Zuck's Events (Facebook Privacy Hole Demo) - <AUTHOR> http://zesty.ca/facebook/#/4/events <comment><USER2> There will eventually be a great turning point on the web when everyone finally understands most of the privacy issues and makes a decision on whether they really want their lives to be private or not. If they go for privacy, Facebook will fizzle out--their business model depends fundamentally on invading privacy. If not, Facebook may just take over the world.

<comment><USER3> It's also worth noting that a lot of facebook's initial appeal, especially when compared to Myspace at the time, beyond its aesthetic improvement, was the fact that it seemed to stand for privacy. The status quo, myspace, was a public-only profile. A facebook profile was accessible only to your contacts or to your school. The available options have slowly but continuously drifted away from that simple promise. A lot of the site's initial traction was driven by huge demand for a reasonable set of privacy controls: myspace was useful but creepy. The argument that the web has moved on in the past six years and that the demand for privacy has lessened is perhaps a red herring, though only time, consumer demand, and viable alternatives will tell: there might be more of an opportunity here than people realize.

Overall, I think this is a really interesting question that society is confronting and it will be fun to see how it plays out.

Side note: I think a lot of the tech press and blogosphere miss a lot of the subtleties here because, well, people like Arrington, Scoble et al. weren't in school at the time, making the cautious decision to open an account. This has been a revolution led by young people, who are often surprisingly concerned about their privacy and don't depend or plan on Internet celebrity for their livelihoods. It feels a bit like eternal September except in reverse: as the demographic ages, the basic tenents erode.

<comment><USER4> Can you enumerate on how the privacy settings are dwindling? Which ones? I feel like I've had greater control over my privacy with more recent changes to Facebook.

<comment><USER5> As an example, "Likes and Interests," "Education and Work," and parts of "Basic Information" used to be text in your profile with a search link. That search would only show people who had chosen (via privacy settings) to display the relevant part of their profile to you. They are now group-like "Connections" to community pages, whose membership is not secret.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's worth noting that this information was already available publicly before f8.

<comment><USER3> Set your privacy settings on lockdown and then put your own Id in instead of "4". This is undesirable behavior.

<comment><USER7> Are you sure? I'm checking myself and nothing is available other than my profile photo.

/[my id]/events

data (empty)

Maybe his privacy settings aren't as stringent as mine?

<comment><USER6> It only works with publicly listed events

<comment><USER8> But you could already look at publicly listed events and find out who was attending. This - in principle - isn't exposing any more information than what was previously there. It just makes it easier to access.

Sure, it still sucks. But it's not a major new security breach. All that it exposes is already there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Whatever you think of Mark Zuckerberg, you have to respect him for this. He knows his information is available through the API, he has chosen to make it publicly available.

It is ultimate dogfooding; equivalent to being able to see Eric's and Larry's and Sergey's searches.

EDIT: blackswan is right; tamed down the comparison to Google in the last phrase

<comment><USER10> On the other hand, his celebrity is now giving greater exposure to the activities of his associates -- they're getting dragged in without much of a choice. I don't think that's very noble of him at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm not sure why people are so offended by what Facebook has done. They've just made the information people made publicly available _already_ easy to parse for computers. Full disclosure: I had no way to prepare for Facebook's new features and I haven't change a single privacy settings since it launched. I just used this site to check what was publicly available for the first time and none of it was a surprise except my events and I don't feel invaded in any way. Feel free to browse around my profile.

<http://zesty.ca/facebook/#/aroon>

<comment><USER6> what bothers me is not that people can see what I've rsvp'd to, but that they can see what I've been invited to, but ignored (unless i remove that event, which must be done manually for each event).

My friends invite me to a lot of events that I _never_ want to publicly be associated with, but unless I specifically remove this event, the whole world can see it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This seems to integrate exactly with your existing privacy settings, so I guess there was no real surprise here. Mine were pretty much on lock-down anyway. I found myself, and every single link except my profile picture and my likes showed "data empty".

</comment><comment><USER13> Is there another posting for this? I can't get to the article through the link.

<comment><USER6> yup: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1294632></comment></comment>


The Only Way to Get Important Things Done  - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/schwartz/2011/05/the-only-way-to-get-important.html <comment><USER3> I'm a massive fan of life-task automation, for the benefits of not worrying about certain things (and therefore being generally happier in life).

Classic example for myself - when I used to commute to work, I would change lanes at exactly the same point every day. There was a month of trial and error to begin with, but this route and those lanes gave me the 'most likely fastest journey'. No more thinking about traffic, worrying that the lane next to me was moving faster, should I change etc etc.

I even have an automated rule for when I need to automate a rule - only when something annoys me three times. Can't find my keys when heading out the door? Very quickly automated where they live (ie, it happened 3 times very fast). Trip over a stair once? Not even going to register as an issue until it happens two more times.

<comment><USER4> Can you give more examples of things you have automated and how they worked out? And what didn't?

<comment><USER3> Sure. In no particular order:

I colour code my diary and contextualise it a month in advance. Today was a Blue- Sales day, so every sales opportunity this month has been offered today as an option- none of my clients (Blue- Delivery day) had it as an option

My pockets are consistent- phone lhs side, money clip rhs, keys to the rear- To check I haven't forgotten/lost anything I just touch 3 pockets

At shopping centres I always park in the same section- replaced standing still remembering my park with automatic 'walking to section' while remembering

When I get a plate of food I generally plan which order to eat it in then exexute, rather than thinking with each mouthful. That may be bordering on ocd but at least I don't do it in alphabetical order!

Laundry is always washed and hung in the same order, linked to where clothes go when clean- ironing pile, top drawer etc. Ditto washing dishes.

I always round up time for calculating travel legs. I don't like being late, and don't mind being 30mins early

I clear my inbox by person not date- allows me to address many emails dealing with the same or related (Tracey- training; Darryl- IP development) discussions at once

For 6 years we have been once a month cookers- 6 meals x 4 portions (roughly chicken, beef, pork, lamb, fish, vegetarian) which are frozen and reheated based on the calendar I draw up

We have holidays drafted from now until November and try to book up our weekends 3-4 weeks ahead, to balance our social life and prevent waking up and wasting a day wondering what to do

And lest all of this seem boring, I applied this mindset most recently to completing the Monopoly Pub Crawl in order- 26 pubs over 13 hours. One definitely needs a system for that.

If I blogged more about any topic specifically, which ones would interest you?

[As for what doesn't work for me- anything linking tasks like 'I will do x then y then z'. One interruption to x means nothing gets achieved.]

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the details! Here's what happens to me.

Planning for a month. How detailed really? I would imagine that such a plan doesn't survive life. How do you cope with changes? I don't plan so much ahead now because other people influence my doings too much.

Always the keys, phone and wallet are in the same location. Take the same buses always so I remember the schedule. I store my stuff in the same location always. Shelves are organized, everything boxed and labeled. Plastic bags stacked by size and tied with rubber bands :) That's just being an organized person. Bookshelf has no particular order because it's acoustically better. Only the to-read -books are in one place in order of interest.

No need to decide in what order I eat stuff, I just put stuff in mouth :) Actually, rotating between the parts, trying to put meat and other stuff in each mouthful.

So far I haven't decided to wear the same clothes every day, or wear my stuff in any order. But this takes only a minute each day.

I'm also always in time. That means I usually wait for other people, I use that time to observe other people or read something on the phone. To work I almost never need to be on time but just come at my usual time +- delays in traffic.

Inbox, I answer stuff when I read it. Should mark some items as followup I guess.

Holidays are difficult to plan for me, never know when can take, should take, need to synchronize with other people, work etc. Besides it feels good to waste time on days off. That's when the brains come up with new ideas. Wasting a day typically means spending it on something that I then thought was most interesting, which is the right thing, yes? If I'm bursting to do something, I do it.

I guess for me the same that plan x -> y -> z doesn't work. Such processes are inflexible. It should be possible to do x, y and z in whatever order I feel like and all of them should be possible to finish in one go. Or not do at all. Now how to string a bigger project together ...?

Cooking part is interesting. What do you do with fresh foods or they are just no on the menu? We cook for 2-3 days at a time and it does take more time than to heat stuff up.

Many of your choices require commitment not only from you but from your family and friends. How does that go?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This advice seems to contradict the advice given about increasing your intelligence in a recent post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2562632>

Compare this:

      Efficiency is not your friend when it comes to cognitive growth. In order to keep your brain making new connections and keeping them active, you need to keep moving on to another challenging activity as soon as you reach the point of mastery in the one you are engaging in. You want to be in a constant state of slight discomfort, struggling to barely achieve whatever it is you are trying to do, as Einstein alluded to in his quote. This keeps your brain on its toes, so to speak.

With:

      The proper role for your pre-frontal cortex is to decide what behavior you want to change, design the ritual you'll undertake, and then get out of the way. "It is a profoundly erroneous truism that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing," the philosopher A.N. Whitehead explained back in 1911. "The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them."

Is there a real contradiction? If yes, is there any point to intelligence if you get less important things done?

<comment><USER6> There is a time for growth and a time for getting things done. A time for learning and a time for executing. A time for training and a time for competing. A time for sharpening tools and a time for using them.

Different strategies for different goals.

<comment><USER7> Exactly. Using a GPS to go everywhere will make your sense of direction worse. But that may be worth the easing of the cognitive load for you.

Also, many of the things to automate-such as sorting email or paying bills- don't really improve your brain anyway. The getting smarter article points out that once you get good at something, doing more of it doesn't make you any smarter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I feel pretty confident that the single biggest thing people can do to be more productive, or to have more time, is to dump their TV.

Following this is the trifecta of: exercise, eating well, and sleeping enough.

<comment><USER4> After dumping my TV some years ago, there are still some problems with time. Working, commuting, exercising and eating seem to take about 15 hours in total. Now with 7-8 hours of sleep it leaves approximately 1 hour for hacking or time with other people. A bit too little, no?

Sometimes it might be possible to combine commuting and exercising, but at the moment it's not worth it, since commuting and meditation, as well as commuting and reading, are possible with public transport.

One thing I can recommend is to get a cross-trainer or exercise bike and watch some interesting stuff while exercising. Recently I've been reviewing open courseware, Clojure webcasts etc. Saves time.

I would say working less for money is the single biggest thing people can do to be more productive, or to have more time.

<comment><USER9> >I would say working less for money is the single biggest thing people can do to be more productive, or to have more time.

moving closer to work has similar effects on your free time without cutting in to your free money.

but yeah, I agree. It's hard to have time to work on your stuff if you work 40 hours a week, especially if you need some family or social time. working part time helps a lot, if you can pull it off. Again, though, be mindful of the commute and reduce the number of days a week you work rather than reducing the number of hours a day you work.

<comment><USER4> I've been considering a 4 x 10 hours week.

But really, commuting is impossible to avoid if you work in consulting, where your customer changes from time to time. You can't expect to move as often. My work used to be only 10 minute walk away ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't know if this comment will get read, it'll be buried down at the bottom... let's pretend it's a pot of gold hidden at the end of the rainbow :)

In short: I agree with this article (originally proposed in THIS article/video [http://www.fastcompany.com/video/why-change-is-so-hard- self-...](http://www.fastcompany.com/video/why-change-is-so-hard-self-control- is-exhaustible))

I moved on from my job as a project manager a few years ago and spent a year dabbling here and dabbling there on different projects. Some open source and some not.

The majority of the time I was "working" I was mostly showering myself in self-imposed guilt: "Why aren't you a huge success by now? Why don't you have an awesome startup on HN yet? Why don't you go back to work for some company and stop wasting money? Why don't you grow all your hair back?"

I enjoyed the freedom of the year, but the guilt and self-doubt was getting to be exhausting. It shook my confidence a bit, but I think my optimism towards life in general helped shore-up that weakness a bit and kept me facing mostly forward instead of giving up and falling down on the ground for a good cry or turning sideways and taking up another position somewhere just to stop the self-loathing.

Somewhere around the middle and end of the first year I made some unintended- but-welcome changes in my thinking.

The first realization I had, due to an article I read somewhere, was: "Guilt is a USELESS emotion".

The article went on and on about it, backing up the claim. Long story short, it was right. It IS useless.

In a way, Guilt is the result of you not being willing to take a stand, make a decision and move on with your life. Guilt is a lot like sitting on a fence and complaining about how your bum hurts all day long, but refusing to get off the fence. And not life decisions... just ALL decisions.

I feel guilty because I haven't called my parents. I feel guilty because I haven't done yard work. I feel guilty because I need to change the oil in my car. I feel guilty because I haven't put any pants on today... etc. etc.

I began to realize that this unwillingness to get off the fence was the source of pain-via-guilt, not the actual decisions themselves.

For the next 6 months I learned to think things through until I hit a logical conclusion, then commit to a decision. Over-thinking was never a problem for me, but committing (I realized) was, so I worked on that.

Only after a few months of almost passive-attention to sticking to my commitments did I realize my life being _noticeably_ easier. I had no idea why, but it just felt great...

That was when I first came across this concept presented by this article: will power is a limited resource.

As a software developer there are a litany of cliched things I berate myself about... gotta work more, gotta exercise more, gotta eat better.

But given my new outlook on life I decided "Enough!", I am going to make decisions and move on with my life. So far this year I have made decisions to work... and work and work and work. Yes lots of things have taken a back seat, but instead of being wishy-washy about it, I am leveraging the mass of my will power against my desire to work and not spending it on anything else.

That means I'm eating fast food and not exercising as much as I "should", but I'm done making half-decisions.

If I decide to eat better or exercise, I'm not going to spend all day thinking about it, I'll just go do it and get on with my life.

Since I learned those two things: 1\. Commit to decisions / Ignore feeling of "guilt" 2\. Will power is an exhaustible resource

Life has jus become fantastic.

I've gotten a hell of a lot more clarity on the things I want and I don't sit all day rolling my hands together because I want to work on X, but my business sense tells me "NO" so instead I have to pretend that I don't want to work on X and instead I'll go work on something else.

Forget that, it's my life, if I want to work on X, I'll work on X.

I like to get up in the morning now. I like what I do. I like what I work on and I like the people I meet doing it.

I have no idea what is in store for me, but sitting under a wet blanket, grinding your teeth from stress and sweating, trying to figure out a HN-worthy business and become the next-big-thing is bullshit.

Living your life; doing things you love and having success find you on your terms... it is intoxicating and so much more accessible than a lot of people realize.

DISCLAIMER: I wouldn't recommend trying this mental shift until you are ready for it. If you are a stress ball and a pure-rage-fountain, maybe wait until you've calmed down a bit before embarking on this journey.

If you are sick of feeling trapped by guilt and inaction and are ready for a change in scenery, give this a try.

Also, but "this" I mean simply accepting that will power is limited and learning to focus it on the things you truly want out of life instead of the things you tell yourself that you want.

TIP: Having a six-pack or a social-cloud-network-web-scale-synergy-Twitter- killer company may not ACTUALLY be what you want when you finally take the time to look inside yourself. Just be ready/willing to accept that. This can be really horrifying for people to face when they start looking inwards because they define themselves so heavily in (sometimes) false terms that the idea they had it wrong this whole time is... just too unsecure/scary/unsettling/open-ended.

<comment><USER11> I think I'm on a similar realization as you. I "used to" want to be featherweight MMA champion of the world. Once I was into fighting, I kind of assumed I wanted to win (I think everyone does), but I slowly realized that I received no joy from winning. I just loved fighting, but I didn't have a drive to actually defeat my opponent. And you're right. It's fucking scary. "Wanting to be MMA champion" was so deeply ingrained into my identity at that point that questioning that made me question who I am. Am I a quitter? Some loser who can't keep his motivation up? How can I get anywhere in life if I give up?

Now I realize that if I don't receive satisfaction from doing something, there's not much reason in doing it. I chose the term satisfaction very carefully here because, for example, people sometimes say eating cookies makes them happy, but they will rarely say eating cookies gives them satisfaction, especially if it's part of an unhealthy lifestyle.

There is still an uncomfortable thought that lingers in mind that I just "gave up" and am trying to rationalize it and make excuses, but I also know that I am still fighting, and if defeating my opponent ever gives me the same elation as just being in the ring, I will be shooting for that goal again. Except at that time, it would be for real.

<comment><USER10> Perfect distinction between "satisfaction" and "happiness".

I think both are important. Satisfaction is typically the result of accomplishment. Accomplishments give us confidence. Confidence (an amazing subject) gives us the strength to mold and shape our lives into things we want.

As an MMA'ist, you know better than probably anyone here the role that confidence has in a fight. If you are fighting someone new to the ring, you've probably had that sense where you can feel yourself dominating him before that first bell ever rings... and he probably feels it too.

I think Happiness plays an important role in exciting us out of bed in the morning; giving us a spring in our step and helping us chase things that eventually bring us satisfaction.

Happiness recharges our willpower (re: this article) and that helps us move forward towards things that bring us satisfaction and the circle feeds on itself.

My limited understanding of this, right now, is something like:

Happiness > Accomplishment > Satisfaction > Confidence (loop)

Without the little things in life that make you happy, you can still accomplish things, but you will eventually run out of gas or do it begrudgingly and the satisfaction won't come.

From what you describe, I wonder if that was what was going on. You continued to do things that you felt brought you satisfaction (fighting) and would time again get to the precipice of "Accomplishment" and stop, so the opponent would take the win and you would fall back a rung in the ladder and feel crappy and feed this cycle of self doubt.

Was the fighting making you _happy_ or was that missing from the equation and you liked it for other reasons? (stress relief, toughness, etc)

This isn't at all as hard as MMA, but I do something identical to this with tennis. When I play regularly I'm pretty good; strong serve, good returns, fast balls, big topspin, etc.

The thing that frustrated me to the point of _stopping_ playing tennis was that no matter HOW GOOD OR BAD the opponent I played was, I would always lose to them.

It was so obviously a mental handicap that it stunned me into a silent rage when I played.

I could play a 4.5 and hang in with them one day, getting to 3 sets and eventually losing. Then play a 3.0 the next day, go to 3 sets and lose to them.

I don't know if it was a lack of accomplishment on the court such that I could never push forward in the circle of confidence, but I realized it wasn't making me happy. So I stopped.

Much like you said, I always wonder if I just "gave up" -- but I really do subscribe to the "Guilt is bullshit" thought process, so I don't dwell on it. I just figure "Hey, if some day I decide to get back on the court, I'll do it. End of story."

If some day you decide Featherweight is all you want, you'll get back in that ring and do it and the whole will-he/won't-he back and forth in your head will be irrelevant because you will have made up your mind THIS is what you are doing and THIS is what is going to happen.

Sorry if that was preachy... the similarity between what you said an my own fumblings with sports was uncanny so I had a lot to say on the subject ;)

<comment><USER12> You should definitely read "Stuck in the middle with Bruce," if you haven't. Fits perfectly with what you're describing.

[http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/misc/2005_Stuck_In_The_Mi...](http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/misc/2005_Stuck_In_The_Middle_With_Bruce.html)

<comment><USER10> Psyonic, thank you for the link. Reading it in chunks, about 1/4 way through it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is Gold, Jerry, GOLD.

And the best advice on creating these rituals, or HABITS is Seifeld's "Don't break the chain", coupled with Pavlina's 30-day trials.

[http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity- se...](http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret)

<http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/04/30-days-to-success/>

<comment><USER13> From the second article:

> I lost seven pounds in the first week, mostly from going to the bathroom as > all the accumulated dairy mucus was cleansed from my bowels (now I know why > cows need four stomachs to properly digest this stuff)

WTF? Does he think cows eat dairy? Or did I parse that wrong?

<comment><USER14> Pavlina's usually pretty out there. It suprises me that he still gets as much attention as he does. There's one born every minute, I guess.

<comment><USER12> I liked him for awhile, but once he crossed the line into claiming we are all actually figments of his imagination (and not just as a thought experiment) I had to stop reading. I couldn't help but wonder who he was writing for at that point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The notion of 'ritual' is a central theme in Twyla Tharp's book 'The Creative Habit', which I think most HN'ers would find a worthwhile read.

</comment><comment><USER16> I read somewhere that it was a myth that willpower is a limited resource and that we imagine it is limited, but it's not. Does anyone else remember where this was mentioned?

<comment><USER17> It's definitely not a myth. Roy Baumeister mentioned in the article did most of the work in describing how willpower behaves, and a few years back somebody else pinned down the actual mechanism (something to do with glucose - <USER2> a glass of something sweet restores most of the will power back).

<comment><USER18> The first thing I thought after reading this was how unfortunate it is for people on diets that they have to drink a sugary beverage in order to regain the willpower to avoid sugary beverages.

<comment><USER17> Yeap, that's one of the lessons to draw from this. Another is that it's twice as hard to change two habits at the same time: i.e. maybe people who quit smoking and find themselves getting fatter to this because of a self- regulation issue.

For what's worth, I remember the "magic number" for creating a habit is 60 days - and there's also good research on the stages one goes through when creating a habit and what's most likely to sabotage him/her at each stage. We really really need more "science in plain English" books about modern psychology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What really helped for me is closing email and only check email at two times a day (a bit before lunch and around 16.00) -> tips from the four hour work week. Don't check email when you get into the office, because your further work day will be influenced by it.

</comment><comment><USER20> Along these lines, I made a little program which yells at me whenever I have too many lines of code without a comment, or too many lines in a single file. I've found it quite helpful not having to actively think about that sort of maintenance stuff.

<comment><USER21> Regarding comments, I really liked a technique Martin Fowler talked about in Refactoring.

Whenever he feels the need to comment, he extracts the commented block into a new method and gives it a name that explains the purpose - instead of the comments.

The result is code cut into small self-explaining blocks that reads pretty much like a sentence.

I tried to follow it these last weeks and IMO it works great.

Instead of a comment - use a function name.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, I followed that advice at one point. But I find in practice a plain English comment can be much more helpful than a function name. For example, from the code I linked:

# Check too many lines. Count number of lines without a comment.

If I were to turn that into a function name I would either have one long ass function name or (more likely) I would cut out several words and lose a lot of readability and clarity.

<comment><USER22> countLinesSinceComment() too long for you?

<comment><USER20> I think it's a bit too long, yes. I prefer around 10-15 characters for function names. Also, you've lost a lot of readability with that camelCase. Also, the "Check too many lines." part wasn't superfluous -- I had a separate check for too many total lines before I count the number of lines without a comment -- and that part of the comment has been lost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them."

I don't think this implies our brains become more capable with more enhanced civilization. For example I can eat an apple without knowing how to plant and tend to apple trees because I live in a civilization where farmers and software developers can exchange services. I don't have a ritual that allows me to grow apples without thinking about it. The whole process of growing apples has been completely outsourced from my life.

So I doubt that creating lots of rituals will work out in the long run. Eventually they might overrun my schedule. And it takes energy to remember the rituals.

<comment><USER24> No, if its a ritual it takes energy to _not_ do it. Its almost impossible to forget about it when you don't do it.

Example: Try to go to bed tonight without brushing your teeth.

Of course, if you can completely outsource a task, that is even better. But I guess you won't be able to outsource your workout, sanitariness, writing down of ideas, going to bed at the same time etc. any time soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think the take-home point of the article is to avoid depleting your limited energies making new decisions about every little thing, which makes perfect sense for me.

Now, Whitehead's cite is another thing:

"It is a profoundly erroneous truism that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing,[...] The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them."

I find it much better for me to be mindful of the things I do. That does not mean I have to make new decisions all the time. It is a non-judgmental mindfulness, the practice of experiencing the present moment.

</comment><comment><USER26> The willpower "battery" can be recharged or trained (it's also a willpower "muscle"). I reviewed some of the research last year: <http://jonathan.graehl.org/mitigating-ego-depletion> and [http://jonathan.graehl.org/evidence-that-self-control-can- be...](http://jonathan.graehl.org/evidence-that-self-control-can-be-trained- lik)

</comment><comment><USER27> Maybe should be phrased as 'The Only Way to get Important Things Done, for me'

Good advice, though.

</comment><comment><USER24> Good article. Funny, earlier this evening I stumbled over an interview with Tony Schwartz (the author of the parent article) and David Allen, from 'Getting Things Done', in the print version of HBR.

I follow many of the advices, they make, already and they work great but many others I keep struggling to make a ritual.

1) Morning Workout: Takes time, especially on days where I have to commute a lot. Sure, I can make a good 5 minute workout but if I have to leave a lot earlier than my usual sleep cycle I don't even want to take that time. I might even decide to only shower the night before and hence can't afford a real work out before jumping in my clothes. Also, I found that I'm often significantly more tired over the whole day when I do a hard morning workout. I have plenty of experience of this from my time in the military. Sure, I should probably do a lighter workout. But I rather have a real workout later than wasting time on some wishi-washi with Homeopathic weights. And real, strenght workout requires full concentration and an awake mind.

2) Sleep Cycle: In winter, I usually succeed on this and I love the benefits. But now that the days are long its hard to enjoy a social life and still get up early. So I do get up early only when I have to and stay up late when its worth it. Not very healthy but a lot more fun.

3) Planing the day ahead: I would love to make it a ritual to decide the night before what is going to be the most important task tomorrow. Sometimes, I do, but tonight for instance I fail. I worked in "the zone" for hours, stopped at midnight. Now, instead of making that decision, write it down and then go to sleep, I'm procrastinating here for more than an hour. I guess, I'm afraid to take the step back to look at the whole task - which is huge for me - and get mentally destroyed by the weight of that challenge. Whereas, if just keep writing tomorrow where I stopped, I might not work on the most important thing, but at least I get something done.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

</comment><comment><USER28> This guy also wrote an _awesome_ book:

[http://www.amazon.com/Power-Full-Engagement-Managing- Perform...](http://www.amazon.com/Power-Full-Engagement-Managing- Performance/dp/0743226755/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_1)

</comment><comment><USER29> But how can you do your work out immediately when you wake up and have to go to work? Wake up earlier? But you still have to sleep around 8 hours per night.. so you'd have to go to bed earlier, which gives you less time in the evening to do some hacking and other things you like. How can you pull this off? Go to work later?

<comment><USER13> There are still 24 hours in a day, doesn't really matter all that much in which order you do stuff when they still take the same amount of time.

<comment><USER30> Not all time is created equal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> it opens with "every time i'm home i'm with my kids" and then give an example:

\- "today my [morning priority] was this blog, then i gave me a reward to play tennis" and

\- "always get 8hours of sleep"

\- "exercise in the morning"

...if i can always get 8h of sleep, always "be with my kids", write blog posts all morning (after the work out) and still have some time to myself to play tennis... i wouldn't be reading about getting things done.

The main problem everyone i know have is to conciliate work, loved one(s), hobbies, 8hour sleep. all in a 24h day.

and the only way to solve it is give up on two each day.

<comment><USER32> Would that nobody had told me about the 8 hours thing when I was so young. I pathologically set alarms before free days to currentTime + 8 * 60 minutes and go to bed alarmTime - 8 * 60 minutes, and I feel wrong all day if this is interfered with.

In fact, I find that my body can handle significant variation to the 8 hour rule. Knowing this doesn't help my obsession.</comment></comment>


Why Don't People Who Can't Afford Housing Just Move Where It's Cheaper? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/upshot/why-dont-people-who-cant-afford-housing-just-move-where-its-cheaper.html <comment><USER3> Family/friends. Real-life social network/support often outweighs the gains of moving somewhere cheaper.

<comment><USER4> Having a support network of any kind is something very difficult to weigh economically; but it is invaluable at the same time.

<comment><USER5> If you've ever helped your friends move or have had them help you, you can weigh the economic benefit very easily.

Not only does it strengthen your friendship, but it takes the profit margin of a moving company out of the equation - that's the economic gain your group gains (even after you buy your friends beer and lunches - you should still be in the plus)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder about this often, but not about in California

Based off this article about hookworm being alive and well in Southern Alabama. [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/05/hookworm- low...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/05/hookworm-lowndes- county-alabama-water-waste-treatment-poverty)

In the article, there is a woman without a sewage hookup paying $611 for her mortgage, and $300 for electricity.

In the city of Atlanta, and much less, some of the suburbs, paying $900 for a single wide's square footage for a house or apartment is entirely possible. This woman doesn't have much family that's not staying with her, etc.

The other logical frustration from this is that density solves a lot of problems. From cheaper insurance, heating/cooling up to 5 fewer walls, to shared sewer connections - an apartment solves a lot of problems compared to a trailer home.

<comment><USER7> Not sure what 'My friends front following' means, but

> Maybe people want to live in their own place, not an apartment.

isn't that the point of the article? people living in high cost cities cannot afford their own place?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a divorced parent, moving to another city would mean losing access to my kids. That definitely weighs into my consideration. With the number of marriages ending in divorce, I wonder how common this situation is and if it also plays into the equation for them.

<comment><USER9> This definitely comes into play, I know several people who want to move or relocate but their ex can't/won't and therefore they're stuck in place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I live near the beach in San Diego, where house prices are pretty damn high, so my wife and I still rent. On the weekends, we ride bikes or walk to the beach and hang out. It's how we like to live our lives.

I've been to a lot of areas in the country, and I simply don't want to live in them, regardless of price. I can walk outside in a t-shirt 365 days a year where I live and not die from exposure in a few minutes. I have no need to shovel snow. I am surrounded by mountains, the ocean, forests and desert are a few minute drives away.

Plus friends. And family. It's also nice living in a place that people want to visit, old friends pop in all the time simply because we live where people want to vacation.

<comment><USER11> Living in a large house with land next to farms and skiing mountains in an interior rural state, I have different priorities then you.

But you hit the nail on the head: most people like to live in a place with temparate weather, scenery, and things that only come with population density. So most people want to live in the same place, despite (or even indirectly because of) other people wanting to live in the same place too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Cheaper does not always mean a desirable place to live. This question somewhat assumes that all places to live are created equal.

<comment><USER13> As someone who lives in an uncool but vibrant metropolis, I think people from more well known coastal cities vastly underestimate how much... world there is out there.

I know many Californians would shudder at the prospect of moving to Houston, but it's actually a progressive, vibrant place with lots of cool stuff to do. Don't like Houston? That's fine. There's a hundred other cities to choose from.

What's that fallacy where you overestimate something's value because you paid a lot for it?

<comment><USER12> To be clear, I think anyone living in the Bay Area must be nuts. But, then again, I think anyone living in big cities is nuts. Give me fresh air and neighbors you can't see any day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Strange how it's _only_ people who already own a house who suggest this.

<comment><USER15> It's a lot harder to pick up and move if you have a mortgage vs. renting some place.

<comment><USER16> Yes, but if you have a mortgage and have been there for a long time, you're probably sitting on a gold-mine. i wonder if bay area residents ever consider how much money they could make if they just picked up and moved some where else. I bet many of their houses (or the equivalent amount of equity invested in rent ROI optimized houses) could out-earn the people living in them, if they bought more than 20 years ago.

<comment><USER15> It's not like that in most places. I bought my house at the right time and it's only increased in value maybe 50% in nearly 20 years. I mean it ain't nothing; it beat inflation, but tack on the interest and I'm probably negative. At least I have equity built into it, which I wouldn't if I had opted for an apartment for 20 years. Most houses only make you rich in the fact that you own something after all the years of paying for shelter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Being able to remote 100% of the time is not as common as people want to think here.

A lot of managers aren't comfortable with that notion, and basically ignore you when you make the case that a position is essentially impossible to fill when just letting it up to local market for labor.

</comment><comment><USER18> Why would you want them to? A city consisting only of people who can afford $1.5m mortgages is missing most of the amenties and services you rely on and value. They only function in San Francisco today out of inertia; their ability to hire and retain staff is plummeting.

</comment><comment><USER19> Everyone I know hase gone through a "power-saving" phase at least once in their life, typically on the path towards buying a home. This is inherently a period of austerity for the individual, or, as the article describes, "great discomfort".

If you're going to be depriving yourself, you may as well do it where people are getting paid the most, and just live like an itinerant/vagabond while there. It's the high salaries and abundant opportunity that attracts all the well-paid housing seekers. Join them, just don't bother with the housing, and watch your savings blow up.

You'll probably learn a bunch about yourself and how to live simply in the process as well.

<comment><USER13> I'm actually someone who's very much a fan of power saving then retiring early.

Indeed, if I were to make a good salary in Silicon Valley and move to another metropolis, the math would work in my favor. But what if I found a partner? What about my friends and networks over there?

Retiring to a city where I didn't know anyone would suck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Affordable housing is a symptom, not an issue. The basic issue is that living in a nice city falls prey to basic supply and demand curves.

The unit of supply is not the house itself, but everything that's included within a city - opportunity, lifestyle, family, friends, food, etc. These things are subjective to each individual, but have some universal similarities (ie: people generally prefer more opportunity to less).

The population of demand is theoretically the entire world, and more practically, the body of people that wants to live in that city due to opportunities and lifestyle. Just speculating, I'd estimate demand to live in a nice city is much greater than the population by 10 or 100x.

When supply is short and demand is not, you reach equilibrium at the point where only the people who can afford to live there do. "Afford" is subjective too, as some people are willing to pay much more in terms of rent and lifestyle sacrifices. In the case of SV, since wages are still extremely high, I think the cost of housing will still increase. It will squeeze the middle class lifestyle heavily (if its not doing so already).

If you want to look at a mature housing market in the dystopian sense of the word, visit Hong Kong. An abundance of high paying finance jobs, low income taxes, and a crazy amount of powerful real estate investors made HK some of the most expensive housing in the world. But finance is no longer growing, real estate is squeezed of its profits, and the affordability of housing in HK is in serious crisis. Haven't lived here for too long, but it seems that lifestyle has been constantly compromised (small houses, live with your parents forever) by the expensiveness of housing. Or that affording your own house is actually a luxury, not a basic human right (depends on your perspective).

Is there a long term solution? Quite simply, not unless we dramatically think of cities differently than we do currently. Fixed housing costs doesn't solve the basic situation that a city is a very attractive place to live, and that many people would like to move there if they could.

Housing cost is currently the way of deciding who gets to live there, and what they're willing to give up for it.

</comment><comment><USER21> Cost of moving: Lost income while looking for a new job at the new location, security deposit, first and last month's rent up front, moving truck, loss of income while moving, lack of security at new job, emotional toll if also moving children, loss of pay due to a different cost of living...

Sure, why not move all the time?

The cost of moving is never trivial, and it requires you to be prepared with sufficient money in your savings account. If you don't have that savings and you don't have a support net to catch you, you're not going to be able to move and remain off the street.

</comment><comment><USER22> Family ties are indeed extremely strong. However, here in Idaho we have lots of former Californians and it seems that it only takes one family member to make the "leap" to move up here, and before long (usually within 5 years) the other members start to see the benefit and move themselves.

My grandmother just moved here after living 80 years in CA. The family next door is 4 generations, each gradually moving up from CA.

The reason is the same: Family. But once someone made the leap, the others followed.

</comment><comment><USER23> That was easy: "The same reason they can't just go to an ATM and pull out more money. Don't well-off folks ask the darnedest questions?"

</comment><comment><USER24> As a side note, over the weekend I a report that said housing sales have gone soft on the coasts. The reason given was the recent changes in the tax laws. Perhaps, if prices drop so might the cost of rentals?

It continues to amaze me how the (policy) talk is pro-affordable housing, but the walk is more wealth - of which property ownership is a great conduit - <USER2> few hands.

<comment><USER15> I think the government is going to stop subsidizing ocean and waterfront properties. Not sure if this is a cause or the cause.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> One of the most striking things I learned about the Rwandan genocide[1] was how many Tutsi simply refused to flee, even temporarily, even in the depths of the slaughter. Not because they wanted to make a stand or affirmatively resist, but seemingly out of some ineffable resistance to change. AFAICT, the same phenomenon has happened in every other genocide, not to mention other large scale disasters.

Economists can and should debate and quantitatively measure varying aspects of and reasons for the phenomenon. But from a high-level public policy perspective the reasons are largely irrelevant; there's simply no denying that on the whole most people by their nature are extremely averse to moving, even in the face of impending death. Any public policy predicated on intragenerational migration in response to run-of-the-mill structural economic dislocation is doomed to fail. Many people will follow straight-forward economic incentives. But a very large number won't, even to their extreme and readily foreseeable detriment. That makes failure inevitable.

[1] See "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families" ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Wish_to_Inform_You_That_Tom...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Wish_to_Inform_You_That_Tomorrow_We_Will_Be_Killed_with_Our_Families))

<comment><USER13> I guess "people will move and the economy will readjust" is the new "let them eat cake," then, isn't it?

<comment><USER26> As Sam Kinison used to say: "Move to the food!!!".

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKNoJ2BzSRU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKNoJ2BzSRU)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Ironically, the source they cite on California domestic migration indicates that, in lots of cases, they do, and that's pretty much exactly what is driving migration out of CA (and, conversely, that people who _can_ afford it are moving in, but there are fewer of those.)

</comment><comment><USER28> Not much to add, except that this article makes me sad. My family struggled with housing costs when I was a child, but as a newly arrived immigrant family to a city with a tiny minority population, the lack of social support was felt more keenly than the cost of rent.

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't think they've address some other factors. It's really scary to move especially when you are struggling. Taking a risk like that when you're only just making ends meet isn't the kind of things we humans do well.

</comment><comment><USER30> Moving itself is a cost, reduced but not eliminated if you are willing and able to abandon literally all your possessions and then live precariously at your destination while the move is sorted out.

</comment><comment><USER31> Because those places that are cheaper are usually cheaper for a reason. And generally they don't have the same job opportunities that the more expensive places do.

</comment><comment><USER32> No jobs.

<comment><USER33> I disagree. I live and work in the Jacksonville, FL area and it's both extremely affordable and abundant in jobs, both tech and otherwise. They can't get enough qualified candidates to move here.

<comment><USER34> Do those plenty of jobs pay as well, adjusted for cost of living?

<comment><USER33> That wasn't the question posed by the article, but let's just say I'm able to easily support a family of 6 and live in a 3400sqft colonial brick house on a half acre, and I'm under 35 yrs old.

So while I might make a little more than half what typical FAANG engineers do, I get to work on IMO more exciting greenfield projects and live within minutes of the beach and 2 blocks from a river.

<comment><USER35> The article does mention that actually, though its not the primary theme.

"And low-skilled jobs in a city like San Francisco pay some of the highest wages in the country; the minimum wage here is twice what it is in much of America, a real benefit that weighs against the high housing costs."

<comment><USER36> It is only relevant if you want to work such a job. Most people I know prefer something less back breaking and soul crushing.

There is one other thing these communities lack - educational opportunities. Especially universities...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I could buy a ton of homes in Flint michigan. I wouldn't have a job though.

<comment><USER38> If you could afford to buy a ton of homes in Flint, Michigan then you could likely also afford to have the job of helping to fix Flint, Michigan, which I imagine while less lucrative, would still provide subsistence.

Sometimes we have to recognize the power we wield and use it to perform selfless acts.

Not saying you should move there and do that, but just that you're wrong in saying that you'd have no job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> for me,

no job, no connection

<comment><USER33> I can relate to the connection part. We rely on family a lot, and that is something we couldn't replace if we relocated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> It's frankly pretty silly when people complain about prices (housing prices, prescription drug prices, gas prices, etc.)

The issue with housing prices is that there are a lot of government policies that have the (intentional or unintentional) effect of increasing housing prices. Some of them are as follows:

\- Making mortgage interest tax deductible

\- Special tax treatment for the sale of a primary residence

\- Laws limiting how many people can cohabitate in one building, or similar laws that enforce this more softly through limits on street parking.

\- Rent control laws which suppress the price of rental units, limiting the incentive for landlords to build new units.

\- Laws that limit the construction (or add extra costs/requirements) to projects that would add more residential units.

\- The utter failure of highway infrastructure during rush hour, which adds hours of commute time for short distance travel, drastically increasing the price of residences that do not require a highway commute.

\- The failure of municipalities to provide adequate and affordable parking and public transit, adding inconvenience to many neighborhoods which drives up prices in others.

\- The failure of law enforcement to create a safe environment in many neighborhoods that offer more affordable housing, leading to increased crime and under-investment in improving and expanding areas that would otherwise be highly desirable for residences.

\- Laws that create building code requirements that are not based on sound engineering or safety principles but which create lucrative contracts for certain professions in the building trade... These increase the cost of new construction and make many retrofitting/repurposing projects impossible.

There are many, many more.

<comment><USER41> All you have to do is look at the final effect, Z. The stated purpose X may or may not be the intended purpose Y. Even if stated purpose X genuinely = intended purpose Y, the actual effect Z matters the most. You're spot on.

<comment><USER42> I'm not sure what you mean by 'actual effect Z', but citizens and their local governments had many valid reasons as to why they enacted each of those policies and constraints. For many people, the value of those policies will be more important than having more-affordable housing.</comment></comment></comment>


Freshbooks Iphone App - <AUTHOR> http://www.freshbooks.com/blog/2012/08/28/introducing-the-new-freshbooks-app-for-iphone/

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know how many times I had to set a reminder to track time with a client. Now I can do it immediately on the go. I've been waiting for this app!</comment>


DigitalOcean Connectivity Issues - <AUTHOR> https://status.digitalocean.com/ <comment><USER2> The HN title i clicked said 5 hours, is that true? Holy cow.

 _edit_ : I guess it is, the Tweet is from 12AM (PST) and it's currently 6AM, yet their status page shows mostly down regions. Though hard to say exactly what the red x means.

<comment><USER3> Not sure why the title was changed. They have been down for about 6 hours now, and people globally are reporting the inability to connect to their droplets. Their status updates are meaningless.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep post titled got edited (maybe mods ?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> my droplets are all fine, and were running the whole time. the issue seems to be connectivity related, as i can only ssh into most of them, and they've been coming back online in groups...

</comment><comment><USER5> They have updated the status page with more information. Apparently, they had a major power outage that took out multiple redundant power sources.

<comment><USER6> At exactly midnight local time at the data center? Something doesn't add up. This is going to be one fun post mortem...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> And the updates from their status channels are a joke.

<comment><USER7> Less of a joke than AWS green ticks.

<comment><USER3> nah, I think they are about the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Prod database deleted again? ;)

Bit of a shame to happen so close to the last one.

<comment><USER9> Lol

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Who to use as a backup to DO, is Linode a good choice?

<comment><USER11> Linode, except for DDoSs, has been incredibly solid.

<comment><USER12> Aside from the DDOS incidents Linode is generally very solid in connectivity department, but their communication skills when things go wrong leaves a lot of be desired - often their status page is 20+ minutes behind and has omissions. The way they handled communication on security issues was equally poor.

<comment><USER10> I'm hoping one or the other will be available at any given time, currently I have 2 droplets with Route53 doing the failover but its still all eggs in one basket. If only we could migrate a backup over to linode/secondary provider would be much easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My droplets are still down 5 hours later.</comment>


Programming Puzzles and Our Mismatch Problem - <AUTHOR> http://foohack.com/2008/07/programming-puzzles-and-our-mismatch-problem/#p73_some_puzzles

<comment><USER2> projecteuler.net is my favorite for sharpening my programming, or for learning a new language.</comment>


Traditional Scottish culture is mostly fictional - <AUTHOR> http://www.nysun.com/arts/hugh-trevor-ropers-the-invention-of-scotland/82417/

<comment><USER2> "Until the 18th century, no one north of the Tweed had ever seen a kilt"

This is misleading. As noted later in the article, highlanders wore plaids, which are basically kilts with an over-the-shoulder piece that can be used as a cloak (it's actually all one big piece of cloth). If you saw a plaid, you'd say, "that's a kilt." Go to a Renaissance Festival and you'll see them all over the place.

<comment><USER3> I don't understand how the transformation from plaids to kilts (a component of plaids), in response to a changing environment, is not 100% Scottish culture? It seems like this is just hairsplitting. An incendiary version of events with the goal of obtaining a catchy book title.

P.S.

I am not even a little bit Scottish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Yes, he admits, the English "have created one of the great literatures of > the world. Yet, have they a single myth that they can call their own?"

Yes, Beowulf. There were probably many others of its kind that were lost when the Anglo-Saxons became Christian. It would violate a lot of what we know about psychology if there were any culture that never had any indigenous mythology.

<comment><USER5> But the events of Beowulf happened in Scandinavia. The poem itself was written in England, though. Probably.

Not that I think it matters much: I suppose only those cultures that have existed entirely in isolation really have truly unique myths, and that isn't very many cultures. And maybe not all of those unique cultures, either, given how many themes are found in the mythology of very different peoples.

<comment><USER4> Right, which presumably means that the tale originated before the Saxons invaded Great Britain. But nonetheless the version we know is told in Old English and not any of its continental predecessors, and its earliest manuscripts are all found in Britain. It isn't disqualified from being uniquely English by the fact that it derives from earlier times in Scandinavia any more than Mormonism is disqualified from being uniquely American by the fact that it derives from earlier times in Jerusalem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Incidentally, a lot of the traditional culture in most countries is fictional. In Europe in particular, a lot of it was made up in the nineteenth century, when there was a huge wave of antiquarianism.

<comment><USER7> >huge wave of antiquarianism

I would call it nationalism. Medieval Europe had no notion of nations. The Dutch national hero, for example, is Prince of Orange, a small sunny principality in South of France.

Throughout the history people associated themselves with their Sovereign, who could be a Spanish king in the Dutch case, or some German duke in case of Italians etc.

Then suddenly in the 19th century there was huge social demand for an independent nation-state. And that demand has met its supply in the form of national legend building.

Scots got their kilts (tartan originally was cloth supplied to colonies), Finns got their national epos written by a single guy, Russians got their national literature written by people who spoke French most of time.

An important lesson is that perception is reality and the one who controls (writes) the history can shape our self-identify.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Bit of an exaggeration to say "mostly fictional" isn't it? Boece published his fictional 900-year history only 30 years after Columbus set off around the world.

In any case, Trevor-Roper published some of the papers this book was based on back in the 1970s and Boece's work wasn't the only record we have of that period of time.

</comment><comment><USER9> On a related note, nobody in Ireland appears to say, "Top o' the mornin to ya!"

But they do get drunk a lot.

</comment><comment><USER10> Whatever next? The Stone of Destiny is a fake? There's no Loch Ness Monster?</comment>


The Pirate Bay down, forever? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.brokep.com/2014/12/09/the-pirate-bay-down-forever/http://blog.brokep.com/2014/12/09/the-pirate-bay-down-forever/ <comment><USER2> In the last 8 years the pirate bay hasn't changed? It went open source and embraced magnet links entirely. Making it so that almost nothing was being hosted on the server itself. You can download the entire pirate bay in 90MB to put one up of your own. There are hundreds of pirate bays all over the world running on almost nothing allowing everyone to download the same things at the same speeds.

[edit: It didn't go open source.]

To suggest the pirate bay hasn't done anything is just lame. Not as lame as sending 20 something's to jail over it but getting there.

The ads were because of legal defence fees, which can be huge.

<comment><USER3> The fact that it's hosting torrents in flat files or in database rows seems like a minor technical difference to me. Apart from that, the same broken UI doesn't seem to have changed much in the past 8 years. I didn't know that TPB was open source... surprised that the community didn't try to improve the UX a bit.

<comment><USER4> The thing is that to download a torrent, the absolute minimum amount of information you need is the torrent hash. The torrent hash is on the order of ~40 characters long, requiring no other information. All you have to do is paste that short sting into a torrent client to download a set of files.

Are we really going to say that these 40 character strings are illegal to share? If I paste the hash for the latest blockbuster in this comment, can legal action be taken against me?

<comment><USER5> It's sad that I have to beat that tired old drum again, but in law, _intent matters_ (yes I have a law degree but I think it's fair to say that one doesn't need one to know that). After 15 years I should have been desensitized by farcically naive 'reasoning' (or I should say, farcically naive sophistry, because let's face it, that's what it is) like 'they don't post torrents, the users do' and 'how can a small string be illegal' but it still annoys me.

At the risk of going down the shitty analogy path, let's consider 'How can putting just a tiny bit of lead into somebody's head be illegal? It's only _115 grain_! I mean, of course, putting 500 grain into somebody would be illegal, but if I put only 115 grain of lead into somebody, can legal action be taken against me?' Really?

<comment><USER6> Maybe a better analogy would be hiring a hall for a music copiers swap meet and charging advertisers for wall space around the hall?

Now, as crimes go I happen to think TPB are far less guilty of offences against humanity than - say - the bankers who cause the 2008 meltdown, or the torturers at the CIA.

And it's also debatable just how many sales of mainstream CDs are lost due to piracy.

But I know a couple of small music software/plugin devs who shut up shop because piracy killed their revenue stream, and it just wasn't worth their time any more.

So it's counterfactual for the supporters to pretend there are no negative consequences to file sharing, and it's all about heroically sticking it to The Man.

It really isn't.

<comment><USER7> > piracy killed their revenue stream

I hear about things like this every once in a while, but where's the proof?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can anybody explain what's the fuzz regarding pirate bay? I mean, there are tons of good torrent sites and search engines everybody use every day... I don't even remember when I last time used TPB...

<comment><USER9> The authorities, indeed even the Movie industry, don't care about the niche search engines and torrent sites that the 1% of people into the scene use, they care about the big ones that 99% of the people use.

By shutting down TPB, they've just eliminated the site that >99% of people are using, which is all that really matters to them.

Moral: Stay off the Radar of those in power, and you can do whatever you want.

<comment><USER10> Alternative explanation: when trying to solve a problem attack the biggest issue first. If TPB was the torrent site for a majority of users (and especially for casual users) then you attack that site first. Now that it is down you move on to #2, #3, etc. The niche sites are less important than the mega-site, but that does not mean that they are not on someone's radar or not going to be next on the list. The "why go after me when TPB is out there doing much worse to you" excuse also goes away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there any existing project or PoC for a blockchain based torrent index ?

<comment><USER10> I do just love how people think a blockchain is magic crypto fairy dust that solves all problems...

<comment><USER12> If you're trying to create a distributed, censorship resistant public record then it's a pretty sensible approach to investigate.

<comment><USER13> Only in the general sense that bitcoin is a system with some desirable properties of a decentralized torrent index. The list of all software with features desirable in a distributed torrent index is as long as my arm and it's arguably sensible to "investigate" any one of them.

But the grandparent poster didn't name many technologies, they singled out the bitcoin blockchain specifically. A technology that through the popularity of its function has made it a popular target to have other things bolted onto. But popularity of the blockchain hammer does not turn all problems into nails.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This article doesn't get the point. It's old, doesn't change, conservative and outdated? Stop using it.

The big problem is that TPB was taken offline not because it was buggy but because helped people copyrighted content.

<comment><USER15> Thank you so much.

This is a seriouis strawman avoiding the actual issues of censorship, big govt overreach, abuse of power, and all that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> How hard would it be to build a distributed hosting system for all the torrents ever on Piratebay ?

Considering how one poster here says that all of the torrents upto 2013 fit into 90 MB , its quite feasible. It could tunnel over TOR to make tracking things a little more difficult.

<comment><USER17> Sure. But how would one manage updates? I.e. accepting new torrents.

<comment><USER16> How about just falling back to Gnutella P2P for the torrent hosting layer.

<comment><USER17> Is that really a viable alternative? My impression is that people left the Gnutella network due to instability and floods of crap files.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> URLs to alternatives?

<comment><USER19> Sometimes if you Google something with the keyword 'torrent' (e.g. "sia 1000 forms of fear torrent") even if Google doesn't give you anything relevant, you might get a Google results page that has a DMCA notice at the bottom; click that, it'll take you to Chilling Effects, and the badly-written (or excellently-written, depending on your POV) DMCA letters will have _huge_ lists of alternatives to TPB, and relevant links to what you were Googling for. e.g.

[https://www.chillingeffects.org/notices/10197331](https://www.chillingeffects.org/notices/10197331)

[https://www.chillingeffects.org/notices/10203483](https://www.chillingeffects.org/notices/10203483)

[https://www.chillingeffects.org/notices/1135322](https://www.chillingeffects.org/notices/1135322)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The article mentions KLF. What is that?

<comment><USER21> I just want to add a link to the previous replies:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manual](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manual)

The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way) is a 1988 book by The Timelords (Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty), better known as The KLF. It is a step by step guide to achieving a No.1 single with no money or musical skills, and a case study of the duo's UK novelty pop No. 1 "Doctorin' the Tardis".

It is a great read and well worth tracking down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Another fight against windmills? Google works just fine for searching .torrent files, I don't even get redirected to TPB lately.

</comment><comment><USER23> I must agree; the ads are way too crazy.

<comment><USER24> Maybe I'm one of these "jerks", but it's always amusing to me when people complain about ads on the internet, while there are so many different ad- blockers out there.

<comment><USER25> I never understood ad blockers or the people promoting ad blockers.

People complain about ads, yet they are unwilling to pay for content, with the popularity of something like ThePirateBay being testament to that.

And then, I can understand that many websites are showing distasteful ads, but if you don't like it, then don't use those websites. This gives a chance to competing websites, being practically like voting with your wallet. Because in truth, ad blockers help the companies that are showing distasteful ads, just like how piracy helped companies like Microsoft.

EDIT: if you're gonna down-vote, at least mention why, otherwise I'm going to assume you are a just freeloader that wants everything for free.

<comment><USER26> > yet they are unwilling to pay for content

Hold it right there. The problem is that there is usually no way to pay. There is currently no way to automatically reimburse website owners when you just read a blogpost from them without going through the trouble of finding a donate button or emailing them for their paypal.

I do use ad blockers and I donate whenever I find something useful. I pirate books and music and I want to pay when I like it.

> don't use those websites

That's not always as easy as it sounds. I've tried DuckDuckGo for weeks but I just can't get the same results, so I'm back to Google now. I'd love to pay google, but I can't and they keep serving me ads.

Now Google is a pretty extreme example with all the data gathering, but you're almost forced to use some websites because it's a social norm (without Facebook, I'd miss a lot of events and messages from the school group). And you can't exactly decide whether ads on the page will be annoying before clicking on a link from Hacker News.

> ad blockers help the companies that are showing distasteful ads, just like > how piracy helped companies like Microsoft

That is actually a good point, I hadn't thought of that before. Then again, I hardly use Microsoft products (just skype, but I could switch over to mumble any minute), but I see what you mean.

<comment><USER25> If you pay or donate for the content you like, I've got no beef against you.

Personally, I do pay Google for using Google Apps and I'm not getting ads in Gmail or the other services part of their Apps.

Indeed, I still get ads in their Search, but that doesn't bother me personally and AdBlock Plus from what I've seen is allowing those ads in their default configuration. YouTube is the one Google service that greatly annoys me, which is the reason for why I've searched for alternatives and so I eventually ended up using Vimeo, SoundCloud and Google Music - US citizens have many more alternatives available, unfortunately for me I'm being blocked because I'm not from the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> [https://tpb.pirati.cz/](https://tpb.pirati.cz/) FTW

<comment><USER28> Search works, but links to the torrent's pages are broken.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I was kind of expecting them to build fully distributed system. But I got really disappointed when they claimed that "reverse proxy" / "load balancing" is latest in distributed systems.

</comment><comment><USER30> I reckon the next big torrent site will be KickAss torrents @ kat.ph. Shame to see the guys behind TPB disenfranchised - they've earned it I guess from all the stress they've endured.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm not familiar with Peter Sunde, but this sounds a lot like Peter isn't attached to Pirate Bay at all anymore.

<comment><USER32> Correct. He has done time and decided to move on with his life. Stopped being involved with TPB in 2009 except for occasionally blogging about it like he did here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> What is so special in TPB? I can't figure out.

I have seen a dozen of better services. Any hidden feature I don't know?

<comment><USER34> _What is so special in TPB?_

Everybody's heard of it, you didn't have to dig through obscure sites to find it, it was always there and always worked.

<comment><USER33> Hmm... now I got it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> [http://unblockedpiratebay.com/](http://unblockedpiratebay.com/) FTW

<comment><USER35> That's just a proxy service. Run a search, it'll fail because there is nobody home. Am I missing something?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36>

</comment><comment><USER37> 1 down, 99999 left.

</comment><comment><USER38> The blog title contain a question mark, I guess this HN topic should also have it...

<comment><USER39> Yes, this should be edited. It is _very_ misleading.

Rings of someone trying to get more people to click the link because instead of asking if it might be happening, it sounds like it definitely is going down forever.

It needs to be changed.

<comment><USER40> exactly!!! this ^

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> NICE TITLE

HN: "The pirate bay down forever (Peter Sunde's blog)"

Peter Sunde's Blog: "The Pirate Bay down, forever?"

<comment><USER42> I'm genuinely curious as to why an admin hasn't changed this title yet.

Certainly enough people have commented about it and it is a grossly misleading omission.

<comment><USER43> Yeah pretty much the silliest thing about HN now - the endless title tweaking by the mods.

And to what end? More than once the title has changed so significantly I thought it was an entirely new article.

<comment><USER42> I agree there should be something that signifies a changed title(perhaps just an appended asterisk) but I also think it is useful and oftentimes necessary functionality.

How would it be 'silly' to add the question mark to the end of this posts title? Especially given that HN guidelines explicitly state that titles should be the headline of the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> He never asserts that TPB is down forever. Misleading title.

</comment><comment><USER45> Fix the title, please, its misleading.

<comment><USER46> It's already back up: [https://thepiratebay.cr/](https://thepiratebay.cr/)

<comment><USER47> No, that's a proxy. Searches don't actually work because the main site is down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> What's that rule again? The one where if a title ends in a question mark, it can generally be answered with 'No'?

<comment><USER49> Betteridge's Law of Headlines:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Extremely misleading title...

</comment><comment><USER51> umm.... this works: [https://thepiratebay.cr/](https://thepiratebay.cr/)

Or is this not the "original" TPB?

<comment><USER52> This is just a proxy. It's down when the main site is down (except for some static things, like the homepage)

Try to search a torrent on it, it will fail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Well, one shouldn't confuse middle age crisis with the failure of his project.

</comment><comment><USER54> Sometimes I really don't get why stuff get upvoted and frontpaged on HN.

<comment><USER55> I feel as if some links, even when poor, are upvoted in order to have a comment discussion on the subject they speak about.

<comment><USER56> comments alone increase rank, but too many look like spam and therefore get stooped</comment></comment></comment>


How to sell SaaS, based on our experience - <AUTHOR> http://colibritool.com/blog/how-to-sell-saas-based-on-our-experience

<comment><AUTHOR> You are welcome Lauren. Some others are worth trying as well. For example, I am super impressed with Klaviyo.com lately. It's probably one of the best marketing automation tools for almost any SaaS.

</comment><comment><USER2> Thanks for the useful tools! Mixpanel sounds good.</comment>


I'm back. This time without Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.ahmedatia.com/Blog/IamBackWithoutGoogle.aspx

<comment><USER2> > Please think for a minute in your web activities, you will get to realize > that you are not roaming the internet but instead you are roaming Google > Services and many others served by Google Services. Please think for a > minute in Google Search, Gmail, YouTube, Blogger, Google+, Analytics, > AdSense, AdWords, Docs, Drive, Chrome, Maps, Hangouts, and Talk etc...

This is an argument I see a lot - just think and you will realize how right I am. It is often used in place of an evidence-based argument and is an appeal TO your logical brain FROM someone's emotional brain.

It always makes me uncomfortable, because it's not far from "search your heart/feelings" \- the basis of any logic- or evidence-free argument. It also seems to have the negative undertone of "if you DON'T agree with me, you obviously can't "think" on my level."

It's not that there isn't evidence of Google being less-than savory - I would argue there is - but I'd research that argument first, not just appeal for emotional sympathies.

<comment><USER3> > This is an argument I see a lot - just think and you will realize how right > I am. It is often used in place of an evidence-based argument and is an > appeal TO your logical brain FROM someone's emotional brain.

I think there's a lot of evidence that people don't respond to logic-based appeals as logically as one would hope. Often, confronted with strong evidence that contradicts people's deeply-held beliefes or feelings, they'll just double-down on those beliefs. Climate change is the most obvious example. While as a scientist I'm sympathetic to your argument, I think the jury is still out regarding the most effective way to go about convincing people to change their beliefs or behavior.

EDIT: typos, reword for clarity

<comment><USER2> I read those studies - that in the face of evidence, people cling to their disproven beliefs even more [0]. It has been coined "The Backfire Effect" [1] They were the scariest and most fascinating I've read in a long while.

[0] [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/antivaccination- pa...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/antivaccination-parents-dig- in-heels-even-after-receiving-medical-info/)

[1] (PDF) [http://web.archive.org/web/20110511211719/http://www- persona...](http://web.archive.org/web/20110511211719/http://www- personal.umich.edu/~bnyhan/nyhan-reifler.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I agree somewhat with the sentiment. Either Google or Facebook becomes a self contained environment that many people just stay in. Still, these are useful services.

I advise non-tech family and friends that they use a separate browser for Google and Facebook, and just use that browser when on those web properties.

For normal web use, use a different browser, with whatever privacy plugins that meet your needs.

</comment><comment><USER5> > I dropped Google Analytics, Google CDN, and Google Web Fonts. This is for > ATIA Web Space. But moreover, I dropped Google Search as the-go-to search > engine.

Need alternatives to each of those?

[https://prism-break.org/en/](https://prism-break.org/en/)

</comment><comment><USER6> "I believe in Open Web, Open Web standards and Open Competition." \- Ahmed, developer of ASP.NET/Sharepoint solutions.

Oh, the irony.

<comment><USER7> Hey, I believe in exercise.

<comment><USER8> I don't mean to be rude but from what I've seen our SharePoint guy get drug through at past jobs, I'd rather get an exorcism than let anyone know I have any knowledge of SharePoint. (Nothing against the tool, everything against users and/or management.) It is like dealing with customers except the customers are your bosses who keep changing their minds. SharePoint can't read what's in your mind. Don't change requirements every week. :(

If anything, I feel sorry for SharePoint developers. It is almost like they're at the bottom of the barrel of developers (or should we say dev-ops since most ops won't touch SharePoint either).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I, too, have been trying to reduce my dependency on Google products. I won't focus on the why's; that's political and ultimately a personal choice. Instead, I would like to offer my experience in the process of switching.

Switching away from Google products has turned out to be far more difficult than anticipated. For me, personally, Firefox is a much worse experience than Chrome. It requires significant tweaks to be usable for me, which costs times and frustration, and is still not good enough. DuckDuckGo ended up greatly impeding my ability to work, because its results were so bad (for me, and my specific search topics). I haven't attempted to drop Gmail; can't imagine how much time that would cost me, not to mention the swarm of spam Google handles without batting an eye, but other services are likely to falter on. YouTube, well, all the shows I love to watch are on YouTube with no alternatives.

These things won't stop me from trying and, eventually, succeeding. However, it is frightening to see just how entrenched I have become in Google's products. And how sad the state of the competition is. The price of freedom.

<comment><USER10> > DuckDuckGo ended up greatly impeding my ability to work, because its results > were so bad (for me, and my specific search topics).

You might want to try DuckDuckGoog that lets you use DuckDuckGo for bang queries and Google for everything else, so you get the best of both worlds.

[http://www.duckduckgoog.com/browser](http://www.duckduckgoog.com/browser)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think privacy needs to be looked at in a different way. We are almost always being tracked and I find that I rather enjoy using Google products. However if there is a private matter of mine that requires the Internet at all I I fire up to browser and find the information I need to find. If is it less sensitive maybe I use a private Firefox session. Then finally if I am on the Internet and know that everything I am doing is clear of privacy concerns I being up Chrome and have a great experience (less so in a recent update). Snowden didn't talk to the Guardian on a Windows machine using Google Hangouts video chat. All I am saying is at least use some sense when your privacy is concerned and that doesn't mean you have to live in an Internet corner where no one can see you. Most people are kind, I promise.

<comment><USER12> _I think privacy needs to be looked at in a different way._

There are other averse effects than sacrificing privacy, which is a trade-off one could indeed make for the comfort of Google's services.

Another effect is that we are currently slowly moving towards an oligopoly when it comes to internet services. Some are intentional, such as shutting down XMPP federation, leaving us with closed ecosystems (Hangouts, Whatsapp, Skype) if you want to chat with most other friend. Others are more of a side- effect, for instance, it becomes harder and harder to run a small e-mail service, as it becomes more and more of a reputation system[1].

If we want the internet to be open for new competitors and services in the future, it's important that it doesn't become a small set of closed systems.

(I am a relatively happy user of Google's services, but I also see the dangers.)

[1] If some spammer uses GMail, it's unlikely that Outlook.com will block other e-mails coming from Google's SMTP servers. If that spammer uses Fastmail, the big players don't mind to block SMTP servers for some time. As far as I understand, this is the reason why Fastmail partitions new users together (server-wise). It's less likely five year paying customer suddenly turns into a spammer and you don't want long-term customers to become victims of a spammer, by having their SMTP server blocked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There are plenty of reasons to beware putting too much faith in Google, but the primary reason given by this article appears to be "because they have a lot of services you find useful". Not sure how much I buy into that.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP: Actually this is one reason but too many reasons are there, it might be not that much clear in my post. All the time I hear people from Google promote for open internet and open standards but on the other hand they violate too many rights when it comes to online identity and privacy. And in the same time I hear that a lot, "I can't drop Google as my primary search engine or Analytics etc..." I believe that we can.

<comment><USER13> You'd likely be better served by including a list of alternatives, if the goal is to show people they can in fact switch. Not everybody knows about DuckDuckGo or similar alternatives.

<comment><AUTHOR> I already pointed in post to DuckDuckGo and StartPage ... totally agree with you to include as many alternatives, thanks a lot akerl.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's funny how people are scared about Google this and Google that, yet are okay with credit bureaus and credit card companies selling one's information to third parties. Very funny, I say.

<comment><USER15> I am not OK with credit card bureaus in any sense of the word. I hate their guts and I think their shitty technology has royally screwed me. And selling my information is certainly not OK. I use Google a lot, I just know that depending on one organization to fulfill one or more services often leads to shitty service or a very serious power imbalance. For example if your search results change their is nothing you can do because Google owns search so they don't even have to bother explaining it to you. Generally it feels like The Google is the most wonderful magical benevolent dictator ever. Still a dictator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Had to reload multiple times to get page loading, maybe try Cloudflare? But then we're back in the corporate fold..

<comment><USER12> Or just use a static site generator with nginx, does the job fine, even on modest hardware.

<comment><USER17> Jetty or Tomcat server static content fast too. I noticed his site appears to be written in ASP.NET, out of the frying pan into the fire.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Google isn't the problem anyway. Policy makers in the US and things like the US Patriot Act are the problem.

</comment><comment><USER19> _" I dropped Google Analytics, Google CDN..."_

Currently offline "Service Unavailable HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable."

Here's the google cache:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fcache.nevkontakte.com%2Fproxy.html#!go/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ahmedatia.com%2FBlog%2FIamBackWithoutGoogle.aspx)

Oh, the irony.

<comment><USER20> This is not irony. He drops a few Google services and yet other Google services are still in use. The Google cache would still work whether its web site was reporting a 503 or not.

The irony would be that by trying to reduce its reliance on Google he would actually make it more important. That's not the case, even if the 503 was really caused by him not using Google Analytics (I wonder how) or Google CDN.

<comment><AUTHOR> The 503 is there because currently my blog is hosted on shared hosting plan ... of course CDN is one approach to ensure availability of websites (I've not moved assets to any other CDN yet) but the point is to reduce reliance on Google Services to consider many other alternatives here and there.</comment></comment></comment>


Why China Bullies - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/china/2020/06/18/why-china-bullies <comment><AUTHOR> No paywall link: [http://archive.is/ANVSs](http://archive.is/ANVSs)

<comment><USER2> On iOS' Safari, you can bypass the paywall if you activate reader mode before the paywall finishes loading</comment></comment>


Improve your revenue, create invoice and get paid – Pi.TEAM - <AUTHOR> https://www.pi.team <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, I am sharing my first SaaS accounting/invoicing software link [https://www.pi.team](https://www.pi.team) . It is much simpler and faster to use than quickbooks or xero. Create invoices, and get paid online using your favorite payment gateway. Obviously it is a new product and not mature like them. However, created this MVP in 2 months :) considering the fact that started learning coding around 4 months back. Please check and provide your suggestions. Thanks.</comment>


You can now take up to 12 ounces of hand sanitizer through airport security - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/13/21179120/tsa-hand-sanitizer-liquid-size-airport-screening <comment><AUTHOR> Turns out airport security theatre is an utter scam, who knew?</comment>


Show HN: 1AppMode – MacOS X Single Application Mode Revisited - cha-cho https://github.com/Cha-cho/1AppMode <comment><AUTHOR> Is this different than pressing CMD+OPTION+H ?

<comment> cha-cho It's not dramatically different than hitting CMD+OPTION+H every time you switch tasks. It is a little bit easier on your fingers though.</comment></comment>