Bushfires Release over Half Australia's Annual Carbon Emissions - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-24/bushfires-release-over-half-australia-s-annual-carbon-emissions <comment><USER2> The hype doesn't make sense and is probably just there for click-bait. The CO2 problem is about adding CO2 to the system. Digging up coal, oil or gas and burning it, adds CO2 to the atmosphere that wasn't part of this system. Burning trees that will grow back does not add any CO2 to the system, only just temporary. The trees that grow back will take up the CO2 again.

You could argue all kinds of things however. The toxic dust coming off of it, or the carbon monoxide isn't really good for humans. The wildlife probably doesn't enjoy the fires either. And if there are more wildfires now than there used to be, because of heat, that is a symptom of bigger problems. But the CO2 is not really the problem here in the wildfires.

<comment><USER3> This would be true in a system in equilibrium. Although, as you point out, we are not at equilibrium, and so it's possible that the carbon storage won't be replaced if (for example), the burn rate increases.

Also, in our case, the lag matters too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had a robust discussion about this today with my dad.

He says that the carbon released from back burning is counted in carbon tallies, but that from bushfires isn't.

I have no idea where he gets his sources from, and he generally doesn't either. However he nailed current carbon dioxide levels (407 ppm) - sI he might know what he's talking about. Does anyone know any more about this?

<comment><USER5> I don't understand "back burning", but I'd say it makes sense not to count bushfire since these trees are going to grow back and re-capture the same amount of CO2 that has been released in the fire.

<comment><USER6> > I don't understand "back burning"

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is this a natural occurrence in this area? This may be hard to hear, but natural wildfires are an important part of certain ecosystems. If man interrupts, the native species can die out decreasing biodiversity and leading to bigger problems.

<comment><USER8> The reduced rainfall of the last several years and the extra heat this year means the forest is much drier than usual. It's burning faster and more of it is on fire at once than normal. Last year, Australia's Bureau of Meteorology predicted an increase in droughts and fires based on long-term trends in rainfall and temperature. "There has been a long-term increase in extreme fire weather, and in the length of the fire season, across large parts of Australia." [http://www.bom.gov.au/state-of-the- climate/](http://www.bom.gov.au/state-of-the-climate/) Here's an article with quotes from more Australian scientists: [https://www.bbc.com/news/world- australia-50341210](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-50341210)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reforestation is not a viable solution to climate change. This should be a wake up call to anyone who thinks planting trees will fix anything. As global temperature rises, these kinds of wildfires will become more and more frequent and we are not equipped to stop them. At this point scientists aren't even sure if forests are a net carbon sink or source after accounting for increasing wildfires.

At best, forests are not carbon _sinks_ , they are carbon _stores_. The only way to turn them into sinks is to cut down fully grown trees and do something with them that will prevent the release of their carbon content back into the environment. If they burn or if they rot, they release all the carbon back into the environment.

The scariest thing about climate change isn't the deniers, it's that most of the people who identify as activists, are active towards ineffective measures. If global climate policy doesn't involve a massive rollout of nuclear to power electrochemical sequestration alongside a steep carbon tax, we might as well just roll over now.

An average of 5 billion people has spent an average of 100 years burning various fossil fuels to provide their energy which brought Co2 from ~300ppm to ~400ppm. There's no way to solve climate change without repaying that energy debt.

[https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?v=2.7....](https://en- roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?v=2.7.6)

<comment><USER10> > Reforestation is not a viable solution to climate change.

It's a strange tangent to take here. The article makes no mention of reforestation.

Just to give some background about the situation in Australia: many of the trees are not just fire tolerant, but their seeds are triggered to germinate when a fire passes through - they depend on fire. This means that 1000s of saplings will arise where there were once 100s of established trees. This increases the fire risk over the next 5 years, but it does capture back a lot of that carbon.

A big problem is that much of the old growth forests, that have less tree density, and thick canopies that rob much of the sunlight to smaller plants, have been clear felled. In their place, is either regenerated forest, with a higher fuel content, or with paddocks, where grass fires can rip straight through.

But still, large canopy fires can still affect these old growth forests. As with all bush fires, the only thing that can be done is to back burn to contain them, and to ensure that sections of forests are divided by fire breaks.

I suppose, to reduce fire risk and potentially releasing all this carbon, we could just turn all the trees into furniture. But I love forests, so I hope deforestation never becomes a popular idea.

So what are you suggesting Australia does here?

<comment><USER9> There's a number of really obvious things for Australia to do. Like not voting in a prime minister who literally brought a lump of coal into parliament and told everyone that it represents the future[1]. We're ideally located for renewable power, we have an abundance of uranium for nuclear. And yet we're one of the worst polluters per capita in the world.

But my comment wasn't about Australia specifically. It was about the general notion which has spread, that planting a bunch of trees will make a meaningful dent on climate change. It won't. It takes 10 minutes and the back of one envelope to do the math to understand that it won't. If you do the math, you'll find that every person on earth must plant 20 trees each year to offset their average Co2 emissions for that year alone, nothing to speak of the 5b people * 100 years debt we must repay to wind back atmospheric Co2. And once fully grown those trees need to be cut down and buried deep underground to contain their carbon content from returning to the cycle.

We must focus our effort towards effective solutions because focusing it on ineffective ones is worse than doing nothing. Afforestation is not an effective solution.

I'm not against afforestation, but at this point we need to run the numbers to figure out whether it makes things better or worse given that rising temperatures mean an increasing number of wildfires that can't be stopped. Wildfires that dump 6 months of an entire nation's Co2 output into the air in the span of a few days.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2017/feb/09/scott-m...](https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2017/feb/09/scott- morrison-brings-a-chunk-of-coal-into-parliament-video)

<comment><USER11> It is necessary to have multiple solutions. There needn't be just one.

We need to restore forest cover for reasons I've responded to you on in another thread.

We need to have low carbon energy - I'm one of those coming around to Nuclear energy.

We need to stop pollution via plastics.

We need to stop greenhouse gas emissions and figure out solutions to address those gases that we've already released.

Your reminder about the wild fires dumping half the years CO2 into the air the the span of a few days is a sobering thought. But, your general message (despite your clarifications) seems to suggest that we might just as well get rid of all trees and artificially supply ourselves with oxygen.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


New lung cells may replace tobacco-damaged cells after people stop smoking - <AUTHOR> https://www.nhs.uk/news/heart-and-lungs/new-lung-cells-may-replace-tobacco-damaged-cells-after-people-stop-smoking/ <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22188388](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22188388)</comment>


Roughly 10% of Microsoft employees said to be iPhone owners - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/03/13/roughly_10_of_microsoft_employees_said_to_be_iphone_owners.html

<comment><USER2> Not surprising. I think this is a good stat for open mindedness -- it's simply wise to personally use the best products out there.

It blows my mind when I see companies have a dogma that everything they do is the absolute best. While it is a good thing to believe in your products, it is another thing to be dogmatic in extreme ways about what products you should use.

I think the more extreme example of this is web stacks. Microsoft and Apple both seem to suffer from this not-invented-here syndrome around .NET and/or WebObjects, and the browsers they create. I speculate there are just massive losses in productivity there, simply because open source produces better web tools. Microsoft routinely makes web pages that only render in IE, and the Apple Store routinely fails on anything but Safari.

Use the best stuff there is. And it might not be invented at home.

<comment><USER3> "the Apple Store routinely fails on anything but Safari"

What?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why would anyone write an article like this without citing the general market penetration for iPhones among tech professionals? I have no idea whether 10% is high, low, or average, so how can I have an opinion about this?

<comment><USER5> Indeed. [http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/03/11/numerator-only- data...](http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/03/11/numerator-only-data/)

According to information I was able to gather, the iPhone has about 25% marketshare in the smartphone market, given that not all technical professionals have any kind of smartphone I'd say 10% may be about average penetration for the iPhone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I worked at Microsoft; lot of people had iPhones.

Does that matter? No. Rational people choose products based on their merits. This is not new and there is no reason for surprise.</comment>


A New Object-Oriented Programming Language: sh [ps] - <AUTHOR> http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/bos94/full_papers/haemer.ps

<comment><USER2> With an online postscript viewer link <http://view.samurajdata.se/psview.php?id=8368f85b></comment>


The Shocking Secret About Static Types - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/javascript-scene/the-shocking-secret-about-static-types-514d39bf30a3 <comment><USER2> I've Javascript developer who has recently joined a project using scala.

I've never been a massive fan of static types, it always felt so verbose, and I didn't really see the benefit.

I don't love it, but I will say that when I change a signature, and the compiler tells me all the places the program now fails because the signature does not match expectations, I find that pretty impressive.

I do think it helps catch certain types of bugs (particularly helpful in finding all the interconnected pieces in a large project).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep. I agree with those observations. Static types can be very handy to reduce developer cognitive load. Automated refactoring tools are also pretty nice. All I'm saying is they're no substitute for a test suite. As a software quality guarantee, they don't even come close.</comment></comment>


Largest U.S. Bitcoin Exchange Shuts Down - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2013/04/18/bitcoin-exchange/

<comment><USER2> The article mentions:

>Bitfloor, the largest Bitcoin exchange in the U.S.

And then later says

>the world's largest Bitcoin exchange, MtGox [...] handles more than 80% of all Bitcoin trade

Deceptive title?

<comment><USER3> I don't think so. Bitfloor was (citation?) the largest bitcoin exchange in the US. Mt.Gox is based out of Japan.</comment></comment>


Lockheed Knee-Stress Relief Device - <AUTHOR> http://breakingdefense.com/2017/05/k-srd-exoskeleton-gives-overburdened-troops-a-leg-up-literally/ <comment><AUTHOR> I see the original headline on this piece ("Lockheed Exoskeleton Gives Troops A Leg Up, Literally") has been neutered, one more casualty in HN's ongoing War On Good Headlines. Sigh.

The original one actually sounded like something that would be interesting to read, unlike the neutered version ("Lockheed Knee-Stress Relief Device", as of this writing), which sounds like a page out of an ergonomic supply catalog.

I know how sensitive HN is to clickbait, but it does a disservice to interesting articles to hide them behind labels that sound deeply, profoundly uninteresting.

<comment><USER2> Indeed–it's a strange outcrop of HN's no-fluff-worldview, in that it seems to consider all hints of creativity as detrimental to its mission.

In this case, it has surely come full circle. In an effort to avoid the original title's pun, it has replaced it with something that gives a completely wrong impression regarding the content. Indeed, as the article mentions, it "makes it sounds like a piece of molded plastic your insurance would refuse to cover".

Let's remember that "clickbait" once meant psycho-tricks like "You won't believe these 10 reasons why...". Newspapers have, since time immortal, used all sorts of literary devices in headlines. Indeed there are some publications where headlines are the only outlet for a bit of lightness. The economist, for example, is well-known for bone-dry articles in contrast to evocative headlines (and, sometimes, outright silly captions).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have a friend who would basically get his life back if he could use something like this to allow him to walk normally.

I'm all for superhuman enhancements, and I know that defence leads research in many areas, but I can't help feeling a bit disappointed that my friend will likely never have access to anything like this.

<comment><USER4> Do you think affordability will be a blocker?

I'd expect such assistive devices to hit the medical market pretty much instantly once they are practical in terms of things like weight, cost and run time.

<comment><USER5> One problem is that you have to make sure that this device tries to rotate your knee around the same axis as your knee does, probably more so when used on people who already have weaker knees.

Because of that, I expect that fitting this to a body is a lengthy and, hence, fairly costly affair.

<comment><USER6> Telescopic arms and IR sensors feeding to the AI could potentially center the joins within a few steps without any human intervention.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm curious what takes up the majority of the weight in terms of what a typical soldier carries?

I'm guessing after some quick math that its not the water like I originally suspected but perhaps the armor and ammo but maybe not?

<comment><USER8> A USMC radio operator on a ground patrol with a plan to be out for less than a day and cover 20km will have radio batteries, a radio, flak jacket, 4 extra magazine, m4, smoke grenades, helmet, sunglasses, weapon cleaning kit, extra socks, 2 days of mre, probably 2l of extra water, poncho liner, rain jacket, gloves, extra socks. Others will have heavier weapons but less radio gear and two people will have ied jammers. Night vision goggles and a peq 16 plus extra batteries and grenades will depend on what they are doing. 60lbs or more is normal for a ground patrol.

<comment><USER9> It's really impressive to me that all that gear only weighs 60 lbs. That is so much stuff.

<comment><USER10> It's the other way around - all that gear is not as much as you'd like and 30kg is a lot of weight to carry on you most of the time :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How hard is it for a hoobiest to build something like this?

What's the hard part? Aligning to your leg? Powerful enough motors? Software?

<comment><USER12> It depends on how broadly you are willing to count as having made one. Super crude examples have already been made at home and can lift things. Power consumption and size are big issues but the largest one is that without really good software the person wearing it will have to fight against the exo-'suit' so much that normal movement will take more energy. One of the big improvements touted in the article is just that, the prosthetic got better software so that it predicted how the user wanted to move better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> >> So if you can't lighten the soldier's load, and you can't take it off him, can you make him stronger? Nowadays, the answer is yes: We have the technology.

Yeah, it's called a squat rack.

<comment><USER14> ...and PEDs of course.

It's interesting to wonder if government special ops teams are encouraged or even required to follow doctor-prescribed PED cycles these days.

<comment><USER15> Yep, testosterone dramatically increases strength, almost eliminates recovery time, reduces the need for sleep and food to maintain muscle mass... the downside, you die at 50

<comment><USER14> I seriously doubt that assertion as testosterone is liberally prescribed to people my age (50s) to help with a wide variety of issues.

<comment><USER15> That's because natural test levels drop in old age, so TRT restores them to the former, youthful levels, between 200 and 1000 ng/dl. For noticeable benefits, enhanced athletes are generally blasting at 3000-4000 ng/dl, and that's just as a _base_ for a complex and crazy strong cocktail of androgenic anabolic compounds.

My point is that PEDs really do take you to a different world physically, and there is zero - zilch competition between natural and enhanced athletes. When you are at that level, it's difficult to come off, go back to fatigue and weakness and small size, so you end up blasting for a decade and at that point your heart is the size of your head.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Red Bull Creation - Calling all hackers, inventors and makers - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QenCwxx7x90&feature=feedu <comment><USER2> Love the various easter eggs that have been uncovered so far - curious how many they have in the end.</comment>


Develop Application Using PDO in PHP - <AUTHOR> https://www.cloudways.com/blog/introduction-php-data-objects/ <comment><AUTHOR> PHP Data Objects is a fast and consistent interface for accessing and managing databases in PHP applications.</comment>


America's local economy keeps shrinking - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/americas-local-economy-shrinking-d3e6cc25-1bc1-4d22-a4d5-e65b8b96e74e.html <comment><USER2> My take is that Yelp has always been full of garbage entries in the bay area.

I've never felt dumber then when I followed somebody around with a smart phone in San Francisco looking for restaurants, all of which were closed or nonexistent. As we did this we walked by a large number of restaurants that were open and looked perfectly fine to me.

Although every TV ad for a location based service shows a map San Francisco, San Francisco is the second worst city I've been to for GPS reception. My GPS receiver can find a signal at Union square and hold onto it downtown, but it can't find a signal anywhere else downtown.

(The worst city for GPS reception is Washington, DC but that's because of government jamming and the dire fear that the U.S. has that Washington will be attacked by sea like it was in the War of 1812 -- just this time it will be missile.)</comment>


Show HN: Y Combinator Social Media Report (Requires Twitter Login) - <AUTHOR> https://socialcrawlytics.com/account/report/SC52ec05ce972be7165

<comment><AUTHOR> Twitter seems to be the biggest network.</comment>


Handy spacemacs commands for developing in JavaScript, node js, css - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/david-cahill/spacemacs-cheatsheet <comment><AUTHOR> As a beginner with spacemacs, I found myself having to ask people and search on google just to do simple things on spacemacs. Here's a handy spacemacs cheatsheet that I hope saves other people some time, enjoy!

<comment><USER2> Have you considered creating a reference card for Spacemacs?

[https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/refcards/pdf/](https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/refcards/pdf/)</comment></comment>


Show HN: LocalWiki, the open platform for local knowledge - <AUTHOR> https://localwiki.org/

<comment><USER2> Aw yay, I took that photo on the new homepage! It was during an editing party at the Prelinger Library in San Francisco ([https://localwiki.org/sf/Prelinger_Library](https://localwiki.org/sf/Prelinger_Library)).

I've been a Wikipedia editor for many years, and last year I started splitting my editing work between Wikipedia and LocalWiki. There is so much I love in the places I've lived that can't fit into Wikipedia's notability/verifiability rules but is still important to me and other people who live in these places, and it's nice to have a collaborative thing to work on that is very relaxed.

So I wrote some articles about curious bits of my neighborhood in SF ([https://localwiki.org/sf/Old_Mission_Police_Station](https://localwiki.org/sf/Old_Mission_Police_Station) for example) and then realized I should start a LocalWiki for a place I spent tons of time photographing and researching when I lived there, Isla Vista (next to UC Santa Barbara): [https://localwiki.org/islavista/](https://localwiki.org/islavista/)

Isla Vista is very interesting but doesn't have a lot of documentation of its history available online, and a lot of residents don't know much about it. It's been fun to use LocalWiki to start organizing and sharing what I've learned about it, and to get other people working with me to build a collective document that goes beyond my own perspective & interests. Also on Metafilter a couple days ago: [http://www.metafilter.com/146431/An- Unincorporated-Historic-...](http://www.metafilter.com/146431/An- Unincorporated-Historic-Neighborhood-Gets-it-Place-on-the-Internet)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd really love for this to succeed. Periodically I'll remark to a friend: "The one thing the internet seems to be missing is a reliable place to catch up on a bit of local scuttlebutt or legend that has caught my attention." For example:

\- Any idea why that restaurant that opened up three months ago and seemed to be doing fine closed up all of the sudden last week?

\- Anybody know why I heard 50 sirens at 2am last night?

\- How long has _this_ been here?

Of course, AOL made a big play in this domain and failed miserably with Patch. I've heard of other successful sites that have have petered out for one reason or another. And then there's the cautionary tale of sites like Topix, as recounted in this New York Times article:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/us/small-town-gossip- moves...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/us/small-town-gossip-moves-to-the- web-anonymous-and-vicious.html?pagewanted=all)

I really hope you can discover the right balance of the scurrilous and the curious, navigate the editing wars and cultural issues that have plagued Wikipedia, and build that topical and timely local news thing I've been waiting for.

<comment><USER4> Not that I don't also want this LocalWiki thing to succeed, but you should definitely check out your local subreddit: [https://www.reddit.com/subreddits/search](https://www.reddit.com/subreddits/search)

<comment><USER2> Yess, and a local Facebook group and/or subreddit can work really nicely in coordination with a LocalWiki. To share local knowledge you totally need that conversation part, where the oldtimers and newcomers sit around and chat (or comment) about what's interesting today and what happened a while ago, in a casual and amusing and timely way. But then you also need the reference part, where bits and pieces slowly get collected and organized and cross-linked to tell a more comprehensive story, and to make sure individual memories don't get lost if people move out of town (or get busy, or die) and aren't around to tell their stories anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> LocalWiki has awesome potential but they're facing two large problems.

If you browse you're going to see that in the majority of the towns someone signed up, started and then abandoned the effort. They need to implement rules similar to Wikipedia and sweep the ghost towns away.

The other weakness is mobile, that's really where LocalWiki could really shine.

<comment><USER4> Also a potential fragmentation problem:

"Vancouver": [https://localwiki.org/vancouver/](https://localwiki.org/vancouver/)

"Metro Vancouver": [https://localwiki.org/van/](https://localwiki.org/van/)

There's a genuinely hard problem in trying to define discrete but sufficiently meaningful localities. People really like clean dichotomies, but locality is fractal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great platform. Used this religiously while in college at Davis. Luckily, there was an active community of people updating the pages, which allowed the Wiki to essentially replace Yelp for looking up business info.

<comment><USER7> That Daviswiki allows for the accumulation of institutional knowledge from the student's perspective is just one of the things that makes it such a valuable resource. I learned so much more about the history and culture of the town and the university than I ever could have using sterile/stale facebook pages or univeristy websites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love this idea. I have had a hard time going to cities I'm unfamiliar with and not knowing a little bit about the important and not-so-important landmarks.

The problem I have with yelp in this regard is that it's all business focused. Hopefully localwiki will provide a more neutral and just updates based information.

<comment><USER9> What do you think of [http://wikitravel.org](http://wikitravel.org)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How do you plan to differentiate from [http://wikitravel.org](http://wikitravel.org)? Is [http://localwiki.org](http://localwiki.org) supposed to be more localised / higher resolution? Targeted at locals instead of tourists?

</comment><comment><USER11> I live in Ann Arbor, have my whole life, and am very glad for the wiki we have on LocalWiki. It's been extremely helpful to me a few times now. :)

</comment><comment><USER12> Nice use of OpenStreetMap on the map page. I wonder if the system utilises the collection of places, buildings, pubs, shops etc that is also mapped.

Edits - looking at it in a bit more detail, it appears that it does allow people to create new pages based on features from the map, my guess is that these "seeds" would be from some spatial database (OSM?)

</comment><comment><USER13> the local wiki editor tool bar & text area I've always thought was done very well. It's kind of a stand out, yet hidden feature that not a lot of wikis do as well. Simple but still HTML driven. I'd like to use the back end and re- template it for a personal site, just because I'd like to tinker with it a little more. Somebody elses' idea about calculating that a wiki is stagnant and having some actions / recommendations, even some auto email to existing editors is a great idea to keep things fluid and current.

</comment><comment><USER14> Very nice idea. Just created the page for Milwaukee: [https://localwiki.org/milwaukee/](https://localwiki.org/milwaukee/)

</comment><comment><USER15> How do you plan to avoid a commercial focus/ bias?</comment>


Australian Securities and Investments Commission guidance on ICO - <AUTHOR> https://www.asic.gov.au/regulatory-resources/digital-transformation/initial-coin-offerings/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is pretty comprehensive in describing different scenarios in which rules could be applied to ICOs.</comment>


Parallel Supercomputing for Astronomy with Julia - <AUTHOR> https://juliacomputing.com/case-studies/celeste.html <comment><AUTHOR> Goodwork Julia team!

Celeste is a huge leap forward. We combined the speed of Julia with one of the world's most powerful supercomputers to set a new performance record and solve a real-world problem. When the LSST begins producing data in two years time, Celeste will be even faster, more accurate and more advanced. Celeste remains number one on our Top Ten List of Big Data Problems for a good reason.</comment>


Ask HN: How to make money as a CS student? - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys, I'm three semesters away from graduating, and while I to learn and work on my own projects in my spare time, I have been looking for a way to make money while doing something relevant to coding. The first option I thought of was an internship with a local (NYC) startup, but almost all of these are unpaid.
What do you guys think is a good way to make some cash in my offtime and hopefully learn from it? <comment><USER2> Shoot me a message on skype or gchat and I'll give you some ideas. breck_yunits on skype or breck7 on gmail

</comment><comment><USER3> The most obvious thing to me is freelance coding jobs. Try a site like Guru.com or Rent-a-coder. You can build experience as well as client references, and if you're good take on larger jobs.

</comment><comment><USER4> We constantly try to get interns willing to work for free at our start up. We get a lot of qualified interns happy to work because we give them interesting work. But if you can leverage your skills and add real value to the start up, ask for compensation. Negotiate a payment plan based on accomplishments. If you meet A requirements, in B time frame, you receive C in compensation. Willing to do work for free up front and take payment on the back end shows that you're confident in your ability to execute and make good on promises.</comment>


Ask HN: who is going to the OpenStack design summit in HK?  - <AUTHOR>

are you going to the OpenStack summit? <comment><USER2> Docker is going, here is our schedule: [http://blog.docker.io/2013/10/docker- at-the-openstack-confer...](http://blog.docker.io/2013/10/docker-at-the- openstack-conference/)</comment>


Kim Dotcom Gets Green Light to Sue New Zealand Spies - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-gets-green-light-to-sue-new-zealand-spies-121206/ <comment><USER2> The interesting part of this case for me is that it underscores the tremendous differences between the US justice system and those of the rest of the world. In New Zeland, Kim Dotcom seems to at least be getting a fair chance. Their government seems to be willing to admit when it makes mistakes, and their judges seem apt to attempt to make amends when mistakes occur.

By contrast, in the US, all of the issues he has brought up so far would be dismissed by judges claiming they were harmless error because they are unlikely to affect the question of guilt or innocence. Of course, there is also no possibility of someone being sentenced to life in prison for stealing a piece of pizza in NZ either, which has happened and does happen frequently here in the US. It's sad to say, but other countries are making the US look less and less civilized every day.

<comment><USER3> >Of course, there is also no possibility of someone being sentenced to life in prison for stealing a piece of pizza in NZ either, _which has happened and does happen frequently here in the US._

I can't find a single example of this. Some people are convicted for long sentences for violating 3 strikes rules, which are questionable, but I think you have exaggerated more than a little here.

[EDIT] [Added] The comment below mentions this case, but the guy only did 6 years:

[http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/10/local/la-me- pizzathi...](http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/10/local/la-me- pizzathief10-2010feb10)

I looked around and there just are not many, if any cases like the OP describes. His comment is an exaggeration to say the least, and may even been an absurd exaggeration based on something he vaguely remembers from 1995.

<comment><USER4> I read 'frequently' as meaning 'much more than it should'. I'm guessing he was referring to three strikes violations leading to jail time for pizza-stealing.

I googled 'stealing pizza jail' and came up with one example, which of course was from California. Doesn't seem like it happens often, but there are enough stories of long jail time for comparably petty offences.

[http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Stealing-one-slice-of- piz...](http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Stealing-one-slice-of-pizza- results-in-life-3150629.php)

I also found this odd story from spain, which is a more serious incident of pizza thievery, with a knife:

[http://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2011/04/25/pizza- thef...](http://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2011/04/25/pizza-theft- malaga/)

<comment><USER5> I find the characterization of that California crime as "stealing one slice of pizza" to be wildly misleading. It conjures the image of someone sneaking up and nicking a piece while everybody's attention is diverted, or similar. The punishment isn't so much for the actual theft as for the threat of violence that was used to carry it out.

I'm not sure that threat deserves life in prison, but it's much more serious than the headline makes it sound, and I don't think it deserves to be called "petty".

<comment><USER6> According to the article he was convicted of "felony petty theft."

      > Williams, who testified in his own defense during his trial,
      > testified that some of the children nodded their heads "yes"
      > when he asked them for a slice of pizza and that he thanked
      > them for it.

      > But a 13-year-old boy in the group testified: "I was scared."

Sounds like implicit intimidation. I think that if there were claims that he threatened violence, it would have been quoted in the article.

      > While petty theft is typically a misdemeanor charge, Williams'
      > earlier convictions allowed prosecutors to upgrade it to a
      > felony.

They used his earlier convictions to upgrade a misdemeanor to a felony, then claim "3 felony convictions" == "life sentence".

<comment><USER5> > Sounds like implicit intimidation. I think that if there were claims that he > threatened violence, it would have been quoted in the article.

This confuses me a bit. I would personally put "implicit intimidation" under the category of "threatened violence", and it seems that the state agreed.

<comment><USER6> If you look (by your nature) intimidating and give someone a grim look, they could be intimidated (especially a 13 year old). Does that mean that you should treat this the same as if he had said aloud, "I'll break your bones if you don't give me that piece of pizza?"

[This is all speculation anyways since we don't really have the full story.]

<comment><USER5> There are really two separate questions here which are getting tangled up.

The first question is what crime he was _convicted_ of. The answer to that seems pretty clear: theft with assault or intimidation.

The second question is what he actually _did_. The answer to that is much less clear.

But the second question doesn't really matter to this specific discussion, although it's obviously highly important in the grand scheme of things. He was sentenced based on the crime he was _convicted_ of, so it was theft with assault or intimidation which got him a life sentence, and characterizing it as "stealing a slice of pizza" is tremendously misleading.

Whether he did something that deserves to be considered that crime is another question, but a completely different discussion. If I get life in prison for a murder I didn't commit, I still got life "for murder", and it would be wrong to characterize it as e.g. harsh sentencing for a lesser crime.

<comment><USER6>
      > The answer to that seems pretty clear: theft with
      > assault or intimidation.

I don't see any references to 'assault or intimidation' being part of the charge in that article. There's also the part where the prosecutor got the charge 'upgraded' to a felony instead of a misdemeanor, which was based on his prior record rather than the facts of this particular case (at least according to the article).

<comment><USER5> Well, a felony implies a serious crime. For a theft to be felony-level, it either needs to be theft of extremely valuable goods, or the act of stealing needs to be be aggravated. The pizza was presumably not value, so process of elimination leaves us with the second.

So again, maybe he didn't actually do what he was convicted of, but that's a separate question altogether.

<comment><USER6> You're speculating though. The only 'hard information' that we're going on here is the article that says this:

      > While petty theft is typically a misdemeanor charge,
      > Williams' earlier convictions allowed prosecutors to
      > upgrade it to a felony.

Sounds more like a "pattern of law breaking" argument was used to upgrade it rather than the facts of this particular matter, but again this is just speculation because we're not reading a blow-by-blow account of the trial.

<comment><USER5> Again, doesn't matter. He was convicted of felony theft, a serious crime, and sentenced accordingly. To say he was sentenced for stealing a slice of pizza is entirely wrong. Whether the additional factors were threats at the time of the theft or previous crimes or whatever, _that's_ what he was sentenced for.

<comment><USER6> Is it so hard to believe that a prosecutor used the 'stole a slice of pizza' incident as a foot in the door, and pushed hard to upgrade it to a felony just to get a feather in his hat (i.e. as a political power-play)? Would you be singing the same tune if a prosecutor had tried to get him convicted of 'felony jay-walking' and then sent him away for 25 to life? If 2 felony convictions + 1 minor infraction are enough to get you to do hard time, can we really claim that it's a '3 strikes policy?' Though, not a resident of California, I was under the impression that 3 strikes laws were sold to the public under the guise of hard criminals that are repeat offenders. This guy doesn't sound like a hard criminal, so I would venture that this situation is one that violates the intent of the law (or at least the advertised intent that the public was sold on).

<comment><USER3> This got out of hand, so let me try to present another viewpoint.

1) No one deserves to go to jail for 6 years (the term he served) or life imprison, even for intimidation of kids.

2) He wasn't a guy who just took a piece of pizza, he threatened kids and he did so after he committed multiple felonies.

3) The three strikes laws were designed to stop people from continuously committing crimes and getting of easily. The mid 1990s were a tough period for American politicians due to rising crime rates and they tried new stuff. (Basically they did the lean startup movement on criminal prosecution.)

4) If you ask me, the case and situation were misapplied.

5) My original point that this rarely if ever happens in the US still stands. This (pizza lifer) was an obvious injustice and it was fixed. It doesn't happen often, if ever and should not be viewed the way it is.

6) We should never let someone go to jail for 6 years, or even 2 years for stealing a piece of pizza from some kids. IMO the US should seriously look at reducing sentences for many crimes and we should take a hard look at reducing our imprisoned population.

7) Most importantly, The US has not deteriorated to the point of a police state, or anywhere close to it. Part of the reason it hasn't is that American's and international citizens have stood up to the government and demanded that they not violate the constitution. HN/Reddit/others have defeated SOPA, and will defeat other measures like it.

Great discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> police search, illegal seizure raids, great show of force, attacking him in his safe-house, unlawfully intercepted communications, unlawful surveillance, (still!) freezing his accounts... But somehow people pirating music/films is the worlds biggest problem? I'd say any government willing to break so many of it's own laws is the problem.

<comment><USER8> Worse is any goverment willing to break their own laws for another government that is really a proxy for an industry... That's what's really scary about this

<comment><USER9> Welcome to Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm amazed at how the NZ institutions are putting their hands up and the courts seem to be working. It seems so different from so many of the stories/comments here regarding similar stuff in the US.

Corruption Perception Index:

NZ = 90 (1st) vs US = 73 (19th)

Not a coincidence?

<comment><USER11> The most interesting point of the article is that it is _illegal_ for the GCSB (New Zealand spy agency) to monitor New Zealanders.

Personally I feel that other nations should learn from this and implement similar policies.

<comment><USER12> It already is illegal for the CIA to monitor Americans on American soil.

Of course once you are used to breaking laws around the world, what is one more law?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Gotta admit he got both balls and the backbone to keep pushing this matter forward.

<comment><USER14> His most honed skill is self-promotion, so that's a given.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Kim is turning into a Julian Assange of the Internet and he is now taking this to a whole new level.

<comment><USER16> Assange is a douche. Let's not lump the two together.

<comment><USER17> What and you think Kim is a great guy?

It's really important to separate the work from the person. I doubt many of us would have wanted to be friends with Steve Jobs but man I'm glad he existed and did the (professional) things he did.

<comment><USER14> Dotcom is trying to make a buck, not sincerely change the system.

<comment><USER17> If making a buck ends up changing the system, why would I care about why he did it? If you go back and look at history with a critical eye you'll find none of your heroes had you in mind when they did whatever it is they did. If we only celebrate the self-less then we have no one to thank for much of anything. That doesn't strike me as very fair.

<comment><USER14> Hey, I'll be happy if this changes anything for the better. I feel I'm setting my expectations reasonably low.

He's best known for bluster and charisma and promises unfulfilled, after all. I'd happily eat these words if anything positive comes from this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Rapt when I saw this on the news last night. A hugely influential decision. Not only is the GCSE now liable for their actions, but it opens up the opportunity to sue other organizations, which we have been unable to do since the eighties.

</comment><comment><USER19> I've been following Kim since my friend showed me the kimble.org flash website back in the early 2000's. All the events in his life could be an amazing story for a movie.

</comment><comment><USER20> There is a worldwide effort going on right now to put a ownership sticker on the worldwide internet, that goal has been failing, so now they are settling for an "ownership of the internet in their jurisdiction", and that is failing too, so they do the next best thing: "Digital rights management" because oh god won't somebody think of the children with child pornography and music downloads!

It's about expanding the power base, the ultimate goal here is for governments to acquire the ability to tax every bit and byte that travels across their borders. Kim stands for freedom. Government, stay out of my shit, you have a few defined jobs and you're not doing any of them here.

Power corrupts and seeks more power, it's the human condition. I'm afraid a free neutral and open internet and the explosion of technology it brought will be a phenomenon for the history books either soon or eventually.

<comment><USER21> > _Kim stands for freedom_

I think you mean "...stands for the freedom to make money off of people in the same way he has been the last 2 decades, namely through at best shady and several times completely illegal and fraudulent means".

Yes, even scumbags have rights, absolutely! No, don't ever paint this egotistical, opportunistic allegorical hyperbole of a man as any sort of "hero" or "freedom fighter".

> _It's about expanding the power base_

On this point, I could not agree more with you. It has been my own impression for a LONG time that all those "you wouldn't steal a car" ads and all the media attention the RIAA/MPAA-mafia are getting for their strong-arm methods is really nothing but a very clever and calculated PR campaign to implant this actually non-existent problem in people's minds so that they then can lobby and extort money and continue increasing their power and influence/leverage on governments the world over. So what I am saying is, it was never about changing people's minds to not copy a CD or a movie but it was mainly about rallying and lobbying for their cause; a self-feeding cluster-frakk because the topic is then obviously "en vogue" so politicians can no longer ignore them and have to give in to their demands. When actually they do not make less money now than they did 15 years ago.

It is very sad to see how successful this has become, seeing NZ fold like that.

<comment><USER6>
      > Yes, even scumbags have rights, absolutely! No,
      > don't ever paint this egotistical, opportunistic
      > allegorical hyperbole of a man as any sort of "hero"
      > or "freedom fighter".

Larry Flint stood for freedom too, doesn't mean he's a humanitarian only thinking of the greater good of mankind.

Even the 'Founding Fathers' of the US were rich landowners that didn't want to get taxed by England. For all of the "fluff" that the history books talk about them being warm and fuzzy about human rights, their philosophies didn't disagree with their pocketbooks.

      > When actually they do not make less money now than
      > they did 15 years ago.

Their profits/revenues do fluctuate, but they use piracy as their scapegoat for _everything_.

Is the economy down, so people have less disposable income to spend on consuming entertainment media? It's piracy at fault! It _definitely could not be_ because people have less money to spend, therefore they spend less money in aggregate.

Are other industries encroaching into the consumption media space (e.g. video games industry)? It's piracy at fault! It _definitely could not be_ because people are now choosing to distribute spending of their finite amount of disposable income in other industries (e.g. buying few movies, and more video games).</comment></comment></comment>


Apply HN: Trely – Outsourcing on Demand for Latam - <AUTHOR> Trely is a outsourcing platform that offer on-demand services for Latam made by curated freelancers.
Initially we are working with design and copywriting services.
For every task generated we take between 20-30% of the money.
Trely solves two problems of the current outsourcing space for latam. And in consequence of solving that 2 problems we offer 3 great improvements.
Problems:
1. Freelancers usually take more work than they should. And we get it. It's hard for a freelancer say no to a contract/work/gig because is the way they make a living. But this often end in a big workload and then delayed deliveries of their tasks.
2. Companies/entrepreneurs spend a good amount of time looking for a good freelance when they have to outsource some work. Checking the portafolio, the references, the reviews, the background. And then, the conversation between freelancer-company can have between 8-15 emails before the work is begun. Next depending on the work size the delivery in no less than a week.
Solutions that trely offers:
1. We look, interview, and vet the freelancers before we accept them in our platform. We look in their resumes, portafolio, background, and references. Then we make them 3 test and the result is that we work only with 15% of the initial candidates.
2. Companies only need to fill a detailed form of their needs and a freelancer can take the job. They can select a time frame of delivery. If the clients are in a rush the price increase.
3. As consequence of #1 and #2 the freelancers only take and work one task at a time. Our platafform only allow freelancers to take one job and delivered fast mantaining top quality. This allowed us to offer services on-demand (24 hours or less depending on the task).
http://trely.co
https://youtu.be/olBBWpDOiiU  (spanish)
PD: Sorry if my text have typos. I'm working hard on improve my english :) <comment><USER2> Oh "Latam" = Latin America, correct?

Are you taking on any jobs yourself, or sending every task to a freelancer? How do you maintain the quality of the work?

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct, our initial target would be Latin America.

We've taken freelance jobs but no the ones that comes through Trely. Just recommendations from our old clients.

And we take just the necessary for paying the bills.

We are really betting on this startup :)

For the quality thing. We have a system that for every job made by the freelancers the client can vote between 1-5 "stars". If the job review is below 3 we personally check the requirement and the work and we made a decision at this point. The client can get a refund or we explain why we believe the job was done correctly and the freelance gets paid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hello, Interesting, do you have any customers / freelancers yet? The site does not seem to be working correctly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. We are currently working with 10 selected customers. At this moment our logistic is working with third party apps like slack, typeform and internal tools developed by us that allow us launch the services in a mvp.

Our final platform is currently at 70% and should be finished and launch soon :) In the case of freelancers, we have associate 84 designers and 19 writers. All of them from Latam</comment></comment>


How secure are passwords stored by Firefox and Chrome? - <AUTHOR>

I installed Passware 12.3, a password recovery program and after testing it out found something interesting.  I tried the website password recovery option and was instantly shown a list of every password I had saved using Firefox and the website it belonged to.  No results showed up for Chrome however.  As far as Internet Explorer goes well I haven't used it in about 10 years.  Looks like Firefox will be uninstalled and never used again. <comment><USER2> A much more secure option: [https://github.com/zdia/gorilla/wiki](https://github.com/zdia/gorilla/wiki)

Store your passwords externally to the browser, then it no longer matters which browser you use, and as well you don't have to worry about how secure any browser is at "storing" all your passwords.

</comment><comment><USER3> OR you open up a ticket with Mozilla and help them (in)directly to make the browser more secure. If you uninstall Firefox, it won't increase security for others :)</comment>


Work Hard, Live Well - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@moskov/work-hard-live-well-ead679cb506d <comment><USER2> I continue to be amazed at the number of people who don't get the whole "after 40-50 hours, you're less productive" thing.

In a very selfish way, I'm rather thankful for it, though. Being able to outcompete your competition by working less than them is ... nice.

As a side-note: I'd argue that the 40-50 hour thing is _even more important_ for founders. The primary thing that goes pear-shaped if you overwork seems to be decision-making ability. Having a decision-impaired founder is not optimal, to put it mildly.

(I speak from personal, recent experience. Normally I stick rigidly to a 40-50 hour workweek, but last year I decided to crunch for a month to release a film. Looking back, it's pretty obvious that a) my productivity barely increased from what I'd expect of a 40-hour week and b) my ability to make effective strategic decisions took a massive, calamitous plunge. It's entirely possible the film would have been monumentally more successful if I'd stuck to my guns and done one week of crunch at most. )

I'd love to see some research on 20-hour weeks, incidentally. The productivity curve is _definitely_ non-intuitive.

<comment><USER3> Under good conditions one can easily work 70 hours/week and stay productive. But traditional open-office sweatshop with 2 hour commute does not work that way.

<comment><USER4> The research contradicts you, and if you're going by your intuition you're likely wrong, even about your own performance.

It's exactly your sort of thinking that means the industry keeps working the way it is

<comment><USER5> While I totally believe the research is right, and see the same results and draw the same conclusions for myself, I don't think the research can tell anything about one individual.

The way studies work is to measure the average of a large group. Most people I assume (I don't have data to back that up) work in jobs that do not have what jkot meant with "good conditions". So the research finds that _on average_ longer work hours do not result in more work done, and that is good advice for every employer.

For a motivated individual or small group that can be different, so I believe such personal accounts and would not tell them they are wrong. I can totally see how founders, special personalities, people with what I call the "perfect job" can work much longer than 40 hours without being wrong about their own performance.

The wrong thing is only to expect that from others or to create an environment that makes others believe it would be true for them too.

<comment><USER2> Covered at least in part in [http://ericdodds.com/research-and-the-realities- of-time-work...](http://ericdodds.com/research-and-the-realities-of-time- worked/) \- including perception vs reality of productivity in crunch time. He has a graph on that:

[http://ericdodds.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/graphing- per...](http://ericdodds.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/graphing-percieved- productivity-daniel-cook-working-overtime-eric-dodds-productivity-hacking- blog-series.jpg)

It's possible that some special individuals can work longer hours than average without productivity loss. However, without hard data to prove you're one of those individuals, given the above, it may be inadvisable to simply assume you are...

<comment><USER6> In addition to this, for every "capable of working more than 40 hours" worker, there's another "incapable of being productive more than 40 hours" worker. That's the joy with averages.

So look around you - of the 20 people who are working late hours with you and believe they are still productive, 10 of them are wildly unproductive, quite possibly to the point of contributing disproportionally negative productivity due to writing bugs.

Is the additional 400 man-hours of productive work worth those 400-800 man- hours spent debugging problems which could have been avoided?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just yesterday I was explaining how I did projects to satisfy bank examiners for a prior employer. The bank examiners would ask us to do work that would, under normal conditions, take a year, and to do that work in 3 months. I got great feedback by the examiners on the solutions provided. Better comments than most of my peers were getting. But the next day my boss would give me another one of these 80 hr / week problems to solve. Not even a day to breath again. Darn.

So I left to work in Higher Education where people complain about the workload and I just laugh. 40 hr work weeks, fun people to work with, and only a few crazy schedules. We even have time to have a cup of coffee and chat.

My health has improved dramatically, my kids actually now think I'm a good dad and my wife and I have time for each other.

I got my life back. took a big pay cut, never looked back. Life is too short to over commit for someone else.

<comment><USER8> > I got great feedback by the examiners on the solutions provided. Better > comments than most of my peers were getting. But the next day my boss would > give me another one of these 80 hr / week problems to solve.

Isn't it so odd that doing good work efficiently is always "rewarded" with yet more work to do. In my experience it creates a perverse incentive for workers to just drag their feet.

<comment><USER9> I think the logic is that if you reward someone for finishing work quickly then they will rush through their work and quality will suffer.

The counter-point to that is you can balance that out by having quality controls such as unit tests and code reviews. If someone writes shitty code then it'll be pretty obvious and they should be corrected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Controversial opinion: I think this is an acute USA/Silicon Valley problem.

I was in similar situation, working 50-55 hours a week for US corps and it was taking its toll on me. I think the American dream makes people think that work is the the only goal in life.

Then I moved to Europe and boy what a change! People here work 32-40 hours max and take bucket loads of vacation. The quality of work these guys produce is really top notch too.

I wish more people understand that working to death isn't a healthy choice.

<comment><USER11> > Then I moved to Europe and boy what a change! People here work 32-40 hours > max and take bucket loads of vacation.

Let me guess: you didn't move to the UK? Generalising about Europe is difficult.

I know people on a 42.5 hour contract, 1/2 hour lunch! My last job was 9am-6pm with 1 hour lunch (40 hour contract (plus 1 hour commute each way)). I'm now happily on a 37.5 hour contract with 1 hour lunch.

<comment><USER12> Compared to the US, the UK's legal minimum of 28 days[1] vacation is a bucket load!

And most full time UK workers are 40 or 37.5 hours, which is still well below what many US workers report their hours as.

[1] [https://www.gov.uk/holiday-entitlement- rights/entitlement](https://www.gov.uk/holiday-entitlement-rights/entitlement)

(This includes bank holidays, typically companies will mandate the bank holidays and give 20 days to be chosen freely.)

<comment><USER11> True, the point about vacation time is valid. Although I'm talking contracted hours. I haven't looked up any stats of reported hours in the UK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think a fair bit of long-hours work is just self-flagellation. Gotta prove to the boss or yourself or your family how seriously you take things. You could even say it's a replacement for productive work.

Take a look at investment banking, the ultimate waste of productive capacity. My roommate did this until his boss killed himself, providing a bit of a wakeup call.

He'd go to work in the morning, sit around all day, and then the boss would get back from meetings and ask for some presentation to be made. By the next morning. Stay up until midnight/2am, ie dinner at work and cab home, repeat. Every day, including weekends.

Nobody who did this thought it made any sense, but people did it anyway. They wanted to climb the greasy pole.

<comment><USER14> Why not negotiate with the boss to work an off-hours shift if your friend was going to "sit around all day" while the boss was out? If your friend was an hourly worker, the IB was wasting money.

<comment><USER15> It's an investment bank. It's not "work" in the sense of any of the hourly paid jobs; it's a form of highly sophisticated _emotional_ labour that is dealmaking for very large amounts of money. In this kind of environment, it's very important to show "commitment", in the emotional sense, by being there. What the person is actually doing is irrelevant, it matters only that they're foregoing whatever else they could be doing with their life in order to make this deal.

<comment><USER16> > it matters only that they're foregoing whatever else they could be doing > with their life in order to make this deal

That is so sad it almost makes me weep. I am thankful every day that I get to both work with cutting-edge tech, being productive, and also have a very healthy work/life balance.

<comment><USER15> That kind of finance industry lifestyle is more like joining a cult or a Maoist revolutionary organisation, except the devotion is to money rather than any other idea. I'd feel sorry for these people but they're generally educated, intelligent people with other choices who've chosen this lifestyle because they believe it will make them rich. Not comfortably well off, rich.

They're not workers locked in a garment factory with no fire exits or immigrants crossing the desert in the hope of finding a job to feed their family.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hoisting my own comment from downthread:

Undoubtably a big reason why salaried staff are overworked: the extra hours are free to the company. It would be interesting to see how long "long hours" culture would last if every single staff hour over 40 hours a week had to be paid for. (Once we got past all the insistence that employees falsify timesheets, of course).

The flip side of that is that every extra hour you work, you are devaluing your own compensation by working for free.

<comment><USER17> I was just thinking about a colleague of mine today. We both worked in a bit of a sweat shop, but he was just out of school and was in the period of life where he was quite happy with 80-90 weeks. But he was also smart (much smarter than me, alas). He decided to ask our boss for overtime pay. The boss said, "No, but you can have time off in lieu".

Well, my friend decided to continue to pull crazy hours and every Friday afternoon at 4:30 (when the boss went home) he went up to the boss and said, "Here. Sign this. These are my hours for the week." They boss (not being too bright) just signed it week after week after week.

Eventually a year went by and my industrious friend went up to the HR department and said, "Here are all of my time sheets for the year. My boss agreed to giving me time off in lieu. Here's his signature on every sheet. I've put in 80 hours a week for a year. Now I want a year off".

Of course they couldn't give it to him. After consulting with their lawyer they gave him time and a half (pro rated on his salary). Then they went to our boss and made a special rule for our team. Nobody was to work overtime again. Ever.

Everybody was happy. Except for my boss :-)

<comment><USER15> That's fantastic. I've known people (consultants) using the 40 hour week to work four days instead of five, but doing it on the scale of a year is impressive. The astonishing thing in your story is that the boss didn't simply deny he'd offered TOIL.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I completely agree with this.

The research is uncontroversial by now (many studies point to the same conclusion).

The trick is maximising those precious 40-50 hours and I think that's where we've gone up and down, backwards and forwards as an industry over the years. We've ended up with a lot of shoddy tooling and unnecessary complexity with our programming paradigms.

Only in the past year have I managed to figure out a way to work 50 hr weeks with the right tooling/programming language and have increased my output! And only by meeting someone else who had made the same mistakes I was making and then helped me discover what I was doing wrong.

Quite enlightening when I was on the verge of quitting the industry because I just kept thinking "this has to be so much simpler than how I'm doing it" and not really knowing how to make it so.

<comment><USER19> Can you share the right tooling/programming language that helped you increase your output? And what were some of the mistakes you mentioned? thx.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Your employer isn't the most important person in your life.

Who cares if taking care of yourself makes you a better employee (it might not). Your life is more important than your employer's shareholder value.

<comment><USER13> That attitude would work if more people had it, and there are areas of life where it does work. Mostly though, you can expect a race to the bottom with people who think they should be outcompeting you by burning the midnight oil.

<comment><USER21> Keep in mind that those people are not your competition.

You're competing on quality (or at least you should be). Being as good at what you do as you are makes you valuable. And you can get more done in 40 hours than those other clowns do in 120.

Let other people fight to be the cheapest and the most willing to be exploited. You're the guy the smart companies go to when they need somebody truly good.

<comment><USER22> You've hit on the underlying problem of this entire discussion; the way employees are judged. Regardless of what annual review process paperwork says, or what ideals we all pay lip service to, the fact remains that many (in the US, at least) businesses do not actually reward employees (salary, promotions, better projects) based on output and productivity. Between political games, friends helping friends, back-scratchings galore, and very different workplace experiences based on who your direct manager is, the system is seemingly FUBAR.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't know. The thing is, it is hard to define "work." All that is clear is that you spend 168 hrs/week engaged in something. Some of that is sleep. Some is eating. Some is writing code, or making plans, or talking with people.

For the last 9 months, I've spend 60-80 of those hours each week putting conscious attention to items directly related to founding my company. Let's call that "work."

But you can also call it "creation." Most of this time I am outside my self. What is being drained or used?

What is different in the time I am not "creating"? My mind is still doing things. What is the difference between "writing the marketing section of the business plan" and "reading a novel"? Does one use less mental energy than the other? I've read so many novels in my life, I'm tired of them. I don't like the way they lock my mind into their train of thought. Reading the novel becomes draining. TV is pure hell. Better to create, to engage in the intricate dance of love and passion with my Muse.

I do take a nice nap in the middle of most days. And it is nice to watch the birds flying in the valley, to lift big heavy things, and to eat good steak.

<comment><USER24> _For the last 9 months, I 've spend 60-80 of those hours each week putting conscious attention to items directly related to founding my company. Let's call that "work."_

This is it exactly. Someone told me recently: "To make it huge in business, it needs to also be your hobby." That rung really true for me as a founder. My "work" now used to be the thing I did when I got off of work at the end of the day. Now I get to do it all the time and it's great, why would I want to do anything else?

Now, the question is, for non-founders or employees, should we expect them to be as engaged etc... to the same degree as the founder. I think the answer is "it depends."

I mentioned this elsewhere but I firmly think that Bezos/Jobs etc... all want to hire people who are as passionate about their work as a founder is. So that's who they structure the company around.

<comment><USER25> That only works when high-engagement employees' compensation matches the sacrifice they are making. Why would anyone bring founder-level engagement to a job with only employee-level compensation? In other words, if you want me to work the same hours as the crazy founder, offer me founder equity.

<comment><USER24> I think that depends on the person.

What you describe is the mercenary style approach - "Well, I've been fucked over before so pay me!" \- and I think that is totally valid mindset, if cynical.

The reality is though that for some problem sets or types of work, the work transcends the tangible benefits. I have to fall back on my time in the military for this one because I have innumerable examples of people who have absolutely dedicated their lives to their military job and what they have to show for it from that perspective is a broken body and a relative pittance; but you couldn't pay them enough to leave because they love it so much.

So it's not always just about hard compensation.

<comment><USER25> Transcends tangible benefits? Are you kidding me? You're talking about cult members, not employees. They call it "compensation" because it _compensates_ you for doing what you otherwise would not want to be doing. There are two kinds of people who work 90+ hour weeks: Those who are compensated enormously for it, and idiots.

<comment><USER24> _They call it "compensation" because it _compensates_ you for doing what you otherwise would not want to be doing._

Ah, there's the rub. The people I am talking about are those who join a company so that they can do for a salary what they would be doing anyway without one.

For example we just "hired" someone for only equity because we were working on a really hard hardware problem that he has been playing with in his part time. He approached us and suggested coming on board - in fact he did a TON of work before I even asked him to and before we had any compensation agreements in place - in fact I was the one who pushed him to let us compensate him in the best way we have available right now because he is stuck at another job.

Maybe you don't actually care about what you do, or believe in it or whatever, but there do exist those who do and want to work on it.

Woz is the best example of this.

<comment><USER25> When you say "they would be doing it anyway without a salary" are you really saying that you have employees who would otherwise work on your project anyway, without pay? I don't know anyone for whom this is true, but if you've found one, congratulations.

Don't get me wrong--I care about what I do. So much so that I put a price on it. If anything, someone who is willing to do 90 hour weeks while getting compensated at a level appropriate for 40 hours cares LESS about what he does, as he is cheapening his profession.

<comment><USER24> No, what I am saying is that there are people out there working on technology on their own because they are interested in it and love doing it and if given the chance some of those people would drop everything to work on that technology.

Not that they would or should work for free, but that there are, as I said, intangible reasons that people join projects and work 80 hour weeks that aren't just compensation.

<comment><USER26> Sure, and as soon as you need to do something they don't really want, they are out of the game.

They have nothing to lose by getting off the train, and thus the amount of leverage they have is enormous.

Most people need to put a roof on their heads, which is why those things rarely happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > The research is clear: beyond ~40–50 hours per week, the marginal returns > from additional work decrease rapidly and quickly become negative.

If that is really true, what does it say about people who are working full- time _and_ trying to do a project on the side?

Are all the people who successfully do that outliers? To have a successful side project do you need to spend less time doing actual work at work? Is there a ticking time-bomb once you start working on a side project (effectively entering a "crunch time"), where after a certain amount of time you're doomed to fail unless you take a break?

<comment><USER28> Let me put it this way. I ended up making a personal rule: don't start any more side projects. I should have made that rule earlier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It should be, "earn shitloads of money and live well". Working hard has nothing to do with it, at best.

</comment><comment><USER30> As someone on the creative side of things, I fully agree with this. Beyond 6-7 hours a day, my work quality suffers drastically. Sure, I can probably sit around before the computer for 12 hours if you want me to. But if you need actual work, you better let me go by hour 6

</comment><comment><USER24> A question and an observation.

1\. Can anyone name a company on par with Amazon/Uber/SpaceX/Goog etc... where everyone is working 9-5? Not doubting they exist, it just seems like all the major high growth big vision companies have this same ethos. Maybe they are successful despite that, but that would seem anti-pattern

2\. There is a subset of people who do not lose productivity after 40/50/60 hours a week (full disclosure I think I am one of these as my work weeks look closer to 80-90) and I think that is who these companies are optimizing for. Amazon doesn't care if it burns out 10 people if it can keep one that is super passionate and can work like a madman.

<comment><USER31> I see lines like this sometimes, and I never speak up. So here goes. You work 16 hour days and it's just fine? You are saying that in your post. It's right there. 80-90 hours. You expect someone reading your post to believe you work 16 hour days, it's fine; you're a rock star who loses no productivity by the 79th hour on Friday evening?

<comment><USER32> Even if you're just 10% productive that last hour, that's still more work than someone who clocked out at 79 hours.

Not saying that everybody should work 80 hours, just that this whole 'working more than 50 hours is _less_ productive than working 40' is one of those extraordinary claims that require extraordinary evidence.

Because looking at the _empirical_ evidence, it's the companies where people work long, hard hours are the successful ones, and not just in software... Try walking into a Cravath partner meeting, or John Hopkin's neurosurgery ward, and propose people go home after 40 because it would make them 'better' \- you'd get laughed out of the room, is where I'd put my money.

<comment><USER15> _companies where people work long, hard hours are the successful ones_

Can we try a little harder than evidence-free correlation/causation here?

A quick look at the world's largest companies [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_r...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_revenue) reveals that the secret of being in the top 10 for success is to be in oil&gas, or to be Walmart. Most Walmart employees are paid by the hour and subject to varying schedules outside their control. The highest tech company is Apple at 17.

Speaking of hourly pay, that is undoubtably a big reason why salaried staff are overworked: the extra hours are free to the company. It would be interesting to see how long "long hours" culture would last if every single staff hour over 40 hours a week had to be paid for. (Once we got past all the insistence that employees falsify timesheets, of course)

<comment><USER24> Have you ever worked an oil job? They are INSANE in terms of hours/labor. I'm from Houston and grew up in and around oil jobs. Amazon is utopia land compared with working at EXXON.

<comment><USER33> that's simply not true. i've worked in BIGOIL (not exxon) and working 7-4 was pretty much the rule.

<comment><USER34> It varies a lot by segment of the industry and the individual team/part of the company you're in.

I'm a geologist and I've worked for three of the majors. I've seen good work conditions and I've seen terrible. (This is all office-based work, too. Things are a _lot_ rougher in the field.)

Essentially all geologists are in the "upstream" side of things (i.e. finding oil/gas and getting it out of the ground). Upstream has three segments (exploration, development, and production), and the work-culture depends a lot on which one of those you're in.

At least in my experience, in exploration things are very schedule-driven. You work crazy hours all the time to meet arbitrary deadlines. Supposedly, we work a 9/80 schedule and get every other Friday off. No one is allowed to take those... It's 7-5 six days a week, and more when it's crunch time. Taking "vacation" means working from home or only coming in for half a day. We're required to code our vacation every year, but I've regularly seen people forced to work through 100% of their vacation time.

Development (oilfield development, not software) is typically a bit more paced. Most of the work will be on a very regular schedule, except for when you're responsible for a well that's being drilled. If you're sitting a well, you're on-call 24/7 for a few weeks. You will have lots of 10pm, 2am, and 6am conference calls and then go in and work a full day. However, you'll typically be told to not show up at the office for a week or so afterwards (that's always informal -- the majors all have strict no comp time rules).

The other segment of upstream is production. I've never worked production, so I can't comment there.

I'm currently in R&D (software development, actually), and it's much more relaxed. We have our own personal hell in terms of the amount of paperwork and meetings that are required to do _anything_, but the hours are more reasonable.

At any rate, the big companies are all effectively 20-50 semi-independent small companies, in my experience. The work culture between those small companies will vary wildly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm based in the US but have friends in France and Spain. They're constantly talking about the cultural differences to how we approach work. I've heard time and time again that many European countries work "smarter" and Americans are way too focused on number of hours.

It's obviously not true in all jobs, but after hearing this so many times, it might be time I try a stint in Europe just for the experience.

</comment><comment><USER36> The problem with salaried employees is that it encourages the "all-you-can- eat" mentality with an employee's time.

Economics students will understand that a rational actor will consume a free thing until the marginal utility of the next unit is zero.

And for a company, the marginal utility of your time is NEVER, EVER Zero. Unless you're a pilot, maybe, or the control room operator of a nuclear plant.

So, even if you're 10% as productive as normal,that's still incremental labor at no additional cost.

But for you, that negative utility affects your health, your family, etc.

The solution is serious and strict laws that prevent employer abuse, and to prevent young people from killing themselves and undermining the value of all labor. They used to be called unions, but I'll settle for government regulation.

Another option is to start your own business, where you decide these things; or to work as a consultant and get paid by the hour. It's AMAZING how much more efficient some of these startups are, or get, when you charge them hourly.

When you give your labor away for free you devalue it, and everyone else's around you.

</comment><comment><USER37> I heard about a couple of assistant managers with the same job at a big retailer who managed to setup an alternating three-day-on/three-day-off schedule. Which works out to 4 days a week. Seems like a pretty clever approach.

</comment><comment><USER38> Working hard cannot exist with living well

<comment><USER39> Define "working hard".

You can spend your workday distracting yourself with Facebook, or cat gifs, making awkward water-cooler small talk with other people who, like yourself, are counting the hours until you go home. This is terribly unfulfilling.

On the other hand, you can spend your workday - the same amount of time, or even less - focused and productive, getting things done, effecting meaningful change. Too busy to agonize over the clock, you're pleasantly surprised by the end of the workday. You feel you've done things worth doing - that you haven't simply wasted your day on pointless drivel.

I would call the latter "working hard". Taking this definition of "Working hard", I wonder if it's not _a prerequisite_ of living well.

<comment><USER5> I agree, the best days are when time flies and you are just challenged at the right level - not to hard to frustrate you, not too easy/repetitive to bore you. But for me this is not the norm, most days are a mix of too hard and too easy, so motivation is sometimes a struggle and/or I'm exhausted and glad if I can go home and recharge for the next day. Even if work is good and fun, sometimes I'm just so much more exited about something not work related (at home, with friends, cool new tech), that I'm also eager to leave or am just distracted while at work.

For me it is "hard" to simply give 100% with no distractions to my fullest potential for 8 hours. I can't even do that for 8 hours most days, so why expect me to do it for 12 or even longer, there would quickly be a negative ROI like the article suggest. I think most people experience work most of the time more or less like that.

On the other hand on days where everything is just right (also on the weekend with non work related tasks I'm exited about) and I'm in the flow, hours do not matter much, and I'm pretty sure I get a positive return from more hours. At least in the short term, I never had the honour to have such a perfect job to experience that daily for months to know about the long term.

That is to say that I could see that for somebody a) with a different personality to shut out distractions, has naturally better motivation or more energy etc or b) with a "perfect" job, it could be or at least feel different. It might be/feel so easy to work fully concentrated for 8 or more hours that "working hard" has to be something even more for them.

<comment><USER39> > But for me this is not the norm, most days are a mix of too hard and too > easy, so motivation is sometimes a struggle and/or I'm exhausted and glad if > I can go home and recharge for the next day. Even if work is good and fun, > sometimes I'm just so much more exited about something not work related (at > home, with friends, cool new tech), that I'm also eager to leave or am just > distracted while at work.

> For me it is "hard" to simply give 100% with no distractions to my fullest > potential for 8 hours.

Working hard's not easy, and something I continue to try and figure out how to optimize further. I use small wagers (e.g. coffee) with coworkers to help with motivation, noise canceling headphones and asynchronous communication (IRC, email) to help minimize flow disruptions, website blocks to break idle browsing habits, task lists and breakdowns to help eliminate "uhh... what next?" indecision, single-tasking as much as possible...

Friends and new tech I can sometimes integrate into work, but yeah, not always.

> I can't even do that for 8 hours most days, so why expect me to do it for 12 > or even longer, there would quickly be a negative ROI like the article > suggest.

At this point, I'll push back hard on management that asks me for more than 8 hours, and it's a serious consideration when job hunting. I'm willing to, on occasion, put more than that in - if I'm convinced the occasion warrants sacrificing long term productivity for some very short term gains - but I'm not willing to let it become a pattern.

Even then, at 12 hours, I'm typically a mindless zombie suitable for little more than manual input fuzzing (read: mindlessly spamming inputs), running build scripts that were prepared and debugged earlier, and uploading build artifacts. I'm not even productive short term for most work tasks anymore. Even bug fixes may do more harm than good.

I've even managed to frame it as an ethics issue to myself: Allowing my employer to repeatedly sacrifice my long term productivity for extremely short term gains is doing wrong by myself, and doing wrong by my employer. Worst case scenario, if (respectfully) standing up to management gets me fired, or turns the work environment toxic, I have another opportunity to find a job that appreciates my work instead of my self-flagellation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> _Note: I've written this from the perspective of the tech industry, since that's my perspective, but the pattern definitely exists prominently in other industries, and in companies across all industries._

I'd say it's written from the perspective of someone who's already seen a lot of success and wealth in his life and now has the luxury of writing about how to live well.

I (and I assume many other founders in the startup world) work about 70 to 80 hours a week. I feel responsibility for my business. If s*t isn't done on a Friday afternoon and people are waiting for it I'm not going to say "Well it's home time. See you on Monday". That's just not how it works.

<comment><USER21> What happened when you tried working a 40 hour week as an experiment? Did your business crumble and force you to work 120 hours the next week just to put it back together? Or did things work out fine? Or have you not tried that?

If you haven't, what do you expect would happen if you did?

From experience, I can tell you that things will work out fine. You'll get your product shipped, support your customers, and have roughly the same chance of surviving if you work sane hours.

When I was crunching to ship Twiddla, I would average between 20 and 30 hours per week. About the same amount of time I dedicated to Rock Climbing, wandering the streets of Pamplona, and sipping wine on the balcony watching the world go by with my girlfriend. Every work day I would come in fresh, with a good idea of what needed building, go heads down in the morning and come up for air around 3pm to find a cold half cup of morning coffee on my desk, next to a cold lunch that my girlfriend had evidently snuck in and deposited at some point.

That was the most productive year of my life. I shipped a product that pays for my lifestyle today. And I never worked more than 40 hours in a single week.

I'd recommend you give that a shot. It sounds a lot more enjoyable than what you're doing.

<comment><USER40> It sounds like you have an enjoyable life then. Congratulations. I feel happy for you.

Look, I am not complaining about my situation. I signed up for this. I like what I do. I just get really sick when people claim "you are going to be sooo much more productive" if you work less. Like it was a general truth. Like they are an authority and know better. Like it applied to everyone and everything at all times. Like there was no need to look at a particular situation and then decide if it's a statement that's actually more than a phrase.

And btw I would really appreciate it if people wouldn't down-vote my comments just because they disagree. That would make this community just a whole lot better.

<comment><USER41> _Rabbi Israel, the famed "Maggid of Kosnitz," once asked a rich man what he usually ate. The rich man was rather ascetic; he proudly described to the Chassidic master his one daily meal, in which he ate and drank nothing more than bread with salt and a jug of water.

"Fool," scolded the Maggid. "Go home and eat meat and other delicacies. Drink aged wine. If you don't, I am not finished with you yet!"

Later, the Maggid's disciples wondered why their master spoke as he did. Rabbi Israel explained: "If the rich man dines on meat and wine, then he would at least feel that the paupers in his town should be given bread and salt. But if he himself subsists on dry bread and salt, he might think that poor people could live on stones..."_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Everyone works hard hoping they'll make out like Dustin but they won't. But if you do it's totally worth it. Money changes a lot of things.

</comment><comment><USER43> >I also hear young developers frequently brag about "48 hour" coding sprints. This kind of attitude not only hurts young workers who are willing to "step up" to the expectation, but facilitates ageism and sexism by indirectly discriminating against people who cannot maintain that kind of schedule

That is a ridiculous argument. "We shouldn't do this thing, because women are incapable of doing it". Maybe women aren't physically capable of working in high-pressure fields.

</comment><comment><USER44> I don't think YCombinator expects start-up founders to work only 40-50 hours a week. Paul Graham has written as follows:

"Economically, you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole working life into a few years. Instead of working at a low intensity for forty years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four. This pays especially well in technology, where you earn a premium for working fast."

<comment><USER15> "If you work really hard, you should be able to produce a baby in only three months!"</comment></comment>