Ask HN: What are your favorite personal blogs? - <AUTHOR> I am looking to read more blogs with thoughtful content like Paul Graham's essays, long-form, insightful, and meticulously trimmed to perfection. It doesn't have to be on tech, could be anything that inspires, enlightens, and makes you think. What are your favorites and why? Thanks! <comment><USER2> Derek Sivers' blog: [https://sive.rs/](https://sive.rs/)

He's been a musician, founder of an e-commerce company (CD Baby), a circus performer, and much more. With that comes an unusual way of seeing the world. It's full of surprising lessons and ideas from each stage of his life.

Longform doesn't apply here because they're each absolutely trimmed to perfection. I think he once said the average length is 22 sentences.

They're sometimes designed with mnemonics that make them easy to remember (a bit like Aesop's Fables). "Treat every customer like Mick Jagger" reminds me of the CD Baby approach to customer service, and "There is no speed limit" reminds me of his music teacher compressing an entire semester of music lessons into a few days.

And "Japanese Addresses" reminds me to wonder if I need to invert my way of thinking about something: [https://sive.rs/jadr](https://sive.rs/jadr)

<comment><AUTHOR> I definitely remember "There is no speed limit," with almost scary amount of detail. I guess that's how you know it's a well written blog! Will definitely check out the rest of his posts. Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [https://fabiensanglard.net/](https://fabiensanglard.net/) it is tech, but it is fantastic tech, tons of amiga stuff that takes me back to earlier, simpler time. I'd recommend a browse through the titles, at least. I'd be shocked if this crowd didn't love it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just read one on the "Tunnel Effect." Indeed, a simpler time. What's neat is that same lessons still stand. Just because we have more computing power today, doesn't mean we should not do thing in a simpler manner.</comment></comment>


Mixery – My Wife Went to My Competitor :-( [Part 1 of 4] - <AUTHOR> http://mixergy.com/true-mind-2016-p1/ <comment><USER2> Why does it look like a big red flag that you haven't even started and you _already have competitors_?</comment>


Soylent CEO charged over illegal shipping container - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/07/soylent-ceo-charged-over-illegal-shipping-container-his-neighbors-hate/ <comment><USER2> Previous discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12188859](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12188859)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12151004](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12151004)

</comment><comment><USER3> I have lived in shipping containers converted into housing, and that is a really poorly done example of such. Considering the financial resources this guy must have, it is not difficult to do such a conversion properly.

Dilettante.

<comment><USER4> Would you mind sharing more about how this happened? Did you do the conversion or did someone else do it?</comment></comment>


Global currency is not a new idea, but it may soon get a new lease of life(1998) - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/166471 <comment><USER2> These old articles are good read because shows how thinking advances. Warnings about euroarea turned out to be true.

Today the idea of optimal currency area is more known.

* [https://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/08/sustain...](https://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/08/sustainability-single-currency)

* [https://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2010/05/optimal...](https://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2010/05/optimal_currencies)</comment>


The man who cleans up blood after murders - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-37360081 <comment><AUTHOR> This caught my attention:

> I usually work with my headphones on because music helps me concentrate. I > always listen to the same three things: Tristan und Isolde by Wagner, 666 > Number of the Beast by Iron Maiden and Paranoid by Black Sabbath. The opera > relaxes me, it helps me concentrate and prepare mentally. But once I put my > uniform on and start cleaning, I want to listen to heavy metal.</comment>


How bad does it look to drop out of grad school? - <AUTHOR> I started Physics grad school this Fall, but I have recently considered dropping out, either to join an existing company or to start my own business. I am concerned about how this would look to future employers, both startups and non-startups. I know that getting an MS degree but no phD in Physics does not look great, as it shows that you quit the PhD program. But is getting an MS still better than nothing?
Also, will the companies (both startup and non-startup) take my grad school grades seriously? One of the classes is known to be very hard to Physics students, but I just don't have the motivation to study hard for the class, and I'm concerned about getting a really bad grade (possibly FAILing).
Recently I've been working on a programming project on my own, as a way to improve my programming skills, and I've been working on it with alot more motivation than studying for my Physics classes. I'm still fairly new to programming so I can't say I'm committed to programming over Physics yet. <comment><USER2> "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary." Steve Jobs

</comment><comment><USER3> There's nothing wrong with quitting a Ph.D. program. To me, it looks like you're bright and intellectually curious, but you've got enough sense to ignore sunk costs, which is a valuable skill to have in a startup.

Some places might ask for grad school grades - Google, I'm guessing, they're strange about that sort of thing - but in my experience this is pretty damn rare, especially when the grades are of questionable relevancy. Never happened to me. If it did, I'd just laugh. My grade in Old Church Slavonic simply isn't relevant.

I quit a Ph.D. in History and got my consolation MA when I left. In my experience, most people don't think 'oh, he dropped out of a Ph.D. program' (although I've never hid that), they think 'wow, he got a MA from Stanford!' Not taking the MA would've been silly - now, with some work experience, it doesn't matter, but when starting out it was really valuable.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Some places might ask for grad school grades - Google, I'm guessing, they're strange about that sort of thing - but in my experience this is pretty damn rare, especially when the grades are of questionable relevancy. "

It's not so much the possibility of getting low grades that troubles me as the fact that my grades may be EXTREMELY bad (ie, FAILing)

So you think getting an MA as opposed to just dropping out now is very valuable?

<comment><USER4> Which school are you enrolled in? The value of the MSc is two-fold:

1\. What you learn on it and the quality of the contacts you make, and

2\. The prestige and contacts that come with it.

It sounds as if you don't value (1), and (2) is only worth much with an elite university.

<comment><AUTHOR> UT-Austin. I completed my undergrad at UCLA, so their reputations are similar. I'd like to move back home near my family, but Austin is a much better place for startups than LA

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Quitting is a little bit better than not getting in to begin with. Getting an MS is getting an MS - loads of people "quit" grad school this way and it's rare that anyone outside sees it as more than you having an MS.

Also, try talking to your graduate school about whether you can switch to a different program. This is not always possible, but it may pose an alternative to getting your ass kicked by graduate-level theoretical mechanics.

</comment><comment><USER6> Make money, get more customers than you can handle, _then_ quit school. Or, why not transfer to a decent school to get your MBA? If you are that interested in business and you are young, consider it. If you are that unmotivated about Physics, you should get out.</comment>


Innovative search engine, recently launched - <AUTHOR> http://onetimeline.com/ <comment><USER2> Looks like it's written in lisp. The Server header comes back "Hunchentoot 0.5.1" - <http://weitz.de/hunchentoot/>

</comment><comment><USER3> That's great. I've been waiting for a good application of timelines to make it on the net. There was some crummy one a year ago, I think. This is pretty cool.

But... I wouldn't quite call it a search engine.</comment>


Way Cooler tiling window manager - <AUTHOR> http://way-cooler.org/ <comment><USER2> At a high level, this sounds a lot like a Wayland version of Awesome: [https://awesomewm.org](https://awesomewm.org)

Both are tiling window managers that are extensible through Lua, support D-Bus, etc.

If you want to check out something conceptually similar, but aren't ready for Wayland, consider trying Awesome.

<comment><USER3> From the docs:

> Way Cooler comes in two primary flavors: i3 and awesome.

> The i3 flavor is set up like a default i3 install, with the same keybindings > and tiling algorithm. The only difference between this flavor and actual i3 > is that the primary configuration format is still Lua.

Sounds very good, I'm an i3 user and I had a lot of trouble getting Sway going on my Ubuntu Xenial box, so I'm going to give this a whirl.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been using tiling window managers for over 10 years, and for this time has been spent on ratpoison (after brief stints with wmii, awesome and dwm).

Despite i3/xmonad/bspwm/etc/etc I keep going back to ratpoison for two features I haven't found elsewhere:

\- chained key commands, a la emacs. E.g., I use C-a b to open a bash terminal. I _do_ use non-chained commands, like Mod4+n to go to the next window, but chained key commands can be much easier to do one-handed, and so far it seems ratpoison is the only to offer built in support for this.

\- manual window arrangement. I don't care for the window layouts most tiling WM's since dwm/xmonad seem to use.

Until I see those features in another wm I'll probably remain one of the handful of ratpoison users.

<comment><USER5> After using Ratpoison as my only window manager starting in 2004, I've now switched to Stumpwm for the better multiscreen support. (It's the successor to Ratpoison, written in Common Lisp.)

<comment><USER6> Stumpwm really is great for multiple monitors, I have an 8 screen setup and it works flawlessly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Privately using dwm [1] for many years now and never looked back.

But having to working under a MS Windows 10 setup now, I was wondering:

Is there anything equivalent for MS Windows?

===

[1] [http://dwm.suckless.org/](http://dwm.suckless.org/)

<comment><USER8> Kinda.

Windows 10 has the ability to tile windows by dragging one of them to the left or right screen edge, or corners (dragging one to the top edge maximize it).

But they can only resize nearby windows when there are a vertical split between two windows.

If i try using a full height window on one side, and two half height on the other, Windows fails to resize the neighbors to match any changes i make.

<comment><USER9> You might want to look into Aqua Snap, it solves a lot of those resizing problems. I'm not affiliated, just a happy customer.

[http://www.nurgo-software.com/products/aquasnap](http://www.nurgo- software.com/products/aquasnap)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's going to be a tough battle if they want to win my heart away from i3.

<comment><USER2> i3 is my #1 reason for wanting to switch from MacOS to Linux. I love a good tiling window manager, and the workarounds to emulate a tiling WM in MacOS just aren't close enough to the real thing.

<comment><USER11> I did this recently for the same reason.

Do not wait and get a Linux system with i3 tomorrow. You will be so much faster and more structured in your daily workflow than with Alt-Tab.

A nice side effect: Apps feel much faster than on OSX. I don't know why but everything is snappier and just more resonsive despite a much weaker CPU and same hires screen on the Linux system. Especially the terminal rendering and application switching which is instant.

<comment> Null-Set It might have to do with the transition animations in OSX. I found a long time ago that turning off the animations in Windows makes a system feel a while lot more responsive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Surprising there's no comment on XMonad yet. Well, it needs a replacement as soon as Wayland is going to become established.

</comment><comment><USER13> I was a little disappointed to find out it's based on the C WLC library rather than being a full Rust implementation.

<comment><USER14> There's some complications involved with switching, you might find this thread interesting: [https://github.com/way-cooler/way- cooler/issues/248](https://github.com/way-cooler/way-cooler/issues/248)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> My faovurite window manager ever is GOOMWWM, which is a manual[1] tiling window manager with some stacking window manager features, is extremely keyboard centric, lightweight, customisable and easy to use. Its also tiny, so if you want to hack the source, its not that dificult to figure out.

Its sadly not actively developed (the latest github commit was 2 years ago), but in my experience, its been very stable and I've used it for years without any issues (although I stopped using it almost 2 years ago when I started using a mac for work).

I haven't tried way cooler, but if it were to let me work like I did in goomwwm (especially manual tiling), I'd be sold. Dbus as the integration mechanism sounds interesting and I like rust and lua too.

[1] I never liked automatic tiling personally

</comment><comment><USER16> Does anybody know what's the _current_ status of window decorations in wayland? Client-side decorations was an incredibly poor choice in the original design. From the screenshot I cannot tell if it's just a custom theme or the "wm" is drawing them.

<comment><USER13> AFAIK it's unchanged. The Wayland spec doesn't really concern itself with decorations. It's up to the apps and compositor to figure it out.

QT allows decorations to be disabled and so works well with a tiling compositor. GTK doesn't. There are various GTK patches and hacks floating around to address this but nothing upstream. Older software generally works well by virtue of pre-dating client-side decorations.

<comment><USER16> I don't expect anything anymore from GTK given it's current track record. The latest issue I discovered was the 'letter' to filename shortcut you _used to have_ in file dialogs. It now triggers recursive search instead. Incredibly irritating, especially when used with large and/or FUSE directories, _even_ considering there's a one line patch to allow customization though dconf which has been ignored since more than one year.

GTK 3 has been downhill usability-wise for me. One of the primary reasons I've stopped as a developer to use it entirely.

<comment><USER17> The recursive search is frustrating. I'm so used to doing <first few letters><enter> to navigate from the root directory all the way down to what I'm looking for. It's not only the small hangs while it searches but also the information overload with all of the results when I'm only ever looking for a specific sub directory in the directory I'm currently in. I guess I'm so used to using it as a hotkey instead of a search.

<comment><USER16> The additional problem is that the search results are also incrementally updated. On an open dialog, I had in three different occasions click on a result just to automatically select an unwanted [new] result.

Also, the path bar is long gone. It used to support tab completion, which was actually faster than selecting files and/or searching for them. I don't know what they're thinking.

The list of gripes I have with GTK 3 is increasing at each release.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This goes on my "need to check out" list. I've been toying with the idea of switching to a tiling window manager for a long time, but I've held it off over not wanting to switch window managers yet again when making the move to Wayland.

</comment><comment><USER19> I spend most of my time working in OS X and I use Hammerspoon. It is really an awesome tool. It allowed me to establish truly keyboard-centric workflow. Not just for managing windows, a lot more. I also have Linux machine at home, I don't use it a lot yet I've been thinking about developing better way to work in Linux - something that lets me keep my hands in "the home row". Can someone recommend a tool similar to Hammerspoon?

</comment><comment><USER20> God knows how to install on Fedora, install script didn't work for me on my test box (installs but doesn't appear on list of WMs in login screen)

<comment><USER21> You likely need to add a new file under /usr/share/xsessions, copy an existing one to a way cooler oriented version

<comment><USER20> Gotya, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > configurable using Lua,

Oh, brings back memories from when I used to have Sawfish installed.

</comment><comment><USER23>
      Way Cooler is designed from the ground up to be secure. Rust
      prevents Way Cooler from ever having a data race, dangling
      pointers, or a segfault. Large classes of security
      vulnerabilities, such as from buffer overruns or use after
      free, are a thing of the past.

haha nice selling point. Could add this to any app built with a memory managed language. =P

<comment><USER24> Data races are possible in memory managed languages. And segfaults are thrown over the fence to the runtime. I'm sure anyone who has used Java in anger has seen segfaults. I certainly have.

Personally, I think the statement is too strong. Rust is not immune to these things as the compiler is victim to all the realities of software development that all projects face. But it certainly does dramatically reduce the bug vectors.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, I suppose for the end user I doesn't matter if program stopped working because of segmentation fault or a panic. Though, if one were to choose on of those issues, then obviously runtime errors are preferable over memory-safety problems that might lead to an arbitrary code execution.

BTW, in Java data races do not cause undefined-behaviour. In fact there is no undefined behaviour in Java at all (as specified at least, in practice as you and many others have observed things may work quite differently).

<comment><USER26> Who said anything about UB? You can easily fuck up a parallel program in a nondeterministic may without UB. If two threads are in a deadlock, each waiting for the other thread to release a resource it needs, nobody cares that it wasn't caused by UB.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Web analytics with API only approach - <AUTHOR> http://infunl.com/doc

<comment><USER2> Your API is pretty strange. Some initial things that pop out on me:

json=true to specify the content type. Ideally, this should be from the accept header, but at the very least it should be possible to only specify one content type. Right now, I can specify json=true&xml=true.

Only using GET.

Session management on the client. Why would I want to log someone out?

Not using meaningful keys. s and t? Why not status and token?

HTTP codes should be used instead of status codes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Consideration for not using HTTP status codes was that they are not working very well with JSONP-type integration. This is when page JavaScript adds "call" script object to DOM and then expects call back when it's loaded. To pass error information in this case we need HTTP server to return 200.

<comment><USER3> If you are using jsonp (?callback=foo) then return a 200 and embed the response code in the response.

      foo({"err":{"code":500,"msg":"oh no. i broke!"},"response":null})

      foo({"err":null,"response":"hooray"})

If not using jsonp, then use the status codes IETF gave you. ;)

Most frameworks (WSGI, Rack) allow you to wrap the response and check for presence of the callback, and transform into a friendlier jsonp format. Then you can simply ignore it and code as normal. In this case, doesn't express (seems to be what you are using?) support route middleware too?</comment></comment></comment>


Linear Discriminant Analysis bit by bit - <AUTHOR> http://sebastianraschka.com/Articles/2014_python_lda.html

<comment><USER2> Note that LDA likely does not give the optimal separating hyperplane when minimizing out-of-sample error. That honor likely belongs to SVMs, and in practice tweaking the kernel and identifying relevant non-linear relationships generally become more important to finding a reasonable classification boundary.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I see Linear Discriminant Analysis more as useful tool for pre-processing and dimensionality reduction rather than using it as classifier

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just a note that LDA is also used as a common acronym for Latent Dirichlet Allocation: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latent_Dirichlet_allocation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latent_Dirichlet_allocation)</comment>


POLL: What do you remember most from school science class? - <AUTHOR> https://www.postbulletin.com/news/local/poll-what-do-you-remember-most-from-school-science-class/poll_0dacdf30-d157-11e8-896a-0fbc66d310d7.html <comment><AUTHOR> And what does that say about you?</comment>


Stunningly dumb Windows design - <AUTHOR> http://www.kpao.org/2008/03/stunningly-dumb-windows-design.html <comment><USER2> I don't get it. Why would Windows name use a known network's name as its SSID?</comment>


VW Tries to Blame Engine Emissions Fraud on LowLevel "Engineers and Technicians" - <AUTHOR> http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/09/vw-tries-blame-engine-emissions-fraud-low-level-engineers-and-technicians <comment><AUTHOR> There's a lesson in here somewhere.

If you're an engineer and your boss gives you an order that will cause the company to engage in unlawful behavior you should probably (1) refuse the order, (2) find another job as soon as you can and (3) _if_ you feel the situation is serious enough that the cost to your career is outweighed by the benefits to society consider to become a whistle-blower.

On another note, that independent research was the trigger that caused this whole scandal to blow up is a very bad mark on the ledger of the EPA who should have caught this right out of the gate and not 1M+ vehicles later.

Interesting statements by VW indicate that some believe there is no way their cars would have passed inspection without cheating. With one diesel engine not being that technologically different from the next how are the independently verified figures of the various other brands working out.

As of last Thursday I no longer have a VW diesel since a bunch of crooks decided to steal my camper. I'd very much like it back, emission problems or not.

If anybody spots a silver grey long wheel base VW T5 with dark windows and a camper roof that opens at the rear then I'd very much like to know about it and I'll make sure there is a generous reward. Dutch registration 16-GGG-6, picture is here:

[http://camarades.com/DSC_5237.JPG](http://camarades.com/DSC_5237.JPG)

Very mad about this :(

<comment><USER2> > With one diesel engine not being that technologically different from the > next how are the independently verified figures of the various other brands > working out.

A few months back I heard that VW was pushing for new legislation further lowering diesel emissions to start to remove all its competition from markets. Back then it was rumored that VW had invested in and patented a slightly different direction that worked. Really, you just have to pretend to have succeeded and then cheat to create a monopoly.

Thanks to IP law, there was little incentive for their competition to investigate a system they couldn't use or wager on developing alternative designs given how impossible the claimed results were.

I think VW should be on the hook to meet their current claims while their competitors should not be.

<comment><AUTHOR> > I think VW should be on the hook to meet their current claims while their > competitors should not be.

That would be a very nice form of justice. And for an encore, make them deliver on their promised mileage across the whole line-up.

<comment><USER3> They'd just file for bankruptcy unless you prohibited that as well. Actually, bankruptcy is still an option for VW if things get too far out of control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> At this point the entire engineering staff at VW should be looking for new jobs. Any executive who is willing throw their lower level staff under a bus rather than accept the fault lies in their management failure for not catching this (or their active participation if they actually sanctioned it) is not someone you want to work for.

<comment><USER3> Yes examples are about to be made of them unless they act soon. The real question is whether they can all find new jobs before they are "fired for cause" and can't collect unemployment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's already proven that those who implemented the circumvention acted on orders from managers.

Link (Ger) [http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/vw-skandal-nicht- nur-k...](http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/vw-skandal-nicht-nur- kriminelle-entwickler-13837007.html)

Translation (Goog) [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.faz.net%2Faktuell%2Fwirtschaft%2Fvw- skandal-nicht-nur-kriminelle-entwickler-13837007.html&edit-text=)

</comment><comment><USER6> The only plausible explanation of a non-criminal nature is that day to day engineers having to hunch over the exhaust of a running VW to debug quirky CAM bus stuff did it as debug mode code and it shipped with the feature toggle on.

<comment><USER7> Here's another semi-plausible explanation: they used machine learning to optimize engine parameters to fit the objective "maximize engine performance" subject to the condition "pass the emissions test".

If the optimization is able to access parameters such as steering wheel position, altitude, whatever, then this would overfit to the test in the manner described. (The fix is to optimize for "have good emissions" instead of "pass the test". Or depending on your point of view, maybe the fix is just to add another optimization constraint "comply with the law" … if you can figure out exactly what is compliant.)

<comment><USER8> That is probably what happened since a corporation is a blind organism for optimizing things, absent a moral compass. Just change 'they' to 'corporate management', and 'machine learning' to 'the engineering staff'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _" The unlawful behaviour of engineers and technicians involved in engine development shocked Volkswagen"_

Trace the source all the way to the top. There is no way in an engineering culture like VW this was an isolated _rouge operation_.

<comment><USER5> Yup, there's probably also some primer, foundation, concealer, lipstick end eye-liner involved! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> And a very generous application of whitewash and stain remover.</comment></comment></comment>


Superfluid Transport in Quantum Spin Chains - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.11470 <comment><USER2> I assume I'm not the only one who read the abstract and still has no clue what this is about?

<comment><USER3> I know what most of those words mean, but none of the sentences.</comment></comment>


Why is it taking longer and longer to fill open jobs? - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2015/6/20/8815561/job-vacancy-duration <comment><USER2> I think another interpretation is that it's become easier for companies to keep jobs "open" and collecting applicants without really having to put in effort to find people. Or, to put it another way, the idea of an "open job" has become meaningless, if it was ever meaningful in the first place.

As a metaphor, we can imagine many people wanting to buy apples, but not being willing to pay the 1$ the supermarket will charge. They could create an "apple opening", posting on an apple selling site looking for people who are willing to sell them apples with certain qualities for a given price that depends on the individual, for example 5 cents. Then, we could poll consumers to see how many have apple openings. Perhaps we could find millions of such unfilled openings, but would this tell us anything about trends in the quality of apples or actual apple consumption?

<comment><USER3> A relevant read: Whaddaya Mean, You Can't Find Programmers? [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000050.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000050.html)

<comment><USER4> I finished reading the article, and only then realized that it's from 15 years ago. Incredibly relevant still, and in my experience companies still pinch pennies when hiring developers

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > What's changed over the past fifteen years is that the internet has > dramatically decreased the cost of identify in an open job listing and > sending in an application. The stack of resumes you need to read through in > order to start scheduling interviews has just gotten longer. The easier you > make it to apply for jobs, the slower the hiring process becomes.

The above explanation of why it now takes employers longer to fill open jobs isn't convincing. Perhaps it would make sense if you received:

(a) 10,000 resumes for a single opening (but that doesn't happen)

(b) 50 resumes from 50 different Nobel laureates and you were torn trying to decide which one is best (but that doesn't happen either)

My experience is that if you got 5 resumes pre-Internet, you'd get 50 post- Internet. But the additional screening is negligible. I found that I can immediately reject 45 of the 50 resumes after looking at them for a minute each because so many of the resumes are unqualified.

You might say that that is 45 minutes lost, but even a single interview will take longer than that. It's insignificant to the overall hiring process.

Maybe what really happens is that in large HR-driven companies, the HR department forces the hiring manager to interview many more incompetent or unqualified people because they got so many resumes to choose from.

<comment><USER6> Posted a senior iOS dev position to Indeed, LinkedIn, Glassdoor where the company is paying 25%(maybe 40% if you include RSUs) above market here (although we don't put comp in the job listing) and only got 3 applicants in a month.

<comment><USER6> Can't post the exact description but the jist of it was:

Strong understanding of objective C and iOS SDK Swift experience a plus Passion for design / UX Proven track record of quality apps in app store

That's literally all I had under qualifications.

<comment><USER7> Did you try to get all the Apple details out of your posting and replace them with Android ones?

What difference does it make whether they built an iOS app if they are a mobile app developer?

Also, why not look for a web app developer specializing in front end. Same skills, just a few minor technical details are different.

I think a lot of employers do not understand what the word "skill" actually means. Generally skills increase with years of experience and if you take someone at the right level and throw a new platform at them, they will spend a week on reading and tutorials and then dive into a prototype of the app they need to build.

After all, Google hires Apple and Microsoft engineers, then expects them to build stuff on the Google internal platform. And they DO!

<comment><USER8> There are big, big differences between the native iOS programming model, the native Android programming model, and the web programming model.

They're not just "a few minor technical details." The toolchains are different, the UI design details are different, the event model is different, the model/backend details are different, and there are significant conceptual differences.

I would be astonished if someone could move from web dev to iOS dev in a week with no previous experience. A good coder can probably bolt together a twinky do-nothing hello world app that quickly from a cold start, but they'll be a long way short of what's needed for a solid commercial-grade app with useful features.

<comment><USER9> Perhaps the reason everyone thinks there is a shortage of developers, is that 'to iOS dev in a week' is somehow an acceptable metric to determine if someone is a good hire or not.

I can not fathom the mindset that goes into the line of thought "yeah he's clearly a great developer - sadly he is currently working from framework X and we would need him to work from framework Y". I can only hope that such an attitude leaves a company more likely to go out of business (and I suspect it does).

A strong engineer with a proven track record building enterprise-level applications is not going to become a shit-hot iOS developer in a week. However he will be just as likely to bring in 10x his salary in value to your company in his first year, as nearly anyone else you hire. But most hiring managers will probably not bother to promote such an applicant to even a phone screen, since it would take too much time out of everyone's daily 'where are all the iOS devs' bitch session on HN or proggit or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One of the problems IMHO is, that employers get more and more demanding.

There is this joke, that fits very good: "If Carpenters Were Hired Like Programmers" [1]

In former days, the readiness to take people and train them on the job was much higher. In Germany this is a really ugly trend. The licence for truck drivers is very, very costly but the earnings of the drivers are very low. In former days the transportation companies educated their own drivers. Today, they don't. They just expect, that the drivers somehow have to have the education and come from somewhere. What is the result: The state is in more and more cases educating unemployed people that they can become truck drivers. They pay tax money, that the transporting companies don't have to pay for it ...

I don't think, that a "free market" has to mean that more and more costs have to been taken over by the state, but that is, what is happening.

Today, when you apply for a job, they search for exactly those skills needed. They are not ready to train you on the job or take people that have to do a lot of learning on the job. And also in Germany: They are not ready to take people above a specific age.

[1] [http://www.jasonbock.net/jb/News/Item/7c334037d1a9437d9fa650...](http://www.jasonbock.net/jb/News/Item/7c334037d1a9437d9fa6506e2f35eaac)

<comment><USER11> I've read that joke before. It's great. It should be re-posted every time one of these "jobs" discussions comes up on HN. It very clearly summarizes what's wrong with the hiring process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here's a famous recruiting ad for "Super programmers" from Autodesk, in 1986.[1] It includes two things you seldom see today. First, there's no list of narrow technical skills:

 _" Relevant experience is nice, but if you're as good a person as we want, you'll be able to pick it up in a week or two."_

And finally:

 _" We'll pay you more than anybody else in the industry."_

That worked. Autodesk ended up owning the CAD industry and the animation industry.

If your company is complaining that it can't find programmers, try that.

[1] [https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/chapter2_43.html](https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/chapter2_43.html)

<comment><USER13> It'd be awesome if AutoDesk unleashed some super programmers on their online store and subscription management portal. Both are an absolutely abismal experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It seems no one is mentoring anyone in professional setting anymore. Stackoverflow.com is nice but sometimes face2face mentoring can't be beat.

And no company seems willing to offer 'apprenticeship'. You are working on a hard problem with latest methodologies and tools? Then it's very likely you won't find anyone out there who has the experience in the methodologies and tools. You just can't hold out looking for the perfect candidate. You are not google or apple. So just give up and hire the best you can find in the pool. Don't wait till you find the ONE. Again, you are not google or apple.

The other problem I think is HR department itself. How many small/mid HR departments keep track of hiring process like SEO metrics are kept/measured? Do they know which manager seems to hire the most duds? AFAIK, HR department is the least automated piece of a tech company. I can tell because they are still scheduling interviews using emails.

And lastly, please take a look at your Job desc/requirement. Is it real or are you just copying/pasting from some other job postings?

<comment><USER15> Pretty much most job positions want a pony. It's the old "10 years experience in J2EE" thing, when a technology doesn't really take that long to learn, or a group of technologies that someone uses, that are impossibly incommon in combination.

People want developers in Foo, not Bar, when Foo and Bar are basically the same.

I prefer hiring smart people that can learn, and that are good to work with, but I do feel people don't believe that as much when there are are a lot of people on the market.

It's somewhat similar to how it's hard to get an employer to fund a conference trip, classes, books, and all of those kinds of things.

And because you can't really move and grow at work, I think that's also why people change jobs more, we're in a very creative professional that desires knowledge - and the system really wants us to hire someone who already knows X or has built X before, and crank out more of the same many times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> * Employers overvalue experience, forgetting that a human is a fantastic machine and with appropriate training and management, most people will be able to do most jobs.

* Communication is hard: both writing resumes and job descriptions – it becomes this strange difficult-to-play game that both sides engage in often having little to nothing to do with the actual job

* Education is poor: at all levels actual learning is not emphasized. Especially learning how to do things. From preschool to graduate school, the game of education far surpasses actual learning. Students aren't interested in learning and teachers are only interested in grades and tests.

<comment><USER17> "Employers overvalue experience"

Only at hiring time. One of the execs reads a journalist article in a trade rag about any random fad and "we" need to have it implemented yesterday. Which is not a problem because successful employees are really good at OTJ training and learn by experimentation. Unfortunately no one has told HR that, and they think they're hiring for tax audit avoidance accountants in the most conservative and uncreative criteria possible.

The ideal candidate has 20 years of experience in a field 10 years old (that only takes 6 weeks to learn of course), in other words focused entirely on the past. The ideal employee on the other hand is an expert at learning "6 week" technologies and making them produce once they're hired. There's going to be friction and failure and massive wastes of money.

There is also the extremely low social status issue. It would be possible to micro-specify (nano-specify?) any management or executive job, but they're not going to put up with it, as an industry, so instead we get "good judgment" type of hiring criteria. The reason why programmers have incredibly low social status is the oversupply (nationwide, anyway) requires them to be talked down to or replaced by someone who will tolerate being talked down to. The extremely low social status permeates the rest of the field too, call center like work environments, crazy disrespectful deadlines, poor management techniques (most modern fads, really), so its not going to be as simple as some sort of union saying "no" to disrespectful job advertisements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Historically long lead times to hiring has been a leading indicator of wages rising. The mechanism is pretty well understood.

Employer A decides that if they can get an employee at a low wage, they would hire another employee and they create an advertisement for the opening. If the economy has moved up, they don't fill it and it remains open.

Meanwhile employer B loses an essential employee for some reason and they go out and actively try to recruit a replacement (generally from other employers in the same industry / space) They find employer A's top performer and offer them a raise to come work for B (which A takes because they have had really poor wage increases over the last 5 years)

Now Employer A has a problem, they are down a key employee and they had an "opening" already so they are in danger of losing income if they don't replace their employee. In order to do that they raise what they are willing to pay the "right" person who walks in the door. And they may try to recruit out of other employers.

"Nice to fill" job openings are an indicator that the business is profitable enough to add labor, which means that the labor it is employing is at or above the productivity rate needed to succeed or expand. In that environment some firms will seek to grow more aggressively than others and that will result in opportunities to be employed at the entry level.

That is a good indicator for folks who are coming into the workforce. How the rest of the economy responds will be interesting indeed.

</comment><comment><USER19> I think this misinterprets something deliberately, and misses some things entirely.

It mentions that wages have been stagnant as proof that it isn't that people aren't applying for jobs that have low pay, but only uses wage statistics as evidence for that, which doesn't really indicate one way or the other that such is the situation.

I think the thing it really misses is the increased conceptualization of open positions that makes it so about the only person in the entire world qualified for a job the way it is posted is either the person that had the job previously, or the exact skills of some other team member.

I assisted in hiring a technical person at a previous job over a decade ago, and after finding no one with the skills we wound up just hiring the most enthusiastic person, and they wound up over achieving.

After harassing HR at my company, I finally made a lateral move where my manager told me he thought at the time of hiring that they needed someone and they thought I might be able scrape by, but now they want me to find someone else just like me.

I've read other studies drawing parallels to online dating and in the face of abundance you keep holding out for something better.

Either people have to do the hard work to generalize the description of the kinds of skills they are looking for that doesn't wind up into yet another set of impossibilities, or the entire hiring process needs a complete reset in some other way. While we're at it we should probably throw degree requirements out the window, and the silly hiring puzzles everyone has been upset about.

<comment><USER20> Extreme pickiness. Every hiring manager is convinced that they must only hire A+++ players or their business is doomed. They'd rather a position go un- filled for 6 months than take a risk on someone simply hungry and enthusiastic. Companies are holding out for that unicorn employee (but, strangely enough, not offering unicorn salaries).

<comment><USER14> They need to wake up. They are not google or apple.

<comment><USER21> Sometimes I wonder if even Apple and Google are Apple and Google :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I am busy already. I already have a job that I like. So, I am not even remotely looking at what other jobs are around, because at the moment I consider that to be a distraction, a waste of time. Now you can generalize this: you can safely assume that anybody who is even just remotely good at what he does, is already busy. He already has a job and he is not interested in your job advert. In other words, above a certain treshold of skill level that is not even that high, you must approach the candidate, because the candidate will not approach you. Besides the fact that he considers your approach to be a distraction (he does not need it right now) the most important question on his lips will be: How much more are you offering than I am getting now already?

<comment><USER23> This attitude is so wring, and hearing it so many times has contributed to my perceptions of myself as a shit engineer.

There are plenty of good engineers like myself who are at times actively or semi-actively looking for a job. I'm in Dallas, and I have a lot of hot keywords associated with myself that are not my core competency. What that means is over 90% of the jobs I get approached about are inappropriate, sometimes wildly. I only get approached by the highly active recruiters, since so many seem to have limited geographical areas and I am not in a position to network with non-recruiting people. These recruiters frequently misinterpret or misunderstand my background.

Thus, I am forced to actively apply to openings if I want something new. Hearing things like this gives me the impression that I will be viewed as inferior just because I had to stoop to the level of applying like the rest of the plebs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I would like to see someone quantify how many job listings are posted to meet H1-B requirements where there is no intent to hire. I've been hearing more and more stories of people trying to get interviews for jobs they see online only to find out the listing was to meet visa requirements for the person in the current role.

<comment><USER25> Job postings that are aiming to satisfy visa requirements are generally easy to identify.

Here are some indicators:

* They're usually listed in a Sunday newspaper rather than online.

* They will not be posted to the company's website.

* They'll require a specific education level

* They'll require experience that is oddly specific

<comment><USER26> Like this one: [https://twitter.com/mrspeaker/status/525650833174978560](https://twitter.com/mrspeaker/status/525650833174978560)

I thought it was the most hilarious thing I'd ever seen until a co-worker on a H1-B told me what it really was.

<comment><USER27> Obviously spelling is not one of the skills required "stored proceeds" :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How often do you see "Help Wanted - Will Train"?

<comment><USER28> A lot by smart employers. When I ran a data science team, we hired mostly physicists and math majors who had only secondary knowledge of CS. Best bargains on the market and they don't come with baggage.

Now I work in sports science. I try to hire brilliant people who have never played the sports in question. Still very, very hard.

<comment><USER29> I occasionally, casually interview for sports gigs (NBA, NHL) and I see it the other way - the needs are not that technically difficult, but the folks doing the hiring are rarely qualified to be doing the interviewing and most are very cheap relative to market so an established, skilled person is infeasible for them. Literally everyone I've met in the industry is super nice, though, and I've made many friends in the process.

<comment><USER28> Oh, working for teams directly is often a joke. Many MLB clubs are not, though. One club is packed with PhDs in their sports science department. They are an exception. The brunt of the great work is being done in private practice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Maybe HR tends to complicate the process to expand its power and justify its existence.

There is this "law" that proclaims this is what happens in bureaucratic organisations - hierarchies tend to be grown for that purpose.

<comment><USER31> Parkinson's Law -- an amusing read, even if quaint. The same book also gave rise to the contemporary term "bikeshedding."

<comment><USER30> Parkinson's Law states that work is expanded to fill the available time. The law I refer to is that the time itself with work to be filled is expanded - for the purpose of requiring more human and non-human resources - which again requires expanding the hierarchy - which expands the power of those who cause this process (as the newly hired people will be added below those "managers").

<comment><USER31> Quite true. I should have italicized _Parkinson 's Law_, the book. Parkinson spends a number of short chapters discussing the expansion of hierarchies, with historical examples.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Because it seems there are many people commenting who might know: is it heard of for a potential employee to negotiate compensation also in terms of amount of paid time off? And if so, has anyone ever heard of a US dev getting European levels of vacation? Like eight weeks?

Because that is my ideal, and I would be willing to give up a lot to get that sort of thing. I need stability, but live pretty frugally, so I would only be interested in an otherwise traditional full-time position. Any input greatly appreciated.

<comment><USER33> I've heard of people negotiating 4 or 4.5-day work weeks for 80% or 90% of the position's full-time salary. In the few cases where I've seen that happen, someone in the company had prior work experience with the candidate and knew that they would be worth bringing in even on a part-time basis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Don't well written cover letters help employers quickly evaluate a large number of applications?

And don't complain that you don't get them along with the resumes. 1) Ask for a cover letter explaining why you are a fit for the job. 2) Discard applications that don't include them. 3) Resist the urge to look through the resumes anyway.

And if you directly ask for a cover letter, and you get anm application that doesn't have one, send the applicant a form letter that says. "This is a form letter. Apparently you do not care about finding a job because you failed to follow the instructions in the job posting. We have deleted your application/email. If you still want to be considered for the job, apply again WITH A COVER LETTER that explains why you are the right fit for the job".

If Employers want Job Applicants to do the right thing, then they need to be proactive and teach. Nobody else trains job applicants how to apply for a job, how to help the employer see quickly that you deserve to get an interview.

<comment><USER34> > Ask for a cover letter explaining why you are a fit for the job

How does this help anything. Plenty of these out there which the applicant can attached to the application.

"I am very enthusiastic to leverage my [INSERT HERE] skills to help [COMPANY] transform the [WHATEVER] industry "

<comment><USER35> This

99% of cover letters will just be, self-importance exaggeration, prospective employer excessive praise, etc.

<comment><USER36> And resumes are not?

I am a decent programmer but not exceptional, but when you read my resume you will see that I am a child prodigy - and that is done without any lying at all just selective highlighting facts.

<comment><USER23> Mine isn't. Maybe that's my problem. :P

<comment><USER37> That's your problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I wonder if part of it (besides keeping positions open just to see what is out there) is that companies can use job openings as analytic data. you find information that re-affirms how much you should be paying employees, expectations of employee turn over, and more interestingly what the competition is doing.

I mean, imagine I am google, I fain interest in a job posting to get some facebook employees to apply. I even give them an interview. between the resume, cover letter, and interview I might be able to get lots of information on what projects facebook is working on and then just turn down the candidate after 3 interviews and say: google is quirky, if one person dont like you, you dont get in no matter how good you think it went.

</comment><comment><USER39> What's also missing is that most resumes are culled mechanically by grepping for keywords. Nobody reads every resume they receive. That's why they ask for digital documents -- and then ask you to submit them _again_ in plain text elsewhere on the form.

</comment><comment><USER40> My theory is that people are shopping around for better employers and better cultural fit, and that it's not just a question of taking the highest offer any more. That would explain why wages are not rising.

<comment><USER10> If the problem would be just employees "shopping around" that would _not_ explain, why wages are not rising. If they would shop around, wages would also rise, even when they are only marginal interested in wages ... (show me 3 employees that are not interested in wages)

<comment><USER37> Tech wages are very inflated as is, expecting them to rise is pretty silly.

When I was looking for my current job, I forgot to even ask about wages. So maybe what they gave me in pay is "flat" from five years ago, but it's still twice what any of my friends my age are making, while they have degrees and I do not.

<comment><USER10> I was only reacting on the argument was made by the OP, that is not logical in my opinion.

I do not know about tech wages in the US. In Germany, the tech wages are not inflated, at least not in my opinion. The normal tech wages have risen maybe 3-5% per year the last few years in Germany (I don't call this inflated) and the years before it was even less.

In the same time, the wages for top-managers have risen maybe 10-15% per year and are since decades incredible high above the wages of "tech wages" (the difference is climbing and climbing). I call _that_ inflated.

Your statement of course is more logical than that of the OP.

<comment><USER37> Developer wages in the US average around €62k, about 20 higher than in Germany, while the US has roughly 30% lower cost of living.

Also, in Germany you're at a 40% income tax rate at €43k, while in the US at €62k you're only taxed at 25%.

Sure, that 40% income tax rate gets you universal healthcare, while in the US we're paying ~6,339.71 Euros a year to insure a family of four. But I think even accounting that, wages are much higher in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> by that graph, hiring:openings is finally at 1.0.

that actually sounds perfect, and it seems inflated before. when it was over 1.5

so, what's the problem?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This might explain it too: [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByFCtZfCcAAg_A3.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByFCtZfCcAAg_A3.jpg:large)

</comment><comment><USER42> I mean, the solution is simple to fix right? Raise the wages for these positions.

<comment><USER37> It's not about wages being too small, it's about offices not being pleasant places to work.

I have never heard a programmer complain about not enough pay. They do, however, complain about incompetent bosses, not enough vacation, and having to deal with non-programmers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> interview != quiz

</comment><comment> anti-shill it's not--it's just propaganda...I never trust any stats promulgated or hyped by the gov't, the media, corporations or nonprofit foundations. They all have an agenda, and agenda that portends no good for the average american.</comment>


Light-weight job scheduling library for node - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rschmukler/agenda

<comment><USER2> This is a nice approach. I especially like the semi Natural Language text input, very similar to [https://github.com/jkbr/rrule](https://github.com/jkbr/rrule)

This will be very useful for one of my pet projects.

How does it handle DST?

</comment><comment><USER3> Ha, this is perfect for what I am setting up at Schematical these days</comment>


Show HN: Interesting for iPhone [App Store link] - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/interesting-for-iphone/id586848801?ls=1&mt=8

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone, I made this app to scratch my own itch of constantly wanting things to read but after spending a few months on it (nights and weekends) I figured some other people might like it as well. I crank though a few hundred content sources on my server, filter out the crud using some simple content filtering rules, publish it out and then Interesting picks it up. Not hitting any DBs or third-party APIs make the app's refresh happen extremely fast and I can add/edit sources whenever I want without needing an app update.

I'd love any feedback you have!</comment>


Hardware and Firmware Issues in Using Ultra-Low Power MCUs - <AUTHOR> http://www.ganssle.com/reports/ultra-low-power-design.html

<comment><USER2> Just wanted to say that everything in this article about the MCU, capacitors and diodes is spot on. (I don't do work with coin cell batteries, but I do have experience with using very small rechargeables and very small solar panels.)

To add to it, don't use zener diodes for over-voltage protection. They are extremely leaky. And if you need high value MLCC capacitors you are better off making them yourself from a stack of (more common) 10uF ceramic caps.

</comment><comment><USER3> Articles like these are great. For those working with ultra-low power MCUs, it's a gold mine of knowledge, data, and wisdom. For everyone else (like me), it finds value as an inspiration. The article stands as an example of what good engineering looks like; the kind of attention to detail and depth of thoughtfulness we should strive to pour into our own projects.

</comment><comment><USER4> Noob question: why doesn't dropping the voltage increase the current?

<comment><USER5> Positive resistance (like a resistor) not negative resistance (like constant power output active power supply)

One way to look at it is the power in cmos gates is all burned up fighting capacitance. You can run a cmos ram in sleep mode for years off a watch battery, but they'll take "serious" power at MHz speeds.

Think of charging a capacitor and watch the voltage across the cap as it charges. As electrons trickle in (thats the current) the voltage slowly rises. It'll take longer to charge that cap up to 5 volts than 3.3 volts. (edited to add, next step in analogy is you could make that cap charge up to 5 volts just as fast as it charged to 3.3. volts by cranking up the current...) So by analogy in your cmos gates the higher the voltage you charge a binary one up to, the larger the current spikes to get to that voltage representing a binary one.

There are resistive losses, but not much. Those are positive resistances, too.

So everything comes up positive resistance aka "higher voltage = higher current" not the other way around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if it is possible to actually design a battery that has 20-30 years life.

<comment><USER2> Sure, here is one that has been going for 175 years:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Electric_Bell](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Electric_Bell)</comment></comment>


DemoMyApp - clear gallery of new web applications and start-up sites - <AUTHOR> http://demomyapp.com/ <comment><USER2> Hi the USP of demomyapp is in watching the screencasts. So if you want people to decide whether your site is worth using submit your demo and comment on the screencasts.

We're doing a new release this week too - look out for ratings and the ability to make announcements about your app.

<comment><USER3> It's having some troubles loading at the moment...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I always thought about something like this. This seems to be a more refined vision. I thought some sort of beta registry would be good, I think that chunking down to webapps is a great idea. I called the idea The Beta Point.</comment>


The Exercise Pill - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/06/a-pill-to-make-exercise-obsolete <comment><USER2> There seem to be basically two arguments against "exercise pills."

1) Self-discipline is virtuous in and of itself. We shouldn't develop alternative ways to control weight and/or maintain muscle tone without controlling food intake and exercise, because that undermines the tangible rewards of virtue.

2) Biology is extremely complicated, and the drug that keeps you compact and muscular in your 40s might end up promoting the growth of cancerous tumors all over your body in your 60s. (As happened to the older mice who received high doses of GW501516.)

I don't agree at all with the first argument. The second one is alarming enough that I'm not going to be the first or even the millionth person in line to obtain these compounds through grey-market channels and dose myself. Similarly, I would _love_ a drug cocktail that prevents the unwanted physical effects of aging, but I'll let other people blaze a trail with human trials (clinical or self-experimentation.)

<comment><USER3> 3) There other benefits to exercise, including stretching and loosening joints and ligaments, building coordination and body awareness, mental benefits, etc. Sweating has benefits as well. I'd find it really hard to imagine that some pill that mucks with metabolism or muscle growth or some other single dimension would cover even a small portion of the benefits of exercise.

<comment><USER4> Yes and no.

Look around. When, as the article mentions, the option is no pill vs some pill that helps in some way; for most people the pill makes sense.

As it is today, many people could alter their diets and improve their health. Yet they do not.

In an ideal world this pill makes little sense. But our First World world of today is far from ideal. Put another way, they say that worldwide more people die from eating too much than not eating enough.

<comment><USER3> Sure. I was just saying there are other arguments against these pills. I'm not a luddite or a perfectionist and can see their use case though.

<comment><USER4> I hear ya. I do, in theory, agree with you. But the reality is most people don't care to take care of themselves. And they wonder why healthcare costs are so high.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "After the age of forty, all of us, even the athletic, lose about eight per cent of our muscle mass each decade, with a further fifteen-per-cent decline between the ages of seventy and eighty. "

This has not been my experience. I have added pretty substantial muscle mass between the ages of 48 and 55 with fairly conventional weight lifting and diet with no PED's. My back squat has gone from 185 to 385 (pounds)and my deadlift from 265 to 465. 40 seems way too early to start packing it in.

<comment><USER6> _Without_ changing your lifting regimen? I find that hard to believe.

<comment><USER7> 2x improvement in 7 years? there's nothing unbelievable about that?

<comment><USER8> 2x improvement just depends on where you start in relation to where you have been. If you haven't lifted legs heavily for a while you'll have to start lower but you'll quickly regain that lost grown. Well, you'll regain the lost ground faster than you'll go up past your old max.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For anyone considering buying this (which was me until 5mins ago) read [https://www.reddit.com/r/steroids/comments/6477mr/compound_e...](https://www.reddit.com/r/steroids/comments/6477mr/compound_experience_saturday_gw501516_cardarine/dg0sq37/)

The important bit:

> In animal trials, there are dose equivalence calculations you have to do > first. Since rats were used in the study you have to divide their dosage by > 6.2 for the human equivalence. So the 5 mg/kg/day for males and 3 mg/kg/day > for females works out to 0.806 mg/kg/day and 0.484 mg/kg/day, respectively. > For example, a 115 lb female would have an equivalent dosage of ~25 mg. > That's a whole lot closer to the doses some of you are taking.

> In the study, cancer was seen even in rats on the lowest dosage. For all we > know, they could have gotten cancer at lower doses too.

</comment><comment><USER10> My biggest barrier to staying healthy isn't motivation or willpower, it's time. A lot of us waste a lot of time sitting in offices when more hours there don't make us more effective or productive at what we do. Give me some of that time back to go on 2-3 hour bike rides every day, and I suspect I'd be happier, and find some way to be more productive.

<comment><USER11> I've had periods of my life where I'm very active and fit, and periods when I'm not. To be honest, I have more time now than I ever have before (I work from home), but I'm actually less active.

I think it's a fundamental misunderstanding that staying active is associated greatly with free time or will power. In my experience it's more like a habit. For example, most people would not leave the house without brushing their teeth in the morning. It would just be disgusting. Most people will bathe once a day. Most people will wear clean laundry. None of these things take tremendous amounts of willpower because the aversion to _not_ doing them is so strong.

In the active times of my life, that's _exactly_ how I've felt about exercise. It's just feels _awful_ not to do it. Just like you find time to brush your teeth, bathe, do your laundry, etc, etc -- you find time to exercise. You have a routine in your life and deviating from it makes you feel bad. It seems almost morally wrong to deviate from that routine.

Somewhat ironically, having more free time (and more options), I actually have a harder time doing all of these things now. I work from home and my wife goes out first thing in the morning. I'm alone. Do I need to eat breakfast? Do I need to brush my teeth? Do I need to bathe? Do I need to change my clothes? It's a running joke that remote contractors don't do these things, but there is some truth to it. Where I _never_ needed willpower to do these things before, now I do!

Luckily the fix is simple (because even if you aren't motivated to do those things, you still feel _awful_ not doing them). You make a routine and you stick to it. You _remove_ options. Although you might reasonably think that sticking to a routine requires willpower, it's actually the opposite. Allowing yourself an option and _still_ doing it is what requires will power.

So just like you would never leave for work without brushing your teeth and having a shower, now you must never leave without doing your exercise. And just like having a 3 hour bath is _awesome_ (I live in Japan and go to the hot springs to do that every time I can!), it's not reasonable in most people's lives. You've got 20 minutes to take a shower. Well, you've got 20 minutes to exercise too (I recommend doing it just before you take a shower). Sure it limits your options about what you can do, but that's not necessarily bad.

If you can't find 20 minutes in your day -- then you have some big problems that you need to sort out. Sort them out because not having even 20 minutes to call your own will burn you out pretty darn quickly.

<comment><USER12> Confessions of a long time remote worker: once I didn't bathe for two months (I was really depressed). The funny thing is, after a week or so my skin and hair seemed to dry up and stop producing oils/smells (confirmed by a neutral third party). When I started bathing again I got really bad acne for weeks. I'm better about it now, but I'm still working at home and still hate taking showers and brushing my teeth. Try not to think about this the next time you're on a conference call with one of your remote coworkers. :)

<comment><USER11> Remote working is a _lot_ harder on the psyche than most people think (before they do it ;-) ). Especially if you've done 1 or 2 days a week remote for a while (which IMHO is an optimal way to work), you start to think that working remote full time is going to be all sorts of amazing with no drawbacks. This is my second stint (first one I did for about 18 months, this one is 3 years this week). I'm definitely happier doing the remote thing now, but there are days/weeks/months where I would kill to go into the office (too bad it would cost me about $5K to get there...)

BTW, I've heard that there are bacteria that live on your skin that keep it relatively in good shape if you don't wash. It lives on the oils and urea that you excrete. When you wash frequently, the bacteria doesn't have a chance to sustain a healthy colony, so you end up greasy/stinky. Apparently still better to wash, but not nearly as horrible not washing as people assume (eventually).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have a feeling such a pill would go the way of testosterone which, even though it could be safely administered to people who don't necessarily have "Low T" to positive ends, is still only a treatment for those who desperately need it. People on the low end of whatever arbitrary, non-standard serum testosterone scale often don't get treatment because they are technically "normal", which completely disregards the benefit someone can see from being brought to the high-end of the scale. Likewise, an exercise pill might only be given to those who are morbidly obese rather than mostly sedentary office workers who would rather get more work done than dedicate another hour every day towards mindless exercise.

<comment><USER14> One of the reasons for this is testosterone treatment is associated with higher rates or cardiovascular disease.

<comment><USER15> While true, this is not the reason testosterone was banned. The AMA argued vociferously against banning it, in fact.

<comment><USER14> You're 100 percent right. I was just explaining why some doctors are reluctant to prescribe it.

The fact it's banned is total bullshit. There are no testosterone addicts in the same way there are cocaine or heroin addicts. It doesn't have any societal harm, and it's risks aren't any worse than maintaining a poor diet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Mice that had been given large doses of the drug over the course of two > years (a lifetime for a lab rodent) developed cancer at a higher rate than > their dope-free peers. Tumors appeared all over their bodies, from the > tongue to the testes.

> ...

> Since then, he has developed a less potent version that he hopes will also > be less toxic.

So yeah, this isn't exactly ready for mass consumption.

<comment><USER17> Whereas the link between anabolic steroids and cancer is pretty weak. If someone is interested in getting fit (or fit looking) with pills, we already have some pretty good stuff out there.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3827559/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3827559/)

<comment><USER15> Pretty much. For anyone interested in how anabolic-androgenic steroids got banned in the USA, check out _Bigger, Faster, Stronger - The Side Effects of Being American_ for a much fairer viewpoint than your high school counselor shoved on to you. tl;dr: Steroids were banned due to non-scientific scares equivalent to "poison in candy" arguments around Halloween.

The inconvenient truth is that we already have the fountain of youth [0] - it's injectable long-ester testosterone, which is cheap, easily obtainable, and safe [1].

EDIT: I see you said "pills." While safe-ish, they're much more dangerous due to liver toxicity. Injectable testosterone is much more effective, cheaper, and safer.

[0]: For men. For women, the results are different and comes with worse side effects.

[1]: Safe is a relative term. But exogenous test use done correctly is very, very safe. And compared to the alternatives that are sold, like prohormones, they're orders of magnitude safer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The TL;DR:

1) Causes cancer. Of, like, everything. TFA put it more eloquently: "From the tongue to the testes"

2) So, shelved.

3) Less toxic versions under research; color me interested! (you know, everything causes cancer anyway)

4) Social implications!

</comment><comment><USER4> "...There are a handful of other contexts where a short course of an exercise pill could be extremely useful..."

Missing from the list that followed has: people wearing VR goggles (e.g., Oculus Rift) and never leaving their bed or sofa.

The Matrix isn't as far fetched as it used to be :)

</comment><comment><USER17> Steroids have been known to do this for decades (if not centuries)

[http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199607043350101](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199607043350101)

</comment><comment><USER19> Can we at least have a pill that makes you want to exercise?

<comment><USER20> "Preworkout" (sugar and caffeine) products are basically this, as long as your caffeine tolerance is not too high.

<comment><USER21> And beta-alanine. The tingly feeling is like a signal to get moving.

[https://examine.com/supplements/beta- alanine/](https://examine.com/supplements/beta-alanine/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Whenever numskull journalists write the phrase "exercise pill" they're talking about growth hormone secretagogues or anabolics. This one is an anabolic SARM; a particularly nasty one that seems to be pretty carcinogenic. Note that people who take SARMs or regular anabolic steroids look pretty good, but they're certainly not achieving any real health benefits. Long term use nets you cardiovascular problems and eventual chemical castration.

Anyone who would tout taking this as some kind of supplement is insane. Soylent arguably more healthy.

<comment><USER23> >and eventual chemical castration.

That's a little over the top. Proper dosing- TRT levels- and regular blood work can keep some of the issues at bay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> There's a lot of discussion here about "virtue" and "self-discipline" \- I'd like to offer an interesting possibility that "discipline" is not about motivation or willpower, but is actually an intellectual exercise of avoiding motivated reasoning in the mind.

The simplest example: I resolve to wake up in the morning to run before work. However, when I wake, I feel exhausted. "You need more rest; you can always make it up tomorrow," I might think to myself. If I accept this as a reason to stay in bed, I am falling to motivated reasoning; I am believing as fact an excuse made by my mind looking for a way out of discomfort. I can rest easy when I believe my excuse. I can rest easy when I can say "I have plenty of discipline, I just needed to rest today."

Exercise is merely one of many ways to illuminate your logical fallacies to yourself. The fallacy of motivated reasoning is what causes alternative facts - the mind can always come up with a reason to avoid the discomfort of getting out of bed, just like it can come up with reasons to avoid the discomfort of saying "I was wrong."

</comment><comment><USER25> I imagine that, if successful, this could make more money than Viagra. I'd happily pay several hundred dollars a month to have a fit body without ever exercising.

<comment><USER17> It's existed for a very long time, but still hasn't fully taken off.

[http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199607043350101](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199607043350101)

<comment><USER26> Does it also have the same health benefits as exercises?

<comment><USER27> It (supraphysiological doses of testosterone, meaning more than any human produces naturally) causes cancer, hair loss, interferes with endogenous hormonal function, and entails many other deleterious side effects that exercise does not. It will increase aerobic capacity by increasing red blood cell count but too much added viscosity of the blood also poses a health risk. So this is rather different from "exercise in a pill".

<comment><USER28> > causes cancer

Source? Because 200 mg of Testosterone E a week is already more than human organism can produce. In study linked above they gave them 600 mg a week.

Most professional bodybuilders are doing minimum of 1g of test a week for years. Most of them have heart problems if any from test. Most problems they have are from different compounds like Trenbolone, GH etc. but not testosterone.

I don't know any study that links testosterone to be a main reason of developing cancer, that's why I ask for source.

<comment><USER21> Just to add to this, tren (and all other steroids) are essentially testosterone derivatives. "GH" is growth hormone, which is not a steroid.

Taking massive amounts of steroids can be a health risk for sure. But as the parent implied, trt-levels of test (200-300 mg/week) are well-tolerated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I knew this was about GW50156. A version of this article has been published every six months or so in various outlets. GW50156 is widely available via research chemical sites and various underground bodybuilders/powerlifters/athletes are using it + peptides + various other drugs to skirt AAS testing.

I think you will find the self-reported side effects and gains of GW50156 to be.... much different than stories like this one portray.

<comment><USER29> It is amazing the chemicals and hormones that bodybuilders will put into their body to build muscle or cut body fat. They really are the original body hackers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> One of the things that exercise does for you is it helps your body take out the trash. I see no means for a pill to replicate that function. Without that, it seems pretty obvious that there will be negative long term consequences to getting your "exercise" in pill form.

This is how this works:

Lymph is basically the clear part of the blood with stuff like red blood cells removed. One piece of the lymphatic system is powered by the heart. But lymph is also called interstitial fluid. It exists throughout the body. It circulates, moving back and forth between tissues and your blood.

When it moves back to your blood, it takes waste products with it, leaving behind cleaner, healthier tissue. These wastes mostly get removed when you urinate.

Physical activity dramatically increases the rate at which lymph gets moved back to the blood. I have seen figures anywhere from 3 to 8 times as fast as when you are sedentary.

Walking a whole lot, sometimes hours a day, has played a big role in my healing journey. I believe this increased cleansing process is a key detail as to why that has helped.

</comment><comment><USER31> Before the exercise pill, it'd be good to have a pill which helps with exercise. For instance strengthens the ligaments without destroying flexibility too much. Or boosts endurance without having horrible side effects, stuff like that. Seems like an easier problem than an all encompassing "exercise pill".

<comment><USER32> Yeah, I don't care much for a pill replacing exercise. A pill giving me the ability to exercise without all my ails though...

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Fascinating -- as much as I enjoy to be active and stretch out, I imagine the benefits of sustained exertion could be entirely replaced by an artificial mechanism. This would be a nice time saver, and if it provides the same good feelings that you get after a good workout, then health in an active person could even be improved by preventing the need for heavy exertion and focusing on stretching and movement. This could reduce joint stresses and put more hours in the day. Very excited to see the effects of this drugs in humans.

</comment><comment><USER29> >>"If you've been to London, then you know," Bill Hayes, a writer and photographer who is at work on a history of exercise, told me. "The driver sits at the front and drives the bus, and the conductor hops on and off the bus and climbs up and down the stairs taking tickets and getting people to their seats."

Er, not for a long while. It's all Oyster cards now. Bus conductors went ages ago.

</comment><comment><USER34> I actually used to take GW50156. Since it's a research drug companies in the US can sell it for "research" purposes.

Yes I know it gives cancer, but the doses that were used in the study for mice were astronomical. It's the equivalent of doing the ld50 of a drug.

</comment><comment><USER35> Well, that kind of reminds me how in the 90s the media published articles saying that Prozac is about to make sadness disappear, and our society is about to turn into a Brave New World. Turns out it was just stealth marketing.

</comment><comment><USER36> Another interesting report about a drug that 'melts away fat in arteries':

[https://www.abdn.ac.uk/news/11280/](https://www.abdn.ac.uk/news/11280/)

</comment><comment><USER37> Also, fwiw, (iirc) they observed huge benefits to exercising even when GW and AICAR were taken in tandem, so it's probably most useful as an exercise amplifier.</comment>


How much of the world's wealth is hidden offshore? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/business-40442595 <comment><USER2> The article totally confuses the concepts of income and wealth, especially in the title. If your country of tax residence does not tax wealth, then moving wealth outside the country should have no legal or moral implications. Some countries make tax residents declare wealth, even if they don't tax it (0% bands), just so they could tax or seize it when they really need the money.

US citizens and residents face a dramatic escalation of the problem, with civil asset forfeiture and the global pretensions of the IRS. Really - why do Americans, who mythically revolted against the Brits for a small tax on tea, put up with this total abuse of power?

      If Musk ever makes it to Mars, the IRS will go interplanetary.

There is no discussion of the fragility and insolvency of the western banking system, which might lead one to move wealth 'offshore', which just means 'somewhere else'. Debt is soaring in almost every sector of the western world, and at some point the defaults will crush one/many/all of those financial systems. No mention of Greece, Cyprus and bail-in laws that might make it prudent to keep some money outside the place you live.

Western 'social democracies' allow electorates to vote for welfare, bloated public sectors and tax cuts (or at least no tax rises), with the result that all their governments are completely broke. They will try to steal your wealth through ZIRP, NIRP, QE and inflation, but in the last resort they will just come after it, wherever they can find it.

      Any government that is strong enough to give you anything you want,
      is also strong enough to take everything you have.

<comment><USER2>
      > If Musk ever makes it to Mars ....

The first thing he should do is set up the solar system's first 'offplanet' bank - perhaps _First Mars Bank_ , or _Red Planet Bank_ , or _Planet 4 Bank_.

He should buy the .mars TLD and assign himself fmb.mars, rpb.mars and p4b.mars and ...

Then there will be the inevitable _MOXY_ (Mars Oxygen), _Ice Mine_ to produce water (an almost-pun on a famous Vonnegut sci-fi book) and the _Red Dirt Mining Co._ , which will presumably excavate a lot of iron ore.

He will need a bitcoin mining site, or perhaps create his own Mars Coin.

Eventually he will need to hire lots of Starship Troopers to fight off the invasion of giant IRS tax-collecting insectoids.</comment></comment>


Study Suggests Talk Therapy Eases Symptoms Of Schizophrenia - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2015/10/20/450321109/study-suggests-talk-therapy-eases-symptoms-of-schizophrenia <comment><USER2> Great if talking helps ease symptoms for some, but this seems like an empty finding.

What, in the physical world, causes this disease? The fungus, gene, or environmental factor - this is what we can hopefully one day discover.

Could the resources devoted to this study have been better used to explore what is creating the problem?

<comment><USER3> "Does talk therapy help ease symptoms of schizophrenia" is a very valid question to ask and study to conduct.

Treatment options for schizophrenia call for some of the strongest psychoactives psychiatrists prescribe. They will lower your lifespan, ability to stay conscious, cause serious metabolic disorders, diabetes, obesity, gynecomastia and less commonly movement disorders. They're a first line of treatment and are prescribed long term or for life. Quitting or switching medications may make the disorder even worse than it was before starting medication.

If a professional can look at a case and decide that maybe therapy + less to no medication can work for that patient, it can result in a significant improvement in quality and length of life.

>Could the resources devoted to this study have been better used to explore what is creating the problem?

Probably not, because the study was funded with this question in mind.

<comment><USER2> There's no doubt the drugs used to 'treat' schizophrenia are brutal - i've seen its effects on my cousin who can only stiffly walk when she takes her medication.

We (of course) need better drugs. Or other forms of real treatment.

We wouldn't send somebody with an equally real disease like cancer to go talk about about how they are suffering and expect this talking to help the actual, biologically based, condition. Sure, they might feel better having somebody listen. But that isn't going to cure them, or help them not die.

Because Schizophrenia is ostensibly a "mental health" disorder its easy for us to fall into a treating it with with some variant of a the freudian model, which may or may not work for overcoming childhood trauma, but is a completely inappropriate tool for combatting an (still little understood) biological condition.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure why you think therapy is not a form of real treatment. Cognitive- behavioral therapy and dialectical behavioral therapy have been proven to be effective for treating numerous biologically based mental disorders. They are not even slightly based on Freudian models.

For many cases it is more effective than medication or boosts the efficacy of pharmacological intervention.

Therapy is an appropriate tool for treating biological conditions. Patients with OCD, whose brain structure is visibly altered because it is a biological condition, respond surprisingly well to CBT and Exposure-Response Prevention based therapy. It is the recommended first line of treatment for the disease [1].

As someone who suffered from OCD, along with depression and anxiety, therapy is a successful way to adapt and overcome diseases that are firmly rooted in biological origins. I experience a vastly improved quality of life than I did years ago. Of course this is an anecdote, but the research backs up the my claims of efficacy.

Given that these diseases affect a network of neurons, learning to adapt to structural, biological or learned abnormalities in the network is crucial.

A study on CBT[2] and depression came to an interesting conclusion:

 _The evidence shows that that CT [cognitive therapy] is as efficacious as ADM [anti-depressant medication], and that its effects are more enduring. Thus, even if CT and ADM work through the same mechanisms in the same temporal order to reduce depressive symptoms, any enduring effects of CT must be produced by mechanisms that are not mobilized in the same way by ADM. The model that is proposed in this article suggests that CT helps patients learn to recruit prefrontal regulatory brain mechanisms – a skill that these patients could continue to use long after treatment ends. Exploring the neural bases of these effects should enhance our understanding of the nature of depression and allow us to develop more powerful and targeted preventive interventions._

Therapy works and most of all it lasts. Medication may work, but when you stop taking it, you're back to square one. The most important aspect of this is the acknowledgment that therapy works, through mechanisms not activated by medication. Understanding why therapy works can open the doors to understanding the disease and new modes of treatment.

[1] [http://psychiatryonline.org/pb/assets/raw/sitewide/practice_...](http://psychiatryonline.org/pb/assets/raw/sitewide/practice_guidelines/guidelines/ocd- watch.pdf)

[2] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2748674/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2748674/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>