Ask HN: Am I doing wrong? - <AUTHOR>

I have been MS developer from last 8 years and worked on various small to medium sized projects. Most of my C# development was web (ASP.NET, MVC 1.0 etc). I also worked on some windows apps and backed windows services.
Due to HN and other hackers community effect I have developed the impression that working on MS technologies is not cool and does not make me hacker.
So I decided that I'll teach myself python, closure and ubuntu; so that I can start developing some of the personal web related development by these hacker's favourite development stack. I have been working on python and django on my evening time and I am enjoying it but that effect my learning new things in MS development stack which will definitely affect my professional careers.
But I think MS is back. In last couple of month I saw at least 10-15 HN post where people appreciated the MS effort for their work like their C#, F# and ASP.NET MVC etc. Now I am confused; what should I do? Should I put my time investment in non MS technologies for some more time or I should go back to MS cave.
I hope there will be lots of people on HN who been in same situation or some of the ex MS developers want to return back on MS development stack.
Please show me some light!!! <comment><USER3> You have 8 years of Microsoft development experience that's pretty decent and I bet this will bring you a lot of good jobs because many companies are using Microsoft technologies even the crappy ones (VB.Net, Classic VB).

However you are absolutely right about Microsoft. Yeah they doing good lately but from which standpoint? Microsoft has a really bad reputation under hackers and I think the reason is not that we all love Apple and Mac's. No, I think those reasons become clear if you look at what Microsoft is doing all the time, what are they implementing, how are they implementing new technologies.

For example Internet Explorer 9. This time Microsoft has to be really good cause they are losing market share month after month. And luckily Microsoft did understand that and they are doing good with Internet Explorer 9 but again they are making things their own way and that's what is bad about them. If Microsoft thinks it needs something they are always developing it on their own without looking what other developers are doing and how they solved those problems. No, they have always this one Microsoft solution doesn't play really good with the rest of the world (and sometimes even with Microsoft software). That's Microsoft.

However I think you are on the wrong way. If your profession is Microsoft technologies and you want to stick with that cause you have a job and you like Microsoft platforms then you should stick with it and become better and better.

But look what other developers and hackers are doing, which new thinks are coming, which things are slowly going and compared to that what is Microsoft doing. Don't turn into a developer who has a Microsoft hammer in his hands that's the worst thing you can do for the world and for your career.

I hope I could help you.

BTW: I learned programming with C#

</comment><comment><USER4> Welcome to the fire&motion effect[1]. You now have three problems.

First, by chasing what some _other_ people think is sexy technology, as opposed to going with what allows you do Get The Job Done, and quick.

Second, your misunderstanding on what the markets care (which is, well, marketing for the most part), and don't care about (eg your technological stack). None of these the things outlined in your post will make any difference whatsoever on your ability to chase lucrative market opportunities.

Third. Despite what some people here might write, "Hacking" -fiddling with technologies, and gaining a deep insight into them- is completely technological agnostics. You can be a hacker, even in VB.NET; it just happens, that some of these technologies has a better "average community member insight" factor, than others.

Thus, your question really boils down to something more fundamental: are you into "hacking" for the tech, or for the people? In the former case, it doesn't really matter whether you'll use MS, or Python, or what the state of the current MS devtools are -just that you gain a deep understanding of them.

In the later case, you should put your investment into _people_ -the ones you'd want to connect with, anyway- and let the appropriate tech emerge from it naturally.

[1] <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html>

</comment><comment><USER5> Worrying about the development language you use is like worrying about using a Stanley hammer versus a Craftsman hammer when building a house. The brand doesn't matter as long as the house gets built.

I've worked in the .NET stack for about 5 years now. It is a real pleasure to work with. When I need to get something done, I know I can do it easily, and without problems. And seeing the recent developments of Java with Oracle, I feel my decision was that much better.

</comment><comment><USER6> There's nothing inherently wrong with knowing Microsoft technology well. It's a tool. Learning more languages is a great goal because you can learn to use different types of tools. This gives you the ability to choose which tool is right for the job you're working on, instead of being limited to the one you know well.

My first experience was in VB and then C#, and I love ASP.NET MVC and still use it for some projects where it makes sense. But having learned other languages I've learned what the limitations of that technology is, and for most things I work on nowadays Microsoft technology is not the best solution.

Depending on what you spend time learning and what types of problems you work on, you may come up with different conclusions, and that's totally valid.

</comment><comment><USER7> The lack of MSFT traction with startups has more to do with cost than cool. (Biz Spark is temporary - they get you in the end).

At my last startup job we used the microsoft stack very effectively - <USER2> cofounder was a microsoft guy, so that's what we used. Not a big deal.

</comment><comment><USER8> I call BS. A "Hacker" is not bound by a technology or language, despite what the [insert language or technology here] bigots want you to think. If you can create a spaceship from a toaster, who cares if it uses nanotechnology? It's still cool.

Go on working in whatever language or technology you want, and don't listen to the idiot zealots who aren't intelligent enough to broaden their horizons to the point where they understand that ANY language is cool if it provides the customers with a viable solution that scales.

Cheers.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think it depends on your goals. Some ideas:

If you want to work for a startup then you'd probably need to learn open source tools (though startups use the MS stack, too). You might also find that a detour into OSS helps you bring fresh ideas back to your MS work.

If you need a job and/or like working with MS stuff, then stick with that (and be shamed on HN ;).

If you want to build a product, then it doesn't really matter--it's more important to bring something successfully to market.

</comment><comment><USER10> When most people claim that language X is "not cool" it's a defense mechanism. They do not know or have no interest in learning X, so it becomes worthless and uncool to them.

Spend more time focusing on theory and less on stack.

As for stack advice, pick what you want to do.

</comment><comment><USER11> Do both.

Nothing wrong with cross training. Athletes cross train to help them perform better in their chosen speciality, so should programmers.

I like to dabble in other languages and frameworks - my bread and butter comes from MS, but if I write a little util to automate something for myself at work or do a little side project, I use something different - it helps keep me interested and it helps round out my craft. I don't think losing a little traction on the most up to date MS tech will affect you as much as you think because you will probably be able to transfer your skills and approaches from other environments back to the MS equivalent pretty quickly. If you really are worried, take a few minutes every day _at work_ to bone up on some MS stuff instead of reading that extra HN second page link to a blog post on "the 15 essential things you must do to become super successful" and all the related HN comments :).

On the "cool" aspect - cool is irrelevant if your work is satisfying.

</comment><comment><USER12> Do whatever will make your stuff work. There are lots of reasons to dislike Microsoft, and plenty of reasons why the culture does not fit. That said, your users do not care how you've created their software, they want things that solve their problems.

Note that many of the articles here are totally stack agnostic, too.

<comment><USER13> I'll have to second that. There's no reason to spend months debating "should I choose language X or language Y?" Don't choose the trendy one. Choose the one you're proficient in, and the one that will help you _ship_ , as shipping is what matters here.

Two comments, though:

* I think startups shy away from Microsoft technologies due to potential costs. Yes, there are programs such as BizSpark, etc., but learning the open source stack can go very far if you're not on infinite budget. Also, I think it's a bit easier to hire people proficient in (insert OSS technology here) in Silicon Valley.

* Even if you will never use the other technologies (say, Clojure), you can benefit a great deal from learning new things. If nothing else, this will help you gain perspective into other ways people solve problems in the industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Learn new stuff is given as the most constant is change itself.

Solve problems with what you are most effective with.

Have fun, use the lang/os/lib/whutnut make you smile while doing it. :-)

Apply above 3 points and hack! (Repeat as needed.)

</comment><comment><USER15> A question you may have to answer yourself might be:

1) Are you looking to have a safe job type career?

or

2) Are you trying to build something that you have in mind?

<comment><AUTHOR> >>2) Are you trying to build something that you have in mind?

Yes I am having something in my mind which i want to develop; that's why i though why not new technology.</comment></comment>


Amazon Removes Products Featuring Nazi Symbols - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/02/technology/amazon-removes-nazi-supremacist.html <comment><USER2> Seems like a good idea, but maybe it's better for a big company like Amazon with really good record keeping and both IP and shipment tracking to know who's buying this stuff. Just in case something more sinister happens that points to criminal activity, for example the Order. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Order_(white_supremacist_g...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Order_\(white_supremacist_group\))

Brinks armored car heist in 1984, some of the money finding it's way into various Nazi groups with the express purpose over overthrowing the government, and who had a Denver journalist assassinated on his driveway.</comment>


Science Exchange (YC S11): A Central Database For Core Research Facilities - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/16/yc-funded-science-exchange-a-central-database-for-core-research-facilities/

<comment><USER2> We actually launched a very similar website with the same goal earlier this year which is cool because it validates our idea. Works almost the same way! <http://zombal.com/>

<comment><USER3> Interesting. A lot of the "challenges" here: <http://zombal.com/scientific- challenges> seem like generic questions rather than requests for specific technical work/lab experiments (e.g. "Is dieting an ineffective way to lose weight?")

Is that a design choice? Is there as much overlap as you think between your site and the one mentioned in the original post?

<comment><USER2> We actually have two formats, one is called Standard Zombs (standard tasks) which is bid-based just like ScienceExchange. The other is called Bounty Zombs (Q&A's) similar to <http://prizes.org/> format. If you go to <http://zombal.com/scientific-challenges> as you pointed out you can filter out the different types.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is awesome! I'm really happy to see a start-up that contributes to scientific advancement in a meaningful, direct way. This service offers a straight-up efficiency improvement over the old method, in which most universities tried to replicate the core experimental facilities of everyone else.

</comment><comment><USER5> The trouble with this idea is that university researchers have very little cash and are loathe to part with it. Almost all of their grant money goes to paying the salaries of people in their lab (fixed costs). If they need to use a piece of equipment at another institution, the current method is to propose a collaboration with a researcher at that university. Additionally, any decent researcher already knows where the specialized equipment resides (they can figure it out by reading the papers in their field or chatting at conferences), so there is no need for a centralized database.

<comment><USER6> As an university researcher (faculty at University of Miami) I agree that efficiency of spending is very important - what is interesting is that researchers are often unaware that by making use of economies of scale that exist at specialized core facilities it is often cheaper than conducting experiments in house (a good example is cloning).

In some fields salaries might comprise the majority of lab costs but in biology this is not the case - experimental costs which can be spent as the researcher sees fit comprise the majority of costs. These costs can be outsourced to pay core facilities (currently $2B is spent outsourcing experiments to core facilities annually in the US).

While i agree that it is possible for researchers to establish where specialized equipment resides by reading papers and chatting with colleagues at conferences this is obviously inefficient and an incomplete record of potential providers. A centralized marketplace is a more efficient method for identifying providers.

<comment><USER7> "A centralized marketplace is a more efficient method for identifying providers."

That's spot on. Access to resources shouldn't be based on "special knowledge" Success in research should be a result of insights, creativity, and hard work, not "being in the know." Best of luck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've worked in Scientific Websites (Biocompare the main one) for 6 years, and I love what Science Exchange is doing. The old guard of distributor networks, old boy research journals and closed research communities. It's taken a while but the industry is ready.

Biocompare received the same reaction when they launched - "scientists like their distributors and the free swag they get", "they'll never order products themselves". Research is ready for a disruption.

</comment><comment><USER9> There are other efforts to create exchanges or marketplaces for scientific research as well (e.g. <http://www.assaydepot.com/>). Small number, but definite possibilities. The problem is that a lot of research institutes and companies have a strong "we need to do everything" mindset that will take time to overcome

 _edit_ as noted elsewhere, funding models also implicitly encourage this behavior

</comment><comment><USER10> I wish I could see more startups like this one, that goes beyond the hot (and often useless) markets of the moment. Really smart people working to solve real problems or to optimize our resources. This is what this country need.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think this is a strong datapoint that YC isn't just random consumer web features!

</comment><comment><USER12> I just had a burl at the site, and threw in a couple of techniques that I would be interested in, or figured should be generic enough. The site seemed empty: Microarrays (error page), mass spectrometry, protein purification, NMR, PCR, biostatistics, bioinformatics.

Are there currently any open projects or facilities renting themselves out?

</comment><comment><USER13> Brilliant. I can't wait to see how this expands to other kinds of scientific outsourcing - problems like scientific software development are highly specialized and surprisingly easy to outsource, but there's no good way for specialists to find folks interested in doing this kind of work.

</comment><comment><USER7> It would be cool to see if amateurs/hobbyists could someday make use of services like this.

</comment><comment><USER14> It seems like this could be made into a even more generic experiment service. Sort of like Mechanical Turk for science experiments, where you pay other scientists to reproduce your results?

<comment><USER15> I think perhaps you meant to write "...pay other scientists to repeat your experiments?"

(Their experiment might not reproduce your results. It happens!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I really would love to see this work, but I have very very strong doubts. I hope you've done your market research, and aren't wasting time creating this website.

I've done scientific research, got published, so I saw this process first hand.

1) Grants are usually very small, only high end labs and a few science centers would do this (in my opinion).

2) Scientists are crazy about keeping their research private. There's a lot of competition and back stabbing going on in the scientific world.

3) Most scientists would find it very hard to rely on somebody they don't know. Experiments are extremely important, and often there's not much room for failure. Let's say you're a biologist who worked on a cell line for 3 years, and you finally have enough material to do an experiment. Would you ship it somewhere else to save some money?

4) Research projects that cannot be done locally are generally not approved. Meaning that the whole research project is financed and planned ahead of time. It's hard enough to get grant money, now imagine your proposed project has many more moving parts and points of failure.

<comment><USER12> I wholeheartedly agree on points 2 and 3 - In fact, I've known scientists that were loathe to send BLAST jobs out to external servers.

Another point is that I've yet to see any core facilities that are running idle. Our core facility mass spec guys are running 24/7, and that's not even taking into account the time they lose to the instrument screwing up. In fact, it'll be hard to see some of the high end equipment running under heavier load – it's all just too fragile.

<comment><USER17> I emailed my dad (biosci professor) for his opinion on this company, but from what I know of his work history and past collaborations, points 2 and 3 are likely road blocks to using this webapp. Trust is definitely a huge deal as I know he flies in specialized technicians he trusts over more "local" and likely "cheaper" technicians. Not saying the local technicians aren't trustworthy or aren't as skilled, but no matter the costs, trust founded on years of collaboration is irreplaceable.

That said, I'm guessing this kind of service may be more appealing to fresh PhDs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The world needs more YC startups like this.</comment>


Ask HN: Tips on Learning Front End Web Development? - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys. I decided I wanted to start learning some front end development and wanted to see if I can get some advice. I am trying to plan out a curriculum for myself, but I don't think I understand the overlap between some languages and how they come into play. I already know some python and some java. I figured it would make the most sense to start with html/css. After that I am not sure what makes the most sense. Do I learn django(figured since I know python its easier to go to django than rails)? javascript/coffescript? Do I need to learn a database language? If so, which is best? MySQL? MongoDB?<p>Thanks for the help. <comment><USER2> 1\. Learn JavaScript (the language)

<http://eloquentjavascript.net/> [http://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Good-Parts- Douglas-Crockfor...](http://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Good-Parts-Douglas- Crockford/dp/0596517742)

2\. Learn jQuery (a JavaScript library)

<http://jquery.com/> [http://www.amazon.com/jQuery-Action-Second-Bear- Bibeault/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/jQuery-Action-Second-Bear- Bibeault/dp/1935182323/)

3\. Learn SQL (the language)

[http://www.amazon.com/Sams-Teach-Yourself-SQL- Minutes/dp/067...](http://www.amazon.com/Sams-Teach-Yourself-SQL- Minutes/dp/0672325675/)

4\. Pick an implementation

MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, Oracle

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

After that, most application development languages are just syntax. Pick what feels best.

Learn how to use Ajax to tie client-side requests to server-side requests and you're marketable.

<comment><USER3> Agreed on points 1 and 2, but for front-end development, 3 and 4 are unnecessary and will pull you away from more relevant lessons, or (even more important), applying what you've learned to new problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> First of all learn HTML and don't use WYSIWYG editor, then learn CSS and Javascript. Yes, learn database language is a good thing and after you know SQL language you probably can switch to any database engine.

If you know Python, then yes Django would be a good choice for you.</comment>


Ask HN: Any war and economy based online games that allow automation via APIs? - <AUTHOR> A long time ago, I used to play oGame. One of those browser based multiplayer games that has both elements of space warfare and economics. Loved it. Eventually left it behind. I tried Eve Online next, and fell in love with it. Left that behind too. Recently, I've been watching the hype of Warframe from afar and wishing I could play.
But I really don't have the time for any of these. And none of the games allow for automation. Even basic macros are sometimes considered bannable offenses.
What I was wondering though was, is there any game similar to oGame or Eve Online that allows or even encourages players to automate their gameplay via scripting/API usage? So I could have a Rasperry Pi playing the game for me 24/7. And build apps for myself to make assisted decisions in the event of something non automatable coming up (eg - Respond to an alliance invitation). The two major mechanics I'm looking for in the game are territory based economics and warfare. Cooperation is an optional thread to look for.
I've searched the internet for this for a while and it hasn't turned up anything just yet. Either this market doesn't exist or it's under-served or my search-fu needs to improve :D.
Do any HN'ers know of games like this? <comment><USER2> If you find one let me know! I love games like that. Currently, what I found myself playing that scratches my itch the most is Path of Exile. The game requires a minimum amount of actual playing but once you get going you can just play the economy if you want without actually playing the game.

Let me give you some details. The game is playable in Leagues, there is a Standard League that goes on forever and then there are Challenge Leagues that reset the whole game every few months (4/5 I think). Most of the player base plays the Challenge Leagues so you get to start from zero every so often. I actually like that because this stops people from taking over too much and it's not frequent enough to be boring.

The game plays as a Diablo game, top down, you go around, kill stuff and collect randomly generated items.

You can then sell your items to other players. Buying and selling is done with intentionally limited GUI/Automation. GGG (the devs) want to keep the experience as "pure" as possible. Which means that to buy an item you have to actually send a message to the person you want to buy it from, then go to their hideout, send them a trade request and then trade whatever you want. There is no real currency but there are some "currency items". The whole economy is player-driven.

To find items there isn't even an official website. There are however a few officially endorsed third party websites like [https://poe.trade](https://poe.trade).

Now, why do I like this? Because it gives you a lot of freedom and interesting challenges. Botting is not allowed but it's very common (and not excessively frowned upon) with certain items that people tend to buy in bulk or currency items trade. There are also many opportunities to create tools that make the whole game experience better.

There are many different ways of generating currency and the game itself is very fun. I would encourage you to give it a shot!

Ultimately, I do not know of any games that allow automation, the moment you make it legal to automate, the game will be taken over by bots and no human player will enjoy playing.

<comment><AUTHOR> So I managed to dig up just one game that looks promising. It's this game called screeps [1]. You program your own fleet of "creeps" using Javascript (or other languages compiled to WASM). There's a fair amount of depth to the game and there is a marketplace and alliances exist.

I'm not a fan of the whole CPU model or the pathfinding model either. Those two are a little too complex for my liking, but there's no doubt that this game is mostly everything one could want in a programmable game.

Overall, I still feel like this market is underserved. But I'm probably going to give screeps a try myself and see what I can learn from it :).

[1] [https://screeps.com/](https://screeps.com/)

<comment><USER2> I'll check it out thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


Hauberk – A web-based roguelike written in Dart - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/munificent/hauberk <comment><USER2> This is neat! The author also wrote Game Programming Patterns and the Dart code formatter:

[http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/](http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10195091](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10195091)

<comment><USER3> He really is munificent!

He is also writing a book on building interpreters: [http://www.craftinginterpreters.com/](http://www.craftinginterpreters.com/)

<comment><USER4> \o/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In the recent stack overflow developers survey, Dart was actually ranked as one of the least liked languages to use. This has actually put me off the language a little bit.

I'm curious if anyone with more experience with the languange could explain why this is and what it means.

<comment><USER6> My guess is that most of the people who said they dislike dart probably never used the language, but still have this opinion because of the whole brouhaha when dart first introduced with the possibility of replacing Javascript in Chrome.

Now that dart is also evolved into something else (A nice language that compiles to Javascript and runs on its VM for mobile devices) I wish that this bad blood goes away and people could take a fresh look. I really like the language and appreciate the hard work of developers of Dart ecosystem.

<comment><USER5> Interesting. Sounds like a rebranding may be necessary.

<comment><USER7> No, developers just need to stop being sheep and start evaluating technology for what it is.

<comment><USER5> If the world is not the way you want, you can either get frustrated about it or adapt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It looks well done as far as the "graphics" goes.

My last roguelike was nethack and probably the genre improved on it and things changed. Example: I was surprised, and not pleasantly, that this game doesn't use the same keybindings of the rogue/nethack tradition. I had to read the docs to learn how to pick up things. It turned out it's "g" (lowercase and not uppercase as in the doc). I didn't find how to rest: "." didn't work but I confess I didn't spent much time on it.

<comment><USER9> If you want a taste of an up to date roguelike, you can try Dungeon Crawl Stone soup.

You can also play online at [https://crawl.develz.org/](https://crawl.develz.org/). It uses the Nethack keybinding for the most part, and you can get access to help in game by typing '?'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Was pleasantly surprised when I recognised his avatar as being on the back of his book on my shelf

<comment><USER4> I'm staring down at you from your bookcase!</comment></comment>


In which we plot an escape from the quagmire of equality (Clojure and Emacs) - <AUTHOR> http://technomancy.us/159

<comment><USER2>
        > As it comes from a Scheme background, Guile provides
        > the immutable data types we need.

Scheme does _not_ provide any immutable data types beyond numbers or symbols, either. Procedures like `set-car!`, `vector-set!`, and `string-set!` all modify their operands. In fact, in R5RS, there's no real way to introduce truly disjoint types (you can, however, simulate them as in SRFI-9 which is being incorporated in R7RS), so it'll be a little difficult to even introduce new types let alone _interoperable_ new types.

        > One of the Summer of Code projects for this year is
        > to allow for pluggable backends in the ClojureScript
        > compiler, with Lua as a proof of concept.

Compound data types in Lua are similarly mutable (perhaps even more so because mutation of tables is acceptable practice in Lua). There will be difficulties targeting ClojureScript to Lua, too.

        > Of course, with a compiler that targets Emacs Lisp,
        > you can work around this by implementing your own
        > immutable types. But this makes any form of interop
        > much more cumbersome... you have to choose between
        > getting equality right and seamless interop.

It's just a fact of life that when introducing a radically different paradigm to any language platform, _interop is going to have seams_.

[EDIT - formatting]

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the pointer. Guile does in fact have immutable strings and lists, but apparently they do not actually come from the Scheme standard: [http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile- devel/2012-01/msg001...](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile- devel/2012-01/msg00135.html). I will update my post to reflect this.

I'll keep a close eye on the Lua ClojureScript backend as well; this should be interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I keep reading how amazing smalltalk, and it's development environment used to be... Why did we lose it? Was it companies trying to 'dumb down' programming (java..?). Tell me, what happened?

<comment><USER5> For one, it cost a lot of money so it had a limited audience. Afaik, VisualStudio drew a lot of inspiration from it, which propagated outwards to the Java IDEs.

<comment><USER6> FWIW, Visual_Age_ (not to be confused with VS), the ancestor to Eclipse, was originally Smalltalk based before being rewritten in Java.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is the font on this page really hard on the eyes or is it just me?</comment>


A Brief Foray into the wonderful world of Linux.. - <AUTHOR>

So, following on from my previous post where I wanted a flexible GUI Linux install, I installed Ubuntu 12 LTS.
Coming from Windows 7 I am both impressed and slightly disappointed...but Linux and especially Ubuntu seems to have grown and matured alot since I last toyed with it.
I love the option to encrypt your home folder without having to install TrueCrypt! But I hate that I cannot press backspace to go back a page in Firefox, or even run 2 seperate instances of Firefox (with multiple tabs).
I hate that the stupid toolbar on the left actually sits on the left, and is so wide I have to auto hide it (used to this) but what I am not quite used to is having to drag my cursor straight off the screen to get it to show up.
I love how everything you need is up in the top right, and I love how everything worked straight off the bat...even Bluetooth works!
Ubuntu seems very quick indeed, which I also love but it will be interesting to see how it performs over time. <comment><USER2> > But I hate that I cannot press backspace to go back a page in Firefox

A bit of google'fu would have turned up plenty of these: "Make Backspace Go Back in Firefox for Linux": [http://www.explodingpenguin.tv/2011/05/24/make- backspace-go-...](http://www.explodingpenguin.tv/2011/05/24/make-backspace-go- back-in-firefox-for-linux/)

> or even run 2 seperate [sic] instances of Firefox (with multiple tabs)

What do you consider to be "2 separate instances"? Is hitting ctrl+n (or picking File->New Window) not what you mean?

</comment><comment><USER3> Most of your issues seem to be about Unity. I don't like it either. You should try KDE. It comes built into Kubuntu if you'd like to run it live before you commit. If you like the feel of older Ubuntu, I would recommend xfce, which is what I use. It has come a long way and seem to be what Gnome would be had it not made such a huge shift with Gnome 3. I think it comes built into Xubuntu but I just install it on whatever Linux I am running at the time.

</comment><comment><USER4> as others have pointed out, seems like a lot of unity issues, a "hot topic" new switch in the ubuntu world that has a lot of ditractors. But because its linux you can pretty much install whatever want on top, KDE or gnome and switch your GUI. Also about the shortcuts, an alternative is alt + left-arrow- key (which I like cause my hands always around the alt/ctrl keys - maybe its an emacs guy thing) see here for a complete list of firefox shortcuts (<http://www.mouserunner.com/FF_Shortcuts1Printable.html>)

for firfox, if you wanted to have multiple instances, which I'm interpreting as multiple firefox processes running, just start it from different terminals.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hmm, I found the default Ubuntu interface somewhat lacking. Out of curiosity, I tried KUbuntu (12.04 LTS), and it seems to be just what I was looking for (flexible, highly configurable GUI interface; very stable and performant).</comment>


Show HN: Ball falls on the teapot in WebGL - <AUTHOR> http://whitestormjs.xyz/playground/?example=model&dir=demo <comment><USER2> Curiously enough, the first time I ran it it was "teapot falling on ball" instead. It slowly slid off the ball after it landed. Still worked fine :)

</comment><comment><USER3> For some reason I was expecting a bowling ball to fall and crush the teapot. More like: [http://bit.ly/2bhClHV](http://bit.ly/2bhClHV)

<comment><USER4> I thought it was going to fall inside the teapot.

<comment><USER5> Set the y coordinate of the sphere to 96.. ;)

<comment><USER6> Better yet, set the _X_ coordinate of the sphere to 94

<comment><USER5> Sorry, you are right, X should be set to 94-ish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sometimes the ball bounces off the spout and rolls down towards the camera. Other times it rolls aways from the camera. Can anyone speculate on why this is apparently non-deterministic?

<comment><USER8> Probably due to rounding errors (multiplication precision)

[1]: [http://floating-point-gui.de/](http://floating-point-gui.de/)

<comment><USER9> This is a ridiculous question, but could quantum mechanical uncertainty be interpreted as a rounding error?

Say the universe only stores a certain number of bits of information for each particle...

<comment><USER10> Aren't the number of particles the deciding factor? If you had 100 particles, you couldn't give me exactly 1/3 of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Set gravity of X to 1. Win!

Seriously though. Very cool demo. Great work.

<comment><USER12> If you set X gravity to 80, it's even cooler. :-D

<comment><USER13> I like -12 best.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I see cool demos, and things that look passable for game graphics [http://alexis.lart.no/emh/snapshots/rts- free.git/](http://alexis.lart.no/emh/snapshots/rts-free.git/)

Is there some big use of WebGL in production that I'm missing? It always seems to have a bunch of promise that no one does much new with

<comment><USER15> The popularity should spike soon, because Unity3D Webplayer has been deprecated a while ago and WebGL is the official Unity3D distribution method for the web. The performance isn't there yet, but authors promise to get there at some point.

<comment><USER16> Unity on WebASM looks really solid though. I'm expecting that's what they're going to be focusing on in the coming years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My first impression: doesn't work. I'm on Safari 9 with enabled WebGL. Wonderful.

<comment><USER18> I never try to use Safari for WebGL. I just assume it isn't supported or so broken it might as well not be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Interesting. Seems to be non-deterministic. Each time the ball falls to a different side.

<comment><USER10> floating point rounding errors

<comment><USER20> Floating point rounding errors are deterministic.

<comment><USER10> in math, yes

in computers, yes and no.

read: [https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2013/07/16/floating- point-...](https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2013/07/16/floating-point- determinism/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hacked Roomba vacuum to become a 360° View telepresence robot - <AUTHOR> https://imgur.com/a/ntGEY <comment><USER2> Wow, impressive! The 360 view, LED moving indicator and full BOM shows some attention to details. Also, the UX looks great. Very nice work.

</comment><comment><USER3> Impressive!</comment>


Productivity and the Workweek (2000) - <AUTHOR> http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/misc/worktime/ <comment><USER2> I'd be interested to know if other software developers feel their current working hours are good/positive?

From feedback I've had I'm generally regarded as pretty good at my job and highly productive but my current working hours leave me completely drained, to the point I go home and collapse on the sofa, make dinner and go to bed. And that's off an 8.5 hour day. It's at the point now where it's extremely likely I'll leave software for good.

Software to me is extremely mentally demanding and draining, it requires short burts of extreme concentration, but what is more draining is making up the remaining 4-5 hours looking busy. My experience of software work is that it doesn't scale linearly with number of hours. Unless you reach flow which is extremely rare in a business setting (thanks open-office / scrum) you can get the work done very quickly and then have large periods of unproductive time.

It's my experience that at most 2-3 hours is productively spent, the rest is wasted.

I meet software developers who advocate for, or don't mind, 8, 9, 10 hour days and I simply don't understand it, it's alien to me. Are they being productive all that time?

Edit: to clarify (since I've posted on this topic elsewhere today) the 8.5 hours include a 1 hour lunch break and Fridays are slightly shorter.

<comment><USER3> > Software to me is extremely mentally demanding and draining, it requires > short burts of extreme concentration, but what is more draining is making up > the remaining 4-5 hours looking busy.

Well said! I haven't met a single software engineer who hasn't described something similar to me. I'm the same, I like to wake up early, enjoy my first coffee and then I feel the most productive for the first 4 hours of the day. In those first 4 hours in my morning, often exactly between 8 and 12 I get a shitload of work done. I get so much done that it feels like a real milestone every day. The feeling of being contend afterwards makes it really hard to get into the same focused mindset back again after lunch. After I had my lunch meal I often spend no more than 1-2 hours just doing minor post-real-work tasks, email replies, etc. before mentally signing off completely and calling it a day.

Asking a software engineer to work a certain number of hours per week is useless. It's better to agree on a certain scope of work that one would like to see get done and then let them off the hook as soon as it's done. Some people can do a 3 day burst of 8 hours, but then are so destroyed on a Thursday or Friday that they won't get ANY work done. Others like me are productive every day, but only for ~4-5 hours. Either way, only a fool will think that they will get more out of an SE than they are actually able to focus on. They will just say that something took longer, a bug was holding them back or whatever.

Moreover, the salaries which SE get are so high that an employer isn't paying for the time anyway. They pay for the skill which is being applied during that time, so what's the point in making them commit a certain amount of time. Absolutely useless... well... hopefully one day things will change..

<comment><USER4> The future struggle for people in these kinds of jobs is to get the wider culture to admit to itself that the latter 4 hours are unnecessary and even detrimental to workers.

<comment><USER5> I think it's rougher for people to understand that aren't in this industry, and there are so many jobs that _do_ benefit from this in a numerical way, i.e. more parts per hour, more accounts created, sales made, etc.

<comment><USER4> Can't deny that there are some industries where more hours are better and that beyond the 4-5 hour range they don't suffer from diminishing returns. But I'd point to David Graeber here and just say that there seem to be a lot of people out there making themselves look busy for much of the day, and in the process wasting a lot of their lives and needlessly taxing their own emotional states. And together we've tacitly made a decision that this is all OK and normal.

<comment><USER5> Yup, it's certainly a punchline in seemingly every office job I've ever worked. I've worked a lot of retail and cooking jobs though too, and I think a lot of people come from these fields as well and have trouble distinguishing intellectual work from physical, utilitarian work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Let's reduce economics to its barest rudiments: I'm pretty sure a worker could buy a house and support a family in 1950 on a single, average 40 hour a week salary; this was probably also true even as late as 1970. How many workers in the modern economy can buy a house and support a family on 1/4 of a 40 hour a week salary?

Those "productivity" numbers are obviously cooking the books bullshit. Either that or they're not measuring the right things. If the bare rudiments; food, housing, family creation cost the same or more, but we claim productivity has increased because ... I dunno we can sit on our fat asses and watch netflix instead of going to a movie theater: that's not measuring the right things.

Edit add: even assuming all the productivity gains have only benefitted, say, the top 10%, you'd see more people who could buy a house and make a family working 10 hours a week.

<comment><USER7> In 1950 the average new home was 983 square feet and the average household 3.8 people. Today it's 2500 square feet and 2.6 people. That's a 270% increase in home space per person.

And that doesn't even get into all the other ways that modern housing is fancier. Central A/C, attached garages, swimming pools, high ceilings, granite countertops, finished basements, more bathrooms, massively decreased fire risk, higher capacity electrical circuits, improved water heaters, builtin appliances.

Median home price in the US is $123/square foot. To house a family of four, under 1950s standards costs about $125,000 in America today. That's easily affordable to a single earner at the median full-time wage of $45,000/year.

I'm not saying that housing policy doesn't artificially inflate the price of housing. There are many easy reforms that would drastically increase affordability. Especially in high-priced metros. But to pretend like people in 1950 had it easier than today is just ignorant of the historical facts.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States) [2] [https://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/the-righteous-small- house...](https://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/the-righteous-small-house- challenging-house-size-and-the-irresponsible-american-dream) [3] [https://www.realtor.com/advice/buy/average-price-per- square-...](https://www.realtor.com/advice/buy/average-price-per-square-foot- for-a-home/)

<comment><USER8> That salary price is nowhere near the minimum wage in the US. $45,000 is around $21.63/hr. Although most places pay more than minimum wage, the current federal minimum wage is $7.25/hr.

Also, you'll be hard pressed to find a livable house for that cheap. The average price of a home in the US in 2019 is $226,800 [2].

The numbers just don't work. Most people can't afford a house right now.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_S...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_States) [2] [https://www.businessinsider.com/cost-to-buy-a-house-in- every...](https://www.businessinsider.com/cost-to-buy-a-house-in-every-state- ranked-2018-8)

<comment><USER7> > The average price of a home in the US in 2019 is $226,800

Yes, because the average home in America is 2000+ square feet. The OP explicitly made the comparison to 1950. And in 1950 the average home was 980 square feet. It'd be like me complaining that cars have become unaffordable because I decided to double the number of cars that my household owns.

You can easily find a 1950s size home for less than $125,000 almost anywhere in America. For example check out the Zillow listings for Omaha, Nebraska. There's a plethora of 2 bedroom/1 bathroom homes (typical 1950 sized house) priced around $100,000. (Many actually built in the 1950s.)

Omaha has the third lowest unemployment rate in the country, and Nebraska's educational system is ranked above average. If your benchmark is 1950, which entails a four-person family, a 1000 square foot house, a job, and decent schools, that's easily achievable today, unless you insist on living in a high cost metro like New York, San Francisco or Miami.

> Although most places pay more than minimum wage, the current federal minimum > wage is $7.25/hr.

Only 2% of full-time workers make less than minimum wage. And of those ones that do the vast majority are under-25. Not exactly the typical 1950 head-of- household. You're trying to compare the poorest segment today to the upper- middle of 1950. You can't compare advertising executives from Mad Men to modern-day dishwashers, then declare that things have gone backwards.

If you do want to look at the poorest Americans, instead of the middle-class, then 1950 looks even more bleak. 25% of homes didn't have full plumbing. 15% didn't have a toilet. 20% didn't have electricity. A third of were heated with coal (which is filthy, unreliable and terrible for the respiratory system).

Without a doubt the bottom quartile of Americans had much _much_ worse housing conditions in 1950 than today.

[1] [https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum- wage/2016/home.htm](https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum- wage/2016/home.htm) [2] [https://aceee.org/files/proceedings/2004/data/papers/SS04_Pa...](https://aceee.org/files/proceedings/2004/data/papers/SS04_Panel1_Paper17.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The interesting thing is that wages have remained stagnant as productivity has increased dramatically. Which means that our labor has been valued less over time. What needs to happen is that the work week shortens while the minimum wage increases in kind. Top execs need to be comfortable making less, as they are the only ones profiting off these productivity increases.

<comment><USER10> Is this (wage stagnation) true for tech? It seems a special case.

I wonder what the exec-pay/wage/productivity growth charts look like if we exclude tech. (Less disparity? More? Less productivity?)

<comment><USER11> There is substantial wage stagnation in tech. I'm pretty sure average compensation hasn't really risen much in 20 years (50k-75k entry, 125k after 5 years, average dev peaks around 200k). This is while many of these developers are making the companies they work for millions in value. Of course there are outliers, and a lot of big blowout top-of-HN companies qualify, but the number of developers has grown substantially and thus diluted the income pool to largely maintain the status quo.

And it feels like there is an active campaign by tech companies to obfuscate that fact. That they can guilt trip developers into saying "well we are still getting paid better than most people being exploited by corporations for huge profits per worker!" as if that means they shouldn't argue for their fair share of the value they create.

Some developers should be paid millions because they are making millions for the company. Some should also therefor not even be employed because they aren't actually doing anything valuable - there are a lot of "developers" that snake their way into teams where they don't contribute functional or productive code and just manage to exist as a fixture of bureaucracy where the dozen layers of management over them don't understand what programming is or how to evaluate their performance so they just collect their 6 figure check as a trick of good fortune.

So there is a faction of developers who don't want to see greater pegging of their salaries to their value, the executives usually don't want to do it because underpaying your top talent is hugely profitable, and the productive devs that should be arguing to be paid according to the value they create are guilt tripped by everyone that they shouldn't. But that absolutely produces tremendous wage stagnation. Just because developers are fortunate to be in short enough supply to demand a higher base salary doesn't change the fact the only reason there is so much demand is because there is so much money to be made.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I reduced my time at work to 80% at the beginning of July. Every Friday is my day now. This week I had to switch it up so today is my day off. It's 1pm and I have already worked out, ran some errands that had been bugging me and am now reading this in one of my favorite diners which I for some reason almost never found the time to go to before.

If you have the chance and it seems intriguing to you I encourage everyone to try it out. I guess not all workplaces support it in the same way as mine does, but it was possible for me to have a three month trial phase after which I can go back to 100% or decide to continue the 80% for a year. Maybe your workplace would be open for that but you just don't know!

Of course it's quite the pay cut, but as a developer with few obligations I can still manage quite well. I feel much more relaxed over all and I enjoy my work more when I'm there. It even subjectively feels like I'm getting more done at work. The weekend feels so much longer and relaxing, because stuff I normally do on the weekend often is already done.

One problem for me is that I tend to cram a lot into my Fridays. I feel like I have to use them to their full potential. Then when the weather doesn't work out or something else falls through I'm pretty bummed. But I think that is something that can be improved over time.

<comment><USER13> I would do this in a heartbeat. Life is too short to believe that we seriously need to spend 5/7 days working for our entire adult life, no matter the type of labor or how much you enjoy it. If you can live comfortably with 20% less income, do it. Money ain't everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I work 60% now. Instead of having two days off each week I've opted to work 4.5h each day. I can only focus intensely for about 4h each day on coding, so this works out well.

It's always been this way for me and to get to 8 hours I'd go through the logs each day (important, but not taxing at all and something better left to an intern most of the time) and attend much more meetings (low intensity but 90% of them were completely pointless) as well as take more breaks for stuff like hn.

I'd guess that I'm producing about 90% of the value I used to, but putting in way less hours. This isn't a bad deal for my employer, I think.

The pay cut kind of sucks, but I'm still making the national median salary because developers are paid so generously.

A lot of people opt to take whole days off, when they work less hours, but I find this arrangement works much better for me. It gives me more time for hobbies, friends and family, working out, eating healthy etc in the day-to- day.

<comment><USER15> Where do you work that gives you this option if you don't mind sharing a little more?

<comment><USER16> Not OP but I have a similar workstyle: I work half-time for one client (remotely), 4 hours a week for another (also remotely) and occasionally take side gigs like teaching or something. The remote work is mostly in Norway, I live in Poland, so the pay cut is not noticable – the fact that "I could be making twice as much if I worked "normally"" is something that always is in the back of my head, but is somewhat dimished by the fact that I still make more than a typical fulltime salary would net me here in Poland.

Being a contractor in a niche technology (in my case it's Perl) is great for this, because the companies involved can't really say "work more or we'll find someone else" – we both know that they won't ;) Also, beyond 4-5 hours a day my (and afaik everyone else's) productivity is diminishing anyway, so it's not like they're losing much because of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Thus for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem - how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.

The strenuous purposeful money-makers may carry all of us along with them into the lap of economic abundance. But it will be those peoples, who can keep alive, and cultivate into a fuller perfection, the art of life itself and do not sell themselves for the means of life, who will be able to enjoy the abundance when it comes.

Yet there is no country and no people, I think, who can look forward to the age of leisure and of abundance without a dread. For we have been trained too long to strive and not to enjoy.

\-- John Maynard Keynes

[http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf](http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER18> Perhaps if we were not handing over most of the productivity gains of society to CEOs, the rest of us would not need to work so many hours. [https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo- compensation-2018/](https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-2018/)

<comment><USER19> What really gets me about this as a sometimes-entrepreneur, is that management is not even taking personal risks. Besides narrow cases of torts and their need to have fiduciary duties, they are no different from other staff workers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think many people would work less if they could afford to. But we're not getting paid for all this extra productivity[1].

[1]: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/10/03/us- wages...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/10/03/us-wages-have- been-rising-faster-than-productivity-for-decades/#279de59b7342)

<comment><USER21> Ah yes, Tim Worstall. Every time I read one of his articles I end up thinking, "He touched on this important related aspect of his topic but then failed to actually detail how it impacts his claim, both for and against." I this article, he mentions "total compensation" includes benefits and suggests that those benefits somehow make up the missing wages. From a pure numbers perspective, the increase in benefits is an increase in total compensation. But it doesn't call out that most of those "missing wages" have been absorbed into handle rising healthcare costs. The people who are receiving these "increased benefits" haven't received anything other than the same healthcare but now they pay more for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Something like 30 hours a week, 4 days a week cant come soon enough.

Right now I work 40-45, 5 days a week and it feels like all I do is work and chores.

<comment><USER23> Two questions

Are many companies offering 4 day weeks? I'd guess yes.

Can people afford to live off a 4 day week salary? I'd guess no in general.

<comment><USER10> Offering 4-day weeks: Do you see this often? Just curious -- I feel like it's rare, so my guess would be the opposite. (I do know several people that work 4 10hr days as machinists or window installers).

My intuition is also the opposite of yours on affordability :), at least in tech...

<comment><USER23> I live in a country I where yeah it's common enough (let assume for good workers not borderline ones) but we're not paid as highly as the US, so supporting a family on a 4 day senior dev salary is a push unless you end got a paid off house.

<comment><USER24> The US system's structure penalizes companies for hiring workers between 20-40 hours. Any company that doesn't rely on flexible <20 hour employees or salary + forced-overtime is basically throwing money away.

 __edit oops- <20..

<comment><USER23> Can you elaborate on why? Is this a tax related thing? Or benefits related?

<comment><USER24> Tax code relating to benefits and labor laws (which kind of assume the environment encouraged by the tax code.)

As an example, benefits have fairness tests between highest and lowest paid employees. Fail those tests and the benefits are taxed, possibly as normal income. Companies find tricks to get people out of the group of normal employees under the IRS rules to beat these tests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Cost of living increases almost every year. Value of money decreases somewhat from inflation. Worker salaries have not been increasing on pace with inflation, much less cost of living increases, since oh... the Reagan years.

What has increased dramatically since the Reagan years is executive pay and wealth of top 1%. What has also increased is consumer debt, particularly during the Clinton years. At the same time that consumer debt was increasing, interest rates (for consumers, not the prime rate) were climbing quickly to their legal limits. Also, those legal limits were occasionally being increased.

Yes consumers are consuming more stuff, and yes most of that extra consumption is rather wasteful and provides decreasing benefit in terms of quality of life or happiness. But the rate of some consumption is going down. Modern computers, TVs, and even mobile phones now can do so much more than most users need that there is less and less reason to upgrade frequently. Buying a new car every couple of years is a great way to waste money. But generally speaking, "the people" aren't living larger than they did 20-30 years ago.

There's very little doubt that the vast majority of the value of the increased productivity output has gone to the top 1%. That's factually visible even without exposing the many sources of hidden offshore wealth that is sometimes estimated to be multiple times larger than the known wealth.

</comment><comment><USER26> People aren't motivated because work is an endless treadmill. Financial independence a roll of the loaded startup dice.

The British model of a financialised economy doesn't work for the many. Just the rich, like YC VCs.

All the questioning "how do you stay motivated ". By retaining your surplus value.

<comment><USER27> you're going to get downvoted the all the protestant work ethic people that think labor is virtuous per se - "an honest day's work is reward in and of itself" type thing (forgetting or conveniently omitting that these values/virtues were defined by capital not labor). I agree with you and many more would too if they didn't see themselves as "temporarily aggrieved millionaires".

<comment><USER28> As Iain Banks put it his The Culture universe, "money is a sign of poverty". We're hopefully still in the tricky beginning of a transition phase to a post- scarcity civilization. Just need that fusion reactor to start with...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The number of times this topic has come up on HN recently is really surprising. It seems 1 or 2 posts on this topic hit the front page just about every day. I run a newsletter and job board called 30 Hour Jobs [1] – I started the project about 6 months ago and it seems like my timing couldn't have been any better.

Usually, I try not to shamelessly plug my own projects too often but I can't help but share it in the comments when the topic is so relevant!

[1] [https://30hourjobs.com](https://30hourjobs.com)

</comment><comment><USER30> Unfortunately, the mid-noughts vintage of this page is showing. After about 2010, productivity growth has not kept up with the page's 1.7% estimate ([https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=oGgn](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=oGgn)).

Also, this page neglects the influence of heterogeneous productivity changes. Some fields don't experience the same kind of productivity growth that we've seen in manufacturing (and services aided by technology); for example a doctor now is not seeing four times as many patients as a doctor in 1940. A barber now is not cutting the hair of four people at once.

You can't productivity-gain your way out of the costs of dedicated attention from individuals.

</comment><comment><USER31> > The conclusion is inescapable: if productivity means anything at all, a > worker should be able to earn the same standard of living as a 1950 worker > in only 11 hours per week.

The logical conclusion from this seems to me to be "productivity doesn't mean anything". If we all have four times as much stuff as in 1950 (rather than working fewer hours) then where is it? Obviously there have been a lot of amazing technological developments since the fifties but most of them aren't that expensive: if you sold your computer/phone/etc. you wouldn't be four times richer.

</comment><comment><USER32> My work/life balance has changed a lot in the last 5 or so years. I've done all of the above (in chronological order):

FTE 100% in the office FTE 100% remote (same company, living in the same city) FT Contract on-site plus consulting FT Contract on-site minus consulting FTE 100% remote (HQ 4-5 hour drive away, quarterly-ish visits) FTE 100% on-site FTE* "wherever" plus 10-15 hours/wk consulting

Right now I'm a FTE at one place where I probably _actually_ spend about 35 hours/week working and then I am on monthly retainer for my old employer (through my consulting corp).

I wake up before 6 most mornings and either put in a few consulting hours or go do crossfit. Then 9-noonish I try and be productive at my full-time job. I usually a long lunch/run errands after that, and then a couple more hours for the full-time job in the afternoon. I'm usually done working by 4:30 or 5pm and then it's time to either cook or go to the in-laws or order food depending on how I feel (I'm the cook and we're a family of 6).

I have found the variety of doing multiple jobs keeps me much more productive in general, because I can basically work on what I want whenever I'm motivated to. The end of the month/sprint can be rough sometimes if I have procrastinated (or just not felt motivated at one job or the other), but every month when I get a check in the mail I feel freshly motivated haha.

</comment><comment><USER33> Someone wrote here about whether 3 hours or so out of 8 being productive "is not just peculiar to software work.

There's an old post from a photographer blogger and funny guy if somewhat controversial [1]:

> The Two-Hour Rule is a law of American business which states that "no > salaried employee, employed by a business to work in an office, may exceed > two hours of actual work in any business day."

> The Two-Hour Rule does not apply to government workers (police, fire, > military, libraries, public works, etc.), independent contractors, services > billed hourly or apply outside the USA. I'll cover these at the end. The > Two-Hour Rule applies to people working at government subcontractors because > they are businesses.

> The Two-Hour Rule was created to ensure that American business thrived on > efficiency, not on dumb hard work, so that Americans could enjoy the lives > they had earned."

[https://www.kenrockwell.com/business/two-hour- rule.htm](https://www.kenrockwell.com/business/two-hour-rule.htm)

[1] Naive amateurs with religious feels about photography and its "rules" tend to hate him, for such advice as "just shoot JPEG" (as if shooting RAW, and squeezing that extra quality is not a tradeoff of file size/storage/post processing, but a holy duty of everyone who photographs, even if it's just BS family/travel/pet pics nobody would ever really care about - not even the family/pet).

<comment><USER34> I was an avid reader of his blog, but never read that. Genius.

On the footnote: reading his advice over and over again made me a better photographer. I still shoot RAW, as I like editing, but his advice on just sticking with AUTO is what made me far more productive rather that fiddling with trying to get the best shutter speed/aperture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I want to note that there's something that has been rarely mentioned in these threads and I wonder why: longer education time (and earlier retirement).

On my parents generation a small percentage of people went to university, and on my grandparents generation most people started working on their early teens (post-war, I'm from Spain). In contrast, today having an undergraduate degree is very common, and a master or even doctorate is no rare. This makes a 10-15 year difference of no-work time to our lives, which is ~1/4th of our work lives. Where before we were expected to work from 16 to 66 years old (~50 years), now we are expected to work from 22 years old to 62 years old (40 years).

Only this is a reduction of work by 20%, or a full work day.

To add on top of that, our life expectancy has been increasing in all developed countries (except, USA). While this does not take away work time, it does add leisure time to our lives.

To be clear, I agree with the article and sentiment here and we should be working shorter weeks. Only wanted to note this since many people seem to ignore it when discussing work week.

</comment><comment><USER36> It's a little odd that the link doesn't mention that average working hours has in fact gone down over time in the United States, from 1989 hours over a year in 1950 to 1,757 hours in 2017[0]. That's a decrease of roughly 12%. Not _as_ much as if all of productivity increases had gone into increasing leisure, but I'm not sure you'd expect that to have happened.

This trend seems fairly robust across countries and extending even further back in time. The average work week in the USA was 62 hours in 1870, and was 40.25 hours in 2000, a decline of 29% [1].

My suspicion is that this actually understates the increase in leisure time, as many household chores are presumably easier due to modern tech.

[0]: [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AVHWPEUSA065NRUG](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AVHWPEUSA065NRUG)

[1]: [https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours#the-decline-of- work...](https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours#the-decline-of-working- hours-per-year-after-the-industrial-revolution)

</comment><comment><USER37> Tech actually seems really optimal for this.

I get assigned a 8 hour task. I spend 4 hours trying to get it done in 4 hours. The next time I get the same task, it takes 4 hours. I can optimize it even further if it happens a lot, get it done in 10 minutes.

I can 'siphon off' time this way, lowering estimates a little, cutting time spent by a lot, then basically reinvesting the saved time into rest or productivity. The other day we had a meeting; I got all the work done before the meeting ended then waited an hour before showing the result.

There are lots of tricks, like figuring out keyboard shortcuts, IDE plugins, or simply refactoring staging/production builds into a single button. It's surprising how much mental effort and time a shortcut like CTRL/CMD + SHIFT + F saves.

The long term goal is to be so productive that I can probably negotiate a shorter work week or more vacation days instead of a raise, as I already get paid a comfortable amount.

<comment><USER38> You can absolutely do that to a huge extent, but good luck actually capturing the productivity gains as an employee. You won't be rewarded with shorter days or salary increases, certainly not in proportion to your productivity increases.

At best, you can use the siphoned off time for learning new things, or networking your way into management.

Employers don't value that kind of thing, possibly because although it increases _your_ efficiency, it also leads to a complicated, brittle environment that is difficult to scale to many employees, and staff that are less interchange and harder to replace.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> "Productivity" means something very different for assembly line workers than it does for retail workers. As productivity has improved over time, we actually have seen the expected reduction of hours, but it varies by occupation. A much smaller number of people work in manufacturing now, while the ranks of retail and white collar workers have grown. People are moving towards occupations where "productivity" is harder to gauge and not necessarily the most important metric at all times. The increase in productivity in some sectors and the migration of workers to new sectors are broadly related, too, since the former requires technological advance, which is the result of cognitive work and creates more need for white collar and cognitive work.

</comment><comment><USER40> We should be having official 4 hour workdays. State mandated.

We can only do about four hours of solid work. There's really no tricks to productivity. Just trying to mask fatigue, I suppose.

But me? I don't do any real work until after lunch. Maybe a meeting, to manage my managers, of course.

I learned this just in recent years tho. Before that, I was as neurotic as anyone.

</comment><comment><USER41> Working fewer hours is absolutely required as a practice of degrowth to reduce CO2 emissions and limit ecosystem damage.

</comment><comment><USER42> Do you know why work is so much more productive? Because so much is automated away, and relies on machines. Each and every worker works using lots of machines. Of course, the more machines you can make work the more productivity you have.

When a large part of your work can't be delegated to machines, for instance nursing a baby, talking to people face to face, etc (mostly "human relations" things) then your productivity can't augment as much. This is also why "human work" earns less than "things work".

Do you know what machines use to work? Energy. In the end, energy availability is the ultimate constraint. Good old thermodynamics. Why can't anything grow forever (and surely not GDP)? because of available energy, and thermodynamics.

</comment><comment><USER43> Sure, productivity is rising. But how much are healthcare and education costs rising? And how does that compare to this rise in productivity?

Until those two pieces get solved, productivity gains don't matter since everyone needs to produce/earn more to just get those basic needs fulfilled.

<comment><USER44> What is productivity?

<comment><USER45> For some things it's easy to measure: eg how much wheat is produced per hour of farm labor.

Some easy to measure things don't rise and it's easy to see why, e.g. how many students does one teacher teach in a given day.

Productivity in the aggregate is "the gross national" product and is calculated by the bureau of statistics. This is divided by the total number of hours worked.

Must be a very big spreadsheet. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I do a three day week with a corresponding pay cut. Incidentally, this puts me in the same position, time-wise, as women returning from maternity leave, so the shorter hours don't mark me out particularly. My co-workers are fine with it, and if a surge is needed, I can work longer weeks and accrue Time Off In Lieu. There is no way that I would go back to a routine five day week.

I'm doing this to prep for the more significant transition of fully retiring, so that I don't hit the cliff edge of going from full-time to nothing. Stopping work is still going to be a bit of a shock, but I genuinely feel part-time working is helping me to prepare for inevitable retirement.

</comment><comment><USER47> Interestingly we did a survey such as this on our massive danish government and it turns out that since the 1950s there has been a 0% productivity increase, the wages have however followed increases in the private sector.

</comment><comment><USER48> As a good tip, in order to keep my workweek short, I try not to work on Wednesday and Friday, and of course, on the week end.

This means I try to work 3 days a week only. I usually can do it pretty much easily.</comment>


Ask HN: Tips for taking better meeting notes? - <AUTHOR> As my career as a developer progresses, I'm being included in more and more meetings (gathering requirements, team development, etc). I find it difficult to take effective notes without losing track of what people are saying while I'm writing. What are some of your tips/tricks for capturing meaningful notes? <comment><USER2> Whenever I'm taking notes, I tend to only write down things I don't already know or understand which tends to lead to shorter list-style notes, each bullet point a gem enticing me to research and eventually fold that concept or terminology into my understanding. If I've got pages and pages of things I wrote down which I already know or can get up and talk about for 20 minutes on the spot... the document may only be 80% useless but I'll treat it as absolutely useless and won't revisit it.

I write in block uppercase, regular lower-case, and cursive, depending on whether it's an action item, an interesting personal note or bit of extracurricular knowledge to follow-up on, or something to transcribe (knowledge or command to be archived) digitally after the note-taking session.

I make liberal use of parens, square brackets and curly braces, which add additional meaning to the different styles of handwriting I employ.

</comment><comment><USER3> Try handwritten notes. I find it much faster for structuring notes in contrast to any computer program. Instead, write down your notes and things you remember afterwards as a word document.

Also, if there is too much to write down, several people should do notes and join their notes later in some collaborative meeting report. That's one way to ensure nothing gets lost after the meeting. For developer meetings, we frequently rised new issues in our bug tracker which were linked directly from the reports which itself were tickets or wiki pages.</comment>


Show HN: A Chrome Extention to Right-Click Encrypt and Decrypt - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/lettergram/AnyCrypt <comment><USER2> > Be willing Copy & paste private key into application

I understand this is a prototype.

This is a hard boundary for me to cross when you have already stated it is a prototype and there are several vulnerabilities. Because of this, I haven't installed your app to try it out but I did watch the video.

In your video you show two users on a web chat application encrypting their conversation after typing directly into the site's input control. The chat site may have been recording the input you typed in. I think Gmail will do this, for example. How about changing the model so you only type into your app?

Interesting way to use keybase. Still seems to be a bit too much friction for the end-user. I would probably accidentally send the message without encrypting it.

What is your vision of where this could lead? How will you make it easier to use?

<comment><AUTHOR> One thing I did to test this, is just using a different private key.

> How about changing the model so you only type into your app?

Indeed this is possible, but a bit more work than I was going for.

> What is your vision of where this could lead?

Honestly, my hope is that this triggers some other ideas and/or someone else is willing to work with me. Keybase is pretty awesome, and opens up a ton of options. I personally don't have a ton of bandwidth, and without anyone else being interested, I'll probably do very little.

> How will you make it easier to use?

Keybase has an API endpoint to export your private key. I requested Keybase to explain to me how to use it, because when you hit that endpoint you get a bunch of junk. It turns out only a portion of what is given to you is the private key, the rest is other data. They wouldn't tell me where to parse.

That being said, I hope they will improve that. When they do, it'll be possible to just plugin your keybase username & password and you'll be able to encrypt and decrypt.

<comment><USER2> > One thing I did to test this, is just using a different private key.

Absolutely. I just don't want to upload another key on keybase and have my correspondents start sending to a different key for me. I didn't think it was worth it to download and recreate the scene in your video of just testing to myself, rather I was thinking about trying it for a week or something.

Are you aware of any similar efforts that I can compare this to?

<comment><AUTHOR> There's also a keybase chrome extension, but they don't have a decrypt option.</comment></comment></comment></comment>