Cognitive Lode – Brain gems for decision-makers - <AUTHOR> http://coglode.com/

<comment><USER2> I find a lot of this interesting and plausible, but have to take issue with:

> _Hedonic Adaptation_ ... Enjoyment of a television program is actually > enhanced by commercial interruptions, despite what viewers say.

I haven't read the study cited, so can only imagine the reasoning and data, but I suspect a lot is hanging on the way enjoyment is measured here. One way of measuring it might be to give people a choice between watching with and without commercials. I'd be pretty surprised if more chose "with." (Do people always act to maximise their own perceived enjoyment, all else being equal? Is there an objective measurement of enjoyment, beyond self-reported perceived enjoyment? Deep philosophical issues lurking here.)

I don't dispute the principle - my personal struggle with chocolate consumption bears out its applicability to abstinence/pleasure trade-offs there. But this particular datapoint doesn't ring true. Perhaps if the interruptions were furnished by pure radio silence I might be more amenable.

An anecdote relayed by my old CS tutor: in one production-line, where the shop floor "enjoyed" pop music via the radio, it was found that a regime of 15 minutes on / 15 minutes off gave the best results. As he put it: "When it's off they can look forward to it coming on; when it's on, they can look forward to it going off."

<comment><USER3> Jonathan Haidt touches on this in "The Happiness Hypothesis", though not specifically applying it to TV watching.

There's the standard issue of measuring happiness, sure, since it's hard to find other than a self-reported subjective measurement for it.

But in general, the principle that what matters most to keep us happy is a steady "upwards trajectory" where things keeps getting somewhat better is getting quite decently researched from a lot of angles. According to Haidt, the studies he refers to in his book supports the claim that once basic needs (food, shelter) has been met, happiness deviates from a lot of what we people tend to think:

It is only mildly correlated with wealth, for example, and then largely because being wealthy allows for more opportunity for an upwards trajectory. However, people who suddenly come into wealth (e.g. lottery winners) report a lot of happiness for a short interval after winning, but then quickly return to "base level".

And another example of the "hedonic adaptation" is that while mental illness such as depression can have a long term impact on happiness, but most other illness does not. Amputees, people with long term horrible chronic illnesses, people who are told they have only a few years left to live etc., that we often feel sorry for and assume will be miserable, all tend to return to base level happiness fairly quickly on average with the exception of those with degenerative conditions that put them on an ongoing downward trajectory. In fact, some groups will tend to be _more_ happy than typical: Those who are slowly _recovering_ from a horrible situation, and who thus see steady improvement in their situation.

With respect to the TV example, I find it quite plausible (with the caveat that I've not read the study either), as pacing in story-telling has _already_ follows a pattern where you set up tension, release it and slows down the story, then set up tension again, for pretty much as long as people have been telling dramatic stories.

Pretty much all movies follow a pattern with "tension release" at least once or twice before the climax as well. I remember my English teacher drawing up diagrams of pacing a bunch of movies when I was in school even.

A perfect example of the alternative - to try to maintain an upwards trajectory as much as possible - would be Crank and Crank 2 with Jason Statham (though arguable even those movies cycle through periods with "lulls" in the action, just on a very accelerated schedule), which indeed tries to keep an insane pace throughout. In those movies it's used as a gimmick (Statham needs to keep his heart going with drugs etc. in the first movie, and needs to keep an artificial heart charged in the second, with antics that in no way try to be realistic at any point), but when you contrast the start of the first movie with the latter parts of the second, you see the result: To make it feel like the pressure is "kept up" the pace keeps accelerating to absolutely ridiculous levels. It's almost tiring to watch.

That ad breaks could provide some of the function in TV programs would thus not seem strange to me at all.

<comment><USER2> Well, I suppose there is a presumption of an enjoyable TV program to start with. I'd overlooked that. I suppose it's quite possible (and maybe even common) to craft TV that is so awful that even the commercials serve to improve the experience (some celebrity game shows come to mind, not to mention certain news outlets...)

But if we assume TV that people have elected to watch in the first place, what do you think of the argument that viewers would likely choose the "without commercials" option?

Assuming this is so, are they fooling themselves into inferior enjoyment?

<comment><USER3> I do believe viewers would likely choose the "without commercials" option ahead of time, but chances are good that they would enjoy it less. We're horribly bad at guessing what will provide the best payoff for us over time. And even when we _know_ , we are horribly bad at making use of that knowledge rather than letting ourselves be led by impulses.

To take the lottery example: How many people do you think would opt for $1m today vs. $10000 this year, $12000 the following year, $14000 the year after, and so on, until they'd have received, say, $3m? Pretty much all research into both lottery winners and the way we judge rewards now vs. later indicates that most of us would likely opt for the $1m now, yet be less happy for it over time vs. an option where we can look forward to steadily increasing rewards over a long period of time.

I'd be willing to be that you could show people data on how the options would likely affect their happiness, and the majority of people would still opt for the $1m now, and go out and start spending.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Round Price Preference

Yes, please, let's stop the 99.99 crap. And with sales tax the point is moot

Even better, let's not have more than 3 significant digits on prices (ok, maybe 4 or 5 for high value items)

<comment><USER5> Ron Johnson thought that, so removed the cheap pricing tricks from JCPenney.

People stopped buying.

He was fired.

<comment><USER6> Yeah I was going to say that the round pricing rule here is one of the more controversial ones. It's been proven time and time again that prices set at .99 will outsell their rounded competition by quite a way. It doesn't even have to be cents or pennies, something priced at $49 will outsell the one at $50.

I remember hearing of one study (I read this in Priceless by William Poundstone, good book), that compared the exact same product sold at $44, $39 and $34 through a split-tested mail order catalogue. Obviously, the $39 outsold the $44 as it was cheaper - but bizarrely, the $39 also outsold the $34.

There is a very weird power to the number 9 in pricing, I wouldn't underestimate it. If anyone wants further reading, I suggest googling "Charm Prices".

<comment><USER3> One explanation I've seen, is that the "9" prices have come to be associated with discounts. $34 sounds like it was set based on cost. $39 sounds like it was set to be cheaper than something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a visually appealing interface for wikipedia's list of cognitive biases. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases)

</comment><comment><USER8> This is fun stuff. I'd love to read more of them in the future, but there's no feed link. Has RSS really died? I'm often surprised by how many sites skip including these now.

<comment><USER9> No probs! Follow our twitter feed [https://twitter.com/coglode](https://twitter.com/coglode) We'll be putting all new gems out via that. Hope that helps!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you enjoy this, you might like 'To Sell is Human'. It's full of little treasures. [http://www.danpink.com/books/to-sell-is- human/](http://www.danpink.com/books/to-sell-is-human/)

</comment><comment><USER11> FWIW, I couldn't get it to load in Firefox. Switching over to Chrome worked in case anyone runs into the same problem.

<comment><USER12> Firefox worked for me...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The fallacy recognition fallacy:

The idea that if you recognize one of those fallacies at play, it's the dominant fallacy and hence correcting it will lead to the predicted results.

Reality is a complicated mesh of variables, and we judge it with a complicated mesh of heuristics.

Studying the fallacies is good, but don't think you suddenly have an explanation & solution for all the problems you see around yourself.

<comment><USER9> Great one Mantrax3! We'll add that on [http://coglode.com](http://coglode.com) I think!</comment></comment>


Sometimes, the old ways are the best - <AUTHOR> http://www.serpentine.com/blog/2015/05/13/sometimes-the-old-ways-are-the-best/ <comment><USER2> One sentence in the article made me do a double take: "reasonably tightly optimized low-level Haskell". For I minute I thought that this defeats the whole purpose of using Haskell, because for me it's all about being able to code at a higher level of abstraction.

But when I saw how quickly he fixed the problem, I reconsidered. As wrong as low-level tweaking in a high-level language feels, if it's still less work to optimize than in C or Java, that's a win, right?

<comment><USER3> Someone with more experience can correct me, but "low-level Haskell" is Haskell that takes into consideration things like evaluation order and thunks. It is stuff that many other languages would still consider way-high-level.

<comment><USER4> Evaluation-order in a sense _is_ more low-level in Haskell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A memory leak owing to the accumulation of unevaluated thunks is sometimes referred to as a "space leak".

<comment><USER6> What are you trying to say?

It sounds like you might be trying to be snarky, as if someone is trying to sweep details under the rug, but just as "the file had its first bit flipped" is more descriptive than "the file is corrupt" but the latter is still a correct description, "unevaluated thunks" is merely a more precise categorization of "space leak", which is itself a subset of "resource leaks", after all.

<comment><USER7> I interpreted his comment as simply providing more information on terminology.

<comment><USER5> Yes, I had heard the term "space leak" used in functional language communities but wasn't sure what it meant. Asking around, the definition is commonly given as I did above.

I thought readers here might find that information useful, given that someone might describe a problem similar to the OP's by using the term "space leak".

<comment><USER6> Ah, sorry. The hypersensitive snark detector has been taken out back and flogged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > The culprit turned out to be JSON strings containing zillions of > backslashes.

My guess is that there was a feedback loop somewhere, with the JSON output of a process being fed into the same process as input, adding extra backslashes each time the data went through the loop.

<comment><USER9> Well as long as it's not a JSON variant of a billion laughs...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > The culprit turned out to be JSON strings containing zillions of > backslashes.

Sounds a little like doubly-encoded JSON. Not that I would know about or have ever been responsible for something like that.

</comment><comment><USER11> You can do unescaping in constant time and space using a state machine. Coroutines would be the ideal way to express this.

 _JSON strings containing zillions of backslashes. (I have no idea why._

I've seen source code where someone was fond of using forward and backslashes in comments as a banner. Perhaps that might be related.

</comment><comment><USER12> So, what happens if the size of the JSON chunk to unescape is greater than the size of available memory? One of the benefits of streaming APIs is trading off CPU for memory.

Of course, it sounds like if it hit the pathological edge case in that setup, it would be in just of bad a position.

</comment><comment><USER13> In my experience, this is a huge problem with Haskell. Laziness, for all of its benefits, makes it difficult to reason correctly about performance in large code bases. I think non-strict evaluation by default probably was a mistake. Other than that, Haskell is great.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is primitive C practice: allocate a "bigger buffer than you'll ever need"\--a siren call for exploiters. There's a simpler way: when you see a backslash, start a (strict) counter.

</comment><comment><USER15> Silly question: why does a string builder need or use escape characters? If you dump to JSON why can't you escape at the very end, with a sikple iteration theough all the characters?

</comment><comment><USER16> Is "thunk" a technical term?

<comment><USER17> Yes, a "thunk is a value that is yet to be evaluated."

[https://wiki.haskell.org/Thunk](https://wiki.haskell.org/Thunk)

<comment><USER16> Cool, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Sometimes, yes. But which times? As ever, therein lies the rub</comment>


T-Mobile CEO John Legere to Be Replaced by COO Mike Sievert in May - <AUTHOR> https://9to5mac.com/2019/11/18/t-mobile-ceo-john-legere-to-be-replaced-by-coo-mike-sievert-in-may/ <comment><USER2> I think this is the sign that the big T-Mobile "ride" is over. There won't be any big future "consumer friendly" practices. They're going to absorb Sprint and become just as awful as AT&T and Verizon.

<comment><USER3> What makes you feel that way?

How do you know Sievert wasn't there behind Legere during all of the "consumer friendly" decisions that have been made recently?</comment></comment>


Does anyone know what's on this page? - <AUTHOR> https://www.example.com/another <comment><USER2> [https://www.iana.org/domains/reserved](https://www.iana.org/domains/reserved)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, but check [https://www.example.com/another](https://www.example.com/another) vs [https://www.example.com/anything-else](https://www.example.com/anything-else)</comment></comment>


An End-To-End Sales Stack for Non-Salespeople - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@scosta/an-end-to-end-sales-stack-for-non-salespeople-e2856aca96aa#.pphv6nt5t <comment><USER2> Self managing all those services over time can become unwieldy. one would really need to nail down a workflow. There is also cost to use those services. However, ff it truly is B2B then the cost won't likely matter much.</comment>


Game Development in a Post-Agile World - <AUTHOR> http://gwaredd.blogspot.com/2010/02/game-development-in-post-agile-world.html

<comment><USER2> Games are freakshow software. They resemble practically nothing else in the software world in how they are produced and are practically the diametric opposite of the projects that spawned the Agile approach.

Games are developed with huge teams, a large proportion of whom are artists of some stripe. They are performance-critical and have an urgent business reason to eke out every last scrap of performance. Most games are a one-shot release and few can even offer patches, let alone iterate. Budgets run into the many millions and deadlines are usually strict. They are usually paid for up front by a third party who bears all the risk and sets all the requirements. To me, they seem more akin to Hollywood movies than the type of software most Hacker News readers work on every day.

As a business software developer running a small shop, I have no more to learn from a game developer than a bicycle mechanic has to learn from NASA. We are solving totally different problems on a totally different scale.

The author points out, for instance, that the cost of change increases exponentially as the development continues. This is entirely correct in a game shop, where code bases are huge hairy balls of C and where vast amounts of art assets are necessary. As a web app developer writing clean, simple Python, I could rebuild most projects from scratch in a matter of days. My code is invariably based on sophisticated frameworks that reduce boilerplate code to an absolute minimum and make change cheap and easy. Of course, one of the goals Agile is to minimise sunk costs, iterate as early as possible and avoid writing unnecessary code, but that is beside the point.

In my opinion, Agile and Customer Driven Development are two sides of the same coin. I see little point in one without the other. If I am developing a business administration tool, I can solve many different problems and many subsets of those problems. There are innumerable possible solutions to each of these. My job is as much a process of discovery as it is development. A game developer produces an entertainment product, a monolithic entity based on a creative idea.

For a game developer, there is no minimum viable product. No game developer suddenly realises that their customers really want a different kind of product altogether. They know what their software has to do, they know their target demographic, they know their marketing channels, they even know their price point. As long as they meet the spec and the deadline, they get paid, regardless of whether anyone actually buys the software. Of course Agile would seem ridiculous to a game designer because they face none of the challenges and get none of the benefits of the teams that pioneered Agile.

To be more than a little blunt, I think that the author has been brain-damaged by writing games. He doesn't seem to realise that his part of the industry is a complete outlier. He may well be a very good games developer, but he seems to know little to nothing about the broader software industry.

He also seems to be completely unaware of the business of software, beyond shipping to a publisher - if he was aware that 96% of commercial games projects failed to turn a profit, he might be a little more sympathetic towards the "rotting corpses of software projects" that he so derides, and might understand why companies choose agility and responsiveness over efficiency.

<comment><USER3> Whoah, there. While _your_ software may have nothing in common with games, there's a lot of software that does.

Products like TurboTax have similarly tight schedules and limited ability to patch. Business platforms like Oracle have massive game-like performance- intensive C++ codebases. Operating systems like OS X or Windows 7 also have big teams, tons of art assets, and a fixed ship date. There are a ton of software shops out there that can learn something from the author's original post.

Many of us on HN have the luxury of building server-based web apps. We live in a very pleasant world with minimum viable products, small codebases, and rapid iteration. However, let's not fool ourselves into thinking that this is the world that everybody else lives in.

<comment><USER2> Yes, but there are relatively very few of these huge products. While there are lots of people working on these huge projects, there are few managing them and even fewer with the seniority to decide on methodology.

If software is anything like the broader business world, then the overwhelming majority of software shops will be small shops. It stands to reason therefore that the overwhelming majority of people managing a software project will be managing a very small number of developers.

My statement about bicycle mechanics learning from NASA stands - there just aren't many people managing big projects. Game development has practically no relevance to practically all managers. I certainly can't imagine that many people reading HN are managing the development of an operating system or a DBMS.

If you happen to be building the pyramids of Giza, linear development is a good approach. For the rest of us, iteration is the only rational way of doing it.

<comment><USER3> I feel like we're talking at right angles. Your central point seems to be that most people will never build software like this. That's totally true, no contest.

However, I think it's still an interesting topic, and a significant minority can learn something useful.

There should be room for both perspectives here.

<comment><USER2> I'd be more inclined to agree if the piece wasn't entitled "Games Development in a Post-Agile World". The central conceit of the article seems to be to debunk agile as a workable method. The article doesn't argue that agile is a hugely useful approach for most developers but a poor approach in some specific niches, it argues that agile is complete claptrap.

I will happily agree with you that there is room for a number of development methodologies.

<comment><USER4> > "it argues that agile is complete claptrap."

No it doesn't. It says that Agile proponents who claim it's a silver bullet are talking claptrap. If anything, it says that Agile is a tool and you need to pick the right tool for the job.

Based on the Agile manifesto, the author proposes a scale with "people" at one end and "process" at the other. Ostensibly waterfall is strongly "process" and Agile is a more "people", but he argues that Agile consists of a number of elements that exist at different points along that scale.

He says that the elements down at the "people" end of the spectrum require good, experienced, self-motivated people. If you have these then Agile is more efficient. If you have juniors or average coders (more likely on a large team) then the overhead of a process-based system may work better.

He also identifies the points within the product's development lifecycle where Agile-like approaches work best and when the more hierarchical methods work best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This was written from the point of view of a technical director of a gaming shop, but it's very much relevant to startup (and other) software development as well.

<comment><USER5> Seemed more of a confused, high level ranting to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> He seems to really hate the idea of agile development, though he takes pains to deny that. It makes sense that he wouldn't really understand it in his world though.

One thing is for sure... the author got a high score on the verbal portion of the SATs. I got kind of bored half way through, but the words were entertaining.</comment>


Statement on Mt. Gox - <AUTHOR> http://antonopoulos.com/2014/02/25/statement-on-mt-gox/

<comment><USER2> "Some exchanges were in fact completely unaffected, revealing as false Gox's claims that this was a bug in bitcoin."

This reveals a lack of objectivity here. There IS a bug in bitcoin. There are workarounds, and some exchanges implemented those properly.

Of course, MtGox should have followed best practices and implemented a workaround, but the above sentence is - on its face - flawed and biased. The fact that some exchanges were immune to the bug does NOT mean that bitcoin bears no fault or that Gox's claims are false. This was and is, in fact, an acknowledged and widely known bug in bitcoin.

<comment><USER3> I'm inclined to agree with cperciva, who is no slouch with security stuff: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7289273](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7289273)

<comment><USER2> The statement is inherently flawed, regardless of its source. Because _some_ exchanges were unaffected does not mean that MtGox was not affected, and the statement itself implies that other exchanges were affected which would be evidence in MtGox' favor.

I'm not saying MtGox was not incredibly incompetent, however nobody is helped by this false defensiveness over a very serious and clear bug in bitcoin that seems to have affected at least a few exchanges.

Regardless of MtGox' incompetence, this IS a serious bug in bitcoin for which a workaround is required, and without which a bitcoin theft is possible.

<comment><USER4> If this implementation is bugged:

[http://blog.magicaltux.net/2010/06/27/php-can-do-anything- wh...](http://blog.magicaltux.net/2010/06/27/php-can-do-anything-what-about- some-ssh/)

then is ssh broken?

<comment><USER2> Please state your point rather than providing just a link. I don't know what you are trying to say.

<comment><USER5> That a bug in one implementation does not imply a bug in the protocol.

<comment><USER2> I didn't say there was a bug in the protocol.

There is a bug in the REFERENCE implementation, which is used by almost every exchange. And one criticism of MtGox was that they used a custom version of the reference implementation, and should have used the standard one. You can't have it both ways.

<comment><USER4> Is there a reference implementation for SSH? I don't think so.

By your standards then SSH is broken, which is false. I don't want to have it both ways. I think if you are running a money service that you should not rely on variables that were known to be malleable since 2011. There's even a wiki page about it, on a site the guy owned, since Jan 2013. Either they run someone elses code and made sure it worked, or run their own code and made sure it worked - and by worked I meant worked the way they needed it to, not the way they expected it to.

<comment><USER2> As I said, they are definitely incompetent.

However, it's quite clear that this is a bug, and it could have affected them, and they could be telling the truth, contrary to what the original article says.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A little regulation and over sight might have prevented all this. And with out it going forward all anyone can do is advise best practices, and then watch as some ignore them and also have their money stolen. Very wild west. Totally something I'll be staying well back from

<comment><USER7> It's unfortunate that many people lost money (and some might have lost a lot), but if the ecosystem can recover from this without _governmental_ regulation (as I expect it will), we have the first evidence (ever) that there is no need for a central authority to conduct oversight and ensure a robust currency.

It looks likely that the free market, which _includes_ the self-regulating actions by Coinbase, Blockchain and others (as well as customer reactions), will punish the bad actors and reward "good" (well managed) companies. It will also create _better consumers_ , who will now be more diligent in evaluating relevant services before they sign up.

You write that you'll be staying away for now, that is your right as a potential participant in the market. We are already seeing the major players (like Coinbase) react to your sentiment by increasing transparency to bolster confidence in their services.

1\. _This is what we want._ 2\. When have you seen the existing financial system react so rapidly and thoroughly to the many flaws and disasters incumbent within?

Yes, "a little regulation and oversight might have prevented all this", but it also might have prevented crypto currency from being able to prove its value (or fail to) in the free market.

<comment><USER8> > we have the first evidence (ever) that there is no need for a central > authority to conduct oversight and ensure a robust currency.

No one has ever doubted that this was possible. 'Robust' currency has existed without a central monetary authority in the past (for millenia!). The reason the Fed exists is because its believe that it takes an existing 'robust' currency and makes it better.

<comment><USER7> ""The Federal Reserve System (also known as the Federal Reserve, and informally as the Fed) is the central banking system of the United States. It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, largely in response to a series of financial panics, particularly a severe panic in 1907"" \- [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_System](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_System)

The common argument is that the modern, global economy is too complex to govern itself, and prone to disasters.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure how this relates to my comment. Its not a binary issue of whether a currency can or cannot function on its own. Currencies functioned on their own okay before, and after the Fed, they've arguable done better. Whether you believe it or not is immaterial to my point--we have a wealth of evidence that robust currency can exist without a central authority. Just because bitcoin rebounds after some period of time doesn't mean that a) it wouldn't have been worse if there was central authority and regulation, b) that the rebound is translatable to other currencies, or to other crises, c) that the rebound was a result of anything other than exogenous increases in demand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Under the presumption that it is true that ~750k BTC has been stolen, has anyone considered the possibility of orchestrating a 51% attack on the attacker(s)?

Gox probably has logs of withdrawal requests. It might be daunting but feasible to sift the tx-MAL withdrawals from legitimate ones, then work with major pools and exchanges to double-spend stolen coins back to Gox.

Gox could then be forced (by the same 51% majority) to pay legitimate requests for reimbursement by vendors or 3rd parties holding stolen coins they transacted for goods or services, given reasonable documentation. Leaving us with some but not unacceptable collateral damage.

<comment><USER10> That really undermines Bitcoin overall.

Also, that makes it more attractive to act maliciously, as an exchange. Either you make off with your stolen BTC (win), or the community fixes things for you (not really a loss).

What _would_ help is some equivalent of FDIC. A group of Bitcoin "banks" that handle your deposits, with some pro-BTC group guaranteeing your deposit up to 100 BTC or something. Getting the insurance would of course require all sorts of intense auditing and oversight. And somehow, someone's gotta pay for it all (perhaps the same group of Bitcoin companies pay in). But that's... very far removed from the current state of affairs.

<comment><USER9> 100% agreed - this would certainly undermine the movement. The open question is whether it would do so more or less than the loss of half a billion dollars held by the community. I'm not sure what the answer is, but shouldn't every option be on the table?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It puts all the blame on Mt. Gox, assuming that their lack of good management is to blame. But I still see the lack of reversibility of transactions (one of bitcoin's strengths) as the major problem here. We live in civilized in a world where there are laws and polices and judges and banks and governments, but bitcoin tries to workaround them for no good reason.

I'm still hoping that banks will take what to me is the bitcoin's biggest feature (multiple wallet addresses and the ability to easily make cash transfers to other wallet address) but without pretending that centuries of legal and financial traditions somehow don't matter.

<comment><USER12> > But I still see the lack of reversibility of transactions (one of bitcoin's > strengths) as the major problem here.

"Stop Saying Bitcoin Transactions Aren't Reversible" [http://elidourado.com/blog/bitcoin- arbitration/](http://elidourado.com/blog/bitcoin-arbitration/)

The n-of-m multisignature facilities described in that article are the future of Bitcoin. You probably don't need multisig arbitration when you buy a coffee or a stick of gum, but you probably do when you're transferring large sums. Of course, there was no multisig protection in sight in the MtGox case, but then there was no blockchain in sight either. Far worse errors of judgement were made there.

Bitcoin makes the use of arbitration services optional, _and_ it makes the actual mechanics of arbitration services safer and more efficient. The arbiter in a 2-of-3 multisig transaction can't freeze or seize funds in transit -- hello PayPal! -- and takes zero action in the vast majority of cases, where there is no dispute.

Banks, credit card companies, and existing payment systems like PayPal can't easily, optionally disintermediate themselves. They must play arbiter. And we must pay for it.

> bitcoin tries to workaround them for no good reason.

There's a good reason. Why do businesses today pay transaction fees when you use your card to buy that coffee?

I'll just quote the opening paragraph of the original Bitcoin paper:

"Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as trusted third parties to process electronic payments. While the system works well enough for most transactions, it still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust based model. Completely non- reversible transactions are not really possible, since financial institutions cannot avoid mediating disputes. The cost of mediation increases transaction costs, limiting the minimum practical transaction size and cutting off the possibility for small casual transactions, and there is a broader cost in the loss of ability to make non-reversible payments for non-reversible services. With the possibility of reversal, the need for trust spreads. Merchants must be wary of their customers, hassling them for more information than they would otherwise need. A certain percentage of fraud is accepted as unavoidable. These costs and payment uncertainties can be avoided in person by using physical currency, but no mechanism exists to make payments over a communications channel without a trusted party."

[https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf](https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13>
      "Cold storage" does not "leak". The idea that the funds were stolen,
      unnoticed, from cold storage, due to Transaction Malleability,
      strains the credulity of even the most gullible observers.

This part of the story still doesn't make sense.

One possible explanation that I haven't seen anywhere else is that MtGox lost control of the private keys to their cold storage.

How else could 744,000 BTC disappear, without anyone noticing, from cold storage?

</comment><comment><USER14> Two important items:

a) Adreas is the Chief Security Officer of Blockchain and a well known / respected digital currency personality.

b) The most interesting part of the article was a link to another post reviewing Coinbase's security practices (1) where he concludes "it appears that the Coinbase system contains the expected funds and their cold storage system and process appear to be operating according to security best practices."

(1) [http://antonopoulos.com/2014/02/25/coinbase- review/](http://antonopoulos.com/2014/02/25/coinbase-review/)

<comment><USER15> If anyone has 38mins to burn...

[http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/17/foundation-brian- armstrong-...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/17/foundation-brian-armstrong-on- coinbase-and-bitcoin-security/)

A Google Ventures video about coinbase security with Kevin Rose(from old Digg) asking a bunch of questions with Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong.

Sounds very legit to me.... but... you _still_ shouldn't leave huge amounts of bitcoin in any exchange! Make[1] your own btc-address + private key and keep the coins there. And note that bitaddress.org can be git clone'd and ran on a computer without internet access.

1\. [https://www.bitaddress.org](https://www.bitaddress.org)

<comment><USER7> Coinbase isn't really an exchange (though it works as such for US dollars). It's mainly a hosted wallet service that provides apps, and merchant and developer tools to make it easier to engage with the bitcoin ecosystem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _> >I was part of the team helping to coordinate between the other exchanges to ensure that they could quickly resume operations which they did no more than 48 hours later. Some exchanges were in fact completely unaffected, revealing as false Gox's claims that this was a bug in bitcoin._

I don't think that reveals anything about what happened in MtGox. Also, don't know if anyone's noticed... but mtgox.com has a message now. [http://i.imgur.com/YDONE4d.png](http://i.imgur.com/YDONE4d.png)

And note the word "DONE" in that imgurl URL. Ominous...</comment>


Swirling Bacteria Linked to the Physics of Phase Transitions - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/swirling-bacteria-linked-to-the-physics-of-phase-transitions/ <comment><USER2> It looks like they discovered Cellular Automata for living things. I wonder if people in Active Matter know about CA's as it could give them ideas.

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

EDIT: Appreciate the feedback from you two. :)

<comment><USER3> I should also say that phase transitions are used to describe the abrupt change in physical parameters as some external conditions are changed. Cellular automata to my knowledge don't really have continuously variable parameters.

<comment><USER4> > "In contrast to a well-mixed chemical reaction system, reaction–diffusion > (RD) networks can produce spatial patterns, where some species are more > abundant in some parts of the substrate and less abundant in others."

"Emulating cellular automata in chemical reaction–diffusion networks"

[http://schulmanlab.jhu.edu/papers/reaction-diffusion-ca- jour...](http://schulmanlab.jhu.edu/papers/reaction-diffusion-ca-journal- version.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> d--b They should really stop linking things to "phase transitions". This is most likely something that follows the Tracy Widom distribution, that has popped up in many areas of maths and physics. Linking this to phase transitions is like saying: "weather predictions linked to the physics of a dice being rolled"

<comment><USER5> Well here's _Quanta_ 's piece on the Tracy-Widom distrbution from a few years ago: [https://www.quantamagazine.org/20141015-at-the-far-ends- of-a...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/20141015-at-the-far-ends-of-a-new- universal-law/)

More people will have heard of phase transitions than T-W and it's certainly not inaccurate while also using somewhat familiar analogies; so I think your criticism doesn't make much sense for a popular science article.</comment></comment>


Online Python Editor with Live Syntax Checking - <AUTHOR> https://pythonbuddy.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone, I created this tool called PythonBuddy ([http://pythonbuddy.com/](http://pythonbuddy.com/)) which allows developers to directly program in python online with a live syntax checker.

I made this so that free and open source MOOCs like edX or codecademy could easily embed and use this on their courses so students wouldn't have to go through the frustrations of setting up a Python environment and jump right into Python programming. Also, professors and teachers could easily set up a server and allow students to quickly test out their code with PythonBuddy online.

I love feedback so feel free to leave a question or suggestion below

And by the way, this is completely open sourced ([https://github.com/ethanchewy/OnlinePythonLinterSyntaxChecke...](https://github.com/ethanchewy/OnlinePythonLinterSyntaxChecker)) so you can host your own PythonBuddy for your class or for fun! :)

<comment><USER2> Looks good. Nice work!

I've not done more than 'kick the tyres' at the moment, but once thing I would suggest is to try and optimize the layout a bit better on mobile.

On a tablet screen in horizontal mode, there's a lot of wasted space round the code entry and the output boxes and you have to scroll up and down from one to the other, as they don't both fit on screen at once.

How it works on mobile should be a priority, as something like this would be the kind of thing that, more often than not, you'd idly tinker with, while on a phone or tablet

</comment></comment><comment> git-pull Nifty!

Some nitpicks:

You can do a "display: none" on the #output ID when it's empty and add some effects to it.

In the examples wrap the print's in parenthesis. Instead of

        print 'hi'

Do

        print('hi')

Example one has a misspelling in

        methodds.append(lambda x: x + i)

but maybe its useful because it shows off the linting/error detection. If it's there on purpose, add a tooltip so newcomers know it's an intentional bug for demonstrating the linter.

I like it. Starred.</comment>


Weave (YC S14) Adds Groups and Events to Its 'Tinder For Networking' App - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/08/weave-groups-events/

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure of the "swipe" idea translates well to professional networking.

"Swipe" seems more suited to making visceral fast (~1 second) decisions based on gut instinct, whereas networking requires >20 seconds when face-to-face and longer in a lower bandwidth environment such as an app.

Additionally when using the app it felt like I was "discarding" someone as I swiped them, which is not the right feeling.

The bigger problem with networking, I find, is breaking the ice. I'd pay good money to be able to intro myself to someone without resorting to a "networking hack".

<comment><USER3> No disagreement on the swipe - we're playing around with a several other UX mechanisms that might be better suited for higher time/consideration per person, would love to get your feedback on it when new UX's release.

In professional networking, both discovering mutually benefitual relationships and ice breaking are big problems. We're currently largely focused on the former, but hope to tackle the latter as well.

<comment><USER2> Happy to provide feedback on new UX -- my contact details are in my profile.

Hey...left-field idea for the ice-breaking problem: t-shirts with a list of all your likes and dislikes printed on them.

Instead of the clichéd "what do you do" it's "hey, you like NCIS too!". Easier, cheaper to test than an app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I started trying Weave 3 weeks back just to see if it works, and to my surprise I connected with some VC folks, talent and bunch of other industry people. The UX has definitely improved over time, so has the onboarding for new users. When I first used it, I swiped 150 times in the wrong direction and accidentally yes'd those folks. Tinder does clearly show 'rejected' etc while you are swiping. Not sure if this has happened with anyone else.

But, a very useful app, good job guys. Although I would like to set my preferences so that I can see more relevant people (or maybe thats your business model)

Edit: just read the comment from tarr11 which mentions the same issue

</comment><comment><USER5> I just tried the android app. The way the ui is laid out, I think I swiped the wrong way a bunch of times. Not obvious if I am swiping to the right. Or from the right...

<comment><USER3> Brian from Weave. Great feedback - we're testing a couple different ways to address this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been using Weave for a few days. It's a pretty cool app. The Android app is a bit buggy but I've met a few interesting people through it already.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Glad we're getting you some good meetings.

We're releasing fixes every day now, feel free to hit me up at firstname.lastname@example.com if Android bugs continue to persist. We'll get them fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> BTW the android version runs perfect on BB10.. You guys should package it as a port and put it on BBWorld.. very easy to do.

Happy to see that there are users in Orange County/SoCal now</comment>


Ask HN: Micro-payments - <AUTHOR>

I was wondering if anyone has experience with trying to setup a payment system that would allow me to accept very small amounts of money, but still be feasible with regards to fees payable to the transaction provider. Many thanks. <comment><USER2> There is one and only one such mechanism that exists, reverse-billed SMS. Even then, the fees payable will often amount to some 25% of the total. What are you going to be selling? If its something you are expecting lots of repeat custom, then you could do as all the music vendors do and aggregate bills over some period of time. Or, if that is a bit too risky sounding for you, have customers charge their accounts up with credit first before shopping.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm trying to setup a website that will allow a small community to sell stuff to each other, but to make the whole thing viable I need to figure out a way to take a micro-payment from the seller at the time they upload their listing. I'm not too keen on the SMS model, the aggregate billing option is one that I might end up taking. Just thought that micro-payments would have been a solved issue by now and easy to implement.</comment>


Ask HN: Java FUD - <AUTHOR>

I want to use Jersey (JAX-RS) to write a web app in the static files+AJAX fashion. I also want to use Java because otherwise I can always keep blaming tools and documentation for things not working out.
So I go over to Java land, and the feeling is that I need to, to get things running, get to know about Tomcat, Hibernate, Maven and JBoss just to get started.
Now, having used Python+Django, I use to favor simpler solutions over complex ones.
What do you advise me to do? Is this just FUD? Should I try a non-EE Java solution (Lightweight java?), or just embrace the 3-letter acronyms? <comment><USER4> Use Grails - <http://grails.org>.

You will need to know Java/Groovy. Groovy can be considered a superset of Java (not 100% technically true, but easy enough to think of that way to get started).

> grails run-app

will run grails in dev mode on its own tomcat.

> grails prod run-app

will run grails in production mode on its own tomcat.

You can proxy Apache on port 80 to the tomcat port (default 8080).

Grails uses Hibernate under the hood, but hides it pretty darn well - <USER2> generally won't need to know much about it, or even touch any XML config files - to get started.

You can slowly add more Java libraries as required.

<http://www.grails.org/plugin/jaxrs> \- this is a JAX-RS plugin for Grails which lets you use Jersey as the implementation if you want to ("At the moment, plugin users may choose between Jersey and Restlet as JAX-RS implementations").

The "Play!" framework might be interesting to you too, if you already know some Java, but I prefer Grails overall.

<comment><USER5> I second that Grails advice. Jersey, Hibernate and Maven isn't that bad, but Grails beats that anyday if you don't mind Groovy. While Play framework is cool too if you want to stick with Java, but it is not as mature as Grails or any other Java frameworks.

<comment><USER4> I was going to go in to a bit more detail, and this might be the place.

All your own code in Grails can be 'plain Java' if you want (or pretty darn close to it). The nice thing is the Java people who want to stick with Java _can_ do that in Grails, or you can go pretty deep in to Groovy if you want.

Grails uses Maven and Hibernate, but you don't need to become masters in them before you start being productive.

This is why I like Grails so much - I've been able to be productive from a very early stage. The more I learn about the under the hood tools, the more productive I become, but I didn't need to understand or configure Hibernate, Sitemesh, Maven or Tomcat to get going. Now that I know more about them, it's even better, but it's great to jump in and have a working app early on (even if it's pretty basic).

Perhaps others learn differently, but Grails has been a great 'on ramp' to Java for me.

<comment><USER6> Well if you are going to jump out of Java then Scala should be a consideration as well. Even the Groovy creator commented that had Scala existed he would probably not have created Groovy. Wit Scala you can still use JAX-RS.

[http://www.yes-no-cancel.co.uk/2009/05/13/building-go- test-i...](http://www.yes-no-cancel.co.uk/2009/05/13/building-go-test-it-fun- with-scala-and-rest-apis/)

<comment><USER4> Well Scala _existed_ at that time (2003), but that's not what he'd said. If someone had showed him a 2008 book on Scala in 2003, he'd have not created Groovy.

All that said, Strachan isn't really involved in Groovy and hasn't been for many years, so I'm not sure his views on the language or its appropriateness is of that much concern. A whole new team of people have been running with Groovy for years, and continue to make it better and more useful to people.

Scala is different enough from Java that syntactically that it's a hard sell for many. Groovy is far more Java-ish for Java devs to pick up, and as such I think it will continue to have a growing userbase for the foreseeable future (but I'm biased, as I run groovymag.com!)

<comment><USER6> Yeah, after re-reading my comment it comes off a lot more rude than was my intention. The point was to say that Scala is a really nice modernized "Java" (I know it is not but for simplicity, that is what I am going to call it) and that even the creator of Groovy thinks it has one of the most elegant designs out of the pack of Java replacements.

<comment><USER4> NP - I didn't take it as rude. Just wrong ;)

<comment><USER6> I don't see how recommending looking at Scala can be factually right or wrong, your bias may be influencing your bering there. The elegance of a language is subjective. The fact that Grooves founder finds it elegant lends credence to the fact that it is a popular opinion. Still no more right or wrong.

<comment><USER4> The ;) is a wink - was meant to indicate to take it lightheartedly (aka a joke).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hey Hugo,

I've somehow become a bit of a devil's advocate for Java lately. Thanks for pinging me - happy to offer a few thoughts.

I've not actually tried using Jersey/JAX, but it looks like a very clean setup for quickly writing low-latency JSON APIs. I'm impressed by the Getting Started example (here: <https://jersey.dev.java.net/use/getting-started.html>) and find the use of decorators to specify path, methods, and content types creative.

As for the rest, keep in mind that you don't have to use anything that you don't want to. I've done a fair amount of Java development and never actually used Hibernate, Maven, or JBoss. For the most part, the complexity that these tools can introduce, while great for many projects, kind of scares the crap out of me. Like you, I'd always go for the simplest workable solution available.

Jetty is a very nice, simple alternative to Tomcat/JBoss, though I find Tomcat to be rather nice myself. One thing I've come to love about Java deployment is that you're literally deploying just one file (a .jar or .war) rather than hundreds.

If you're looking for a nice, clean ORM, check out ActiveObjects by @djspiewak. Its design is based on the active record pattern, and it's very easy to get up and running with about any database as a backend. I used this on a large project ending a few months ago and had a great experience with it. Daniel's also available via Twitter and IRC and tends to be happy to offer an answer to a quick, informed question. Here's the post he introduced it with (<http://www.codecommit.com/blog/java/an-easier-java-orm>), and here's the project page. (<https://activeobjects.dev.java.net/>). I'd also strongly recommend checking out these docs he put together: <https://activeobjects.dev.java.net/ActiveObjects.pdf>

I really love the "static files + AJAX" approach that you've suggested (it's actually the same one mentioned in the project I referred to above). If you were to build something with Jersey and ActiveObjects, perhaps with a small caching layer in between (either an in-app cache if you'll only have one app server, or memcached), you will have produced a screaming API for your application.

The Play framework (mentioned below) is also very good, and has emerging support for Scala, which I and many others find to be much cleaner and more expressive than the equivalent Java. If you're feeling adventurous, I whipped together a quick little framework for building zippy JSON APIs and simple frontends via a lightweight wrapper around the servlet API. It's called Miso. Here's the info on that (and do ping me if you feel like playing with this - <USER3> may have a more recent version): [<http://blog.paradoxica.net/post/401365886/hello-miso>]. See here for docs, and especially page 6, which shows what a sample controller / API endpoint looks like: <http://u.phoreo.com/gx.pdf>

Of course, this also depends on whether you actually need that, and how much experience (or desire to learn) you have. If you're comfortable with Python, something like Flask or Piston might be more appropriate. At the same time, I would suggest that those who say that '"x language" or "y framework" makes developers infinitely more productive' aren't offering terribly productive advice, as I find myself about equally productive in Java, Scala, Python, and Ruby, and often opt for Scala or Java unless I'm hammering out something quick and imprecise. That is to say, it's definitely a matter of preference. So, choose what you think will make you most productive, or, choose to learn something new which might be a bit difficult at first, but will also teach you a lot about statically-typed languages and could potentially meet the needs of your application with far fewer resources and lower latency on the server-side for years to come.

Regardless of which path you choose, feel free to hit me up with any questions along the way.

<comment><USER6> _I've not actually tried using Jersey/JAX, but it looks like a very clean setup for quickly writing low-latency JSON APIs._

I was a very early adopter of Jersey and JAX-RS and I have to say, it is one of the first API's that I have seen come out of Java that provides the rapid development and prototyping typical of Ruby or Python. If future Java API's take their queue from JAX-RS then Java will again become competitive. I trained a guy just last week on JAX-RS and had him up and running in less that a day. Only truly elegant designs can provide that level of simplicity while exposing the ability to accomplish the task you want without having to make compromises. JAX-RS is a gem in the Java world and I hope that future Java API's will follow suite.

As well Netbeans tooling for JAX-RS goes a long way to reduce development time. You can write a JPA annotated class and Netbeans will gen the schema as well as the REST service. Or you can write the schema and Netbeans will gen the JPA class and the service. While I am generally not a fan of reliance on tooling this is a case where it helps without pooping all over your code.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Founder? Seeking co-founder? (May 2019) - <AUTHOR> Similar to "Freelancer" monthly posts, but for people looking for co-founding partners. <comment><USER2> Not sure if this would be the right thread, but I'm a UI/UX designer and I am looking for 1 or more developers (front-end or backend) who wants to partner up for consulting work.

I would love to provide end-to-end design and development services to my clients.

The long-term goal is to scale up operations to be more of a platform like Gigster - but at the beginning it's more of a agency-esque approach.

<comment><USER3> What stack are you targeting in the backend?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looking for sales/biz-dev oriented co-founder on an online wholesale ordering platform. Product is in beta, has some users, and close to initial revenue. Email email@example.com if you're interested in talking.

</comment><comment><USER5> Working on a social network for neighbors. It's basically Reddit + craigslist, where subreddits are cities.

Need someone to help me solve the chicken/egg problem.

<comment><USER6> What's you differentiator from Craigslist or NextDoor?

Are you focusing on transactions (i.e. buy/sell/help needed), or are you focusing on social (donation requests/lost dog/transit discussion)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seeking non-technical co-founder. Low-code for developers, product in beta, 9 figure TAM, great margins, excellent LTV.

[https://hofstadter.io](https://hofstadter.io)</comment>


Screening Job Candidates With Trello and Zapier - <AUTHOR> http://dezz.me/99ab8

<comment><USER2> Zapier has become one of my favorites web services. I've always lamented that IFTTT doesn't cater to the productivity/project management crowd by offering a very limited set of channels to work with. Then Zapier came along and blew me away.

<comment><USER3> One of my favorite bits of Zapier happens when you want to wire up services they don't support: they actually ask you for an email address to notify you when they do support it. And yet almost nobody else does.

More impressive (although this is, to be fair, a low bar): they do _not_ try to stick you on a mailing list or anything like that.

<comment><USER4> Out of curiosity, which service did you try to sign up to use?

<comment><USER3> I wanted to wire up Redmine and Trello, but they didn't support Redmine at the time.

<comment><USER5> I do believe we support Redmine now, if we're missing something specific within Redmine, just let us know.

<comment><USER3> Hence "at the time". =) This was last year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd be exceedingly careful about putting any kind of HR data or workflow into a public service like Trello.

Otherwise, nice idea, and I can already think of several uses for Zapier so I'm going to learn more about that.

<comment><USER7> Aren't Trello boards private?

<comment><USER5> Indeed, they can be: <http://i.imgur.com/MVXeF8l.png>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A desktop program that does something like Zapier would be useful and not terribly hard to make. I simply would not trust an online service to hold some credentials.

I've automated these sorts of tasks many times with Python scripts but never made a general solution with a nice GUI.

<comment><USER8> Create a nice responsive GUI to manage the scheduling and allow the community to submit Python plug-ins to do specific tasks. API keys and credentials will always be stored on the user's computer only.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How does this compare to <http://ifttt.com>?

<comment><AUTHOR> The two are similar. Zapier offers more services (including Trello), but IFTTT seems to be free.</comment></comment>


xsv: A fast CSV toolkit written in Rust - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/BurntSushi/xsv <comment><USER2> Are there numbers and pictures to show me how this is fast?

<comment><USER3> From the Benchmarks section of the README:

[https://github.com/BurntSushi/xsv/blob/master/BENCHMARKS.md](https://github.com/BurntSushi/xsv/blob/master/BENCHMARKS.md)</comment></comment>


John Cleese: Nobody knows what they are talking about - <AUTHOR> https://blog.valbonne-consulting.com/2014/02/10/john-cleese-nobody-knows-what-they-are-talking-about/ <comment><USER2> Nobody knows what they are talking about- including us!

Nobody knows what they are talking about- including the people who like the things we make! (Not just the people who don't like the things we make!)

Nobody knows what they are talking about- including all our idols, leaders, geniuses, experts, and John Cleese.</comment>


Burnout Comes in Three Varieties - <AUTHOR> http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/minds-business/burnout-comes-in-three-varieties.html <comment><USER2> A year ago, I would have thought that the antidote to burnout was start-up culture. I'm a little less naive about it now.

The reality is that you can burnout in any of these ways whether or not you're a corporate monkey or a start-up monkey. Substitute vending machines and water coolers for fancy free-for-all-cafes and foosball tables, and many start-ups have similar WORK demands of their employees. In other words, no matter how fun the culture, it can't forever mask the fact that you're working toward someone else's vision and mission.

I once thought this would be very different in a company of 50 vs 50,000. But even in start-ups, we suffer from an over-emphasis on specialized activities (for efficiency and scale). This creates jobs that lack ownership of the big picture, and therefore may create short term excitement (if the work or team is interesting), but does not equate to long term passion and fulfillment.

As a founder with an idea, part of the reason that I don't want to join an existing effort is because I want to build an organization that challenges this model. Is there a way to better distribute ownership of the vision to everyone in the company so that instead of having a bunch of employees working toward your vision, you have a bunch of entrepreneurs collaborating to define that vision? That in my mind is a major part of avoiding burnout.

The secondary piece is helping people realize that work/life balance is always necessary. As a founder, I spent one month subscribing to the Valley norm that I should just work constantly. Mentally I was fine, but physically I pinched a nerve (or something) and all kinds of horror happened. Yet this cultural attitude of fast fast fast is so prevalent, I think we should also do more to encourage people to adopt some "slow" principles.

<comment><USER3> I would say that start-up culture is the perfect breeding ground for burnout.

#1 cause: lack of a mature organization. No clarity, no process, no structure, constant uncertainty and bosses that clearly have no idea what the fuck they are doing.

Collective ownership, treating employees like entrepreneurs even though they are very different people with a different mindset and different coping mechanisms is not just misguided, it's downright destructive.

Employees are not entrepreneurs, they have a different mindset and different coping mechanisms. They can handle the uncertainty of a starting company that may very well fail, they can handle long hours, but they need certainty about the nature of their job, what is expected of them and their coworkers. Not having that structure makes them extremely vulnerable to any kind of stress, stress that a startup job is guaranteed to have.

It frankly pisses me off how badly employees at startups are treated by not recognizing their needs as _employees_. No amount of toys, free snacks and other gimmicks will compensate for that.

<comment><USER4> You typically don't see that big picture when you're 20 - it's hard _not_ to see it at 40. Probably another reason the stereotypical "startup" employee skews younger.

<comment><USER5> To be explicit: younger workers are much easier to exploit.

If all younger workers realized this and acted collectively, the impact would be immense. Instead, SV is overrun with temporarily-embarrassed entrepreneurs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have a much more succinct description of burnout:

Burnout is a broken narrative.

Everyone has ups and downs, and everyone expects that. We persevere, however, because we believe, however irrationally, that it will work out in the end.

Burnout is believing that no, it probably won't.

The way that someone stops believing this is very reasonable---they take risks with the assurance that it will work out ("low salary, but look at the equity! Keep working!"), and then it doesn't (company shuts down). Or perhaps "we promise this is the last crunch" \--- and it never is.

Don't confuse this with a lack of trust. Healthy people who don't trust their employers leave and start a company/work for someone else. Burnout is when you don't see a happy ending _anywhere_.

<comment><USER7> Sounds like a depression.

<comment><USER8> Which is why burnout is mostly work-induced depression.

<comment><USER9> how would someone know if it's work-induced? Depression is commonly attributed to things that weren't actually the cause.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I feel like being stuck between the second and the third type of burnout. Honestly, even though coding was my passion since being 13 years old, I had serious troubles at every single programming job I took. My productivity always seems to be at 10% of what I expect from myself; every time I have to _think_ about something I start feeling sleepy (and I _need_ to sleep 8h/day just to be able to get anytthing done), and I procrastinate like you wouldn't believe.

For the last two years I thought that maybe, just maybe, it was because I suck at coding and my work troubles are a symptom of me not being really into programming. And then, few months ago, I stared a completely pointless side project. Back came to me the passion and productivity. I can get more done in 1h for my side project that in 8h at my job. Through the last few months I gradually regained the faith in my own programming skills. I realized that I do indeed know how to code; it's that I just can't force myself to work on stuff I don't give a fuck about.

I'd love to know what to do about this. I understand that it's easier to work on your own idea than on someone else's. But having like order of magnitude differences in productivity between my job and hobby project... this just feels wrong.

</mind-dump> </drunk-posting>

<comment><USER11> Sounds very much like myself (except that I'm a freelancer, so can procrastinate much easier). I'm still trying to solve it, but I found that some things help:

1\. A cardio workout. (Came highly recommended by a dear client of mine, and indeed significantly increases the amount of energy I feel during the day. Does not solve procrastination by itself, but helps with that sleepiness.)

2\. Pair programming. (This is a true deal breaker. Maybe we're just not created for solo work, and that's it?)

3\. Eating less, and less carbs in particular. (I've been diagnosed with insulin insensibility, and it really shows; I usually get very sleepy after eating.)

4\. Doing work you can be proud of, way before the deadline. Not always possible, but when it is, it can keep me going for a bit. Relax, take those extra few hours to make the code clean, polished and well-documented.

In my case (and perhaps in yours as well), it's not really about work being boring or not. I had a very exciting side-project of mine, which is now selling on the Mac App Store for great profit, but I started to procrastinate on it after a few months as well.

Feel free to email me to talk some more.

<comment><USER10> Thank you for your tips and advice :).

AD 1. I recently went through a physical therapy after a knee accident and I noticed a difference in my energy levels and mood in that period of time, during which I had about 1h of exercise every day. So I think it might be a good idea for me to try and include some workout into daily schedule.

AD 2. Could you elaborate a bit more? I tried it once or twice, and I don't really feel it. I usually think out the things before coding them, and I'm having a hard time coordinating that with other person for anything that's even slightly complex.

AD 3. Been on ketogenic diet last year, didn't notice much of a difference in terms of productivity (but I did lose the weight I wanted).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I certainly feel some symptoms of burnout - quality of my work went down, development is no longer interesting, all projects look the same to me. But this is not something sudden, it's been there for years, slowly changing my life. Sorry for such an useless comment, but I'm realizing it will be difficult to recover from this creeping apathy.

<comment><USER13> That sounds like depression, to be honest. As someone who has depression, and is trying to get better, my best advice is to start by at least mentioning it to my GP. Doctors can help!

<comment><USER12> I think burnout is a kind of depression, but a work-related one. I don't suffer from apathy in my private life, still have some interests and hobbies, but at work i feel i'm going backwards.

BTW thanks, I really hope this is not a depression. And good luck.

<comment><USER14> That is why its such a difficult situation. when you have depression you may not want help, due to the negative affects of depression controlling your actions. Burn out still allows you to want to get better. The up side of depression is that typically with medication and or therapy you can get better. Burn out really only has two cures: changing jobs which is a pain or your work changing which is usually out of your control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I did not read the full paper so I can't comment on details that are not present, however from the article it seems as if they are attributing the burnout to the individual's own psychology when in fact it's usually a mixture of failures within the organization and the individual combined. I.E an individual may burnout in one company and not another and in reverse an organization is unlikely to burn out 100% of its employees.

<comment><USER16> Yeah. This was striking to me, too. The article delegitimizes burnout as being only the result of dysfunctional coping strategies. There is no exploitation of labor? There are no dysfunctional organizations? Any job is potentially fulfilling?

For better or for worse, capitalism is alienating; It disregards human value and replaces it with the economic value of labor. Pretending that that isn't the case, that labor in service of another for wages is the proper and normal condition of human beings, will help no one either adapt to this unnatural set of conditions or understand how to work at a societal level to ameliorate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I burned out around six years ago, due to constant insults, being shouted at, sworn at, criticisms (not constructive or analytical in any shape or form), taking the blame for other people's mistakes, threats of being "blacklisted", threats of violence, being treated like a retard, developing an awful cough due to the amount of dust on the premises and the disgusting hypocrisy and double standards practised by many of my co-workers. After eight months of work, I could count the number of positive remarks about my work that I had received on one hand with fingers to spare. The number of "incidents" would require roughly 80 or more pairs of hands to tally.

I don't think I fall under any category mentioned in the article, I will furnish myself with a new category: "burnout by feeling terrorised".

From my experience reporting these incidents to an outside authority is pointless, the usual response is "well everyone has problems at work". Do not give them a soundbite of what insults/threats you have endured, you might spend the night in a prison cell.

From the article:

> _Treatments that include emotion regulation, increased cognitive > flexibility, and mindfulness may help ward off burnout in susceptible > individuals, suggests the research team led by Jesus Montero Marin of the > University of Zaragoza in Spain._

After being released from this job, the only thing I diagnosed about myself was: "I try too hard to be understanding and sympathetic of others". If you find yourself in this situation, my treatment would be: if the tactics of your enemy are more effective than yours, copy and adapt them to make your swords sharper.

<comment><USER18> > if the tactics of your enemy are more effective than yours, copy and adapt > them to make your swords sharper

If you start copying the enemy's tactics, they have a way of making it look like you started it. Ultimately they are hypocrites who manage their public image to look good while they themselves do the exact opposite. If they're putting bugs in the code to generate money-making after-hours calls, then they'll accuse you of doing it. If they're bullying you, they'll very quickly and loudly call you the bully if you reciprocate in any way. Although they're monitoring you closely, they'll soon notice and single you out if you try it on them. They'll then present the publicly visible aspects of their own harassment as a proportional response to yours, hiding the full extent of their own, the fact they started it, and how tolerant you were of them at first. Because of the legal situation they made sure you were in, your only choice was to walk away. You don't just _decide_ to copy and adapt their tactics one day - the enemy have spent their entire lives honing their own skills in hypocrisy, bullying, whitewashing, and fleecing you of money.

<comment><USER17> > _If you start copying the enemy 's tactics, they have a way of making it > look like you started it._

Not merely copy, copy then adapt. I think they were not aware of the hypocrisy, merely highlighting it is often enough to stop people in their tracks.

> _If they 're putting bugs in the code to generate money-making after-hours > calls, then they'll accuse you of doing it._

It wasn't a software house, it was an optometrist. They were passing off another optometrist's varifocals as their own. If they were caught, it would be impossible to accuse me of doing it. I worked in the front office dealing with paperwork, I am not optically trained (it's equivalent to studying medicine) and I was not involved in purchases, only sales.

> _If they 're bullying you, they'll very quickly and loudly call you the > bully if you reciprocate in any way. Although they're monitoring you > closely, they'll soon notice and single you out if you try it on them._

Who said I was going to resort to bullying, I'm referring to _implicit blackmail_ , level out the field. Suggest the possibility via suitable questions and rhetoric, but never mention it directly. Regarding any kind of monitoring, the higher ups weren't monitoring the workplace effectively, which is partly why this kind of behaviour occurred. The surfacing section at the back of the building was highly inefficient and the problem was rarely discussed, let alone addressed. There were several people who didn't do any work at all, that's mental inefficiency. I was once asked to keep quiet regarding some of my co-workers drinking beer on site. The higher ups would smoke cigarettes inside the building, again asked to keep quiet (smoking indoors at work was banned in Britain the previous year, and the place was stocked with gallons of methanol and white spirit, BOOM).

> _They 'll then present the publicly visible aspects of their own harassment > as a proportional response to yours, hiding the full extent of their own, > the fact they started it, and how tolerant you were of them at first._

One colleague used to shout "FUCK OFF" at me on average three to four times a day, in front of a dozen witnesses. Not everybody at that place was a cunt, some of them were cool. Sometimes the phone was left off the hook, so his bad behaviour had been heard by the customers on several occasions. There is simply too much evidence lying around.

> _You don 't just decide to copy and adapt their tactics one day - the enemy > have spent their entire lives honing their own skills in hypocrisy, > bullying, whitewashing, and fleecing you of money._

In this case, the enemy was incredibly retarded. Another colleague once asked me to spell "claustrophobia" when she was sitting in front of a computer connected to the internet. One of the delivery men thought that the computer wasn't connected to the internet.

Oh, here's the best bit. I once saw a photograph of the marketing manager sporting black face paint, a wig and a garish looking poncho (he was dressed as a rasta, he looked fucking stupid), snorting cocaine. With hindsight, I wish I had just grabbed it and run to one of their customers down the road.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It sure seems like most tech jobs would only need therapy as a means of last resort. Keeping a mindful eye towards burnout and adjusting your response to it based on the type seems like solid advice.

I see it as:

1\. The complainer: sit down and negotiate a way that person can make a bigger impact that's measurable

2\. The avoider: simply try to get this person to do something they are excited about

3\. The worn-out individual: this person probably just needs a bit of regular recognition (and no overtime)

Personally, I find way more people in categories 1 and 2, though category 3 definitely happens in startup land where people work way too much and only see the mountain in front of them is never getting smaller.

Of course I'm being a bit of an armchair manager, but it seems like a fairly decent starting point.

</comment><comment><USER18> > Organizations that want to keep their employees happy and productive may > begin to invest in the fight against burnout by helping employees find > accessible, affordable therapies for coping with stress.

Sounds like an advert peddling employee training sessions in stress management to employers who want to cover their arses legally while continuing to require their workers to, say, carry their mobile phones around at all times to field calls at, say, 3 in the morning to fix problems that wouldn't have happened if the bosses had invested more resources in making sure after-hours problems didn't happen in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER20> As a developer, on top of 8 to 9 hours of work, I spend 1 to 2 hours reading technical books and coding on a usual weekday. Weekends too are spent on working on side projects. I can do this now as a twenty something, but in my 30s and 40s when there are wife and kids, I am not sure if this is viable.

Are there vocations that doesn't require constant deliberate self-improvement? I can understand casually reading up on books and papers to catch up once in a while, but the expectations imposed on developers to always solve problems, learn completely new tools, frameworks and languages seems undoable for me in the long run.

<comment><USER21> It's not viable now, yet you still do it. What will change is that you realize it's not viable. It an abuse inherent in our society and culture that the naive are taken advantage of and exploited by society as a whole, driven by the exponential advantages a few gain from the exploitation of 99% of the rest of us. The only thing that trickles down is the fraud of a ponzi/pyramid scheme. Many people don't realize that our whole society is far more like a ponzi/pyramid scheme than not. Sure, you and I are at various levels of the top tier of that ponzi/pyramid scheme, but even we don't realize the un- realized gains due to us that are being pilfered by those above us on that pyramid. We are just happy we get what we got, which is more than those below us, so we feel good in spite of being defrauded, robbed, and stolen from.

If it wasn't about exploitation then our society would shift towards "performance" based work and lower work hours per week with more free time for family, life, and happiness; but all regular people get when they are productive and efficient is more and more work because there is "always someone willing to work harder"...as the wealthy who employ those people who cause that dynamic tell us. The exploitation comes in the lack of limits and boundaries, our wealthy dealers keep telling us we should do more and try a different drug. It's a rather archetypal form of abuse, nothing is good enough and the bar keeps moving higher and higher and is always just out of reach, like that carrot leading a mule on a plow.

I suggest you might want to consider doing what most do, just enough not to get fired and spend all that energy you have to develop your freedom and liberty from the rat-race and maybe even do it in such a manner that allows you to offer that opportunity to others you employ.

Unfortunately, that is rather diametrically opposed to the interests of the YCombinator and VC symbiotic...parasitic???....relationship, but when you are beholden to someone else who draws 20 ... 30 ... 40 ... 50% of your efforts, gains, and profits.....you can never achieve freedom and liberty. There are frequently warnings of schemes that require you to pay or buy into something, what else are many ...most???... of these VC and incubator programs? Maybe slightly better versions? But they still promise you connections and entry into an otherwise closed community they helped build a fence around.

<comment><USER22> I think your view while mostly valid, is too simplistic in regards to the role of VCs.

The relationship between a VC and an entrepreneur is symbiotic, not parasitic. The VC has collected extra cash he wants to risk to produce good returns on. The entrepreneur wants to build a business but does not have the funds to see it through the growth phase on his/her own. The two of you can get together to produce something that neither of you could have done individually. Each getting a slice of a pie that would not have existed if you had not worked together.

<comment><USER21> I actually see it as being rather simplistic to assume it's a symbiotic relationship instead of a parasitic one. Parasites can often implement methods to make themselves attractive or initiate the parasitic relationship, precisely, because it is mostly in their own main interest.

We just recently saw the owner of the Klippers expose that same relationship, just because something is on a far larger scale, does not mean that it is any less the same thing underlying it. Yes, _some_ founders get insanely wealthy, but the VCs get even wealthier because they have fine-tuned a formula of exploitation and manipulation. Yes, a lot of investments they make go bust, but that's why they take an arm and a leg and a pound of flesh while they're at it. They are essentially diversifying their investments, but they are also profiteering from a huge arbitrage opportunity. They are essentially trading in the inefficiencies of the market because that is risk they don't want to burden and don't really actually want to do any work to do due diligence to find the good investments. They are in the business of statistical investment..... the more money you throw at it, the higher the likelihood of hitting the bulls eye....simply based on statistical probability.

That is of course offset by various other revenue streams because the scale is not frequent enough to base it purely on statistical probability, but that is the core.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Burnout for me was a self propelling entity. I'd work 12 hours a day, but not get anything done. So i'd work 16 hours a day. Not get anything done. I was depressed, unmotivated, unwashed, my personal life was falling apart, and my professional life was falling apart. The worst part is I didn't actually diagnose it as burn out until I got out of the company.

</comment><comment><USER24> Fascinating. I must be worn out and bored. Huh, I think I already knew that. But linking specific behaviors to it is good. Maybe if I take some time off and find something new to do, I won't be worn out and bored.

</comment><comment><USER25> Burnout is damage from prolonged stress. Stress happens when an organism faces demands beyond its sustainable capabilities to meet. All stress implies a recovery period, because the stress involves digging into reserves.

I don't think the exact varieties of stress really matter all that much. It's all just a matter of too much stress over time.

I think stress levels can be measured pretty well via biomarkers. Waking body temperature tracks cortisol and adrenalin (higher is better). Resting heart rate (higher is better) and heart rate variability are useful to track. I find when my waking temperature is below 97F it is clearly warning that I am burning out. If possible I might spend a day or two without leaving the couch or thinking about anything.

Athletes track this stuff and back off training accordingly to manage stress. I don't think work/career stress is essentially different from athletic training. It's just that so much white collar work stress is psychological and not obviously quantifiable.

</comment><comment><USER26> You know what burnout feels like? It feels like dropping everything you're doing, everything you were hoping to achieve, packing a small bag, and flying away to a different continent for a few months.

Burnout is when working at a YC startup during YC feels like a vacation. When waking up at 10am and coding until 10pm feels like _rest_. That's burnout.

You do not fuck with burnout.

<comment><USER27> No, this is not burnout. This is overworking. Burnout is when you have zero _interest_ in touching your keyboard, let alone spending 12 hours coding.

<comment><USER26> Well I wasn't really so much burned out from working as I was from "startupping". So doing just coding was pretty relaxing in comparison.</comment></comment></comment>


Extreme haunted house McKamey Manor is a torture chamber, petition says - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/10/30/an-extreme-haunted-house-requires-page-waiver-critics-say-its-torture-chamber/ <comment><USER2> Its supposed to be more of a mental endurance challenge than a haunted house. A lot of people that try it are either people that run their own extreme haunted houses (which are generally nothing like this one) or people into extreme sports or other challenges that somewhat replicate intense military training similar to special forces selection. The guy claims some actual special forces people have gone through it. From the videos and the vague descriptions it sounds like a SERE school simulator with the exception that in this case they keep going until you quit and then you get sent home, whereas in SERE school you definitely "lose" over and over again, but they fully intend for people to make it through. Also at the manor in addition to the SERE like torture they seem to focus a lot on making people eat gross stuff or do gross things kind of like fear factor.

To sign up you have to watch at least 3 hours of videos and then go through an intense interview process. Don't know if its true but the guy claims that they tell you everything that they are going to do to you before you start.

Its not for me but unless they are lying about the way it works it seems like its impossible to not know what you're getting yourself into.

</comment><comment><USER3> > The cost of admission is a bag of dog food for McKamey's five dogs.

> McKamey said he has invested more than $1 million in the attraction,

Something doesn't add up there. Also there seems to be a miles long wait list.

</comment><comment><USER4> This guy and his haunted house were covered in "Dark Tourist" (Netflix). The whole thing seemed more brutal than scary (at least in the traditional sense of "haunted").

I did get the impression participants were pretty well informed about what they were getting into though.

</comment><comment><USER5> So Im sitting here hacking away in Emacs. How does this help me?

<comment><USER6> You should feel relief that you are only hacking in emacs and not paying to be tortured by a psychic.

<comment><USER7> M-x doctor could help in this instance, no doubt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yeah... not sure what to make of this. Almost reads like an April Fools' article.

I just can't imagine a person who would want to take part in this, nor a person who would want to run it... Then again people intentionally eat ghost peppers etc. so ya never know.

<comment><USER8> Reminds me of the Death Jockeys in _The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect._

<comment><USER6> lol yep. Incidentally I happen to be reading that right now 0_0

<comment><USER9> Look behind you... OOGA BOOGA

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's torture 100%

Very graphic: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euy_71_nvCw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euy_71_nvCw)

<comment><USER11> Wow. So you're letting someone beat you up for a chance at $20k.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sound like an ad for the movie 'Haunt'? That's exactly the script

</comment><comment><USER13> This had got recent attention in the mainstream media. I went down the rabbit hole of reading about McKamey Manor a couple years ago. It's very very strange and somethings don't add up.

</comment><comment><USER14> Created an account to de-lurk and comment.

McKamey is an actual maniac, the entire extreme haunt community hates him, and he is a piece of shit. He makes the entire community look bad, and he's the one that gets all of the press because bizarre sells. People need to stop outrage-promoting him, full stop.</comment>


In Favor of Price Gouging? - <AUTHOR> http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/in-favor-of-price-gouging/

<comment><USER2> I have long felt that anti-gouging laws are misguided fix to a problem. The best example I have heard is a story of three college kids who lived outside the strike-zone of a tornado. They rented a refrigerator truck, and some chainsaws then filled the truck with bags of ice. Because the roads were in such bad shape, and they had to keep cutting down trees that were in their way it took the group the better part of a day to make it into the town center. However once they got there they started selling the bags of ice for about double what ice would normally cost.

As more and more people heard about the ice a long line formed in front of the truck. As the story was described to me most people would get to the front of the line and when they heard the price the people would complain that the students were gouging but still ask for 3-4 bags of ice. Eventually the town's police came, locked the truck and arrested the students for price-gouging.

All this did was prevent the people who were waiting for the ice to not be able to get any at all. Additionally since people, even people who complained about the high price, still bought multiple bags it was obviously worth buying to them at that price, and as more people outside realized they could make money they would be more likely to bring in even more ice, reducing the shortage. Contrarily if the students knew that they would only be able to charge the normal price for a bag of ice they would never have bought any and the shortage would have been worse. If your mother needed ice for her Diabetes meds wouldn't you rather pay $8 for a bag of ice than not be able to get any at any price?

Incidentally this story came from an episode of Russ Robert's Podcast EconTalk www.econtalk.org that was released about a year and one half ago. If anyone wants to know more specifically I can check just ask, but regardless if economics interests you I highly recommend the podcast.

TL;DR: "price gouging" is actually an effective way to help alleviate shortages, especially in disaster zones where there is little or none of a necessity such as ice, available.

</comment><comment><USER3> By allowing the price of water to go up, it would encourage more people from outside to fulfill the increased demand. By limiting prices, the government is not just telling sellers they can't sell a product at a higher price, they are telling people that they cannot buy something they are willing to pay for. Prices are a very efficient way to allocate scarce resources, in this case potable water.

</comment><comment><USER4> Isn't price gouging just one of the (albeit extreme) consequences of the market? Supply plummets, demand skyrockets.

</comment><comment><USER5> Spot on, reminds me about this story:

[http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1954352&page...](http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1954352&page=1)

Synopsis - guy from Kentucky buys 19 generators and rents a uhaul to go and sell them 600 miles away in Mississippi during Katrina. People line up to buy them because all the stores are sold out. Police arrest the man and confiscate the generators. This guy was doing his 19 potential customers a gigantic service and only wanted 100% return on investment, he probably could have sold them for more than that, but instead NO ONE gets a generator. Absolutely asinine, the guy is a hero not a criminal.

<comment><USER6> That's a pretty good description of Soviet Union you have here.</comment></comment>