Faster Parallel Python Without Python Multiprocessing - <AUTHOR> https://towardsdatascience.com/10x-faster-parallel-python-without-python-multiprocessing-e5017c93cce1 <comment><USER2> I am a terrible python scriptwriter. Still, I use my own scripts that I have written through trial and error and reading lots of stack overflow. I process about 500 images per day and each one takes about 30 seconds each. Adrian Rosenbrock has been a real lifesaver. I have a machine dedicated to this. I tried using multiprocessing once and could not get it to work. Being able to process in a parallel fashion would be a gamechanger for me.

The beauty of python for someone like me is that I can get my job done without actually having to do it. I free up my own time to leverage more of my creativity and have a multiplicative effect on my productivity.

The reason I bring all of this up is that so many of the examples for advanced libraries I see are geared towards seasoned software engineers. The examples include false arrays of data so that you can "just see" how to use it. I don't think anyone realizes how confusing this is to the guy who is a restaurant manager, or the gal who is a researcher that just needs to know how to make this work for them.

If it's an image, how about putting image = cv2.imread("C:\image.jpg") or whatever?

Anyway, a bit of a rant but there are people who are very thankful that smart people in this world like yourself write libraries we can use to make our daily lives better. Including example code that is stupid simple would make me so much happier.

</comment><comment><USER3> While I appreciate the efforts of authors and believe in long term mission, they seem to not mention anywhere some key shortcomings of Ray, while marketing it pretty hard (eg see the paper).

I have used ray (a year ago) in one of the advertised basic applications: parallelising the environments for RL. It was unusable back then, as it was clogging up the memory.

The plasma store which is backend for arrow was never cleaned which made the computation stop after 3 hours

Here's the issue:

[https://github.com/ray-project/ray/issues/2128](https://github.com/ray- project/ray/issues/2128)

Or perhaps this has been fixed already?

</comment><comment><USER4> Every time I see a performance issue/solution of Python, I was wondering why there is no company maintaining a distribution with a high-performance Python JIT compiler with patched, GIL-free packages. Given the prevalence of Python and what have succeeded in JVM, it seems like a fruitful business.

<comment><USER5> One problem is that because of the GIL, many python libraries don't use locking on their data, etc., because they don't need to. That makes them thread-unsafe without the GIL.

<comment><USER6> You mean libraries with c extensions

<comment><USER5> No, even libraries without. Picking something random in the python 3.7 standard library: collections.OrderedDict.__setitem__ doesn't look thread-safe when it updates its linked list. EDIT: well, in fact, the data race in that one is there whether there is a GIL or not...

<comment><USER7> Just FYI, there are few remaining use cases for OrderedDict, now that built-in dict keeps insertion order.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love Python but they best way to do do parallel Python is to use Go.</comment>


How to setup an anonymous VPN server? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> (1) setup a VPN server at a hosting provider (you pick)

(2) turn off all logging

(3) make it available to the public (you pick how)

(4) get flooded with abuse reports

(5) get shut down by your hosting provider

</comment><comment><USER3> Algo is easy and works well: [https://github.com/trailofbits/algo](https://github.com/trailofbits/algo)</comment>


Animal Smell - <AUTHOR> https://nootrobox.com/blog/do-you-have-animal-smell/

<comment><USER2> I love the term 'animal smell.' Having experience on both sides of the table as an entrepreneur and a VC, I can say that there's something to the notion of "smelling like a winner." It's hard to pinpoint, but the blog nicely highlights some of the signals for it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe I should send an actor who's really good at this animal smell thing...</comment>


Cloudflare for SSH, RDP and Minecraft - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-for-ssh-rdp-and-minecraft/ <comment><USER2> So, on one hand, this seems very useful.

On the other hand: Speaking as a Windows network admin, such a laughably large number of Windows vulnerabilities start from "someone had port 3389 exposed to the Internet", I find it a little strange that Cloudflare would support RDP. Shouldn't RDP be used solely behind a VPN, much like other services Cloudflare already offers?

In a world where Cloudflare is pushing DoH into people's browsers against the wishes of lots of orgs because it's best practice, isn't supporting direct RDP access from the Internet a bit backwards? Shouldn't Cloudflare be, if anything, blocking RDP access by default as a safety feature?

<comment><USER3> > _I find it a little strange that Cloudflare would support RDP? Shouldn 't > RDP be used solely behind a VPN, much like other services Cloudflare already > offers?_

Of course. But...

As we both know, people have running RDP on the standard port, wide open, with zero firewalling or other access controls since the beginning of time and continue to do so regardless of "common sense", best practices, or anyone suggesting that maybe they shouldn't.

At some point, it doesn't take much to decide, "Well, if they're gonna do it anyways, we might as well try to make a dollar off of it".</comment></comment>


Need feedback on my first SAAS pre-launch – WebTraff - <AUTHOR> http://webtraff.sameerkumar.website/ <comment><USER2> I need a lot more details. How is it going to increase conversions. Show examples. How does it not use any code? What's the process to use it? Don't use 'anon.' Just spell it out. Human language. In your subscribe box say 'enter email to subscribe' or something more specific. Where are T&C and Privacy?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Show different offers to different people: anonymous visitors can be encouraged to opt-in, subscribers can be encouraged to buy your entry-level product, and returning customers can be presented with up-sells or cross- sells. Webtraff is a platform with easy configuration WITHOUT CODE (OneTime setup).</comment>


Stop building for San Francisco - <AUTHOR> https://werd.io/2018/stop-building-for-san-francisco <comment><USER2> This was an excellent and though-provoking article. But of course it got no love on HN lolz.</comment>


Show HN: protonet.info - social infrastructure with the push of a button  - <AUTHOR>

Heya! We're longtime lurkers and do sometimes post, today however I want to present to you with the fruits of almost 4 years of work, hacking, designing, physically building (for the record: 2 years full time). We'd love to get some feedback from you guys and feel free to give us any hints on what we could/should change, or any opinion on whether you think that'd be something you'd use.
protonet.info
So here's our rough plan:
We love the web and the possibilities it gives us, we also love the way the cloud allows us instant and ubiquitous access to our data and apps. Now what we don't like is that these things run on massive server farms and to get all that cool stuff you have to basically sign your digital life away. This is what we want to change, we want to turn the web on it's head, instead of having these massive data centers we believe everyone should have a piece of that infrastructure. It should be dead simple to use and run, should be social and should be easily extendable for devs.
This is our first step towards that goal, it's a super simple, handmade server that runs our social "operating system", basically an awesome NAS, combined with a pretty cool groupchat, combined with filesharing capabilities. Perfect for small companies and dev shops.
Runs on: Ruby on Rails for authorization/authentication/CRUD, nodejs for all systemy things, a great amount of JS for what is being done in the browser and a fair amount of ruby and other glue code.
ps. if you want to have one be sure to enter hackernews into the message field at the end and you get 20% off - just whipped up some code to handle that (paypal should show the correct amount)
pps. we're looking for a great designer to bring our work to the next level UI/UX wise - contact me at firstname.lastname@example.com if you're interested or know anyone who could be <comment><USER2> Some feedback;

I cannot find the hardware spec's of the server on your site. If I was to consider buying a server from anyone I would absolutely need to know the specs.

An idea;

Build the OS to sell independently of the hardware.

</comment><comment><USER3> Clickable: <http://protonet.info>

<comment><AUTHOR> awesome, thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a great application -</comment>


Removing the Docker IT Operations Bottleneck – StackEngine - <AUTHOR> http://stackengine.com/removing-docker-operations-bottleneck/ <comment><AUTHOR> I think that once a company comes by and has good documentation and examples of what Docker can do, it's going to blow up. An example more than "Hello World", I think it would be helpful to see how you can install/configure apache and deploy an application hosted on github.</comment>


More millennials want to live in trailer parks - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1178031/its-becoming-economically-desirable-to-live-in-a-trailer-park/ <comment> java-man _want_</comment>


How Oracle Engineered Its Sales Staff for the Cloud - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-oracle-engineered-its-sales-staff-for-the-cloud-1502875803 <comment><AUTHOR> "Many hires were put through a revamped training program, then charged with winning over startups and small businesses that Oracle largely had bypassed."

The article goes on to claim that Oracle has had success with signing startups and small businesses for cloud products. Has anyone here signed on with Oracle? Have things really changed?

</comment><comment><USER2> Here's a link to the article that does not require registration to read:

[http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/08/16/how-oracle- en...](http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/08/16/how-oracle-engineered- its-sales-staff-for-cloud.html)</comment>


Ask HN: Would you guys work for Bitcoin? - <AUTHOR> As in receive your salary in BTC. <comment><USER2> I would definitely not. For many reasons, but the volatility alone is enough to put me off of it. Losing a months income to a flash crash?

Not only that, but I'd have to convert it to fiat anyway to pay for 99% of the things I spend my salary on. With the fees involved in the exchange and fluctuations, I'd end up with less money in the end most likely.

Bitcoin is a fun toy, and spending some of my disposable income on it sounds ok. But my whole salary? not on my life. I sincerely hope there is no one around that is so blindly invested in the idea of Bitcoin they are converting their whole salary to Bitcoin.

<comment><AUTHOR> Bitcoin is not a toy, it's a very useful tool for transferring value across borders and very good at that, especially when banks and companies such as Western Union impose unreasonable fees on their users.

Also, Bitcoin is not as volatile as it was once anymore, have you checked the price in the last few months? It has stayed around 200-300-ish USD.

It's fine if you don't want to use Bitcoin, but please stop spreading FUD.

<comment><USER2> I have looked at the price lately. In fact using the Coindesk chart[0], over the last 3 months it has swung between 200 and 300 USD you are correct. But a drop from 300 to 200 USD is still volatile as hell. It means that my Salary could lose one third of it's value in the space of a month. The one year chart is worse. Of course it could swing the other way too, but I like a little more safety in my income.

As for it not being a toy, that's a matter of how we each use it. You use it as a more serious financial instrument evidently. Personally I prefer services such as TransferWise, for reducing those bank fees, but if that's how you use Bitcoin then good for you!

[0] [http://www.coindesk.com/price/](http://www.coindesk.com/price/)

<comment><AUTHOR> 3 months? More like since Mt.Gox went out of business in 2013 or so.

<comment><USER3> Literally in the link he posted, if you look at the 3 month pricing chart, the low point is $209 and the high point is $309. This isn't speculation or guessing, those are some pretty huge swings in such a short amount of time the data quantitatively shows.

I wouldn't want my salary to have that kind of volatility.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's really disappointing everyone focuses on the volatility yet everyone dismisses the advantages of Bitcoin.

<comment><USER4> It's disappointing that people want to make a consistent amount of money? Yeah....that's just stupid </sarcasm>

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not saying it's stupid to prefer a stable currency, I'm all for price stability and making a consistent amount of money.

I'm saying it's disappointing everyone focuses on volatility, yet everyone dismisses the other advantages of Bitcoin.

<comment><USER4> They're not saying that. They're saying that those advantages don't directly apply to them, but volatility does. They aren't dismissing it, just saying that for _them_ the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages, which is perfectly acceptable.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you have money coming in and out, does it really make a difference?

Some people make a lot of assumptions, but I bet none of those people ever tried Bitcoin.

<comment><USER4> I'm confused:

> I'm not saying it's stupid to prefer a stable currency, I'm all for price > stability and making a consistent amount of money.

>I understand, but is the volatility really a problem as some people think it is?

You seem to be contradicting _your own_ idea. Yes, volatility is a problem.

Why? Because your rent, utilities, and other living expense aren't based on the same volatility. The "money going out" has the potential to be valued very differently than the "money coming in".

Do you really want to be _evicted_ because the money you were paid was valued differently than your rent? Completely possible with BTC.

Fiat currencies work because a large collection of people _around you_ agree on & depend on their value. If my landlord disagreed about the value of a dollar, my getting paid in dollars would be _just as useless_ as getting paid in BTC.

For a fiat currency to be worthless _to everyone around you_ it would requires a failure of Government, or some other very large catastrophe. At that point, paying rent is the _least_ of your problems.

Edit: and to reflect _your edit_ , yes, I have tried BTC. I made a not- unsubstantial amount of money by essentially _gambling_ with it's value. But had my timing been _even slightly different_ , I would have lost money instead, and a lot of it. I bought it when it was priced around 50 dollars, and sold when it got to 680 dollars a while back. But what if had been the other way around?

Edit2: If you change it out _immediately_ after getting paid, the risk is lower (you'd basically be operating like many Payment Processors who process transactions in different currencies). That would also eliminate any possible benefit, as it's being used purely as a _transfer currency_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've heard of some FinTech startups that are offering forward-contracts (think futures, or put-options) on Bitcoin. If I can get my hands on those kind of contracts, I'd totally accept my salary in bitcoin. It seems like that would eliminate any potential downside, as long as those contracts are relatively cheap to buy.

<comment><USER6> I can't imagine options would be cheap to buy, as the seller is taking on all the risk, and they will take into account the volatility of the underlying asset when determining the price they would be willing to accept.

Forward contracts are different from options. But what's the point of being paid in BTC every month, if you enter into a set of forward contracts to convert that BTC into USD? It's equivalent to being paid in USD.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sure, but I would transfer most of it out to USD.

I enjoy BTC for sending/receiving payments as it is very easy, but I don't see it as a safe 'investment'.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I've just tried bitcoin for the first time for receiving money and I couldn't believe how easy it was.

What options do you suggest for converting to local currency, USD in your case?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love Bitcoin, but why would I work for Bitcoin? It provides no single benefit. In fact, it only provides risks and more hassle (have to convert it to EUR to be able to use it).

Burned my fingers on freelancing for Bitcoin a couple of times already.

<comment><USER9> "Burned my fingers on freelancing for Bitcoin" \- can you please elaborate? was the problem with bitcoin or with the counteragent?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would. Just need to re-quote every 3-6 months due to floating quotation, but ok.

</comment><comment><USER11> Yes. It would at least be something I can trade for a pittance of real money. That being said I would also work for food and housing.

</comment><comment><USER12> Sure - if I can specify the exchange rate.

</comment><comment><USER13> Absolutely not. Real money for real work.

<comment><AUTHOR> What's so real about fiat currency? There's nothing fake about Bitcoin.

<comment><USER12> Every store in my country accepts fiat currency. I can pay taxes and fines in it, or pay for government services. It's legal tender for all my debts. If I could do all that with bitcoin, it might be real enough.

<comment><AUTHOR> That does not make your currency any more "real" than Bitcoin.

<comment><USER14> I'm guessing that by "real" he means "useful", as in it can be "used" to pay for things like medical bills, insurance, student loans, taxes, rent, utilities, groceries etc. Bitcoin is definitely "real" in some sense of the word, but for most situations it functions similarly to money that is not real (like monopoly money) in that it won't be accepted in exchange for tangible goods and services. Even the relatively few establishments that accept bitcoin as payment don't really regard bitcoin as real enough to accept directly and instead hire a middle man to convert bitcoin into "real" money on their behalf.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Major Scientific Journal Joins Push to Screen Statistics in Papers It Publishes - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/major-scientific-journal-joins-push-to-screen-statistics-in-papers-it-publishes1/

<comment><USER2> Cool. Journal of Cardiology has done this for some time, Stan Glantz personally reviews pretty much every article then works with the authors to correct their mistakes. The amount of obvious errors he catches is HUGE.</comment>


This 25-year-old's answer to antibiotic resistance - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencealert.com/the-science-world-s-freaking-out-over-this-25-year-old-s-solution-to-antibiotic-resistance <comment><USER2> Blogspam of

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/health/does-this-25-year- ol...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/health/does-this-25-year-old-hold-the- key-to-winning-the-war-against-th/)</comment>


Should I continue to work for a company that MITM all my web traffic - <AUTHOR> Recently the company I work for has implemented a third party solution (zscalar) to intercept all outbound https traffic. Although conceptually I recognize the desire to protect the company. I feel like this is a huge invasion of my privacy in particular when accessing a personal account. <comment><USER2> You can use your cell to tether your personal machine if you are allowed to bring one.

You can also just buy a 4g enabled tablet and use that unless you work in finance.

If your workplace wants to monitor its own network that is pretty normal for any company over 50 employees. Most of the polite ones will tell you that they are monitoring.

</comment><comment><USER3> Then don't access any _personal_ accounts from work?

<comment><USER4> People aren't robots. I quite like to have my personal email open just in case anything urgent comes in. I like to have my personal github logged in, just to see messages.

I'm still producing my work, in fact I'm so far ahead of my colleagues, that I can take entire days off because I'm delivering early.

If somewhere told me I flat out couldn't use personal accounts I'd tell them to f- off.

Also - work is give and take - if work is not going to "give" a little, and let me use personal accounts, then I'm not going to "give" you some extra time when production goes down out of hours, or there's a big push for a delivery.

Anywhere that's this inflexible is a crappy place to work, tell them to get bent.

<comment><USER3> You don't log in on very sensitive services (i.e. mail). You log in on not so sensitive services (i.e. github, if you don't have any private repos) and you ALWAYS use two factor auth. Always.

For very sensitive services you're either staying away for 8h/day or use your phone, connected via 3G/4G (not wifi).

You know the saying, my house, my rules :) It's _their_ pc, their internet connection.

Depending on your country, there might be some laws that will prevent them to scan your traffic. Or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems like every mid-size-or-larger organization does this now. I think the only way to escape this is to work for a trusting "mom and pop" outfit, or work for yourself.

Places that do this kind of thing (most places) usually have a culture of secrets and backstabbing. Life is too short.

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened." \- Matthew 7:7-8

Or, if the check is just too damn juicy to part with the bastards, SSH and VPN are your friends.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have no problem with companies doing this as long as they inform their employees that all web traffic, including https, is monitored. As a rule, never ever trust a device or local network other than your own. Bring your own device and use your own mobile data connection.

I worked at a startup that was acquired by a big company and subsequently had all manner of crap implemented including zscaler. They didn't tell us about zscaler and when I discovered this I let them know I was pissed.

</comment><comment><USER7> Can you use your smartphone for personal use? I don't use work computers for things I want private because I don't want my credit card #, passwords, etc. on them.

Browsing HN on my lunch break though? No problem.

</comment><comment><USER8> Do you know for certain that they are MITM'ing +ALL+ traffic? Some firms have domain-based exceptions for certain sites (e.g. wellsfargo.com).

</comment><comment><USER9> If you feel bad about this, you should at least be able to report and to have access to a process that describe how your data are used.

<comment><USER10> I feel like this is on track for most places, an above board explanation of how safe your personal data is. If they are going to assume no personal web access on their systems, or not give that access privacy then you have to evaluate if that is the right environment for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> You're going to be hard-pressed now to find a company of any size that doesn't do something of this sort.

It's their network and their resources, so they get to make the rules.

If you don't like their rules, don't access personal accounts from work.

My employer has also implemented zscalar, but I never accessed things like my bank account, credit card accounts, social media accounts, etc. from work even before they did that.</comment>


The United States is isolated in the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2013/11/18/the-united-states-is-isolated-in-the-trans-pacific-partnership-negotiations/ <comment><USER2> Is there no end to what the US Govt will do for large lobby groups?

Here the US seems to be opposing the rights of Lat-Am countries to use emergency measures to protect their citizens against "Chagas disease" because that would deny its pharma companies a lucrative & desperate market.

>> Take the following snippet, from Article QQ.A.5:

>> (a) The obligations of this Chapter do not and should not prevent a Party from taking measures to protect public health by promoting access to medicines for all, in particular concerning cases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, [US oppose: chagas] and other epidemics as well as circumstances of extreme urgency or national emergency.

>> Here, "[US oppose: chagas]" indicates the word "chagas" is disputed, with the United States opposing its inclusion in the treaty. This is a reference to Chagas disease, a form of trypanosomiasis, a parasitic disease primarily affecting Latin America. U.S. opposition can probably be attributed to pressure from the pharmaceutical industry.

<comment><USER3> >"Is there no end to what the US Govt will do for large lobby groups?"

This is not an issue. "Large lobby groups" also include organizations such as the EFF, ACLU, unions, and foundations such as the Gates Foundation. And let's not forget the biggest lobby group of all: the American citizenry. If you ever wrote your elected representative to vote a certain way, you are lobbying.

>"...because that would deny its pharma companies a lucrative & desperate market."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this doesn't make sense. HIV/AIDS is also a lucrative desperate market with no vaccine currently available. Heck, why is the US okay with malaria being on there even?

Also, wouldn't the Latin-Am governments purchase supplies and any future vaccines from the pharma companies? In a national emergency, the government throws more money at the issue. So, when there is a Chagas vaccine, the Latin- Am government can throw more money at the pharma company who is producing the vaccine. How is the pharma industry benefiting from the US striking out Chagas?

<comment><USER4> _let 's not forget the biggest lobby group of all: the American citizenry_

Does the citizenry have the same level of access to negotiating parts of the TPP as the lobby groups who paid admission? IIRC, the citizenry have been completely cut out of the process. They didn't even know the contents of the TPP. What r0h1n possibly implied is that the US Govt backs interests that are paid for.

<comment><USER5> >Does the citizenry have the same level of access to negotiating parts of the TPP as the lobby groups who paid admission?

If they wanted it, yes.

<comment><USER6> Are you serious? You do realise that the only reason you've gotten to read this article was because someone leaked the negotiating draft, right?

While lobbying groups have had direct access to the negotiations, it took someone violating confidentiality for journalists to even be able to tell you what's being discussed.

<comment><USER5> If senator's phone lines were crammed-full of citizens demanding knowledge of the negotiations, then the citizens would get that knowledge. But they don't. No one cares or even knows about this.

<comment><USER4> _When the executive negotiates without Congress 's participation, citizens don't get a say in the process. We don't get to review the agreement, or pressure our representatives into changing or rejecting it. However, special industry groups do, including the RIAA, as advisors to USTR._

\- [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120508/17174518835/time-t...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120508/17174518835/time- to-realize-that-obama-administration-doesnt-even-have-authority-to-commit-us- to-acta-tpp.shtml)

P.S. The TPP stands for Trans Pacific Partnership. A US senator means jack shit to someone in Japan, Australia etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _United States and Japan are relatively isolated in their negotiating positions. This could bode poorly for the United States as it seeks to shape the TPP to its liking._

Actually this bodes well for the USA. The greatest enemy of the USA on these IP issues is the powerful and moneyed insider lobbies that want to destroy our freedom for a few more dollars. If the US negotiators who are controlled by those interests might be frustrated, that's the best news the American people could get.

<comment><USER8> It would be nice if the news stopped using the term "The United States" for all these sorts of stories and instead qualified them more precisely. e.g.

"US special interest groups representing the intellectual property lobby isolated in the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations"

<comment><USER9> If not for the fact that these groups act with consent of the government elected by the people of the United States.

<comment><USER10> Actually, Congress hasn't been allowed to see the treaty either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ignoring for a second the subject matter, I think it's fantastic to see network analysis used in a (non-academic) major publication.

It is about time the insights that can give are made available to a wider audience.

I'd love to see the techniques Bret Victor uses in his "Ladder of Abstraction"[1] essay applied here especially if they were combined with the beauty of the NY Times "Snowfall" visualisations[2].

Anyway, well done Washington Post!

[1] [http://worrydream.com/#!2/LadderOfAbstraction](http://worrydream.com/#!2/LadderOfAbstraction)

[2] [http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow- fall/#/?part=tunne...](http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow- fall/#/?part=tunnel-creek)

</comment><comment><USER12> > This graph indicates that the core overlap of negotiating positions > currently includes New Zealand, Singapore, Chile, and Malaysia, although the > direct connection between New Zealand and Singapore is weaker than the > others.

Maybe that's because the 12-country TPP, initiated in 2010, is an expanded version of the 4-country TPSEP (Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership) agreement from 5 yrs earlier among Chile, New Zealand, Singapore, and Brunei. Their overlapping negotiating positions were cemented 5 years earlier than the other 8 countries.

> Counting up sole-country proposals, we might have expected the United States > to take first place; in reality, it turns out to be Canada, with the United > States and Japan following well behind. Of course, this chart doesn't tell > us what Canada is proposing or opposing on its own. It could well be that > Canada is the sole party capable of opposing controversial provisions.

Maybe this is because the most recent countries to join the negotiations were Japan (March 2013), Canada, and Mexico (both October 2012).

The article doesn't mention this fact, instead speculates "It could well be that Canada is the sole party capable of opposing controversial provisions". I would expect better from the Washington Post.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is probably more high level academic analysis than the TPP has had in the previous two years of negotiations, and it shows why open access to the treaty can provide great benefit to both the people negotiating it and the people who will be governed by it.

<comment><USER2> Great point!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Thank you for dragging the TPP treaty into the light Wikileaks!

Humanity may very well owe you for this.

<comment><USER15> Practicing your overstatements?

<comment><USER16> Not for the people who would end up dying of Chagas because they can't afford medicine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think the distinctive feature about Japan and the US is that both governments are (through very different mechanisms) under the sway of their own internal pressure groups. This makes them unable to take a reasonable bargaining stance.

Perhaps this is a symptom of Japan's and America's waning power? In the past, they could afford to take less reasonable stances because they were dominant in their respective spheres, so their political classes had no incentive to clean things up.

</comment><comment><USER18> There are a number of options for the US. It could, for example, not be involved in the trade talks (it wasn't originally); it could make demands that crash them; it could make ludicrous demands and have them acceeded to; or it could negotiate as a partner to the other members.

I suspect that the only two outcomes that are regarded as succesful is a multilateral treaty on US terms, or no multilateral treaty at all. The last thing the US wants is a multilateral treaty between East Asian and Pacific nations, which the US regards as its back yard.

</comment><comment><USER19> Not really surprising. A lot of "big" nations from G8 and other places you'd expect to see are plain missing from this mess, and those left, while many are smaller, even they aren't thrilled at being pushed into this clearly US benefiting gig. The US' international cohesive power is on the wane and this is great demonstration.

</comment><comment><USER20> When you do business with the US, you see it very clearly: The US is a world on their own. So big that they don't need to establish connections as they already have the connections between their States, some of them(most of them) bigger than Chile or New Zealand.

</comment><comment><USER21> I really look forward to the day the rest of the world doesn't give a crap about whatever the US does. A decadent hegemony in decline that doesn't even realize how infantile it looks.

</comment><comment><USER22> > _The United States is isolated in the Trans-Pacific Partnership > negotiations_

School bully and his group of 30 rugby playing pals is isolated on negotating taking the lunch boxes of nerds.

</comment><comment><USER23> I was somewhat disappointed by the articles inherent bias towards the US. There is no reason why the US should place its strong IP laws and history of pharmaceutical innovation in jeopardy during the opening salvos of an international treaty negotiations.

<comment><USER24> This brings up an interesting question. what is the BATNA of these countries. That is, what is their recourse if nobody can agree?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> So now we know why this is being done in secret, so the US can push morally indefensible positions such as that over Chagas disease on behalf of big pharma.

</comment><comment><USER5> What's wrong with being alone in pushing an issue? Is this middle school?

</comment><comment><USER26> I imagine that after SOPA and ACTA, those other countries didn't listen to every US request anymore, and were embolden to have their own requests.

</comment><comment><USER27> JESUS CHRIST their layout is annoying!

I'm sorry I couldn't even read the article because there's so much CSS garbage on that page!

</comment><comment><USER28> Irony: increased openness for a president who promised change.</comment>


Prosecutors drop Montreal Mafia; RCMP surveillance tactics questioned - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/montreal-police-surveillance-within-lauded-investigation-cause-prosecutors-to-drop-mob-cases/article34379831/ <comment><AUTHOR> "The development is a new setback for a once-promising prosecution, but allows federal authorities to sidestep questions about police surveillance gear."

"Police [...] had intercepted more than a million supposedly secure electronic messages sent on BlackBerrys."

"Prosecutors offered them relatively light sentences on murder-conspiracy charges. The bargain was struck last March after their criminal lawyers raised a litany of questions about how the RCMP got inside the suspects' smartphones."</comment>


Windows 8.1 Preview - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2013/06/26/the-windows-8-1-preview-is-here.aspx

<comment><USER2> I like it. Nearly all the features shown off in that video make me go "want!". The additional start screen organizing features are precisely what i'm looking for.

Now all I want is more and better fullscreen apps. Not the "your favourite news source" apps. They're bullshit on phones and they're even more bullshit on PCs or big tablets. Real, useful apps. Like a barebones spreadsheet that fits in a sidebar. Zen-writing text editor. Extensions for IE-in-fullscreen- mode. Music player that doesn't suck and doesn't want to be all "cloud".

They're getting real close here. I really hope app vendors follow suit.

(p.s. if you try Win8 without a touchscreen, you didn't really try it at all)

<comment><USER3> I can't get past the fact that I hate full screen at all.

<comment><USER4> Well, Windows 8 probably has the best handling for screen sharing out of any tablet OSes- the whole "snap" functionality is very clever. Not so for desktops, of course.

<comment><USER5> personally, i don't care about Windows on a tablet ... i develop software and create graphics using a 24" monitor ... i don't like seeing full screen anything. Windows 8 is a disaster for serious content creators and productivity professionals like me.

<comment><USER6> What, all because of a fullscreen start menu? Start8 lets you configure it to open in a smaller popup overlay if you'd prefer. Or indeed have an old Windows 7 style menu instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I actually really enjoy Windows 8 and will probably just wait for 8.1 to be released. Its cool their listening to their customers but I hope they don't force the start menu back on everyone. At least boot to desktop will be awesome considering my "D" key is broken and clicking the "Desktop" tile takes an eternity.

<comment><USER8> How did you type this?

<comment><USER9> ASCII code for D.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I clicked through to the live feed on [http://channel9.msdn.com/](http://channel9.msdn.com/) from the link there. I was right in time for the presenter to click on the new windows button which makes an incredibly jarring animation of tons of randomly colored tiles pop up over the screen. The presenter then says "not at all jarring ... not at all jarring". Sure, right, I think you need to get out of that reality distortion field - it's not working.

<comment><USER11> Have you actually used Windows Phone or Windows 8 for any length of time? The animations are very subtle on actual devices and work very well with the flat look.

Can't speak for the animations being screencasted across the internet via streaming video though which can introduce lag, jitter, FPS drops and artifacts, especially for fast moving scenes like animations. I'll reserve my judgment till I install the preview.

<comment><USER10> The full screen, multi-colored tile metro screen is subtle and not jarring? The one that pops up whenever you want to launch a new program, completely removing any context of what you are currently working on? Is that what you're actually saying?

The strange rotating 'subtle' animation you are trying to say makes up for this just makes it all the worse by putting completely unnecessary 'bling' all over a workstation.

<comment><USER4> So you haven't used it, then?

<comment><USER2> Clearly he hasn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> REALLY hope I can turn off the start button.

<comment><USER13> Same here. That thing is useless.

<comment><USER14> Is its function the exact same as pressing the Windows key (bringing up all the app tiles/metro UI thing)? I already do that whenever I want to start something. I tend to navigate using only my keyboard when possible, so when I open stuff up I just hit Windows key and start typing what I want ("chr" and then Enter would start Chrome, for example).

The only downside to the technique I use is that they separate Apps from Settings/Utilities (whatever word they use), so if I want control panel type stuff, I have to arrow down to that filter to see the search results that I want. I hope 8.1 consolidates that (or that there's an option to make it work that way)

Before today I was under the impression that the start button they were bringing back would be like the Windows 7 start button.

<comment><USER3> People wanted a start menu that didn't take up the whole screen. They just put in a button.

I just want less full screen shit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It still feels like an OS designed purely for tablet computing.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it is amazing a company as big as MS has converged work station, tablet, phone and Xbox One UIs in such a short amount of time. Not saying I like all the changes, just amazed at the short amount of time it has taken.

<comment><USER16> I cant really cosign this one, by converging they shoehorned 2 different UI's into 1 OS, and dont seem to have given any one of the three groups what they really wanted.

<comment><USER2> I guess it's just taste, too.

I, for one, love the combination. When I'm coding, I'm nearly only in desktop mode. Browser with 20 open tabs, developer environments, consoles, the whole shebang.

Then, when I want a break, I hit start and open Twitter or fullscreen IE10. I'm suddenly on a tablet (with a dock that's always attached, but ok). My ongoing work is still there but hidden from my view and my mind. I stop using the mousepad, and browse with touch only. IE10 has a really excellent user experience on a touch screen, it makes Chrome on Android tablets feel ridiculously ancient.

Then, when I'm done with HN, private mail, and the weather, I hit Win+D and _poof_ , my tablet became a PC again.

It may be a coincidence, but Microsoft essentially made a two-mode OS that precisely matches the two ways I use a computer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Oh dear.

I have used Windows 8 (work on IT, I am forced to). Windows 8.1 seems to look, and behave just the same as Windows 8. Adoption not happening here.

<comment><USER18> That's curious. If it looks and behaves exactly the same then adoption (as in updating) shouldn't be a problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Bing integrated all over the place? Does Microsoft honestly think they'd lost enough market share that they are no longer viable candidates for antitrust lawsuits?

<comment><USER19> I guess I'm a little shocked at how willingly everyone just thinks this is ok. Bundling like this is not in the best interest of the consumer. Why would interested in artificially inflating a company's market share in an unrelated space because you forget to disable it?

Are you going to be ok if Microsoft introduces ad tiles in Metro?

<comment><USER4> Yeah, what if Apple force-bundled their maps service on the iPhone and gave it OS-level hooks that no other apps were allowed? We'd all be in upro- oh, wait

EDIT: below was a conversation with rdouble, who decided to delete his entire half of the thread.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Available on MSDN subscriber downloads in x64 ISO form now.

Downloading at a pitiful 600k/sec :(

<comment><USER21> Maybe this shows a generational gap...but I don't think I could ever consider downloading at 600k/sec pitiful.

<comment><USER22> We need some nice speed simulators so people can see what it's like downloading text over 300 baud; 1200 / 75 bps; 9,600 bps and 14,400 bps.

You can read the text as it downloads. You use interlaced jpegs so that people can see something while the rest of the image downloads.

<comment><USER23> Sloppy[1] is a really old tool that does this. For iOS development specifically, I've been told of Network Link Conditioner[2], and supposedly, Fiddler[3] and Charles[4] both includes some of this functionality.

1\. [http://www.dallaway.com/sloppy/](http://www.dallaway.com/sloppy/)

2\. [http://mattgemmell.com/2011/07/25/network-link- conditioner-i...](http://mattgemmell.com/2011/07/25/network-link-conditioner- in-lion/)

3\. [http://fiddler2.com/](http://fiddler2.com/)

4\. [http://www.charlesproxy.com/](http://www.charlesproxy.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> All I see is Metro demos, which I want nothing to do with. Anyone have a list of the actual features?

<comment><USER4> The Verge has a rundown: [http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/26/4465888/windows-8-1-previe...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/26/4465888/windows-8-1-preview- video)

spoiler: it involves a lot of Metro, what with it being the Windows UI now, and all.

<comment><USER25> > and website owners can create separate Live Tiles that can be pinned to the > Start Screen to access RSS feeds.

That little tidbit really stood out as interesting to me. I seriously hope that MS does this well, and I can have live tiles for all my favorite sites that actually update with their new content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Project Spark looks like a fun toy.

</comment><comment><USER6> Can anyone confirm whether or not this includes ReFS support? That's probably more important to me than any other feature 8.1 could possibly offer, having encountered silent data corruption just a few months ago (thanks, WD).

<comment><USER27> ReFS is includes since Windows 8's initial release but only on Server editions.

<comment><USER6> Yes, hence wanting to know if it's included in 8.1 preview as it has been in the leaked prerelease. [http://www.winbeta.org/news/leaked-windows-blue- build-9369-h...](http://www.winbeta.org/news/leaked-windows-blue- build-9369-hints-refs-client-support-windows-81)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> the video doesn't show a single desktop improvement. as a purely desktop user (never once having used a metro app), is there anything for me in 8.1?

<comment><USER29> Yup, tweaks to what they're calling the "Power user menu" Start+x and Display Scaling and of course now you can boot right to the desktop.

[http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/hands- windows-81](http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/hands-windows-81)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Live video of the keynote at BUILD [http://channel9.msdn.com/](http://channel9.msdn.com/)

Live blog [http://live.theverge.com/live-microsoft- build-2013/](http://live.theverge.com/live-microsoft-build-2013/)

Ballmer being his usual trademark excitable self. [http://d35lb3dl296zwu.cloudfront.net/uploads/photo/image/130...](http://d35lb3dl296zwu.cloudfront.net/uploads/photo/image/13084/20130626-09220688 --IMG_0087.JPG)

<comment><USER30> Thanks, always a pleasure to see the monkey man.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Will 8.1 still come with the NSA backdoor. If so, I do not want.

Try Linux.

<comment><USER11> Honest question, isn't there NSA written code in Linux via the SELinux patches that were integrated?

<comment><USER32> Yes, but given that it's open-source I imagine if there was a back-door in it, someone would have found it by now. That said, they could purposefully have excluded security triggers for vulnerable kernel exploits which haven't been found yet... but as far as being some direct back-door in it by now I highly doubt that.

<comment><USER20> Look at the OpenBSD IPsec fiasco and ask yourself that again.

<comment><USER32> Yeah, and weren't those found to be totally and completely false?

<comment><USER20> "possibly" is the answer to that question. They found a few flaws but not necessarily anything conclusive.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Omnivore (e-Ink Kindle now starts at $79) - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/printer/magazine/the-omnivore-09282011.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Buried in the lede of the article which is mostly about the Kindle Fire's development:

 _Almost giddy with excitement, Bezos retrieves one by one the new crop of dirt-cheap Kindle e-readers—they start at $79—from a hidden perch on a chair tucked into a conference room table._</comment>


A new physical therapy biofeedback platform - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/the-role-and-importance-of-bio-feedback-in-physical-therapy-article-1-in-series-56ad76c666a8 <comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN folks! We are a physical therapist/engineer (husband-wife) team who have prototyped a new biofeedback platform. We've started a blog post on it and the first article in the series is live at the url above!

Thanks!</comment>


I went full nomad and it almost broke me - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/i-went-full-nomad-and-it-almost-broke-me-2a02c5e8f138?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3---4 <comment><USER2> I think this is an interesting topic but that article is basically incomprehensible. It could have benefitted greatly from a little more of the "first this happened, then this happened" approach rather than being an impressionistic onslaught of feelings and vagueness.

<comment><USER3> This type of writing/speak is the equivalent of the classic interview response: "My biggest weakness is that I'm such a hard worker." It doesn't feel honest.

I wonder if that is because the author is a founding member of digital nomad community/agency, honestly I have no idea exactly what it does because the website is super vauge, so to question the lifestyle is to question his livelihood.

<comment><USER4> You hit it on the nail. The article is actually somewhat of an advertisement. The author is signaling about his "master status" as an exemplar of this iconiclastic lifestyle. He needs to do this to sell his self-help books, tutorials, advice, etc. He also needs to gain the credibility so he is invited for talks for those mostly marketing based "Hacker Cons" where a bunch of semi believable tinkerers tell their stories about how they did something so special and mold breaking. And I don't mean technical conferences we all love. I mean the bullshit ones.

<comment><USER5> Hahaha no plans to be th next Tony Robbins just yet but I'll let you know when I start my cult ;)

<comment><USER4> Hahahaha, good one! I actually really love B. K. Robbins - he is my favorite motivational sneaker! The way he speaks is so deliciously appetizing!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm full nomad right now - driving my Jeep around Africa for 2 years - something like 80,000 miles through 30 countries over 2 years. [1]

I'm absolutely loving it. I will never go back to full time 9-5 5 days a week. At this point, I don't even consider it life.

Previously I drove Alaska to Argentina - 16 countries over 2 years and 40,000 miles. I also loved every second of that! [2]

[1] [http://theroadchoseme.com/africa-expedition- overview](http://theroadchoseme.com/africa-expedition-overview)

[2] [http://theroadchoseme.com/expedition- overview](http://theroadchoseme.com/expedition-overview)

<comment><USER7> Driving alone around in Africa is what you consider life? I know working 9-5 is not a good life. However working on something you love, in an environment with friends and family and fun, is a good life i.m.h.o. I always have the feeling nomads always need to shout of the roofs of "how much better their life is". However I do think, what you are doing is super cool. However seeing it as "this is the only life thats worth living" is a bit extreme.

<comment><USER8> Honestly, it sounds more like just an advertisement for their "lifestyle blog". Just like everyone and their mother is vegan now, and has to make sure you know it every second of the day.

<comment><USER4> "Look I'm worldly - I'm traveling the world!"

"Look, I'm a founder! I put a web app up!"

"Sign up for my newletter, my blog, my instagram, my X, Y, Z so you can find out how to make the same ad revenue I do, off of people just like you! You don't have to be you forever..you can take advantage of the yous and become one of the mes!"

/s

<comment><USER8> Not sure if you're trying to instigate, but I agree that there is just too much marketing noise, and I wish everyone would just shut up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was hoping to find out what a "magnitude 8" burnout actually looks like, but I didn't get it from this article.

What made his mentor ask if he was okay? What does low energy mean for this guy? What came between the realization and the recovery?

For me it was burying myself in social media, reading books, and binging pirated TV shows. I had a pattern of beating myself up internally for not going out and making friends, taking on or finishing projects, or even doing basic tasks like laundry and cooking. When the voice of self abuse started - usually the moment after my partner left the room, but sometimes even before that - I'd whip out my phone instantly to quieten it. Many days I'd sit at the kitchen table for five or six hours, scrolling feeds and watching shows, waiting for my partner to come home and give me enough motivation to pretend to be human for a while.

I kept thinking, how can I be stressed? All I'm doing is sitting in the kitchen. There's no stress here.

But I was living in someone else's house in a country where I had few friends and didn't speak the language. I had just started a new, remote job which was mentally demanding, and had no one, not even co-workers, to talk to about it. I stopped stopped doing my two healthiest activities - writing and cycling - except on rare occasions.

I got to the point where I left the relationship, and went home- though I didn't want to- because I couldn't recognize myself at all anymore and didn't know how to get back to myself except by returning to the last place where I felt like a human. I'm two months into recovery now and have only just gotten to the point where I can sleep through the night, sometimes.

That's what it looked like for me. Hope it helps someone else realize what that feeling is. It took me way too long to recognize it, and by then it was too late.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've been a nomad for almost 2 years now changing countries often (about 10 different ones) while working remotely for various companies with a dependent spouse and practically no savings.

It's stressful because changing countries always turns out to be a lot more expensive than it seems, also changing companies as well is difficult; it's mostly contracting so sometimes they don't pay on time. Remote work is also draining because the boundary between your work and personal life is blurred.

Also, one time I had to leave a hotel without checking out because I knew that I couldn't afford the bill on a Sunday because my international payment was delayed and due to arrive during business hours on Monday; I had to check out over the phone the next day. The worst part was that in the process the client I was working for probably figured out that I was broke.

You need a really high income in order to do it and ideally if you have partner they should be able to find remote work as well (it's not always possible depending on the profession).

After 1 year, it's really not fun at all but I guess it builds your character; it pushes you to the edge of your abilities and gives you confidence that you can survive anything in any environment. Initially I did it because I wanted to travel but eventually it just became an effective career-optimization strategy. If you're willing to relocate absolutely anywhere, a lot of opportunities open up to you and you become better at identifying good ones.

<comment><USER11> I'm shocked that living in hotels requires a high income. Shocked.

<comment><USER10> Usually I do AirBnb which is much cheaper but on rare occasions hotels are the best options.

If I plan to stay 6 months+, I will get a lease, but it's sometimes tricky depending on the country.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I went backpacking for 3 months a while back, in the developing world and while the freedom is exhilirating, it does get boring and lonely from time to time.

It's easy to make friends while traveling, but they are very surface level friendships and when you inevitably split up and go your separate ways, it's sort of heartbreaking because you're alone and have to start over again.

Not to mention that you're essentially homeless, which has its own nagging feeling of insecurity.

Long term travel definitely worth doing, but I'm not sure I would want to do it again.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I'm the same. I'm glad I did the backpacking thing but it starts to do my head in after a while. I need my own "home base". Maybe with a big enough RV it'd be OK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not to be rude, but moving once a month seems crazy to me.

I thought that most countries give a six month visa. I would think that it would take me a couple of weeks to get settled: finding a place to stay, getting used to foraging for food and getting used to new types of food. Arranging good Internet connectivity. Also, moving every month would be expensive.

EDIT: also, staying places 4-6 months would provide more opportunity for longer lasting friendships.

<comment><USER15> There are almost no countries, that allow tourist visa for six months. Work visa usually requires a local sponsor. World is not adapted to idea of nomadism.

<comment><USER16> The Philippines allows you to extend up to a year (longer if you jump through some hoops). That's multiple extensions, but you don't have to leave the country until you approach the 1 year point. After that, you can come right back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> IMHO, there's a big difference between (a) working as a "digital nomad" and (b) trying to make an income while vacationing all over the place. I have had great success with the former, which allows you to save money with longer stays in each location. The latter means you're wasting more time moving (both planning your next move and physically traveling), are paying tourist rates often (for everything).

</comment><comment><USER18> I love the nomad lifestyle, in the US being a nomad was easy especially if you have a big vehicle (I had a bus) because once you pass the suspect screens that the police implement to get a green light in their system you are no longer harassed. Here in South America it is different most foreigners are treated very well backpacking or with a vehicle, if you know the language and present yourself well. It is very hard to be broken if you have all your wits, desire, motivation and determination, a person can go indefinitely with a laptop and a backpack without ever stopping or until you complicate it.

<comment><USER19> What part of south america are you in, if you don't mind me asking? I'm living in south america and I'm worried about the lack of safety drug cartels cause, making me travel less often than I'd like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I would never hire anyone that "works" like this. This all reeks of bullshit, the whole working nomad lifestyle. I know people that do it. Their definition of work and mine are very different.

</comment><comment><USER21> Former full Digital Nomad and current sporadic Digital Nomad here (37 countries so far).

First time I "went rogue" and left everything behind was more a rejection and "overdose" of normality. Repeating the same day over and over and little to no variation beside the name of the source code file.

I didn't know what I was doing, but I became good at it quickly enough.

> Nomadic life is hugely variable and it's difficult to see patterns emerging.

That's his issue. The patterns are important too. You don't press the reset button everytime you move. It sucks, but a new city is just another city. A country side Airbnb is just another one, a language barrier is just another one. It removes some of the "explorator" fun, but you _have_ to treat this as a cycle.

Another tip I learn the hard way, but early enough, was _not_ to plan ahead. Murphy laws is part of the fun. You have to be more flexible than randomness itself. Not knowing what's ahead __remove __the stress about the future. The 70 's punks might have been on something after all. With smartphone, you can book [planes/hotels/buses] last minute and get discounts. Not as big as planing months ahead, but enough to keep going (compared to full tourist rate).

Be yourself (for whatever that means). Don't try to follow a recipe for success or happyness. Freedom is about not following a path. That alone is the most rewarding aspect.

Also, "it's just a job" is important to accept. It's a job to and for yourself. The Nomad is your "job", not yourself. It's better to take a step back and just float above it all. If you take the Nomad thing too seriously and use it to define yourself, you are doomed.

One last thing thing that has to go is any sense of pride or ideological ideals about the whole Nomad thing. If you see it more about a meta joke about not liking normality, not knowing how to fix it, but trying nevertheless, then you will be fine.

[https://xkcd.com/137/](https://xkcd.com/137/)

<comment><USER22> How do digital nomads deal with paying income taxes (assuming they are programming or freelancing along the way)?

<comment><USER21> If you spend more than 6 month outside of your home base country, it gets complicated. I did that once and wont do it again.

This year I only spent ~2 months on the road so there is no problems. From now on, that probably will be the way to go. A real home base all year long with a big (or 2) big Digital Nomad trips. Being "homeless" and full Nomad is a little too much (unless you got a VR or something, but that restrict you to North/South America)

You also have to take into account who pay the value added taxes, that's the complicated part. When in Canada, depending on the province, one of the tax is paid by the customer and I charge the customer the other one. When clients are outside of the country, but I am legally working from Canada, then it's export and it's their problem. Some there is a lot of gotcha and product categories and trade deals. Thankfully I only work in a single field, so I don't have to learn them all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Could someone please post the text of the article? I find it challenging to read this site...

<comment><USER24> many browsers have 'reader mode' \- the article was fine to read in safari's 'reader mode'.

<comment><USER25> Not all mobile browsers have this feature. I also had issues reading the site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Maybe he should try some nomad-coliving stuff out there

<comment><USER27> You mean, a hostel? :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I clicked on the title thinking this was a story about someone who went off the deep end after writing too much Haskell.

<comment><USER29> I too have not have enough coffee yet today and made the same mistake.</comment></comment>


Gadgets can be hacked to produce 'dangerous' sounds, says researcher - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49291665 <comment><USER2> >Mr Wixey has been in contact with manufacturers to help them develop defences that can act if a device is being made to produce dangerous sounds.

Seems like a lame cash grab. A compromised vehicle could potentially emit sounds disruptive enough to cause an accident, but that's not what the article addresses. It seems to think there's some sort of threat from weaponized bluetooth speakers and headphones. In reality nobody would sit there and let these devices damage their hearing. They would either de-power or destroy the device or move away from it. I'm not familiar with any set of headphones powerful enough to permanently damage hearing in the moment it would take a user to snatch them off their head.</comment>


Mathematical Pattern Live Wallpaper - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cklowe.android.morellet

<comment><USER2> Does anybody really use live wallpaper? They waste battery. On the other hand, you are rarely at the home screen, most often in an app where the wallpaper is in the background.

<comment><AUTHOR> When you use widgets, you see the home wallpaper</comment></comment>


Microsoft surges 8% after Morgan Stanley says it will reach $1T market cap - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/26/microsoft-surges-8-after-morgan-stanley-says-it-will-reach-1-trillion-market-cap/ <comment><USER2> My day job is at a massive institution. We recently went all-in on O365. The odds of us _ever_ leaving this platform are slim-to-none. Microsoft has really hit a powerful long-term business model.

The key is tying these services to discounts on Windows licensing. We're buying them anyway so no matter what Google offers us they can't beat the cost savings Microsoft can provide. Same with AWS vs Azure — we can use our volume licensing in the cloud with Azure where with other providers we'd have to pay through the nose.

Until Windows is threatened, this will be the status quo. And I think that disruption will take quite a while.

<comment><USER3> _Until Windows is threatened, this will be the status quo._

Windows is under enormous threat, and much of our computing now takes place on alternate devices. The example of O365 is the perfect example, that platform being equally usable across many platforms (because it had to to have any market influence).

And if Microsoft is just discounting everything to get your business, that doesn't support the theory of Microsoft dominance. It is yesteryear trying to desperately hang on to have relevance. That is not an example of why Microsoft is a 1T company, but is an example of why the future doesn't look so hot.

<comment><USER4> Is there real competition in the front-office / back-office "alternate devices" space? There are certainly niche players but at least at the $bigcos I've worked at, most "real" tasks aren't easily accomplished on a tablet, phone, or Chromebook. Web spreadsheets tend to be feature-incomplete, presentation and document creation is a mess, and that's not even starting in on the hundreds of proprietary front-office tools for appointment scheduling and client management and back-office tools for analytics and finance, which are strongly Windows-based. I've only seen a few people use tablets day-to-day and they're all mid-to-upper level execs whose jobs are far more delegation- and-communication oriented and who have the liberty of sending someone an email when they need "the numbers" pulled or a slide presentation whipped together.

Even the BigCos I've worked at who use GSuite have had an additional subscription to Office365 for employees who need Excel, Word, and PowerPoint. I've seen very few larger companies who can subsist on Google Sheets alone.

This could be something that changes in the next 5-10 years, certainly, but it's been a prophecy that's underdelivered for years. Kind of feels like the "year of Linux on the desktop" all over again.

<comment><USER5> I've worked with Office 365 & helped setup & admin several GSuite businesses. GSuite is a nice light alternative. It's online Office apps seem to trump Office 365's online Office apps but the desktop version that comes with most Office 365 subscriptions is in a league of its own. You have to purchase GSuite plugin after plugin to try & replace its capabilities.

<comment><USER6> I think if you're trying to _replace_ user-facing Excel, Access, or Word usage of a meaningful sort with anything but other specialized tool is a fools errand.

At the same time: GSuite is leagues better, more intuitive, homogenous, more collaborative, friendlier to sysadmins, and friendlier to document-based data manipulation. It's also more than "good enough" for the 99% use cases of PowerPoint, Excel, Word, Paint, etc.

GSuite for all, Thick Old Office for the accountants and data crunchers who need it, all docs on Google Drive... why not?

O365 is kinda ok (things that should work dont, the split between online and offline is ass, the tools are heavy, the collaboration is semi-hidden), but it's the sharepoint and up-selling of Azure services that make it kinda Evil. I think a hybrid approach preserves the moral high ground and best-tool-for- the-job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Headline is a bit sensationalist. They closed last Friday down 6-7% on the week and bounced back today to almost exactly where they were a week ago.

<comment><USER8> A bit? MSFT is a few points below its _two week_ high!

<comment><USER9> Nearly every article that attempts to explain the movement of a stock price is sensationalist. There are occasional times when there is a clear cause and effect, but usually there are a million different things going on and trying to tie it back to a single cause is hopeless.

I notice that they are careful to phrase it in a way that does not explicitly describe cause and effect. Here, the headline merely states that one thing happened, then another. Any causality is inferred by the reader. But of course the reader will infer causality, and the writers know it, and cultivate it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> On a somewhat unrelated note, does anybody else despise the new Techcrunch design? I scrolled below the article for a second, then back up, and somehow I was no longer on the MS article, but rather watching a Fitbit Versa review.

<comment><USER11> Unfortunately it's become a common UX pattern. Bloomberg does the same, you scroll down and now you are in a different article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What Microsoft needs to do is make UWP APIs on par with Win32 APIs. Also, the reason why so many companies wrote custom apps for windows was because of VB. They need to make it so that you can write code and compile it to a single executable without the framework tacked on that is as easy and powerful as VB was. This will get them back in the game and push them over the 1 trillion hump.

</comment><comment><USER13> Mainly because of their cloud business, which I feel is a fair evaluation.

Azure is widening the gap between 2nd and 3rd place in cloud hosting, while also making huge gains in cloud services, which is something AWS doesn't have.

<comment><USER14> What services does Azure have that AWS doesnt? I thought it would be the other way around if anything.

<comment><USER15> a better web interface, for one.

<comment><USER16> Yeah azure has a nice interface, nicer account/subaccount management features (Iam roles in json... Come on Amazon)

Also I find the billing pretty easy to understand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Are there any potential repercussions for Morgan Stanley if this is just a pump-and-dump? Because it seems that's what it is.

<comment><USER18> this is a closely watched, public company with a market cap of $722bn. An optimistic analyst report is not the same as some garbage ICO

<comment><USER17> Sure. But when there's such a massive movement with no change in fundamentals just because MS said something, you can't help but wonder. I think these large companies do this pretty often, although rarely with such dramatic effect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is just my own humble opinion.

I think whoever boosted their cloud offerings (in terms of market share) the next few years, will reach $1T market cap first.

And it's well within reasons for all major cloud vendors to reach $1T in a couple years.

</comment><comment><USER20> Question: has Microsoft ever been second to the product party by more than 3 years, and won? What about on sever and tools?

Bing, windowsphone, Zune, ie, are all end-user facing failures—none of which were based initially on in-house innovation.

My concern is with Azure, and I want to believe 1) that cloud is not winner take all and 2) that microsoft won't fatally trip over itself as it tries to learn what the market wants.

Please help me with fodder to form my own opinion on whether Azure can ever be more than a bundled tie-in (Azure sales ~= Azure utilization) like our old friend Sharepoint.

<comment><USER21> Excel when Visicalc and Lotus 123 were king Word when WordPerfect was the standard

<comment><USER22> All of them helped by compention own mistakes.

Excel started on Mac and as ported to Windows afterwards.

Visicalc was never ported to Windows, while Lotus never managed the transition in a good way.

WordPerfect was the king of wordprocessors in text based OSes, took too long to accept the world had gone GUI and was quite arrogant to their customers. There is even a book about its downfall, " Almost Perfect".

Sometimes Microsoft does not need to make too much effort, when their competition is good killing their own jewels.

<comment><USER21> True. It is fairly hard to unsettle an incumbent defacto 'standard' that doesn't make mistakes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> MS should make windows free and just charge for services. I'd love it if they made SQLServer free (sans support or add paid support that actually is good not outsourced) too but that's a pipe dream.

<comment><USER24> Pretty close to free for me, $5 month basic sql server to play around with (only 2 gigs of data though). Wish they would make it free...

<comment><USER25> Mssql is significantly more expensive to run than postgres, Mongo, dynmodb, or mysql when you need a real sql server. This is true for both self hosted and cloud solutions.

Dynmodb in AWS offers 25gb free. That's twelve times the storage without charging you a dime.

<comment><USER26> Dynamo db is not cheap at all. Writes are expensive and the structure of Dynamo is far from flexible and very limited in regards to querying. I don't know what the usecase is for it.

<comment><USER25> >usecase

Dynamo db handles burst traffic (scaling up and down on server count) better than mssql. Dynamo also handles big data better than sql.

The last time I tried (2015) no amount of indexing or sharding was allowing for decent performance on joins across tables with 300+ million rows in sql server. I've seen dynmodb used in map reduce functions with more data.

Dynamo also doesn't completely suck at typical transcational work, and it's convient to have one datasource across the warehouse and application layers.

<comment><USER26> When I worked in Australia we had a client with ~1.5tb database in SQL Server, largest main table was about 2.5b records. Had no problem returning joined records in low ms times. Wouldn't be good if it had really high traffic but we wrote about ~1-2m records per day into the tables without issue reading it out.

SQL Server can perform. But requires a lot of massaging.

\---

We tried using DynamoDB for logging, not sure why but the team had trouble with document sizes, write limits, in the end it was growing and going to cost more than SQL Server, was replaced with logging to PostgreSQL with much more flexibilty and runs on a t2.micro instance without issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The bigger question in my mind is whether MSFT will reach a $1T market cap because it is essentially behaving like a banker and moving money around, or whether it will genuinely innovate to expand its revenue. If it is the former they are vulnerable to their souffle collapsing. The typical hypey techcrunch headline belies the fact that MSFT is reapproaching where it was two weeks ago in the markets.

<comment><USER28> > essentially behaving like a banker and moving money around

Modern GAAP makes this impossible to hide thanks to Enron (shuffling cash between subsidiaries).

<comment><USER27> I suspect they are emulating Apple. 2:45 of Rana Faroohar in 2016 on Apple & capital markets [https://youtu.be/-lt5xCFq-RA](https://youtu.be/-lt5xCFq-RA)

<comment><USER28> Thank you, this was the context I was missing. I'd be curious what the requirements are for public companies to report gains from these types of investments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is there any chance Microsoft will take a strong stance on privacy like Apple? They seem to have strong business models besides ads so they can avoid becoming a data grubbing pile of crap.

<comment><USER30> They sued the government to keep from handing over customer data stored overseas. Isn't that a pretty strong stance on privacy?

They could certainly strengthen their stance in some areas, though, such as by including Bitlocker in all versions of Windows and using strong E2E encryption in Skypep. But I'm not sure that the majority of people would use Bitlocker anyway.

<comment><USER31> That's not even close to the same. Windows 10 is the spying king: [http://bgr.com/2016/02/10/windows-10-spying- investigation/](http://bgr.com/2016/02/10/windows-10-spying-investigation/)

Did you forget about Prism? [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft- nsa-...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa- collaboration-user-data)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> MSFT should go the other way of Google now and offer full data privacy guarantees(I guess they still have a big Bing Ads business though).

That being said, It's scary how big these MegaCorps have gotten.

<comment><USER33> I actually don't get the data-hogging of Microsoft, their ad revenue is only ~7% (compared to ~88% at Google).

Would be much better if they would follow Apple model and ditch advertising altogether and focus on products and privacy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> [Comment deleted because I'm mainly just angry at Microsoft for literally 20 years now.]

<comment><USER35> Agreed. But it's every major player in tech. I wish the political desire to regulate markets existed. We have these huge corporations, and few else. They just don't employ enough people, and their products leave people wanting.

As far as seeing anyone sunset, I don't. But I do hope to see the end to homelessness and needless brutalism.

<comment><USER34> ooof. way to make me feel bad. hold out for successful universal income experiments, I guess

<comment><USER35> Oh, I don't mean that toward you. I mean all the hostility and associated violence in the world wret large</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is this idea for audio compression technically feasible? - <AUTHOR>

I have a great idea for an audio compression algorithm, but does exist already? And if not, is it technically feasible?
My idea is that you take repeating identical sounds/frequencies (kick/snare/hi-hat/bass etc.) and encode them as the "same" as the first occurence in the song. That way you would save a lot of data/space, especially with electronic music where many of the sounds actually are 100% identical along the song.
But would this work in practice? Or would it be too complex to find out what is truly identical and what is just similar, but not similar enough to be marked as "same"?
I would love to hear what HN has to say about this. Thanks! <comment><USER2> As someone who listens to EDM (electronic dance music) almost exclusively (though, I'm no DJ or producer) the vast majority of those sounds come from some sort of midi type software or machine be it a drum machine, sound effects machines or software, or recordings of sounds that occur around us. EDM music also has a build up - the beat generally starts simple and gets more complex as the track progresses. Sometimes, thats called the drop, right? When a track builds up, they "drop the beat" and the best gets more complex, as found in Dubstep.

So, I think compression like that might work in software they use to write / develop a track; if the software can determine that 2 notes or beats are identical, it could code the file with less data in it, but I think of music to be similar to water. It's fluid, with each note / beat / voice effecting the notes / beats around it. Ever listen to a track with the voice removed? Or with the drums removed? It sounds very different then when the track untouched. Point being, I don't think this would work for a final mp3 or lossless compression.

(or I may be completely wrong)

</comment><comment><USER3> You're kind of thinking of the "source code" for electronic music.

To simplify things: You start with a sequence of notes stored as MIDI, which are played through synthesizers and sampled instruments, which generate the sounds. Then you layer effects on top of that, such as reverb, filters, and compression.

Distributing this "source code" probably wouldn't make music files any smaller, since you would also need to distribute all of the sample packs and effects plugins. A single reverb or compression plugin will take up tens of megabytes. Acoustic instruments are usually sampled at very high quality. A grand piano library can be gigabytes of samples, which includes all kinds of variations for velocity, acoustic response, etc.

In addition to that, anything you record with a microphone can't be compressed in this way, such as vocals, or any acoustic instruments. So if you have vocals throughout the whole song, then the entire length of this audio track will have to compressed at the original bitrate anyway. So if you have a 3 minute song that uses lots of samples, but also has 3 minutes of vocals, then the vocals are your bottleneck. Whatever you do to split up your track into samples, your minimum filesize will be 3 minutes of compressed audio.

So as soon as you have anything that can't be reduced into repeating samples + filters, you won't be able to do better than MP3 or FLAC (for lossless compression).

If your song contains very little recorded audio, and is purely MIDI + synthesizers, then this technique could save a lot of space.

</comment><comment><USER4> The analysing part sounds like something "The Infinite Jukebox" [0] must be doing to find suitable paths to jump between.

[0][http://labs.echonest.com/Uploader/index.html](http://labs.echonest.com/Uploader/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> I know little of the topic, but the end result sounds equivalent to methods that convert a music recording to a MIDI file. There is a list of such programs at [http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Midi#Converting_from_audio...](http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Midi#Converting_from_audio_formats_to_MIDI) . That section does comment that this is a challenging research problem.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I should add that I'm a music producer myself and know very well how music is created.

What I'm wondering about if it's feasible having an algorithm that searches for repeated instances of any sound (don't limit yourself to thinking MOD or samples) across a file and then marks these as "same" in order to save space.

Any programmers who could tell me that?

</comment><comment><USER6> Some people actually create such files by writing music with a tracker. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_tracker](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_tracker)

What you describe may be called a conversion to a tracker format.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is this not the type of thing that every compression algorithm does?

<comment><USER8> Nope. MP3, for example, cuts off all frequencies outside the audible range and thus achieves large savings.

<comment><USER9> A 44.1Khz .wav file has no frequencies outside the audible range.

<comment><USER10> How well do you hear 1Hz? A 44.1KHz doesn't have _a lot_ of frequencies outside of the audible range, but that's not really that relevant, as that's only a minor trim compared to the crazy things lossy compression algorithms do here. Their main focus is having the result sound _almost_ like the original. The audible sound-image is modified extensively by them, with focus on simplifications that are hard to notice for a human.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Announcing openrespect.org - <AUTHOR> http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/11/08/announcing-openrespect-org/ <comment><USER2> You will need a lot more than a website and a banner to stop flame wars. This disscussion will probably become a confirmation of that rule, really fast.

I don´t find how it would actually help me... i need more insight.</comment>


Ask HN: How have you done internationalization (i18n)? - <AUTHOR> We've got a i18n project coming up at my day job. I'm curious to hear other's experiences with completing i18n projects. What worked well, what didn't work so well, what would you do differently? Were there any 3rd party tools or services you used? <comment><USER2> It is really, really hard to do i18n really well. Most developers think it is easy because they don't consider all the little details that you need to get right. It's everything from input fields using comma or period as the decimal separator, Sunday or Monday as the start of the week, to currencies, different line lengths, time formats and much more.

IMHO, unless you plan to support more than half a dozen locales, it is less work to do one website (or frontend) for each locale than it is to build one website that adapts to multiple locales.

Good enough i18n is much easier. Just keep all strings in an associative array: {("greet", "en") : "Hello", ("greet", "ru") : "Здравствуйте!"} then each time a message is to be printed, have a function that looks up the correct translation: i18n_lookup(string_key, language).

</comment><comment><USER3> I recommend to keep things simple whenever possible. For most of our website projects we use simple dictionaries that we typically store in YAML files, just like this:

[https://github.com/DPKit/gdpr- portal/blob/master/src/transla...](https://github.com/DPKit/gdpr- portal/blob/master/src/translations.yml)

We then have a custom Jinja filter that looks up the translation for a given word, such as

        {{'summary'|translate}}

In code, we have a simple helper function like this:

        def t(key, lang):
            return translations[lang].get(key, '[{} not found]'.format(key))

In practice we use a slightly more advanced version of this function ([https://github.com/adewes/beam/blob/master/beam/site.py#L91](https://github.com/adewes/beam/blob/master/beam/site.py#L91)) which allows us to also include formatting parameters to allow things like {{'contact-us'|translate(name='Max',email@example.com')}}.

You can also keep date and number formats in the i18n dictionary to internationalize dates. Most internationalization libraries do not provide much more than that and try to be overly clever by e.g. offering automated pluralization etc. but in my experience they often subtly break things.

Works quite well for us both on the backend as well as frontend, here's an example of a website (also open source at [https://github.com/DPKit/gdpr- portal](https://github.com/DPKit/gdpr-portal)) that uses this method:

DE: [https://dsgvo.dpkit.com](https://dsgvo.dpkit.com) EN: [https://gdpr.dpkit.com](https://gdpr.dpkit.com)

(we decided to keep the different language versions on separate subdomains for better usability).

Don't be afraid to write your own solution for simple problems like that, no need to use 3rd party libraries for everything :)

</comment><comment><USER4> Google has some great resources including a few open source projects [0]. I don't use any of them directly, but they have been a great inspiration to learn from their epxerience.

[0] [https://developers.google.com/international/](https://developers.google.com/international/)

Disclaimer: I used to work on i18n and i10n for Google as a country specialist back in the days.</comment>


Beyond Passion: The Science of Loving What You Do - <AUTHOR> http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/01/23/beyond-passion-the-science-of-loving-what-you-do/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+StudyHacks+(Study+Hacks)&utm_content=Google+Reader

<comment><USER2> Argument doesn't make sense. Author asserts that goal is "autonomy", "competence", "relatedness," as opposed to "passion" or "personality." You don't have to "care" about your work as long as you self-manage and are good at it.

However, then the author defines:

"Autonomy" as "you endorse [your] actions at the highest level of reflection." This implies work that satisfies your own human values, which seems like part of "passion" or "personality," more than simply freedom of choice.

(Also, what's the point of making your own choices if it's not for pursuing of goals you either care about or enjoy, which again seems like "passion" or "personality.")

"Competence" as "mastering unambiguously useful things." I don't know about you but I have never been able to master anything that I did not in some way have some "passion" or "personality" for.

There is the Carol Dweck argument that if you decide you can learn anything, and put in enough hours of deliberating practice, then you can be good at anything. Given that the amount of deliberate practice people are citing is 10,000 hours required or approximately 10 years, then doing this without passion seems like a hideously painful waste of your life.

"Relatedness" as "to love and care [about people], and to be loved and cared for." Again I don't see how this is independent of passion or personality. Passion is loving and caring about something, e.g. people. Personality I think has some definite non-zero correlation with whom you love, care for, enjoy spending time around.

Autonomy, competence and relatedness seem like fine things to seek in your work, but I'm not convinced of the author's argument that these things are independent of passion or personality.

(Also it's worth pointing out that the author does not provide a "have an awesome experience of work" example so much as he provides a Tim Ferris-style 4 Hour Work Week example of "make a bunch of money quickly and then go spend your free time." The example person in the post, despite having "mastered" database optimization, doesn't actually care to go optimize a database more than once every few _months_.)

</comment><comment><USER3> _In several earlier posts, I argued that mastering a rare and valuable skill is the key to generating a remarkable life_

I'm a passionate proselytizer of this. So many many of my peers have made major choices about what to pursue with little to no critical analysis of what they want out of life and how the chosen path will get them there.

</comment><comment><USER4> Pro Tip: Reading self-help blogs is not a rare and valuable skill, no matter how good you are at it.

</comment><comment><USER5> I agree, it's important to master something useful.

But the hidden lesson in this blog post is to always apply that mastery to problem environments. The bigger the problem, the better.

When things are going along smoothly nobody cares what you've mastered.

In other words, if you want autonomy, relate to someone who genuinely needs help with the things you've mastered.

</comment><comment><USER6> I found this blog post to be far more useful than (the cited) Daniel H. Pink book, Drive.</comment>


Li-Ion Batt Inventor: New Tech for Fast-Charging Noncombustible Batteries - <AUTHOR> https://news.utexas.edu/2017/02/28/goodenough-introduces-new-battery-technology <comment><USER2> This is really interesting. More interesting is the footer:

> The UT Austin Office of Technology Commercialization is actively negotiating > license agreements with multiple companies engaged in a variety of battery- > related industry segments.

I wonder which companies? Tesla hopefully!

<comment><AUTHOR> If this works out it will revolutionize the EV market more or less overnight. No manufacturer can continue using current batteries if this becomes a reality, an the recharge time is reduced to minutes.</comment></comment>