How to Build Muscle - <AUTHOR> https://www.julian.com/learn/muscle/intro <comment><USER3> This isn't a bad guide, but for those new and interested in the topic, the Reddit r/fitness subreddit ( [https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness) ) has a wiki which is probably the best all around guide out there to getting fit, muscular, and strong: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/wiki/index](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/wiki/index)

It is both entirely free and substantially better than this guide. It is based on the combined experience of people who are much further along in their fitness journey than Julian. There are good answers to all common questions and there are solid programs that match various personal preferences.

<comment><USER4> The main issue with /r/fitness is that it's not a focused guide so you run into decision paralysis almost immediately. It's great if you already know what you want, and it's very open ended. And, generally, I think people who are really far along in their business journey are not who beginners should be listening to.

<comment><USER5> The wiki _does_ seem to be a focused guide, unless I'm missing something.

<comment><USER4> Am I missing something? The Getting Started area splits into 4 exercise sections immediately and you're left to your own devices. My first attempt at serious exercise was from this very page and I ended up doing stronglights for a while, which was OK...

<comment><USER5> That's a fair complaint I guess. It seems to narrow things down a bit but maybe not enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The only thing worse than no knowledge is just a little knowledge.

Although I've always been a "geek" I am into sports since high school - so it is now more than 20 years. Maybe I was just lucky, but I always had good results, even in the era when internet was not there for the information. Never had to take any supplements, and the results were just right. I won't bother you giving advice, because:

1\. Everyone's body is different 2\. It's simple once you get it, but it might be difficult to explain.

I'll just say that skimming through this guide I've seen a lot of fluff, some good info and also lots of crap.

I think that, for the people here who would like to start working out, the most important things are:

1\. You have to build the habit of working out from now on for the rest of your life if you want the results to stay. 2\. Find a professional guidance at first. An enterpreneur whose experience sums to (citing from the OP): "I wrote the first draft of this guide months ago. I meant to publish this then. But I unexpectedly lost half the muscle I had gained." is not the best source of knowledge in this area.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Happy to provide some thoughts on whatever you find to be crap.

<comment><USER7> > "the myth that women have a harder time gaining beginner muscle"

Do you have a study to prove that women can grow "beginner" muscles at the same speed as men? I mean common, testosterone levels are drastically different, it will surely affect the muscle growth.

<comment><AUTHOR> Studies:

1: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11890579?dopt=Abstract](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11890579?dopt=Abstract)

2: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7558529](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7558529)

3: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2991130/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2991130/)

Article: [http://bayesianbodybuilding.com/natural-muscular- potential-w...](http://bayesianbodybuilding.com/natural-muscular-potential- women/)

Yes, men have more testosterone, but testosterone is less important to the female muscle development process. In fact, women benefit from higher levels of IGF1 growth hormone, which is critical to muscle growth, as compared to men [1, 2].

[1] [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/49661582_Circulatin...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/49661582_Circulating_levels_of_IGF1_are_associated_with_muscle_strength_in_middle- aged-_and_oldest-old_women)

[2] [http://press.endocrine.org/doi/abs/10.1210/jcem.81.7.8675561](http://press.endocrine.org/doi/abs/10.1210/jcem.81.7.8675561)

<comment><USER6> Don't get me started on p values now, but just think about this:

"Eight young men (age 20-30 years), six young women (age 20-30 years), nine older men (age 65-75 years), and ten older women (age 65-75 years).

The results indicate that neither age nor gender affects muscle volume response to whole-body ST."

"Six women and 6 men trained the elbow flexors 3 days per week for 20 wks, one arm performing in each session 3-5 sets of 10 maximal concentric actions on an accommodating resistance device, the other arm 3-5 sets of 8-12 coupled eccentric/concentric actions on a weight training device."

"One hundred eighty-one previously inactive healthy Caucasian (N = 117) and African American (N = 54) men (N = 82) and women (N = 99), aged 50–85 yr,<...>

Training-induced increases in absolute MV were significantly greater (P < 0.001) in men than in women, though both sex groups increased MV significantly with ST (P < 0.001), and the relative (%) increases were similar. "

So, if we are to believe the first two, that were, BTW conducted on miniscule samples, and concentrated on only one exercise of a small muscle, we should expect the same muscle gain in 20 year old men as in 70 year old ladies!

I wonder why those old ladies do not feature that much at bodybuilding competitions or Olympic games...

The third, which has larger sample, actually says that there is the difference between males and females, which is in accordance with what we can see at every sports event.

<comment><USER8> Note also that the elbow flexion muscles (biceps, brachialis) have relatively low androgen sensitivity

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> First sentence: "Most bodybuilding advice is wrong", proceeds to list the most common bodybuilding advice.

The best thing you could do to learn how to build muscle is to go to a big bodybuilding forum and just do whatever bro-science they spout. I've been following bodybuilding forums and casually looking at research for many years, and invariably the bro-scientists are way ahead of scientific proof, in terms of methods and techniques, all the way down to finicky details. You'll also get the truth about what you can and can't do with/without anabolics.

Edit: I see that the author is here. It's not a bad guide, good design etc, but frankly it rubbed me the wrong way to basically read "I'm right and everyone else is wrong, because I researched", without having a highly impressive build to back it up. Even professional body builders don't prescribe certain techniques/methods as gospel.

<comment><USER10> I've been on bodybuilding.com for many years... yes, there are thousands of bro-science meatheads there, but also valid people, with valid advice. For instance Jim Stopanni is a research fellow at Yale University School of Medicine... (although lately he's been overusing his credentials for selling his line of supplements)

[http://www.bodybuilding.com/author/jim-stoppani- phd](http://www.bodybuilding.com/author/jim-stoppani-phd)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> So far, after 20 years of competitive rowing and an office job, I've found the best advice for me is simply don't get injured, remain active (get out!), and cook more. All these fads might work (IF, keto, crossfit), but I think they mostly answer other questions than fitness or health. People want to feel like they are getting results fast... That is rarely sustainable in my experience and observation.

<comment><USER12> keto is the best way to lose weight, period. You lose weight while not even trying ... it really is the miracle diet, for most people anyway. Gives great mental energy as well. (yeah, sounds like bullshit, but turns out to be true for lots of people)

<comment><USER13> I have much experience with keto. For loosing fat it can be a tool in the arsenal but it is not everytime goto tool that it better than anything in every situation that some people try to make it is. As for the mental clariness, my experience is that I constantly have some kind of mental fatigue on keto, sometimes so much (after training) that I am funny to speak with (bugging out to much). That persists even after 1-2months on ketosis, cyclic or not, does not matter.

<comment><USER11> Hard to be a great athlete without protein AND carbs.

<comment><USER14> You don't need to be a great athlete in order to be fit, which is what this is about.

<comment><USER11> Let me rephrase: hard to have optimal (or even suboptimal) athletic performance without carbs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Have a hard time scheduling workouts? Wake up an hour earlier than normal > and work out in the mornings before your day kicks off.

Oh it's such a bad advise for beginners, lifting weights when you body wants to sleep is an easy way for beginners to lose interest in weightlifting and injure yourself. Also sleep is incredibly important for muscle growth.

<comment><USER15> Yes, but are referring to just beginners which would be 5bls of weights as arm curls, leg lifts, etc..or are we imagining bigger weights?

<comment><USER7> I doubt you can see a 20lbs of muscle growth in 3 months using just 5lbs weights in excersizes.

<comment><USER16> You're not seeing 20 lbs of muscle growth in 3 months regardless of exercise choice. Even with AAS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I used to be a gym nerd too. My current approach: Screw common advice. Find what works for __you__. Take hints from algorithm design. Start small. Limit yourself to use variables you can influence, observe and measure. Come up with a system that embraces failure, try to make it anti-fragile. Experiment and enjoy the ride.

I'm personally quite chaotic and hate planning. Some weeks I hit the gym five days, some seven, some none. As such my training routine involves an auto regulating method which adjusts volume as needed. Periodisation (or lack thereof) is done with a simple recursive algorithm.

3/4 goes for nutrition as well. Screw counting macros, calories and weighing myself. If I like what I see on the mirror, great. If I feel that I'm getting flabby, I drop a PSMF day here and there until I look better.

<comment><USER18> I made one crucial change to my schedule which goes against a lot of the training advice I see online: only train once per week per muscle group. This usually means a split over two days and the rest is recovery.

What I lose by doing this is some of the neurological component, so I don't have those zippy gains that you get from beginner training. But I'm always completely recovered or nearly so every time I go in, and that seems make the bigger difference long term as I'm never left feeling overtrained, I can go in every week and give it 100% pretty consistently and the progress is trickling in month by month.

This is all to second: Definitely do your own experiments and focus on an all- factors outcome of building a lifestyle you are OK with. It took me something like 15 years of training to get to a point where I felt in full control of how I was going about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> No offense, but Julian after three months isn't even as big as most guys you'd find at a local gym. Why would you take this guy's advice, "science-based" or not?

 _Addendum:_ I understand if you're still making progress, but maybe give it more than a few months before you start publishing advice on how to gain 20 pounds of muscle?

<comment><AUTHOR> This guide is about where you're starting from and how efficiently you can get bigger. Not about becoming massive (which is in large part a function of your genetics).

<comment><USER20> Can you please release "fat loss" program for free and inversely, charge for info on getting bigger? I mean, how would one notice an actual growth behind his varying fat levels?

<comment><USER21> isn't "fat loss" just: eat less, do more cardio?

<comment><USER22> For the most part no, as that would propel postal workers and warehouse employees to the fitness levels comparable only to Olympic athletes. Fat acquisition, absorption, retention and burn is a functional of the endocrine system (hormones) rather than cardiological system (heart and blood vessels). Gary Taubes' "Good Calories, Bad Calories" as well as his numerous articles is probably a good start.

<comment><USER21> didn't know that; always thought it's just calorie in < calorie out. will check out that book, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Unsurprisingly, there is what looks like a paywall / call-to-spam at the end of the 2nd page.

For those who want a non-engineer's guide, I cannot recommend strengtheory.com enough. Greg Nuckols is legitimately strong and legitimately up to date with the research.

I'm also struck the idiosyncratic exercise selection. For most beginners a boring group of barbell exercises and a flourish of bicep curls and pullups will get them started. Typically in less time, with less equipment.

Take the dumbbell RDL, for example. Most people can't get the barbell variant even vaguely right and it has an entire bar to cue you about what path to follow.

Hand grippers? Right out of the gate? The good ones aren't cheap. Or you could just wait until grip strength is a limiting factor.

<comment><USER24> I haven't found anything easier to get started with and stick with than the 5x5 program. Squats, deadlifts, bench, overhead press and rows to work the major muscle groups. Start light and build up slowly and steadily.

Although my strength-building workout of choice has always been sawing, splitting and stacking firewood. Talk about building functional strength...

<comment><USER25> That's the basis of the [http://www.shovelglove.com/](http://www.shovelglove.com/) workout - take a sledgehammer as a weight, and do labor-equivalent motions with it.

Shovelling, splitting wood, rowing, churning butter, harvesting food, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's a bit disingenuous that the guide states that it's free, but then the second half of it is paid only, and that while there are a lot of citations, especially in the second part of the guide, the author isn't really in a place to explain to someone how to gain muscle except for some personal experience (1 year of research, and some time weight lifting) and instead must make an appeal on the basis of accomplishments, which basically just makes this like "another blogger's personal journey to weightlifting and so can you", albeit with some scientific research to back it up.

The thing I would worry about the most is that the guide is made to seem better than others because it has some cited studies, but who's to say that those studies are statistically valid (which is somewhat hard to come by in the field of nutrition and fitness) or that the author didn't pick certain articles to back certain points and pick others to back others?

</comment><comment><USER27> There is a lot of useful advice in that article. However, I am always made weary by people's use of term "muscle growth." What is typically perceived and dubbed as muscle growth is actually simply muscle cells retaining water and sugar as fuels to help accommodate the ongoing increase in physical activity. That is what anyone who begins training observes in the first few months. Think of this as a simple increase in the size of each muscle cell due to storage of extra fuel. This is completely analogous to our accumulation of fat. We barely ever grow the number of fat cells. Instead, we shrink or expand them like sacks.

However, when it comes to the actual increase in the number of muscle cells, this process is much more difficult to launch. From my experience, this cannot be done without proper hormonal background. By this, I do not mean exogenous (injected) hormones. I mean that one has to have proper levels of testosterone and growth hormone. The former is regulated by the psyche and can be described as the hormone of successfully overcoming difficulties and becoming a winner. An interesting thing is that your brain does no care whether you successfully beat someone in a computer game or just finished a marathon. It will still reward you with testosterone. On the contrary, if you beat yourself over small things, you will fill yourself with cortisol, which is inversely related to testosterone.

Needless to say, to me the muscle growth constitutes invoking the second scenario. That is a formidable but not at all impossible task. It requires knowing how to work with yourself and your mind.

<comment><USER28> Right, this is the ol' sarcoplasma volume vs myofibril density debate. It's also that the modern perception of the appearance of fitness is not well correlated with functionality - hence the prizing of the former over the latter.

<comment><USER27> Absolutely. To continue this line of thought I would even say that most "muscles" of the so-called body builders are to a large extent swellings of lymphatic system and interstitial space. When one eats so much protein, the body does not know what to do with it and simply stores it as junk everywhere it deems safe (least dangerous). Where is the least dangerous? Well, it is not the brain, not the heart, not the organs. So, it deposits them in the muscles and other tissues.

<comment><USER7> But if their body only stores protein as a junk and muscles don't have a real use in "so-called bodybuilders" as you say, why are bodybuilders able to lift insanely heavy weights and most of them successfully compete in powerlifting events setting records?

<comment><USER27> Have you ever heard of Golgi apparatus? Well, it is the thing in your cells that is responsible for estimating how much stress it can take (roughly speaking).

Human strength is limited not by the muscles but by the tendons and nerve signals. Here is an explanation.

When you try to lift something your body knows instantly whether it is able to do it or not. If you do not believe me, go try and deadlift an impossible weight. As soon as you start lifting it after setting up, your body will relax and will not let you. It is a protective mechanism. Now, it the weight is close to what you can handle it will let you fight the weight and attempt the lift.

Similarly, there are many occurrences where a mother will lift (with ease) concrete blocks of several hundred kilograms to save herself and her child. Perhaps the more famous one was of a man who was stuck under a huge boulder after an accident in the mountains. As far as I recall, the boulder was about 600kg. He threw it off with ease. You know what happened with him? He tore every single muscle off his bones while doing that. I am giving these examples to illustrate why such protective mechanisms exist. If they did not, we would be tearing muscles off bones daily.

Now, when it comes to powerlifters, they use low repetition and high weight precisely to increase the limits of their tendons and the power of their nerve pulses. In addition they are working the creatine-phosphate (ATF) energy capacity of their body that is responsible for very short-term work. This has nothing to do with protein. I assure you that any person is physically capable (speaking of muscles) to lift huge weights. It is just that your body will not let you.

When it comes to bodybuilders, they train their strength (tendons and bones) as well, but as a side-effect to trying to bloat their muscles.

<comment><USER28> _Have you ever heard of Golgi apparatus? Well, it is the thing in your cells that is responsible for estimating how much stress it can take_

OK but there is also neuroactivation - at any time your nervous system can "drive" about 30% of the fibres in a muscle. If you could achieve 100% neuroactivation you would be 3x stronger instantaneously - at the risk of as you say destroying connective tissue. But it is not "with ease", it is at great cost, so the body will only unlock this feature as a last resort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > _I'm a startup founder and engineer. My work has been profiled in Forbes, > I've written a book, I've built a popular open source library, and I've > started and sold a company._

[http://www.txstate.edu/philosophy/resources/fallacy- definiti...](http://www.txstate.edu/philosophy/resources/fallacy- definitions/Irrelevant-Authority.html)

<comment><USER30> Might be technically a fallacy, but:

\- General problem-solving is a skill, guy seems to have it and it does apply to fitness research

\- His success in various fields undoubtedly require perseverance, which also is a relevant trait.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I don't like going to gym and the solution to this problem was bodyweight fitness. Growth is a little slower, than with lifting, but you are learning cool tricks like handstand. The program from reddit's /r/bodyweightfitness is a good start: [https://www.reddit.com/r/bodyweightfitness/wiki/kb/recommend...](https://www.reddit.com/r/bodyweightfitness/wiki/kb/recommended_routine)

<comment><USER32> I never liked going to gym and doing the scripted set of weight lifting. For me, compound exercises are the best.

Lately I have been "greasing the groove" by doing low-rep pull-ups (and push- ups). You do it every day and there is no "training to failure." See [https://breakingmuscle.com/strength-conditioning/greasing- th...](https://breakingmuscle.com/strength-conditioning/greasing-the-groove- how-to-make-it-work-for-you)

The cute thing about bodyweight fitness is that you can do it anywhere without any special equipment.

<comment><USER31> I've got a tendonitis in my right elbow, when I tried greasing the groove for pull ups, and spent several months recovering. Be careful :) Any sign of pain in an elbow means your tendons need a rest.

<comment><USER32> Thanks. Do you know what caused your tendonitis when greasing the groove for pull ups? Improper form? Over-training?

<comment><USER31> I think over training, though the main problem was my ignorance - I ignored a mild pain in the elbow during last sets. One day I've got the pain that wasn't subsiding and that day I learned about tendonitis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> My 2c on this is while the "looking good for da ladies" part is definitely valid motivation, working out just for the looks gets old fast for a variety of reasons.

Having an athletic performance goal (squat/bench/pull/clean more, sprint faster, close a harder gripper, do more pullups etc) is not only more "motivational", it also sets a measurable and objective goal to work towards.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is good advice but I would caution engineers who sit at their desk all day. Don't just lift heavy weight without spending almost an equal amount of time on core strength and flexibility.

<comment><USER35> definitely focus on stretching before work out. I have seen so many of my friends screw up their shoulder because they didn't focus on stretching.

<comment><USER28> Stretching cold muscles will do nothing at best or injure you at worst - stretch after your workout. Warmup with light exercises first. E.g. if you are planning barbell squats, start with air squats.

<comment><USER36> "Another warmup type that provides no performance benefit is doing a light starting set before lifting your normal weights (study). "

This advice worries me. You do not warm up to increase performance in each session, you warm up so that you can keep doing sessions (hint: you can't work out when you're injured).

<comment><USER28> Absolutely. Air squats before real squats get blood flowing into the muscle, you "rehearse" the move a few times to remind yourself of the form, etc. That's what reduces the possibility of injury.

If you think about it from an evolutionary perspective, a warmup to increase performance makes no sense - you wouldn't have time to stretch first if you were about to be eaten by a hungry mammoth - the body would want to jump straight to peak power and if you get injured it's better than being dead...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> You should include your actual lifting experience rather than irrelevant stuff like startup founder and engineer.

By the end of the first page my impression is that you started lifting for 90 days and decided to nerd out and write a guide (which is probably not true, but I'm also not motivated to continue reading to find out).

Tell me your stats and the timeframe you achieved them in. Can't really approach this topic abstractly and theoretically like engineering.

<comment><USER28> If you read to the end, you need to spam 15 friends on FB to see the last page, or pay $8. I'm not in the market for such a guide right now, just curious to see what the deal was - and it's not reasonable IMHO for a guy who has been doing this for 3 months and is reproducing advice found for free elsewhere, to charge anything...

I mean check this out: [http://www.precisionnutrition.com/cost-of-getting- lean-infog...](http://www.precisionnutrition.com/cost-of-getting-lean- infographic)

Or read t-nation.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> The only thing more consistent than the simplicity of basic weight training is the consistency that people are duped into thinking there are tricks.

<comment><USER39> Or that building muscle necessarily means "being fit" and that it's the go-to thing to do if you want to "exercise".

Looking fit ≠≠≠ being fit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Start with BodyPump. You won't learn much if anything about proper form etc but you'll get a lot of low intensity reps in.

After about 6 months +- you'll plateau. This is good.

Switch over to a 5x5 program like StrongLifts. Read about proper form. Watch YouTube videos about proper form. Ask about proper form. Avoid personal trainers and do this yourself.

I like the SL app since I can mentally check out and just think about form.

Learn to love the squat. Never skip your warmups.

Go from there.

<comment><USER41> Why avoid personal trainers ? While I do agree but how to get proper form ?

<comment><USER40> IMHO, a lot of time spent studying proper form by watching YouTube videos (Scott Hermann, BuffDudes, Layne Norton, ...) will help you a lot more. A lot of this is mental; it's you figuring things out. I don't think PTs are good teachers. But I've learned a lot from watching these guys over and over again.

All that and learn to love the squat. Paused ATG. Squats make everything better.

<comment><USER42> Youtube is a great resource to find a general consensus of the common wisdom.

You can also record yourself with a tripod and camera and watch later.

Another way to learn is to watch other people (People who look like they know what they are doing) in the gym. If you are the outgoing type, you can spark a conversation with them and ask them to watch your form (or spot your lifts). You get lot of practical knowledge this way.

Form is everything. If you cannot do the reps with proper form (and breathing), reduce the load till you can, then slowly progress. It is worth it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This was largely a decent intro, but I would hesitate to trust this one article's statements without doing other research and reading other guides.

One thing that stood out to me was the author's idea that creatine is not beneficial for women to the point where we may as well skip it. There is research showing the opposite of what the author has stated. Example: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9390981](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9390981)

Creatine, as he says, is among the most widely researched supplements. Aside from providing potential cognitive benefits it has been shown to be effective for both men and women working toward strength gains. And as another user commented, creatine supplementation could very well explain part of the great weight gain the author claims to have experienced as it causes muscles to retain water and appear bigger (in both genders).

</comment><comment><USER44> Sorry for a shameless plug, but since we are in an exercise-related thread it might be a good place to... yeah, you guessed it - present our app and ask for some advise. It contains serious training plans (think weightlifting, not 5-minute abs workouts) and helps you to follow them. It's called Fortitudo and its first scratch is available on Android here: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pl.com.fortitu...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pl.com.fortitudo)

We're also building iOS and web versions now and all of us developers working on the app are weightlifters with 3-10 years of experience :) Please take a look at it and tell me what you liked and what you didn't. Thanks

[Edit] Website (an oldish version): [https://42.do/](https://42.do/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Author here. More than happy to spend the next few hours answering any questions if the admins find that appropriate. I will do my best to cite evidence/research for my responses.

<comment><USER45> I've seen some studies that say the number of reps you do doesn't matter. Can you comment on this? Here's a link to a study: [http://jap.physiology.org/content/early/2016/05/09/japplphys...](http://jap.physiology.org/content/early/2016/05/09/japplphysiol.00154.2016)

Also, I've never heard of muscles shrinking due to being overworked. Can you elaborate on how this happens?

<comment><AUTHOR> #1: Reps. When working out for muscle size (as opposed to strength), it's optimal to use a weight that's light enough to do a set of at least 8 reps with but heavy enough that you can't easily do more than 10 reps [1, 2]. This range of 8 to 10 reps means it's fine if you stop at 8, 9, or 10 reps in any set. Go as high as you can while stopping one rep short of the maximum you feel you could do.

Stopping one rep short of exhaustion is an important technique: It doesn't decrease your rate of gains and it increases your recovery time between sets so that you can complete all your reps (study, study, study) [3, 4].

#2: Shrinking from overworking is surprisingly a real thing. The science is unclear as to how _exactly_ muscle mass responds to resistance exercise, so my answer would be made up if I gave you one. What I can tell you is that "being overworked" is the result of lifting too heavy for too many total reps. This might seem impossible since your body should be unable to continue lifting past a natural point of exhaustion, but if you use machine exercises (especially a pulley machine), it's easy to cause a disproportionate amount of stress to your muscle relative to the incrementing heaviness trajectory you were lifting for free weights.

[1] [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7873571_Muscular_ad...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7873571_Muscular_adaptations_in_response_to_three_different_resistance- training_regimens_Specificity_of_repetition_maximum_training_zones)

[2] [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23252049_Changes_in...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23252049_Changes_in_muscle_size_and_MHC_composition_in_response_to_resistance_exercise_with_heavy_and_light_loading_intensity)

[3] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4731492/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4731492/)

[4] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21986694](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21986694)

<comment><USER46> Recent research has shown that progressing with 8-12 reps is not any more optimal for hypertrophy than progressing with 20-30 reps (what people would normally think of as developing "muscular endurance"). The difference in practicing 8-12 reps is increasing strength as well, i.e., participants doing 20-30 reps didn't see significant increases in their 1RMs (despite muscle growth) while those doing 8-12 reps did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I used to obsess over muscle mass back in college and that being "all natural." Creatine and citrulline malate? I black listed them in my quest, and my personal experience is that these are not needed for the goals stated in the article. I also did not use protein supplements, but then again I had access to an all you can eat cafeteria with sufficient variety to support a (mostly) healthy protein rich diet.

A disciplined training program and diet got me what the article promises (over 20 lbs of muscle mass and significant strength gains) without buying any supplements. I can't remember how long it took, but it wasn't that much longer than 3 months. As long as you're not going for the unusually bulked up look, a disciplined training program and diet will get you where you want to be.

</comment><comment><USER20> Though I'm not taking it as ultimate truth, I'm glad this article exists. Most foobar-advice sites just copy-paste some material without bothering to note readers that it is not backed by anything except similar googled bs.

Btw, is anyone aware of "engineer's guide to xyz" aggregator?

<comment><USER20> After reading it, all came down to "if you want to lose some fat, pay some bucks or share the link with 15 people" formula.

Subtleties are always there at the end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The impression I got is that men like the thin type more than the fit type. And, even then, they care about the face more than they care about the body. The motivation to exercise for that kind of reason is just not there for women, in my opinion.

Agreed with his thoughts on male physique attractiveness, though, as well as the section about steroids.

Overall, seems like a nice guide, and I appreciate someone, for one, remembering that women exist. Very detailed and comprehensive, even if it's not necessarily super accurate (doesn't have to be, does it?). I may add it to my schedule in addition to the kickboxing if I can justify a 2nd gym. I find it interesting that he stats with grip, grip and basic hand strength is my #1 problem for so many situations. I spent about 2 hours preparing a bike rack because I simply didn't have enough strength to move the metal rods in place.

I think his arguments for how little time it takes vs. how easy it is to get to a decent baseline (rather than chasing the popular ideal) are good enough. And having your own home equipment is probably a much better predictor of consistency than any amount of motivation. The other motivation stuff I would say is decidedly not useful. Exercise at this level is indeed available to almost everyone and doesn't require you to be a hyper-motivated super hard working person, you just need to decide that it's something you want to do and fit in your schedule.

<comment><USER48> > "The impression I got is that men like the thin type more than the fit > type."

I know it's a cliché, but it's also true... men have different preferences, just like women have different preferences. However, if we're looking at average preferences across the world, I'd say men overall do prefer fitness over thinness (assuming it's toned fitness instead of a bodybuilder physique).

I suspect the idea that men value thinness above fitness may in part come from the fashion industry, where height and thinness are definitely prized highly, but in my opinion that's mostly because they make it easier on fashion designers (long flowing lines, less need to tailor the clothes to the body shape of the model).

> "And, even then, they care about the face more than they care about the > body."

I would say this is true, but again I can only speak for myself. In my personal opinion a woman with an attractive face is attractive almost regardless of their body shape.

> "The motivation to exercise for that kind of reason is just not there for > women, in my opinion."

Sure, the motives are different. From what you've said, it sounds like you're already committed to working out, so this isn't something that applies to you, but what I want to make it clear to anyone reading this is... do it for yourself. None of what I've just said about body preferences matters, feeling healthy is better than just looking good. If it gives you a confidence boost too, great. I guess what I'm saying is don't let a feeling of 'not being good enough' drive you, instead enjoy the results you get out of what you put in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> My biggest source of frustration is fat loss vs. strength/muscle gain.

I started strength training a year ago. Didn't really get serious about it until march of this year. I'm 50+ and had to devote several months to work on flexibility and what I call "injury proofing" myself. This meant mostly working with machines to slowly get things ready for free weights. In March I quit machines and switched 100% to free weights under the Rippetoe program.

I've seen visible improvements in shape, for example, my t-shirs are now tighter around my biceps. And, yes, I am significantly stronger than a year ago. What's the problem, then?

Well, I probably have 30 lbs of fat, with a good chunk of it around my belly, that just makes me miserable. My lifting coach tells me I need to accept it and eat more. I hate it and want my "you look pregnant" fat belly gone. Not sure what to do other than to stop lifting and going on a low calore diet. I am afraid I would lose all the gains of the last year of work. I am approaching a 300 lbs deadlift at this point.

When I go to a regular gym I am often stronger than most guys there. I am grabbing hundred+ pound dumbells when everyone else is working with 75-pounders. Yet, I am the one who looks fat. It's frustrating.

<comment><USER50> Keep lifting, but your workouts will suffer. I just went from ~274 to ~258. I'm weak as hell.

You won't lose the strength permanently. I took off years while doing my degree + my first 2 years and in the past 12 months I regained 20 years of lifting strength.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Best article I've ever read on muscle building based on reviews of scientific literature: Matt Might's Hacking Strength [http://matt.might.net/articles/hacking- strength/](http://matt.might.net/articles/hacking-strength/)

From a high level, it looks like this article aligns and agrees with Might's.

</comment><comment><USER52> It's true that gains can be had quickly. I've seen athletes go from Charles on the left, to bodybuilder on the right, in a 3-6 month timeframe. These are athletes who would get drug tested, so I'm pretty sure it's all natural.

Although I think it's yet to be proven Julian can make you look like Charles though. Achieving gains is a bit different than building a well rounded athletic body - the kind that is recognizable and aesthetically pleasing.

My physique was like Charles' but I got it from playing sports over years, not from doing isolated exercises in the gym. It's easy to spot who got big in the gym, as certain muscles are overemphasized.

So it's quite easy to be healthy and strong. Just pick an activity you like, and eat well. IMO, gym work should be on top of that, to get you competitive in the sport you choose. It's not a complete development unless you really know what you are doing and are extremely disciplined. That is, doing things the hard way.

</comment><comment><USER53> lol the answer, like a lot of things in life... is simple, but not easy. how to build muscle:

\- nutrition. eat enough protein and calories. i don't think people have to overthink this. if you're getting fat and don't like what you see eat less. if you're constantly weak and tired eat more. if you're good at tracking cals/weight then do that.

\- get enough sleep.

\- pick a good beginners lifting plan: something like stronglifts or starting strength. these are help you build solid habits and good form, but in the end it's just picking up heavy stuff and putting it down until your muscles fatigue within a certain amount of reps. repeat the next week.

\- the most important factor: consistency. even 2 good spaced out workouts a week will do wonders, but you'd be surprised how many people can't manage that. a shitty program and diet/sleep will be overcome by just straight consistency. you will progress slower, have an off week or two or three, but by the end of each year you will have progressed. this is where i think people fail the hardest, and think of it as some like grueling journey to the "finish line" as fast as possible when it's really a long marathon for the rest of your life. nobody wins an award for getting leaned out in 3 months vs 6, you're building habits for life (sorry, just a rant)

i'm obviously simplifying, but for most of the population and even for the "goal" pics in that article, you could train indefinitely on a basic program and achieve that.

having jumped on this train at age 29 and going on year 5, i can tell you that it all these tricks and tips might help you in the short term, but in the end everyone is going to learn some things the hard way and make some of the same mistakes over and over. there are no shortcuts (edit: unless you use some "help").

</comment><comment><USER54> There was a time in the distant past when my goal was to get "big". For the last 10+ years, my goal was to get "fit". After multiple orthopedic surgeries in 2014 (don't ask), I pretty much have no choice but to focus on "fit". Is just my personal opinion, but I think "fit" men and women look better than "big" men and women. Here's my two bullet point guide to fitness:

1\. go to the gym for 2 hours every day

2\. don't eat junk food, drink beer, or drink soda

#2 actually comes as a side benefit from #1, for me anyway, because my body now keeps my mind in check when it comes to food.

I do fitness classes. No heavy weights. Mostly women - some of whom could kick my butt. There might be one other guy besides myself in a class of 40. I don't care - they've let me in on their fitness secret - let me join the tribe.

<comment><USER55> But beer is proof that God loves us

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> on your first day at the gym, do the exersises without any weigt on, then on second day do them with half the weigt, or you will be so sore you dont want to go back. Your body will adapt quickly thoug, after ten sessions it will start to feel nice.

<comment><USER5> I think this is really important. Nothing can destroy the excitement of starting a new life regime than feeling broken and sore after your first day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Alternatively, find a contact with access to enough recent biotech equipment to generate myostatin antibodies [1] or otherwise blockade myostatin or increase follistatin via gene therapy or other strategy.

I wager that this sort of thing is already taking place quietly on a small scale, given the large and growing number of people with access to the necessary tools and ability to do this.

[1]: [http://news.iupui.edu/releases/2015/12/myostatin-warden- musc...](http://news.iupui.edu/releases/2015/12/myostatin-warden-muscle- growth.shtml)

<comment><USER23> There's a lot of snake oil in this space. Nobody has conclusively developed any kind of myostatin inhibition in humans.

There's basically a Nobel prize for anyone who does because it's the holy grail for muscle-wasting diseases. So the research is fiercely intensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> It's not obvious to me that you need to research this stuff. Just start going to a gym and do whatever the bug guys do, then ask advice when appropriate.

</comment><comment><USER59> The 2.5lb increments/week seems unrealistic. If you can increase weight by 2.5lb/week over any sustained period, it most likely means that you started with too low a weight. A 2-3 week increment cycle seems intuitively more likely to match actual strength gains. I'd be curious to hear others' experience, or any references on the subject.

<comment><USER60> I will grant that I was severely underweight when I started lifting at 6'6", 205lbs (well, underweight by the standards of strong people; most people would probably say I was a better weight when I started), but I have gained weight at around that rate for sustained periods multiple times in my lifting career.

10/10/13 - 12/11/13, 205lbs - 235lbs, 3.75lbs per week

4/24/14 - 9/12/14, 235lbs - 275lbs, 2.2lbs per week

4/29/16 - 8/22/16, 385lbs - 315lbs, 2lbs per week

I don't know exactly what my body fat % is, but I do have the healthy layer of fat that you would expect of somebody who is "bulking". My gut feeling is that my body fat % is similar now at 320 to what it was at 245.

I followed Starting Strength's gallon of milk per day recommendation and generally ate as much food as possible. Lots of carbs, didn't really pay much attention to my protein intake, though I eat a "normal" amount of meat.

I should say, though, that my gut feeling is that I could have grown faster in the last two spurts. Gaining has, so far, never felt difficult and, as a father of two small children , my lifestyle is not really compatible with optimizing recovery. I've been super stressed through a lot of my training and I'm a notorious insomniac even on nights where kids don't keep me up.

<comment><USER59> That sounds reasonable for bulking. I was actually referring to the increments on the weights you're lifting. If curling 25 lbs is on the edge of your ability to finish 4 sets when you start, say, is it reasonable to expect you'll be curling 35 lbs one month later? And 45 lbs a month after that? In my experience, real strength gains come more slowly.

<comment><USER60> Probably not for curls, but definitely for lower body. I'm still adding 7.5lbs to my squat every week (currently at 355x5x3) and 15lbs to my deadlift (current at 395x5x1).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> I'm very much looking forward to this guy's next posts: * 20 Things You Can Do To Drive Your Man Wild Tonight! * We Ask Ten Women What They Really Think of Dudes With A Six Pack * "It took all day" \-- Jonathan Taylor Thomas with an exclusive on his recent visit to the DMV

The last one won't be a rambling blog post, either. It will be science.

</comment><comment><USER62> How you can tell someone is lying to you / full of crap rule #10233:

They sell you something as a pre-requisite to the thing that needs to be done.

These priorities are seriously out of whack. If you simply ate healthy (in a caloric excess) and did a basic strength training program at a gym (5x5 or Starting Strength), you would get superior results to citrulline malate and hand gripper exercises. Check out these pyramids[1][2] to understand how to prioritize your nutrition and exercise.

[1] [http://muscleandstrengthpyramids.com/wp- content/uploads/2015...](http://muscleandstrengthpyramids.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/10/Eric-Helms-Muscle-Strength-Nutrition-Pyramid.jpg)

[2] [http://www.kinetix.bz/wp- content/uploads/2015/07/TrainingPyr...](http://www.kinetix.bz/wp- content/uploads/2015/07/TrainingPyramid.jpg)

Notice for nutrition, supplements are the smallest part, whereas calories (energy balance) are the most important. Funny how this article focuses on the least important part.

Or for training, notice that the most important section is specificity - <USER2> you're training for strength and size, you need to train the exercises that maximize the strength and size of as many muscles as possible. So therefore would you choose big movements that work lots of muscles with lots of weight to build lots of muscle simultaneously (i.e. squat, deadlift) or small movements that work few muscles and therefore influence a small amount of mass (i.e. hand gripping and crushing strength).

You don't need to pay for anything to get in shape (other than a gym membership). I'm a competitive powerlifter who graduated high school at 6'1" 140 lbs and I routinely walk around over 200 lbs now at 30, without ever having to pay for hand grippers or someone's workout plans to make it work.

</comment><comment><USER63> Make sure you don't destroy your immunity/adrenal glands by overtraining. Lifting is a major source of stress and can overload your stress-coping mechanism; if you go through a phase of increased stress from work/family, tone it down or do just maintenance cardio, or else you might break down and become seriously sick.

</comment><comment><USER64> I'd like to hear some good advice on how to get rid of belly fat. Of course, I could eat less, but then I'd be in constant need of energy (as I do work out a lot, so I think I'd lose muscles if I ate less, which would be bad of course). So, how do I lose that belly fat while maintaining muscles?

<comment><USER65> "i just want to lose a little bit of belly fat" is an internet fitness cliche second only to "i don't want to get all big and bulky".

the startup equivalent is, "i don't want to be a billionaire, i just want to make a couple million bucks, that's all. where do i start?"

luckily, losing fat is easier than startups, because it's deterministic.

you can not spot-reduce fat. you need to lose fat all over your body. your genetics determine where it comes off first/last/etc. anyone telling you otherwise is selling you something.

for fat loss, look into a ketogenic diet and high intensity interval training combined with strength training.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> > Workouts: First 2 months [...] 2 months to infinity [...]

A recipe for unlimited plateauing. Don't tell this guy about mesocycles.

He's still in the "newbie gains" phase - where nearly anything you do results in gains - so take everything he says with a huge grain of salt.

</comment><comment><USER67> > "In other words, the majority of women prefer the left side to the right > side"

These sort of statements are misleading - women who are more physically attractive (unfortunately, what most males prefer) tend to prefer the model on the right (in my experience).

<comment><USER68> Most of females are into the types of Brad Pitt and David Beckham, who are definitely fit, but thin (Beckham is outright scrawny, Pitt used to be "cut" when he was young, not so much now)

So definitely the "left" type. A lot of women say they are intimidated by too much muscle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> This is not _wrong_ , but it's also not any more right than stronglifts.

</comment><comment><USER70> Quite timely :-) .. Any training videos / program that anyone would recommend? There are ton out there and would like to get a few recommendations (paid ones too)

</comment><comment><USER71> Nice amazon affiliate link get rich quick scheme.

</comment><comment><USER72> LOL. Just LOL. I hate to be negative. But look at author. Look at his pictures. He's got no clue what it really takes or what he is taking about. Not bad advice, but not great. I've spent 20 years building my physique ([http://YouTube.com/simpleprogrammer](http://YouTube.com/simpleprogrammer)) and I can tell you that no one has it "figured out." I have learned one thing for sure though. Never trust someone who doesn't look much better than you do.

<comment><USER73> The biggest problem is when people using anabolic steroids give advise without disclaiming that they're not natural. The two simply do not go together. Naturals do not train the same as steroid users. They cannot recover as fast. They cannot do such high volume work. They need to get stronger to get bigger. Most of the bro science revolves around some brosplit that hits 1 body part once a week and at some ridiculous volume.

<comment><USER74> "Let me try this same training routine as someone on steroids and wonder why I can't make progress because the only thing increasing is my cortisone levels"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> What worked for me was removing barriers to exercise. It's been an odd, decade-long progression, but here's how it went:

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

I. Initial Annoyance with Gym

a) The biggest barrier is building the willpower to get to the gym. I live in a snowy city, so I knew that heading to the gym would be torture in the winter.

b) Working full-time meant that the only times to head to the gym were before work (6-8) or after work. I wanted to match my exercise time to when I had the motivation.

c) Heading to the gym is a huge cost. If you do 4 sets, it might only be 20 minutes of actual lifting, an hour round trip to/from the gym, 20 minutes showering. I think mentally, you know that heading to the gym is a a huge time-sink, cluster of obligations that goes far beyond the actual lifting.

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

II. the Home Gym - It was the obvious solution to the issues above. In addition, it's been a massive cost saving over the years. It's not a massive setup, here's what I have:

a) Bowflex Selecttech dumbbells - they adjust weights from 12.5 pounds to 52.5 pounds (there's a version that goes up to 90lbs too). You can do a lot of different exercises with them

b) Jump rope - a heavy leather rope, not a speed rope. It's incredible how fit you'll get from jumping for 15 straight minutes every other day. Plus it beats running because you can watch TV while you do it.

c) Two kettlebells

d) Resistance bands - these have been marginally useful, but they're also cheap and really portable. I bring them with me when I travel

e) interlocking floor mats - these protect the floor, but I've never dropped anything in nearly 8 years

f) a yoga mat - for situps

g) an Xbox - I'm not kidding. I would play Pro Evolution Soccer and Fallout 3 while doing situps.

h) Medicine ball - Don't get one. It's no fun unless you have someone to throw it to.

I researched different lifts using ExRx primarily using these two links:

* [http://www.exrx.net/Lists/Directory.html](http://www.exrx.net/Lists/Directory.html)

* [http://www.exrx.net/Lists/WtMale.html](http://www.exrx.net/Lists/WtMale.html)

All of those items can be tucked away into a closet or under the bed. I stuck with that for the first four years of my home gym. Ultimately, I added two large pieces that increased the space taken up, but still don't dominate the room they're in:

* An adjustable bench that folds flat

* the Power Tower (that's really what it's called) - a station for chin-ups/pull-ups and Roman chair lifts

You won't be Instagram-huge, but you can get large muscles. It's a little underpowered for chest since it lacks a bench press, but you'll still have chest gains doing isometric dumbbell presses.

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

Finally, this summer, I've lately found a ridiculously effective way to motivate myself to consistent exercise -- I only play video games while exercising. It's essentially a Pomodoro-style alternation between 8 minutes of playing, then lifting 10-15 reps of each exerise. It's incredible to realize that it only takes about 4 minutes to run through your exercises. I think people often spend the interval between sets agonizing about how tired they are and dreading the next set. Now, once I'm done lifting, I go straight to another mental task (video games) which feels like a reward for lifting. Once cycled through my exercises 4-6 times, I drink a protein shake, maybe play videogames for another hour, then continue with the rest of my day.

It sounds bizarre, but it's been a ten year progression to fit exercise as painless as possible. I wouldn't recommend this for beginners though. Exercise equipment isn't the sort of thing you want to buy lightly. Also, I had lifted a bit in high school, and consistently in college before starting the home gym. It's likely best to learn the basics first.

</comment><comment><USER76> Hackers Guide to gaining muscle: Trenbolone

<comment><USER77> not to confound with Toblerone

<comment><USER78> I do like toblerone, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> [https://daks2k3a4ib2z.cloudfront.net/54a5a40be53a05f34703dd1...](https://daks2k3a4ib2z.cloudfront.net/54a5a40be53a05f34703dd18/57b12ee3ec62b90517b8b4f1_My%20Transformation%202-p-800x593.jpeg) on the left, it feels far enough muscles for a developer, why would you need more muscles? that consumes more calories :) and are pretty useless, except for our stupidly wrong society's standards

<comment><USER30> \- You'll look like a developed man, rather than like a permateenager. This is nature, not artificial standards

\- Greater bone strength AND flexibility, preventing posture issues

\- You'll be perceived better in your development team when it comes to leadership, arguments, etc. It's hardwired in us

Seems like a deal to me!</comment></comment>


Hire Family People - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/996-hire-family-people

<comment><USER2> Thank you so much, 37signals guys.

I've always found pg's essays to be motivational and inspring, but there are two things that always turn me off; 1.) I don't live in San Fransisco, and probably never will, and 2.) I have a family. I often feel dismissed by PG and his disciples. DHH's stuff gives me hope that there's still a chance for "fogeys" (cripes, I'm only 33!) like me.

I have a feeling that, if I ever applied to YCombinator, my application would end up in the wastebasket the moment they caught a whiff of the fact that I have a wife and kids. Is that fair?

I stay up late into the night hacking after the kids go to bed, and I'm in the office hours before other people are there so I can do some extra hacking. Am I not motivated enough? Can I not be passionate? Perhaps DHH is onto something. Perhaps balancing the challenges of work and family five you a healthy dosage of time management and prioritization skills.

There are some interesting comments on DHH's site - several presumably young, single kids are crabby and crying "discrimination!" (e.g., "Wow, that's actually offensive. And illegal in BC, Canada and I hope other enlightened jurisdictions.", or the more eloquent "I'm single and you can kiss my ..."). I wonder if these people have ever noticed that the discrimination often goes the other way, _against_ the thirty-something parent crowd, too.

<comment><USER3> _I have a feeling that, if I ever applied to YCombinator, my application would end up in the wastebasket the moment they caught a whiff of the fact that I have a wife and kids._

We don't ask on the application form if people have kids, nor as far as I can recall have we asked anyone in an interview. The reason most of the people we fund don't have kids is simply that most of the people who apply don't have kids.

<comment><USER4> > [...] most of the people who apply don't have kids.

how do you know if you don't ask?

<comment><USER5> Not for nothing, but for a hiring manager, asking this question is a firing offense. So is age, marital status, religion, or even any question about place of residence apart from "are you capable of being on-site during core hours".

From a lot of unfortunate experience: tech people suck at following these rules.

<comment><USER6> It's been noted in the past that Y Combinator in fact does ask for founders' ages. Presumably it can skirt the hiring laws because it is funding a company, not employing people.

<comment><USER5> Why does YC ask for founders ages?

<comment><USER6> This thread suggests that they collect them for statistical purposes:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=116976>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Even if people with kids were more productive per hour, that's not enough in a real startup. The empirical evidence is pretty clear on that. I can't think of a successful startup whose founders didn't, in addition to being smart and determined etc, also work long hours.

<comment><USER7> I think the reason for that is more one of risk. Starting a new company is a lot more risky than being an employee of one. And if you have a family to support, you're less likely to be willing to take on big risk.

So I absolutely agree that it's easier to start a company when you're single and have no obligations because you can tolerate much more risk.

Update: Seems that the original argument changed from "if kids are so great, why aren't more founders parents when they start their business" to "kids might make you more productive during regular working hours, but you need more than just regular working hours to start a business".

I'm happy to offer my thoughts on the second argument as well. I think people working on startups generally work way too much and the ones that succeed don't do so because they put in 14-hour days.

At 37signals, our "startup" (Basecamp) got off the ground on a 10 hour/week programming budget and designers who were busy doing client projects. For the first year, it wasn't the sole focus for the company.

We believe those constraints were instrumental in their way they shaped Basecamp and thus part of the success of the company.

Doesn't mean that there might not be other businesses out there where working lots and lots of hours can be beneficial somehow, but I think that it's a fallacy that you need to work crazy hours to succeed. I do believe that others believe this, though, I just don't think it's healthy or beneficial.

All of this is somewhat tangential to the original argument, though, which is that you shouldn't be afraid of hiring family people. Who should start a company is a great debate as well, though.

<comment><USER3> (If this exchange is confusing to anyone, it's because dhh was replying to my comment while I was still editing it.)

But in reply to the second half: while 37Signals may be a counterexample to the rule that startup founders need to work long hours to succeed, there seem to be a lot more startups that did than didn't.

Different people presumably have different points at which spending more time on something makes the result come out worse. Probably this also varies with the type of work. So it could be that when person = dhh and work = product design, 10 hours per week is a reasonable limit, and when it's someone else and the work = writing database software, the limit might be 70 hours per week.

In the absence of any other evidence, you have to assume that successful startup founders knew what they were doing, and that if they worked long hours it was because it paid off for them.

<comment><USER7> I fully agree that different businesses require different levels of input to make it work. But this crowd seems to be mostly in the "web business" area, so I think our example is at the very least relevant.

And we're saying here's an example of a web startup that didn't follow the traditional wisdom of "long hours necessary for business success", which is offered as one data point that perhaps "long hours" isn't the success requirement as some might think it is.

Similar to the talk from SUS on Gmail's invitation system. Just because Gmail used an invitation system and had success doesn't mean that using an invitation system will give you success.

(BTW, as meta comment, I'm incredibly impressed with the level of discussion here. It's so un-web like ;). Where are all the personal insults, the trolling, and all that which we've otherwise come to accept must be part of a open-for-all comment box. Very nice job!)

<comment><USER8> (As a new member of this forum I'm a bit shy to add to this thread, but here it goes anyway.)

I suppose you've both seen the writings of Alan Carter (<http://the- programmers-stone.com/about/>) and it seems to me that it just might be a way of getting these two seemingly differing viewpoints aligned.

If stress is the biggest factor then age or marital status might have very little to do with it. At least directly. Married people might have learned to handle stress well and younger people might be less affected by it.

That is to say, you both might have seen the "less stress affected" crowd and drawn conclusions about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> After a contractor decided on a radical life change and moved to a different country, leaving us without anyone with his skill set, my old manager used to joke that he should only hire people who have a mortgage, because they'll never leave on their own.

Funny as a joke, but a bit chilling when it's given as real advice.

<comment><USER10> I'm pretty sure that a lot of managers actually follow this advice consciously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm just going to point out that this sets a troubling precedent. If one firm thinks it's legitimate to discriminate in favor of mothers with children, that suggests that being a parent is an acceptable basis on which to discriminate. It opens the door to people thinking about whether somebody is a mother in making hiring decisions. That's troubling on a lot of levels, and in some states illegal.

EDIT: apparently the source has been revised to make it clear that the point is just to look evenly at parents and non-parents; that's OK, but I'll leave the comment above in reference to the earlier version.

<comment><USER12> Laws or not, in the startup world there's a lot of discrimination when it comes to hiring decisions.

<comment><USER13> And the laws are kind of weird. If you say you discriminate, but don't, you've committed a crime. If you say you don't discriminate, but do, it's not a crime. (I think the reality is that everyone discriminates in favor of "people they like" anyway. It is somewhat scary that we have so many thought crimes now.)

<comment><USER12> There are certain examples of hiring discrimination which are pretty clear cut. I am not sure if the cases have been tested in court, however.

See for example [http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20030430-000001....](http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20030430-000001.html)

The paper is "Implicit Discrimination." Marianne Bertrand, Dolly Chugh and Sendhil Mullainathan; American Economic Review, 2005, 95(2), pp. 94-98.

if you have access. Unfortunately, I don't at this time.

The basic results are that a resume with a 'black' name versus a 'white' name (and no other difference) are far less likely to fetch callbacks. Further, there's no appreciable difference in callbacks for black candidates with increasing skills, whereas there's a drastic increase for white candidates.

There are many other studies, and then there's my own, personal experience, which I'm not about to get into.

<comment><USER14> I presume you're referring to age/gender discrimination.

At least people generally recognize that sexism is wrong. There is a lot less raised consciousness when it comes to ageism.

You start college early, and everyone says you're too young. And then later, ironically, you find when you hit 30 that the thinking has recently shifted when it comes to start-ups, so then you're too _old_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm not complaining but is it 37signals week?

<comment><USER16> I believe that David came away from Startup School with a heap of new ideas that he's been talking about back in Chicago.

<comment><USER17> I believe he has decided to take the opposite position to pg on every point about how to start a business and see how well he can argue it.

Which is a healthy thing for Hacker News, I think, getting other perspectives.

<comment><USER3> Actually there wasn't anything in DHH's talk that I really disagreed with, except the use of the word "startup" for the kind of company he was describing. There's already a word for companies like Italian restaurants: businesses. A startup is a very specific kind of business: one that starts small but could grow very large. Only a fraction of the 30 million businesses in the US are startups.

I think what made people think DHH's advice was relevant to startups was that he was talking about starting a business to write software, which is also what most startups do. But structurally the kind of small business he was talking about was more like a landscaping company or a shoe store or a restaurant. Which is a perfectly legitimate thing to do; it's just not a startup.

<comment><USER7> I think that's a pretty narrow definition of a startup. Also, there are plenty of businesses that start out small and then grow very large over time. Actually, most large businesses took a long time to get there.

Say like foot locker or Zappos for a "shoe store" (both big business) and say McDonald's or Olive Garden for a restaurant.

By the same measure, we're building 37signals to grow as well. Grow revenues, grow customers, grow influence. We're just not that hooked on growing head count or office space (which are often the most visible indicators of growth for a private company and thus often mistaken as the only indicators).

To me a startup simply means a new business that's getting off the ground. That business may well end up big one day and it may not, which is okay too.

I generally don't think that you can become a star by trying to be a star. I think you just try to be the best at what you do and if you are, hopefully the star part will take care of itself.

<comment><USER18> pg has been specifically keeping the definition of "startup" narrow, to describe only the businesses that go through the two-guys-plus-vc-plus- sleepless-nights-equals-fast-megabucks pattern that we saw in 2000. I think that's the model he's most interested in, that he sees as the most dynamic and rewarding.

Shiny.

That said, the things you describe closely match what I've wanted to pursue. For me, and many others, it's the more rewarding, long-term way of doing things. Your talk at SS08 was a huge breath of fresh air.

But, I don't think it's all that fair to dilute someone else's definition of a startup with your own idea of what a startup is. It might be time to come up with a different term, and let startup mean the thing that pg and the vc guys and others want it to mean.

<comment><USER7> I think that's a hijacking of the word that's not helpful at all. And I don't think that pg would argue that you can only call yourself a startup if you're going for VC funding and a sale or IPO.

If so, there's an awful lot of tech companies that have been wrongfully labeled as startups under this narrow definition. And you'd only be able to call yourself a startup in retrospect once you saw whether you ended up being a megabucks exit.

So 37signals would have been a startup if we sold to Google tomorrow, but not if we kept on as an independent company just making money?

<comment><USER18> No, he might not, but getting funding of some kind is a pretty large part of the kinds of startups that they /are/ talking about, because it makes it easier to develop that massive, rapid growth that gets people's attention. Likewise, a sale or IPO aren't the only ways to derive value out of the startup, but they're the ones that get the most focus, because they're the fastest way to get the desired results (lots of money). I think that this point of view was pretty clear in several of the talks at SS08.

Do I necessarily think that that's the only kind of "startup" that exists? No, not at all. (And I'm probably gonna get busted at some point for putting words in pg's mouth.)

But, in a nutshell, no, they're not talking about the same kind of businesses you are. Others have already made this point for me ([http://www.gaborcselle.com/blog/2008/04/startup-school- surfi...](http://www.gaborcselle.com/blog/2008/04/startup-school-surfing- wave.html)).

So, coming back and saying, "No, we're talking about two different approaches to the same thing!" ... well, that's not helpful.

Again, my only point is that they're talking about a very specific sort of model when they use the word "startup". If you think your model is the same thing, I wonder how you'd distinguish between a startup and a "software business", or "web venture", or whatever. (And, I think this point is getting made by other elsewhere, not just in this thread but outside of news.yc.)

<comment><USER5> According to Graham, "getting funded" isn't even a part of the plan for most YC startups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> In the startups I've worked for, the best systems administrators were guys with 5-10 year old kids.

Experience actually counts for more in systems administration, so being older isn't a disadvantage. Surviving the infant-toddler years hones one's skills at managing interrupt-driven tasks and strange working hours.

</comment><comment><USER20> Not to dredge up the past, but this refreshingly contrasts with Zuckerberg's encouragement at Startup School 2007: 'If you want to found a successful company, you should only hire young people with technical expertise'. [http://www.texasstartupblog.com/2007/03/27/facebook-class- ac...](http://www.texasstartupblog.com/2007/03/27/facebook-class-action-suit/)

</comment><comment><USER21> I assumed based on the title he meant "hire people from your family." Was totally expecting an essay about the McAskill's at SmugMug.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if this would have been better accepted if the title was:

"Why it doesn't make sense to discriminate against family people"

</comment><comment><USER22> I'll admit, DHH coming into Hacker News is a breath of fresh air, even if a few of the 20-somethings here (including myself) can sniff out the psuedo- defeatist , "statistically its not possible" scent it is tinged with. I think, on the whole of things, pg isn't out to attract the type of people that want to start the types of business DHH is talking about.

I think pg is set out to do the same thing VC's do (invest in outlandish, maybe crazy ideas), albeit with a focus on extremely good hackers and with a fraction of the budget.

What DHH seems to be implying is that you should focus on building something that you can get paid for, right away, and throw away the big dreams. Which is pretty much the opposite of pg.

<comment><USER23> Maybe I'm in the minority. I think DHH's arrival here is a big gust of foul air.

Suddenly the arguments are getting out of control, and pg's participating. Nitpicky, negative, petty debates.

I've read every DHH post that's appeared here in the past days, and every one of them comes off like the work of a sophomoric contrarian who believes that the minor success he's had entitles him to tell the world how to think.

I like this place better when positive, hopeful people are having conversations.

This air just stinks.

<comment><USER24> I have enjoyed the comments in this post, even if sometimes negative.

For example the PG's and DHH's discussion about definition of a "startup" might seem like nitpicking when taken out of context, but I found it extremely valuable.

<comment><USER23> Extremely valuable? Why? Because DHH deigned to comment on our little forum? Can't be for any other reason: he's not saying anything interesting or useful, anything less than obvious.

<comment><USER25> Why do you care so much? It's not like DHH is going to be banned for saying things you don't love.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is music to my ear as a father of three, 40 yo hacker.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've been a programmer since I was 12 years old, and have over 30 years experience with technology companies - and yes, startups too .. I helped get a few major 90's-era dotcoms up and running and many of them are still at it today.

My experience is this: either you waste a _lot_ of time futzing around with computers, or you make them do the work they need to do and get on with your life. It has nothing to do with how old or young you are, or how many kids you have. I am a very happy Father now - in fact, this is the greatest startup, with the most rewards, I've ever been involved in - and I'm still applying the same fundamental policy to myself as a programmer: get things done, don't futz around with computers, make them actually do the work they're supposed to do.

It doesn't matter what "kind" of person you are, it matters only what kind of things you make. I know 50-year old grandfathers who can kick royal Assembler ass and still leave early at the end of the day, and I know 18 year old kids who put the keyboard down after 8 hours and go do something else instead, as well.

IMHO, this over-generalization about 'types of people' is a real curse. I would say, don't do it. There are no 'types' of people in the computer world, no matter how the ycombinator cultists want to pitch it to the world: there are people who get things done, and people who don't.

Get things done. Get your code written, working, tested, and in the hands of people who will actually use it. If you can't do this, then you will fail. If you can, then rock on .. may your kids, now and in the future, always appreciate this aspect of you as a person.

</comment><comment><USER28> Those 37signals people are very, very arrogant. I don't like it. I disagree on every post they have just by reading the title.

<comment><USER7> So someone is arrogant when you don't agree with them? And you don't even have to know what they're saying to make that call, you just have to read a three- word summary? What a unique path to expanding your horizon.

<comment><USER29> heh -- you did leave an open invitation for the trolls :)

<comment><USER30> Unfortunately, trolls are able to find invitations where there are none.

<comment><USER31> 'Scuse me, is this the kegger?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Western Digital rolls out high-security SSD for the entertainment industry - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/western-digital-rolls-out-high-security-ssd-for-the-entertainment-industry/ <comment><USER2> Cool idea. I wonder what recovery options it offers. If the phone/computer dies, it would be disappointing to lose access to your data completely. Hopefully there is a paper backup code available or something like that.</comment>


The PowerPC 600 series, part 1: Introduction - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180806-00/?p=99425 <comment><USER2> I like their description of r0 as "limited use." There was some parody Twitter account with "new PowerPC instructions," one of which was mscdfr0 -- Means Something Completely Different For Register 0. See [https://twitter.com/ppcinstructions](https://twitter.com/ppcinstructions) for others (I'm not the author).

For those who don't get the joke, certain instructions like addi r0,r0,1 (encoded as addi 0,0,1) actually get turned into addi r0,0,1 -- instead of adding one to the contents of r0, they add one to _zero_ , putting one in r0. This is to facilitate loading immediates, so a typical "load32" does an addis (same r0 limitation) to load the upper 16 bits followed by an ori (doesn't) to load the bottom.

This is maddening if you don't watch what you're doing, which is why RISC architectures that make a register _explicitly always_ zero are sometimes less obnoxious (MIPS).

The article is, however, disingenuous about branching. Virtually any PPC (dis)assembler worth its salt will use extended mnemonics for the bc instructions the author complains about. Plus, you can branch on arbitrary bits in the condition register fields, which the bzero32 routine in Mac OS X uses to great effect (mtcrf 0x01,r4 puts the lower four bits into the condition field, and then it just tests each individual bit with a bf branch -- no compares needed!).

<comment><USER3> I am sorry for game and compiler developers.

or is there any other group that cares about this today?

<comment><USER4> If you want to get really skilled at debugging, symbolic debuggers often break down in ways that are easily worked through by reading disassembly. Reverse engineering is a related and more elaborate extension of that. Finally, certain types of development are done partially with native use of the ISA even if the majority is done in a higher level language like implementing atomics and related lock free algorithms, bootstrap code for systems software, multimedia and compression codecs. It's useful and only a few days learning to have at least passive familiarity in the main ISA you use if you do anything that compiles down to native code for the first reason. It's also not that bad, I'd rather read assembly over modern javascript frameworks to be perfectly blunt.

<comment><USER3> most of the time I had to gdb something that was broken (apache on all my last times) I was looking for IO instruction at the wrong time instead of bugs in pointers usage, but yeah, I do see your point (no pun intended). I can clearly see eioio causing some of the performance/race conditions I was hunting down recently (which thankfully was NOT on ppc :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hope this series goes into the fabled 615. A Pentium socket compatible PowerPC chip that also had a x86 instruction decoder, but was never released.

<comment><USER2> The 615 got a lot of bad press and much of it was not deserved. There was that apocryphal claim it took an "eternity" to mode-switch, but while the penalty was non-trivial (a pipeline spill), it was definitely faster than claimed. This was probably no small amount of FUD on Microsoft's part so that they wouldn't have to support it.

The real irony was the existence and support of Windows NT on PowerPC (up to the W2K betas), so Microsoft actually didn't have much of a beef with supporting the architecture in general after all; they just didn't think doing the engineering on the 615 specifically was worth the cost.

<comment><USER6> Microsoft dropped support for NT 4 PPC in 1997, very early in the release cycle. SP2 was the last update that had PPC support. Maybe you're thinking of Alpha, that was much better supported and was only dropped during the Win2K RCs.

[https://www.itprotoday.com/windows-8/windows-nt-powerpc- no-m...](https://www.itprotoday.com/windows-8/windows-nt-powerpc-no-more)

<comment><USER2> Ah, yes, I was thinking of Alpha. But NT4 was still a full fledged product on PowerPC at least for a period of time, so my larger point stands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> These are enormously important processors, the 604 and 620 were invariably checkpoints of modern CPU design to the masses.. OoO, hardware performance counters etc.

</comment><comment><USER7> Not sure why Microsoft is writing about PowerPC 600 now, other than some technical insights, anything else interesting? I feel PowerPC is gone, along with UltraSPARC, HP, SGI, etc chips.

<comment><USER8> This is Raymond Chen's blog, who has been writing interesting technical articles, including multiple detailed introductions of past and present architectures, for more than a decade (maybe even longer). Some of the covered architectures are gone entirely, some have changed since their presented form. That's a big part of what makes them so interesting.

<comment><USER9> Raymond celebrated 15 years of blogging about Windows history and related topics recently (July 20)

[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180720-00/?p=...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180720-00/?p=99295)</comment></comment></comment>


An Interactive Map of Shakespeare's London - <AUTHOR> http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/04/an-interactive-map-of-shakespeares-london/390060

<comment><USER2> Every year, usually in September, I spend 3-4 days in Ashland, OR, and take in a few plays at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Truly world-class theater, I've enjoyed many superb productions there.

It helps to _read_ a Shakespeare play before going to the performance. Easy to do these days given availability of the work on the Internet, often well- annotated. It often happens that reference is made to the London Shakespeare knew, and I think this interactive map could be quite useful in understanding the full context of a play.

Seems the map project is in an early stage. It will be a great asset as the textual information about the historic features is filled in. I'll definitely come back to it a few months from now.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very cool! The reference to Comedy of Errors is a bit misplaced, however, as the play is set in Greece.</comment>


NP-complete problem solved with biological motors - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/np-complete-problem-solved-with-biological-motors/ <comment><USER2> Having worked worked in both quantum information and biology, I have a few things to say about this article...

1) The 1st paragraph really annoys me. Quantum computers don't solve NP Complete problems by trying every solution. This is a common misconception. In fact, it's widely believed that quantum computers wouldn't solve NP-Complete problems in polynomial time, though they may get a moderate speedup over classical computers related to their superior searching capability.

2) The biological computer in the article also doesn't solve NP problems in polynomial time. Rather, it proposes a highly parallel machine that divides runtime by a very large constant. The real claim is to make a low-energy parallel processor that makes it easier to throw lots of processors at the problem. It does not alter the complexity classes. The linked PNAS article states, "it is inherent to combinatorial and NP-complete problems (assuming P != NP) that the exploration of the entire solution space requires the use of exponentially increasing amounts of some resource, such as time, space, or material. In the present case this fundamental requirement manifests itself in the number of agents needed, which grows exponentially with 2^N. Effectively we are trading the need of time for the need of molecular mass." Unfortunately, the experiment hasn't quite got this far, since "the error rates of this first device are too large for scaling up to problems containing more than ∼ 10 variables." It may constitute a step in the right direction, though.

3) The popular science article (as opposed to the original research it links to) is probably too focused on trying to make this about P vs. NP and misses the actual accomplishment: that the researchers can control a microbiological system outside of their own brains well enough to compute with it. This is pretty cool and may be valuable progress in nano/biotech even if it doesn't end up being a viable computer.

<comment><USER3> In grad school I always heard Scott Aaronson harp on these issues too. He was fond of saying that quantum algorithms organize things so that amplitude here and amplitude there is arranged just so, to ensure that wrong answers experience cancelling amplitudes, rendering them highly unlikely to be the observed outcomes.

It's not about "trying everything in parallel" but rather shoving amplitude around to ensure that correct answers are overwhelmingly more likely to be observed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ugh. This again.

[http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/npcomplete.pdf](http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/npcomplete.pdf)

"this totally scales in polynomial time... but we lose statistical significance as n increases"

"this totally scales in polynomial time... but scales exponentially in the number of proteins needed"

<comment><USER5> That's a cool paper. It touches on a question I've had before about how much of our algorithmic reasoning is predicated on the implementation of CPUs and our current tech stack.

For example, I understand that it's been proved that sorting can at best be done in O(n*log(n)), I guess related to the number 1-to-1 comparisons that need to be done.

However, how does sorting, say, the physical length of sticks come into this? If you stand them all in a bundle you can easily select out the tallest, and then the next tallest, etc, by e.g., lowering a sticky horizontal plate.

It's beyond my cleverness to think about how that could be implemented in a useful way for a computer, but could we prove that it's not possible? Could we have custom-designed units for specialized operations that take advantages of differences between the digital/analog world?

<comment><USER4> I'm going to provide an avenue for thinking about why the stick sorting example is problematic.

Before starting, you have to specify the the size of the plate / the sorting machine. Let's say it supports 10,000 sticks.

I'm going to give you 20,000 sticks.

Does your machine still solve the problem in O(N)? Nope, it's back to O(n log(n)).

The issue with complexity theory is that it's for _arbitrarily large N_, and solutions that work intuitively for small N often run into walls, especially physical solutions.

EDIT:

BTW, I had to stop and think for a bit on that one. This question made me smile; it reminded me of why I enjoyed school. Great question, where the answer isn't obvious and elucidates something about the nature of complexity and how it disagrees with intuition.

<comment><USER6> You can build an arbitarily large sticky plate in linear time, before using the plate. It doesn't add a log(n) factor.

<comment><USER7> Well, I don't think that's true.

Eventually, the plate will be higher density than the material available at the point of its construction, so it will need to take material from outside the plate's current area to fill it.

As the plate extends further into lower-density regions, it will have to extend its materials gathering exercises further and further away from the actual construction site, so they'll take longer and longer to get there.

Even if the plate is very low density indeed, eventually you'll run out of planet and have to start dismantling the moon - which is quite a long way away - unless the plate has a lower density than the volume of space the moon encloses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The NP-complete problem here is merely used as a intensive benchmark. It's still just "bruteforcing" the solution.

</comment><comment><USER9> Sounds very click-baity.

1) Quantum computers are not able to solve NP-complete problems. They have their own complexity class, BQP, that is suspected to be disjunct from the class of NP-complete problems.

2) If they solved just one configuration, like it said in the article, that doesn't prove anything. They must be able to solve any problems in that class of problems.

3) However, even if they "just" found a way to solve an NP-complete problem 10000 times more energy efficiently, that's impressive, even if it won't scale. (And it won't, because it's NP-complete.) Just don't do those clickbait things, OK?

<comment><USER10> Isn't solving one NP-complete problem solving all NP-complete problems? Reducibility is how you almost always prove something _is_ NP-complete.

<comment><USER4> You're confusing solving an instance of subset-sum with solving subset-sum.

If you solve subset-sum, yes, you've solved all NP-complete problems.

If you solve an instance of subset-sum, you've only solved that instance of subset-sum.

The issue here is that to show you've solved subset sum, you need to show that you've solved it for _all possible inputs_.

Subset sum is "given a set (or multiset) of integers, is there a non-empty subset whose sum is zero?".

If I give you the set {-2, -1, 0, 1, 2}, you can tell me in O(n) time that a subset of this sums to zero.

That doesn't mean you've solved subset sum, it means you've solved an instance of subset sum. To solve subset sum, you need to provide a proof showing that you have an algorithm that works for ANY set.

The work here gets results for a specific configuration. To show it solving subset-sum, it would need to be shown to work for all possible sets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> These comments are ridiculous. Nothing in the article claimed they could solve NP-complete problems in polynomial time. They didn't even claim it was very practical. But it's a super interesting way to do computation.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm not seeing how this solves an NP-complete problem at all.

First, the actual press release from the researcher: [http://nicolau.lab.mcgill.ca/?p=1207](http://nicolau.lab.mcgill.ca/?p=1207)

However,

> _We provide a proof-of-concept demonstration of such a device by solving, in > a parallel fashion, the small instance {2, 5, 9} of the subset sum problem, > which is a benchmark NP-complete problem._

> _Actin filaments exploring the {2, 5, 9} device. The movie shows a time > lapse of 200 typical fluorescence micrographs of actin filaments (shown in > white) moving through a network (shown in blue) encoding the SSP with the > set {2, 5, 9}. Exits labeled with green numbers represent correct results, > and magenta numbers represent incorrect results._

They have _17_ different exits. What isn't clear to me is how the exits from the device map to actual solutions or non-solutions of the subset-sum problem. {2, 5, 9} has only 8 subsets (including the empty set), so there's more exits than what I'd call "possible solutions". Roughly half of the exits map to a "correct" answer, roughly half do not. (If you ignore the "which subsets?" questions, and just as _is there a solution?_ , then I suppose half makes sense, in that half the exits are "no solution" and the other half are "a solution exists".)

But my other question, and the one I feel like neither site adequately answers, is how do you set up the device that the protein moves through? If it requires as many exits as possible solutions to the problem (i.e., one for each brute-force "attempt"), then creating the device requires as many exits — and at least as many gates, if not more; _creating_ the device then is still hard, and has the same issues scaling that a computer does. That you can evaluate the device quickly becomes meaningless: you must build it, first.

Edit: The 17 exits correspond to the _sums_ , not the subsets. (I was also missing how they never specified what the target sum was; this is how.) So, "correct" exits are exits where there exists a subset that sums to the number of that exit. (They're solving all possible values for the sum for a given set.) As an example, exit 14 is "correct" because there exists a subset, {9, 5}, which sums to 14.

Edit: Also, here's the paper[1]. This is the weirdest hyperlinking job I've seen in a while. The only link Ars seems to give to the researcher's press release is in the image credit (and even then, only to the site's home, not the release itself…). The press release only links to the paper _on the page title_?

[1]: [http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/02/17/1510825113.full](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/02/17/1510825113.full)

<comment><AUTHOR> The Ars article links to the abstract. There's a line at the bottom of the article with the text:

PNAS, 2016. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1510825113 (About DOIs).

The DOI is a link to the abstract. I'm not sure why they don't link to the full text directly, but it's not restricted access.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I do not believe that an actin-based system for parallel computation could ever be more energy efficient than ceramic hardware.

It might give off less waste heat than your standard desktop PC; but that is not a valid comparison when you consider other, specialized types of circuitry.

Furthermore, the energetic cost of producing and purifying protein should be noted as expensive in the calculation of efficiency;

And the fact that actin filaments are not permanently stable in solution makes this system untenable.</comment>


I guess I wasn't the only person over 30 whose feelings were hurt at TC Disrupt - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/03/svangel-peak-age-old-entrpreneurs/

<comment><USER3> I have these tiger repellent shoes. They're just standard black/black Adidas Superstars, but I have never seen a tiger while wearing them (and i have travelled a lot).

I'm not sure age discrimination actually exists in the startup industry, and certainly anyone who equates correlation with causation doesn't have any place attempting to do anything that requires a modicum of intelligence IMHO. Nor would i want to work with a VC who made such an error.

What I find funny is that people just throw these stats out there without any acknowledgement of this, nor any discussion of confounding variables - <USER2> least David Lee is acknowledging that he should have done so during his presentation rather than after. I bet there is significant correlation between the founders of successful companies and their families socio-economic background too - look at how many are Ivy League graduates or dropouts. How about their marital status? Number of children? Personal debt? Tenure related benefits? These factors are likely much more significant than age in determining the amount of time and effort a person can put into something, and how much risk one is willing to take doing anything. However since age has a strong correlation with these other attributes it's just easier for people use age as a kind of summary statistic. Recognition of this is severely lacking, especially amongst the media types (who I'm sure actually do know better, but it's a pretty boring headline isn't it?).

Anyone can do anything they want with enough time and effort. Some people need less of these than others, and timing has a lot to do with success. But it has precisely fuck all to do with age alone.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I find it funny that SV Angel had to come out with a clarification on the matter. I recall feeling pretty bummed after hearing this presentation. It was a weird tone given the general can-do attitude of the TC Disrupt audience. Here's the way I resolve this ... I have my own reasons for not having done a startup earlier in life, and if anyone holds my age against me in an entrepreneurial endeavor, it is their loss.

I wish we had more discussion on the topic of insane ageism (I'm 31 and apparently, I'm over the hill?) in tech startups as opposed to more discussion on stupid bitcoins.</comment>


Free Mobile is my home internet provider for 18 months - <AUTHOR> https://jorislacance.fr/blog/2019/04/24/free-mobile-at-home <comment><USER2> Nice writeup. You hinted at it in your conclusion, but a reverse tunnel with autossh is a good fix for the NAT problem. I've been doing something similar for the past couple years, using a Netgear LB1120 as the LTE modem. I love that it accepts two external antennas. Since my setup is in a remote location, I connected a passive omnidirectional antenna to maintain a low-bandwidth link at all times, and also an amplified directional antenna pointed at the nearest tower for a full-strength signal and dramatically increased throughput when I'm on-site (additionally, I can power on the amp via my automation server if I need a boost when connected remotely).

I'm pretty conservative with my internet usage at that location, but data caps are an issue. So far, the only times I've hit mine were the 2018/2019 FIFA World Cups! ;)</comment>