-5-hour-workday/ <comment><USER2> I had this same kind of personality / mental condition, and I am going to say, if he is really of the same personality type, 5-hour days are not going to help this author in the long term. What is helping his mood is not really the shorter day, but the hope of having made a short-term structural change that might fix things. The thing is, it won't. He already mentions at the end that burnouts are back. Well, pretty soon the 5-hour days will be feeling too long and he will be 'unable' to do them. Then what? 3-hour days?

The fundamental problem is that he doesn't actually want to be doing what he is doing, despite the rhetoric of "great team and awesome project". Come on, is that really how you feel about it deep in your heart, or is it empty SV rhetoric?

Two things will help this author:

(1) Strike out on your own, following your own motivation only. Yes you have to figure out how to make ends meet financially, but that is your lot in life. Fortunately it is easier to do this with computers than in most other fields.

(2) Meditate, learn to observe your mind and why it does what it does, so that you don't feel powerless or subservient to things like burnout. It's hard to explain the transformation that takes place, but being able to stand next to or outside these mental processes is very powerful.

<comment><USER3> He also doesn't really think well from the company's perspective, here's an Employee FAQ to complement the Boss FAQ on what's not addressed:

1\. There is a fixed cost to having an in-house employee no matter how many hours he/she works. Healthcare, Office Space, Parking, lunch, any subscriptions to systems per-head etc. So inherently it's a bad deal to lower % productivity because these cost stay same. Note that not only these costs don' decline, company now has to hire _more_ people to replace lost time, and incur these costs for those people as if they're full-time. So instead of fixed cost going from 1x->.8, it actually goes to 1.25x to get same amount of work done!! (assuming 80% productivity at 5h)

2\. Even if (1) wasn't an issue, splitting a project to a larger team is inherently less efficient. The communication overhead of a 2 person team (1 comm. channel to manage) is 1/3 of a 3 person team (3 relationships/channels). Communication complexity increases exponentially with team size.

3\. Time & context are very important to competitiveness in technology. Doing the same project in the same #hours and same $ is irrelevant in the real world if Team1 did it in one 4 weeks real-world time and Team2 did in 6 weeks of real world time, even if total hours worked is same. Likewise, employees build company and project context faster, can iterate faster, acquire relevant domain knowledge faster, and thus become more productive in Team1.

4\. Should your stock vest over 5-6 years now instead of 4?

[ edited for paragraph breaks ]

<comment><USER4> You're making the mistake of saying fewer hours would be less productive, and there's considerable doubt about that.

<comment><USER2> I have run a company for 13 years and I don't have doubt about it at all. Dropping to 5 hours is for sure going to be less productive unless all your employees are terrible in the first place (in which case, just hire people who want to work more).

I am not claiming that the standard 8-hour day is the maximum; but I think if a shorter day is better, I would guess the situation would peak around 7 or 7.5 hours. But again this depends on what kind of people you are talking about. I personally work 60+ hours a week, most weeks, and I prefer it that way.

<comment><USER5> And you are actually productive for all of the 60 hours?

I work a normal north european 37.5 hour week and I'm productive about 75% of the time. If I'm having an off day, I'll just go home and do something else and come look at the problem from a new angle the next day.

Programming is a creative profession, just piling on the hours doesn't affect productivity in a linear fashion.

<comment><USER6> Piling on hours will affect productivity super-linearly. It means more parts of the project are fresh on your mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I actually worked at a company who tried something similar to this (6 hours/5 days) for about ~2 months, and it worked for a little while. Unfortunately we found a lot of problems with this:

\- People who started early (~7am), left really early, and people who like to start much later (~10am). This led to only ~3 hour overlap time period when the majority of the dev team was in. There was a small effort to normalize the start times, but we could never find a common time that worked for everyone.

\- I felt this put an obscene amount of pressure on some people (including myself) more so than others.

\- People hate meetings, people beg and cry that meetings are a waste, but the bitter reality is ether you get everyone on the same page at once, or you need to do it separately, which becomes even more pressure for certain people. Combine this with the limited time when you can guarantee the majority of dev will be in, makes it difficult.

\- The coop/intern students i felt got shafted hard by this, since time is so much more valuable during that two months they often got very little direction.

\- I also personally found that about 6 of us (team leads/seniors) ended up with much more pressure, and stress due to trying to force 8 hours of work into 6 hours of a day.

In the end we ended up giving up on the idea, due in combination to other departments complaining, some HR payroll issues, and problems with coverage.

<comment><USER8> This highlights something about our industry that I find a little weird. Collectively we want to be respected as professionals, yet feel it's ok come into work whenever it pleases us despite its impact on the team.

In my view, a true professional shows up and gets the job done, no matter what. Asking employees to show up at 9 am on a reasonably consistent basis so that the team can work effectively seems like a pretty low bar to me (except in the case of special personal circumstances, of course).

<comment><USER9> It sounds old fashioned, but I have to agree. I look at my parents -- my mom worked 16 hour shifts in a hospital with no natural light for almost 40 years. She was doing work that touched people in life or death situations; a far cry from many of the apps we're building.

She never complained. Yet we find problems sitting for 8 hours in an Aeron chair drinking micro-brew coffee with the freedom to check out Facebook or Amazon whenever we want.

Was my mom unhappy? Nope, she loved her job. Was she tired and burned-out at times? Absolutely. I think a lot of this has to do with perspective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's already a 5 hour work day, it's just inside of an 8 hour attendance day.

<comment><USER11> More like a let's touch that code for an hour or so day. ;)

<comment><USER12> After that lets have a meeting!

<comment><USER13> Just finished a 2 month project without having a single meeting with business and I must say, things are much better. Business never told me directly what to do and I never told them directly how long something would take me. Best approach ever.

<comment><USER14> This works wonderfully if everybody involved acts rationally and professionally. Otherwise, it can quickly become a nightmare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Also worth realising that in a lot of companies you're not being paid for your output, you're being paid for a certain amount of access to your brain.

The value in your job isn't your output, it's the organisational outcomes that occur as a result of you doing what ya do.

Some companies are fine and built around the outcomes of 5 hours a day of your code. Some organisations though really want 8 hours a day of access to those sweet, sweet neurons. Even if the constant interruptions, meetings and feelings of unproductivity are side effects, perhaps they value the outcomes of 2 hours a day of your code and the value sharing that comes from an inane question at 17:59, more than absolute output.

Not saying the latter is more efficient or should be right, but just showing there's different value companies derive from their employees over and above project deliverables.

<comment><USER16> Is that really true, or is it just a well-sounding rationalisation we tell ourselves to avoid doing anything to make things better?

<comment><USER17> It -can- be. I know I am woefully undertasked, and in way, way too many meetings. Oftentimes I'm thrown at things that are floundering despite having no knowledge of them, their history, their current deliverables, etc. Not to actually code, but to just be present. Even though I feel entirely useless in such a role, it seems to provide some comfort to my superiors, and even to the teams in question. There are enough areas I'm extremely knowledgeable in, there are enough times I -am- able to save people/teams large amounts of work, there are enough times I can basically just look at a set of stories that they're predicting will take man-weeks, and say "I'll have a solution in place for you to start playing with tomorrow", that my presence seems to benefit a number of people even when I do nothing at all, just as a security blanket. If that's worth my salary to them, while I still have time to learn things on my own (and, er, browse HN), fair enough.

<comment><USER18> I hope you're an architect-level or at least getting there. I kind of feel sad for some architects though, they rarely get to code anymore, their existence is meetings, but presumably their ability to coordinate and prioritize the big picture outweighs having them apply their coding chops. For coders that can't give up coding it's a self-limiting move to resist that direction, lots of companies seem to have pressure that to advance you have to do 'less'.

When you do your big prototype solutions is it usually something you toss over the fence to the team that now takes on the rest of the dev/qe responsibility or do you try to work closely with one or two people on that team as you build it? I mostly ask because another sort of altruistic (or selfish if you're just killing time until the next round of meetings) thing you can do with your role is go around dropping mana on heads-down coding grunts by working with them directly on something; they'll probably have a nice feeling of appreciation like this person, who they aren't quite sure does what but must be very valuable, is taking time to work with them, and hopefully you teach them a few useful things from your deep knowledge to boot.

<comment><USER17> Kind of. Due to some internal politics, we have an 'architecture team' being formed, by someone who I don't want to work for (but who wants to poach me). Meanwhile I've been the de facto architect for a year and a half for software development. My actual title is 'backend tech lead'.

As to approach, it depends. Occasionally I've written and hosted a solution, and given endpoints for people to test with, before then walking people through the specifics and bringing devops on board to move it to production, and then will still actively take a hand in making changes/fixes/etc. Other times I've basically just POC'ed it, and then suggested to a team "Hey, this looks like it will solve a problem you're facing, here's some POC code, maybe play with and evaluate this approach, see if it'll fit your needs?" and they have, and in the process have learned more about the particulars than I knew, so that they're in a good place to do the real evaluation and decide what direction to head in. And still other times, especially common with juniors, when someone hits a roadblock, I'll sit with them, seek to understand the problem, and either explain the nature of the problem, and some possible solutions, and leave it up to them to pick one (since they have the most domain knowledge), or work/talk with them to work to and understand an ideal solution (if it doesn't require domain knowledge I don't have).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Lot of people in this thread saying they'd be willing to work N% hours less for N% less pay. Am I the only one living in a high cost of living area, for which the opposite is true? I'd be totally for working more but getting paid more. At this point in my life, mid-life crisis age, I am starting to notice time stalking me, realizing my inadequate retirement savings, and wondering how many more at-bats I'm going to have before it's time to walk away from the baseball game. Am I going to have to eat dog food when I retire? What's my kid's college going to cost? Will I ever be able to afford a vacation? Who really has comfortable answers to these questions?

Why on earth would you _choose_ to work and get paid less than you can, while you are young and capable?? I look back and wish I had worked multiple jobs when I was younger, not that I had _fewer_ hours.

<comment><USER20> > I look back and wish I had worked multiple jobs when I was younger, not that > I had fewer hours.

Paradoxically, I just read an Internet comment how your 20s should be a wild ride of backpacking, meeting people, having sex, and living a carefree life.

I don't think your effort should go into maximising work hours; that's a mistake I have made a few times in the past. You maximise the ROI on your effort by climbing the right hill [1]; and it takes some failures before you find the right one.

[1]: [http://cdixon.org/2009/09/19/climbing-the-wrong- hill/](http://cdixon.org/2009/09/19/climbing-the-wrong-hill/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Given a choice, I think 8x4 would be more sensible in terms of benefits. The best use of free time is enjoyable experiences outside work, which is more doable when you have it without interruptions of a work schedule. Five hours a day is awesome if you have a hobby or a side project; not so much if you want to travel. The second reason is the time it takes to level up and actually start working. Honestly, this could be lessened if I didn't check reddit & HN first thing after I start working but I have grown a bit habitual to it.

At any given day, five hours of focused work is much better than eight hours filled with distractions, but I haven't found the magical solution to make that (super-focused work) happen.

Personally, I don't have much of an issue with working hours. The main issue is I can't enjoy long stretches of vacation. Yes, it's possible to sacrifice some of your salary to go wild, but you can't do it without getting a frown from your superiors.

<comment><USER21> Right now I work 4 days out of 5. I'm paid 4 and my retirement plan will be 4/5th too. But at the same time, I work on personal projects. I also choose my day off on tuesday. Because tuesday is not an extended weekend, so it's "my own projects day" and it's the first day like that in the week so I'm not tired like I'd be on, say thursday.

I have to work until 67 in my country. So when I'll be off, I'll be way to tired to start new stuff. Moreover, after 50 years old, I'll get a good chance of getting cancer or some other life-changing disease. So I think it's better if I take my time right now...

Final note : this holds because my job is not a dream job, so my return-on- time-investment is weak (I don't consider the ability to buy a big car or around-the-world vacations, or top-notch-phone to be a good return on the time I spend at work)

<comment><USER22> > I have to work until 67 in my country.

I presume you mean you have to work until 67 if you rely on the state to fund your retirement?

<comment><USER23> Depends how you interpret it. Could also be due to any of the following:

\- low wages meaning lower contributions

\- low investment returns

\- changes to the tax system

\- they started contributing signifiant amounts later in life due to other pressures

<comment><USER21> I'm just following the "system" here. Nothing fancy. I'm not in a situation where I can retire earlier. I could do it, but for that I'd have to make a ton of money, which implies competing with people which may be better at selling themselves than me. I'm afraid I wouldn't perform very well in such context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've always worked from home (freelanced, then started a remote company). Never actually been to a regular office.

Recently, I joined a coworking space.

I used to think that I'm "unproductive", but after seeing how others actually work, I'm surprised that businesses get any work done at all.

I'll be amazed if most employees work at more than 60% productivity.

<comment><USER25> I've worked in offices, now working from home. A few hours a day is enough to be considered exceptionally productive in terms of coding for me, this leaves a lot of time for other productivity, family, work around the house. In an office environment the rest of the time is spent looking busy. A surprising number of people will not admit it and will very adamently deny that they are not being productive, yet output shows differently.

But then there are meetings. Factoring in meetings takes a lot of time. Endless talk about improving process...

The flip-side of focusing on productivity and less so on actively participating in meetings or scheduling them is getting stuck in a coding job, being remote and not active in pursuing promotions the companies I work for usually fall back to relying on me for good code and meeting/exceeding planned output and that's it.

In my experience, if you have the goal of moving up a company hierarchy, you have to put on a show that you are a busy which has little to do with output (code) and lots to do with appearences (lot's of talking).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I track all my billable time for last 7 years. My average is 4:30 billable hours a day and I can confirm that every period of over-working ends with equal or longer period of under-working. So the 4:30 is like a gold number. I stopped to fight with this, and now after 4:30 hours I happily clock out and go home. (Yes, I'm self-employeed). This way the only reasonable strategy to earn more without having health issues is to bill more per hour. Exception to this 4:30 rule is non-programming work that doesn't require high concentration: visual design, reports, configuration, CSS tweaks etc - I can do it pretty much non-stop for whole day.

<comment><USER27> >every period of over-working ends with equal or longer period of under- working

I've only recently come to accept this. I've recently hit a period of too many clients showing up at one time and I now feel stupid when I work on the weekend because I know that kind of "heroic" effort will be balanced out by me goofing off on Monday.

<comment><USER28> and thats precisely the cool thing. i made 4k last weekend working on a video encoder. delivered and now goof of since then

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> My contract specifies a 7.5h workday... But I do only 6h/day, and so do most of my colleagues. I am very lucky: I live in France, this country has a strong culture of "stay late at work and the boss will like you", yet my firm does not care about that. It cares about getting sh*t done.

This is a broader subject than "work hours": my firm thinks that staying more hour to procrastinate is not not useful, and it believes that employees are more efficient when they are happy! In order to have an efficient workforce and less turnover, I think any business should try to answer: "for each employee: what conditions does he/she need to be happy at work?".

<comment><USER30> You definitely have a dream job for France! I live here too but I am "lucky" to work for US employers remotely but from what I have seen at traditional French companies your situation is unusual. I hope that those ideas start to spread across French business culture!

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I've tried both 5 short workdays and 3 longer workdays. I like 3 longer workdays better. A full day for work and a full day for something else mean, to me, that I can focus more fully on work and then focus more fully on something else. A "half work, half not work" day means, to me, that I can't quite focus on either.

TFA presents the shorter week [the alternative to a shorter day] as 3 consecutive days; I prefer interleaving work and non-work days, so as to neither be absent from work for 2 days in a row, nor work for 2 days in a row.

<comment><USER32> I worked the 3x10 schedule for a while, I loved it! Unfortunately, my boss insisted I come back to work full-time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I really wish more companies would be willing to do this, as a childless adult I have no need for more than 20 hours worth of pay, and my health definitely benefits on a lighter schedule.

Currently I'm achieving this through contracting but I would much rather have a more typical employment situation to reduce the administrative burden and the need for sales.

<comment><USER34> > I really wish more companies would be willing to do this, as a childless > adult I have no need for more than 20 hours worth of pay, and my health > definitely benefits on a lighter schedule.

Pardon my ignorance but in your view how is having a child supposed to push this in the other direction? Do you see having a child as an opportunity/reason to raise the 20 hours/week to 40 hours/week and stay away from home longer? Because I thought the point of raising children was so you could spend some of your time raising a family, and my impression was most older people would rather be with their families than at work. Do you see yourself wishing that you could work 40 hours when you have children or something? Wouldn't it make more sense to work more now and save for that future instead so you don't have to work as hard then?

<comment><USER35> im with OP. if you are alone right now all the extra time you have will be yours alone, and all the money you earn will have to be enough to support you.

If i chose to do it like you sugested. Work 100% and save 50%, there is no way in hell that i would save that 50%. Nobody would. When you only have 10$ in bank to buy a lunch you buy it for max 10$ but if you have 100$ you have to force yourself to spend only 10$. you probably would not. I know that i would not do it 100% of time. So in the end you end up saving alot less then 50%.

when you get your child, the extra time that you have if you work less will be spend between you, your child/family, your alone time ( if you value it, will be not even close to 50% ) and because having a family is way more expensive, all the money you saved when working 100% and supposed to save 50% would be spend 3 times faster then when you where alone, and then you would have to go back to work.

<comment><USER34> > When you only have 10$ in bank to buy a lunch you buy it for max 10$ but if > you have 100$ you have to force yourself to spend only 10$. you probably > would not.

I would agree with you but this is not the situation we're talking about there. The OP is totally comfortable living with 50% of the income; clearly he's not counting pennies when he goes out to get lunch, and I assumed that's not a situation he's looking to get himself into either (but if he is for some reason, then OK, you're right).

It very much seemed like he'd be still living pretty darn comfortably and getting everything he wants at 50% pay. Unless you like to spend money just for the hell of it, I don't see why you'd spend more on your lunch just because you're making more money, when you're already eating whatever you want anyway.

> when you get your child, the extra time that you have if you work less will > be spend between you, your child/family, your alone time ( if you value it, > will be not even close to 50% ) and because having a family is way more > expensive, all the money you saved when working 100% and supposed to save > 50% would be spend 3 times faster then when you where alone, and then you > would have to go back to work.

I was thinking more like, invest the money in something instead of directly spending (say) 10 years' worth of 2x salary in like 3 years of daily life expenses. Maybe even use it to start your own business and dictate your own hours... so many possibilities I can't even think of when you have the money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I wish more companies offered less than 40hrs/wk. But, hey, most places don't like even giving vacation. I'd rather commit seppuku than go back to a 40hr office.

<comment><USER37> What do you do now?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> There is another point to consider: Getting 20% less money, doesn't necessarily also mean 20% less money after taxes. When I was working part-time (20h per week) while studying, working full-time during summer meant this: ~90% more work (from 20h to 38.5h) but only ~60% higher salary (after taxes). So I just continued to work part-time in holidays and enjoyed summer. In my country higher salary means higher taxes, working less hours therefore means paying less taxes because of a lower salary. Taxes don't consider the number of hours you work. Although you need to consider that you also pay less e.g. into your pensions fund, some of your additional salary is "just" taxed away. When working 20h the difference for me was substantial, right now not so much. But that may be different for you.

</comment><comment><USER39> Great to see people trying things like this!

But... Ctrl-F "commute"? Nope, don't see anything. Are you either remote or living very close to the office? Having more than a few minutes of commute does potentially change the trade-offs.

<comment><USER40> When you only have to work for 6 hours it's very easy to avoid the more congested hours. Allowing you to get to work by routes that normally are collapsed, or just using the same route and getting there 15+ minutes earlier because there are no traffic.

I think is a win-win

<comment><USER16> I used to work 6 hours and commuted each day by bike for a total of 2 hours of commute. It was the best. You do your work AND get your daily exercise AND have 8 hours left over.

<comment><USER41> You had a 1 hour commute each way by bike? Did you live 13+ miles away or did you just take a leisurely pace?

<comment><USER16> It was ~10km in a straight line uphill. Our roads aren't really built for bikes and I don't want to become a smudge on the road, so my route was more meandering to avoid every large straight road possible. My absolute fastest was 32 minutes going work->home downhill, taking the usually unsafe roads, because traffic was unusually low for that day. After I bought a velocimeter and used it for a while, my average speed was about 14km/h.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I am very very interested in this myself. I proposed something similar to my current company but got refused.

I experimented with different hours off on certain days and found that the thing that would turn me into a productivity monster would be a 4-5h work day with remote option. But now try to find something like this (especially in Asia). Despite loving my current job, I think if I would get a counter offer from a company with these benefits, I would probably quit right away.

I am personally not a office bee and dislike leaving when it's dark. I'm drained of all my motivation and the darkness makes me just want to go home, watch a YouTube video and sleep, just to repeat the same cycle again. I managed to counter this fairly successfully by working outside of cafes that have terraces and picking a new location every day. My motivation and productivity level stays up longer and the drain is reduced, but now if I just had more time...

</comment><comment><USER43> Reminds me of a buddy's 5 year plan. He owned 50% of a company that he bootstrapped to 8 figures in revenue; his co-founder owned the other 50%.

Here's his 5 year plan:

Year 1: work 4 days a week

Year 2: work 3 days a week

Year 3: work 2 days a week

Year 4: work 1 day a week

Year 5: cash cheques, spend time with his family, and do adventure sports full time

</comment><comment><USER44> _But since I 'm giving the company the best hours of the day I would ask 80% of pay for the 60% of workload._

The author states that he's able to work with fewer distractions and better concentration when it's a 5 hour day, so everyone's a winner - he gets more time, he gets the same amount of work done, and the company saves money. I can imagine it works very well in the author's circumstances. But how many workers are in the same situation?

For a start, _very few_ people can afford a 20% cut to their pay. Anyone in that situation is out.

For businesses that pay people enough that they could afford a 20% pay cut, such as the big high profile IT companies, the business is usually awash with cash; they need people to do _more_ work and are willing to pay overtime for them to do it. Saving 20% of the wage bill is no incentive.

Lastly, as dasmoth points out, if you have a commute then you'd just be increasing the relative amount of time you're travelling compared to working, which I imagine would make it feel much worse. I have a 30 minute commute each way and when I do a half day it feels like a huge waste of time.

As a solution when it's appropriate I think it's great, but I doubt it's applicable to many people.

<comment><USER45> > But how many workers are in the same situation?

Most software developers, I'd guess

> very few people can afford a 20% cut to their pay. Anyone in that situation > is out.

True, but among software devs it's proably a lot more common than in the rest of the population

> Saving 20% of the wage bill is no incentive.

It's the same argument as why businesses want workers to do 50h weeks and not 40. It's hard to find two talented persons so they find one and hope he'll work more. What they aren't seeing is that they'll have to find a replacement for him within just a couple of years. The incentive for the business must come from the fact that once this is widespread enough, talented people aren't going to want to work for the old "we expect you to be here 40-50h" businesses.

> if you have a commute then you'd just be increasing the relative amount of > time you're travelling compared to working, which I imagine would make it > feel much worse.

This is important. First, if you have a 1h commute it makes no sense to go to an office every day and do 5h as you point out. For some it would make more sense to work 2-6 days a week from home, thereby reducing the number of commute hours per work hour. For others, it would make most sense to do 4x6 instead of 5x5 hours etc. Also (and this is very important) if you do commute it's important to be able to work during the commute. A 1h train ride is easy to convert to work (even if it's not productive work but at least being available for chat questions, catching up with email etc) but a 1h car ride is not.

<comment><USER44> _True, but among software devs it 's proably a lot more common than in the rest of the population_

Even among that small subset of the population I doubt it's common. Your lifestyle expands to fit your income. That makes it increasing difficult to accept a lower wage. Further to that, it'll become even less common as developers get older and more commonly have mortgages and families.

<comment><USER45> Indeed - but if you asked me 10 years ago whether I'd rather have this setup than the extra pay - I would no doubt have taken less work. Consequently today I would perhaps have a smaller house, had I taken that chance.

There may be those that won't be able to take this offer because they already have the mortgage however,

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Back when I worked for someone else, I switched to part time after I had been there several years. I would work Mon, Tues, Thurs and got paid 60% of my previous salary. I was more productive than ever and came to the office having thought through things and ready to type it out.

I also didn't notice the drop in salary because I had time to repair things and didn't "buy" progress in hobbies. I also had time to design things for work while sitting in a convertible by a lake rather than a drab office. It was one of the best experiences of my life. Sometimes I wish I could do the same thing working for myself but the situation is different.

The only tough part was not having time to socialize with coworkers. They would take breaks and talk about things but I felt my time was so precious that I wanted to get my work done.

<comment><USER47> This does seem nice, but if I'm being honest with myself if I was only working 3/5 of the time for 3/5 of the pay, the last thing I'd be doing in a convertible by the lake was work. :)

M/T/H does seem better than M/T/W or M/W/F though.

</comment></comment><comment> EZ-E One issue is that most companies would take a person asking for a lighter work hours as lazy, or not motivated No matter the company, there will always have "that" vibe when wanting less hours, unless they are specifically seeking a part time

"What's wrong, don't you want to work 50 hours a week like the rest of us ? What's the matter ? Not motivated ?"

<comment><USER48> For a different perspective, consider the Netherlands where the right to work part-time is enshrined in law. It's really common for people to switch to 36 or 32 hours having previously worked 40 hours full-time, and it's culturally acceptable and isn't seen as lazy or unmotivated.

[http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist- explains/2015/05/ec...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist- explains/2015/05/economist-explains-12)

<comment><USER49> "and it's culturally acceptable and isn't seen as lazy or unmotivated"

Uh, you should probably add to that "... by other people who work part time". There most certainly _is_ a career bias against part time workers. Sure, in some sectors it might be worse than others, and not all of it is that explicit - but come promotion time, working part time gives you a severe handicap.

<comment><USER48> Well, no, I wouldn't add that because plenty who work full-time don't see part-timers as lazy or unmotivated (or may intend to do so themselves at some point if they have a kid, for example).

And sure...it may indeed be the case for some that promotions are slower to come by not working full-time. Hardly strange- if you work fewer hours, your experience will accrue more slowly. But this is separate from cultural acceptability or value judgments by your coworkers/employer: one can be productive and motivated for 36 hours a week, just as one can be lazy and unmotivated for 40.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I went through some kind of burnout as well last year (more related to personal stuff than work itself) and decided to take a long vacation. I didn't want to go back to the usual schedule and risk having the same issue again in a year or two, so I decided to work part time when I came back.

So, now I work Monday to Wednesday and have Thursday to Sunday free. This means I only have three days per week to make an impact on the company (as opposed to the ones who work full time), so I find myself really focused. My productivity vs before has skyrocketed.

What do I do on my extra days? Sometimes I go out, sometimes I just do nothing and relax, sometimes I do small side contracts or personal projects. I hope one of these takes off one day and allow me to recover the money I gave up when switching to part time. At least now I've got the energy to work on them.

</comment><comment><USER51> /me looks at clock, laughs, gets back to work.

<comment><USER52> at least you are allowed (i assume) to check HN every now and then during office/work hours? There is always worse :)

<comment><USER51> Yeah mostly on HN while:

* Tests are running.

* long-running scripts are running.

* Code is compiling.

* Database is importing.

* Files are copying.

* etc

Thank goodness for this site and a few others.

<comment><USER53> What do you compile, linux source?

<comment><USER51> * "Compiling" static assets (CSS/JS) on a JRuby-on-Rails project from 2012.

* docker build -t whatever -f some/Dockerfile .

* aws cloudformation update-stack ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Have you also done anything about trying to find out why you have trouble focusing? I read some older article from your blog also and got the feeling you have been taking yourself as a static thing and that the things around you need to change for you to feel better. Or did i get that wrong?

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting view. I would myself say I've tried a lot of things and I wish I could be contempt with what I have, but it just never works out this way. However I'm totally open for suggestions, since I'm really willing to try anything (but "suck it up").

Also I have tried figuring out what's wrong/different about me and I have no answer. I've actually have had situations where I'm grateful for having a job at all, but the positivity only lasts a few weeks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I'm a remote freelancer and currently also doing 25h/week but usually distributed over 7 days. Originally started because the birth of my daughter but I've quickly noticed how my productivity increased. I think it's even more than my productivity in 40h in the office (also because I could never really relax there). I used to have the "I hate everything and being locked up in that office all day long is awful" moments every 3 months. Now my motivation stays roughly the same over the year.

</comment><comment><USER56> 2 weeks is not enough of a dataset. Habits have to be unlearned and off-work time reorganized.

Come back in a year.

Also, it would be better to ask the manager's observations regarding productivity. Biases and all, you see.

<comment><AUTHOR> will do :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Well, programming isn't really traditional work. You know,

      W=F×s

We don't apply a lot of F and definitely don't move a long s, so at the end of the day there isn't a lot of W we've done. I think it's useful to think of the Puritanian work ethic briefly mentioned in this article, together with the recent article about running modern society on human power alone. Back in the day, we really did run a lot of things on human power. Yes, for the really long s, we used large animals capable of sustaining a great deal of F throughout the day, but other than that, a lot of stuff was done by hand. If you don't apply your share of the F, you literally don't have food to eat. The goods you had were a direct product of hand labour, every bread was made with a nontrivial amount of calories expended by human muscle.

As we see, the more you work your muscles, the better they start working - that's the basic premise of exercise and getting in shape. However, your brain doesn't quite work like that. You can over-exert your mind much more easily than you can your muscles and it just doesn't recover as well as them. For your muscle, the cycle is work->muscle hurts->muscle recovers->work hurts you less now. For your mind, the cycle is the other way around work->you get burned out->you recover->you now burn out more easily. This fundamental difference in the nature of work in the knowledge economy is what we should focus on, to overcome the work ethic, traditions and employer-employee regulations, that were formed in the time when 1 bread = lots and lots of calories expended by muscle.

</comment><comment><USER57> I remember the Heroku founders espoused 6 hour work days for developers. They felt that this was the daily limit for creative workers - and that there was not only diminishing returns after 6 hours, but potentially negative ones (due to bad decisions made when overworked).

</comment><comment><USER58> The reason hourly employees are to be paid time and a half in the US is to incentivize companies to hire more people. Decreasing the full time/OT line increases the demand for labor. I just wish I knew how to make that thought agreeable in the US.

<comment><USER59> > I just wish I knew how to make that thought agreeable in the US.

Maybe relieving employers of the need to provide all full time employees with fringe benefits (ie. medical insurance)?

I don't know if this means we need a publicly funded, single-payer, healthcare system, or if there is a more attractive solution. But the way a person's healthcare is tied to their employer in this country is rather bizarre, and I'm sure it is widely regarded by businesses as an incentive to avoid brining on more full-time people.

<comment><USER60> _Maybe relieving employers of the need to provide all full time employees with fringe benefits (ie. medical insurance)?_

Even before it was legally mandated, market forces made it virtually impossible to not offer it for full-time skilled labor.

Why would I work for you when I can go to your competitor, work for them and get medical insurance? Even if I was in a position where I needed a job, as soon as I can leave, I'm going to go elsewhere.

<comment><USER59> Why don't the same market forces drive my employer to buy gas for my car or give me gift cards to amazon or walmart?

<comment><USER60> Ask for that in your next salary negotiation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> > Free time has filled up. I still get more stuff done, but personal > development still requires proper scheduling and planning. The allure of > "I'll have time for everything" has gone.

Yes: it's not the working for 8 hours, but rather the limited time left after the 8 hours is over. There is so much more in my life than what others will pay me to do, and I'd have so much more energy for work if I was given more of my time back to pursue it...

</comment><comment><USER62> You can't measure engineering productivity over a span of a couple of weeks. You can't compare the output from week X to week Y unless the test conditions and subjects are completely in-sync. We all know that would be impossible.

Here, the author claims there is a change in productivity, all the way down to a %.

There is nothing scientific behind this; you might as well let your cat pick the numbers. They will be just as valid.

</comment><comment><USER63> The word "commute" is missing from this essay.

<comment><USER64> More broadly, there's overhead and limitations imposed by having to work on a given day. Even if you're working a short day, you usually can't take off and do a substantial recreational activity or really jump into some project.

People differ of course, but a 3-day weekend is worth a whole lot more to me than somewhat shorter days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why not be a freelancer?

Work when you want to; earn market rent for your time; and balance your need for leisure time (which may differ from others') with your need for compensation (and, maybe some other gratification if you love your job).

We are all free agents, even if it doesn't always feel that way in a traditional job.

</comment><comment><USER65> On Sweden's 6-hour workday: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/17/efficiency- up-...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/17/efficiency-up-turnover- down-sweden-experiments-with-six-hour-working-day)

</comment><comment><USER66> If a company starting doing this, it would be a real boon for recruiting. It's pretty hard to compete w/.

</comment><comment><USER67> I find that 20 and 25 hours is too little. You need to spend a considerable time in office just to be part of what's going on.

However 30-35h where perfect. You get stuff done, you are not too far out of the loop, especially if others do the same, you are still able to rest enough.

</comment><comment><USER68> My dream workday:

From 6:15am to 9:00am, work alone at home.

Get ready and 15 minutes walk/cycle to an office.

From 9:30am to 12:45pm, team work.

6h/day (3h on Friday), 27h/week. Wednesday and Friday work from home only.

</comment><comment><USER69> I know this is off-topic, but I hate the st ligature, so out of place... I mean it's a screen I'm looking at, not press-printed paper, no need to save on fonts.

</comment><comment><USER70> As so often is the case the post highlights how work gets in the way of life. Should have been born rich ;-)

</comment><comment><USER71> How would I have time to both do my work and read Hacker News with only 5 hours in my workday?

</comment><comment><USER72> Just had my weekly Wednesday off (oceanic the zone) and spent 3 hours working on my side hussle that is a web store. Tweaked the theme, analysed ad data and set up some new ad tests. I felt super productive getting as much done as might take 8 hours if the work was "jobified".

Spent rest of day trying out mattresses, getting a massage, cooking fish and watching star trek. Hoping I'm successful so that every day can be like this!

</comment><comment><USER73> I started doing four hour workdays about eight years ago. Every day is a potential workday, and some rare workdays are two! I don't find it burdensome to have a month-long streak of working every day at this pace. And if I "miss" a day (or week), it isn't the end of the world.

I have a seasonal side-hustle that includes the occasional 12-hour workday and even multi-day 24 hour stretches. Funny side-effect is an increase in code quality and productivity during the season.</comment>