New York Is Confiscating Delivery Bikes, Hurting Immigrants, And Helping No One - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/40537103/new-york-is-confiscating-delivery-bikes-hurting-immigrants-and-helping-no-one <comment><USER2> I'm sorry but I just can't line up my daily observations of some bikers' and ebikers' dangerous behavior in NYC vs that of drivers (who admittedly I have also seen drive dangerously) and the data often cited showing that drivers break just as many laws.

Call this some fallacy of observation or confirmation bias or whatever, but I see bikers biking the wrong way weaving between traffic on NYC streets, running red lights (generally when there are no cars, but hey, it's still running a red light), and doing other dangerous-for-pedestrian things literally every time I go outside. A few months ago I was clipped by a biker going the wrong way through a red light as I was in the crosswalk. Almost a year ago a friend was hit full speed by a biker in the East Village and lost two teeth.

Of course a car hitting a pedestrian will be worse for the pedestrian than a bike in the same situation. But many bikers are dangerous too, at least in NYC, and when I walk the streets I'm more afraid of a biker coming out of nowhere than I am of a car doing the same.

I have a hard time understanding the knee-jerk reaction to marginialize how dangerous bikers can be when an article calls out this behavior. There's always some counter argument about how dangerous cars are. They are both dangerous, now can we just admit this and start asking cities to police dangerous biking too?

<comment><USER3> > * and the data often cited showing that drivers break just as many laws.*

I'm also doubtful and suspect that the data is essentially cherry picked. Relative to distance travelled, I suspect cyclists do indeed break traffic laws more frequently. Especially if "severity" of violation is accounted for.

i.e. There's often some jackass in a car who runs the red light shortly after it changes. However, despite the blatant law violation, it's not _that_ dangerous because it happens immediately after the light change and for better or worse, people expect it. Cyclists on the other hand will often blow through a light whenever they get there if they think they can make it through without getting hit, whether that's right after the light changes or two minutes later. The car running the red light immediately after it changes is quite frequent but the cyclist running the light whenever it's convenient is more egregious even if less frequent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm wondering how many commenters here actually live in NYC. Delivery bikes are a menace. A 20-something guy in my building recently started hopping around on crutches. Athletic guy. Got hit by a food delivery bike and fractured his leg. I have a near miss at least once a week. They're like darts that pop out of nowhere even on sidewalks, at full speed, sometimes swerving at the last second. Zero respect for any traffic laws. It's especiaily dangerous if you have a dog as I do, esp when crossing a street, bc a bike can slice into the leash in the space between you and your dog, since the bikes pop out of nowhere so fast. I'm exceedingly cautious at night now in scanning around me at crosswalks.

<comment><USER5> I live in NYC and I bike every day. I have no problem with e-bikes and I think the fact that they are getting confiscated is extremely misguided given that they are receiving praise in many other cities as a smart alternative to cars. It's insane that the police in NYC are so concerned about these bikes killing people meanwhile there are dozens of bicyclists dying every year due to car accidents and virtually no bicycle-related pedestrian deaths. Biking is by far the most dangerous thing I ever do by an order of magnitude; I've almost been crushed by cars multiple times, I've actually been brushed by cars a couple of times, and multiple friends of mine have been hurt. I'm considering stopping biking because of this, but the truth is that it is so much faster than taking the train or walking that my morning commute from Greenpoint to LES would not really make much sense without a bike. I find it ironic that police are notorious for parking in bike lanes causing bikes to have to veer out into traffic to get around them, which is extremely dangerous. (See [http://copsinbikelanes.tumblr.com/](http://copsinbikelanes.tumblr.com/))

I understand that bikes are more concerning than cars for pedestrians due to being quiet and going the wrong way, and I hate as much as the next guy. It is bicyclists' responsibility to obey traffic laws. It seems that the police should enforce the laws against these e-bikes going the wrong way or not stopping at stop signs, not for existing in the first place.

<comment><USER6> >I understand that bikes are more concerning than cars for pedestrians due to being quiet and going the wrong way, and I hate as much as the next guy.

We seem to be very against bells in the US.

<comment><USER7> When I tell folks in the US my bike has a bell they say "psssh like a car will hear that" they always seem surprised when I point out it's more of a polite alert to people walking. Because who walks, after all?

Also without the constant deadening roar of internal combustion, bells are fairly audible.

<comment><USER6> That's interesting. I always assumed it was because of social perception here in the US that bells on bikes were for kids.

The background soundtrack of my time spent in Amsterdam and Copenhagen is that have bike bells ringing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love bikes and bikers, but think that the kind of freedom some of us exhibit is dangerous. We should abide more by the rules for bikes, as we expected the car drivers to abide by their own rules.

If when we bike we break the rules, we might generate dangerous situations for pedestrians, for ourselves and for cars. It took me while to realize this.

On the other side, if the rules are inappropriate, then yes, we have to bargain for new rules. But the article did not added anything about this. God thanks I do not need to register my bike and get a plate!

But we might need to develop a test to get a e-bike license :)

</comment><comment><USER9> I love how they're making it an "immigrant" issue and the gig-economy companies are "abdicating responsibility". Meanwhile actual residents of NYC are vehemently against how reckless and dangerous these people are. It's a good example of how agendas in the media have gotten out of control.

<comment><USER10> I don't think their narrative is helped by featuring someone who immigrated _16 years ago_ yet still doesn't speak English either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If delivery using cyclists is unsafe and they should slow down, it seems like the city has to go after the businesses that provide the incentive to speed.

Maybe enforce a minimum elapsed time and price for a delivery? If they get there sooner, they have to wait for the next job.

<comment><USER3> In that case they'd simply carry multiple deliveries. And no one is going to support the "delivery food must be cold" ordinance anyway.

I honestly applaud looking for more fruitful and effective areas to regulate, but in this case, I don't think you found the appropriate target.

<comment><USER11> Of course it's never going to be that simple, but it seems like you have start with incentives if you're ever going to get anywhere. Services like GrubHub gather lots of data and it _could_ be used to improve safety, but apparently isn't?

Maybe make the services partially liable for any accidents, and they'll make some changes in their routing?

<comment><USER3> The incentives need to be useful though. Realistically it's Google doing the routing anyway and cyclists ignore it when they know a faster path. GrubHub cannot reasonably fix that unless they're going to fine delivery workers when they deviate from the route, which seems absurd given that delivery workers will legitimately deviate for faster routes that are equally safe.

Making GrubHub liable for accidents also doesn't do much. Accidents are relatively uncommon anyway and it's probably very affordable to just eat the cost. Plus I'm not sure how GrubHub would force safer cycling even if they were incentivized to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Those electric bikes are a nightmare. They are so quiet you can't hear them coming. Coupled with how recklessly the delivery guys ride them it's a recipe for disaster. These guys plow through red lights and gun it in the opposite direction on one way streets. Maybe it wouldn't be a problem if these guys didn't ride like assholes.

<comment><USER13> So they should ticket dangerous riders, not ban e-bikes outright.

<comment><USER14> You're dealing with an administration that similarly believes guns kill people, not that the people that use the guns to kill people are responsible.

<comment><USER15> People use guns to kill people. Sure. This would be a valid argument if the US didn't have a gun culture as well as guns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In case you find these confiscations as misguided as I do, it looks like there is an existing petition against this: [https://www.change.org/p/legalize- class-i-pedal-assist-elect...](https://www.change.org/p/legalize-class-i- pedal-assist-electric-bicycles-in-new-york-state)

</comment><comment><USER15> As much as I don't like to malign modes of transportation which are environmentally friendly, cases like this are exactly why regulation is introduced. Once you get large numbers of people getting away with borderline criminal behaviour, regulation is brought in to explicitly deal with it to deal with the now commonly occurring edge cases.

Of course corporate entities don't want it, they tend to be pro-deregulation. So injuries have been downplayed because, as others have said, they are not deaths.

This could perhaps be handled by requiring registration of all vehicles for commercial purposes, as they are usually under the most pressure to increase throughput and thus bend rules. This would deal with the issue of unfairly disadvantaging the poor who need the economy afforded by bike transport, while dealing with the exploitation of the lack of regulation by corporate entities.

</comment><comment><USER16> "..calling them a public threat because their riders exceed speed limits and disobey traffic laws by riding the wrong way on streets and on sidewalks. This reasoning is faulty: Do Lee, a researcher at CUNY Graduate Center and organizer with The Biking Public Project, which works to amplify the voices of underrepresented cyclists like delivery workers, tells Fast Company he has found no evidence in his research that e-bikes have ever killed anyone.."

The reasoning contained in this excerpt is faulty, and it's so glaring I'm surprised the editor let it through - hasn't killed anyone yet <> is a public threat!

</comment><comment><USER17>
      given that immigrant delivery workers tend to earn only around $10/hour

That's below NYC minimum wage.

<comment><USER18> As someone who doesn't live in the USA I've always wondered: NYC (heavily DNC?) routinely seems to do things that are far more inhuman and racist than anything the GOP does, how come it never generates the same level of outcry?

<comment><USER17>
      NYC routinely seems to do things

Are you blaming _city government_ rather than crooked employers?

<comment><USER18> Employers will try get away with whatever they can. Why is the city not enforcing the law?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Subcases and Hierarchy - <AUTHOR> http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/blog/post/Subcases-and-Hierarchy.aspx <comment><USER2> _Wallah! Task lists._ I can understand leaving out the accent on voilà, but "wallah"? It's not even pronounced like that.

If you Americans insist on writing French with such a horrible accent, I'm going to start raiting English vit my Finnish äksent. Rivendz vil pi sviit.

<comment><USER3> You, monsieur, are mistaken about the provenance of the word: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallah_%28arabic%29>

<comment><USER4> Based on the context, it's more likely Joel intended to use say this: <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/voil%C3%A0>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The discussion of the storage of the hierarchies in the database is quite interesting.

<comment><USER6> This is the first time I've run across trees/nodes in the organization of relational data. Makes a lot of sense and certainly sounds like someone was "thinking outside the box".

<comment><USER7> The nested set model is a well-known workaround for storing tree-like structures in a relational database.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Am I missing something about the database section? It seems like if I add, e.g. a right child to node B in the diagram, I will have to update the "right" values on nodes A & B, as well as both the "left" and "right" values on C & E. Imagine doing this with a much larger subtree where C is, and you're looking at a ton of UPDATEs to store one new node, aren't you?

<comment><USER9> Yes. The good news is that you read hierarchies much more often than you update them, and hierarchies in a bug tracker are going to be relatively tiny, so taking a minor write-hit in exchange for a massive read improvement is a logical trade.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> my favorite feature in the new version of Fogbugz. the only issue I've ever had with it is that if you enter in your parent case and subcases but then find that they are accidentally under the wrong project, the only way (AFAIK) to move the entire case tree is to click on each individual case and move them all one by one. Other than that, I must say it's pretty sweet.

<comment><USER11> I think the multi-select in the grid view is what you're looking for to make that easy; both shift-select and control select work when clicking on grid rows. Not the easiest thing to find, but really useful.

<comment><USER9> You can actually just hold the mouse button down and drag over a pile of checkboxes in the right column. No need to hit shift/ctrl.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article is fluff. There is a superficial exploration of the development process, punctuated with non-descriptions of the actual coding. Screenshots of nested items is not news.

The entire content is that FogBugz has met a routine feature request. This belongs in the FogBugz changelog, not on a news site.

<comment><USER13> Your account is incomplete. You failed to describe the frantic back patting they gave themselves.

On a more substantive note they did describe how their first implementation failed a usability test.</comment></comment>


Three Girls Win Intel Science Fair - <AUTHOR> http://wayofthewoo.blogspot.com/2008/05/three-girls-win-intel-science-fair.html

<comment><USER2> This is nice to see, but the Intel fair is hardly a meaningful measurement of demographic trends.

Winning the Intel competition depends heavily on a high-school student's (rather privileged) access to university-level research. It's no secret that universities are invested in youth outreach for women and minorities in science. In other words, there's a huge, not-so-hidden selection bias going on here.

A far more _interesting_ question: what happens to these women after 8+ years of post-secondary education? (Hint: they don't tend to stick around to gather more awards)

<comment><USER3> from what I know, it is always kids with parents that are into the industry that win it. So, privileged, also means having a parent working on advanced research or R&D with heavy access of materials and knowledge that normal parents don't.

<comment><USER4> While it's very true that privileged parents/school connections help some students tremendously, good science is still good science. Anyone with a good research idea that can execute well will be able to go pretty far in the competitions. You don't have to have PhD parents or go to a private school to win.

I won several awards at ISEF many years ago, including a few full-ride college scholarships. That was before Intel took it over completely. I also won awards at Westinghouse and some of the DoD science competitions. My Dad was a truck driver and my Mom was a waitress at the time. They are 'normal' - for the most part ;-) I also went to a small, rural high school that was definitely NOT known for its science programs. Despite this contrary anecdotal evidence, I'll have to mostly agree with you about the background of the people that win at these competitions...although I can't speak directly to the gender issue. (I do remember quite a few female competitors...?)

I was definitely the odd guy out at most of the competitions because I didn't go to a private school and/or come from a very wealthy and educated family. I was also a little lower on the...uh...Asperger's scale that most of my competitors, to put it diplomatically. While I was a geek at my high school, I seemed like an extroverted uber-jock at most of the competitions because it turns out that everything IS relative. It was a very weird (but nice) change in roles.

They have some great awards at these competitions. I won a trip to MITI City in Japan, for example. It's also fun...the practical jokes that come about with that many geeks hanging out are amazing! ;-)

<comment><USER2> Well, like they say...the exceptions make the rule.

I think what's interesting about your story is not so much that you did these things, but that you were _able_ to do them. In particular, what happened that allowed you (rural high school kid with blue-collar parents) to do Westinghouse-caliber work? Did someone approach you with a great opportunity, was it the result of tenaciousness and single-minded dedication, did you have a Homer-Hickam-style, one-in-a-million series of fortunate events...all of the above?

The fact that you're agreeing with us about the overall competitor pool in these contests suggests that your experience was a pretty rare event.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Did you read the shit they did! They did some pretty crazy shit for being high schoolers.. I hardly knew my way around an integral in high school let alone doing what these kids did.

</comment><comment><USER6> lol, asian and two indians like I expected. white girls are stupid and lazy :p (bring on the downmods)</comment>


Container Linux will still be developed - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/coreos-user/GR4YlF2c1dM <comment><USER2> CoreOS product manager and author of this note, happy to report this!

I submitted an alternate title: "CoreOS Container Linux will remain Red Hat supported OSS"

<comment><USER3> It's great to hear that Container Linux will live on as an official and supported product/project.

Is there any chance you can comment on the future of rkt development and support from a CoreOS and/or Red Hat perspective?</comment></comment>


Researchers are keeping pig brains alive outside the body - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611007/researchers-are-keeping-pig-brains-alive-outside-the-body/amp/ <comment><USER2> Perhaps, based on the article, a better title could be "researchers keep large fraction of brain cells alive in pig brain..."

I hope they did some fMRI studies of the brains. Wonder if they just got some random noise (i.e., brain cells firing asynchronously) or if there was some discernable pattern.

And if there is a pattern, then.. wow! But also, little creepy..

As an aside, I respect that the authors on the paper refused to comment on it till the paper gets reviewed / published.

<comment><USER3> I would be very surprised if there was any kind of pattern. Once you cut off patterned sensory input, there is no reason to believe any pattern would persist beyond that. Even meager attempts at sensory deprivation often result in quite quite dissolution of consciousness, with it only be restored upon resumption of sensory input. That combined with the fact that significant changes to our bodies and perceptive apparatus lead to significant changes in our subjective experience makes it fairly clear, to me at least, that you can't have a mind without a body perceiving and creating a feedback loop between the world and your 'self.'

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Soviets did similar experiments, the end result was the invention of heart-lung and dialysis machines [0]. Makes one wonder what this will lead to down the road? But it will probably be a while before we get there due to ethical concerns of doing something like this with a human brain.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiments_in_the_Revival_of_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiments_in_the_Revival_of_Organisms)

<comment><USER5> > Makes one wonder what this will lead to down the road?

Brain as a Service?

<comment><USER6> Robocop

<comment><USER7> Uplifted swine? Pigsmatrix?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Even though he says the EEG was flat: I'm mostly horrified at the idea that the pig might still be conscious.

Pigs are self aware.

<comment><USER9> Maybe someday we as a species will evolve to a point that we recognize the immorality of experimenting on beings which are sentient but do not have the capability to consent.

It boggles my mind that the learned individuals performing such experiments (and especially, the ethics boards that green-light them) fail to recognize as false the dichotomy between human and non-human sentience; but, humans have a history of performing experiments on other _humans_ against their consent, so I shouldn't be surprised.

<comment><USER10> Pig brains are just (dog) food. Morality shouldn't be concerned with food no matter how sentient it is.

<comment><USER11> Why are pig brains dog food? Because they're below the arbitrary threshold of intelligence we have drawn in the sand to determine sentience?

What if there was extra-terrestrial life of greater intelligence still that encountered our own species, and subjected us to identical treatment according to the exact same basis of morality?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Huh. I guess in our lifetime we'll see a human brain sustained outside the body and then put back in so we can ask the person what it was like.

<comment><USER13> It must be weird having thoughts without any sensory input whatsoever...it's like a prison of sorts.

<comment><USER12> > _It must be weird having thoughts without any sensory input > whatsoever...it's like a prison of sorts_

I don't know. For an uninstantiated mind, perhaps. But if you know it's temporary and know it's safe, perhaps it would be therapeutic. Or beneficial in some other way. Maybe a detached brain sleeps better. Or maybe it instantly and irreversibly goes mad.

<comment><USER14> Perhaps relevant: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Rather than trying to building practical pattern recognition systems using computers we can use animal brains, i.e. not models for brains, like the bee brain model [http://greenbrain.group.shef.ac.uk/](http://greenbrain.group.shef.ac.uk/), but _actual_ brains hooked up to circuitry. Or, if the whole brain is impractical, just relevant parts, e.g. the visual cortex for visual analysis. Using higher-level animals like a pig may be gross, ethically speaking but how about others, e.g. mice. Think about a visual processing unit using 1,000 mice brains harvested from embryos.

I think the bottleneck here is to keep brains/tissues alive, so this research is interesting.

</comment><comment><USER16> A bit disturbingly reminiscent of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked- in_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-in_syndrome) and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun)

</comment><comment><USER17> I hope there was no possibility that the brains regained consciousness in any sense, otherwise it seems like incredibly unethical experimentation.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is a key development in my personal plan for Futurama-style immortality. Glass jar futures, anyone?

<comment><USER19> With a realistic enough VR and feedback environment I would take it if they could keep the essence that is me alive and able to interact with reality.

<comment><USER20> Maybe this already happened to me and I didn't realize it.

Apparently in my VR simulation, most major Linux distributions have adopted systemd and the UK is leaving the EU.

<comment><USER21> _Apparently in my VR simulation, most major Linux distributions have adopted systemd and the UK is leaving the EU._

So trippy! You'll never believe mine though, Donald Trump is president of America and Dick Cheney outlived Robin Williams. I think I got a bad vat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> since when do pigs have better technology than primates ?</comment>


A Visual and Interactive Guide to the Basics of Neural Networks - <AUTHOR> https://jalammar.github.io/visual-interactive-guide-basics-neural-networks/ <comment><USER2> The author posted this as a Show HN earlier today

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13183171](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13183171)

edit: @dang, could we merge these posts so @jalammar sees the community's appreciation and can provide feedback?

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty cool.

As far as Neural Networks goes, I would really recommend reading Michael Nielsen's book ([http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com](http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com)). Just top notch content and free!

<comment><USER4> Thank you for the link. A lot of the suggested resources seemed to be coursera videos in this blogpost, and I much prefer to read books rather than watch videos.

Good blog post though. I liked that it was interactive, nice touch :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > What are the applications for machine learning in the fields you're already > knowledgeable about? What new magic can you wield by mixing this spell with > others in your spell book?

 _sigh_

</comment><comment><USER6> Thank you!</comment>


There's no such thing as Android, only Android-compatible - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/12/theres-no-such-thing-as-android-only-android-compatible.ars <comment><USER2> It was annoying enough that my computers eventually became too slow to run the newest versions of Windows/Ubuntu/Mac OS. I can't imagine the the frustration Android users must feel to be denied updates not because of obsolete hardware but because of handset and carrier neglect.

Google should step in and assure that all Android (tm) hardware can be updated to vanilla releases of the operating system without the need to be a technology wizard.

<comment><USER3> In some ways it reminds me of the very early days of PCs. An early consumer really needed to know their stuff when buying a PC back then.

Here's some common scenarios from back in those days:

\- Buy a Tandy? Sorry, weird video card and sound controller meant limited software selection.

\- PC Jr? Similar. But entirely different from the Tandy hardware. Even had a different kind of VGA and oddball joystick ports!

\- 5.25" drive when the software is only in 3.5"?

\- How about double sided disks?

\- Double density?

\- Oddball keyboard connector on your AT&T brand 8088?

\- No Parallel port? No printer.

\- No PS/2 port, but the needed trackball peripheral needs it?

\- Weird IBM MCA slots? Can't get a sound card.

\- Wrong UART chip? Stuck at 2400bps.

\- Hercules graphics card? good luck with that.

All of these things were on systems that were "PC Compatible", and were advertised as such, but made owning and operating these things a serious pain. It was a loose "compatibility". If you had just the right hardware mix and match, and just the right drivers loaded in the just the right parts of memory, you could get 85% of the software to work.

Later software sent users through extensive setup processes with questions like:

"What DMA assignment?", "Hercules graphics?", "CGA, EGA? or VGA (not PC Jr. Compatible?", "EMS?" etc. etc.

It's not quite that bad with Android, it seems about 95% of the software I try on my devices works fine. But it's still kind of a pain, and useful to keep the old days in mind.

<comment><USER4> Just like the old days, graphics are the big sticking point. Most current shipping devices have some mix of the following:

\- Resolution:

* HVGA (mostly only low-end phones now)

* WVGA ("standard")

* FWGVGA (early Motorola)

* qHD (most high-end phones)

* WSVGA (7" tablets)

* 720 (Rezound, Galaxy Nexus, more soon)

* WXGA (10" tablets)

\- Graphics

* Adreno (Qualcomm)

* GeForce (nVidia Tegra)

* ARM Mali (SGSII, less the T-Mobile USA variant)

* PowerVR (everyone else)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't want updates "indefinitely". I think 2 years of updates, which is the usual lifetime of a phone, or updating to 2 major new versions (5.0 and 6.0 for 4.0/ICS phones) is reasonable.

I don't mind if they raise the price a little, but they'll have to heavily promote this "feature", otherwise customers won't know why their phone is more expensive than the competition who isn't offering these updates.

<comment><USER6> It would be a lot easier for handset vendors to upgrade all of their devices from the last 2 years if they didn't release a new phone with slightly different hardware every month. LG alone is upgrading 11 devices to ICS - that's over twice as many devices as _all_ of the iPhones ever released, and Apple has been selling iPhones since 2007.

Baring actual hardware limitations (e.g. the lack of NAND space on the Nexus One), most of the work in porting a ROM is the device drivers. Vendors are really shooting themselves in the foot by releasing a dozen different hardware configurations in a single year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "MS-DOS—the original "weak OS." Every version of the software is retailored and rebranded by its manufacturer. Even some software has to be rewritten to conform to different machines and their varied specs."

Interesting definition of 'original'... unless my history is very wrong, *NIX was around first. Retailored and rebranded by vendors? Check. Rewritten for different hardware? Check.

Android is like Unix, which is no surprise really, since technologically that's what it is.

What freed Unix from the fragmentary mess of vendors? It was cheap commodity hardware, combined with GNU. As long as smartphone makers try to differentiate their products, incompatible versions of the OS will proliferate - and as long as Android remains schizophrenic about whether it's really open or not, and as long as Google tries to prevent forking, forks will happen. The best defence against forking is not to try to defend against forking. (Further reading: esr on bazaars)

<comment><USER8> Unix was only rebranded in the early 80s at the exact time DOS was released. However, Unix's unintended "re-branding" was at its birth: due to its portability & availability in source, every installation was almost a "port".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> A lot of people expecting about 3-year life cycle of a smartphone now.

They'd buy one under contract and upgrade to a new on within 18-24 months. The old smartphone then given to a family member. It is a lot more common than the tech crowd.

So having manufacturers updating the phone for at least 3 years would really help a lot.

</comment><comment><USER10> The lack of upgrades is not necessarily a problem for most people. This is why there has been little commercial interest in providing a constant stream of upgrades.

Take Windows XP for example. People are still installing this even though they are no longer supported by MS.

</comment><comment><USER11> Seems I got lucky in that I'm using one of the older phones that has always had some community development inertia behind it.

In fact, I installed Android 4.0 last night and now I'm running a phone thats almost exactly 2 years old. I love my HTC Incredible.

</comment><comment><USER12> by far my biggest complaint about my droid x2 is that I have no idea if or when it will get ICS. When google announces updates to android, rather than getting excited, I get pissed off. My phone is less than 6 months old, and was a top of the line phone. I have no idea if I'll ever get ICS. Isn't that absurd?

</comment><comment><USER13> > In other cases that upgrade will require significant engineering > investments—time and money—on the part of the handset maker and the carrier. > They might decide to spend the money and deliver the update, six months > later. Or they might decide that the investment isn't worth it.

It's a double whammy. The OEMs need to spend the money for the update and the customer will be disincentivized to buy the newest hardware.

Not supplying ICS for the Galaxy S will help the sales of S II and the Galaxy Nexus.

<comment><USER2> It seems like the perfect opportunity for a hardware vendor to separate themselves from the crowd.

"Buy our hardware and be assured software updates for 2 years."

<comment><USER14> So, buy from Apple?

From my own experience with this, I bought a Samsung Moment a couple weeks after it launched and was abandoned with about 17 months left on my contract (with some severe bugs that were never resolved while I had it). I did get an official update to 2.1, but it was very late and that was the last update it ever received while I owned it.

Sure, I wasn't an eligible purchaser for their next immediate phone release, but their utterly terrible support of my product _ensured that I'll never be a future customer of Samsung, for any of their product divisions_ and severely tarnished my impression of Android in general. All Android manufacturers do equally bad jobs at supporting their products with only a couple of products as exceptions (even "big release" phones like the original Motorola Droid got abandoned before their earliest contracts ended, late buyers are really screwed), so I'm not too keen on rolling the dice on any future Android products either.

<comment><USER15> I was using my OG Droid on a regular basis until I got a Galaxy Nexus. I was running the latest Gingerbread and a super-tuned fast kernel from <http://www.peteralfonso.com/> on it. When the manufacturers drop the ball, the community jumps on it. Far better than an iPhone of similar vintage (the OG Droid came out in late 2009.)

<comment><USER16> I'm not seeing how your solution is "far better" considering that the "iPhone of similar vintage" is the iPhone 3GS (released June 2009) which still continues to receive updates.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Foreign Language Learning Hacks - <AUTHOR> http://www.thangudu.com/post/37252447326/language-hacks <comment><USER3> Number 2, number 4, and number 9 of the suggestions in the blog post kindly submitted here are all well worthwhile. As my user profile discloses, I am an American native speaker of General American English (originally part of a monolingual household in a basically monolingual neighborhood of native-born Americans) who acquired various second languages. I have reached a high enough proficiency in Modern Standard Chinese to make my living for several years as a Chinese-English, English-Chinese interpreter and as a Chinese-English translator. I know maintain a bilingual household. I still enjoy language learning as a hobby, and my children attempt learning various human languages.

One old webpage I like with language-learning advice

<http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html>

lists some helpful books with a lot of research-based advice on learning new languages.

<comment><USER4> Is your partner also 'an American native speaker of General American English'? I would be interested in learning more about households where both parents learned additional language(s) to raise their children bilingually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Learning words != learning a language.

Most of the posts I see on HN mostly revolve around learning languages. In my opinion that's only part of the problem. It's more difficult to get the structure of sentences and tenses correct. I personally know words in 2 - <USER2> languages which share a root with my mother tongue, but it doesn't mean that I can speak those languages because I often don't get the way a single word transforms based on the tense, part of speech etc. For eg. merely knowing the word "smile" would only take you so far. Knowing the difference between "He is smiling", "He smiles", "He keeps smiling at me" is the tricky part.

Perhaps we are obsessed with learning words because it's the easier problem to solve. Learning sentence structure and grammar takes time and effort.

<comment><USER6> _Perhaps we are obsessed with learning words because it's the easier problem to solve._

I think that depends on the person and/or language.

My Polish grammar knowledge is now pretty impressive, but I'm having a terrible time trying to remember words, so spend the majority of my time attempting to force memorisation with flash cards.

In a way it's kinda fun - I can go through pages of grammar exercises, conjugating and declining correctly, but with no idea of what Marta did in the past with 101 of somebody's somethings.

<comment><USER7> I'm delving into learning Polish myself but have been taking mostly a whole language, immersion approach. For example, when I was in Krakow I bought myself a book on CD and the book itself, so I can 'read' along as I listen. I use translation tools to put selected passages into English. I also spend time listening to Polish radio. I know at some point I will have to develop some discipline about tackling grammar in a systematic fashion the way you are doing, but for the moment I guess I'm content to as much as possible to get a feel for the language. Japanese is my second language and its challenges are almost completely different... anyway, good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you are trying to learn Italian, the good news is, there are a number of outstanding movies that are not famous outside Italy. I'm talking about masterpieces here. One for all:

"Indagini su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto"

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065889/>

<comment><USER9> Thanks. Can you name more?

<comment><USER8> Sure:

"Amici miei" (1, 2, 3... there are many sequels)

"Un borghese piccolo piccolo" (Mario Monicelli)

"La dolce vita"

"Il Gattopardo" (Luchino Visconti)

"Travolti da un insolito destino nell'azzuro mare d'agosto" Lina Wertmuller

"Le fate ignoranti" (Ferzan Ozpetek)

"Il Marchese del Grillo" (Mario Monicelli) // I love this

"Le conseguenze dell'amore"

And a lot more.

<comment><AUTHOR> I love this list. I've seen most of these.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My favorite hack: talk to kids. They will do two things that adults won't:

1\. Laugh at you, so you know when you're wrong. 2\. Patiently "teach" you things over and over and over again.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why no mention of duolingo.com ?

Their iPhone app is driving an immense improvement in my German.

Living in Switzerland I also like to watch shows e.g. on MTV in English but with German subtitles on. Then I can pause the live TV and rewind to match English spoken expression to German translation. This helps too.

<comment><USER12> Is there a service out there that includes the generation of vocab review sheets (many words, defined in one viewspace)? I find duolingo (and Anki, other web services) unsuitably slow for learning vocab.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Grammar is always the toughest.

I think this depends somewhat on the language. For some, grammar is the first major bottleneck to get to a usable beginner level, but for others, it's pronunciation. For example, Danish grammar is relatively simple (which is one reason Google Translate is very good translating it), but it's quite difficult for non-native speakers to pronounce it intelligibly. I've also heard second- hand that pronunciation is a bigger problem than grammar for beginning Mandarin Chinese speakers.

<comment><USER7> It turns out that the obstacles are the same for both: tonal inflection. Most people are familiar with this fact as it pertains to Chinese and many of the languages of southeast Asia (Thai, Vietnamese, Cantonese et al) but remain completely unaware that it also a core feature of the languages of Scandinavia, Danish included. btw, Google translate does an excellent job translating Chinese (but a pretty terrible job with a superficially related language like Japanese). It turns out Chinese and English word order are the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The biggest one is missing. Why do you remember every line of every funny movie you've ever seen, but can't remember a single, excruciating, boring, mind numbing moment of Rossetta Stone ("el gato....snore....la mesa..snore...etc"). Because it's not engaging your brain in a lasting way.

I built this app (and download) w/ a business partner (and it's a side business as my main business is consulting), and people love it. We have Spanish and English and we're planning more languages (probably English for Mandarin and Cantonese speakers next)... <http://www.buenoentonces.com/>

Full disclosure - it's kind of randy so you need to be OK w/PG-13 humor. But that's why you learn it. If you do every class, and you already have a bit of Spanish, you WILL come out with a signifcantly greater grasp of conversational skill.

Email me (it's in my profile) and i'll send a coupon code for free classes to HN folks.

</comment><comment><USER15> If you can, the very best way is simply immersion.

Move to the country and live there. Live with people, make friends with them. Ask them to speak to you only in their native language. Listen to their music and watch their TV and films. Read their books - above all children's books.

In my first four weeks in Germany I did a 4-week 'intensive' course that covered enough basic grammar and vocabulary to stumble through a one-on-one conversation with a lot of pointing.

After that I never looked at another vocab sheet. I could feel my brain soaking up the language day after day; I'd reach out for a word I'd never learned or a phrase I'd never used and find one waiting.

Obviously not everyone has the opportunity to immerse themselves in a foreign culture for twelve months, but if you do then just take it - time spent learning the language before you go is probably inefficiently spent if not outright wasted.

<comment><USER16> It's not impossible to learn a language in your home country, but it's damn difficult. Most English learners reach a pretty good level even in their home country, but English is unprecedented in it's universality, usefulness, availability of TV, movies, books, everything.

For example, living in Sweden I was fairly fluent by the time I was 18 without ever having had a single conversation with an English speaker. I did what most people do, watch a lot of TV, then TV without subtitles, play games, write posts on online forums etc. The first time I had to actually speak it, I was 21 and taking care of an exchange student from the US. That year was what made me truly comfortable speaking English for days, without having to struggle for words and expressions.

It's that experience, and also spending 2 years at a US university and then working here, that made me a 98% native speaker. It's to a point where people can't tell that I'm not native now unless they spend a day with me. Some people sense that there's something a little off perhaps, still. I think the last 10-15% is extremely difficult to get for most people, without living in the country. A lot of that last 10% is cultural as well, there are still many cultural references that fly past me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Kindles support good foreign-language dictionaries, allowing you to look up unfamiliar words as you read. This has massively improved my reading speed in German, and made reading less frustrating by making it faster.

<comment><USER18> I've been working on a variation of this with a connection to a flashcard app [<http://www.vocabulous.net>]. Basically whenever you look up an unfamiliar word you can tap "add" and it ends up among your flashcards.

Now I just need amazons book catalog, and it'll be awesome...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> FYI:

>das ist nicht gut

is also perfect, normal, modern German

<comment><USER20> I was about to point out the same thing, also "tak tak" means "yes, yes". Also, learning from "meme posters" is a bad idea. They often intentionally misuse the language in a non-obvious way, especially if you've just started learning it.

I don't think breadth first works well with learning many languages at once. What's the point of being able to recall a few phrases in each language. Learn one until it's at a usable level.

One important thing I wanted to add that helps me a lot is: use Anki! It's the most time efficient way to memorise information.

Also, advice like this is specific to a family of languages.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah. Very true. I guess memes should be taken in context with the help or under the tutelage of a native speaker.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> My favourite technology for memorizing vocabulary is definitely memrise[1]. It actually combines a lot of these things together so it becomes more than just a flashcard site, it has a wiki-like community format so people can add 'meme'-based mnemonics, usage examples, etc. Really smart stuff.

[1] <http://www.memrise.com>

<comment><USER22> <useless_rant>

Why are all those sites english->whatever-language and not whatever- language->whatever-other-language?

I know it can be long to translate everything, but once you have a English->French course and an English->Italian course, why can't we have a French->Italian one (and vice versa)?

</useless_rant>

<comment><USER23> Because going between any two languages is a separate task. Unless you have a universal language that contains every linguistic feature everywhere and can achieve lossless transition, using X->Y and X->Z to make Y->Z will introduce an unacceptable level of error. English is not a universal language.

<comment><USER24> My Natural Language Systems professor just went through that topic yesterday -- that in the case of all machine translation applications, the ultimate goal is to get as high up in a 'natural language pyramid' where the tip is a single universal language. So we get the most use out of elements of any two given languages that have as much in common with each other as possible; these common elements could then be applied to other similar languages.

Interestingly, he also proposed that the closest thing we have right now to that 'tip' language is sanskrit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Learn the verbs at simple present like in the target language: I am, you are, she is, he is.... I have, you have, she has...

Every time you want to say something and you cannot find out how to say and write down in your paper.

And keep them in a a4 page in some place and take it with you everywhere you go. When you speak and you don't remember a word, quickly check your page.

</comment><comment><USER5> How does learning pangrams help? I don't get how the author has benefited from learning all the letters of German when they mostly correspond to the English alphabet. It does sound like a cool thing to learn, but I can't think of any use beyond that. What am I missing?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. I should have been clearer.

The german pangram I cited happens to be my favorite, but in some sense provides less utility than a Russian or Arabic pangram. In the early days of learning a new language, sometimes people forget the letters or pronunciation, but a pangram can help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Shameless plug: two years ago I created <http://nabbber.com> to help me learn English. Basically, it's like Twitter, but instead of tweets you post words that you've recently learned. You can follow other people and see their new words on your home page (just like tweets).

I'm in Bali now and I'm using Nabbber to learn Indonesian. Whenever I see an unknown word (in a shop, at a gas station, etc) I save it and then revise from time to time.

Here's how my profile page looks like: <http://nabbber.com/AlexanderZaytsev/words/id:en>

I find this method (just got out in the wild and write down unknown words) the most efficient one.

</comment><comment><USER27> Not a bad list, but I've never understood the reasoning behind frequency word lists. The 5,000 most common words in a new language are the ones that I need to worry about least, simply because I'm going to be encountering them so frequently.

For the record, I've found that very little can match forcing yourself to speak your target language with native speakers. Back this up with studying vocabularly and grammar on your own. Hard work, but incredibly effective.

<comment><USER28> I think learning the top 3000 words makes it easier to get more passive help from books, newspapers and television. For me, there is a threshold when I improve without really trying, just by reading and listening. It's not the most efficient method, but I don't have to sit down and study.

<comment><USER29> Yeah, establishing that baseline of 2-3k works is what makes most of what you read comprehensible, and allows you to pick up more vocabulary and understanding through context, which I think is pretty much the key. I actually do think it might be the most effective method once you're at that level.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> "Learn the top 1000 spoken or written words of a language"

Is there a resource that provides a list of the most frequent words for a given language?

<comment><USER21> <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Frequency_lists>

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> watch shows in your favorite genre, in (target) foreign language + eng (or your native language) subtitles.

<comment><USER21> I found this didn't help me much beyond picking up the odd word I'd learned in context. Switching to target language subtitles and using VLC to slow down the playback slightly has done wonders for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've been learning Spanish for about 3 weeks now. I use a combination of Duolingo (highly recommended!), memrise.com (nice way to retain words) and Coffee Break Spanish podcast on iTunes. Can someone suggest Spanish movies/shows I can watch?:)

</comment><comment><USER33> That's a good list. I think the most important first step is to find what really interests you (whether that be comic books, TV shows, movies, music) and use that as a starting point. For example, a lot of people I know learned Japanese because they were interested in anime. If you are studying something that truly interests you, it is much easier to stay motivated.

In my opinion, there is still a lot of room for innovation in the online language learning space. It is a very tough problem to solve and it is one that I am currently working on with my startup - BiFluent[1]. Our thesis is that one thing that is really missing for people learning a foreign language is metrics. If you are running a startup, I'm sure you could immediately tell me how many new users signed up today, what your current conversion rate is, etc. But can you do the same thing if you are learning a foreign language? Can you tell me what your level was 1 year ago, 6 months ago, 1 month ago? Can you tell me (precisely) what your strengths are, and what your weaknesses are (speaking, pronunciation, vocabulary, idioms, grammar, etc.)? Can you tell me which words you should be studying next, based on frequency analysis and tailored to fit your study goals? I believe that if you truly know your level, and if you are able to measure your improvement over short term periods (every month), it becomes much easier to stay motivated and stay on track.

One tool we are hoping to ship in the next week or so is a vocabulary assessment tool. Historically, the only way people have measured vocabulary is by the number of words you know. For example, "I know 5,000 words". In my opinion, this is a vanity metric. It doesn't really tell us any useful, actionable information. Our new tool reports what we call your Vocabulary Coverage Ratio. This is the percentage of the total vocabulary of a language that you will know or understand (analyzed on a frequency basis). So, for example, if your Vocabulary Coverage Ratio is 85%, this means that you will understand 85% of the vocabulary in any given situation. After we ascertain your level with our tool, we can also break out your coverage ratio across different mediums (TV, newspapers, magazines, fiction) using the data in our corpus. Also, once we know your vocabulary coverage ratio, we can use the frequency analysis in our database to give you tailored study lists. These study lists will show you the next 50 most frequent words you should be studying based on your current level and interest (we have different lists for medical, business, SAT, GRE, TOEIC, etc.). If you choose the right words to target, you can quickly improve your coverage ratio.

So in conclusion, I think the best "hack" is a mix of two things. 1) You need to find what interests you and use that as a jumping point 2) you need to use science and tools to accelerate your progress (just like we use analysis tools in every other aspect of our lives).

[1] <https://www.bifluent.com>

<comment><USER34> A common problem for tech-minded people when approaching human languages is to equate learning words with learning a language but it doesn't work that way.

The two big reasons are differing division of word boundaries and collocations. The second half of this 2 minute video explains both: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cjnP6mogEU>

<comment><USER18> Very true. One way around that is to put more than one word on your flashcard; a phrase of five-ish words enough to study in that way, but long enough to show some grammar and context ("the elephant has a long trunk").

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'd add two of mine to that list: try thinking in foreign language and calculating in it.

</comment><comment><USER36> Great tips, but if I remember correctly the Italian movie is called La Vita e bella.

<comment><USER37> It's called "La Vita è bella"

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I would love to see something like this but for learning programming languages.

</comment><comment><USER39> And everybody searching for Aleksandra Kozuszek

</comment><comment><USER40> I find mixing tasks helps me out. I use duolinguo at home and I have a bunch of Pimsleur tapes (old method but still great for basics) on my phone for various languages that I listen to when I walk home from the gym and I'm still excited from working out.

Of course I seem like a madman walking down the street still flushed from the gym muttering to myself in french or german but hey, that's how it goes sometimes.

I really do think immersion is the best way to master a language but you still need a basic proficiency in it. Then just walk around speaking like an idiot and asking for corrections until you don't sound like an idiot anymore.

<comment><USER13> The last part is a little easier if you're in a context where other people either don't speak English or are unconfident in it. Many Spanish people will be okay interacting with your broken Spanish, for example, but many (most?) Scandinavians will immediately switch to English. I've also had better luck with languages which have more speakers, since they're more used to hearing non-native accents: French or Spaniards or Italians can accept a pretty wide range of pronunciations, but mispronounced Danish ends up completely unintelligible to many people.

<comment><USER40> mm, the only place I've put this into practice was when I was learning French and living in Quebec, I'd simply say that I was trying to practice and most people would go along with it. I can see it being a problem if your bad accent makes the language unintelligible though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I recommend using <https://github.com/antijingoist/AlphaSymbolic> as a means of distilling the cultural/economic/historical/etc unnecessary typographic biases/information latent in current font libraries. At least for Latin-based systems; these biases may distract the reader from developing extensible representation models of the text itself; thus, they distract the reader from more immediately perceiving the "stress" or density of text, since the characters are each so "unique" in terms of glyphs, etc.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a science news platform like hacker news? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Data Science - [http://www.datatau.com/](http://www.datatau.com/)

<comment><USER3> I'm curious to know if it's running on the same platform -- or just has the same UI?

<comment><USER4> Looks like the same platform, the code is available here: [https://github.com/wting/hackernews](https://github.com/wting/hackernews)</comment></comment></comment>


How Do you Motivate Yourself and Stay Focused? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2013/10/08/how-do-you-motivate-yourself-and-stay-focused <comment><USER3> Elon Musk answered a similar question, and identified drive as the only relevant factor:

"How do you stay focused, motivated, and maintain enthusiasm when things don't go the way you'd hoped?

"I think my, sort of, drive to get it done is somewhat disconnected from hope, enthusiasm, or anything else... I actually just don't care about hope, or enthusiasm, motivation... I just give it everything I've got, irrespective of what the circumstances may be... You just keep going, and get it done."

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOPgM7Sc2VQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOPgM7Sc2VQ)

<comment><USER4> I love Elon Musk, but jesus christ, way to make the rest of us feel utterly human.

<comment><USER5> I'm impressed by his scientific endeavors, but I have a hard time forgiving him for Paypal.

<comment><USER6> It seems you are trying to be cute/follow the meme that it's good to hate on PayPal because of the account freezes and stuff as of late. However, before PayPal it was so hard to make a payment or transfer money to someone. They deserved the success they had for a groundbreaking product. Hating on Musk for decisions the company has made more recently is pure folly.

<comment><USER5> >It seems you are trying to be cute/follow the meme...

Because no one that's capable of independent thought will come to a different conclusion than you did right? There's no need to be condescending just because you don't agree with me.

Paypal is a shitty company because it fails to support sellers in any meaningful way. Part of this stems from the fact that it isn't a financial institution, so it will always lose to industry standard financial institutions if it tries to fight fraudulent charge backs. Unfortunately this renders the service close to useless for anyone trying to sell anything that's worth more than about $20.

It works great if you want to buy something, because you have a 100% chance of getting your money back if the seller doesn't come through. Unfortunately, people committing fraud against sellers also have a 100% chance of getting their money back, because Paypal doesn't even attempt to investigate these situations properly.

<comment><USER5> Instead of silently down-voting, why don't you counter with information that supports the opposite? Perhaps you know someone who has a good experience as a vendor that uses Paypal. Sadly, I myself know multiple dealers that shut their accounts down after they got tired of losing money to thieves.

<comment><USER6> Again... not Musk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I feel like I'm facing the same problems but in a completely opposite context. He's in a stressful situation every day, unsure what's going to come next, and forced to imperfectly make decisions. His strategy for motivation comes from keeping his eyes on the prize and going with the flow.

I'm in a completely stress free environment - every day blends in with the next; I can just do nothing one day and tell myself I will do it tomorrow. I'm financially stable enough to never be in a do-or-die situation. My passion for my project temporarily died somewhere after 30k lines of code. Yet, it is my dream to finish the project. I _have_ to finish it, it's my self-designated job. But it's such a huge, abstract task, and I can just enjoy myself _right now_ instead. There's literally no reward for working until after another year of it. It's so hard to stay focused and motivated when nothing is at stake.

<comment><USER8> What if I gave you one hundred dollar bills and said this is all the money you had to spend. Once it's spent, it's spent, and you can never get any more.

How much would you spend on movie ticket? A blissful escape, sure, but you probably have other things to do with your life.

You're only going to live for maybe one hundred years at most, maybe many less. _Spend_ your years wisely.

<comment><USER7> I agree, I would be super motivated if that was the case, because it would give me a concrete deadline. But it's hard to simulate desperateness, because I could always bail out (unless I gave all my money away, which isn't a good idea). It's not like I'm rich or anything, I just saved up enough money to do exactly this (work on this project full time) for a while, and yet here I am, sitting around struggling to do it.

I _want_ to _want_ to work hard. I just really need to learn self-discipline.

<comment><USER9> It's extremely difficult to self-manage if you haven't been in a safe situation to experiment with it.

Personally, I find that the only sensible and generally applicable solution is to set short-term goals based on a formally written project plan to yourself.

You don't ever have to give that project plan to anyone else, but you should write it as well as you possibly can. It should be clear on what kinds of things are feasible to do, what is required, what you can do first to prove the concepts, and so on.

I do this for every project I start, after struggling with the problem in graduate school a bit. It takes about a week per proposal to put something together of reasonably high quality, but by the end you actually probably have a very good sense of the strongest argument you can make to do the project as well as the weaknesses, as well as ideally a logical argument for why it might work based on citable evidence. This would also include things like "this experiment I can do" (translated to "this market idea I can test" in business) will generate some result that is clear and helpful in moving towards your medium term goal -- which is probably to either make enough money or be able to raise enough money to pay yourself and enough staff to move to the next medium term goal.

Then take that medium term goal and break it down not into time-based goals but sensible sub-goals. If you want to build a web service, a first goal might be "I think that people have a use for... I can test that by building... and collect data using... if that works, then it's worth doing the second goal..."

Break it down as small as is sensible to do, but limit this kind of strategizing so that you don't go really far down a road before putting it aside to sit and let you get a fresh perspective. Bounce it off others to see if they can poke holes in your strategy that you didn't think of. And so on.

Anyway, it's not so much self-discipline as it is realizing that big goals are always changing and medium term goals are uncertain. You have to always be able to change those goals based on the actual data you collect. But the short term goals should be achievable. And it will take time to isolate what good short term goals should be.

A good short term goal might be, to start, to make a good start on identifying short term goals...

<comment><USER7> That's a good idea - even though I'm in the middle of the project, and the project is big enough where a plan of the entire project wouldn't be feasible, I can at least do it for the chunk I am working on right now. I think just being explicit with my tasks would be a huge step. Right now everything is vague and kind of just in this "idea soup" in the back of my mind. Every time I pull out the next idea to work on, I realize I had all the wrong expectations the whole time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Staying motivated is simple: don't work on boring shit.

That may sound like a shallow phrase, but I've been there. You've convinced yourself that you're working on the most awesome thing in the world. You keep thinking that you're supposed to be motivated, because what you're doing is great. But deep down, you know that you'd rather do something else.

At that point it usually boils down to rewards. Is the reward worth continuing?

If the answer is yes, go on. Shouldn't be a problem. If the answer is no, you know why you aren't motivated. Drop it, look for something else.

<comment><USER11> But it's not that simple. Not that simple to drop something when it's 70% complete, not easy to find something new that won't also become boring at 70%, and not easy to start from scratch.

Plus, with every failure, you lose a little bit of trust in yourself and belief that you can get things done.

There's always a point where the motivation is just gone and you have to push through somehow, and if you can't get this thing done, chances are that you won't be able to do it the second or third time, either ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> My attitude towards major decisions comes from an incident in my childhood. I make them and then see whether they stand up to the lesser tests along the way - reason and reality.

It's not willpower for me, it's not even trying to focus on something. It's making a choice and meaning it - really meaning it: _I 'm gonna do this, you'll have to kill me (or the idea as the case may be) to stop me._ Then I've got something to work with. What that decision is at the time isn't the most important part. Try to talk yourself out of that decision - depending on the time and resources, try to get other people to talk you out of it - if you fail then do the thing, if you succeed then don't. If it gets far enough, throw the dice and accept what may come with the knowledge you gambled as well as you were able.

The important thing for me is to make that initial choice. I find that works much better than indulging in doubting a course of action that I can't really define. Hesitation is often just another word for freezing, panicking or running away.

...

Not that I think that my style of thinking is suitable for everyone. I wonder whether the sort of choice making I'm talking about here is something that everyone can do. For instance, lots of people seem to have the fear that if they get attacked they're not going to act as they want to - which doesn't really make sense if you have the experiences to know you can make a decision and mean it.

<comment><USER13> what was the incident?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't do too good with 'motivation' or willpower. I do good with habit. For me, motivation dies and willpower fails. Most of the shit that worked out well for me is stuff that I just kept with.

We had a real good day at the office, I wanna say, Tuesday? After a string of really good days. And I had to physically stop everybody and go get a couple beers from the corner store and HAND them to people to celebrate our rad success. Because it was boring. It honestly was. We do what we do every day, and sometimes we get the bear and sometimes the bear gets us, but if we work hard enough we live another day, and eventually small stupid wins pile up.

<comment><USER15> I love your post. Not just because the Weeds reference made me laugh, but because not all of us are living a lifestyle far and above everyone else.

Because some of us have trouble going on every day, but we have to give it everything we have - or, at least, we know that's what we need to do to progress beyond where we are - and it's motivational to know that even people who aren't Success Factor Superhuman Outliers 10X Winner Ass-Kickers are out there, too.

<comment><USER14> I could make an equally compelling argument for being both an ultra 10x super ass kicker and a total loser. It depends on the day, really. I'm probably having an ass kicker week this week. It's difficult to be certain, as keeping the ups and downs from affecting you personally is a survival skill, and what happened this week is a factor of a bunch of shit I did months ago, and what I focus on today won't matter for months into the future. Because of this weird time distortion, the only way I can function personally is just showing up and going at a sustainable pace for a long, long time.

But it is very elon musk "don't believe in hope". If getting shit done was contingent on things working out according to plan I'd have quit years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you're near the beach, try surfing, and especially at the end of a long day of work. Not only is it great exercise, but also can be a very transformative experience. Refreshing in both the physical and mental sense. This gives me motivation and focus in other things I take on.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm so tired of seeing motivation hacks, or similar stuff. If something supposed to motivate you doesn't motivate you enough, that supposition is just plain weak and has no deeper place within you. That's it. Be yourself. That's the ultimate motivation. Nothing else can be motivating you more than that, and shouldn't be, unless you want to be someone else, or as hollow as possible.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'll take a crack at the problem. What motivated me to lose 10 pounds, was a bet I made with my brother. I told him if I don't do Insanity (workout program) everyday I'd take a picture with myself in a dress. Now he was holding me responsible and I had this negativity driving me. I finished the full program.

I just did a similar thing with my co-founder for my start up except with cold calling. We've broken our sales record this week. Bottom line I think negativity motivates me more personally than positivity. Lastly whatever it is, try to make that a habit, so you have to force yourself to do it at the exact same time and place. (my two cents).

</comment><comment><USER19> I only work on projects I have a deep interest or passion for. Nothing kills motivation more than non-interesting work. A close second is ensuring you're on a great team.

I agree w/other comments that taking breaks helps, but I haven't found that to be as important as those two (passion and team). You can take as many breaks as you want throughout the day, but if you're stuck having to return to non- interesting work or a team you'd rather not work with, you'll still find it hard to get motivated and maintain focus.

</comment><comment><USER20> While staying focused in a startup is important, it's nice to have freedom to explore new ideas and thought processes outside of the core product.

I've seen plenty of startups hyper-focus on one product and fail because they couldn't position their product in the marketplace properly (seeing the forrest-through-the-trees).

</comment><comment><USER21> Like this: [http://www.collegeanswerz.com/discipline-and- understanding](http://www.collegeanswerz.com/discipline-and-understanding).

</comment><comment><USER22> The problem only exists if you have it. It doesn't really exists, but seems to exist if you let it exist. Ostensibly this advice seems not helpful as it doesn't solve the problem, but by not acknowledging it, the problem is solved. You can of course choose to manifest this problem as another problem that is solvable, which can mean mid-life crisis etc or whatever task you seek to be productive at.

<comment><USER23> What does this even mean?

<comment><USER22> It's impossible to express or study something that is ineffable. It's like extrapolating an underlying mechanism to quantum physics. You might get a model. Your model might be consistent, but the model is never guaranteed to be true or be anything better than lucky.

Study some Daoism, Socrates, decideability, and other such intellectual resources regarding perception, conditional existence, and the possibility of solutions.

I get a high state of spirit from attacking whatever is in front of me. My progress begets progress. If I don't have progress, I start. Convolution of the topic of motivation is basically procrastination unless what you're doing is not leading you even on a meandering path to your goal, in which case you need more goals and to be involved in activities with more potential. I work on FOSS, maintain and develop FOSS, help users with the FOSS I work on, and there's no doubt that it pays off, monetarily and in terms of potential. Therefore, I am never in contact with this problem. I've worked dead-end jobs to get into financial and skill position to work high-potential jobs. Any time I'm not in such a position, I seek ways to get into such a position. The problem of motivation is rhetorical. Expecting an answer might give you one, but the existence of a problem or a solution to something that is axiomatic is a dead-end unless you get lucky and something totally outside your perception leads you to believe that you have a solution and a problem and that the two together have given you motivation.

<comment><USER24> Starting off by saying a bunch of vague things and then mentioning quantum mechanics is a really good way of turning away most readers. Do you want to have a constructive conversation, where you communicate concrete and meaningful things, or do you want to just give off the appearance of sophistication?

<comment><USER22> Wah. While this was going on, I finished a re-write of the Android billing APIv3 integration in Kivy. [https://github.com/knappador/billing- example](https://github.com/knappador/billing-example) Please test the provided binary and post logcats of failures. Interested in more devices and Android versions.

<comment><USER24> You are super cool.

<comment><USER25> Advanced markov chains?

Edit: Nevermind, Github username matches HN..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> _When I rest I feel utterly lifeless except that my throat burns when I draw breath...I can scarcely go on. No despair, no happiness, no anxiety. I have not lost the mastery of my feelings, there are actually no more feelings. I consist only of will._ \- Messner on the first solo ascent of Everest

There is no secret, it is willpower. Every person draws willpower from their own unique place. Find yours.

</comment><comment><USER27> simple: i do other things. i take breaks. i work a healthy 35h a week or so (of actual work, not of checking imgur/facebook/reddit/emails/coffee/what not)

i think its well covered elsewhere. if spend too much time focusing on work, you'll lose that focus entirely.

</comment><comment><USER28> How do I motivate myself? That's kinda hard to explain. It involves a lot of inner demons and mindsets that date to my childhood growing up dirt-poor in rural southeastern NC. But what it boils down to lately it this: I'm 40. I'm not getting any younger. I haven't yet accomplished my most outlandish dreams. And I have never been crazy about accepting mediocrity. I don't want to live an average, boring, moderately successful life. "Go big or go home", whatever.

So, for the past two years or so, my mindset has been "I'm basically out of 'at bats'. I don't get any more chances to make my dreams come true. I do this _now_ , or I load my car with booze, drive to Vegas, and pull a 'Leaving Las Vegas' routine."

I just hope I can find a girl who looks like Elisabeth Shue. I <3 Elisabeth Shue.

I also draw a lot of inspiration from music. Since Suster started the Eminem references, here's one of my favorites:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1xXYeNrW9k](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1xXYeNrW9k) ('Till I Collapse - Eminem & Nate Dogg)

Along with stuff like this:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQQcOQsCFnw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQQcOQsCFnw) (Keep Your Eye on the Money - Motley Crue)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gnJ- fQ1uwA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gnJ-fQ1uwA) (Stick To Your Guns - <USER2> Jovi)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liZKm86wW88](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liZKm86wW88) (Never Say Die - Jon Bon Jovi)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3MXiTeH_Pg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3MXiTeH_Pg) (Here I Go Again - Whitesnake)

Of course, you have to realize, I grew up in the 80's, in the era of the "80's feel good movie" where the underdog hero has his back to the wall, all the odds against him, and through hard work, dedication, (and a training montage, of course) ultimately perseveres and triumphs over evil. Those are the kind of metaphors that are pretty deeply lodged into my psyche.

It also helps that I simply enjoy the act of creating things, and right now, my goal is to create this company that I have in my head. I see what we're capable of building and where this can go, and I want to make that happen.

 _Even more difficult. You have an offer to sell your company. Should you? You might net $1 million and that would change your life. But everybody is telling you not to sell and instead to "go for it" and you don't know whom to listen to. One. Million. Dollars. I know it's not what it used to be, but news flash – it's still a million dollars! How can you wake up every day and process that decision. Five million? Ten?_

This reminds me of the (in)famous "An acquistion is always a failure" discussion[1]. I said what I have to say[2] about this, in that thread.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5483582](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5483582)

[2]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5483765](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5483765)

</comment><comment><USER29> You make up story or illusion. Else, living under bridge and staring at running water gives the same satisfaction.

</comment><comment><USER30> Focus is brother to blindness, just saying.

</comment><comment><USER31> This reads like a screen play. "One Million Dollars - would you take it?!?" Indecent Proposal. ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107211/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107211/))</comment>


Show HN: Ench.me — Create your personal landing page in a few clicks - <AUTHOR> https://ench.me <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone,

Ench.me is a tool for building micro landing pages from the phone without coding.

It allows bloggers, influencers, content creators, entrepreneurs, and brands to connect with their friends & followers outside of Instagram and other social media in a simple way.

This is our first beta and we will be happy to receive feedback. Feel free to criticize or praise (we love constructive criticism :)) Or just let us know what you think.

We really hope you enjoy it. Express yourself through these micro landing pages ;)</comment>


You May Have Seen My Face on BART - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-coffeelicious/you-may-have-seen-my-face-on-bart-8b9561003e0f

<comment><USER2> I think it's a dupe. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9993353](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9993353)

</comment><comment><USER3> > I didn't ask for any of this attention, and I'm rather uncomfortable with > all of it.

I was on the front page of the New York Times for being "Hooked on Gadgets". I asked for it by agreeing to be the center of the story, didn't know it was going front page when I started, and it still made me uncomfortable when it ran. At the time, it was the most commented story in the history of the New York Times. I stopped reading the comments by people about 20 comments in. My wife made it to about 100 comments before she had to quit.

People say horrible things to each other. They judge each other, they make blaming statements about each other, they speak for other's feelings, they refuse to listen to the real feelings, or thoughts, and love to rationalize away whatever issues they have with themselves that they see in others. At the end of the day, it's easier to fault someone else and draw blame to them than it is to accept their own faults.

When you go online, you open yourself up to these people. There's not a lot you can do about them other than give zero fucks what they think or say. That's a tricky thing sometimes, because you can end up hurting people who care about you while trying to avoid those that don't. I wouldn't say I'm great at it nowadays, but I'm better than I was before as a result of having dealt with it.

It's a process, being excellent to each other, and all I can do is try harder at it tomorrow than I did today. :)

</comment><comment><USER4> My college did this to me. Hastily thrown together event "Hey, let us take some photos of you for the website". A year or two goes by, and I've left town (graduated), and friends start emailing me photos of my face on the side of a bus. Big campaign, apparently.

To make it better, I looked pretty much like a sociopath in those photos.

And I'm sure I signed some forms saying that they could do this, but they also rushed us through those forms because we were apparently short on time.

</comment><comment><USER5> _The negative opinions about this ad that strangers feel so compelled to share illustrate solid examples of the sexism that plagues tech._

Actually I didn't find the comments highlighted in the illustration all that sexist. It seemed to me that that commenter was not so much weighing in on what engineers are supposed to look like, but rather attempting to analyze the semantic content of the recruitment ad, because most ads/corporate presentations are so heavily designed and the people depicted are often professional models/actors, whether working on commission or selected from a stock photography database. Think of all the generic business websites where everyone in the photographs just happens to have culturally ideal proportions, have perfect skin/hair/teeth and look impeccably stylish. When I see that I don't think that the company is made up of fantastically good-looking people who happened to be photographed at their desks, but that the people depicted were chosen for a mix of attractive looks and professional presentation.

(Now, I don't mean this as dismissive of sexism in the tech industry, which I think is a huge problem, well summed up by the real-life experiences mentioned in the article.)

 _At the end of the day, this is just an ad campaign and it is targeted at engineers. [...] News flash: this isn't by any means an attempt to label "what female engineers look like." This is literally just ME, an example of ONE engineer at OneLogin. The ad is supposed to be authentic._

Yeah, but 'authenticity' is itself a commodity in the world of advertising, and advertising is fundamentally about turning things into commodities. Paying money to display images of people along with a commercial message in front of the largest audience possible is fundamentally different from presenting a portrait of an individual. Here, the commodity bargain is 'be part of a group of friendly cool people, in exchange for performing this kind of work.' I don't believe that people are reacting to you so much as they are responding to the superficiality of advertising in general.

 _In fact, if you knew me you would probably know that being famous is one of my biggest nightmares_

PTSD aside, aren't nightmares where we are most ourselves?

</comment><comment><USER6> I think there is another issues with these ads.

"My code helps Fortune 500 companies keep their data secure" vs. "My team is great. Everyone is smart, creative, and hilarious"

This gives the impression that the woman is not excited about the 'engineering' work, but instead about the social aspects of the workplace.

<comment><USER7> _This gives the impression that the woman is not excited about the 'engineering' work, but instead about the social aspects of the workplace._

That's a weak objection at best. Talking about how smart and creative your team is is obviously praising their engineering capabilities.

<comment><USER8> You say that, but "hilarious" isn't normally a word I associate positively with engineering. "Isambard Kingdom Brunel's bridges were _hilarious_!"

<comment><USER9> No one is saying their engineering work is hilarious. The idea is that they themselves, the human, is hilarious. We don't judge a person solely based on their technical skills but based on the quality of their character as well. You can work with a genius and hate the job because he's mean. Or you can work with someone who is quite average but a good person to be around and you might love the job.

No one gets called out when they say Elon Musk is charismatic, and you can't argue the man isn't good at what he does. Having a sense of humor says nothing about your technical ability but says a lot about how enjoyable you are to work with. Just based on your comments here, I would guess that I would not enjoy working beside you. If you don't associate the character description of "hilarious" with anything positive, you and I would not get along. See how that works?

<comment><USER8> I was responding more to the grandparent's comment that the woman's quote suggests she is more interested in the social aspects of the workplace than the engineering work (versus the quote from the male engineer, which seems more obviously about technical aspects of the job). Smartness and creativity certainly are traits I would appreciate in an engineer, but hilarity is not. All three, however, are traits I would appreciate in a human. Condescension and snap character assessments aren't normally traits I appreciate in anyone, so you're right, we probably wouldn't get along.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am slightly confused. So what happened?

<comment><USER11> People assumed the billboard used a stock photo, rather than a picture of an actual engineer, because she didn't conform to the physical expectations of an engineer. See the picture of the facebook comment thread in the article. It turns out a lot of engineers don't conform to the physical expectations of an engineer. A lot of them are posting to Twitter under the hashtag #ilooklikeanengineer - [https://twitter.com/hashtag/ilooklikeanengineer](https://twitter.com/hashtag/ilooklikeanengineer)

Conference organizers should probably keep things like this in mind when booking male-dominated lineups ("we just can't find any woman engineers" is a common refrain).

<comment><USER10> Ah thanks. From the text I inferred she is transgender or something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > _" I am a passionate self-taught engineer, extreme introvert, science-nerd, > anime-lover, college dropout"_

Is engineering not a profession? How can you be an engineer without completing your education in an accredited engineering school?

<comment><USER13> Yeah, there's a fair bit of controversy on this topic. In California at least, I believe that the use of the title "engineer" is regulated by the so-called PE act:

      http://www.bpelsg.ca.gov/laws/pe_act.pdf

Regarding public opinion, I myself have a degree in "Computer Science and Engineering" and have worked as a "software engineer" for 21 years, but my engineer friends don't consider computer engineering to be "real engineering", and my scientist friends don't consider computer science to be "real science". :)</comment></comment>


NYTimes style bubble charts with Python and Nodebox - <AUTHOR> http://www.juiceanalytics.com/writing/bubble-trouble/

<comment><USER2> Javascript rendering would be much more useful than having to use an OSX app.</comment>


Converting UTF8 strings to UTF16 using SIMD/SSE instructions - <AUTHOR> http://woboq.com/blog/utf-8-processing-using-simd.html

<comment><USER2> > the 4 bytes sequences (Supplementary Planes) are very rarely used (most used > languages and useful symbols are already in the Basic Multilingual Plane) > and also more complicated so I did not vectorize that case for the scope of > this blog post. This is left as an exercise for the reader ;-)

And you still call them UTF-8 and UTF-16?</comment>


Why McDonald's wins in any economy - <AUTHOR> http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2011/08/23/why-mcdonalds-wins-in-any-economy/

<comment><USER2> Am I the only one that found that French fries illustration to be terrible? Cheesy picture that purports to be a "chart", that shows 2 values, plus the cryptical legend "French fries do not reflect actual earnings-per-share gains." And I'm not even much of a Tufte fanatic myself.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartjunk>

<comment><USER3> It's worse. If you look closely, it's really one data point not two, since the value is not given for the lower french fry. By the way, that footnote is hilarious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One thing I admire McDonald's is its willingness to train its workers. One of my colleague's teenage daughter worked for McD's when she was in high school, and later worked for another fast food joint and she was able to identify many operational inefficiencies.

Another thing is McDonald's never got stuck in the idea that its core brand is about burgers, or expanding its menu is bad mantra.

The McHappy meals for example, guaranteed regular clientelle because of its collectibles. But the parents didn't want burgers. So the business altered its menu to keep the parents happy.

In contrast, Burger King's menu has remained static.

</comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me of this excerpt from _Iacocca_ :

 _[...] my father had opened a hot-dog restaurant called the Orpheum Wiener House. It was the perfect business for somebody without much cash. All he really needed to get started were a grill, a bun warmer, and a few stools.

My father always drilled two things into me: never get into a capital- intensive business, because the bankers will end up owning you. (I should have paid more attention to this particular piece of advice!) And when times are tough, be in the food business, because no matter how bad things get, people still have to eat. The Orpheum Wiener House stayed afloat all through the Great Depression._

<comment><USER6> However, food production was one of the worst businesses to be in during the great depression. Food prices plummeted to well below cost of production rates. Combined with some extraordinary environmental events around the same time, farmers were hit hard – really hard.

However, in this recession, it is one of the best businesses you can be in. Prices haven't been this strong in a long, long time. Goes to show there are no absolutes in life.

<comment><USER7> The farming and restaurant businesses are completely different. Low food prices hurts farmers, but helps restaurant owners.

<comment><USER6> Absolutely. They are, however, both in the food business, which is what the quote said to be in. As seen by the farmers of the time, the fact that people need to eat doesn't mean that you will survive hard times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Business might be great, but TIL McDonald's borrowed $109M directly from the Fed as part of the Commercial Paper Funding Facility invoked after the Lehman collapse and was in debt to the Fed for 223 days.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/data-visualization/federal- reserve-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/data-visualization/federal-reserve- emergency-lending#/McDonald%27s_Corp)

<comment><USER9> Does that suggest something about the precariousness of MCD's business model or about the severity of the credit crisis?

<comment><USER8> You'd have to dive into their business to figure out if they would have been in deep trouble without public money or if they were literally eating _our_ lunch. Personally, I'm not sure a fast-food chain should be receiving money from the Fed, but hey...

<comment><USER9> 400,000 employees, for a start.

<comment><USER8> Looking at their financial sheet, I'm not sure any of their business would be affected if they had to pay more for this measly $109M. Their profit and positive cash flow is in the billions per year. At some point (and higher rate), _someone_ would loan McDonald's $109M, no? Why wasn't this just left up to the market?

<comment><USER10> McDonald's probably has some lobbyist of their own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> McDonalds has a really bad rumour in Sweden. Yes people eat there, but people are starting to change mindsets I've noticed. Subway and such a bit healthier alternatives are becoming more popular.

Wort to notice is that what McDonalds is earning money on is not really the food, it's the real estate and speculation around these. IKEA do the same thing: "We want t build a building here" - who wants to have a store nearby? _bids_ by other companies and regions who want people to come there more often and pay tax.

<comment><USER12> How long have there been Subway franchises in Sweden? More people are going to Subway here (Netherlands) too, but that's just because they're only now starting to open more shops.

Furthermore, [http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&...](http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&artikel=4596465) says that you're flat out wrong - 2010 was a record year for McDonalds turnover in Sweden. Unless you have data on McDonalds' image and the result of that on its turnover in Sweden, don't take your impressions of certain phenomenons as fact because it's sure to suffer sample bias.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "win" being the operative word here.

 _cost-conscious consumers are flocking to fast-food eateries_

The economy isn't doing well at all, and people are flocking to the cheapest alternatives. That's why Walmart, Dollar Stores, and McDonalds will always do well in desperate times.

It would be nicer to see people purchasing raw ingredients and cooking food at home. I can't imagine the amount of bad health effects that are going to hit the nation in 10 years if this behaviour continues.

<comment><USER14>
         It would be nicer to see people purchasing raw
         ingredients and cooking food at home

I'm trying to do that, but it's pretty hard and time consuming.

I don't know how people do it -- I mean, I can cook and sometimes it is delicious, but it's nothing worst than waisting 2 hours on something and then at the end to find out that I blew the dish for some reason.

I also cannot eat the same food for more than 2 days in a row.

So if anybody knows some book on food recipes that are easy to cook, I'd be grateful -- keep in mind though that I'm a carnivore that hates pizza/pasta (love grilled stuff :)).

<comment><USER15> _I don't know how people do it -- I mean, I can cook and sometimes it is delicious, but it's nothing worst than waisting 2 hours on something and then at the end to find out that I blew the dish for some reason._

Don't you ever spend a couple of hours trying out an idea in code only to find out later that it's a complete wash? Making mistakes in cooking is no different from any other activity - it can be a valuable learning experience if you recognize it. Plus, in cooking, you can _usually_ still eat your mistakes.

<comment><USER16> I think many people don't find cooking fun, it's like laundry or doing the dishes: it's a chore. I wonder if this is due more to cultural influences than anything. It seems there are plenty of other cultures (mostly European) that seem to really enjoy cooking, and so you find it more often in those places.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, that's a good point. I suppose I figured that, at least in this community, people would tend to view cooking as a creative endeavor not unlike hacking, rather than some menial repetitive task. Different strokes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Has anyone own or run a McDonald franchise? How's the experience? Does it require lots of work? Or just require passive monitoring? How's the cost vs payout?

<comment><USER18> My father's/family friend opened a McDonalds franchise about 20 years ago. He needed to have approximately $350k, 'non-borrowed' cash on hand to be considered as a franchisee.

> How's the experience?

It must be good because he now owns 4 McD franchises. All his kids worked there through HS and (some) college. His son is the "Manager" of all 4.

> Does it require lots of work?

I think after their first couple of restaurants, they have developed and refined their management system. The son works a typical work week floating between restaurants and balancing books, hiring managers, etc.

> Or just require passive monitoring?

My fathers friend was at the first restaurant from almost open to close everyday for several years. (I used to ride my bike there for free ice cream and he was always there). The son seems to have enough free time - its almost like a 8-6pm type job for him.

> How's the cost vs payout?

He and his family are very well off and have been able to invest in other money making areas as well. A lot of hard work on the front end but now he has 4 cash cows that his son manages.

<comment><USER17> Thanks. That's very good info.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> AFAIK they've never been profitable in my country, though it might be an accounting trick...

<comment><USER20> That's a common rumour in Finland, at least, but they've posted 3 profitable years (out of 26). I don't know about their accounting, but I find it plausible that they'd want to maintain a presence at a small loss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This reads like a submarine PR article for McDonalds and Jim Skinner.

</comment><comment><USER22> I like the idea of supporting your managers in front of employees even if you don't agree. Address it later in private so you don't undermine them.

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder how long those salads would hold up before they decay visibly :-/</comment>


Restricted Stock vs. Options - <AUTHOR> http://www.burningdoor.com/askthewizard/2007/04/restricted_stock_vs_options.html <comment><USER2> Important topic, but I think the writer could've explained things more clearly.

A 10 second google search found this, which I think does a much better job: <http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/columnist/block/2003-07-14-ym_x.htm></comment>