Mass grave in Poland embodies the violent beginning of the Bronze Age - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/05/mass-grave-in-poland-embodies-the-violent-beginning-of-the-bronze-age/ <comment><USER2> We are all standing on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of some {mostly unidentified} people.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure that this is true in some parts of Europe. Some of the inhabitants of those places are descended from the people that first inhabited it when the ice sheets pulled back.

<comment><USER4> Which places? I would imagine this might be true of e.g. basque people but even in cases where you can draw a clear cultural/linguistic lineage, that doesn't mean that population has actually remained genetically distinct / free from admixture in that time. Which isn't a bad thing, but I think it makes the claim to direct lineage not really true.

The only example I can think of that might fit the bill are the Sami. But I'm not an expert on Sami genetics or history. There's also the issue where you know people in an area may have been living a certain way of life for tens of thousands of years, but without ancient dna, how do you recognize an invading culture that left similar archaeological artifacts (like evidence of reindeer herding) but was genetically/linguistically distinct?

<comment><USER5> Sardinia too, at least in the highlands. The Basques and the Sardinians are very closely related: the PIE-speaker conquest basically never touched them. (~10% Steppe ancestry, with ~0% in some inland villages.) Unlike Basque, though, the neolithic Sardinian language didn't survive --- except in a few place names.

<comment><USER4> Interesting, I would have thought that the Sardinians would have more mixed ancestry after the Carthaginians/Romans interacted with them. I was aware that they had an ancient culture but not that it was non-PIE

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Unfortunately Poland still is positioned in an area where enemy can come from any direction (and they have - Russia, Germany, Austira, Sweden etc) and it sucks geopolitically.

<comment> village-idiot One of the running jokes of the Revolutions podcast is that to truly understand the history of the X revolution, first you must understand Poland. He keeps saying this because events in Poland triggered some surprisingly weird outcomes Europe wide, including arguably helping turn the French Revolution from a domestic affair to a continent wide war.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's said that "the past is a foreign country". It's also an incredibly violent one.

There's been this undercurrent in archaeology and historiography since the 1960s that interprets the past as a successful of peaceful cultural, technological, and linguistic diffusions and that downplays evidence of conquest, force, and violence. For example, an archaeological belonging to this school that chanced across a layer of an ancient fortress festooned with skulls, arrowheads, and soot would present that layer as evidence of some kind of funerary ceremony instead of applying Occam's razor and suspecting a conquest and sack. It's infuriating.

Reading recent papers on ancient Rome (a personal interest of mine), I find myself stopping, sighing, and saying almost out loud, "Those Germans just moved into the empire as good neighbors? The name 'Vandal' got its connotation for no reason at all? The contemporary historians were just lying propagandists and we can dismiss everything they wrote? Really, dude?". Or, "Indo-European languages replaced almost all indigenous European languages because... cultural diffusion? Before writing? Okay dude." I could go on and on on. These "[migration of] pots not people" people apply the same lens to _everything_, and it's super annoying: what they claim runs counter to what everyone knows deep down is true about human nature.

Fortunately, this "[migration of] pots not people" is no longer tenable. Ancient DNA has opened up a world of new evidence --- see [1] and [2]. As it turns out, As it turns out, intuitions of the early anthropologists like Gordon Childe --- whom these 1960s-era "pots not people" have not rested from attempting it discredit --- were right after all. Conan the Barbarian is a pretty fair depiction. What you see in the genetic record is wave after wave after wave of conquest and slaughter. Some Y chromosome lineages disappear entirely, while the X chromosome ones survive --- indicating that conquerors (as everyone suspected) basically killed off all the men and took all the women. This pattern is attested in historical times in Asian steppe cultures [3], and there's no reason to suspect that pre-historic cultures operated any differently. Turns out, they didn't.

The reason Europe speaks Indo-European languages isn't that the ancient inhabitants thought that Proto-Indo-European was neat and adopted it --- it's that the PIE-speaking Yamnaya swept in from the caucuses and slaughtered mostly everyone (especially men) except the Basques. It's not pretty, but that's the way it was.

Moreover, it's important to realize that we all have the latent potential for barbarism inside us. We've been at peace for so long --- almost 75 years --- that we've forgotten that man's natural state is "war of all against all" and that peace is incredibly fragile. Downplaying ancient violence encourages present complacency and endangers our present peace.

[1] [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03773-6](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03773-6) [2] [https://www.bbc.com/news/science- environment-43701630](https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43701630) [3] [https://www.amazon.com/Genghis-Khan-Making-Modern-World- eboo...](https://www.amazon.com/Genghis-Khan-Making-Modern-World- ebook/dp/B000FCK206/)

<comment><USER7> > The reason Europe speaks Indo-European languages isn't that the ancient > inhabitants thought that Proto-Indo-European was neat and adopted it --- > it's that the PIE-speaking Yamnaya swept in from the caucuses and > slaughtered mostly everyone (especially men) except the Basques. It's not > pretty, but that's the way it was.

This is ridiculous statement. Yes, there must have been conquests and slaughters in history and many other man made disasters. Some of the conquerors had been multiplying faster because they had been taking better lands from conquered or because they had better agricultural techniques.

But the idea that each coming wave had been perpetrating Holocaust on the entire territory of Europe is simply technically impossible.

Much more likely is that after some violent conquest there were periods of assimilation, mixing of cultures and single language becoming a common tongue.

<comment><USER8> Well, it seems to be mostly true for (north)America. Not much left of the native inhabitants. Must feel like a holocaust to them. Similarly for Australia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> OK, yes - the humans' entire past has been incredibly violent. But hey, even now we are not far behind, are we? (And, by the way, you can't possibly invent something horrible that can be done to a person that hasn't already been done, many times over.)

<comment><USER10> You can't? How about being thrown naked out of an airlock into space? That's pretty horrible, but nobody's done it yet.

I guess it comes down to how picky you want to be with "no, that's similar enough to XYZ that's been done before", but finding new stuff is _easy_!

<comment><USER11> But you didn't just invent that - the idea of an airlock death is building on at least a hundred years of prior art here.</comment></comment></comment>


Radiation Dosage Visualization - <AUTHOR> http://blog.xkcd.com/2011/03/19/radiation-chart/

<comment><AUTHOR> The current events angle is nice to have, but I'm at least as interested in the new-to-me way Randall organizes the information in the chart.

</comment><comment><USER2> Very nice, easy to read, and provides a good visual reference for relative scale.</comment>


Non-Apology Apology - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-apology_apology <comment><USER2> We could reduce their occurrence by demanding less apologies of people

<comment><USER3> Or if people took more responsibility for their actions.

<comment><USER2> I'm not suggesting people shouldn't take responsibility for their actions.

I'm suggesting that no adult should apologize for anything unless it's sincere.</comment></comment></comment>


M 7.1 SoCal Earthquake: What's Next? - <AUTHOR> http://temblor.net/earthquake-insights/m-7-1-socal-earthquake-triggers-aftershocks-up-to-100-mi-away-whats-next-9055/ <comment><USER3> One thing I noticed is that when the US talks about earthquakes, it often only notes the seismic magnitude value of the quake and doesn't always mention the seismic intensity scale values of the affected locations. This is in contrast to Japan where quakes are almost always mentioned in both magnitude and the Japan Meteorological Agency's "shindo" intensity scale [1], eg. "The 2011 Tohoku Earthquake was a M9.0 quake with a maximum intensity of shindo 7." The US does have the equivalent of the JMA shindo scale - the Modified Mercalli (MM) scale [2], and they do seem to be used, but I see the MM values mentioned much less frequently than how both the Japanese agencies and the general public refers to shindo values.

While the magnitude value signifies the overall energy of the quake, intensity scale values indicate the shaking intensity of a given location; hence, it feels more grounded in one's daily life experiences. Many Japanese individuals have developed an approximate sense of how strong a quake is - <USER2> like "That was a bit big, somewhere around shindo 4?" are common after quakes. People do of course care about magnitude, but the thing they care most about after a big quake is more likely "what was the seismic intensity in the worst- hit area?"

Any idea why intensity scales seem to be much less common in the US?

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Meteorological_Agency_se...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Meteorological_Agency_seismic_intensity_scale)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_Mercalli_intensity_sc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_Mercalli_intensity_scale)

<comment><USER4> I haven't lived in seismic areas much, but I was in central LA for both of these quakes. I was hoping for a simple Richter*distance (or d^.5, whatever may be appropriate) value to be reported. I realize that real effects are multivariate, but wouldn't that at least provide the maximum possible effects to report a magnitude-distance metric? Bc for a few million people I think the quake felt like a strong spin cycle in the next room , but we were told it was the biggest in decades.

<comment><USER5> Yeah really depends one distance and local conditions. And sometime 'micro' local conditions.

Friend of mine that lived in Oakland during the 89 earthquake mentioned seeing a 'line' of damaged buildings that snaked through a neighborhood. One or two houses on a block were wrecked. The houses across the street were also wrecked. Houses next to them were fine. Go the next street over same thing.

He thinks that line followed an old creek bed that developers filled in. So those houses were built on mud overlain with poorly compacted fill. During the earthquake the mud liquefied and sloshed around and the fill settled.

Flip side, friend in the Santa Cruz mountains a couple of miles from the epicenter. His house is built on top of a hard shale outcrop. His house suffered no damage at all.

<comment><USER6> The weakness of poor fill was also demonstrated by the collapse of row houses in the Marina district of SF.

One striking effect was the _directionality_ of the damaging waves. Bookcases and such that were perpendicular to the waves from the hypocenter went over; those that were parallel were fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The writing and research following this quake series has again underscored for me both a) how little we actually know about predicting earthquakes b) and how frustrating that is. You can read every article out there about the things, and each one ends with, roughly, _shrug_. As somebody who derives a sense of control from knowledge, it's extra terrifying to have something with such a huge potential impact on me completely in the dark.

<comment><USER8> I don't see the point worrying about things outside of your control. Solar storms, nuclear war, infectious diseases, asteroids, any number of other unknown natural phenomena we know nothing about. Mitigate what you can, try to help others, but accept that at the end of the day, you (and the rest of humanity) are most likely inconsequential in the story of the universe.

<comment><USER9> I'm just a casual ham radio operator, military history hobbyist, amateur health science researcher, and I know a tiny bit about space. But it seems the four types of disasters you mention have been studied and measured in depth, with the result bring great impact on our vulnerability to them. Is this not so, and should we not continue improving our measurement (control) systems?

<comment><USER8> We should strive to improve our model of the universe, but I was specifically responding to the notion of being "terrified" by the person I responded to. I think am not terrified by it because I've accepted that there are always any number of risks that can wipe me out, known and unknown.

<comment><USER10> You conclude that infectious disease is "out of your control"?

<comment><USER11> > I'm saying no point in being worried about it.

(sorry there is no reply option for lots of pulp).

Isn't worry the one human emotion that actually makes us ready for things. If we had an earthquake 1000 years ago that killed half of society and the people just said, damn oh well. They don't do things the same way after that do they? They change design, learn more about the planet, adjust adjust adjust. All of that is driven by worry.

<comment><USER8> Perhaps worry is not the right word, as the person I initially responded to had used the word "terrified". As in I wouldn't dwell on things out of my control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The scale of geological time never ceases to impress:

"There was plenty of accumulated stress, enough to permit a quake with 3 m (10 ft) of slip. That suggests that one can, indeed, have aftershocks 150 years after very large mainshocks"

<comment><USER13> What I don't get is how is a quake which happens on a disconnected and different fault (heretofore unknown) an aftershock of a previous quake (which occurred over 100 years ago)?

I looks like quakes are on a continuum. The extremes are, each quake is an individual event; on the other all quakes are a result and continuation of previous quakes. It seems like the slider position on the continuum is up to a bit of "interpretation".

<comment><USER14> As a person that knows nothing about this subject, that's the impression I got as well. The tectonic plates are constantly moving, so of course earthquakes in one place will often cause stress in another place. Understanding this process is certainly important, though.

<comment><USER12> I think it's closer to being a constant chain of reactions than otherwise - because the earth has so much heat and magma below its crust.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I live in SoCal and can't believe the amount of attention this has gotten, literally world wide. Am I underestimating the importance or is it just a slow news cycle?

</comment><comment><USER16> '...nothing at the ground surface had given this fault away before it fired off the quake. Some of the world's best field geologists had scoured this area for the past 50 years...'

</comment><comment><USER17> If you can don your anti-quackery bio hazard suit, the youtube channel Dutchsinse is entertaining for his forecast of earthquake locations. His guesses involve following trends along tectonic boundaries on a globe scale. One of the things I've heard him say that I've not heard elsewhere is the implied correlation between geothermal pumping operations near the latest epicenter and crust weakness. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj6Vj4TOtx4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj6Vj4TOtx4)

<comment><USER18> Eek. The content is interesting, but the channel's style and sound effects are just too much for me. Same problem I have with "Mad Money".

<comment><USER17> I agree, too much VHS-iness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I can't speak to the merits of this article, but the tone is a bit sensationalist, especially the conclusion, and then they link to some commercial entities to help you prepare for doom. It makes me dismiss the entire article as a fear-mongering advertisement.

</comment><comment><USER20> Interesting a non-peer-reviewed study is released quickly on web.

However Dr Stein is one of my Stanford classmates and computing earthquake stress changes for 30 years. So I would believe this study.</comment>


West Coast vs. East Coast: April Fools' Day in Internet startup culture - <AUTHOR> http://www.cenedella.com/job-search/west-coast-vs-east-coast-april-fools-day-in-internet-startup-culture/

<comment><USER2> I suspect it has something to do with what is locally defined by the culture as the 'successful' person.

In the Bay area (not the 'west coast') the local culture embraces the 'millionaire nerd.' Part of the archetype for this person is they are a 'kid at heart' and may dress poorly, have star wars action figures on their mantle, and spend hours discussing the finer points of some new videogame.

In NYC (not the East Coast) the local culture embraces the successful banker. The archetype of this person is a wizard with finance who understands how to convert a concept into a 35% margin. They court 'high net worth' individuals and corporations who, to a large degree, manage their outward facing image as part of their brand. They are acutely conscious of being at the 'right' charity events, wearing the 'right' clothes, and hanging out with the 'right' people.

People who want to be successful in New York don't do April Fools pranks because it wouldn't project the serious 'brand' they want to build, people who are successful don't do them because the realize just how much they depend on their brand as part of their success and it makes no financial sense to risk that with some goofy prank.

People in the Bay Area have seen billionaires hanging out with people in clothes they bought at Sears, seeing if they can use a mentos-coke fountain to knock over a trash can. Clearly the meme for them is "I don't care how stupid this makes me look, I'm all about the fun." For them doing an April Fools prank is just another way to have fun.

If you look around at who is successful in an area and their image in the general media you can probably guess if they will have any interest in participating in an April Fools prank.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting observation - I think there are a number of factors at play here...

In my world (Business development/partnerships), I've noticed a diff between west coast and east coast (really Bay area vs. non). The west coast guys are less interested about getting money for BD deals than the east coast guys are. I wonder if that is partially playing out here too... the west coast guys have more money so they can spend their time with pranks (note- we did one too and we're in Chicago)

Could be way overthinking it though.

Another point - I noticed that some of our peers in Chicago did April Fools jokes but they didn't take over the homepage, they were just blogposts that were likely never read.</comment>


Coping with context-switching madness - <AUTHOR> http://kreeben.tumblr.com/post/124222419141/coping-with-context-switching-madness <comment><USER2> I've been at this game professionally for over 30 years and still struggle to switch context, and now the memory isn't as sharp as it once was.

I can have several projects on the go at one time, and need to provide technical support to various customers "on-demand". My coping strategies are:

I context switch as little as possible and try to spend at least a solid day on each project. Of course the support calls scupper this when they come in.

I've persuaded my boss to either email, or save up all his attention-breaking calls into a single one each day.

I have a text file for each project into which I log what I'm doing and why. You probably know what it's like to be several levels down your stack, "in the zone", when a call comes in. By adding just a line or two, indented, I can quickly recover where I was. eg:

      Starting to build routine XYZ
        Need to add new table ABC to database
          User will need maintenance for that. ToDo.
            Ask Joe to add it to testing. done.
        Table added.
        Create AA class
          Need a new SQL view for that
          Created view
            If this gets more complex in future, consider changing to an SP.
          Added to deployment file
        Would this class be better split?
          That would make for better design, but time is limited now
            Not convinced UserView belongs in here...

... RING... RING... aggghhhh... mental construct collapses in a heap.

I also add comments in there about ideas, changes, problems. If I don't get to pick the project back up for a week or two, I can read the last few dozen lines and get back to where I was. It's also invaluable for recalling why something was done or not, and what else was considered. Using a simple text file allows a bunch of projects to be "grepped" for specific key words very quickly.

</comment><comment><USER3> To the OP, you are definitely not alone. PG had a good article on the difference between a managers schedule and a programmers schedule [1] (Interrupt driven vs Focus driven).

Unfortunately as you become more responsible for the management of your peers and projects, you will experience this problem more and more. Some people cope by having a context switching role during office hours and after hours get a good 1 or 2 hours of solid dev work in, others book their own time out, and close their door signaling they are unavailable. Unfortunately this isn't always possible, you'll always get colleagues / clients that still bash your door to get some time with you.

But being in this transition phase between the two worlds is definitely one of the biggest challenges every dev faces. Best of luck.

One thing though, having more personnel will not solve this problem, only make it worse, as you now will have even more people reporting to you and which you have to keep busy.

[1] [http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html)

<comment><USER4> I don't know. Even since I was a student developer for companies there were always at least three topics at any given focus that needed at least some share of my attention. PG's suggested stretches of time where I could just do one thing are very small and very small to realise. In a great world one would have such a schedule, but if you don't code alone you will always be interrupted. At least that's my experience up to now.

<comment><USER5> It really depends on where you work. I worked one place where communication was biased heavily in favor of e-mail, with the understanding that it was less intrusive than other forms of communication.

There was not exactly a _ban_ on interrupting developers, but there was a culture against it (and there were things that were explicitly always okay to interrupt a developer for; e.g. a bug found by a customer).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The act of context-switching itself is tiring so the trick is to keep the amount of context-switching you do to a minimum.

For example, during brief idle times (e.g. while you're waiting for something to download/upload/compile), don't do stuff that requires you to concentrate hard.

If you do, you're effectively "unloading" the previous context from your brain and replacing it with something else (e.g. dealing with email). Then, when the thing finishes downloading/uploading/compiling, you have to "reload" the original context. That's two context-switches that you don't really need to do.

I used to be a trader, which requires a _lot_ of high-pressure, high-focus context-switching, most of it interrupt-driven. During brief downtimes, we wouldn't try to get something else done - we'd let our brains relax by goofing off, talking about crap/sports/girls/whatever, shooting Airzooka or Nerf guns at one another, playing practical jokes, giving one another shit, etc.

That sort of stuff doesn't require a context switch in your brain because you don't have to concentrade - you just let your brain relax (like letting a CPU sleep while it's waiting for input). When a work-related interrupt arrives, you just drop the goofing off and concentrate on work stuff again.

It may sound like you're wasting time by not filling every minute of the day with productive work but, overall, you'll probably be more productive because, althought you're spending less time actually working, the quality of your work will be higher. Plus, you won't feel as exhausted at the end of the day/week.

<comment><USER7> I was a programmer many years ago and always had music on when working. It wasn't pumping / awesome music but it allowed me to drop back from the concentration of work into the music for a short while then get straight back into work. I wouldn't lose my attention and it game by brain 30 seconds of down time. People are different, but that works really well for my. My role is now more 'interrupt driven' and I really don't like it, people get the hump when I make them wait 10 seconds stood at my desk seemingly being ignored as I finish the micro task.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've solved this problem by adapting the algorithm from a journaling filesystem to my real life.

[http://faq.sealedabstract.com/uninterruptible_programming_su...](http://faq.sealedabstract.com/uninterruptible_programming_supply/)

<comment><USER9> Interesting technique. But I cannot help to think that it is good mostly for people who are already good (or at least not that bad) at context switching anyways.

What I mean is that many people, inherently are more chaotic, and over- structuring their lives is counter productive. It could make productivity constant but overall worse.

Thinking about psychology of this, I believe this might be good to "right brained" types, but it would be such a burden for someone who solves problems mainly via extroverted intuition - random thoughts that are generated so quickly and without any structure - you would need to write down something every few seconds basically, forget about actually doing something.

<comment><USER10> I do something similar, and I'm very chaotic, not at all structured. When Im doing something I have my notebook open, if an idea pops into my head I write it down, maybe make a few notes about it, then go back to what I was doing before. Whatever I'm currently working on has a star next to it in the notebook. And once I finish I cross it out (usually). Its not organized like a list, basically just a brain dump. ( Examples of old pages: [http://paste.click/VvnUdA](http://paste.click/VvnUdA) [http://paste.click/RZyWLG](http://paste.click/RZyWLG) [http://paste.click/CsVaoa](http://paste.click/CsVaoa) ) Doing it in a text editor would be just one more thing to get distracted by, and it doesn't really work for the brain-dump/brain-map style, since spatial relations between what I write has significance. This way instead of going off on a tangent I can finish what I'm actually trying to get done, but still keep track of the unrelated ideas/thoughts.

Obviously it won't work for everyone, but it's boosted my productivity massively, and I'm the furthest thing from structured and awful at context switching (Well I'm great at switching, its the switching back that I'm bad at :) )

<comment><USER2> I used to write stuff down, but in my case on sheets of paper that got filed with the project. But I kept thinking "Dammit, I know I've met this problem before, what was the solution?". Doing the same note-taking thing, but using the PC instead of paper, makes it searchable. You're right about the mind-map diagrams though.

<comment><USER10> Yeah I have plenty of pages filled with the project. Not having them searchable is a pain, but every time I've tried to use vim for it, it ends up being a bigger distraction than the ideas themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Big thanks for reading my post. I most definetly have a touch of ADHD (my therapist concludes), I'm anti-social whenever there is room for me to be that, I love the rush of being in the middle of a complex problem, alone in my cathedral, looking, debugging, and slowly reaching a solution, one you intuitively know is right, but I'm quite easily distracted when stressed, and context-switching stresses me out. I'm not always humble, sure, and that's is because I am still influenced by an old world view of mine, one which there exists Neo's and ninjas, but it is slowly being replaced by a more adult view of things. But with all my psychological problems I have still managed to make a career out of my abilities but nowadays that career no longer feel like a good path for me. I'm not loving the stress of being half sys dev and half a PL. I'd prefer skipping the latter if it is at all possible. I think, since I'm not enjoying myself that much, that I should either find a more purified sys dev role at Microsoft, Minecraft or Spotify (are you hiring?), or become a PL, or change my line of work entirely.

</comment><comment><USER11> "I'm tech lead in these projects and I coach two of my colleges, rookies, by using peer programming and code reviews and just by straight up lecturing them, sometimes both arrogantly and with a temper, on naming conventions and object orientation and stacks and heaps and such. A couple of hours each day I sit on my own chair at my own desk and code, you know, implementing requirements, doing the things the customer wants us to do, the acctual work. I love those couple of hours."

This guy sounds like an absolute delight to work for. I wonder how his "colleges" would feel if they read this!

<comment><AUTHOR> My colleges have learned to love me. It's not an instant thing, liking me, but after having apologized on several occasions to the people who's feelings have gotten hurt, well, if they know you're a good person they seem to take some abuse ;) But it's a problem I'm well aware of. However, my arrogance can often be explained by me being completely stressed out by my work situation.

<comment><USER12> Yes, i used to have a boss that would literally shout at me in an open plan office in front of everyone. After a while I realized it was just his style (and I wasn't the only one he shouted at). He was basically a decent guy with some bad habits. His / our boss was the opposite. Came across as a nice guy at first but turned out to be a real c __t.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have ADHD and, consequently, task-switching is one of my more problematic quirks.

Apart from medication, I've found that pair programming has been an absolute _godsend_. Having another engineer next to me helps me to keep coming back to the task. We can recreate context quickly through conversation and as one of us fades, the other can jump in.

It's also helping me to realise more often when I am launching into a tangent, because those tangents will involve me vocalising the fascinating shiny thing that just popped into my head.

That said, the linked post raises a different practice: one story at a time. Context switching should be within the boundaries of a story. If it's too big, break it down.

I'm lucky to work for a company (Pivotal Labs) where this is the accepted way of working.

<comment><USER14> Great tips, I too am a programmer with ADHD.

I have ADHD to thank for my self-education and following career, where by I cannot resist spending hours on things that are highly stimulating, such as the next interesting thing to learn in computing, which is pretty much infinite.

The tragedy is that once something is learned or done so many times it becomes routine and boring. It doesn't provide the same mental stimulation. Unfortunately, in most businesses, the types of problems are almost always in the routine category. This I've found is where my attention faulters.

<comment><USER9> At least to me, symptoms you wrote sound totally normal and not necessary ADHD. Of course since nowadays everything that deviates from common character traits is considered ADHD... You could take a look at MBTI character types and find out that this is very normal for some (e.g. INTP).

<comment><USER13> > _At least to me, symptoms you wrote sound totally normal and not necessary > ADHD._

The diagnosis is sometimes unclear to people without ADHD.

This is why generally it requires a registered psychiatrist to make the diagnosis and prescribe treatment.

People with the "predominantly inattentive" subtype (previously called ADD) typically go undiagnosed for long periods, or indefinitely. I was diagnosed when I was 32.

<comment><USER14> 23 for me - this year in fact! It's somewhat harder for PI adults I think because there's a long trail of failures that are perfect explained through the lens of ADHD-PI. Even harder with vivid long term memory.

All the school reports that say "James could do better if he stopped daydreaming|looking out the window and focused more". I was lucky I that I came out with absolutely decent GCSEs (mostly As and Bs) but unlucky in that I felt shame and now defeat that I could have done much, much better. College was a write-off, I attempted 3 times but gave in after 3 months each time because the stress caused my inastentiveness in lessons made horrendously boring stoked psychosis which landed me in hospital each time.

A lot of my life seems wasted having not known about ADHD-Pi (and of course my parents and educators), except for programming and computers which not only kept me in some degree sane (I could have been worse) but also led me into a job that seems matched to my traits and with a manager that is willing to overlook my big flaws because he thinks my skills with a computer far outweigh them.

What a journey. I say there's enough to write a book but I've just never got round to it...

EDIT: I've just walked head first into a pole just after pressing submit. Sums up my life entirely.

<comment><USER13> I had a very similar experience, right down to the early school reports and scraping by on having a good memory. It took me a decade and three attempts to graduate from university.

I'd just thought I was incurably lazy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> One thing that should be mentioned is that one of the easier ways to avoid interruptions is to simply say "No" more often. As it goes with most simple advice, it's much easier said than done, but delegating tasks better is one skill as a manager that I think must be learned and practiced over time than something that is innate to people in any way.

Unfortunately, it's extremely hard to stop the habits of a bunch of people unless you actually change things enough around them to encourage change.

Becoming a single point of failure as a human resource is no different of a problem to me than neglecting to design your systems for high availability, failover, and sufficient redundancy. Bus factor is something that does matter but people seem to only realize these things are so terrible in hindsight of a disaster. Unfortunately, I've found that most organizations being reactive by nature rather than proactive tend to require disasters in order to have a sufficient shock to their workflows and methodologies.

</comment><comment><USER16> Why not work with your team to develop a well documented process? Having an actual human being as the source of information on naming conventions, etc. seems counter productive. Obviously the constant context-switching is also counter-productive and borderline unhealthy.

It sounds like most of the issues here come down to poor organization and management. If your company embraces the "yes man" culture of trying to keep every client happy all of the time and wouldn't dare tell them that it will be done tomorrow, you'll be in context-switching hell for the life of your job there.

It's interesting to me to see people martyr themselves over a poorly organized or nonexistent process.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it's an organizational issue that I'm the only one in my team with more than 2 years of experience. I was hired just recently. The strategy of having one strong developer in a group of 3-5 (very cheep) juniors is not working out. We are growing painfully fast and the bottleneck is often finding good developers (that will work for peanuts). What I want to achieve here is an agile development team that can work on several projects at a time, i.e. a whiteboard with tasks coming in from several projects and where everyone in the team has knowledge of all parts of the systems.

To me it boils down to this: business men think money can be saved (and quality upheld) by having few or inexperienced developers, if only you manage them properly. I do not.

<comment><USER16> I agree with the business men in theory but not in implementation. It sounds like they're talking out of both sides of their mouths. You can certainly save money and uphold quality if you've invested the time/money in developing a solid process. If you don't spend the time to develop a process and don't spend the money on the people that can manage that chaos, you're going to have a bad time.

Unfortunately that's what this Startup Cowboy Culture seems to embrace. It's more about looking and feeling busy than actually producing any quality results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A coping mechanism I have is to work from home.

Tracking time in-the-moment (as opposed to waiting until the end of the day) also helps.

And having a boss that's been a programmer and is aware of how context switching can hurt productivity.

Context switching bleeds time from the main tasks I'm assigned to. If I'm not tracking my time precisely, making a summary at the end of the day, I'll wonder how I was so unproductive in the span of the day for the given task.

If I measure it in the moment, I'll see all the little interactions that stopped me. This developer asking me a question. QA asking me to look in something that requires investigation. A little fire to put out over here. Things that are too short and resolved to remember.

</comment><comment><USER12> I have now reached the stage where my database and front end app is so central to the running of my organization, that I can hardly get any real development done (I have given up on any features that I expect to take more than a weeks worth of full time coding, as I am bound to be interrupted with something more urgent).

How I can frame that as a positive in job applications? I feel like I am not learning much and becoming a 1 years experience 10 times (well for the last two or three). Everyone seems interested in silly hour and a half coding challenges.

</comment><comment><USER18> I really like those context-switches during my workday, never thought that would be a problem for other people. Thanks for the interesting post.

<comment><USER19> I confess to being shocked by this (v4n4d1s') post

<comment><USER18> Why? Is this really uncommon?

<comment><USER20> You're the first developer I've heard of that says they like context switches.

<comment><USER18> I'm not really a developer anymore :3

Currently I manage a bunch of eLearning and eAssessment services, like a Moodle installation for 25k users, at one of the biggest universities in Switzerland. It's a very heterogenous environment with a shitload of different systems, different tasks and different objectives from all directions.

Context switches keep me awake and my day interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> A bit of humility will do you good.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've just recently learned all the good things that come with being humble. Becoming an adult, but slowly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I reserve 4 hours a day for client queries mainly when they are online. And then shut things off for 8 other hours of coding. 4 hours per client mas/menos.

</comment><comment><USER23> "The Zone" is not as productive as you think. But also being tech lead for two projects is not a good way to live - you can probably stand to be tech lead on one project, or work on two projects at once, but not both. Find someone you trust enough to hand one of the lead positions over to. If no-one is good enough, maybe you need to work on hiring and/or training.

<comment><USER24> What do you mean with "the zone is not as productive"? I recently had the luck to work a few hours from home, undisturbed, alone, in the "zone". It was by far the most productive time i ever had.</comment></comment>


Get the HN you want: follow HN folk with email notifications. - <AUTHOR> http://www.hackerstream.com/

<comment><USER2> The problem with getting a stream of someone's comments is that (unlike blog posts and tweets) comments are not written to stand alone.

One can reduce the problem by always including the parent, but that is often too much or too little context. For a stream of omments to be worth reading really requires some indication of what older comments are necessary to understand any given comment and probably some changes in the habits of comment writers.

And yeah, the inability to make views worth reading of comments by selected authors makes me try to stay away from trees of comments like we see on reddit and HN. (HN however has other things going for it though that offset my dislike of trees of comments.)

<comment><USER3> Yeah. I've tried to make the most of current mores with the 'x more comments' link, which shows all of a comment's parents. What do you think of that?

<comment><USER2> I noticed that link, but did not try it because I was not really paying attention and assumed it was like those links on Reddit or (old) Slashdot that hide low-score comments.

I would have been more likely to try it if the link said, "Show x more comments above," since that phrasing is used on Less Wrong, or, "Show context."

(Trying it now.)

<comment><USER3> Ah, thanks for the pointer to lesswrong!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Don't forget <http://hackerfollow.com/>, it's still up and going strong. No email notifications, but it just works.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd love to get some HN'ers trying this out over the next few days. Here's a little write-up we wrote about why we built it: <http://akkartik.name/blog/2011-05-13-05-47-29-soc>

</comment><comment><USER5> I have seen your ad a number of times when googling for "hacker news". Are you planning to implement some sort of monetization in the future?

<comment><USER3> That's great to hear :) No, no plans for monetization. We're just trying to build a steady little stream of feedback.

Why _do_ you type 'hacker news' into google?

<comment><USER6> hacker news + $article-title

<comment><USER7> Better: site:news.ycombinator.com $article-title

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Out of all the HN interface apps I've tried, this is one has stuck. Enjoy.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the kind words!

<comment><AUTHOR> np. It was actually your post a few days ago that led me to it. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2737779> I started using HS, and I have been enjoying it. -so thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's a shame we can't get an API which gives access to which stories users have upvoted/downvoted and use that to build a better frontpage for ourselves.

<comment><USER3> Well, the HN model has always been that votes are private. We can argue about whether that's a good idea (I don't think so), but it's probably not going to change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Any reason why you don't set the "charset" on your pages? I'm seeing some unknown encoding "question marks". (chrome/mac)

<comment><USER3> Ah, thanks for the bug report. I'll fix things like <http://hackerstream.com/?item=2747279>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just released the news reader which includes hackernews but also Twitter and more <http://jetsli.de> \+ supports geeky features <http://ow.ly/5DMnk>

</comment><comment><USER11> Appears down from the UK at around 11pm BST Sunday, unfortunately!

<comment><USER3> Back now! Sorry about that.</comment></comment>


How BioWare's Anthem Went Wrong - <AUTHOR> https://kotaku.com/how-biowares-anthem-went-wrong-1833731964 <comment><USER2> There's so much here that it's almost impossible to decide what to comment on. The bit about sending the best Frostbite programmers to work on FIFA is pretty damning. EA brass is apparently as boneheaded and old-guard minded as they say.

</comment><comment><USER3> > "I actually cannot count the amount of 'stress casualties' we had on Mass > Effect: Andromeda or Anthem," said a third former BioWare developer in an > email. "A 'stress casualty' at BioWare means someone had such a mental > breakdown from the stress they're just gone for one to three months. Some > come back, some don't."

Those poor developers... absolutely disgusting behavior by Bioware and EA management.

</comment><comment><USER4> Fantastic reporting. We rarely get to see game dev under the microscope, especially for very recent or ongoing projects.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. An insightful look into how company politics, culture, and processes can derail a big project. Very interesting to see a post mortem in the gaming industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wish BioWare could buy back their independence from EA, like Bungie did from Activision.</comment>


Show HN: Visualizing Federal Employee 2012 Salary Data - <AUTHOR> http://www.thegovernmentpaycheck.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> A visualization of the 2012 Federal salary data set posted recently by Enigma.io. I submitted recently to HN, but it didn't get much attention. I've cleaned up a few things and added a median salary/top ten section. All the code is on Github now.</comment>


Yahoo Stock Quotes in Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/doneland/yquotes

<comment><USER2> Does anyone know of any true market data sources that are not delayed, free and open for commercial use?

<comment><USER3> Interactive Brokers has a very robust API, and market data fees are $10/month or free if you spend more than $30 on commissions.

(I'm not affiliated, but I've used their services before and have been happy)

<comment><USER4> _> Interactive Brokers has a very robust API_

IB's API is anything but robust. It is inconsistent, poorly documented, and IB have a history of changing it without notice.

It also requires all communication runs through their client side Java GUI app, which is also prone to a variety of problems.

That said, IB are a very good low cost broker with amazing product breadth. But I would suggest caution if using their data API for anything remotely serious.

<comment><USER5> You can always use FIX if you don't like their API, no?

<comment><USER4> FIX is for execution, market data is still via their API and client software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Have you seen sample code using a JSON API?

Of course.

> Yeah, but have you seen sample code using a json API.... __* IN GO!?!? __*

(mindblown)

[http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1025913/images/o-JON-STEWART- WEED-...](http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1025913/images/o-JON-STEWART-WEED- facebook.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER7> Is this just a Go Wrapper for the Yahoo Finance API?

<comment><USER8> Looks like it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Related: I hacked Quote Stream ([https://github.com/nodesocket/quote- stream](https://github.com/nodesocket/quote-stream)) together a while ago. It pushes real-time quotes (not delayed) from Google to your browser via websockets using node.js.

Heads up, it has not been touched in 3 years.

</comment><comment><USER10> I wrote something similar in Go about one year ago for my IRC bot.

I never thought it'd be useful for anyone, but well, I guess it can :P

<comment><USER11> If you wanted it...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've done something similar using Haskell: [https://github.com/agrafix/yahoo- finance-conduit](https://github.com/agrafix/yahoo-finance-conduit) I tried to do this using a streaming approach (conduits), but the data is delayed and there is no real streaming api.

</comment><comment><USER13> Unrelated, but is Google Finance never going to get updated?

<comment><USER14> Doesn't look like the API side will make a comeback at least.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What sites do you all use to check up on your stocks, read news etc?</comment>


Ask HN: What books and blogs are best to learn about hardware manufacturing? - <AUTHOR> Moving from hardware hacking to developing consumer-quality goods is a big step. What books/blogs/websites are good for learning the basics of moving from tinkering to production? Thanks. <comment><USER2> I really like [https://blog.bolt.io/](https://blog.bolt.io/)

(I've never moved my hobby past tinkering though, so take it with a grain of salt)

<comment><AUTHOR> That looks interesting, thank you. I'm an inveterate tinkerer too...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A tiny bit of searching finds [https://www.amazon.com/Hardware-Startup- Building-Product-Bus...](https://www.amazon.com/Hardware-Startup-Building- Product-Business/dp/1449371035/) \- follow the related products links and you'll find more.

Keywords I used: "product design hardware"

</comment><comment><USER4> I found the DFM series from Dragon Innovation to be incredibly insightful.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFFtao43tkw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFFtao43tkw)

EDIT: Changed link to first video of the DFM series

</comment><comment><USER5> About books check this one: The Hardware Hacker: Adventures in Making and Breaking Hardware

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - Andrew Huang sounds like a fascinating guy, I'll check this out.</comment></comment>


Less than 24 hours on Udemy as an instructor and I'm close to leaving - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nickjanetakis.com/post/133482093993/less-than-24-hours-on-udemy-as-an-instructor-and <comment><USER2> "There's no way to see who bought your course in their interface at all... All they do is e-mail you very basic information like the name of the student, the coupon they used and how much it resulted in"

I'd expect that. Like any resale marketplace, they want to stay a middleman between seller and buyer.

Similarly, ebay shrouds email and phone numbers between buyer and seller; it will even _block_ messages that contain anything they can parse as an email address or phone number.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, but it's beyond just being a middleman.

Udemy doesn't even give you anonymous data in a way that's reasonable. A simple table list of sales with dates, amounts and coupon codes used would be good enough but you don't even get that.

You'd have to resort to manually copying information from the e-mails as they come in, and then paste them into an excel sheet or rig up some trigger based script to do this automatically.</comment></comment>


GOP nervous that border wall fight could prompt year-end shutdown - <AUTHOR> https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/448674-gop-nervous-that-border-wall-fight-could-prompt-year-end-shutdown <comment><AUTHOR> "Trump is demanding $5 billion in border wall funding as part of a deal that would put limits on federal spending and raise the debt ceiling."</comment>


System 76 Galago UltraPro review - <AUTHOR> http://www.aychedee.com/2014/01/04/galago-ultrapro-review/

<comment><USER2> What's the battery life like?</comment>


IPhone Accessory Development - <AUTHOR>

I am working on a new accessory for the iPhone/iPod Touch. It is an Ethernet adapter that plugs into the dock connector, along with software that allows you to do network analysis from your phone.<p>This is a bit of a departure for me from pure software, so I'm still learning as I go. If this is of interest to you, I've set up a short survey on surveymonkey to collect information about features, pricing, etc. I would really appreciate any feedback. http://bit.ly/1radd <comment><USER2> Sounds curious. How do you plan to take 100 or 1000Mbits of data and stuff that down a serial pipe and then analyze in software?

<comment><AUTHOR> There are a couple things we are looking at, but it basically boils down to filtering/buffering as much in the hardware adapter before shifting it to the phone on demand. Realistically, the product won't be able to do full line- speed Gbit dumps for extended periods of time, but for simple network scanning/troubleshooting, hopefully it will be adequate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Q10's answers need to be rephrased: 10\. Do you mind if we contact you in the future regarding this product? Under no circumstances will we give out your email.

No, you've wasted enough of my time.

Yes (please provide us with an email address)

"Yes" means that I do mind, so I don't want to give you my email address.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm starting to wonder in how many ways I can screw up a 10 question survey. Thanks for the feedback. I had 5 other people proofread the survey and you are the only one to catch that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks interesting. Could the connection be used for other purposes, like sending print jobs or file serving off the phone? Or would the speed just be comparable to the current wireless connection?

</comment><comment><USER5> You set up number five incorrectly; let us know when you fix it!

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that - This is the first time I've used Survey Monkey. It should be fixed now. Thank you for letting me know.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there an API service to post JSON and have it formatted - <AUTHOR>

Is there a service that exposes an API to send JSON strings, and they format it pretty like http://jsonlint.com and give you a public link?
Ex Request:
http://someservice.com/create -d 'json={"key":"value"}' -X POST
Ex Response:
{"url":"http://someservice.com/aEv3HcZ"} <comment><USER2> I wrote a PHP class that does this for both JSON and XML, but no public API for it. Let me know if you want the code for it.

</comment><comment><USER3> free or paid service? I dont know of any but i am in processes of making such API. How soon do you want it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha, we were thinking of pounding this out tonight because we need it. Do you have anything done?

<comment><USER3> nothing yet, but looks like you need it too soon...how about a weeks time from now. I guess it's not feasible for you</comment></comment></comment>


You Probably Can't Get Into the World's Most Exclusive Website - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/06/08/most-exclusive-website/

<comment><USER2> I am accepting applications for the most exclusive community online as of yet, the application fee is $1,000 just to be considered and hear more, but if yiu cant afford that, then you clearly arent even qualified to join.

If you want access - wire me the consideration convenience fee.</comment>


Ask HN: Where is the best online conversation consistently taking place today? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Since I monitor that for [https://projectpiglet.com/](https://projectpiglet.com/)

Hacker News and Reddit are easily the most open platforms that have that have some of the best conversations.

Beyond "general" conversations, I'd actually recommend specific forums for more 'niche'

<comment><AUTHOR> I assumed that was the case but wanted to make sure there weren't any blind spots in my knowledge</comment></comment>


Undershoot: Parsing theory in 1965 - <AUTHOR> http://jeffreykegler.github.io/Ocean-of-Awareness-blog/individual/2018/07/knuth_1965_2.html <comment><USER2> At the end, Kegler links to this comprehensive overview of the history of parsing:

[https://jeffreykegler.github.io/personal/timeline_v3](https://jeffreykegler.github.io/personal/timeline_v3)

which contains this easily overlooked but IMHO extremely significant statement:

"a recursive descent implementation can parse operator expressions as lists, and add associativity in post-processing"

Personally, it has always seemed like a no-brainer to me that this is clearly the Right Answer. It is a mystery to me that the computing world at large has spent so much effort on a problem whose solution is actually very straightforward if you just give in on one tiny little piece of theoretical purity.

See [http://www.flownet.com/ron/lisp/parcil.lisp](http://www.flownet.com/ron/lisp/parcil.lisp) for my own implementation of such a parser. As you will see if you count LOCs, it's very, very simple by parser standards, and yet it handles all the "hard" problems: associativity, precedence, infix and prefix operators.

<comment><USER3> I have a toy problem that I throw at anyone who thinks they've "solved" parsing: Haskell list comprehensions. A list comprehension takes the form

        "[" EXPR "|" STMT["," STMT]* "]"

Where STMT is given by:

        STMT ::= EXPR | PAT "<-" EXPR

The problem is that, until you see that "<-", you don't know whether you're supposed to be parsing a pattern PAT or an expression EXPR. This is extra hard because patterns and expressions overlap significantly; for example, "(x, Left 2)" could be either a pattern or expression. But "(x, Left (2+3))" is definitely an expression. You can get arbitrarily deep into parsing a pattern before you realize it's actually an expression!

Recursive descent parsers, even with precedence climbing, can't really handle this nicely. Neither can LL or LR parsers. In fact, GHC's actual parser uses a hack: it parses patterns _as_ expressions, and as a post-processing step checks that the expression it parsed actually was a valid pattern! This works IF your patterns are a subset of your expressions. But if there are patterns that aren't valid expressions (Racket's match-patterns have this property), then you need to get even cleverer.

General-purpose parsing algorithms like GLR, GLL, parsing with derivatives, and Earley parsing (which Kegler advocates) can handle this, of course, although I'm not sure how efficiently they do it.

<comment><USER4> I argue the parsing "problem" is not really a "problem" (for most people, anyway).

When you view something as a problem, the problem should have an input and a desired output. The name of a parsing "problem" assumes that the input is a grammar and the output is a (hopefully efficient) function from a sequence of symbols to a parse tree or a boolean flag certifying that the grammar accepts given string. Naturally, solving this "problem" requires a general algorithm that works well for most or all variety of grammars.

However this setting is far from the current practice: people just avoid a grammar that is hard to parse at all! Of course there are many practical grammars have ambiguities that require hacks, but there seems the maximum number of hacks permitted, and people ditch a grammar requiring too many hacks. Limiting l-value syntax to a subset of r-value syntax works because there is generally only one of them in the entire grammar. Well, even in the (LA)LR age people just resorted to the semi-automatic s-r conflict resolution without much thought. So the grammar is not an uncontrollable input; in many cases it is flexible enough to make the whole parsing "problem" irrelevant.

I still believe that having a solution to the general parsing problem is nice (there are still a lot of applications with no control available to input grammars, granted), but I think its importance is somewhat overvalued.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The thing is that writing a parser requires that a person to understand what a formal language is. Overall, only a subset of programmers understand even this, so parsing has a certain inherent hardness to it (you can't just use a library or just use an object).

Of course, the problem of how to create a parser is solvable any number of ways if you mean how to convert an unambiguously specified formal language into a parser. But that doesn't mean basic challenges don't remain. Especially because a formal language is hard to understand (and can be ambiguous) and because what one wants the language to actually do something, there is a further trickiness involved (you have to bridge interface between syntax and semantics). So which _way_ to solve the problem of parsing become a complex decision. But it's not so much "we don't know how to efficiently do this yet" but rather "there is no one-size fits all approach."

<comment><USER6> You'd be surprised how many programmers don't understand (or at least think about) a formal language and manage to write a parser. Heck, it explains why a lot of languages have bizarre hacky syntax.

The problem of writing a high performance parser and the problem of writing just a parser at all are fairly isolated. I've written many parsers during my career but don't consider myself a parsing person by any means (though the number of people who have written incremental parsers for IDEs is probably countable on one or two hands, most people don't think about that as a parser problem).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Superb website with loads of content.

This [https://jeffreykegler.github.io/personal/timeline_v3](https://jeffreykegler.github.io/personal/timeline_v3) is also worth your time twofolds.

<comment><USER8> lol this dude hates PEG parsers

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If parsing is "complicated", then there's another solution. Don't play the game. Change the rules. Play a different game.

My understanding (and, since this is the Interwebs I will quickly be corrected if I'm wrong) is that Python is easy to parse; a lot of the battles about adding features to the language involve keeping the grammar simple.

And yet Python is eminently useful, despite being simple to parse.

I'm reminded of how we didn't understand how to specify a simple grammar in the "good old days". E.g. take ancient FORTRAN.

The for-loop in FORTRAN is actually called do. And you specify the end of the loop by numerical statement label (found in columns 1 thru 5). Thus:

          DO 10 I = 1, 7
          some stuff here, loop done for I = 1,2,3,4,5,6,7
       10 final line of loop

But spaces aren't significant. So if you write the following statement

          DO 10 I = (1, 7)

You get something totally different. You set the value of the complex variable DO10I to (1,7). Bheech. Who wants to parse that? (And yet, there were very capable FORTRAN compilers back in the 1960s!)

<comment><USER2> > Python is easy to parse

Lisp is even easier.

<comment><USER10> And Forth easier still.

<comment><USER11> Yes...and far more accurately no, you can't actually write a parser for Forth with a fixed grammar, you can only write a complete interpreter for it as it is capable of modifying its own grammar on the fly. It is possible to define new words which when executed take over the input stream and do arbitrary things.

<comment><USER12> Those tricks will not necessarily compile right though. Forth is a compiled language, if implemented completely.

<comment><USER11> Those tricks certainly are necessary to compile Forth, it's common to define words that create new words for custom data structure, which extend the grammar of Forth. Any time you use 'create ... does>' you are in effect extending the grammar in an ad-hoc way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm a little surprised that ANTLR and L* don't make the list (ANTLR from the practitioner POV and L* from theory).

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm sorry, but this is just rambling. He goes on about theorists and practitioners without actually saying anything about the problem at all. He doesn't explain why he thinks the current state of the art isn't the solution. What _does_ he want to do that isn't handled well?

There are many ways in which parsing can be improved in practice and theory. Actual technical aspects would be more interesting.</comment>


Show HN: Gandalf, a simple and brutalistic URL blocker - <AUTHOR> Hi everyone, I just wanted to show a small python tool that I created today to avoid my own procrastination at work (which is ironic, given that I've procrastinated to do this). It's a URL blocker based on entries in /etc/hosts. It has a command called gandalf to start and stop the service blocking and adding or removing URLs.
I must say, it's very brutalistic, I've done it in a few spare hours I had yesterday and today, the codebase is extremely simple and it just does it job, nothing else. It contains a PKGBUILD for Arch Linux but I still haven't submitted it to AUR.
Hope you like it! Any comments are welcome.
https://git.sr.ht/~oscarcp/gandalf <comment><USER2> I was expecting a _URL shall not pass_ joke somewhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> It does, when you try to access a blocked URL it will redirect you to a local webservice that will tell you that You! Shall! Not! Pass! :D</comment></comment>


What is Square or any startup really worth? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/13/square-what-its-really-worth.html <comment><USER2> There's an inverted Ponzi dynamic to this. In a Ponzi scheme, the earlier gain the most and the later the least. In this dynamic, the later are guaranteeing their returns at the expense of the earlier.

It makes sense because of the necessity of these companies to raise capital, but it also has a somewhat ironic tinge.

</comment><comment><USER3> It is worth what someone is willing to pay for it. The correct question is: under what conditions is it worth it? Many valuations seem to rely on investor N+1 being even more gullible than investor N.

You can't defy gravity though; eventually someone is going to want to get a dividend. It must be more profitable to own shares in a firm than to not once the chain of fools has run out.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm confused here -- the argument is that a ratchet which is clearly going to trigger in the IPO is better for employees and other shareholders than a down round? Assuming the odds of IPO are 100%, and if we could assume the down round would be at the same price as the effective price due to ratchet, is there a difference?

I guess there might be other provisions in earlier rounds of equity which would be triggered by a down round vs ratchet in IPO, but is this mainly a distinction of optics?

</comment><comment><USER5> Must answer question: Worth to whom?

Not every potential buyer will agree on the "worth" of X.

Ultimately X is not worth anything unless and until X is sold.

Perhaps the tense is wrong.

Not what _is_ X worth, but what _will be_ the worth of X (when X is sold).

In the end, "worth" is "price paid" (by some buyer).

<comment><USER6> That's true, but what I think they generally refer to is the price the market would pay (that is, the price/share where demand for a share will equal the supply).

You are correct that "X is not worth anything unless and until X is sold" \- that is why they are saying that IPOs may be lower than expected for these huge valuations - because the equilibrium market price is believed to be lower than the current valuations, priced by a small market of investors. According to the efficient market hypothesis stocks on the stock market will trade at their fair value (that's pretty disputed, but a good amount of respected people agree with it).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Whatever it is acquired for. ;)

</comment><comment><USER8> Url changed from [https://recode.net/2015/11/13/how-startups-ratchet-up- their-...](https://recode.net/2015/11/13/how-startups-ratchet-up-their- valuation/), which points to this.</comment>


Organization Design For Startups - <AUTHOR> http://joaquinroca.com/2013/03/organization-design-for-startups/

<comment><USER2> Really found this article useful thanks. It feels like there are often aspects of each of those models - makes me think of many different startup companies.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you found it helpful! The model presents them as four distinct types, though each organization is likely a blend of the four with tendencies mostly in one direction or another.</comment></comment>


Microsoft gets patent for real-time f-bomb bleeping - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081020-microsoft-gets-patent-for-real-time-f-bomb-bleeping.html <comment><USER2> I hate this "f-bomb" phrase. It puts a minor expletive in the same league as h-bombs, a-bombs, 500lb bombs, cluster bombs and roadside bombs. For fucks sake...</comment>


Twitter's record-breaking night killed the Fail Whale, no thanks to Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/11/07/twitter-election-dev-post-mortem/

<comment><USER2> "Ouch, Ruby! You need some aloe for that burn?" It seems like every language/framework should be able to handle 1.5 billion queries per day without problems. Otherwise it sucks, right?</comment>


Paul Graham consistently says 'um' ~7 times per minute - <AUTHOR> http://blog.metricfire.com/2012/03/paul-graham-consistently-says-um-7-times-per-minute/ <comment><USER2> If anyone has a similar habit and wants to stop it I will tell how my high school fixed it for almost all of us.

In my (private) high school's health class "like" and "um" and others were referred to as "stop-words" by the teacher because people would say them instead of pausing. It's really obvious once you look for them, for instance here with pg but anywhere really. I remember hearing college tour guides that would literally say "um" after every single sentence, probably unbeknownst to themselves!

Almost every class in the school had projects, and the health class project was for us to remove the stop words from our speech by the end of the semester. We did this by all using recording software (had to submit either by cassette tape or wav/mp3) and answering questions such as "Do you want to live forever and why or why not?" by speaking for at least 5 minutes. These were our homework assignments maybe once a month, with the overarching goal considered as the class project.

We had to very consciously never use any stop words. We could pause the recorder if we had trouble thinking of what to say, but we could never say those words.

I was skeptical of the assignment at first but my class all agreed by the end of the semester that it made us much better speakers, simply learning to consider our pauses instead of filling the silence with "like" and "um".

<comment><USER3> I know girls that talk faster than they can think so every third word is "like". In this case it's not a pause but more of a tick. Sometimes I am in awe of the content density. They can talk for hours and say absolutely nothing.

<comment><USER4> "Like" is increasingly used to introduce a quotation, particularly in SoCal dialect. It's not necessarily the most elegant use of language, but it's not a pause or a tick.

<comment><USER5> kristianc was like, "It's not necessarily the most elegant use of language, but it's not a pause or a tick.", but that's not, like, the only use of "like" in American vernacular. It's also used to pause, or to, like, distance yourself from what you're saying.

<comment><USER6> Nice going... For sentences like your last example, in the past few years I've been hearing "as in" with increasing frequency. I find it quite annoying and would be very curious to learn about its origins, as in how did it start.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Believe it or not I wrote the first draft of an essay about this yesterday. (I went on a one-day trip to NYC and wrote the first draft of one in each direction.) So stay tuned.

<comment><USER8> The data is two years old, but it looks like you're at the start of your traditional March/April/May writing tear: <http://andrewacove.posterous.com/wip-pg-essays>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As someone who's not a great speaker, it's always disconcerted me a bit about the disproportionate weight we (myself included) place on the _manner_ in which a message is presented.

PG's a great thinker about the subjects he discusses, and his essays have a very high signal to noise ratio. But when this video was first posted the 'umms' was one of the top comment, and probably detracted quite a bit from the core message he was conveying. Had this been an essay, I suspect the reception would have been more positive.

Conversely, if you re-read the TSA blog response which we all ridiculed, it was actually an EXCELLENT response for a TV news journal format (think O'Reilly or Anderson Cooper). He dodged the issue, obfuscated a bit, threw in a few quips, and ended the blog post addressing a completely different issue. If the TSA rep had gave that response on TV, many people would have perceived the TSA to have 'won' the argument. But because it was in written format, we were all free to dissect for the actual content, and we came away underwhelmed.

REALLY good speakers have an almost magical ability to enchant audiences even if they're not saying anything of importance. Probably the best public speaker I've ever seen was a preacher who when I parsed for content wasn't saying much. A close second was a Yale undergrad years ago doing a debate competition about some trivial topic I can't even recall. I do remember the impression he left though, and thinking this guy was good enough to temporarily convince me that the sun revolved around the earth.

<comment><USER10> > PG's a great thinker about the subjects he discusses, and his essays have a > very high signal to noise ratio. But when this video was first posted the > 'umms' was one of the top comment, and probably detracted quite a bit from > the core message he was conveying. Had this been an essay, I suspect the > reception would have been more positive.

You don't even have to guess-pg published the contents of this talk in the essay "Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas", which was much better received than the video, judging by the HN threads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a common habit for PG. I've seen him speak in person 2-3 times and watched a handful of videos of him, and each time I noticed the amount that he said "um". Obviously the content is valuable and worth listening to, but it is naive to say that these sort of distractions by any speaker are worth overlooking.

Unfortunately, these are distractions from the content, which is what matters. Simple exercises could could help fix the habit with only a few hours of practice.

A trick that helped me in college was to say "uh" or "um" every other word while practicing a speech. This mental trick causes you to be hyper-aware of the habit, thus helping you to subconsciously stop inserting the words into speech. Try it out sometime.

</comment><comment><USER12> > I wondered if he was a little nervous, but that didn't seem likely for > someone in his position.

All sorts of people can get nervous speaking in public, including people that are thought of as being 'natural' public speakers like Steve Jobs (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzDBiUemCSY>) and Sam Harris ([http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-silent-crowd- overcomi...](http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-silent-crowd-overcoming- your-fear-of-public-speaking/)), as well as billionaires ([http://www.quora.com/Peter-Thiel/How-is-Peter-Thiel-so- amazi...](http://www.quora.com/Peter-Thiel/How-is-Peter-Thiel-so-amazingly- brilliant-but-so-ineloquent-in-public-speaking-stituations)) and CEOs (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3hu3iG8B2g>).

<comment><USER13> One of the things even the high-powered public speaking trainers tell you is that the only way not to be nervous is if you no longer care. Any time you have an audience you actually want to learn something or be convinced to take some action, you should feel a bit nervous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If this research on PG, or other speakers, continues please also record the room temperature so we can see if the um rate varies with temperature.

<comment><USER15> I think you'll find it actually varies with pressure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Am I the only person who found the graph in the article a little weird? Wouldn't it have been more illustrative of the author's point (that the frequency of ums/uhs per minute was pretty consistent) to show a graph of ums/uhs per minute instead of total ums/uhs at any given time? (i.e. the graph should have been almost flat).

<comment><USER17> You're just asking for the derivative of the function he plotted.

Showing that the function is linearly increasing is the same as showing that it has a constant slope, in any case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's a very unique 'um', too. You could tell he was pretty nervous. But as someone who has had my 'um's during speeches ruthlessly pointed out to me, I'm basically trained to notice when someone says 'um.' PG's speech was tough to listen to.

<comment><USER19> It didn't seem like nerves. It appeared that he was thinking through some of these things on stage in more depth than he had previously done so the ums provided the time to collect the thoughts in a coherent manner.

<comment><USER20> that reminds me - I can't find the link now, but - someone had counted the vocalized pauses of college professors and averaged them by subject. They found that professors of math and hard sciences used the fewest, and that professors of philosophy used the most. Presumably, because, when there's less of a definitive answer to a question, you must work harder to come up with words to describe it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I would love a "Tech Jam" -- like a poetry jam, where you get in front of an audiance and can speak on any subject (tech related) for 5 minutes or so to get over the fear of speaking and to get over the propensity to say uhm all the time.

In such a jam, it would be great to let everyone follow some simple structure:

* My name

* My company

* My passion

* My skills as it related to that passion

Or something along these lines. Whatever the structure is - just let it be practice and not tied to anything other than stage time.

<comment><USER22> Practice. Practice. Practice. I've become a pretty good public speaker because of simply that. I absolutely adore this concept. No slides. Just a jam about something you love.

<comment><USER21> Any venue /event you can think of that would allow this (like a bar with an open mic)? You're back in Brooklyn now though, correct?

Any HNers from SFBay interested in this? I'd love to give this a go - I'll call it UMJam :)

<comment><USER22> I'm gonna talk to GA about it. Or just start my own public house in NY for it ;)

<comment><USER21> I bought UMJAM.com - lets put a page up :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I was there for his pycon talk, and it seemed to me (they stood out for me as well) that he was using disfluencies to express disbelief or punctuate something extraordinary or unexpected with humor. I do this too? But instead of uhm, I'll end a statement on a rising tone as in an interrogative?

<comment><USER24> You're in good company. The rising tone at the end of a sentence used in a non-interrogative context is called uptalk or a high rising terminal [1]. Its increased use has been a far-reaching dialect shift that has been ongoing for a couple of decades now. The New York Times published an article on it in 1993 [2] and just recently another [3] with a good overview of how its use has mostly spread into every corner of the American populace. Perhaps my favorite discussion of uptalk is an analysis of some of George W. Bush's speeches in which he extensively employs it [4].

###

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_rising_terminal>

[2] [http://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/15/magazine/on-language- like-...](http://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/15/magazine/on-language-like- uptalk.html)

[3] [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/28/science/young-women- often-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/28/science/young-women-often- trendsetters-in-vocal-patterns.html)

[4] [http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002708.h...](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002708.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is just a minor end-of-thought speaking affectation. I've never really been bothered by it. John Carmack has an even more characteristic "um" which comes out like the word "I'm". That honestly did bother me at first, but you get over it after a while.

Not a big deal unless you're really worried about your first impression. Once you're where John Carmack or Paul Graham is, that's not an issue.

I recently noticed that Chuck Klosterman's delivery sounds a lot like an excited Paul Graham. He's a good model for what Paul would sound like with more flow between individual thoughts:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yTwbga3lGM#t=39m10s>

</comment><comment><USER26> I quit on my own, instantly, within 3 minutes of practice by simply TALKING SLOWER. It's like I gave my brain enough time to send words to my mouth and I stopped saying "um" and pausing immediately. It felt miraculous. lol.

</comment><comment><USER27> Neat post. Good way to highlight how easy it is to use your app (I'm assuming it's easy).

I clicked on your logo on that page, and although it is a clickable element, NOTHING HAPPENED. Please, please, please, please link your logo to your home page. Please.

</comment><comment><USER28> I have noticed that my annoyance at a speaker's 'um' goes way up when I don't like the speaker, or the subject matter is turning me off.

When the new division head announced that we'd been acquired because Sprint loved everything about us, and he was only introducing a few minor, very cosmetic, changes? All I could focus on was his 'um's.

That and my resume.

pg talking about why Hacker News has it's quirks? Loved it.

I guess the same thing happens with spouses. My second wife does things that I -know- should annoy me. They do when other people do them. But with her .. it's cute. Adorable. Another reason why I love her so much.

Been almost fifteen years since I got hitched - I guess it's true love.

</comment><comment><USER29> I first read many PG's essays, and only recently has seen him on video. But, by that time, my attitude was set in such way, that I take his ummms as a sign that he is taking a wee bit of time to translate what is going in his head into more human understandable form. His essays show clearly the depth of thinking. Such thoughts need extra effort/time to translate from human lisp to human language. So, I have no problem that PG takes a second now and then to formulate a thought to be understandable by a wider audience.

</comment><comment><USER30> I really think my answer here on Quora about Peter Thiel explains the main part of this: [http://www.quora.com/Peter-Thiel/How-is-Peter-Thiel-so- amazi...](http://www.quora.com/Peter-Thiel/How-is-Peter-Thiel-so-amazingly- brilliant-but-so-ineloquent-in-public-speaking-stituations/answer/Justin- Meltzer)

I don't think it's nerves as much as it's a mismatch between someone's internal intelligence/thinking speed and their ability to translate that into speech on the spot.

<comment><USER31> Yes, absolutely. Different people think in different ways--some in language, some in images, and some even more abstractly. (I suspect this is the key to mathematical talent--whether or not you can think purely in mathematical abstractions without the need of other aid.) So unless you're thinking in language already, there's often a translation process you have to run your thoughts through before saying them, and this process can be expensive, especially with the pressure of people looking at you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is something that can be curbed with practice. If you give your presentation to someone, they should point this out. To get better at public speaking, you should try to curb any behavior that detracts from the message that you want to deliver.

I remember listening to RMS talk at the HOPE conference one year and it was painful to watch him talk. He obviously needed very long breaks when he was speaking, using them to take sips of Pepsi. The pauses were at times in his speaking were almost planned for some sort of applause or at best internal agreement and reflection on the idea. It was all very awkward, if you can't tell.

It was RMS, so nobody cared, but I'm sure that he could have gotten his message across better with some effort.

</comment><comment><USER33> Reading this thread, the masses of 'um's here really feel contagious.. i wouldn't want to be starting a speech right now.

I have to say PGs 'UHM's were very noticeable (distracting, even), although that perhaps was a little influenced by the prior mention.

Finally- slightly OT but i missed the discussion thread- I was really disappointed by Paul's responses to the questions asked. While I understand it is difficult to come up with a proper response on the spot, i thought the questions particularly about university's peripheral 'roles', and manufacturing-oriented start-ups were really insightful and his mostly side- stepping answers really missed an opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER21> I am someone who says UM a LOT.

I think and speak very fast - but when I speak in front of others, my physical speaking ability doesnt keep up with my thinking and I end up saying UM a lot.

I watched others speak and never say UM and I just don't know how they do it.

<comment><USER34> Just like anything else, public speaking is a skill. To do it well requires focused practice. Learn to keep your mind and your mouth at the same pace and be willing to have silence while you think, rather than um, or have something more substantial to come out of your mouth than um.

It isn't easy of course, but any skill worth learning isn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This post and all the comments seems a little rude. This isn't a 4h or toastmasters feedback forum. Letting someone know they need to work on their public speaking skills is something better done in private. Whatever they were trying to communicate they were doing their best to communicate it at the time, and it's rude to focus on speech difficulties instead of content. Believe it or not some individuals have neurological conditions that prevent super-clear communication, but it's not a nice thing to point out outside of a venue designed to improve public speaking.

</comment><comment><USER36> I find it's not the frequency of these words, but the volume and inflection that's the problem. There are a series of computer science lectures on youtube, and also some courses I had at university where the lecturer says UMMMMM at a substantially higher volume than the rest of their speech, and drags it out for a second or more.

The resultant sound is like a cow mooing, or someone doing an offensive impersonation of a downs syndrome patient at the top of their voice. The effect is totally unbearable and I have no idea how people sit through hours of this stuff.

<comment><USER35> Link please?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Vocal pauses are natural, and they happen. Our brains can handle them. Why is it even considered personal betterment to expend energy replacing them with whitespace?

</comment><comment><USER38> The link to the video[1] (at least at the time of posting) is wrong—it's a talk by Katie Cunningham! The correct link is [2].

[1] <http://pyvideo.org/video/628/keynote-paul-graham-ycombinator> [2] <http://pyvideo.org/video/626/keynote-paul-graham-ycombinator>

</comment><comment><USER39> Maybe this one speech was an outlier; I haven't noticed this in previous pg speeches (in front of 300+ people, and some televised things like the NY event).

Peter Thiel, on the other hand, has consistently technically-bad speech patterns, but the content is compelling enough to make up for it.

Tracking the same speaker in multiple venues/contexts vs. comparing different speakers seems a lot more interesting.

</comment><comment><USER40> I didn't think he was nervous. That just sounded like his speech pattern. I found it refreshing that he didn't sound like a salesman.

</comment><comment><USER41> Is there any early videos of him speaking where he exhibits stuttering (or other speech impediment)? It sounds like when people who "self-treat" (intentionally or not) and substitute one impediment for another, ideally one less apparent.

Then again maybe it's one of those habitual things, for example when someone says "Knowwhatimean" repeatedly.

</comment><comment><USER42> Umm, no: <http://www.bloomberg.com/video/67469618/>

</comment><comment><USER43> The 'um's are not the parts that matter.

<comment><USER44> Apparently you're not familiar with the signal to noise ratio.

<comment><USER43> I have an uncle who is a scientist. He speaks _very_ slowly. And he leaves long pauses between his sentences. The reason for that is that he actually thinks through what he says. There is relatively little 'signal', but the value of what he says is large enough to make up for the low bitrate.

<comment><USER45> I think that was Jemka's point. Sidnal/noise ratio is not the same thing as throughput.

For instance imagine that instead of stopping to think, your uncle turned on the radio during the pauses. The same amount of useful information would be transmitted but we would not say that both scenarios are equally desirable.

Silence is the desirable pause method. It allows the audience to absorb and understand the signal better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Ha - funny, this is the first thing I noticed when watching the video of this presentation, and it drove me so crazy I only made it through the first 3 minutes before I had to stop watching. Wish it wasn't the case, would have loved to watch the whole thing, but it was maddening....

<comment><USER47> absolutely - david crockford has the same problem, and I just simply couldn't listen to his entire javascript series

had brilliant university professors who were the same.

people need to realize that this is fixable, and is very important to fix if they want to share information more effectively

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I'd rather listen to an average presenter with great content than a great presenter with average content.

</comment><comment><USER49> Nonetheless, it's impressive he can even public speak at all given the fact he's a hacker by nature.

<comment><USER50> this is just ridiculous and dismissive of everyone who has ever tried to better themsleves

<comment><USER51> I'm a hacker by nature and have been bettering myself through Toastmasters for years. I didn't find the comment dismissive. Public speaking is a skill that takes a lot of effort to develop and maintain. I agree it's impressive when someone who spends lots of time hacking (and communicating 1:1) can also deliver an effective speech in front of a crowd, even if that speech has flaws.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I believe its common for great thinkers/writers. If someone is able to speak something valuable faster without the need to feel pauses it means that he either super-fast thinker or he memorized/polished his speech, which is something, i guess, PG dont have time for.

</comment><comment><USER53> Hmmm. I commented on this in the other hacker news entry (for his talk) and got a -1 for it. I guess this is just a habit formed after many years. The quality of the talk is still great and that what's most important.

</comment><comment><USER54> I've really enjoyed the presentation but I've noticed the 'um' too. hopefully pg will see this thread as constructive criticism and he'll make an effort to get rid of the 'um'.

</comment><comment><USER55> Before I watched the talk I read comments complaining about the 'um's, so I was extra focused on it. When I watched the talk I did not find it distracting at all. YMMV

</comment><comment><USER56> Good way to get attention to your service, and I did check it out, but, uh, pricing? Would have considered service but unknown cost made me head back to HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> Apologies for the way, way off topic post, but we'll be announcing pricing soon. Hopefully in a couple of days, and we'll be sure to 'tell HN' when we do. It's likely to be between $30/month and $200/month depending on volume.

Yeah, shameless linkbait. Sorry. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Maybe not entirely on topic but does anyone have any good tips on dealing with stammer or stutter related issues? Maybe exercises or something?

</comment><comment><USER58> His brain has too much throughput for his mouth to handle! So he uses 'Um' as a kind of verbal buffering device.

</comment><comment><USER59> pg also ends a lot of sentences with "right?" I used to have the same affectation, and have worked hard to eliminate it. The main one that remains in my own speech is saying "so" (as a transition) a bit too much. I have the video to prove it; you'll see what I mean on Pi Day.

</comment><comment><USER60> i loved the content, but i think that he could use some coaching on how to give presentations. i did find the 'um's to be distracting.

</comment><comment><USER61> who cares?

</comment><comment><USER62> Tough crowd.

</comment><comment><USER63> Indeed I can only hear the first 3 minutes as those 'um's starts to drive me crazy, hope he watches his own speech and improves his speech skill soon.

</comment><comment><USER64> Barack Obama does the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER65> And "like"

</comment><comment><USER66> The only people this matters to is people who count how many times the speaker says "um". Toastmasters types. The rest of us can see the forest for the trees.

<comment><USER67> It was very distracting. It takes quite a bit of training to eliminate pauses from speech but it takes significantly less effort to replace 'um' with a pause.

<comment><USER18> Pauses aren't even bad. Pauses give your audience an opportunity to process what you're saying. I've had pauses encouraged to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> I think that's a sign of greatness. Mark Zuckerberg has, um, the same trait.

</comment><comment><USER69> 'umms', intentional or not, can actually help the speaker in seeming more genuine.

For example, I hit on a lot of women and in the process, over some time, end up saying basically the same lines and stories. I risk coming across as too- smooth/scripted which is just as bad as being very nervous.

Especially when retelling a story, I intentionally inject plenty of 'umms' and look up as if I am trying to recollect something from my memory.

<comment><USER70> That just proves you're a creep.

<comment><USER69> I'll bite. How does it prove that I am a creep?

<comment><USER71> Obviously it's very subjective... but how can you not see why the type of person who isn't always reading up on "negging" and the like would think you a creep for that?</comment></comment></comment></comment>