Calorie Counting × Meal Planning - <AUTHOR> http://maxwellforbes.com/posts/calorie-counting-meal-planning <comment><USER2> If you want to get fancy with your meal planning, you can use a constraint solver like Google's or-tools to figure out what recipes to cook to meet nutritional (and other) goals semi-optimally:

Example code:

[https://github.com/google/or- tools/blob/stable/examples/pyth...](https://github.com/google/or- tools/blob/stable/examples/python/stigler_diet.py)

which solves the Stigler Diet problem: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler_diet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler_diet)

The combinatoric difficulty of optimal nutrition planning is not something I see brought up very often, and I find that fascinating in its own right. It's harder than it looks, and I feel many people don't understand why.

<comment><USER3> This is an excellent reference, thanks a lot. Have you tried this for meal planning, out of interest?

<comment><USER2> Not seriously. I work on other similar optimization problems for my day job though, I can definitely imagine adding a bunch more complexity to guide the solver toward the right solution shape (price, volume, meal frequency, preferred foods, variety, etc).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For anyone trying to count calories, here's a tip that doesn't seem to be common knowledge:

Calculate your calories per day, then multiply by 7. That is your weekly budget. Don't budget by the day, there's no margin for error, and you'll hate your diet and stop doing it after a few weeks.

If your daily budget is 1,800 calories, your weekly budget becomes 12,600. Suddenly, having 400 calories of ice cream after a good week of working out and counting calories doesn't hurt and doesn't represent a quarter of your daily allowance. You can still have a normal day of meals with that dessert pay off, and still come in under your weekly budget if you've been planning or eating really light and lose weight.

Because at the end of the day, you have to take your psychology into account. Nobody can sustain eating boiled chicken and steamed broccoli for more than a few weeks.

<comment><USER5> I think counting calories you eat is oversimplified anyways. If I do activity, or intermittent fasting or anything that influences the metabolism, that has a big impact. Like living in a house with stairs. How old you are. A ton of other things.

> Because at the end of the day, you have to take your psychology into > account. Nobody can sustain eating boiled chicken and steamed broccoli for > more than a few weeks.

Agree

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Shameless plug for [https://ultimatemealplans.com](https://ultimatemealplans.com) \- all meals are 15 minutes and 5 ingredients.

Supports paleo, keto, AIP, banting and general real food "clean" diets.

You can calorie count within these, but focusing on food quality and satiety helps a majority of the people fix the mentality side of fixing what they put in their mouth.

</comment><comment><USER7> I subscribe to EatThisMuch for a lot of this stuff. I think calorie counting through meal prep makes a lot of sense and EatThisMuch does a solid job of allowing me to do things like set macros, black list certain ingredients, account for my schedule and leftover preferences and also has a good (but sometimes flawed) integration with whole foods delivery.

You definitely need to do some care and feeding on your favorite meals (unless you love eating cottage cheese with every meal) and remove meals for days you know you're likely to eat out, but other than that it just works out of the box.

</comment><comment><USER8> >When I thought about getting my food, I really had three goals: cheap, fast, and healthy.

Here's my cheap, fast, and healthy diet that doesn't require any cooking. I started a few months ago and it's very effective in losing weight and saving time.

Half of a pound container of cottage cheese, plus a large melon (cantaloupe or honeydew are easy to cut once you learn how) for breakfast. One can of sardines for lunch. Another can of sardines, plus a can of vegetables for dinner.

One bottle of water at each meal plus 1-2 more throughout the day. Whenever hungry in between meals, snack on almonds.

You can buy a week or so worth of everything at a time, and some like the fish, vegetables, and nuts can be bought in bulk for months. Effectively no work to prepare anything, the trickiest is really the melons, you can substitute to bananas or grapes for easier fruit but higher carbs. And you can always eat out a meal every few days, estimate how much it makes up and eat that much less.

This costs roughly $10/day, and I'm targeting 1200 calories, which is the minimum recommendation for men. I track everything with an app and allow myself to go slightly higher if I'm hungry at the end of the day. There's about 3-400 calories buffer for those almonds, which I sometimes use for coffee with milk, or for various alternative snacks (e.g. granola bars in bulk turn out to be extremely cheap on a per calorie basis). And then there's a buffer between 1200 and the roughly 17-1800 I'd be at for breakeven, so if I splurge once a week I just don't lose weight that day but I'm not gaining anything.

<comment><USER9> This gotta be a joke right? Your story is something I would expect form a 4chan greentext. In case its not: I am happy you can live with this kind of diet but honestly, it just sounds very horrible for me and if I would need to live like that every day I would become very depressed. It's worth to cook at least simple food, just to have some variety in ur daily live and warm meals are so much nicer than eating cold every day.

<comment><USER8> I go out for a warm meal every so often. I just don't want to have to do that every day or to have to learn how to cook.

Before this I drank Soylent for around 2 years, I'm not the kind of person to get bored by lack of variety in food. I just wanted something easier and healthier than Soylent.

<comment><USER9> It's good that you found a way to plan meals that works for you and I am not saying that you should stop. What I am saying is that most people value the variety of food and actually want their food to taste good so I think your plan is not suitable for the vast majority of people. I mean I am also one of those people who "eat to live" instead of "live to eat" but your plan is just way too extreme. Even I can feel the difference in my mood when I manage to cook every day and get a decent variety of food. I started to meal prep every sunday and just prepare food that I then heat for dinner and that worked pretty good for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great application and writeup, thanks for sharing (and making it open source)!

The file-based approach to defining data is a good way to go I reckon - it's simple and easy to update (especially with source control). You can always upgrade to something more sophisticated in future.

How complete/challenging does the unit conversion component feel, out of interest? (I'm reading through `conversion.ts` in the codebase at the moment)

By chance I'm working on some ingredient unit conversion code too - I'd be happy to learn from & share experiences. FWIW the tools I'm exploring are Pint[0] and convert-units[1].

[0] - [https://github.com/hgrecco/pint](https://github.com/hgrecco/pint)

[1] - [https://github.com/ben-ng/convert-units](https://github.com/ben- ng/convert-units)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much for your kind words! As a frequent reader but rare poster, I find HN more daunting than I probably ought to.

Those unit conversion libraries look awesome! Way better than my pile of hacks. I only added the units I happened to use in recipes (surprisingly few). The most hacky thing is probably all the cooking-specific ways of saying "thing" (clove, pack, fillet, sprig, scoop, etc.).

The most interesting problem I ran into with unit conversions was actually around the user experience: when did I want units converted at all? Right now, the app simply always does it before rendering anything. This means converting to the smallest unit of that type, and then picking the largest reasonable unit to display. This can lead to annoying instances where you put an ingredient in one unit, but another is displayed. I also went a little overboard on the fractions, so you see things like "2/5 tsp" which is just absurd.

<comment><USER3> Glad you did post :)

This is going to be a brief ramble because it's late here in the UK, but I'm keen to respond because those are _exactly_ what I'm looking into too.

Re: finding the appropriate display units, `convert-units` in particular has a method `toBest` which attempts to find the best-matching display unit for a quantity. The main problem is that it's unaware of culinary measurements (i.e. tsp as you mention, which could round up to tbsp, etc) at the moment.

I reckon that with a few additions to that project, and a few judicious extra test cases[0] to assert the right behaviour, it'd be possible to get it to perform smart display rounding on culinary measurements too.

Ideally those units would only be rendered by when a 'culinary unit system' is optionally enabled. That'd avoid any backwards-compatibility issues for the library -- and also because most users just want to see milliliters and liters by default I'd imagine.

As a slight aside, `pint` has nice support for alternative unit systems[1]. I'm planning to use `cgs` for storage of ingredient quantities since it's fine-grained.

Anyway - I'm probably thinking faster than a practical design, but if you have any interest, I'm probably going to look into extending `convert-units` for this use case a bit more. If it's possible to create a common library we could both use to ease some of the display work, I'd be really happy to collaborate.

[0] - [https://github.com/ben-ng/convert- units/blob/93883046e43b5b0...](https://github.com/ben-ng/convert- units/blob/93883046e43b5b0825489de076b9698de013503c/test/best.js)

[1] - [https://pint.readthedocs.io/en/0.9/systems.html](https://pint.readthedocs.io/en/0.9/systems.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm kind of on the opposite side of this, because I like to have a bunch of different meal possibilities and then mix and match during the week based on what I have going on. I think to do weekly meal planning you need to have a very regimented routine and if you have variability in your schedule then it can get tricky to manage.

I have been using "My Macros+" for some time now and it works great. It's a few dollar app (no recurring fee unless you do the subscription, I don't) and then you can add your own meals or pull in meals from the vast database of food items. (Adding your own custom is the way to go, so you can verify accuracy)

Once you have done it for a few weeks it is really simple to maintain, because you just add it from the list. Takes me only about 30 seconds to 1 minute of total time per day to manage.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is pretty cool and I would totally use/pay for this if it was in a more usable format. Counting calories works like magic, but it's a total pain as the author outlines. Does anyone know if something like this exists that doesn't require editing the code directly? ;)

<comment><USER12> We're working on an app to make it easier using image recognition. It's called Bitesnap and is available on both Android and iOS. I'll probably open up an API to allow you to query your own data soon as well.

<comment><USER13> How do you account for oils? Does it work with curries or other kinds of stews?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nice write up! I've always found it difficult to keep on top of diet (much more than exercise), so I've ended up using a collection of techniques / tools to stay on track, including a calorie-counting app, intermittent fasting, smart scale, a fitness tracker and macro-nutrient goals.

I also find actually inputting calories per meal helps me remain aware about food choices, while intermittent fasting (12pm - 8pm eating time) has drastically reduced snacking, because in those 8 hours I want _filling / healthy_ meals rather than light (..dangerous) snacks.

I've never quite managed to routinely pre-prepare meals, now I'm inspired to have another crack at it.

</comment><comment><USER15> >> With food, you control calories from roughly 1800 - 3500 per day, but with exercise, you only control 200 - 400.

In other words, exercise cuts 11-22% of calories on the low end, and only 6-11% on the splurge day.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think all these tools are missing the most important circle: satisfaction. Food is one of the pleasures of life. Why you treating it like a chore.

You eat multiple times a day, every day. I wanna have tasty food, which is also healthy, not too expensive and fast to cook. What is missing is good quality recipes linked to calories and cooking time to make a meal plan.

</comment><comment><USER16> I currently pay for Trifecta, it's ridiculously expensive. The meals are good though, and meet my nutritional needs and keeps my calorie consumption in check.

I just want an app that can give me keto recipes, plan my meals for the week, and tell me what to shop and cook for the week. Seriously, that's all I want. Does this exist?

<comment><USER17> I'm using yourketo.diet for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > This idea changed how I thought about fitness. The simple reality is that > you control vastly more calories through what you eat than what you burn > through exercise

Any source on that?

> a pretty descent workout burns 200-400

my morning exercise burns 100 kcal (7 min workout) and my evening crossfit training burns 700 (that's what gym website claims)

<comment><USER19> If you don't eat the calorie it doesn't have to be burned, your exercise to calorie burned is questionable since there is no real way to measure how much you burned doing those workouts and it verys per person based on a number of factors. Even if you did burn 800 calories a day if you consume 3k without knowing it your still not going to make progress on your weight loss goals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Shameless plug for [https://www.joyapp.com](https://www.joyapp.com)

Built it for myself, then it slowly spread through forums. No ads, and your data is yours and yours only.

<comment><USER21> What does revenue vs hosting costs look like for something like this?

<comment><USER20> Hosting is not a big expense, though I recently migrated from Linode to GCP for redundancy and infrastructure-as-code (Kubernetes)[1]. This increased expenses substantially.

The professionally curated foods and CPG[2] source is a much bigger expense.

[1] Linode has since added k8s. I've always had a great experience with them. [2] Consumer packaged goods, think items with barcodes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Thanks for this. A similar project was in my private pipeline. Maybe I can just use this instead :)

</comment><comment><USER23> You know, one way to short-circuit all this "we have no idea what is going on with nutrition" business is to build an app where you 1) record what you eat and when, 2) record how you feel and what happens to you physically and when, and finally 3) correlates the two to draw conclusions over time on what ingredients are making you feel which way.

<comment><USER24> Ate (formerly YouAte) does this pretty well. It doesn't do the correlation analysis for you but it does allow you to easily log the food, whether it's on-track / off-track with your goals, how you ate it, where you ate it, and how you felt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Try fasting for a day a week, two if you can. The fat will drop off

<comment><USER26> In conjunction with anything else?

<comment><USER10> high protein and low/no carb. You can be more keto (high fat), but the key is to keep your carb bucket low, so your body is oxidizing fatty acids for its fuel source. (rather than glucose from carbs)</comment></comment></comment>


Project Loom Update - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV46KFV1m-4 <comment><USER2> The best part of the talk, IMO, was on the restartable sequences. :)</comment>


Driving Without a Smartphone - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/07/driving-without-a-smartphone/564644/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> This is good. Even while at a stoplight it's important to be aware of the traffic. However I do wonder what this law says about people who use Google Maps while driving.

Also just the other day I had an Uber driver who was looking at their Facebook feed WHILE driving. Ride cancelled, reported to Uber.</comment>


Ask HN: Any raw html/javascript search engines? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for a search engine that will allow me to search raw html/content.<p>Someone has put up an anonymous slander site but used their google analytics tracking ID for it. I'd like to be able to locate which other sites use this ID but I don't know of any search engines that allow you to search raw content. <comment><USER2> An interesting idea indeed, don't know of an existing solution, but I'd definitely use it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Blekko have one for adsense ids, not sure if they have a slashtag for GA though.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've had this idea for years, hope someone finally does it.

</comment><comment><USER5> That would be unbelievably cool.</comment>


Is Legal Pot Crippling Mexican Drug Trafficking Organisations? - <AUTHOR> http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/01/legal-pot-crippling-mexican-drug-trafficking-organisations.html <comment><USER2> Study: Is Legal Pot Crippling Mexican Drug Trafficking Organisations? The Effect of Medical Marijuana Laws on US Crime

Citation: Gavrilova, E., Kamada, T. and Zoutman, F. (2017), Is Legal Pot Crippling Mexican Drug Trafficking Organisations? The Effect of Medical Marijuana Laws on US Crime. Econ J.

Link: [http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ecoj.12521](http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ecoj.12521)

DOI: 10.1111/ecoj.12521

Abstract: We show that the introduction of medical marijuana laws (MMLs) leads to a decrease in violent crime in states that border Mexico. The reduction in crime is strongest for counties close to the border (less than 350 kilometres) and for crimes that relate to drug trafficking. In addition, we find that MMLs in inland states lead to a reduction in crime in the nearest border state. Our results are consistent with the theory that decriminalisation of the production and distribution of marijuana leads to a reduction in violent crime in markets that are traditionally controlled by Mexican drug trafficking organisations.

</comment><comment><USER3> No....

'The Sinaloa cartel can buy a kilo of cocaine in the highlands of Colombia or Peru for around $2,000, then watch it accrue value as it makes its way to market. In Mexico, that kilo fetches more than $10,000. Jump the border to the United States, and it could sell wholesale for $30,000. Break it down into grams to distribute retail, and that same kilo sells for upward of $100,000 — more than its weight in gold. And that's just cocaine. Alone among the Mexican cartels, Sinaloa is both diversified and vertically integrated, producing and exporting marijuana, heroin and methamphetamine as well.' [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/magazine/how-a-mexican- dru...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/magazine/how-a-mexican-drug-cartel- makes-its-billions.html??mtrref=undefined)

and that was in 2012...

<comment><USER4> The marijuana market is twice the size in US Dollars vs. the cocaine market and nearly half the volume of the overall drug trafficking.

[http://www.talkingdrugs.org/report-global-illegal-drug- trade...](http://www.talkingdrugs.org/report-global-illegal-drug-trade-valued- at-around-half-a-trillion-dollars)

<comment><USER5> Maybe this is a west coast perspective but I would have guessed that even before it was legal the vast majority of the marijuana market was served by domestic producers versus imports, whereas cocaine is all imported.

Edit: Some googling produces estimates ranging from 30 to 70 percent imports, depending on the point the article is trying to make, so let's just call it 50% domestic nationwide.

<comment> nv-vn Totally is. I live on the East Coast in an illegal state and all weed around here is either imported from legal states or grown locally. It's not hard to find grow ops or people who will ship weed here. In a world where mass quantities of drugs are so easily available on the darknet, it seems ridiculous to think the domestic MJ market is primarily run by cartels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If the crime rate is decreasing in the U.S. this is not being reflected within mexican borders. As Mexico has just been through its most violent year in history. [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-violence/mexico- mu...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-violence/mexico-murders-hit- record-high-dealing-blow-to-president-idUSKBN1EH0LK?il=0)

</comment><comment><USER7> The US needed a lot of morphine during WW2. So it bought all the morphine Mexico could produce.

After the war they were left with lots of crops but no legal market for them. This led many of them to turn to the illegal market.

Cartels pay a lot of money in bribes and security which will not be necessary with legalization. It is possible they just become legal growers.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why doesn't Mexico just legalize heroin and cocaine distribution? Wouldn't this put an end to the cartels?

<comment><USER9> I don't know how popular that would be with Mexican voters, even if it drastically reduced the money flowing to cartels.

Probably more important than domestic sentiment is the inevitable retaliation that would follow from the United States government if Mexico just legalized all drugs. I wouldn't be surprised if the US government cut off trade with Mexico and started running overt and covert operations to ensure Mexican prohibitionist politicians take power again. In the worst case the US government might even deploy armed forces across the border, to ensure that American law is enforced in Mexico, like it did with Panama in 1989.

<comment><USER10> Canada legalized marijuana, the US did not react.

Mexico could legalize marijuana with little US recourse.

Heroin and Cocaine might be problematic.

<comment><USER9> I don't think that the US government would react drastically if Mexico legalized cannabis. I think that it would react drastically if Mexico legalized "hard" drugs, as ttul suggested.

On further consideration, I don't know if legalizing all drugs _in Mexico_ would really hurt drug smuggling profits. The value of the product would still be much higher on the US side of the border. Legalization would just decrease the costs to source the drugs in Mexico. Lower barriers-to-entry into the smuggling business might reduce profit margins for smugglers as a group, depending on how violent the competition is. For a historical parallel, I guess I should read up on how Canada's economy and violent crime rates were affected by US Prohibition, when alcohol became much more valuable on the US side of the border than the Canadian side.

<comment><USER8> Since production of alcohol in Canada was legal during the US prohibition, presumably all of that production was done by legitimate businesses. Then licorice macularis would be on the right side of the law until they cross the border. Thus there would be no need for criminal activity until you reached the border. Right?

<comment><USER9> That's the null hypothesis. It seems to make intuitive sense. I still need to read up before I find out if that is how it actually worked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's weird - it's very hard to find 'Mexican dirt weed' these days, since all the medical dispensaries opened up.

The medical stuff costs a little bit more, but it is way better. But you can't even find the old crap if you look.

<comment><USER12> I stumbled upon stuff that was of a similar quality to 'Mexican dirt weed' (though we called it 'Mexican brick weed' back in the day) on smaller islands in the Bahamas and in a couple of places in Eastern Europe.

I agree, though, that I haven't seen anything even remotely close to that garbage anywhere in the US in the last 10 years.

And the price for the really good stuff has actually come down a fair bit (10-30%) in the last ~5 years (especially in the last 2), even on the black market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Northwest Cannabis Solutions, one of the largest cannabis growers in Washington State, is run by the Russian Mafia.

I'm not sure about Mexican cartels, but legalization certainly hasn't stop organized crime involvement.

<comment><USER14> Do you have a citation for that? Ive been to a shop or two that felt a little sketchy but this interests me.

<comment><USER13> No citation unfortunately. My friend who runs a dispensary told me.

<comment><USER15> Comical, your source is "my friend told me"?

<comment><USER16> On the internet, that flies. It might not seem completely trustable but then again nothing on the internet should be taken alone. Further, it's not like there are many safe ways to make such a claim.

<comment><USER17> Agreed. Obviously the mafia doesn't participate in surveys so, barring criminal charges or conviction, anecdotal evidence is the best one can hope for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> aaron-lebo PDFs:

[https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=39284158802843660...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=3928415880284366038&hl=en&as_sdt=0,44)

<comment><USER18> Awesome. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The traffickers and criminal organizations in Mexico are distinct. The cartels responsible for trafficking today only use marijuana to enhance their people smuggling bottom line. The big marijuana industry from Mexico and Colombia were greatly diminished years ago. There is still a thriving local illegal marijuana market in Mexico and Colombia as well today, the ounce costs around $20-$50 depending where you are, there are some good wild strains too that fetch high-dollar in the states among connoisseurs, that market is not cartel controlled. Mexico's politics will be better determined based on what happens in the United States and Canada in coming months. Marijuana was partially legalized in Mexico in 2016, it is quite likely that Canada and Mexico will collaborate closely on this.

</comment><comment><USER20> I recently had a candid conversation with an ex-Con about this very subject while vacationing in MX.

Yes, pot _exports_ have declined, but MX is _importing_ the latest growing and manufacturing processes from CO, WA, CA, OR innovators (and presumably serving their domestic pot needs).

Coke still remains the biggest revenue generator.

</comment><comment><USER21> If they really wanted to cripple the cartels, they would impose a tax on all drugs sold by the cartels. This can be done without legalization. If caught with drugs and no tax stamp, you get charged with tax evasion.

This would also raise needed revenues.

<comment><USER22> You need to make it unprofitable by destroying their monopoly:

-Legalize production and possession. However, criminalize sales.

-Also, take the power to classify drugs away from the DEA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Will it just create another blackmarket with another organized crime taking control? I'm not sure about legalized states in America but in Canada, from what I hear all the dispensaries in Vancouver and beyond source it from the black market.

Also unlikely that the overwhelming demand will be filled by the legal producers after July 1st, it seems like such a long road to true legalization.

Tobacco is legal and yet allegedly about 1/3rd of tobacco sold in the Ontario area are also smuggled from the US.

</comment><comment><USER18> The "Drug Trafficking Organizations" are the cartels. It is important to remember they don't exist to traffic drugs, they exist for the top leader(s) to obtain and maintain power, like a state-in-waiting. As other activities become more profitable, they switch over to those. Marijuana loses its profitability, they can switch to other drugs, guns, smuggling, "coyotes", or legitimate enterprise.

This is what unfettered capitalism (anarcho-capitalism) looks like. I like capitalism, generally, but divorcing morality (or, alternatively, failing to separate socially-contracted power to coerce action) from economic gain results in the violence and brutality.

<comment><USER24> _Marijuana loses its profitability, they can switch to other drugs, guns, smuggling, "coyotes", or legitimate enterprise._

Not disagreeing with your larger point, but the fact of the matter is that it's a lot harder to sell people meth, coke, heroin, etc. than it is to sell people pot.

If coca cola were made illegal, something that is bad for you by many metrics but hardly life destroying, people are not going to switch to hard liquor in the same way.

Kidnapping, hard drugs, smuggling, all of these are sources of income, but they're dwarfed by pot sales. The hope is that the cartels can only maintain the empires they have with a huge money maker like marijuana, and without it, they may get more desperate and expand the worst of their operations, but they will still shrink in their influence, power, geography and labor force.

<comment><USER25> > it's a lot harder to sell people meth, coke, heroin, etc. than it is to sell > people pot.

Only the first time. Then the opposite is true.

<comment><USER26> On what basis are you making such a statement?

Afaik many people use meth for performance enhancement and as a cheaper alternative to coke, heroin mostly comes in with people who've built up an opiate addiction through prescription opiates and a cheap escapist solution.

Add in a generally very crappy living situation, where these substances are used as means of escapism from reality, and most of the habit boils down to all kinds of circumstances, but very rarely to this urban myth of "it's just so addictive that you can't stop after the first time", as most of it has to do with building habits on top of an already destructive lifestyle.

Case in point: I've done meth and coke more than once, and never did I feel the need to "keep on doing it due to withdrawal". If anything, the side- effects of something like meth make it very unpleasant to regularly use due to being physically and mentally very taxing.

That's why I don't think there's some kind of "large untapped market" for substances like these. Most people are still rational actors and if otherwise content and happy with their life won't start with destructive behavior on the sole basis of a substance being "super addictive".

<comment><USER27> > On what basis are you making such a statement?

That's whats being thought on _elementary_ school traditionally, haha.

You don't have to look far though. Look at the usage of Khat by Somalians and Kratom by Thai. If its easily available and socially accepted, its gonna fly and will be very difficult to get rid of.

I can't wrap my head around using meth. Speed alone makes my head swirl and everything go fast. Exactly which performance would be enhanced by an even stronger upper? Or is it people with undiagnosed ADHD who resort to meth?

In Europe though, I know drugs like these are used in clubs, but so is XTC (MDMA & relatives) and GHB. XTC seems to be more rare in Eastern Europe where speed is more rampant. Whereas heroin usage is on an all time low. But theres people who go to clubs Thu/Fri/Sat (yeah, it starts on Thu for some reason). And if they use multiple times a week, yep then it goes quickly downhill.

> That's why I don't think there's some kind of "large untapped market" for > substances like these. Most people are still rational actors and if > otherwise content and happy with their life won't start with destructive > behavior on the sole basis of a substance being "super addictive".

Oh, I do! All these young goths who automutilate themselves (though a niche subculture, I admit), teenagers in general cause of being unsure as well as having to perform (study). If its more widely and easier available, its also cheaper, and more accepted.

To be fair, I've also seen people addicted to booze, weed, and cigarettes. Its just that these drugs are more socially accepted.

<comment><USER26> > Exactly which performance would be enhanced by an even stronger upper? Or is > it people with undiagnosed ADHD who resort to meth?

I've seen it very popular with people working in shifts doing physically very taxing work, like warehouse workers in logistics, often combined with alcohol as a downer.

I have atypical ADHS and a small line will keep me up (and mentally super focused) for 3 days straight. But the crash that follows is really nasty and can last for up to 2 days. Not something I'd want to go through regularly, I can count on one hand how often I do that in a year.

That's snorting tho, I've heard and read that smoking it is way different and more comparable to a heroin high (short, very intense, mostly fading away). Nothing I would want to do if I want a downer I'm happy enough with some Indica cannabis.

> teenagers in general cause of being unsure as well as having to perform > (study). If its more widely and easier available, its also cheaper, and more > accepted.

Imho this whole phenomenon of "experimenting teenagers overdoing it" is the direct result of decades-long prohibition and stigmatization politics. Educators and adults keep telling young people "Using this will make you instantly go crazy and addicted, all your teeth will fall out!". But when they try it they notice how it's not that bad, so they underestimate the actual long-term effects and consider them as "just more fear-mongering", which then leads to irresponsible long-term abuse.

The other side of that is the abuse of legal drugs, where people often overdo them as they consider them "safer" due to being legal. For whatever reason way too many people think this whole legal/illegal distinction is made on a scientific basis of the substances actual effects when it really isn't.

<comment> saiya-jin You are correct, but also overestimate how rational young&desperate perceive these self-destructing habits. It's far more emotional, desire to give big FU to all adults and their rules, and not giving a slightest damn about consequences on one's body.

When you're 15, you don't care how your life will look like when you are 30. It feels like talking about retirement.

God I am glad this period is long over, life can be so good now (and apart from alcohol, a bit of weed and few spectacular mushroom trips I didn't do any other substance).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Hopefully

</comment><comment><USER29> I must admit I only read the headline, but I'm sure the organizations are making due with the thin, tight-margins off black market cocaine, heroine, and methamphetamine sales.

<comment><USER30> I'm really sorry for being pedantic, I'm uusally not like this, but I have seen this frequently on HN. It's making do, not making due.

<comment><USER29> In all seriousness, I greatly appreciate corrections like this in a way that so few people do.

<comment><USER31> Technically your "that" is superfluous. ;)

> In all seriousness, I greatly appreciate corrections like this in a way so > few people do.

<comment><USER29> I upvoted you.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which CRM do you use? Any open source / self-hosted? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> This is a total plug, but my company offers a self-hosted version of our CRM - it's called Sugester. You can check it out at [http://sugester.com/crm](http://sugester.com/crm) if you're interesed or contact me directly via szymon at sugester.com.

</comment><comment><USER3> I liked the simple CRM [https://www.onepagecrm.com/](https://www.onepagecrm.com/) so much I started working for them after a few years of being a customer :)

</comment><comment><USER4> CRM is a strange term. To track sales and comms with clients we've been using Close.io and it's pretty sweet. We have LOTS of integrations around reporting and Slack notifications on top of it. Let me know if you want more info. @jokull on Twitter.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> What do you think of Odoo? [https://www.odoo.com/](https://www.odoo.com/)</comment>


Apple firing back at Kindle Fire? - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/mobile-wireless/213087/apple-firing-back-kindle-fire

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't be surprised if they did exactly what they just did with the iPhone - when the 3rd generation comes out offer the 1st or possibly even 2nd generation much cheaper instead of actually building something cheap and nasty.</comment>


An ImageNet-like text classification task based on Reddit posts - <AUTHOR> http://www.evolution.ai/blog/page/5/an-imagenet-like-text-classification-task-based-on-reddit-posts/ <comment><USER3> The post mentions not getting great results with OpenAI Transformer. I haven't tried that, but using a similar framework, ULM-FiT, I narrowly beat the fasttext benchmark on a 250-class dataset we use internally. I will follow up with how it does on this data set.

<comment><USER4> ULM-FiT and OpenAI's Transformer* are quite different. Both are pretrained language-models, but ULM-FiT is a standard stack of LSTMs with a particular recipe for fine-tuning, whereas the OpenAI's Transformer uses the much newer Transformer architecture, and no really fancy tricks in the actual fine- tuning. I suspect the difficulty is with the Transformer model itself - <USER2> is not the first time I've heard that it is difficult to train.

* = To be clear, this refers to OpenAI's pretrained Transformer model. The Transformer architecture was from work at Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks fantastic. In particular, the focus on many-class classification is important, it's a common real-world task that is often overlooked. I have some suggestions:

More types of baseline accuracy measure would be useful, eg. accuracy, and micro and macro f1 with unbalanced classes.

It would be very useful to know inter-annotator agreement for the manual classification and human performance for the task of identifying the original subreddit. I'm not a huge fan of creating artificial categories when natural ones are available. In practice there will be a real difference between the 26th and 27th league of legends subreddit, it might be some subtle topical focus shift or something political or tonal.

Is there some kind of standard measure for trading precision and recall when classifying in a hierarchical class structure? That is, you start predicting general high-level categories and move down to the most specific class you can get to before confidence falls below a threshold? Then the evaluation measure gives you more credit for getting lower down the tree (rewarding information gain in the class hierarchy).

<comment><AUTHOR> A nice comment, good to see other people are thinking about this! I agree with you about the imbalanced classes, I do have a copy of this, the main issue is that the way this dataset was created was only looking at subreddits which include 1000 posts or more, meaning that class imbalance is somewhat unrealistic, if I do publish an imbalanced version it will include all subreddits, not just the carefully selected 1013.

re: the reason for the artifice. First of all note that none of the labels in here are exactly superficial - I have made a taxonomy - but I have only used this to filter out subreddits - I did not combine the posts from different subreddits in the same category here. The main reason was to combat the fact that these are not great labels otherwise - many subreddits are subsets of others - e.g. you have r/gaming -> r/finalfantasy -> r/FFVIII - and you don't know that this follows a hierarchy a priori (N.B. categorising all subreddits would require significant resources).

Worse than this, you have subreddits that don't really follow any obvious kind of categorisation, e.g. r/askreddit (by far the most populous in terms of self-posts), or more randomly, subreddits devoted to podcasts like r/joerogan - they are basically places where people go for broad, likeminded chat, and they can overlap with just about anything. I would argue that this is actually not always realistic - for the examples I have worked on in the past, labels were reasonably unambiguous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fun fact: Reddit uses a similar NLP technique as the t-SNE vizzes to combine the content of subreddits for building recommendations: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKISLQ87GO8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKISLQ87GO8)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for posting this. Super cool to see how they are suggesting subreddits

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You can get similar raw data using these public bigquery datasets: [https://bigquery.cloud.google.com/dataset/fh- bigquery:reddit...](https://bigquery.cloud.google.com/dataset/fh- bigquery:reddit_posts)

</comment><comment><USER9> Are you breaking Reddit TOS by storing/hosting posts?

If someone deletes their post on Reddit it will still be stored and available on your site.

<comment><USER10> Why would OP care about reddit TOS?

<comment> super-serial Because violating copyright laws could get him sued and jeopardize his startup?</comment></comment></comment>


Tech worker resistance is crucial to preventing human rights abuses in the U.S - <AUTHOR> https://blog.valerieaurora.org/2016/12/13/why-tech-worker-resistance-is-crucial-to-preventing-large-scale-human-rights-abuses-in-the-u-s/ <comment><USER2> We need a code of ethics for software developers, with actual teeth (violating it means you can't commercially build software any more).

Edit: it's amazing how much the alt-right has infiltrated Hacker News. The notion that we, as developers, should have a professional obligation to engage ethically should not be so controversial (yet here I am with negative karma for proposing it).

To expand on my point:

1\. This is hardly a novel suggestion. Lots of positions have professional associations with ethics rules. See engineers, doctors, lawyers, librarians, etc.

2\. This is not a union. Lawyers don't bargain collectively.

3\. Nobody is talking about illegal immigration. The worry here is around proposals for a database of Muslim-Americans (who are almost all here legally).

4\. Nobody is coming for your code. Obviously you won't need to enter your professional PIN to compile code. It just means you'd have to be a member to work for a major tech company.

<comment><USER3> But who decides what's ethical?

I struggle with the same issues here in the UK, where the professional body for tech, the British Computing Society (BCS) is not just toothless, but in my eyes, actively harmful (for example, chose to vote _in favour_ of NSA-like practices at GCHQ - including giving evidence (in the form of an expert statement) to the government).

I think what is important to realise is that something approximating the majority of people do actually go against the values typically espoused by the people who visit HN, not just in the wider public but also within tech. And even discounting those, how many people are quite happy to just do as told? How do we work to distill the concept of professional ethics in tech from these people, and then instill it?

<comment><USER4> I think a good first step is to learn from groups—doctors, librarians, lawyers, engineers—who have such a working system of professional ethics in place.

<comment><USER5> They define a much more narrow set of ethics. Nobody's losing their engineering license for designing missiles. You lose your license for sneaking in last minute changes in without proper review, accidentally causing missiles to explode in their launch tube.

<comment><USER2> Doctors lose their medical license for deliberately harming people or engaging in inhumane experimentation.

<comment><USER5> How many doctors lost their licence over capital punishment?

<comment><USER2> Actually, since 2010 anesthesiologists have refused to participate in capital punishment. [0]

> In at least one case, the planned execution of Michael Morales, the > execution warrant was stayed indefinitely due to the objection of the > contacted physicians to participate.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participation_of_medical_profe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participation_of_medical_professionals_in_American_executions)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > We refuse to participate in the creation of databases of identifying > information for the United States government to target individuals based on > race, religion, or national origin.

This would mean I can never work on a system to support a social program that identifies at risk minority children to improve health care initiatives. No one can ever work on a national census again, or demography surveys.

It also highlights the "Americ-centric" view from a lot of tech people. The US government is right out, but despite this pledge talking about their recent Genocides, its perfectly fine to build these systems for Bosnia or Rwanda.

I'm also curious to know to whom anyone can "whistleblow" to now days, especially now that people are trying very hard to paint Wikileaks as a Russian front.

Ultimately, this is too broadly worded and toothless. I'll just stick to "First do no harm".

<comment><USER4> That's kind of a wilful misreading of the text. The mention of "targeting individuals" explains the intent of the pledge.

This pledge is US-centric and _should_ be US-centric, because that's the jurisdiction these enormous sets of user data live under.

As far as who people can whistleblow to, there are any number of tech journalists and public figures with a well-earned reputation for integrity.

<comment><USER6> > identifying information for the United States government to target > individuals based on race, religion, or national origin.

> to minimize the collection and retention of data that would facilitate > ethnic or religious targeting.

Those are the only two instance of "target" in the text on [http://neveragain.tech/](http://neveragain.tech/). There is no context on the pledge and that's what they are asking people to sign.

Governments target individuals for a broad number of entirely valid reasons, for healthcare, social services or law enforcement. Some genetic diseases are racial or ethic - if a new genetic disease is discovered, is a national health service obligated to or discouraged from contacting members of that racial group? Scientology is a "religion" that has had a sketchy background, should we make it impossible to build a database to track members?

<comment><USER7> This is wildly disingenuous. But then with your username, that's about what I'd expect.

<comment><USER8> That's a pretty silly ad hominem from someone who usually writes interesting and helpful comments.

<comment><USER7> I'm not above the occasional cheap shot.

<comment><USER8> To be honest, if I'd read further down the thread first I wouldn't have bothered to say that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sure, force your boss to have the H-1B guy write that SQL query.

Then hop on the Google Bus and try not to think about the ways in which the tech industry is rotting away American democracy (c.f. "Facebook is confirmation bias at scale").

<comment><USER4> The H-1B guy is not going to write the query to get himself deported. Even we immigrants are smarter than that.

<comment><USER6> Why would the HB-1 guy be worries about deportation? HB-1 guy has a legal visa to be in the country.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't view a decentralised resistance of technology workers as the right remedy behind this "Never Again" movement.

* It underestimates the amount of diversity which exists within the tech community in terms of political or moral beliefs and attitudes. Just a small fraction of disagreement is enough technical capability to build a lot of things for big entities.

* The AMA or ABA is useful for censuring activities which are obviously noxious to broader society, which helps it manage its standing within society, but I think that is almost the entirety of the motivation and scope of professional ethics. Nevertheless I think there are advantages to organization and I hope for more of it. That being said,

You can't stop a metaphorical database of Muslims at a time when there's sufficient political support to do so -- and there's plenty at the moment. There's also enough political support to build illegal mass surveillance machinery, and then lie to Congress about it. The aggregate of the US is okay with that, just like how the aggregate of the UK is okay with even more in- your-face surveillance. Likewise, you cannot stop the documented abuses of psychiatry when there's all too much political support for it.

* I anecdotally see tech workers as constituting a small % of society, and as too politically diverse and unorganized to do anything interesting. The tech community places too much responsibility on itself without a commensurate degree of reliable power to back it up.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's true all human beings - including software engineers - need to think about ethics and to avoid participating in human rights abuses. But the "Never Again" pledge is a simplistic, knee-jerk way to do that.

Refusing to build a database of people based on their ethnicity or religion sounds like a good idea when you think of the possible abuses it can be used for. But the US census gathers precisely that information, and (almost) no one freaks out about it. Google and Facebook already have that information, and (almost) no one freaks out about it.

The only reason someone is freaking out now is because Trump was elected. Now, that might make sense - maybe a normally harmless database will be put to horrible use by him. He has said horrible things. But he's also shown a lot of what he says isn't intended literally.

We do need to be careful and vigilant. But "Never Again" isn't a good way to do that.

Another issue is with this kind of thinking:

> But history tells us that, whether you do it humanely or not, this kind of > large-scale human rights abuse requires huge numbers of people working > together with the full knowledge that they are committing human rights > abuses.

No, as Hannah Arendt and many others have shown, large-scale human rights abuses often do _not_ involve lots of people consciously doing evil. Instead, they usually think there are good reasons for what they do.

<comment><USER7> _But he 's also shown a lot of what he says isn't intended literally._

I am so sick of this bullshit meme. The price of all the privilege and power of being President is that you take responsibility for what you say and how people could interpret it, because your actions have potentially life-changing consequences for people and so people have a strong interest in knowing (through your speech) what sort of actions you intend to take. If Trump can't or won't control his own speech, why should we assume that his actions are rooted in competence? You're basically saying that the concept of honesty is irrelevant when it comes to politics, which is an invitation to the worst sorts of corruption.

It also overlooks two things: one, that it's incredibly disrespectful of people who are victimized by his casual remarks to say that the anxiety and fear stimulated from his position of power don't matter and thus (implicitly) that it's OK to provoke anger and fear in other people - in a word, bullying. Two, that many of Trump's supporters do take him literally - about building a wall, or how to treat Muslims, or about it being OK to grab women by the pussy, and Trump is empowering them while simultaneously disclaiming responsibility for their actions.

I can't believe I even need to explain what a steaming pile of bullshit that position is.

 _No, as Hannah Arendt and many others have shown, large-scale human rights abuses often do not involve lots of people consciously doing evil. Instead, they usually think there are good reasons for what they do._

You mean like in the opening sentences of your comment?

<comment><USER11> The problem is that in fact half the US population interprets Trump the way he intends. You and I belong to the other half, and we are puzzled by his non- literalness.

Apparently for the last 8 years the opposite was happening, you and I had a president that spoke "our language", while the other half of the US kept misreading him.

I don't know what to do about this except to try to listen to the other side and understand them the way they intend to be understood.

<comment><USER7> I've been listening to the other side for a good 15 years now and I have a very good idea of where they're coming from, thanks. And I don't mean secondary sources like liberal commentary websites or hand-wringing books on America's changing social fabric, I mean that I read all kinds of right- leaning sources, from think-tank publications t forums, public and private, from abstract economic theory to neo-nazi groups. I pay close attention to everything from what sort of humor they like to their religious and philosophical justifications for a wide variety of radical views. I have spent many thousands of hours immersed in conservative thought, which is pretty much the opposite of being in a filter bubble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How about we work to make the government small and weak enough that it doesn't have the capability to commit large-scale human rights abuses?

<comment><USER13> Then you have two problems: large-scale human rights abuses by private interests, and small-scale human rights abuses by the government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This article is fairly silly.

> "We refuse to participate in the creation of databases of identifying > information for the United States government to target individuals based on > race, religion, or national origin."

National origin - don't you have to declare what country you were born in to visit/emigrate to the United States? This is trying to legislate intent, which fails miserably. One thing we've seen is that if the database/tool exists, it'll be used in ways that nobody had ever thought of before.

> I'm not one of the people who seriously believes that the cost of deporting > millions of people will deter the Trump administration from doing it (one > easy way to reduce costs: don't deport people humanely). But history tells > us that, whether you do it humanely or not, this kind of large-scale human > rights abuse

I like how she goes straight from deportation to large-scale human rights abuse. If you deport illegal immigrants (regardless of national origin or faith), you're enforcing the law. Period, point blank. To stretch that into human rights abuse is far-fetched at best.

<comment><USER15> I am so far batting .750 with my conservative friends trying to convince them that mass deportation is an issue they should be concerned with. Every one of them begins by pointing out that "illegal immigration is illegal, full stop". Here are the issues they're not immediately considering:

* For many Latino immigrants, the wait list for permanent residency is over 20 years long. The wait isn't that long because we want to restrict immigration; we broadly agree that if we drastically reduced the immigrant population in the US, the economy would suffer, because those people are staffing the meat packing plants, cleaning the hotels, working the line at practically every high-end restaurant, harvesting crops, laying bricks, and putting up tile. Rather: the 20 year wait list is simple bureaucratic cruelty: there are loud constituencies who are uneasy about formally allowing people to stay here while being totally content with allowing them to work here undocumented, so long as they're kept second-class.

* That's bad enough, but not dispositive. The real problem is that we've created the expectation that people can work here for years and years without obtaining permanent residency, and so people put down roots _and then have children here_. Children born in America are American citizens, full stop. We are idiosyncratic in having a Constitution that guarantees birthright citizenship, but we do, and we are a nation of laws. To deport undocumented workers with children born here is to put young American citizens in the position of having to choose between losing their parents or their home country. _Pointlessly_. We owe our fellow citizens better.

* A huge number (pretty much everyone agrees it's a plurality) of undocumented workers are undocumented not because they've done something wrong, but because they've somehow fallen off their visa track --- which the law makes incredibly easy to do! We put them on an untenable 20 year legal obstacle course that really requires professional representation to complete. They spend that time working and raising children. Then we punish their children for technicalities, while quietly replacing them with other Latino immigrants.

* The due process concerns about deportation are overwhelming. More than 70% of deportation cases in which the subject is represented by an immigration attorney fail --- the immigrant isn't deported. But the overwhelming majority of deportees aren't represented, because we don't guarantee counsel to people in immigration court. All we give them is a translator. If I sued you on some bogus libel charge for pissing me off on HN, how well do you think you'd do if you were denied a lawyer?

I am ultimately ambivalent about immigration enforcement. I recognize that we are in many ways more lenient than much of Europe. My objection to the big dumb wall isn't moral, it's just that it's a big dumb waste of money.

I am not ambivalent about pointlessly tearing up, or, worse, forcibly relocating families that include American citizens. There are hundreds of thousands of those. I would absolutely quit a job, refuse investment from a firm that supported, or sever ties with a client that participated in a mass deportation program that forced children to choose between their parents and their country.

<comment><USER14> > there are loud constituencies who are uneasy about formally allowing people > to stay here while being totally content with allowing them to work here > undocumented, so long as they're kept second-class.

If you have to get smuggled into a country without papers to live in this country and work for wages less than people who already live in the country, you sort of already have the expectation of being second class. Yet, people still come. It's a choice they make. It's not an easy choice, but still a choice.

> we are a nation of laws

and then

>To deport undocumented workers with children born here is to put young American citizens in the position of having to choose between losing their parents or their home country. Pointlessly.

The law is the point, as you said, we're a nation of laws.

> The due process concerns about deportation are overwhelming.

Due process is only a right guaranteed to citizens. Not quite sure what your point is.

<comment><USER16> > It's a choice they make. It's not an easy choice, but still a choice.

And as for the children who never had a choice to make...?

<comment><USER14> That argument works for really any situation involving children.

Children never had choices to make when born into an alcoholic family, or in a country in a war torn third world country, and yet they still suffer. That's just sort of how life is. The children suffer based on the mistakes of their parents.

We have limited resources, and we have to decide how to partition these resources.

<comment><USER16> So because children suffer injustices, it's fine to spend billions of dollars of taxpayer money to deliberately cause more injustice? That can't be your argument.

<comment><USER14> > it's fine to spend billions of dollars of taxpayer money to deliberately > cause more injustice?

To enforce the law and to prevent these injustices to happen in the future. How are you causing more injustice? That's sort of like saying "Why spend money to evict squatters in houses they don't own? They have children, and it costs money to evict them."

<comment><USER16> Childhood arrivals are not squatters!

<comment><USER14> Childhood arrivals are definitely squatters. If they're not born in the states or citizens. They're here when they shouldn't be here.

Those that were born here are citizens, and get the choice like every other citizen - move to be with their families, or stay here alone. The fact that they're children is immaterial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't get it. You are saying you don't want to make a database that the US can abuse(but it is OK for other countries?) but then you concede that the US probably already has the best database, but, wink-wink, they won't abuse it?

<comment><USER15> No. The pledge acknowledges that abusable databases exist. It doesn't ask that people leave companies that maintain those databases. What it demands is that signatories commit to resist abuse, and, ultimately, to sever ties with employers that abuse those databases.

The fundamental idea is that if enough people sign, management at tech companies will have to make decisions to comply with unethical government orders knowing that the discovery of their compliance (which is inevitable) might cause significant retention problems.

<comment><USER11> > The pledge acknowledges that abusable databases exist. It doesn't ask that > people leave companies that maintain those databases. What it demands is > that signatories commit to resist abuse, and, ultimately, to sever ties with > employers that abuse those databases.

In practice, developers work on those databases in Google and Facebook. They'll be "ok" because they don't know they are abused. Other engineers in those companies will work on giving the government access to it (as Snowden documented), and they too will not see any abuse so they are ok. The government gets that information and does what it wants with it. It might be abusing it right now. (There have been many deportations under Obama, for example, with little uproar; it's possible tech databases helped in those.)

The pledge is toothless. To be actually effective, it should have called on people to not work at Google and Facebook.

<comment><USER15> The pledge commits them to resign from Facebook or Google should either comply with a USG mass deportation program. That's not "toothless".

<comment><USER11> As I said, Google/Facebook data may _already_ have been used in Obama's deportations. No one knows either way. So the pledge can have zero effect.

The real problem is the existence of the databases, and government access to them. Both of those things are facts right now. The pledge ignores that.

<comment><USER15> That the pledge doesn't instantaneously solve all problems does not imply that the pledge is "toothless".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> " target individuals based on race, religion, or national origin."

Ok, but what about a database used to target people who aren't in the country legally? Is that a human rights abuse? No race, or gender targeting.

</comment><comment><USER19> Strongly agree, the lack of ethics in our field is deplorable. If people were building software for gas chambers HN commenters would find a way to excuse it.

<comment><USER20> I've literally seen different HN commenters say some variation on "maybe some people are just not valuable enough to keep alive" three times _today_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> One step closer to a software engineer union. Move faster. It's time.</comment>


How To Avoid Ruining The Startup You Just Bought, From A Google-YouTube Engineer - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2013/08/28/how-to-avoid-ruining-the-startup-you-just-bought-from-a-google-youtube-engineer/?utm_campaign=forbesfbsf&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social

<comment><USER2> is it just me or did this article have absolutely zero interesting information

<comment><USER3> 'Let the startup keep their culture'

Slow news day.

<comment><USER4> Advice from a person who as described does not sound like anyone who has ever worked at a scrappy startup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> At this point youtube seems more like an experiment in how much bullshit you can put your users through without them leaving your service.

</comment><comment><USER6> Youtube might have avoided ruin up until now, but it's suffering from suffocation by G+ and the same over-design afflicting Gmail.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, but google are destroying all their products with G+, YouTube isn't unique there.

<comment><USER8> I think I've counted at least six different variants of that obnoxious tout screen YouTube occasionally shows to convince you to convert your account over.

<comment><USER9> Oh yeah, and the name one really bugs me too... Nope I don't wish to change my name for the 400th time lol.

<comment><USER10> Thanks, we'll ask again later.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Magit, the magical Git interface - <AUTHOR> https://emacsair.me/2017/09/01/the-magical-git-interface/#start <comment><AUTHOR> [https://emacsair.me/2017/09/01/the-magical-git- interface/#st...](https://emacsair.me/2017/09/01/the-magical-git- interface/#start)

Magit is a text-based Git user interface that puts an unmatched focus on streamlining workflows. Commands are invoked using short mnemonic key sequences that take the cursor's position in the highly actionable interface into account to provide context-sensitive behavior.

With Magit you can do nearly everything that you can do when using Git on the command-line, but at greater speed and while taking advantage of advanced features that previously seemed too daunting to use on a daily basis. Many users will find that by using Magit they can become more effective Git user.

\---

To the moderators:

I have read the rules. Because user submitted stories about Magit have been penalized in the recent past, I am adding this comment.

This article describes the current version of Magit, which can be downloaded and tried out as required by the rules. So I feel justified in submitting this even though the "show hn" rules state the a "fundraiser can't be tried out". The fundraiser can't, but the software this article is about can. This is how one user put it: "An inverse Kickstarter; feels as if the product is already out and pledging started after."

\---

The campaign is already fully funded. However, I also tried to reach new (non- Emacs) users and - according to the sparse data available to me - that did not succeed. I hope that this submission can change that. (And of course I also don't mind if a few of those potential users make a contribution.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Heh - a happy user just posted a new screencast about Magit: [http://emacsrocks.com/e17.html](http://emacsrocks.com/e17.html).

If that is too short or fast for you; a few older and generally longer videos are listed at [https://magit.vc/screencasts](https://magit.vc/screencasts).

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> magit is absolutely awesome. The single most productive interface to git I've ever seen. It's like vim but for git and it's in Emacs.

</comment><comment><USER3> Such an amazing tool, use it every day, both at work and at home while working on my own projects.

</comment><comment><USER4> Magit must be why Git was invented.</comment>


MacBook trackpad scrolling change since Catalina 10.15.4 - <AUTHOR> https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mbp-16-trackpad-scrolling-change-since-catalina-10-15-4.2227933/ <comment><AUTHOR> I made an Ask HN post about this a few days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22738931](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22738931)

Nobody chimed in there to say they'd experienced this, so it's good to finally get confirmation that it isn't just my imagination. Considering how much time I spend on MBPs and the fact that I just invested in a new 16" as my personal laptop, I'm desperately hoping Apple recognizes that this was a mistake and fixes it. It completely destroys the user experience in my opinion.</comment>


How many keystrokes do you have left? - <AUTHOR> http://www.keysleft.com/ <comment><USER2> I wonder how many decent devs spend anywhere near 4 hours a day typing. I spend most of my day working out what to build and how to build it, not typing.

<comment><USER3> I'm a front end developer. The calluses on the tips of my fingers have their own calluses.

<comment><USER4> I'm put in mind of my favorite tweet from a friend: "If I had a dollar for each time I typed <div> today... wait, I do"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I long ago reached the point where I can type much faster than I can coherently code. I haven't reached the point of being able to type as fast as the nonsense that my mind thinks up.

</comment><comment><USER6> 500,000 keystrokes per computer program left? What monstrosities to they think I'm going to write?!!

<comment><USER7> if that includes backspace, not so very far off in my case ;-)

<comment><USER6> a fair point, I hadn't factored that in...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This fails to account for the possibility of direct brain interfaces within our lifetimes. It also fails to account for the possibility that I'll be revived after the singularity. The chances of that are low, but the number of keystrokes I'll be able to type if it happens is extremely high.

</comment><comment><USER9> Keys left seems to just be standing in as a surrogate for time. Sure, try to use your time valuably. And maybe blogging is a good way to save time by avoiding repeating yourself.

But I'd start with silly consuming-not-creating timesucks like TV, movies, even reading HN ;-). These eat more of my time than email.

</comment><comment><USER10> I would assume for 72, not 90.

At least for the USA, 90 seems a pipe-dream unless you are fortunate to be wealthy or a congressperson awarding yourself gold-plated healthcare.

If you are in China, your government is killing you with unregulated industrialism that is making the very air posionous.

If you live in Japan, the radiation may already be seeping into your area and causing cancer.

And if you are in the middleeast, your government might kill you for the wrong trivial actions against their religion, being a woman, or daring to challenge a dictator.

90 definitely seems like a pipedream unless maybe you are in Canada, Europe, Iceland/Greenland, or Australia/NZ (apologies to all those I missed, ie. South America and Africa, may you live a long and happy life).

Wow I just depressed myself.

<comment><USER8> If you're making a point about how low a number is, you need to base it on an upper bound. 90 is certainly high, especially to assume you'll maintain your current typing speed, but you have to shoot high if you're saying "You only have this much left to type".

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It would be nice if this included some sort of WPM test.

I could easily just Google "WPM test" and take it, but that just turned me off on carrying on with this.

<comment><USER12> [http://www.goodtyping.com/test.php](http://www.goodtyping.com/test.php) worked for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I feel slightly depressed...

<comment><USER14> This too will change.

<comment><USER15> Because he'll be dead?

<comment><USER14> Or maybe he'll get a typing course. Not all change has to be for the worse.

<comment><USER16> By this metric, any time you spend in a typing course uses up your remaining pool of keys left. Unless you're increasing your WPM enough to offset the number of keys you've typed in taking the course, you're then running a negative in taking the course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nice one. I type insanely fast (makes grown secretaries cry) so the outcome didn't worry me too much but it definitely gives you pause. For added effect, make a browser plug-in or an app that reminds you. Next level: a count-down timer that adjusts based on detecting the keystrokes you type in audio picked up through a mic.

Would be nice as a wrist watch too. Tempus fugit.

<comment><USER17> How fast is "insanely fast", and is that your speed when testing your speed, or your speed when actually writing (code, emails, HN comments, etc.)?

Personally I hit ~105 when doing a speed test (no idea where this falls on the "reasonably quick" to "insanely fast" scale), but would never hit this when I have to think about what I'm writing, as opposed to just ignorantly copying text put in front of me.

<comment><USER14> I go much faster when I'm typing what I'm thinking than when copying text, especially if it is a text that I have no clue about or in a language that is not native or near native to me. Given a typing test in French, German or Spanish I would probably fail miserably. But typing rarely involves copying text and rarely involves writing in languages that you don't know.

<comment><USER17> While technically true that typing what I think is quickest, I very rarely find myself with more than a few words to write without needing to think about what I'm writing, which slows me down. This may be in the form of an actual break to decide what to write next, or may just be pausing to decide on best wording, etc.

Is this different for you? When was the last time you managed to write more than a sentence or too without your brain slowing your hands down?

(Speed tests on the other hand - I can read them as fast as my fingers can move, so as long as I understand what I'm reading I can do that pretty much as quick as my typing ability lets me.)

<comment><USER14> I don't think while I type. By the time I start typing I know what I want to write.

When writing long blog posts I go through a couple of revisions, but that's not so much typing as it is editing which is much slower.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think the author of this site is a tad bit too optimistic regarding the advancements in code development, that are waiting for us in the future. Code writing tools or new input devices, maybe some other paradigm shift.

</comment><comment><USER19> I do like the concept, and it makes an important point, but...

Please change the text or background colors for higher contrast. I'm young, with semi-decent eyes, and white-on-light-blue and brown-on-tan are difficult to read.

</comment><comment><USER20> perhaps i'm missing something, but your death will not come sooner or later by typing less or more - perhaps your muscles will wear out if you type to fast or so - so spending more or less time typing doesn't matter with regard to how many average days are left to your death. Can someone enlighten me?

<comment><USER21> The site is only telling you that you have finite keystrokes left, so don't waste it writing comments on HackerNews.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does this account for the fact that you type slower as you get older? What about typing less?

</comment><comment><USER23> The number is lower if you take into account the probability to develop RSI each year.

</comment><comment><USER24> try with multiple languages: I do French and German on a regular basis (more or less).

</comment><comment><USER25> I was a little upset when I was forced to take typing in junior high. Now I think I should send them a thank you letter as I watch everyone hunt and peck.

<comment><USER26> Please do that. You may just make someone's day better.</comment></comment>


Rhove gives renters a financial stake in their apartments - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90523549/this-startup-gives-renters-a-financial-stake-in-their-apartments <comment><USER2> This and similar schemes all ignore the benefits of diversifying. You want don't want to invest in your area (or your employer, etc.), because in that case, if your area has a crisis you lose not just your job, but also your investments. The justification given for it just bizare. For example:

>A 2019 report found that Americans over 65 who own homes have a median net wealth 47 times larger than renters of the same age.

Correlation/Causation anyone?

Invest in index funds instead.</comment>


What's A Non-Programmer To Do? (Advanced) - <AUTHOR> http://spencerfry.com/whats-a-non-programmer-to-do-advanced Doh. Wrong link.
Can a mod please change it to:
http://spencerfry.com/whats-a-non-programmer-to-do-advanced <comment><USER2> Comparing this with his original post[1] is a fantastic illustration of how the business aspect of a growing startup isn't necessarily an issue of scale, but of the role itself. In the earlier stages, his job was to do whatever didn't involve firing up a terminal. Write some copy, take a phone call, etc etc whatever it took to keep the developer's happy and focused. Now managing something like payroll, contracts. and the rest is a whole new ballgame. Its great to learn from his ability to adapt.

Thank you, Spencer. You're an inspiration to aspiring tech Entrepreneurs out there too stupid to program ;)

\--

[1] <http://spencerfry.com/whats-a-non-programmer-to-do>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> <http://spencerfry.com/whats-a-non-programmer-to-do-advanced>

The article link is wrong. The problem of sticking "Advanced" on the end of a URL. :)

Can a mod edit it, please?

<comment><USER3> Thanks for writing this Spencer. I asked about "What does a biz person do at a startup" at the YC meetup; and your earlier article was brought up. Awesome sequel!</comment></comment>


The Stethoscope - <AUTHOR> http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-stethoscope/ <comment><USER2> I wonder if the opinions expressed relate more to US practice than European.</comment>


Ask HN: The Hacker skillset - <AUTHOR>

Eric S. Raymond says in his primer:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
"It's best, actually, to learn all five of Python, C/C++, Java, Perl, and LISP. Besides being the most important hacking languages, they represent very different approaches to programming, and each will educate you in valuable ways."
Is there any language you feel should be included/excluded, and why? <comment><USER2> Unless you're planning on going into enterprise software development, I'd argue that the similarities between Java and C++ are sufficient enough to ditch one of the two (at least in terms of fundamentals).

You could also substitute Java for C sharp, if you're so inclined, or Python for Ruby. I'd definitely switch Perl for a decent shell (and sed and awk). I know it's not fashionable here but I'd probably bail on Lisp. While it's a great language it's not that widely used and you'll either pine for lispness in other languages or you may well hate it like I did (although I do recognise it's power, I was spoilt with python).

Ultimately though, the hacker skillset isn't a skillset at all, it's a mindset. It's the ability to bend the world to your will. The ability to say, "There are no rules and there are no limits that are not self-imposed". That for me defines the difference between regular people and hackers.

<comment><USER3> > you'll either pine for lispness in other languages

Any language is a waste of time if it doesn't have any features you'll miss when you aren't using it. At that point it's just a Blub you're applying out of expedience, not learning anything from to expand your repertoire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd suggest a lazy language as well, Haskell being the obvious choice. Having lazy infinite lists changes the way you think.

Apart from the obvious commercial benefit, if you have C++ and Python I don't really see the need for Java, but I might just be being bigoted there.

Perl could be substituted with Awk - I've had this debate and I don't feel strongly about it. Perl is more wide-spread and common, making it a better choice if you want to go hacking things that are there, but I find Awk nicer to program.

I'd also start looking for massively parallel languages of one form or another. The ability to think not just in threads or co-routines, but genuinely in async-parallel is becoming more important.

So that's my $0.02 of free advice. Probably worth what you paid for it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Javascript

Read Javascript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford. After reading this, I can't help but agree that JS has always gotten a bad rep and been undervalued. It really can be an elegant language, and Crockford found the perfect way to demonstrate that.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd take off Java. Perl is optional. Add Ruby as an optional alternative to python (e.g. "Ruby or Python").

I'd also add 'git', or just decentralized version control tools in general. Although not a language, it's definitely a must-have skill.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd put Ruby on the list. I don't think it was really on the radar (outside of Japan, at least), when ESR wrote that. Javascript is also a lot more important than it used to be.</comment>


Today, I Repaid My Student Loan. Should I Start Investing in Startups? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@clementdelangue/today-i-repaid-my-student-loan-should-i-invest-in-startups-b1c141347dca

<comment><USER2> I would look into the rule of 9's when thinking about contributing to retirement.

There are a number of people who retire by 40 or earlier, look into early retirement extreme or Mr. Money Mustache. By wisely saving your money in Roth IRA's/IRA's, Brokerage account, rental income properties, you could retire very soon.

A rule of thumb, if you save 75% of your income, you can retire safely at your current standard of living in 7 years. Something to think about when thinking you may die before you get to retire.

There was another post here a few days ago about how to reduce the amount it cost to live, one gentleman is able to comfortably live off of $200/month. If your expenses are so low, image what your life could be like? Work 20 hours a week on your own SaaS project. You will be able to bootstrap a startup and hire employees to take the work load off of you significantly, making a living would be even easier then it is now, and much more exciting.

I would say look at how you want to live when your 40, and head that direction. If you want to be living on a boat, off the anchor, traveling where-ever sail will take you, then you may want to start putting money away in both retirement accounts and brokerage accounts. If you want to be working at the same company you are now, renting in the valley, I would invest that money into yourself, take classes and certifications to boost your resume.

</comment><comment><USER3> What is your risk tolerance?

That is the very first question you need to ask yourself. If you decide that in the future you won't need virtually instant access to your funds, then you could.

Realize that until investors are chomping at the bit for a share of a company, it isn't very liquid.</comment>


You can use Android system on your PC - <AUTHOR> https://www.bignox.com/blog/play-dbz-dokkan-battle-pc-noxplayer-5-quick-advices-fast-track-way-higher-levels/ <comment><USER2> any reason why this is better than other options like Bluestacks?</comment>


How do you get more users to your website? - <AUTHOR>

Synopsis:
I started http://www.leapfm.com about a month ago just as a side project for fun. It was initially a project for me to try out some new learned features and techniques in Ruby on Rails. Albeit, I started to see a bit of value in the idea itself and have continued to develop it and gather feedback.
After reaching the front on Hacker News I was provided with awesome feedback and my first 20 users. However, after the hype subsided those users don't seem to be coming back :/.
Now with any online community, the content is driven by the users. Which means the websites success is driven by the users. Imagine Facebook with only 20 users it would be a pretty boring place. And that's the dilemma I'm facing.
So, what are some ways to get more users?
As the only way this website will be truly a place users wanna' come back to is if there is new content being uploaded consistently. <comment><USER2> I'm in the same boat as you. :)

(I launched [http://sideprojectors.com](http://sideprojectors.com) about a week ago)

I'm planning to write up some of the things I've learned, but..

1\. I've learned that it is important to remember that "marketing" or call it "growth-hacking" is going to be a grind work.

2\. I read this over and over again each week - [http://www.fastcompany.com/46525/slowly-i-turnedstep- stepinc...](http://www.fastcompany.com/46525/slowly-i-turnedstep-stepinch- inch)

3\. Look out for good forums - reddit is good. But in your case, I guess you'll have to search for good music forums and start connecting with people!

4\. Continue to improve your site in the mean time - little features here and there.

5\. Twitter - I'm just finding out, Twitter is a great way to connect with people.

Hope that helps a little!

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know much about the target market, but I would try and get people passionate about promoting their favorite artists/songs to this site.

You could find forums for specific music categories (electronic, hip-hop, rap etc) and try driving traffic from there to leapfm by posting links to top songs from the category. You could also try and get them to upvote music of the specific category.

You can target Facebook fan pages of artists that have songs posted on leapfm. Try and get the fans to Share the link and upvote the artist on the site.

<comment><AUTHOR> ahh, some useful tips here :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Get active on social media (it may be hard, but is necessary). To get started read this: [http://www.quicksprout.com/2013/08/15/7-simple-yet- effective...](http://www.quicksprout.com/2013/08/15/7-simple-yet-effective- social-media-tactics-you-should-leverage- today/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Quicksprout+%28Quick+Sprout%29)

</comment><comment><USER5> What's your keyword strategy? What's your keyword market? How much of it are you covering? (let me tell you - 0%).

Accept - in terms of content your website is pretty crappy. That's a starting point! Roll up your SEO sleeves and start working.

By the way what does you little website do? I looked at it 10 times and I still have no idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Basically, it's a new way to find music. You sign-up, and can upload and leap/vote up songs similar to HackerNews. The songs at the top are ranked highest/hence the songs you might want to hear!

<comment><USER6> Seems like a similar concept to www.musicboss.fm (not my site)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Reddit founders would make fake accounts, post stories, and randomly comment on them. Also, you could trying giving your friends gift cards to be active on the site.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like it!</comment></comment>


Amazing Job Openings At Cool Startups  - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/gilt-hunch-digg-jobs-2010-6#simplegeo-is-hot-in-the-location-space-if-thats-your-thing-4

<comment><USER2> Allow me to save you the trouble of clicking through each of these 17 pages.

1) Twitter - <http://twitter.com/positions.html>

Twitter is hiring in several areas, including engineering, marketing, and monetization

2) Gilt - <http://careers-gilt.icims.com/jobs/search?ss=1>

Gilt is hiring financial analysts, engineers, product and marketing managers, and interns.

3) GroupOn -<http://www.groupon.com/jobs>

Groupon is hiring for several positions--many in sales, some in product development (such as visual design or quality assurance engineering).

4) SimpleGeo - <http://twitter.com/SimpleGeo/statuses/15264604240>

Geodata startup SimpleGeo tweeted that it was looking for HTML ninjas to do front-end programming.

5) Bug Labs - (this link is broken, it seems to point to the login for an editorial interface)

Bug Labs, a technology startup producing modular devices, is hiring web- developing interns, a QA specialist, and a VP of Engineering and Operations.

6) FourSquare - <http://foursquare.com/jobs/>

The location-based social network has open jobs in the engineering and business development departments. Foursquare is also seeking specific iPhone engineers to tune the iPhone app.

7) Sourcebits - (no job link?)

"is looking for a full time online PR person (in addition to several project developers)."

8) Digg - <http://jobs.digg.com/>

Digg publisher/Chief Revenue Officer Chas Edwards tweeted that the social news site is hiring engineers. While Digg is only hiring engineers, the positions range from business intelligence infrastructure to mobile and web applications. All the jobs are based in San Francisco.

9) Hunch - <http://hunch.com/info/jobs/>

Front-end developers can solve some "really interesting problems" at the San Francisco or New York offices of Hunch.

10) Quora - <http://www.quora.com/about/challenges>

is currently hiring engineers and product designers.

11) Asana - <http://www.asana.com/jobs>

is in search of "The Designer" and "The Business Person."

12) Smule - <http://www.smule.com/jobs>

Smule, creator of the sonic media iPhone "I am T-pain" and "Ocarina" apps, is hiring engineers, developers, and marketers.

13) Rent Juice - <http://rentjuice.com/current-openings/web-developer/>

Rent Juice a startup that works on making rentals easier, emailed to say it is looking for a developer.

14) New York Times - <http://www.journalismjobs.com/Job_Listing.cfm?JobID=1172909>

The New York Times is looking for a media-savvy journalist.

15) Amazon - <http://lab126.com/careers.html>

Amazon's Lab 126, responsible for the Kindle, is on a hiring binge for managers, product engineers, interns, and recruiters.

16) Apple -<http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-job-openings-2010-6>

Apple is always hiring

(Several of these seem to stretch the definition of "startup".)</comment>


How I stopped procrastinating, learned to code, and launched my first product - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/lynnetye/how-i-stopped-procrastinating-learned-to-code-and-launched-my-first-product-2i1 <comment><USER3> As someone who procrastinates and is interested in how people learn to code, I was looking forward to reading this. But there is no substance here about how she stopped procrastinating or how she learned to code. There's a reference to a coding school that she dropped out of, but we don't know why she dropped out, what she learned, or whether she'd recommend others to do the same. As for procrastination tips, the word "procrastinate" appears only in the title.

Looking forward to reading the sequel: _How I stopped procrastinating, learned to write, and launched my content marketing blog._

<comment><USER4> Many people try to solve their procrastination by trying to renew their motivation. I find this to be very unreliable and it also has the potential of leading you down the rabbit hole of less important things like watching videos or reading articles like the one linked to here.

The only solution that worked for me and keeps me from relapsing into procrastination behaviour is the non-zero-days concept: Every day you do at least one thing to help you get closer to your end goal (whatever that is, can be multiple). It doesn't matter how much you do or how big the task is that you completed, just do something. Small things add up and before you know it you're already halfway there.

More often than not, this gets me in the right mindset and I end up accomplishing more than just the one small thing I set out to do.

This was a bit off-topic but hopefully it helps you.

<comment> Harvey-Specter > non-zero-days

This is wonderful advice. I've been using the same concept for the last month or so. When I get home from work I walk the dogs and then sit down and commit to putting in a little work on whatever personal project I'm working on. More often than not my 15 minute commitment turns into an hour or more of progress.

<comment> p-funk Procrastination is actually just a mild form of discomfort about what one perceives to be an overwhelming task. The "no zero days" mindset is excellent because it gets you past the initial discomfort and gets you into the stage where you're actually working on the thing. Once you are working on it, it becomes easier to _keep_ working on it because you realize it isn't as bad as you perceived before you started.

The pomodoro technique is another thing that's commonly recommended, which is essentially the same. It helped me big time.

The great thing is that it applies to pretty much anything. Having trouble picking up a new programming language? Just look at the wiki on it and you'll probably find something that sparks your curiosity. Having trouble keeping up with exercise? Just walk for 1 minute and you won't want to stop. It's all about consistency over time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder how many people this article temped into procrastinating by reading it, rather than doing their work, after it hit the front page of HN...

<comment><USER6> Does _just_ reading the comments count?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How many non-developers are reading "Hacker News"?, that's the question... usually almost everyone i read here has a background on it, even sysadmins that usually then to not classify themselves as developers know something about it.

Also with that name i first thought it was another NoSQL DBMS or IDE.

<comment><USER8> I'm a marketer. I consider myself fairly technical, can code a bit and can easily have technical discussions with engineers. I'm not a developer but I'd love to improve my skills and build a product one day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's also really inspiring to see that the author managed to get it done working mostly alone as I understood. For me it was always the problem - if I can't get someone on board with me for some project, it stops me even if I would really love to work on it.

<comment><USER10> Lynne here! I wrote this article and hope I didn't make it sound like I did it all alone. I had a lot of help, guidance, mentorship, and support along the way.

While I don't have a cofounder or someone who is working alongside me on Key Values, I absolutely would not have gotten here without help. Even without a cofounder, people can (and should!) find help, guidance, mentorship, and support from forums like Indie Hackers and dev.to.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the response, Lynne! Yeah, I read that you had to meet/talk/collaborate with different people and networking was really important part of your project. But what excited me was that how you turned the idea you love into the web-service, how you stayed motivated (even though as you said you don't have a co-founder), how you managed networking - <USER2> are wonderful examples to be inspired by (at least for me)!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That key values website has a terrific UX and design. I love it.

<comment><USER12> Agree, amazing UI... there was just something I was missing: it has a _EQ > IQ_ "key value", but not _IQ > EQ_ :(

<comment><USER10> This is an really interesting suggestion. Someone else in HN said the same thing a few weeks ago. To me, the default in engineering is to value IQ over EQ (this is why 99% of interviews lead and focus on the technical screening/assessment). Do you disagree?

<comment><USER12> > To me, the default in engineering is to value IQ over EQ

Possibly, but ideally there'd be some kind of explicit emphasis place on the importance of IQ, or explicitly committed to meritocracy, the idea being to avoid MBA management types and office politics and such... Well one can dream :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well done Lynne.

Anyone else think the name of the product simply can't be beaten? It's perfect.

<comment><USER14> Totally agreed! I think she nailed the name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Thanks for sharing, great launch!</comment>


Twitter Doesn't Want You Sharing This Link About TV Piracy - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/twitter-doesnt-want-you-sharing-this-link-about-tv-pira-1834043362/ <comment><USER2> Really doubt Twitter cares. They got a dmca takedown and complied. This is gizmodo click bait.

<comment><USER3> Yes, it is Starz that cares. Hacker News has this covered at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19663229](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19663229) .</comment></comment>


Profit from India - <AUTHOR> http://www.work.com/profit-from-india-1618/ <comment><AUTHOR> Navin Pathak, senior partner of Entry India, tells us how to benefit from the booming India economy.

<comment><USER2> The links provided were very helpfull.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Founders' expectations - <AUTHOR>

YC's W15 application deadline is Oct 14. What do founders, who have already applied or who are planning to apply soon, expect to gain from YC W15 program ? Money, Network and Mentorship are often sighted as primary reasons to join such program but which one is the most important among these three ? Are there any other expectations ?<p>I am not affiliated with YC or any other accelerator/incubator programs. <comment><USER2> The money is nice but just enough to allow us to continue working for 6 months or so. And the networking is certainly useful in the long run. What I'm most looking forward to, though, is the mentorship portion.

Specifically, I personally want to learn:

      * how to run a Beta with the highest standards
      * how to grow my organization and be an effective leader
      * how to work with other organizations (partners, customers, etc) at a company level

Those are all things I've done in an individual capacity but not as the leader of my own company.</comment>