Why Do Cars Have Brakes? - <AUTHOR> http://www.devjoy.com/2013/02/why-do-cars-have-brakes/ <comment> adam-a The premise is surely nonsense! The full logic ought to go: Why do we have cars? To go faster. Why do cars have brakes? In order to slow down again.

If all we were concerned about was going fast then why ever slow down? Cars need to regulate their speed in order to provide safety, and also so they are usable, if I can't stop then I can't get out at my destination. Many elements of a car help in it's overall function, which is to go fast, but you may as well say the purpose of a fan belt is to go fast. Brakes are a part of a car and saying that their purpose is the same as the whole car is useless and confusing. They have a specific purpose within the machine.

From the linked article: "[the] answer feels paradoxical which usually means there's a deep truth". Indeed. The simpler explanation is that it's pure twaddle.

<comment><USER2>
      if I can't stop then I can't get out at my destination.

Different people seem to have different interpretations of this question. My interpretation was: Why have brakes instead of coasting to a stop? Coasting to a stop is popular with drivers who are 'Hypermiling' [1] - and bicycles used in velodromes don't have brakes [2].

While this isn't consistent with Richard Dalton's blog post (if you coast to a halt, you wouldn't need to throw your children out of a moving vehicle) but it isn't inconsistent with Jon Jagger's blog post, which Dalton credited as his inspiration.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy- efficient_driving#Accele...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy- efficient_driving#Acceleration_and_deceleration_.28braking.29) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velodrome#Bicycles_and_track_de...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velodrome#Bicycles_and_track_design)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if car technicians go around making weak analogies with software development to justify their industry practices. Something like: "Why do software developers have compilers? blah blah blah, and that's why we need to keep your tools organized"

<comment><USER4> Why do computers have virus scanners? They only serve to slow down the computer and to block some programs from running. This is contrary to the goal of a computer, which is to run programs! But by blocking evil programs, the good ones can run faster, with less disruption.

...and that is why we change our motor oil.

</comment></comment><comment> X-Istence Has the art of using the engine to slow down become so unknown that it is no longer considered a way to slow down a vehicle?

<comment><USER5> Only works on stick shifts.

<comment> X-Istence And every single last automatic. Besides D there is always a couple others, like 1, 2, 3 that are used for getting out of sticky situation or when you need a lot of torque... those also apply for engine braking.

Do I suggest engine braking in an automatic in the general case? No, generally because the torque converter isn't too happy unless it was specifically designed for it. However if you are going down a steep mountain you better downshift even in an automatic and use the engine, or when you get to the bottom your rotors will be glowing red, your brake pads will be disintegrated, your brake fluid will be boiling and your car will be smelled from miles away.

Yes, I have seen people brake all the way down the I-70 coming over the vail pass in Colorado, and it isn't pretty... if it doesn't break everything your rotors are going to be warped completely...

<comment><USER6> Kids, listen to this man. :)

When I was newbie, I didn't downshift and was instead keeping the brakes lightly pressed. After a few mins of this, when I pressed them a little harder to slow down more (at a turn), the pedals sickeningly went _way_ more than they were supposed to. Remembered in a flash what had happend. Thankfully, I was able to pull over and let the brakes cool a bit.

The brake fluid had overheated and turned into a compressible liquid (if you remember your Pascal's Law (iirc), hydraulics can only work if the fluid is nearly incompressible).

<comment> X-Istence Eh, I'm 24 years old ... in the crowd here on HN I would be considered part of that "kids" :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Overextending the analogy, there's no brakes on track bikes but they go fast too. They don't need them, the fixed gear means applying counter pressure on the pedals stops the bike.

The clunky software analogy would be to do with lightweight simplicity.

</comment><comment><USER8> The analogy between automobiles and software testing can be extended to consider the racing line - the combination of velocity and distance through a corner which results in the fastest time.

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

<comment><USER9> Which brings me to the point that the steering wheel is much more important than brakes. Being able to go faster because of brakes is not very useful if you are heading into a wall.

<comment><USER10> Well, you can still stop before hitting that wall. Steering might be of little use if you're going fast and approaching a dead end with walls on either side.

<comment><USER11> Perhaps we've driven beyond the metaphor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow, a silly brain teaser AND a strained metaphor. I'll never hear the end of this one!

</comment><comment><USER13> Even my parody "Ten Reasons Why Building a Startup is Like Riding a Motorcycle" has more meat than this :-) [http://lazyant.com/post/37406994081/ten-reasons-why- building...](http://lazyant.com/post/37406994081/ten-reasons-why-building-a- startup-is-like-riding-a)

</comment><comment><USER14> When I was on my company's R&D team, we were looking at possibly designing a car. One of our ideas was regenerative braking (nothing new, I admit). Basically, you can use several types of pump or motor as a generator when run in reverse. This allows you to collect that energy back into the system instead of wasting it all as heat. It also has the added benefit of turning the rotational kinetic energy into stored potential energy, thereby slowing down the vehicle. Our design still included disc brakes for safety, but would have used the regenerative braking most of the time.

</comment><comment><USER15> To really add breaks where you can stop while running without blowing completely up you need to add fault isolation and tolerance in your system. You need to use actors and messages (you might get parallel execution as well depending on your algorithm as a bonus).

The alternative is to prove that your program won't crash. So you need to write in a very restrictive style. This is more like you need to be able to compute a path your car will take ahead of time given all the other obstacles that could get in its way. That works too but it is highly impractical.

</comment><comment><USER16> Why dont the lightcycles in Tron have brakes would be a better question.

</comment><comment><USER17> I drove a motor scooter as a kid that had broken brakes. He's right--it wasn't much fun, because I knew I couldn't go fast.

<comment><USER18> And by extension, my scooter has ABS brakes, which means I can go faster in the wet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If people knew how to drive efficiently they'd use gears to do this and only use brakes to stop. Just sayin'

<comment><USER20> How would that be efficient?

Engine braking wears transmission components which are considerably more fragile and expensive than replacing brakes. Engine braking only stops you using the driven wheels, brake discs apply to all wheels.

<comment><USER21> >Engine braking wears transmission components

No it doesn't. Synchronized, rev-matched downshifts put negligible load on the drivetrain. Coasting to a stop with the gear already selected, putting it in neutral just before stall does that even less. The stresses produced by acceleration are ballpark estimate around an order of magnitude greater. This can be inferred by the fact that usually the rate of deceleration by engine braking is smaller than the rate of acceleration for a given gear ratio, ergo, the drivetrain is strained less.

<comment><USER20> It still wear components that are not as easily replacable as brakes. As for coasting to a stop whilst still in gear, I agree with that being a good idea but I don't think that's what digitalWestie was getting at.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is ridiculous. The typical "stoner effect" -- a phrase that sounds in some way deep or metaphysical causing susceptible people's neurons to flare, producing only the word: "Woah..." I know this is probably controversial, but in my opinion it's the same effect that causes people to find deep meaning in a Jackson Pollock painting.

As others have pointed out, lots of fast things don't have brakes, because they don't need to stop. As I don't think others have pointed out, slow things have brakes too, such as the space shuttle transporter.

<comment><USER23> You're certainly right in that there are logical flaws in the article. But the stoner effect is useful (and dangerous) because it's much better at creating changes in beliefs/behavior than rational argument. It's a pattern worth understanding because you can use your understanding to defend yourself, or use parts of the effect to communicate your ideas and convince others.

The book _Switch_ [1] goes into more detail about what actually works when you're trying to get people to change. I highly recommend it if you're interested in Psychology or Marketing.

[1]: [http://www.amazon.com/Switch-Change-Things-When- Hard/dp/0385...](http://www.amazon.com/Switch-Change-Things-When- Hard/dp/0385528752/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> What a load of shit.

<comment><USER25> analogies gone wrong -- terribly wrong</comment></comment>


Demoscene nostalgia: Future Crew's Second Reality - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtCW-axRJV8

<comment><AUTHOR> And as a bonus, the Making of:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIIBRr31DIU>

Amazing what this guys could do with so little memory and CPU.</comment>


Thin is in: Ars Technica reviews the MacBook Air - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/macbook-air-review.ars

<comment><USER2> My favorite quote: "The next stop along this path of disappointment is battery life."

<comment><USER3> Anyone know if you can buy some kind of auxiliary battery for it? Because otherwise I'm not getting one after all. 2.5 hours is not enough to get stuff done on planes. What a disappointment. I was so looking forward to a laptop I could use without always in the back of my mind thinking about how much time I had left to finish what I was working on before the computer died.

<comment><USER4> Doesn't an external battery make something designed to be small kinda pointless?

I wonder what kind of ultra portable could be made that was a simple unix box with a black & white display and no graphics. It would need to have cell- network access, which is another thing lots of people are upset that the Air doesn't have.

Apple basically told everyone: we fit it in an iphone, but we couldn't fit it in something 10 times the size.

<comment><USER5> It's already been built (<http://laptop.org/>), except for cell network access. They also have minimal color and a small amount of graphics. You can even power it with a hand crank.

As soon as they build one with a bigger keyboard, that's my new machine.

<comment><USER4> Actually, the XO is nothing like what I'm talking about. The screen is too small, it has color, the keyboard is too small, mesh networking is too new to be sold as a consumer product, and it is designed for 3rd world non-hacker children. They are a demographic as close to me as hiphop hacker single moms.

<comment><USER6> The XO has a really innovative dual mode screen with a super high DPI black and white screen with no backlight.

<comment><USER4> You could probably get an even better DPI daylight readable screen if you only allow for 2 colors. No dual mode.

There are many, many cool things in the XO. Too much for what I'm talking about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks like it only shines in a very limited amount of use cases.

<comment><USER8> That doesn't matter as long as it shines in the use cases that the average consumer cares about.

<comment><USER2> I'm guessing those would be battery life and a spindle.</comment></comment></comment>


Need great web design on budget. - <AUTHOR>

Since searching on google for this type of things is useless, I'd think the HN would have pretty good recommendations. Any suggestions? <comment><USER2> Are you asking for website content creators or learning website design?

<comment><AUTHOR> website creators. I know a bit of design myself but don't have the time.

<comment><USER2> Something like Google Sites (<http://sites.google.com>), Weebly (<http://weebly.com>), Wix (<http://wix.com>), or Wordpress (<http://wordpress.com/>)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not DIY. I want to pay someone to make/design the website.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> You'll have to provide a lot more specifics.

<comment><AUTHOR> All I need is a recommendation for a web design company. It is for a friend's small business website. It's the basics that is needed with some goods aesthetics, nothing fancy.</comment></comment>


Computer colors aren't consistent - <AUTHOR> http://augmentedreality.miamioh.edu/computer-colors-arent-consistent/ <comment> TD-Linux Color theory has been extremely well researched for quite a long time. If you are not familiar, I would suggest reading up on the CIE 1931 color space [1].

Some of the confusion in the article relates to terminology. >When we say "yellow" we typically mean a pure monochromatic light with a wavelength of about 570nm. This is not actually what most people mean. Colors like "yellow" usually mean the tristimulus values that produce the visible color yellow. This is a totally different concept than a single-wavelength light source. This becomes more important for colors like "purple".

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_1931_color_space](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_1931_color_space)

<comment><USER2> But CIE color space still doesn't help with dichromatic people

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ideally, each person should probably characterize their display by eye (instead of a hardware device; and for this to work properly we'd need a better user interface than the existing ones), separately for each context it will be looked at in (i.e. a laptop would need several profiles for various lighting conditions).

But we can actually get pretty good results for most people, most of the time, by sticking to industry standards. If a display can get the chromaticity of its primaries close to the sRGB spec and bright enough for the context, and content authors design for sRGB, then most people (minus the substantial percentage who have color vision deficiencies) will see something reasonably close to what the content author intended.

If the display doesn't match the spec (like the iPad mini retina display which trades color fidelity for power efficiency), then it would be nice if software would compensate a bit. Unfortunately, mobile operating systems and software don't ever bother with color management, because it was too computationally expensive for the first 2 generations of iPhones. It's sad that this is still true for iOS, considering how Apple pioneered color management software in the 90s.

For folks with color vision deficiencies, we could probably do better than current displays, but there are several types of color vision deficiencies so it's going to be pretty hard to satisfy everyone.

<comment><USER4> >sRGB

If we're going to be fixing colour, we can start with the abomination that is sRGB. It has a nontrivial RGB<->sRGB conversion function and you must convert your images to/from it for every single operation like alpha blending (i.e. font rendering with anti-aliasing) and scaling, or the results will be wrong. Sometimes only a bit wrong, sometimes spectacularly wrong. We should just switch to 16 bits per channel linear RGB. People just get everything else so wrong.

<comment><USER3> My point is about getting the display primaries close to the industry-standard spec. Whether you gamma-encode your image data or not isn't really relevant to that.

For saving images to disk or transmitting them over the wire (e.g. images making up part of a web page), it's a great advantage in most cases to use gamma-encoded rather than linear values, because we want to save bandwidth and storage.

For operations internal to e.g. an image editor, just use floating point numbers and a linear space.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good morning… another one who woke up… finally. Anyone who was active in computer graphics in the past century knows about this. This is why there are contact color spaces like CIE XYZ or CIE Lab. Yet for some reason we're still using desktop compositors that work in imprecise and small gamut sRGB instead of a contact color space.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is why CRT monitors remained popular for as long as they did even with the advent of LCD technology; they tend to be more accurate color-wise, so graphic designers would prefer them.

</comment><comment><USER7> I spent a lot of time working on color matching back in the early 90s when the first cheap Macs large screens came out - back thyen we thought some simple transform could make it all the same - one thing we eventually realised was that there's only so much you can do here - there are no standard human eyes, they vary as much as screens (for example 10% of the male poulation is red- green colorblind)

</comment><comment><USER8> that's why people who work with graphics use a calibrator.</comment>


Futurists imagine life in 2050 - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/global/2018/nov/25/futurists-the-world-in-2050-science-medicine-food-travel-predictions <comment><USER2> I like futurists, they are probably the number one source of bs.</comment>


A Note About Git Commit Messages - <AUTHOR> http://tbaggery.com/2008/04/19/a-note-about-git-commit-messages.html <comment><USER2> I find it unnatural to write commit messages in the present tense. To me, it seems like commit messages are a log of what work has been done, which would naturally be described in past tense. Nonetheless, I do write my commit logs in present tense for the sake of consistency.

Does anyone have a good explanation of why commit messages should be in the present tense? (Beyond what the article says: "This convention matches up with commit messages generated by commands like git merge and git revert.") Why do commands like git merge and git revert generate commit messages in the present tense? The best explanation that I can think of is an analogy to literature: literary analysis is written in the present tense, because any time you open a book, the story is happening now, in the present tense. I don't quite buy that, but it's the best explanation I've come up with.

<comment><USER3> Commits are like actions.

For example, think about the "fast-forwarding", "rewinding" and "replaying" that Git does. When you rebase, Git rewinds your divergent commits, fast- forwards the branch, and then replays your commits again. What happens when it replays those commits? _Fix login bug. Update copyright year. Ignore log directory._ Done!

<comment><USER4> I don't know it seems so weird to see it like that, fix login bug seems more like a todo than an action.

I could understand if it were in this format: Fixes login bug. Updates copyright year. Ignores log directory. Those seem so much more like actions than the other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > wrapping your commit messages to 72 columns

> On an 80 column terminal

> Good email netiquette dictates we wrap our plain text emails (for) an 80 > column terminal.

I think format should be separated from presentation and presuming people should use a particular display device is wrong. These are well established principles and Unix, although lacking a tradition of interface design, isn't some kind of exception.

* I use a modern email program (I use gmail but this would include, say, mutt).

* I sometimes use a wider terminal. Sometimes I use a narrower one. On my system (OS X default 10.6) less handles this just fine unless some 72-character-neckbeard screws it up.

* I sometimes use a GUI tool to examine messages, like github. These may be wider or narrower.

In all these cases forced 72 character wrappings look terrible.

<comment><USER6> Exactly. That's why you write it to the lowest common denominator, so that everyone can use it well.

<comment><USER7> And let's not forget where else where the text may end up later.

I'm sure this message was fine in their mail reader:

[http://www.ietf.org/mail- archive/web/manet/current/msg11520....](http://www.ietf.org/mail- archive/web/manet/current/msg11520.html) (chosen only b/c I was reading through the list this morning)

But now I must horizontally scroll :(

<comment><USER8> To be fair, thats a problem with the way browsers render anything inside the <pre> tag. If anything, it is an example of what people should do, not force unnecessary restrictions on the way they write text. Lest you might end up with:

        > This is a short paragraph that I am quoting that
        > someone
        > else sent to me.

<comment><USER7> Indeed. We can fix all these systems... or stay at 72 columns.

<comment><USER9> Or door 3: Let bad software stay bad, use good software instead and format our text naturally. If somebody chooses to use software that can't wrap text, that's fine for them personally — but I shouldn't have to deal with their artificial limitations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This may be a mundane post, but it's sorely needed IMO. Way too many people create crappy commit messages. I've started kicking them back to the developer to fix.

<comment><USER11> How do you ask them to fix them? I'm imagining that you see the commit message after they've pushed it up somewhere. Are you asking them to reword/amend the commit--i.e., change the history of a pushed branch, with the little bit of extra work that involves?

<comment><USER12> This isn't really an issue. Contrary to what a lot of people will tell you, it is fine to change the history of a pushed branch -- especially for the most recent commit -- so long as other developers adopt a policy of rebasing after fetch. Here is a concrete example:

(bare repo): # Make sure receive.denyDeleteCurrent = ignore

(Dev A): git push

(Dev B): git pull --rebase # you can make this the default for a particular tracking branch so it is just "git pull"

(Dev B): # do some work

(Dev B): git commit

(Dev A): git commit --amend

(Dev A): git push origin :master # Deletes remote master. Not required for shared branches -- those can simply be replaced -- but "master" is usually the "current branch" for a repo, so it bears knowing.

(Dev A): git push origin master:master # And now we replace the remote's version with our local version.

(Dev B): git pull --rebase # Updates pointers and applies the new commit on top.

Yes, if you do even more devastating history changes than this, Dev B needs to dig a little further on why his rebase is going haywire. THIS is why people fear the history change; it is sometimes extra work for downstream developers to handle the rearrangements (and we developers like to be lazy and for everything to work smoothly the first time). Thankfully, downstream developers can solve these problems with a few git tools, including "rebase --onto" and cherry-picking. But in the case of a quick and simple commit amend, all is well.

Alternatively, you can code review, but sometimes people are in a rush, and you run into this situation. In most environments, I wager it will be okay, especially if there is communication on the changes and reasonable education on version control theory.

<comment><USER11> Interesting, thanks for the example, works exactly as you said.

There is a race when dev A deletes master though, right? What if someone else made a commit between when dev A last pulled and when dev A deletes master, wouldn't that commit be lost? In the process of testing this I managed to lose dev B's work a couple times, so I still think this kind of operation is too risky to be worthwhile.

In case anyone is interested I made a test script based on Xurinos's example: <https://gist.github.com/769904>

<comment><USER12> _There is a race when dev A deletes master though, right?_

Yes and no. I could say that this is where communication can help a little, and it depends entirely on your local group's policies, but that would be the easy cop-out. Let's say it really happened.

Dev B's git pull --rebase will also lose the change; it was assumed to be pushed up, and a git fetch means that you are reflecting exactly what is in the remote branch. But changes are never truly lost+++. Dev B can check his reflog, find his original commit, and cherry-pick it in, resubmitting it. Afterwards, he can bonk Dev A over the head for not pulling before pushing.

There is a danger that Dev B would not notice, but from a little test I just did, he is going to get some nasty messages during his git pull --rebase that should indicate that something interesting just happened.

I have not looked into this, but does anyone know if it is possible to lock a remote git repo (aside from the automatic push lock)? If one could manually lock the repo, the process would be to lock, pull, push-delete, push-for-real, and unlock.

+++ depending on your git configuration policy. I think you have 30 days before dangling commits are truly pruned permanently.

<comment><USER11> > I have not looked into this, but does anyone know if it is possible to lock > a remote git repo (aside from the automatic push lock)? If one could > manually lock the repo, the process would be to lock, pull, push-delete, > push-for-real, and unlock.

Or maybe if Git could do a "test and set" on a ref? For example, instead of two step delete and recreate, how about "git push origin +master": forced update, but your Git sends "update master to 1234abcd iff your current master is 5678fedc" where 5678fedc is where origin/master points on your local Git. If someone had snuck in a new commit Git would then fail and you could deal with it. (Of course, on a busy shared repository "deal with it" could take a while if people keep sneaking in commits; but I suspect that kind of commit volume is very rare.)

<comment><USER12> Oh! I made a mistake. You do not have to delete or use the special config flag if you use --force for your push. I wondered why I remembered doing this on side branches. With --force, we do not have to do this. Also, I think you need to make sure you have -u on this kind of push so that you maintain your tracking connection, but I am not 100% positive.

Don't do this:

        git push origin :master

Do this:

        git push -u --force origin master:master

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> And in case anyone needs negative examples (or a good laugh), check out <http://whatthecommit.com/>

</comment><comment><USER14> The recent-ish vim syntax file for git commit message takes those recommendations into account - they don't do anything about the present vs. past tense obviously, but come up with color warnings, which helps a lot. That's actually how I learned about those preferences and the reasoning behind in the first place btw.

<comment><USER13> I believe that the syntax file is the work of Tim Pope - the author of the blog post we're talking about.

<http://vim.runpaint.org/extending/integrating-vim-with-git/>

</comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 I consider "ability to write a good SCM commit message" one of the boxes to check on my "Is this person a good developer?" checklist.

</comment><comment><USER15> Ever since reading that post, I've tried my best to adhere to similar guidelines. On a personal level, it kind of gives you a little 'retro' on what is was you just did, which is never a bad thing. I've also found myself making larger, more meaningful commits, which, I think, is a good thing.

<comment><USER16> Agreed. I've found that for me, to have meaningful commit messages, you have to have a meaningful amount of work complete. Otherwise you end up with a bunch of "more work on feature x" messages.

This is counter to a lot of the "commit often" mantra that so many git people have, but it's working better for me.

<comment><USER12> "commit often" is fine. It's "push often" that gets you into trouble. With an interactive rebase, you can polish up your commits and their messages before pushing them, presenting to your peers a finely crafted (readable, reviewable, maintainable) publication.

<comment><USER17> Indeed, I only discovered that recently and it makes git pretty cool.

It has the added advantage of being able to merge commits that fix intermediate bugs that you introduced yourself and fixed immediately. There is no reason to bore other people with those.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> 72 character lines is unnatural to read for long sentences (especially in web browsers).

Also, less has line wrapping and who develops using 80 character terminals anymore? Maybe the author has a time machine back to 1981? I want access to that!

<comment><USER19> A lot of people still prefer work with revision control tools from a standard unix command line.... in an 80x25-ish window.....especially when it comes to debugging and investigating things (so we can use all our other nice shell text processing tools to make sense of things)

Something that fits nicely in that space is helpful in that case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> My favourite commit message this week:

"improve crapping"

(typo: should be cropping)</comment>


Google News down? - <AUTHOR> https://news.google.com/nwshp?hl=en&tab=wn

<comment><USER2> I think many of Google's services were down for a bit. I couldn't sync Chrome on a new install, search, etc.

Everything seems back up now.</comment>


Is this killing all the benefits of iCloud keychain or am I missing something? - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/edincik/status/396720594734960640

<comment><USER2> Settings->Safari->Passwords and Autofill->Always Allow

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> i changed my linked in password with icloud keychain tool to a super-duper complex high secure one. But trying to login from my iPad was disappointing</comment>


Why 12-Foot Traffic Lanes Are Disastrous for Safety - <AUTHOR> http://www.citylab.com/design/2014/10/why-12-foot-traffic-lanes-are-disastrous-for-safety-and-must-be-replaced-now/381117/

<comment><USER2> There was also a huge (200+ comments) thread about it here at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8439977](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8439977) about 8 months ago.</comment>


Using Hilbert Curves to 100% Zelda - <AUTHOR> https://blog.merovius.de/2017/07/22/using-hilbert-curves-to-100-zelda.html <comment><USER2> For reference: The generic name what op does is "spatial indexing". There is an algorithm for efficiently working with such data called Hilbert R-tree ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_R- tree](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_R-tree)). But there are alternatives (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_database](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_database)).

Many databases nowadays contain functions to these operations (e.g. [https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/spatial-analysis- fun...](https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/spatial-analysis- functions.html))

<comment><USER3> They can even be explained to a surprisingly low tech operator, with pre- calculation at a high tech level: [http://www2.isye.gatech.edu/~jjb/research/mow/mow.pdf](http://www2.isye.gatech.edu/~jjb/research/mow/mow.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > There might also be better approaches than Hilbert Curves. For example, we > could view it as an instance of the Traveling Salesman Problem with a couple > of hundred points; it should be possible to have a good heuristic solution > for that. On the other hand, a TSP solution doesn't necessarily only have > short jumps, so it might not be that good?

TSP is actually very amenable to heuristics and state of the art branch-and- bound algorithms can often find optimal solutions even for instances with thousands of points.

Does anyone here know if there is a good open-source solver that we could throw this problem instance at?

<comment><USER5> The issue isn't about approximating a TSP instance, but ensuring that points aren't too far apart from each other, even at the cost of increasing total length.

I can't immediately think of a reduction that would factor this in so the best thing may be to just reduce this to the appropriate ILP instance and use a mixed ILP approximator like GLPK (or Gurobi is free for students too).

Incidentally, achieving a polynomially-sized ILP formulation for TSP isn't quite obvious. Wikipedia has a good explanation of how to do this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem#In...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem#Integer_linear_programming_formulation). I'm not sure if the metric TSP has a simpler formulation.

Edit: Now that I think about it, it may be difficult to express the constraint that edges should be balanced out in a linear way. I happened to write about a similar problem a while ago ([https://modalduality.org/posts/optimizing-color- coding/](https://modalduality.org/posts/optimizing-color-coding/)), I ended up giving up on finding a linear formulation and went for sequential least squares instead.

<comment><USER6> If you want to minimize the long distance walks add an exponential weight for distance then solve. There are many ways to go about this stuff, but the goal is to map your preferences to the weight function.

<comment><USER5> Right, but then the problem is no longer linear and approximating is more difficult. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "exponential weight" in a linear program, do you have an example?

<comment><USER7> So say you have a graph on distance, d, that you want to weight based on a preference, p, from 0-5 going from least preferred to most preferred.

You might make your weight function as w(d, p) = d * (2 ^ p)

<comment><USER5> That's fine, but `p` is a variable, not a constant, in the original post's case, right?

<comment><USER8> That doesn't seem necessary. Picking a value of p just selects how much you prefer short hope to shorter total distance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> (I experimented with using space filling curves in City Skylines (a sim city clone) a while ago; here's awriteup for any who might be interested: [https://inventingsituations.net/2015/11/28/space-filling- cur...](https://inventingsituations.net/2015/11/28/space-filling-curves-in- simulated-cities/) )

<comment><AUTHOR> This is really interesting, thanks for linking :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > So I started on the onerous task of finding the last 17 locations.

A French guy (Xalikah) who did the first, manually planned 100% speedrun of the game had a similar problem; he spent a few hours with a couple folks helping him check his map for obscure place names he was missing, and when he was at the last one, someone joked "99.81% speedrun," and people were suggesting he do a slow systematic scroll over the map so they could look for missing placenames. He wound up sleeping five hours or so and in the morning remembered that he'd skipped using some bridge somewhere. 49 hours!

It's kinda wild that game worlds are now large enough that you can reasonably use algorithms not only to write games but to get 100% completion playing them as well.

<comment><USER11> > _It 's kinda wild that game worlds are now large enough that _

I haven't played Breath of the Wild yet, but eg Chrono Trigger has an enormous game world as well. Did they really get much bigger since?

<comment><USER12> It is hard to make an apples to apples comparison against Chrono Trigger, but you'd not be grossly wrong if you described BoW as having a 100X bigger map. It is also much, much more populated with things to do, enemies to beat, mushrooms to pick, etc.

<comment><USER10> > mushrooms to pick

And durian. Delicious, delicious durian.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 2-opt can probably improve on the Hilbert solution ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2-opt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2-opt))

Is the world planar? There's an epsilon approximation scheme for planar TSP that's linear in the graph size (but exponential in 1/ε)

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm confused by the grammar - is "100%" being used as a verb? Is that correct in English?

<comment><USER15> Strictly speaking you can use any noun as a verb in English. The grammar allows for it, though most nouns will not have a meaningful verb counterpart, semantically, or it will not have a usage that most people will understand (i.e. it won't be colloquial)

So in a speed running context, I would definitely say it is acceptable, but it might not be in the greater population. But the grammar nazi have nothing on this one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why is the Hilbert Curve any better in this situation than say lexicographical order on (x,y)?

<comment><USER17> It's pretty easy to imagine a counter-example that would have you traverse the length of the map, when the best route would be to detour on an existing traversal. Consider:

        1...2...3...4...5
        7...............6
        8.......9........
        13..12.....11..10

versus

        1...2...3...4...5
        13..............6
        12......9........
        11..10......8...7

<comment><USER16> Good point, though I'm not convinced Hilbert really avoids this. For example, look at n=3 here:

[http://www.texample.net/media/tikz/examples/PNG/hilbert- curv...](http://www.texample.net/media/tikz/examples/PNG/hilbert-curve.png)

This might lead to say

. . . . . . . .

1 . . . . . . 2

4 . . . . . . 3

. . . . . . . .

when

. . . . . . . .

1 . . . . . . 4

2 . . . . . . 3

. . . . . . . .

is more efficient.

Generally speaking, it seems this is basically TSP.

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried describing here [https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6oxra8/using_h...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6oxra8/using_hilbert_curves_to_100_zelda/dkn3gbr/) why I think that this is theoretically a TSP problem, I don't consider that necessarily the _best_ way to treat it. tl;dr is, that at least to me, at the time, for this problem, the speedup of an optimal solution wouldn't have outweighed the additional thinking time to get to that optimal solution (and, most importantly, to _actually_ make it useful; after all, I wasn't actually drawing a path, I was outputting a list of names).

You can even see that in the argument I added to the post; while a zig-zag line might've been, in theory, a stupider, easier way to solve the problem, in practice it would've meant spending some time thinking about the right discretization. With a Hilbert-curve, I could just choose some n that is definitely large enough and be done with it and the additional cost of the more complicated curve doesn't really factor in, as I could just copy-paste it anyway.

But yes. The theoretical problem is a TSP and with the right set of tools, I could've added some efficiency to the search by viewing it as such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _The returned file turns out to not actually be JSON (that 'd be too easy, I guess) but some kind of javascript-code which is then probably eventually eval'd to get the data:_

        /**/jQuery3110644358575
        2152035_1500757689075(
        /* json-data */)

Is that just JSONP?

<comment><USER19> Yes this is just a standard JSONP response as served through jQuery; not sure why this wasn't clarified.

<comment><USER17> My guess is author has never heard of JSONP before. Obligatory: [https://xkcd.com/1053/](https://xkcd.com/1053/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I have seen JSONP. But I'm not a frontend dev and in my experience the web suffers from a persistent overspecialization of terms. I didn't mention the term JSONP, because I didn't want to end up calling something JSONP just to have someone point out, that this isn't really JSONP, but floobleworp, which is when you use jQuery and add the comment-symbols to make it safe against XSS or something in that regard.

Also, I still consider JSONP an incredibly gross idea :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Spoilers! Hacker news bot posting the map image into a facebook post was a good way to make sure that I know now where all south shrines are :( [https://www.facebook.com/hnbot/posts/1427803187274958](https://www.facebook.com/hnbot/posts/1427803187274958)

</comment><comment><USER21> excellent! i wonder if there are more algorithms that can be used in this game. binary search is an algorithm that can be easily done by a person (doesn't need a ton of iterations to locate result).

<comment><USER22> Binary search would make a good bar bet. "Pick a number between 1 and 1000. I'll make guesses, and you just tell me whether they're too low or too high. I'll bet you $10 that I can guess the number in only 10 tries or less."

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> A Zelda game that depends on Google Maps. I'm getting old.

<comment><USER24> The game doesn't. He references the zeldadungeon.net map which uses google maps javascript api. Nintendo would be full of morons if they ever did something like that. Just read the fine print.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Except that this doesn't take into account elevation.

<comment><AUTHOR> As this was only about efficiently enumerating the missing locations, not walking them, that's fine. I.e. I had to find the ~5 needles in the haystack of hundreds that I needed to visit. Given that sparseness, it was most efficient to just jump to the nearest warp point and directly go there.

Elevation and the like would be more interesting to figure out what's the most efficient way to collect all Korok Seeds, for example, when the interesting point cloud isn't as sparse. But then you'd definitely want to view it as a TSP problem anyway.</comment></comment>


Well paid jobs that require you to be physically active? - <AUTHOR> I have been working as a software developer for about ten years, and it has always been my passion. I often took my work home and worked 13 hours each day for years. I earn relatively well and I am the highest paid developer in our firm.
In the past one two years however, my motivation has been on a steady decline. I have largely lost my interest in IT, partly because it no longer feels challenging, but also because I feel inactive.
I would love to do something else, optimally something that requires my being physically active. I am more athletic than 99% of my peers, doing at least 12 hours of sports every week, and I would love to expand on that.
However, throwing away all that I know feels wrong, it is the capital that I have built on, and I don't want to take a large cut on my salary. Perhaps more importantly, I need the prospect of advancing my career.
Any idea for jobs that are both well paid and require a lot of physical work? Of course, the right mix of physical work and science would be perfect, but I am guessing that such a thing does not exist? <comment><USER2> There's a guy in the office across from mine who will all of a sudden jump up from his chair and run to one of the labs a few hundred feet down the hall at a fast jogging speed. This happens several times an hour.

One day I asked him why he was doing this and he told me he was a kernel programmer working on some piece of gear that needed to live in the lab, sometimes the kernel panics and he has to go bounce the box.

I was about to ask him why he doesn't set up some kind of a watchdog to bounce the box for him, but then I realized he was probably the fittest guy in the building.

So just become a kernel hacker, and keep your test boxen a few hundred feet away.

</comment><comment><USER3> Camera operator. The film/video field is rife with opportunities for smart digiterati, the work is challenging, fulfilling, and well paid. Not a photographer? Become a 'dgitial imaging technician' - arrive in middle of nowhere, set up a bulletproof fileserver, push terabytes of video data around on demand while creating secure backups and often working with alpha builds, work 18 hour days.

Downsides: you need to be near LA, NY, London or some other international city to get regular work. It's psychologically as well as physically demanding, with many extreme personalities. Upsides: if you have talent or brains you can rise fast; film is an extremely meritocratic results-based environment. Arty types are mostly technophobic and will worship you like a god as long as you don't screw up.

<comment><USER4> I have so many friends in the industry and it blows my mind that movies ever get made. The inner workings of the movie business with its 'extreme personalities', on-set politics and its ridiculous accounting processes would likely drive any computer programmer to madness.

That said, the camera operators at the top of their game get paid _really_ well. Its a total racket too, if you're good and in whatever guild controls the camera operators you can command ridiculous amounts of money.

<comment><USER5> This is purely anecdotal, but a guy that one of my friends is dating is an ESPN golf cameraman, and apparently goes to like 8-10 tournaments a year all over the world, aims a camera at that tiny little ball for a few days at each tournament, and gets paid 6 figures (in GBP)... I have no idea how to get a gig like that but it always sounded like a sweet deal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Work as a deckhand on a superyacht. The responsibilities of a deckhand include cleaning, varnishing and painting, polishing, tender operations (small-boat handling skills required) and working the lines/ropes. This is a hard work position with long hours, but can have the added benefit of substantial tips on the larger and busier charter vessels.

Typical salary can be found here: [http://www.superyacht-crew- academy.com/salaries_superyacht_c...](http://www.superyacht-crew- academy.com/salaries_superyacht_crew.html)

I work on a 78ft yacht in the Med, ([http://www.camperandnicholsons.com/sales/search/-/page/sales...](http://www.camperandnicholsons.com/sales/search/-/page/sales- yacht-profile/yid/8012/)), PM me if you want more details about this kind of work.

<comment><USER7> HN doesn't have PMs. What's your email?

<comment><USER6> firstname.lastname@example.com (I have also updated my profile page, sorry about that).

I'm looking forward to any questions you might have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Underwater welding (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbaric_welding>) and dive engineering are extremely lucrative, physically demanding and exciting jobs. A friend makes 6 figures and gets to travel to exotic places to boot.

<comment><AUTHOR> That sounds very cool, but probably requires multiple years of training (with little income).

<comment><USER9> I think you'll find this same problem with all of the high paid (physical) jobs, unless you invent the next macarena or something.

<comment><AUTHOR> Quite possibly true. Unless it builds on things I already know.

<comment><USER9> What are your areas of physical expertise or experience?

<comment><AUTHOR> You mean there is no physical activity that directly builds on top of a software engineering education? Yeah, I guess it was a stretch.

But I actually think that there might be a middle ground that involves sports and engineering. Perhaps a product or service and a reason to jump on the startup train.

<comment><USER10> There are, see my above reply about elevator mechanics. You are on your feet all day, you carry equipment around, you use hand tools, however you extensively troubleshoot and get creative with solutions to electrical and mechanical problems. So, combines the physical activity of a construction type of job (very rewarding filling), with the ingenuity/troubleshooting of programming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think there's plenty of opportunity. I've run into engineers (some software, some not) who work on wind turbines, technology in developing countries, or oceanography... I'm sure plenty of folks will mention the military, as well. I think there's absolutely opportunities out there, though most of the ones I can think of will involve lots of travel.. hopefully that's not a problem for you.

<comment><USER12> Heh, military + IT makes me think of sci-fi tv show scientists. Too bad those jobs aren't real...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The more obvious question might be, "What can I do that combines physical activity with what I do now?"

I had a professor in college who decided he was going to work construction during the summer. He's obviously in a different situation than you, but I still liked the idea.

A few thoughts:

1) Read "Shop Class as Soulcraft:" [http://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class- Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft- Inquiry-Value/dp/1594202230/ref=thstsst-20) . I have no idea if it will help.

2) Have you thought about an IT job that requires, say, moving around computers (as colleges must require somewhat regularly), or maintaining systems on ships, or something like that? I have no idea if any of that would work.

3) Could you combine two part-time jobs? An IT job that pays bills, perhaps, with a job doing something else?

</comment><comment><USER14> Peter: This isn't so bad, huh? Makin' bucks, gettin' exercise, workin' outside.

Lawrence: Fuckin' A, man!

</comment><comment><USER15> Field robotics. Technically very challenging (involves computer science, math, physics, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, control systems engineering, etc.) and very fun. Provides many different areas to specialize in, e.g. perception, planning, learning, control, etc. And you get to spend time physically working with machines just as often (if not more) than sitting at your laptop writing code.

For example, my formal background is in computer science and a large part of my job involves applied math, physics, algorithm design, and writing code but I am now also involved in electronics design and mechanical design (picked these things up on the job). Further, I spend many days outside working with vehicles, powered wheelchairs, and other mechatronic devices: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fPgIPgzIfc> I happen to work in an industry building assistive devices for people with limited physical abilities but depending on the application area you can be outside doing numerous physical things, for example, look at iRobot's involvement with the gulf oil crisis: [http://www.irobot.com/gi/more_information/gulf_oil_spill_res...](http://www.irobot.com/gi/more_information/gulf_oil_spill_response/) Heck, the guys at Willow Garage recently went on a dev sprint to have the PR2 (one of their robots) fetch them beers: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3Cq0sy4TBs>

There is a somewhat steep learning curve to becoming a "guru" in the field due to how broad the required skill set is yet at the same time, due to the breadth of skills needed to build useful systems, if you have depth in a particular area (e.g. writing code) there is definitely room for you to fit in on a team and you can pick up the stuff you don't know over time as you get more exposure to it.

<comment><USER16> do you know if there are any successful bootstrapped startups in field robotics? for instance, 1 or 2 guys in a garage who succeed into designing and selling their own UAV? or maybe design a new wheeled robot toy?

<comment><USER15> Sure. There are quite a few. Here is a non-comprehensive list:

<http://www.bnrobotics.com/> <http://www.resquared.com/> <http://www.aethon.com/> <http://www.redzone.com/> <http://www.seegrid.com/> <http://www.bostondynamics.com/> <http://www.irobot.com/> <http://www.cyphyworks.com/> <\-- started by some of the original iRobot folks <http://www.mobilerobots.com/> <http://www.willowgarage.com/> <http://www.evolution.com/> <http://www.sensiblemachines.com/> <http://astrobotictechnology.com/> ... etc ...

NOTE: Some of the companies are further along than others but all of them (to the best of my knowledge) started as startups and/or university spin-outs (which is a subset of startups). You can normally find startup robotics companies near/around the schools with the best robotics programs (i.e. CMU, UPenn, Stanford, MIT, etc.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Generally, physical work is not as rewarded in modern society as intellectual work. Almost anything physically grueling a human can do, a machine can be designed to do it better. If the human in question is expensive, a machine has probably already been designed to do it better.

Personally, I just go for walks at random intervals during my workday. It keeps me from being completely deskbound, and also keeps my brain from getting stuck.

</comment><comment><USER18> firefighter in an urban/suburban area. starting pay in chicagoland area for a firefighter/paramedic is 55K. exorbitant increases as you gain seniority, along with a pension.

<comment><USER19> These jobs are _extremely_ hard to land.

My brother spent about ten years trying to become a firefighter. He went to firefighting school, got his B.Sc., and worked as a private firefighter on a military base - didn't help. I don't think a single person from his graduating class in firefighting school actually became a firefighter.

<comment><USER16> why so? competition? or the physical standards are so high barely nobody can manage it?

<comment><USER19> Way, way too much competition. Besides being the one gov't occupation the public has unalloyed respect for, firefighters get great pay and benefits and a lot of free time. Plus there aren't that many positions available, and many of the ones that do open up often go to 'legacies' and others with insider connections. Even before the recession, advertised positions routinely got hundreds of qualified applicants.

<comment><USER18> All of the above reasons against firefighting are absolutely correct. There is rampant cronyism, and corruption, as would be expected from a union comprised of supposed civil servants. Minimum standards are moving towards becoming an EMT-Paramedic prior to even being hired. Nonetheless, great work if you can get it.

And don't get me started on people double dipping...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My father loves working on elevators. It's a very active job, but it requires lots of troubleshooting and innovation. You have to be able to troubleshoot OLD relay based switching equipment, tape reader programmed controllers from the 80's and fancy new digital controllers.

He has to be able to engineer support and rigging systems to move old/new equipment out of tight spaces, knocking out walls, contracting out metal workers to add in support beams (elevator generators and motors are very heavy and big). I got him setup with autocad to draft some counter weight plates he had cut via a fire cutter (laser cutter but with cutting torch).

Lots of fun projects, lots of problems, lots of solutions. It pays $55 an hour i think, top scale, and you get something like $15 an hour in benefits. It takes around a year to get called off the bench (it's a union job, but not a shitty union like teamsters. People can and will get fired for not doing their jobs).

Finally, for the workaholic, overtime is always available and it's double time. $110 an hour an extra 2 hours a week can really add up.

Basically, if I wasn't programming I'd be making elevators go up and down.

Another option I have considered is an arborist. Kinda funny, but I love rock climbing, and being an arborist is basically "the same thing", in that you get to harness up, jug up some fixed lines, rig up lowers (can't always drop branches), etc. Looks like alot of fun at least for a while!

</comment><comment><USER20> Cabinetry: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinetry>

It doesn't have to be overly taxing physical work (requiring a lot of strength), but it is usually a very active physical work (requiring constant movement).

Getting well paid while doing it might be tough. It is not a well paid job by default. However, with some imagination you might be able to use your scientific/math/engineering background to make products that have decent margin.

<comment><USER21> There's a KraftMaid factory near where I grew up, and it is the job that people work when they can't find work doing anything else. The work conditions are pretty crappy (for modern America, at least). It's very repetitive, mind- numbing, no-way-it-can-be-good-for-you-longterm work. And the pay only starts out at like $13/hr. This is in northeast Ohio.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Oilfield roughneck. Work the rigs for a few years, then go back home and write software for the oil & gas industry.

<comment><USER22> Thanks for sharing, had to look the term up.

roughneck (drilling): "A low-ranking member of the drilling crew. The roughneck usually performs semiskilled and unskilled manual labor that requires continual hard work in difficult conditions for many hours. After roughnecks understand how the rig operates and demonstrates their work ethic, they may be promoted to other positions in the crew."

"This might actually refer to roughneck duties, or to one of the other crew positions, such as lead tong operator, motorman, derrickman, assistant driller or even driller."

[http://www.glossary.oilfield.slb.com/Display.cfm?Term=roughn...](http://www.glossary.oilfield.slb.com/Display.cfm?Term=roughneck)

Do you have experience with this? Likes/dislikes of the job?

<comment><USER23> I have not been a roughneck, but I grew up in Edmonton, Canada at a time when several of my Gr. 12 classmates went for 3 months in the summer and earned more than their teachers did in a year.

The pay is high (my friends earned about 12k/month) but it is dirty, dangerous work. You are isolated for weeks or months at a time. Drug use is extremely common, and your safety and even life often depends on the clear thinking and detail-orientation of someone who is hungover or high or both. There will be no internet access, although there is probably a communal television with satellite access. Many workers lose much of their money gambling: you can not participant and be isolated, or participate and lose, or participate and win and risk physical interventions.

My mom wouldn't let me go. :)

<comment><USER19> Any money you don't lose gambling will just go toward the downpayment on a $100k pickup truck anyway, if the parking lots of Grande Prairie on a weekend are any indication. =)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> You could become a gigolo who fixes ladies' computers.

<comment><USER25> "Oh, ya see there? The molex connectors aren't plugged in to the RAM. Let me get my electrostatic bracelet, and I'll have that screwed back down in a jiffy."

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> How about cutting your job down to part time and doing active things the rest of the time?

How about going on a long walk every lunch break and maybe a short walk in the afternoon too?

</comment><comment><USER27> Airframe and Powerplant Mechanic (A&P)? Working on airplanes involes light to heavy physical activity and regular use of engineering problem solving. It's an indoor and outdoor activity depending on the situation. It is FAA regulated so earning their certification is a must.

</comment><comment><USER28> Well, I used to be a field geologist, and while there was a lot of active in- the-field work, there was also a whole lot of sitting behind the computer writing reports and lots and lots of meetings.

I'll suggest an alternative that doesn't require you throwing away your 10-years of experience: you just need to find the right place to work.

I'm an engineer for a company located in a fantastic location with lots of opportunities for outdoor recreation of all kinds. We really do support a better life/work balance than any startup I've worked for.

And we do interesting work with modern tools and methods (Rails, agile, etc.) And we're growing and hiring.

I'm not gonna spam this post with a job posting. But if you're interested it's not too hard to figure out how to contact me or find out who I work for.

</comment><comment><USER29> Field researcher in oceanography, zoology, biology, archaeology, geology, or similar field.

</comment><comment><USER30> Professional sports player. ;-)

</comment><comment><USER31> Surveyor.

Licensed surveyors make good money, particularly if they run their own small firm. This is due to the difficulty in getting licensed (education + exams + apprenticeship) and importance of the data they gather (property surveys become legally binding documents and site surveys provide essential information to civil engineers). And with GPS, etc, there's plenty of technology involved.

</comment><comment><USER32> I've had the same sort of thoughts, but I've been sitting at a desk for almost 20 years.

I've often considered landscaping / lawnmowing, especially when my landscaper took off for a two-week vacation to Europe that I can't afford. A few of my firefighter friends have landscaping businesses on the side.

My father-in-law works in environmental permitting. He spends about 4 days a week in the office (home or corporate) and about 1 day a week out in the field, surveying plant and animal life. It's not the most physically demanding work, but it is outside.

I had a friend in the Army Reserve that spent a year in Afghanistan, doing IT work for the Army. Sucked, but he was very close to going right back as a civilian contractor and making 5x as much doing a similar job. Afghanistan probably isn't the best place to go, but with bases all over the world, there are probably some more desirable locations.

You could get involved with FEMA or even someone like the Red Cross. I wouldn't call it high-paying, but they employ IT guys in disaster areas.

<comment><USER33> My startup works with small businesses. I've been amazed at the amount of income that good service professionals can bring in. Landscapers, air-duct cleaners, carpet cleaners... we have a couple of clients that have owners pocketing 7 figures yearly.

What I find really interesting is how much the process these really successful owners use mirrors what we do in technology companies. They try different pitches. They test different call-answering tactics. They hone in on the words, phrases, and ideas that resonate with customers. They test different advertising metrics and are obsessed with tracking and analytics.

Once they understand how to close deals and what the best sources of leads are... they scale. For instance, one of our air-duct cleaning partners (that clears 7 figures in profit) has grown to four crews and a full time booking agent. The booking agent is extensively trained and closes 60-70% of all leads. The owner spends her time focused on quality control of the actual crews for the most part.

The point being: There is PLENTY of room for small business owners to make a lot of money with manageable levels of scale. You still have to have a keen business sense... but outcome based decision making works no matter what business you run.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Could try an extended leave of absence to do a short-term, physically intensive project (like habitat for humanity or some type of volunteer/relief effort) -- that way you see if you actually like it. It's possible that semi- regular breaks are rejuvenating to the point that you don't need to embark on an entirely different career.

That or UFC.

<comment><AUTHOR> That made me smile because an extended leave is exactly what I tried in May/June, going on a bike trip across Europe. Unfortunately it didn't rekindle my love for my job.

<comment><USER34> Well hopefully the bike trip was fun. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm in a similar situation. Although not as athletic, I would love to have a more physically demanding job.

Somewhat wishing I had made a more vocational career choice such as plumber or electrician. I have an interest in both and have done a significant amount on my own, but they both require training and apprenticeship to be officially certified in my state.

Unfortunately it's a little late in life to make a career change like that work economically, so I'm thinking about getting a Treadmill desk and requesting more time working from home.

Has anyone tried a treadmill desk? Something like the TrekDesk: <http://www.trekdesk.com/> How did it work? Was it awkward or difficult to do actual work?

<comment><USER36> A standing desk worked for me for a few weeks while I got over a back injury. I felt great, and a soccer ball underfoot gave me something to play with when I was thinking more than typing. Unfortunately, I couldn't stand to stick with the standing desk after my back got better, because my computers, papers, and books were just too spread out around my office.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Physical Therapist!

"Physical therapists practice in hospitals, outpatient clinics, and private offices that have specially equipped facilities. These jobs can be physically demanding, because therapists may have to stoop, kneel, crouch, lift, and stand for long periods. In addition, physical therapists move heavy equipment and lift patients or help them turn, stand, or walk." And: "Median annual wages of physical therapists were $72,790 in May 2008." (From <http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos080.htm> )

Plus, you get to help people recover from ailments and improve their daily physical experience.

<comment><USER21> My ex is working on this degree right now, and it requires 4+ years of schooling along with a 3-month unpaid internship (she's actually paying tuition!).

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> You can make decent money as both golf and tennis pros. I'm not sure how easy it would be to become either if you're not already pretty skilled though. I'm certain it could be done, and the younger you are the easier, but it would be some work if you don't have much skill at either.

You could also get a teaching certificate and become a coach. This may be a lot of work as well depending on your state, education, etc.

You can become a personal trainer with not too much effort if you're like spending time in gyms. It'll take awhile to build up and maintain clientele, but it's not a bad way to go.

</comment><comment><USER39> a related book, the story of Patagonia and Black Diamond: [http://www.amazon.com/Let-People-Surfing-Education- Businessm...](http://www.amazon.com/Let-People-Surfing-Education- Businessman/dp/1594200726)

My experience: I tried to start my company in the sports field, but I failed. At that time I was surfing 2h/day and running a bit. Now I'm employed, I gained 10kg, and I'm not really motivated and looking for a better way of living.

</comment><comment><USER40> My cousin is an intensive care doctor and he is on his feet all day long running from one place to another, but I guess it will take a long time to become one...

<comment><USER41> true, but you could also go the Physician's Assistant or Nurse Practitioner (or just Nurse) route... shorter training (only by comparison to MDs), and they all spend a lot of time on their feet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Maybe you need a vacation. You mention that you do 12 hours of sports every week, that is already quite high.

Perhaps you could also reduce the number of hours you work everyday.

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm waiting for someone to come up with a wii type remote controller-based operating system

\- jump for 'list files', punch for 'double click', punch in different places for different letters ... you get the idea

then you just have to force yourself to use this one hour a day ...

imagine if you could map tai-chi movements to your keyboard.. you could learn tai-chi while filling in those tps reports !!

anyone think this is a good startup idea ?

</comment><comment><USER44> this falls under the work-to-live/live-to-work question. i've found in my adopted city that 90% of the people here live to work, which (i think) is pretty typical in western (american) culture. career == life-fulfillment/self actualization. there is nothing wrong with what you're going through, you are just redefining yourself.

take dermidgen's advice and get a hobby. take up something that you can invest yourself in outside of computing. if that's coding something not work related, great. if that's finding a more physically challenging hobby, go for it.

personally, i took up triathlon about a year ago and it completely changed my life. 3 sports each with it's own challenges. it's a bit pricey to get into but, it's time-consuming and there are an incredible number of attractive women that participate in the world of multi-sport (ie: triathlon clubs).

i also do an outside project with a friend which keeps me learning new things. Last idea, Take a foreign language class.

</comment><comment><USER45> Landscape architect / gardener...

</comment><comment><USER46> I am not sure about the US, but in australia if you work as a labourer ie (builder, painter, electrician, etc) your salary is on average equal to or above (six figures) office jobs. It is just due to the current labour shortage.

</comment><comment><USER26> Whenever I get this thought I always tell myself wait ten years and we will probably have some kind of virtual reality interface to computers where we could at least walk around a lot.

I've always been way too optimistic with technology :-(

</comment><comment><USER47> Organic farmer. Done right, if you have the skill, it can make enough money to live comfortably on; takes you closer to nature than you'll ever otherwise be; and in general makes for a Very Happy Athletic Job.

</comment><comment><USER48> I stepped down to working 80% weeks, not because I hate my IT job, but because I love having 3 day weekends that I can spend on myself. The pay is still good enough for me to live on.

</comment><comment><USER49> I am surprised no one brought up astronaut.

</comment><comment><USER50> acting? modelling? a serious (for once) personal trainer?

<comment><AUTHOR> Acting is definitely not for me and I am not good looking enough for modelling. Personal trainer is actually a very good idea, and sports medicine has always been one of my interests. I am sceptical that this makes sense financially, but it sounds like a job that can be started gradually without needing to make a hard cut from my current job. Interesting, I will think about it more.

<comment><USER36> If you want to compete on knowledge, you'll have to look for a professionally- run organization such as a medical rehab clinic or a college sports program, which will probably require some kind of professional training or certification, maybe even a relevant degree. Without those, you'll be starting at the bottom. However, you'll be in a truly professional environment where you can develop expertise and work into a specialty.

In _personal_ training, one-on-one in a gym, you need absolutely no training, certification, or even knowledge to get started. It's a bad situation from the consumer's point of view, which I imagine means a bad situation from the point of view of competent, knowledgeable trainers:

<http://www.stumptuous.com/how-to-choose-a-personal-trainer>

 _Many trainers are fly-by-night, students trying to make an extra buck, people filling time till they get a "real" job. There's nothing wrong with working part time as a trainer but often it results in people with minimal hands-on experience. If possible, find someone who has experience working with various types of people, and if you get really lucky, someone who has powerlifting or Olympic lifting experience._

The trainer I use now works at a small gym (where I pay $10 per month), charges $25 per hour, and gives me competent coaching on all the lifts I want to do, including powerlifting and Olympic lifts. He has a sports training degree and experience both as a high-level high school athlete at a school with a very sophisticated training program and also as an assistant trainer with a Division I college sports program. That gives him no economic advantage over the Brad-Pitt-in-Burn-After-Reading type trainers. If you go to a fancy gym and hire a no-nothing bimbo or himbo to train you, odds are they'll charge a lot more. Knowledge and enthusiasm for the job are cheap. If you want to make money in _personal_ training, you have to sell yourself on the other factors: looks, rapport, motivational skill, etc.

P.S. Make sure you check out the sample job listing at the end of the post I linked above.

<comment><USER50> >someone who has powerlifting or Olympic lifting experience

why are you implying that personal training has to be weight lifting? I personally find weight lifting stupid, useless and boring, not to mention that it's not the right way to work on the body I have and for the body I want to have. Just my 2 cents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> surgeon. military.

</comment><comment><USER52> consulting, where you travel a lot and do a lot of presentations

</comment><comment><USER52> consulting, where you travel a lot a do a lot of presentations

</comment><comment><USER53> Politics?

</comment><comment><USER54> Wow, this question could have been written by me.

Here's what I've found. Starting on a new career path is a crappy proposition. Most of the trades that have been suggested do either require extensive training and preparation, or some degree of paying your dues (as with any industry). However, what really killed it for me is that basically I would be doing contract work (we all know how that goes - ebbs and flows) for about 150% less than I do now.

Here's my current solution to this issue. Change of working environment and the addition of a second job. Boy am I busy NOW!

To change environments I decided to go solo contractor, get my 3g tethering setup on my iphone, get my laptop, and now I go as far out into the wilderness as possible while still getting 3g signal, and I work from the shade of a tree in nature. I try to do that for at least 50%-60% of my work. It has helped tremendously!

I've also spent a great deal of my extra sports time brushing up on skills that I had thought would never be an actual part of my life - shooting. This is something that doesn't require formalized instruction or training - although there is plenty of that available. The additional benefit is that I can now instruct others how to properly, safely, and boldly handle a firearm - and to use it effectively. This not only solidifies the knowledge I already have (teaching others is by FAR the best way to get something deeeeply rooted into you), but gives me an opportunity to be outside doing something physical, make money, and give back in an area where there is a DESPERATE need for quality instruction without ego (there is sooooo much ego in the shooting work it's sickening).

This particular path has actually relieved a tremendous amount of stress in my life and opened up opportunities and connections with people and communities that I never expected. It's quickly becoming a secondary career path. My new mission is to find a way to bring both worlds together - find a need in the market that fits a shooting developer ;) and fill it.

I'm currently a certified instructor of the C.A.R. System by SabreTactical <http://www.sabretactical.com> and the civilian variant IPD Systems.

PM me - you're in my head. lol get outta my head get outta my head!!!

<comment><USER55> "for about 150% less than I do now"

Wouldn't that mean, instead of getting paid, you were paying them 50% of your current rate?</comment></comment>


Google's Web video could use pointless squabble - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/21/AR2010052101683.html?wprss=rss_technology

<comment><USER2> The title is correctly copied across, but the text of the article makes clear he means "end pointless squabble" not "use pointless squabble".</comment>