Show HN: Want an idea for your startup? Generate it automatically here - <AUTHOR>

Here is something I made for fun, after getting annoyed by hearing numerous ideas proposed by various people.<p>http://www.kidura.com/front_pages/misc_fun/ <comment><USER2> Here is your pitch: WhizBird is a exhilarating startup that is a complete game changer. I founded WhizBird after realizing that there is an untapped 200 billion dollar opportunity in Cat Toys.

I can't tell you the details about our platform because we are currently in stealth mode, but we are the only player in Cat Toys which we will completely disrupt in 2 months. At WhizBird we believe that everyone deserves breakfast. Our product will bring together Big Data, Mustache and Handlebars to introduce synergies that will democratize, and revolutionize Cat Toys.

This idea is so potent yet so deceptively simple that it has the capacity to produce an unlimited amount of profit.

We haven't created our product yet, so we are looking a real Django Dominator to join our team so they can build it for us. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for you to be a part of the next big thing. We have free food, unlimited vacation, generous equity compensation. Also each week we give you a new Apple TV just for being amazing.

If you know Django and 'want in', just tweet me and you'll be on our uber game-changing, revolutionary, disruptive team in no time, helping us change the world!

</comment><comment><USER3> Here is your pitch: Boom.io is a Sublime startup that is a complete game changer. I founded Boom.io after realizing that there is an untapped 504000 billion dollar opportunity in Education.

I can't tell you the details about our platform because we are currently in stealth mode, but we are the only player in Education which we will completely disrupt in 2 months. At Boom.io we believe that everyone deserves Freedom. Our product will bring together WebGL, Agile and Lean to introduce synergies that will democratize, and revolutionize Education.

This idea is so potent yet so deceptively simple that it has the capacity to produce an unlimited amount of profit.

We haven't created our product yet, so we are looking a real Angular.js Samurai to join our team so they can build it for us. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for you to be a part of the next big thing. We have free food, unlimited vacation, generous equity compensation. Also each week we give you a new Puck Mouse just for being amazing.

If know Angular.js and 'want in', just tweet me and you'll be on our uber game-changing, revolutionary, disruptive team in no time, helping us change the world!

</comment><comment><USER4> ok lets go:

This is my pseudo google glass startup called "Hulioly" at [http://glass- apps.org](http://glass-apps.org)

Hulioly is a hillarious startup that is a complete game changer. I founded Hulioly after realizing that there is an untapped 225252334 billion dollar opportunity in internet.

I can't tell you the details about our platform because we are currently in stealth mode, but we are the only player in internet which we will completely disrupt in 4 months. At Hulioly we believe that everyone deserves sex. Our product will bring together big data, social media and google glass to introduce synergies that will democratize, and revolutionize internet.

This idea is so potent yet so deceptively simple that it has the capacity to produce an unlimited amount of profit.

We haven't created our product yet, so we are looking a real ajax gangam to join our team so they can build it for us. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for you to be a part of the next big thing. We have free food, unlimited vacation, generous equity compensation. Also each week we give you a new iwatch just for being amazing.

If know ajax and 'want in', just tweet me and you'll be on our uber game- changing, revolutionary, disruptive team in no time, helping us change the world!

</comment><comment><USER5> Generated : "...We need a real PHP batman to join us..." :P</comment>


How to Design for the Modern Web - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/s/silicon-satire/how-to-design-for-the-modern-web-52eaa926bae2 <comment><USER2> Satire like this is nice to see. It does seem like 'modern' designs like Reddit are repeating the obnoxious user-hostile behavior that older companies were ignorant enough to think they could get away with in the web 1.0-early 2.0 era.

Bullying your users with dark patterns must be effective, even if it is distasteful to me.</comment>


Changes at YouTube - Phasing You out of Youtube (vid) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V025E_b5I4g&feature=player_embedded <comment><USER2> Wow. The creator of this video has a rather large sense of entitlement.

<comment><USER3> Really. I completely agree. It's great to give feedback to a company on their products and services, but to tell the company 'we want this back, too bad if you can't make money off it', is going a bit far. He's gotta realize that if there is a market for the smaller channels, either YouTube will figure it out (maybe with his help), or some other company will serve the need. If not, than maybe there just isn't a market with a viable business model to make it work. He can't expect a company to keep loosing money just so he has a place to put his videos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> YouTube has to do this to dig out of their gigantic monetization hole:

<http://www.businessinsider.com/is-youtube-doomed-2009-4>

They have a net loss of _half a billion dollars a year_. Even at Google that's not the kind of number you can ignore.

Basically, YouTube gives a ton of revenue to small video producers who are popular in niches, but doesn't earn any money from those guys because advertisers are too scared to put ads on user-generated content. So instead of changing advertiser behaviour (which would be really hard), they are instead trying to funnel users to content that _can_ be easily monetized. It remains to be seen if this will work or just piss off their users and kill YouTube.

<comment><USER5> _They have a net loss of _half a billion dollars a year__

Repeating this ad infinitum doesn't make it true. A single report, from a single analyst, speculated that they may be losing that much.</comment></comment>


Why It's So Hard For NYC Startups To Hire Developers - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/why-its-so-hard-for-nyc-startups-to-hire-developers-2010-5

<comment><USER2> It's hard for startups everywhere to hire developers. SF, Boston, London, Cambridge, etc. There's a huge global shortage of developers.

I don't think people realize how fast the global demand for software developers is growing. In the UK it's now the 16th most common full-time occupation for men. The UK simply isn't producing developers anywhere fast enough to keep up with growth. I doubt any other country can either.

<comment><USER3> My husband and I are both programmers, and as he has dual UK/Canadian citizenship we were looking into a move to the UK. We found that developer salaries in the UK were shockingly low, even in comparison to Canada. (Which is itself not exactly high-wage compared to the US) Not to mention that the cost of living in the UK is extremely high. If there really is that much demand for programmers, it isn't reflected in salaries.

<comment><USER2> What sort of figures are you talking about ?

The UK varies quite a lot by location and field. In general for a experienced developer in London I'd expect a salary in the region of 35k-60k GBP/57k-96k CAD (the financial sector somewhat above this range; academia below it).

<comment><USER3> The salaries I saw advertised were mostly around the lower end of that range (~35k GBP) for London. Less elsewhere. In Canada, that's starting salary for someone fresh out of university. $80k-100k CAD would be a good salary for an experienced programmer.

Of course, that doesn't take into account the exorbitant cost-of-living and higher taxation in the UK. Plus, it seems like most of the programmer jobs are clustered in the most expensive area around London. Even if we didn't have to take a pay cut to live in the UK, our money would still buy far less than it does here.

<comment><USER2> 35k is what a graduate would get in the UK for somewhere like Google or a tech consultancy, but you wouldn't get that from most non-tech firms.

You're right most jobs are clustered around London though and due to the high rent of London it's definitely less affordable than Canada.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Twitter's explanation regarding the hijacked accounts - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/05/twitter-gets-hacked-badly/

<comment><USER3> "Not ready for prime time" because someone found a flaw in an admin tool? This is naive. For most of what TechCrunch _does_ consider "ready for prime time", there's no assurance that similar flaws don't exist. What has Yammer, Arrington's "can't live without it" enterprise Twitter clone, done to address this problem?

<comment><USER4> From the comments:

 _"Josh Walsh":_ TechCrunch hasn't ever been comprised in some way?

 _Arrington:_ not like this. plus, we're a BLOG.

well, if that's not an admission by Arrington that Twitter _is_ a big deal...

<comment><USER3> TechCrunch runs WordPress. I feel like it's pretty safe to say that they've been compromised in ways Arrington isn't ready to think about yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From Twitter:

"We plan to release a closed beta of the open authentication protocol, OAuth this month but it's important to note that this would not have prevented a Phishing scam nor would it have prevented these accounts from being compromised."

I have several friends who work at twitter, but I'm sorry, I have to disagree.

The fact that they use http auth for api access means that hundreds (or thousands) of people have had admin credentials with which they can go in and wreck havoc, doing exactly what we have seen today.

I like to integrate admin control into the normal site, so my lesson from this is: make it so the admin only portions of the page only when you are viewing through a VPN...

It isn't quite 2 factor (2 passwords - vpn then site - is equivalent to 1 password) but it makes it so intruders have to jump through two hoops - <USER2> which the VPN is normally harder to do)

<comment><USER3> I agree that management applications should always be out-of-band, but what do third-party applications have to do with the internal applications Twitter's support team uses to handle email address resets?

<comment><USER5> the "internal application" is <http://twitter.com/admin> and inline admin controls on the normal pages.

they might have more but in the past when twitter employees has showed screenshots at talks that is what they use.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, what I'm not following is what this has to do with OAuth and third-party applications.

<comment><USER5> Any admin user who uses a 3rd party app has to give their full credentials (username/password) to the service.

And they have to store them in plain text.

So if either: they are malicious, or they are attacked, the credentials are lost.

I'm also assuming (not blindly) that the twitter admins use/tryout many of the tools.

<comment><USER3> So that's a good point. Even if their admin tools needed to be inband, it's messed up if people are using the same creds to administer Twitter as they are in using the service or messing with third-party apps. We don't have any evidence that this is the case, but it's a good lesson to keep in mind. Thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Conversion rates for free software + paid software? - <AUTHOR>

We are currently getting 0.007% of visitors buying our software on our website.  We are also getting ~18% of visitors downloading the free edition.
Our sample size is pretty healthy (we are talking in the tens of thousands here not hundreds).
For other people who sell software online with a free edition available, would you be able to share your numbers?  To me the gap between 18% and 0.007% seems disproportionally large.  Can anyone tell me if this gap is too large? <comment><USER2> 18% was reasonable for BCC back when it was downloadable. I got approximately 1.5% of downloads to convert, so that would be about .27% as you are measuring it. Different markets, different acquisition strategies, and different apps will have _vastly_ different numbers here. It is also highly sensitive to time of the year in my market.

If you haven't looked at it before, optimizing a) the installation, b) the first run experience, and c) the checkout funnel (hint: start that funnel in the application, ideally roadblocking a customer from something they urgently want to do) produce big wins for comparatively little investment. For example, for ~3 hours teaching people how to install software, you can get a big win in successful installations. (You are likely counting 18% of visitors initiate downloads but, unless you take efforts otherwise, you have no clue how many downloads actually result in successful installations or executions of the product.) Try downloading Skype and steal everything they do.

You can _really_ increase download rates if you send targeted traffic at landing pages designed to encourage installation. (AdWords converted upwards of 25% for me, though I eventually "bid that down" by getting less qualified customers, because it was still profitable.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for delayed reply and thanks for taking the time to write! I read your BCC blog posts before in the past, it's very cool you take the time to post thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I can't comment on conversions with both a free version and non free, but I can comment on just a landing page optimized to sell. With very targeted traffic coming from a recommendation such as a positive blog or a glowing youtube review I've seen conversions of up to 20%. Very specifically targeted traffic without reviews (or what one might be called a pre-sell) can get up to 8% conversion, but that's if your software solves a really specific issue and you've got great copy hitting the benefits you will offer and a good funnel urging people to buy. If you're just getting people who are only vaguely related to the problem you're trying to solve, you will not even see 1% conversion.

This of course depends a lot on the price point, target audience, and most importantly source of traffic. If you're getting very targeted traffic and you've got a great landing page emphasizing the benefits, you will see better conversions if you're not hitting those points.

</comment><comment><USER4> I agree with landing page optimization but a few more questions to consider: What are you doing to up-sell post-signup? Are you holding webinars, doing newsletter campaigns? The sign up process should also be so simple. The problem I see so often is trying to get too much info about the customer upfront. Are you sending emails to free users incentivizing them to upgrade? Are you giving away too much in the free version that there is no incentive to upgrade? Understand how your customers are using the free version and let them know how much more they can do in the paid. I agree that less than 1% converting to paid compared to the 18% is too large.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Stupid error (posting at 5am lol) it's 0.7% not 0.007%.</comment>


Advice to Lawyers Suing Toyota - <AUTHOR> http://www.satisfice.com/blog/archives/420

<comment><USER2> I consider this advice to be evil. Are people looking to show that Toyota actually caused these accidents, or are they looking to pick apart potential flaws in testing processes and use those to imply that Toyota did something wrong? Truth, or smear for cash?

Simply put, this sounds like someone with an axe to grind who is more than happy to "stick it" to Toyota if it gets their point across.</comment>


Study: diet soda can really mess with your metabolism - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/8/10/16125654/study-diet-soda-can-mess-with-metabolism <comment><USER2> Why are all these studies always done so poorly?

One way to add another level to test the sweetness mismatch theory would be to try multiple sweeteners. She only tries sucralose. If others fail, her theory is probably wrong.

The article also says there was a higher metabolic response defined as using more calories to process the drinks at the 50-50 level. How does that lead to storing more calories? (I might be misunderstanding this part though).

And is the mismatch is worse at the 50-50 level then eating more carbs would be better (get you off that peak) so a full meal would vastly negate the effect?

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty interesting how fake sugar and carbs are worse then fake sugar alone.

I'm interested in keto diets and they use a lot of fake sugar in their dessert fat bombs which apparently may be better than fake sugar and carbs.

<comment><USER4> I eat keto and just cut the sweets - my goal was to be healthier and love longer and fake sugars didn't align with that. I used to have a big sweet tooth. I quickly adjusted and sweets now make me feel gross. Wouldn't change it for the world.

<comment><USER3> Wow! How long did it take ? I keep trying and failing because of candy and stress eating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm confused by what the take away is here.

\- 70 calories, this is the sugar equivalent? = high reward?

Why than no food with the diet coke? And does this make it worse than sugary drinks?</comment>


Systems Software Research Is Irrelevant - <AUTHOR> https://web.archive.org/web/20060420001914/http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~ejones/writing/systemsresearch.html <comment><AUTHOR> "Today's graduating PhDs use Unix, X, Emacs, and Tex. That's their world. It's often the only computing world they've ever used for technical work.

Twenty years ago, a student would have been exposed to a wide variety of operating systems, all with good and bad points.

New employees in our lab now bring their world with them, or expect it to be there when they arrive. That's reasonable, but there was a time when joining a new lab was a chance to explore new ways of working.

Narrowness of experience leads to narrowness of imagination."

<comment><USER2> Great excerpt.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you follow utilitarianism? If not what is your moral framework? - <AUTHOR> What are your thoughts on utilitarianism? Any other moral framework that you follow if not for utilitarianism? <comment><USER2> _What are your thoughts on utilitarianism?_

If you can implement that in a purely voluntary manner then I'm fine with it.

 _Any other moral framework that you follow if not for utilitarianism?_

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

</comment><comment><USER3> What I think of utilitarianism is that moral frameworks may be interesting philosophy and maybe even useful for groups to use when making decisions together, but are an unnecessary complication for individuals with a bit of a conscience.

The "golden rule" covers about 99.9% of ethical dilemmas I've faced in real life so far.</comment>


The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days - <AUTHOR> https://guzey.com/science/sleep/14-day-sleep-deprivation-self-experiment/ <comment><USER2> When I go many days in a row without enough sleep, I find that my cognitive abilities (i.e. what I am capable of doing) does not seem to significantly decline--as judged by things I build and people I interact with.

But, my endurance of focus (the amount of time for which I can perform at a high level) does suffer.

The weird thing is that it doesn't feel like I _can 't_ keep going... it's just that I sort of somehow don't keep going. I find my mind wandering more easily, checking in on social media more, and then time passing more quickly when I do. I'm more likely to look up from Twitter or HN and be surprised at the time.

In short I don't seem to be any dumber while doing something, but number of things I get done in a typical time periods declines.

As I have come to understand this impact, it has given me greater empathy for addicts. My brain doesn't feel like a tired muscle, or like I'm doing anything wrong in the moment. It's only later, when I look back, that I realize I was making bad decisions and losing time. It has just reinforced how hard it is to use decision-making to recover from a situation where the brain has already been compromised by bad decisions.

<comment><USER3> > I find that my cognitive abilities (i.e. what I am capable of doing) does > not seem to significantly decline

It's very common. Studies on sleep deprivation report that subjects do not feel their cognitive abilities decline. However, measuring cognition using objective tests does show a significant decrease in these abilities.

<comment><USER4> See also: "I'm better at pool after 3 beers."

Yeah, no you're not.

<comment><USER5> A few beers makes you better at anything hindered by anxiety. For many people, that's playing pool at the bar in front of others. Or speaking a foreign language. Or holding conversation.

<comment><USER6> I think a beer can help with anxiety. A few beers just results in overconfidence.

I will admit it helps with conversation if you don't normally talk and you're around equally drunk people, but a few beers plus a crowd of sober people doesn't work as well as most people think it does.

<comment><USER7> I would say it depends on your alcohol tolerance. I get tipsy if I have a beer. Other friends don't show any signs at 3 beers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Since a few years ago (when I read Why We Sleep [0]) I've made it my priority above all else to allow myself 8 hours of sleep, even if I don't 'use' all of it. With more sleep, an innumerable amount of things are better (as read in the book), but subjectively I noticed the following after about a month straight of good sleep:

* Pain was far more manageable (IBS, MMA injuries)

* Sleep was more restorative when I woke up

* Emotions far more regulated (less irritable)

* Quicker to come up with on the spot jokes, or come up with a refutation to an argument

* Gym performance +30% at least

* Gym recovery faster

* Short and long term memory improvement

* Less health flair ups

* Reduction in brain fog

It's hard to notice these differences subjectively unless you know what it's like when you're "optimized"

Following a keto (or carnivore with a focus on ketosis) diet leads to a further boost across the dimensions mentioned above.

I think many people outside of self-optimization don't realize what they're sacrificing when they choose to forego sleep. Even total productivity is enhanced, despite working less hours due to sleeping.

[0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We_Sleep](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We_Sleep)

<comment><USER9> The author of the OP is not a fan of Why We Sleep, having found many errors and misrepresentations [1].

[1] [https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/](https://guzey.com/books/why-we- sleep/)

<comment><USER10> I had just purchased and starting reading the book when this was first posted here. I haven't spent much time to look into either side, but I stopped reading the book because I felt like I may be filling my mind with false information. And I bought it in the first place thinking an expert was going to teach the most important things we know so far about sleep. It bums me to think about this.

<comment><USER11> I can summarize what both the original author, and what the person wrote criticizing agree on. Yes, sleep is required. Get enough sleep that _you_ feel rested.

A lot of the critique was around the 8 hours, and the conclusions about what happens if you get less.

Anecdotally, I never sleep 8+ hours. I also get up without an alarm clock every single day. I'm not going to stress that I normally sleep ~7 hours and feel rested when I wake up. I know on the rare occasions if I get less than 6 hours, I'm going to be really tired that night.

<comment><USER12> One problem with this approach is that if you've always had dysfunctional sleep, you don't understand what "feeling rested" really means. I had undiagnosed sleep apnea until my late 20s, and it was insane what a difference getting a CPAP made. I literally couldn't conceptualize how fatigued I had been all of my life until I had something to compare it against, and when I finally started getting restorative sleep my whole life changed.

<comment><USER13> How did you realize you needed to get a CPAP?

<comment><USER14> not OP, but if you have sleep apnea, you typically snore very loudly. You may not realize you're doing this because you're asleep and alone, but if you sleep with someone, they will definitely let you know something is wrong and a dr will tell you to get a CPAP machine.

<comment><USER15> It depends on the type. The most common type, Obstructive Sleep Apnea sounds way worse than loud snoring. If you've ever heard it, it's like the person is suffocating while they sleep (because they almost are).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > It seems that there's very high variation in how people respond to sleep > deprivation.

There you go. It's the tyranny of averages: when variation between humans is greater than the effect of the intervention.

This reminds me of reading _The How of Happiness_ and learning that happiness is basically 50% genetics, 10% circumstances and 40% behavior. The author frames that 40% as a really big number, but I thought about it the other way around: if you're unlucky enough to be born into the bottom decile of genetic happiness, then you could _do everything right_ and still be less happy than someone with really good happiness genes who does everything wrong.

Some people get smashed by any lack of sleep, and some people (most notably short sleepers) are totally fine with as little as 4 hours a night. There is no advice that works for both kinds, and formulating advice based on averages is committing a grave fallacy.

I suppose the world of health research is plagued by this erroneous assumption that humans are more or less the same. In some ways sure, but in many ways we are profoundly different.

<comment><USER17> I ain't no fancy pants happiness author but I'd posit that happiness is 70% stupidity and 30% circumstance.

You can be poor and happy or rich and happy, but the smarter you are the less likely either of those are true. Though being rich certainly helps.

<comment><USER7> Why would it be less likely to be rich and happy the smarter you are?

If you're smarter, it means you can learn more efficiently. If you learn more efficiently, you get a deeper understanding of the world.

If you understand how something works, you stop having the wrong expectations, so you're less likely to be unhappy.

<comment><USER18> > you stop having the wrong expectations, so you're less likely to be unhappy

This seems like a big leap in logic.

<comment><USER7> Can you point out how?

Here's an exaggerated example: are you upset because you can't fly like a bird? Probably not, because you know that the world doesn't work that way.

A more subtle example: If you understand why people act the way they act, you stop being angry when they act in a way that is harmful to others or themselves. It doesn't mean you just let them do it. You stop them if you can. But it doesn't make you unhappy. Just like it doesn't make you unhappy if a wild animal attacks you when go into its cage, for example.

<comment><USER18> If my dog or friend or family member would die, I'd be unhappy. Understanding that death is natural wouldn't do much to that unhappiness. Maybe someday I'd get over it, or maybe not, but either way, it wouldn't be because I gained some deeper understanding of life and death.

> it doesn't make you unhappy if a wild animal attacks you when go into its > cage

Maybe we have different definitions of unhappiness at play here, because being attacked by an animal would definitely make me unhappy. I mean at the moment it would mostly make me fear for my life, but afterward when dealing with the damages I got, I think I would be quite unhappy, and understanding that really I'm the one to blame wouldn't help. It could make me more unhappy, leaving me kicking myself for doing something so stupid.

I wouldn't blame the animal if that's what you mean, but that's different from happiness/unhappiness.

> are you upset because you can't fly like a bird

I think that's more because my hopes and dreams are shaped by the environment that I've grown up in and, living amongst other humans that can't fly like a bird, the possibility of doing that has never occurred to me, at least not for seriously enough to become an issue of happiness.

Had I been a born an elephant with huge ears that all my so-called elephant friends would torment me for... yeah it would make me pretty unhappy if those ears wouldn't at least give me the ability to fly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've always mused that we could somehow recover some of the "wasted" time of sleeping. 8 hours every night - a third of a human's lifespan - is just so much time.

Sadly, I've never found any positive research that there's any way to do it safely. When I was younger I found schedules like the Uberman[0] and was amazed by the claim: only 2 hours of sleep a day required, as long as you stuck to a pretty rigid schedule and were disciplined about napping on time. I never had the scheduling freedom available to actually give it a go, and accounts of others trying it seemed to indicate that it was actually pretty awful to keep up.

This article seems promising, but it's a relatively short experiment. Would be interesting to see what happened after a year of 4 hour sleep. Based on the author's description, sounds like their body was trying to force them asleep at every turn and they had to fight through it. That would be hard to maintain long-term.

I truly wish one day we can isolate and synthesize whatever magical thing happens during sleep and recover some useful time. This seems much more practical than life-expectancy extension to me. As long as, of course, employers don't take it upon themselves to increase the workday as well. I'd rather sleep than work.

[0]: [https://polyphasic.net/schedules/uberman/](https://polyphasic.net/schedules/uberman/)

<comment><USER20> Have you tried lucid dreaming? I've been a lucid dreamer since I was a kid but I didn't know what it was called and I thought that's how everyone's dreams work. Somewhere along the way in law school I started using my dreams to study. I'd slow-walk through hypothetical fact patterns or anticipate getting cold-called to recite a case we'd read. It's been incredibly helpful and once I realized my classmates had no idea wtf I meant by "I literally study in my dreams" I found all sorts of groups online who have different techniques you can try.

I still use lucid dreaming for all sorts of things like practicing for presentations or running through meetings that I know will be difficult. I've found its most useful (for me at least) when prepping for interactive or adversarial situations because it forces some part of the brain to "be" both sides: the question asker and answerer.

<comment><USER21> I have, but I wake up after every lucid dream, so I need to spend more time in bed to get a full length sleep.

And it only last a few minutes, so there is not enough time to study. Even if there was, I am always more interesting in flying around.

And most of the time I only reach a half-lucid state. Like tonight I got stuck in a time loop in a train station. Like I could not leave, because I did not have the right ticket or travel card. Then on a random train the ticket inspector wanted to arrest me. I was aware enough to realize that I could control the environment and could wish the ticket inspector away, but that just triggered the time loop and put me back in the train station where I started.

<comment><USER20> I actually think the infinite loop, while frustrating, is a good sign! As a kid I had a recurring dream just about every night (I'm talking _years_ ) about infinite escalators. I'd ride an escalator up and get off only to find several more to choose from to continue riding up. No matter what escalators I chose there were always more. No end. No way out. It was pretty stressful for my elementary school self.

I had a psychologist relative who tried to help me with my "nightmares" by telling me to just accept the escalator dream instead of being frustrated by it. Somehow it worked, instead of getting frustrated by the endless escalators I eventually figured out how to just dutifully ride in peace until I woke up.

Of course that was super boring, but once I stopped frantically searching for the "right way" to do the escalators I started to figure out all the cool things I could do to entertain myself on the infinite escalator rides. I still use an escalator to "start" my lucid dreams if that makes sense. Maybe you'll similarly take the train to lucid dreams?

All that is to say that I think the loops are actually the perfect way to practice if you can manage to abandon the problem-solving urge. Easier said than done, I know. Best of luck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have come to the (non-scientific) conclusion that this is probably genetic. I know some people who sleep a lot less than me and seem to be fine with that. I am not fine with less sleep, but I wish I was because I would love to have the extra hours each day.

I thought of this for the first time when listening to a Freakonomics podcast series interviewing major company CEOs. Several of them mentioned schedules where they average 3-5 hours sleep per night, forever. They all seemed to think that was fine.

I think I would be severely ill, maybe even literally die, if I averaged 3-5 hours sleep for a duration of many months.

When listening to that series it hit me, maybe this is a genetic thing. In the same way that you kind of need to be tall to make it into the NBA, maybe you need the "minimal sleep is okay" gene to make it as a CEO or rocketship founder. People with those genes get anywhere from 10-20 hours more time per work week than I do, and that's a big advantage over one week, let alone compounded over a career.

I don't know what the research says about this, but my lived experience makes me think it's pretty likely, and unfortunately that also means I may have to be more realistic about what my body is and is not capable of.

<comment><USER23> I think it's more likely some people can just power through lack of sleep. I've recently started trying to sleep more 6-7+ hours after a decade of doing the 3-5 hours thing.

I just feel better now with more sleep and while I certainly could perform at a high level with less sleep I had to exert more energy the longer the day went on to stay focused.

Genetic? Maybe, or just really good discipline and work ethic?

<comment><USER24> Well, yes, but this is a bit of a false dichotomy.

It's obvious that capacity for discipline and work ethic are not entirely independent of genetic factors.

<comment><USER25> But it's always 30'C and plantains and mangos hang from trees! Why worry!?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Was his assessment basically just playing video games? I've noticed that's an activity I can do proficiently for an extended duration on very little sleep (along with things like "bulk" coding) but there are others I'm awful at unless I'm well rested (eg. complex planning, creative efforts like songwriting) and I've found my communication skills start to become impaired when I'm really sleep deprived.

I'd be curious to see how he performs on a broader spectrum of cognitive and even physical assessments.

<comment> T-hawk What type of video games? That matters a lot to me. I can play a turn-based game like Civilization completely fine on little sleep (measuring the quality of play objectively, like by productivity or victory within a certain number of turns.) Soft real-time games like say a Mario platformer are a little worse but playable if I'm tired. Hard real-time games with very tight and sensitive timing like Guitar Hero or high-level Tetris are unplayable at anywhere near peak form if I'm not fully rested.

<comment><USER27> Games requiring long term focus, chess for example, I personally have difficulty playing when sleep deprived, even though it is turn based. I find I play at ~200 rating points lower on low sleep.

<comment><USER28> Agreed. Many a late sleepless night have I blown 200 points or more on frustrating blitz games. I would regularly play a game or two during lunch breaks, climb a good bit, then stay up too late one night and rage throw my points into the abyss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is one of those posts I wish I could downvote 1000 times. It's the brogrammer equivalent of fake news: 22-yo kid "makes science" with a sample of 1, some videogames, and a few charts.

You are 22 year old. Your body is at peak condition, built to go out and hunt for days on little food and little sleep. _Of course_ it will work more or less fine for a few weeks.

<comment><USER30> I'm the author of this study.

>It's the brogrammer equivalent of fake news: 22-yo kid "makes science" with a sample of 1, some videogames, and a few charts.

>You are 22 year old. Your body is at peak condition, built to go out and hunt for days on little food and little sleep. Of course it will work more or less fine for a few weeks.

I like this comment because its author can't decide whether my study is the "equivalent of fake news" or whether its results are obviously true.

<comment><USER29> You are clearly unfamiliar with the process of mass-producing fake news. It typically takes "common sense" and proceeds to mislead it through bad paths. Which is exactly what you do with this "study": you over-analyze a situation that is relatively obvious, with a sample of 1, and _simply by doing so_ you effectively suggest to generalize its results - which is wrong.

You dropping a caveat mid-page in a single sentence is also the same thing tabloids do: make a big title about something, then state the opposite somewhere in the actual small-print article.

<comment><USER30> If I had the opportunity, I would not only downvote you a 1000 times, I would outright ban you from Hacker News. Your comments are uncharitable, careless, and abrasive.

>you over-analyze a situation that is relatively obvious, with a sample of 1, and simply by doing so you effectively suggest to generalize its results - which is wrong.

>You dropping a caveat mid-page in a single sentence is also the same thing scummy tabloids do: make a big title about something, then state the opposite somewhere in the actual small-print article.

The title of my study is:

>The Effects on Cognition of Sleeping 4 Hours per Night for 12-14 Days: a Pre- Registered Self-Experiment

Which clearly tells the reader that this is a n=1 study. I'm not just dropping a caveat mid-page. If you somehow missed this, it's your problem, not mine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I find it concerning how many people in this thread immediately jump from believing _Why We Sleep_ is truthful to the book is complete bullshit because guzey says so. Indeed, some good points are raised by him but at the end of the day he's just _another fucking guy with a blog_. The entire field deserves more study but the responses on here feel like Grandma on Facebook passing on something she read because it feels right.

</comment><comment><USER32> > I slept 4 hours a night for 14 days and didn't find any effects on cognition > (assessed via Psychomotor Vigilance Task, a custom first-person shooter > scenario, and SAT).

Remember kids, the only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down.

<comment><USER33> So all my late nights playing video games as a teenager could've been justified had I only phrased it as "doing a PVT for cognitive studies"?!

<comment><USER34> You would have to systematically write the circumstances and resulting observations down

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I read about the Uberman sleep schedule stuff myself when I was younger and trying to recover time I "wasted" sleeping. I ended up trying Uberman myself (15 minute naps, 6x per day).

I did a decent amount of prep work. I talked to my doctor (who basically said as long as I'm not falling asleep while driving, go for it). I set up ways to track my cognitive abilities around work (remote software engineer at the time). I started tracking kill-to-death ratio in favorite first person shooter (I thought it was a good measure of my innovation, as you can't use the same tricks for very long against human opponents). I also started tracking my weight, strength, endurance, and food intake.

It was hard to get into the schedule, and it never really clicked and held. Eventually I found the schedule to be frustrating and difficult from a social perspective. So I ended up dropping it a little over a year after I started.

So yeah, a little over a year.

When I analyzed my numbers I didn't see any particular hits in any of the areas. Work stayed stable (I actually got promoted about 9 months in, so I'm fairly confident about that). My kill-to-death ratio in the FPS climbed steadily along a similar trajectory as it had before I started. I found I was eating more (from ~2300 calories per day to almost 3000 calories to day), but my weight stayed level. Strength and endurance went up slightly, but that's probably more because I was checking them regularly versus not doing any exercise leading up to it.

Would I suggest it to others? No. There were other issues I had with the plan, more societal. And it was frustrating to not be able to focus on something for more than 3.5 hours at a time. But it certainly was an interesting time.

<comment><USER16> Was adaptation to Uberman staggeringly difficult? I tried it multiple times, each time thinking I had come up with the perfect system to push through, and each time failing. On my final attempt I would go for bike rides to stay awake and would actually doze off for a few seconds at a time ("microsleeps") even while riding.

I concluded that physiology determined whether or not something like Uberman is even possible for a given human being, and I don't have the right physiology. I have a close friend who tells me that he "doesn't get jet lag" and seems to have other resistance to circadian disruptions, so I've always thought that he would be perfect for Uberman but he's not interested so I can't really test my theory.

<comment><USER35> > Was adaptation to Uberman staggeringly difficult?

Not sure which adaptation. For dropping into the mechanics of actually sleeping it was hard, but manageable. I spent a solid 48 hours awake. That ended at ~9:40 AM and I gave my spouse strict instructions to get me up at 10:00. I fell asleep instantly, and she had trouble getting me up in 20 minutes, but we got there. The second nap I had a couple shots of espresso right before I went down, and that helped me get back up. The worst part was that first night. I was sorely tempted. After a weekend I had kind of fallen in a rut, but it helped to be out and about for a bit, just so that I was stimulated enough to not feel sleepy. After about two weeks I had fallen into something that felt normal. Sleeping was kind of a chore then.

Adapting other parts of my life were harder. Close friends knew what was up, so when we went to a party or something I'd take my naps in a car, or another room. During the year I'd say I skipped half a dozen naps, and it was always a battle of willpower to not be completely derailed. I didn't drink, because I didn't want that to be a reason I skipped a nap.

These were the reasons I ultimately decided to stop, but it was never really a stable situation. Missing a single nap would throw me off so hard that it was a battle to go back into it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Having recently had a baby, 4 hours of presumably uninterrupted sleep per night is an absolutely amazing prospect! Luxury!

What I noticed was it was not so much a lack of sleep, but how the sleep is interrupted that was the killer. After a few days of barely sleeping longer than 30 mins at a time I found that memory was hugely impacted, and even trivial mental arithmetic required concentration. I suspect this is to do with not being able to get into the appropriate "deep sleep" cycles or something- something-REM sleep?

If you are up for it, please try the experiment again with 4 hours of sleep randomly broken up into 10-60 minute chunks (random variability is important - i.e you go to sleep not knowing how long you've got) distributed throughout the day, with a minimum of 60 minutes between each chunk. Enjoy :)

<comment><USER37> I think this is the interesting question. I'm an extremely deep sleeper and almost nothing wakes me up while I'm sleeping, but I've found that I naturally sleep significantly longer if my bedroom has too much light or there's a significant amount of noise around me while I'm asleep. So despite not actually waking up consciously, I think I sometimes end up in this partial wake state where I'm not getting proper REM sleep and as a result, not actually getting the rest I need.

It wouldn't surprise me if this is often the case for people who feel they need more sleep. Having proper blackout shades and full silence (via ear plugs or otherwise) during sleep allows me to sleep a significantly shorter period of time _as measured by however long I end up staying asleep_. I typically don't use an alarm, so it's fascinating to be able to notice that natural difference in how long my body seems to need before booting back up.

Interesting anecdote - the pandemic is what triggered my awareness of this effect. When I'm at home alone sleeping (typically into the late morning, I'm a night owl), my dog will sleep with me. When my girlfriend started working from home from early in the morning, he would wake up with her and bark loudly at the occasional activity outside. I suddenly couldn't wake up on my normal schedule, even though I wasn't actually consciously woken up by the barking. The thought occurred to me that it could still be the barking and something related to the depth of the sleep, so I tried ear plugs + having my girlfriend close the bedroom door. Suddenly I was back to sleeping normal hours. Years of strange sleeping pattern problems were explained in an instant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Guzey had another blog post on Matthew Walker's sleep book posted on HN a while back. I thought it was a bad faith critique, from my own biophysics perspective. We had some back and forth, guzey seemed nice & respectful enough, but I still had my misgivings about the critique. Sleep is very much an open question.

HN seems to really love maximizing cognition and the overall efficiency of their life. That said, if you want to try this experiment yourself, know this: sleep also affects mood, memory, and longevity (e.g. dementia). Chronic sleep deprivation is not good for you.

<comment><USER39> It's so strange to see "independent researchers" attempt to poke holes by any means in an argument meant to protect people from the ill effects of sleep deprivation, yet provide zero non-anecdotal evidence to support lack of sleep being beneficial.

Discounting Walker's argument with "he's not thorough" and then providing a "study" done by one person with no professional research experience appears fine for HN

<comment><USER38> Eh, I understand the motivation though - I think a lot of people on here are young, driven programmer-types who resent sleep because they see it as inefficient. I think they're mistaken, but the drive to experiment on yourself is understandable if you're in that cutthroat world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> "Why We Sleep" by Matthew Walker summarizes quite a lot of research on sleep. It leaves little doubt - we currently know of no safe way to significantly cut down sleep.

I haven't seen the research presented in that book being refuted.

<comment><USER41> I think this book is mostly bullshit - the same author that wrote the linked HN post dug into that book and there was a ton of manipulative data and just straight up false claims. [0]

I get a pretty strong pseudoscience vibe from it.

From a previous post:

I got a strong motivated reasoning/bullshit vibe from Walker in this interview: [https://www.npr.org/2018/07/20/630792401/sleep-scientist- war...](https://www.npr.org/2018/07/20/630792401/sleep-scientist-warns- against-walking-through-life-in-an-underslept-state)

Particularly this section:

> "Sleep is not like the bank. So you can't accumulate debt and then try and > pay it off at a later point in time. And the reason is this - we know that > if I were to deprive you of sleep for an entire night - take away eight > hours - and then in the subsequent nights, I give you all of the sleep that > you want - however much you wish to consume - you never get back all that > you lost. You will sleep longer, but you will never achieve that full eight- > hour repayment as it were. So the brain has no capacity to get back that > lost sleep..."

I don't think this follows - seems likely to me that sleep is not some linear time thing and that there's a standard overhead that doesn't need to be repeated to extend and make up the time. This feels like a symptom of not understanding the mechanism and making a bad assumption.

I also found the "I won't mention the cognitive failures I can detect" irritating. If there's some actual thing to mention, say it - this kind of thing sets off alarms for me.

It doesn't surprise me that the rest is similarly bad.

[0]: [https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/](https://guzey.com/books/why-we- sleep/)

<comment><USER42> >I get a pretty strong pseudoscience vibe from it.

I don't quite know how to categorize complaining about pseudoscience based on a "vibe".

It's not quite irony... maybe it's just humorous. As a member of the post Alanis Morissette generation I guess I can no longer recognize irony.

<comment><USER41> By 'vibe' I mean a ton of statements that sound likely to be false or at least would surprise me if they were true that aren't backed up when you look closer. The fact that the information is surprising isn't bad itself, but it spikes curiosity - then when I look deeper there isn't much actually _there_ to support the surprising claims and what is there has a ton of issues.

There's a lot of 'wow, isn't that interesting' talk and deference to authority on an 'important' issue, but little talk of the actual mechanisms of how things work, little consideration of obvious counter examples that could be an explanation (like the one in my comment).

The sense is that the argument is driven by motivated reasoning instead of trying to understand what's true. Basically starting with a position and forcing the data to fit your pre-existing position.

It feels like I'm being conned by someone making up bullshit for status or some other agenda (maybe just sunk costs into an existing theory). Often bullshit and complex interesting topics can sound similar at first and it's helpful to have some sense for telling the difference. Otherwise you wander around impressed by 'energy crystals' and worried about 5g.

<comment><USER43> What agenda could be served by convincing people to get enough sleep?

<comment><USER44> I don't know if you can call it an agenda but I think there's something like a 'wellness' or moderation bias in these fields. The idea that you need to balance out hard work, slow down, and so on.

For example, as it turns out there is little evidence that stretching actually does anything, yet a lot of experts used to recommend it for decades. Same with nutrition, 'balanced diets', workouts at low heart rates and so on.

<comment><USER45> What do you mean that stretching doesn't do anything? Any links to such evidence? It's a pretty simple experiment to stretch every day for a month and measure your flexibility gains, so that's quite a bold claim. Do you mean it has no direct impact on your health?

<comment><USER44> >[https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/08/stretchin...](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/08/stretching- before-exercise-is-overrated/376089/)

it actually has negative impact on health and injury in people who do static stretches in particular is significantly increased. (as is in people with high levels of flexibility in general)

Nowadays stretches as a warmup are not recommended any more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> This study can lead one to conclude that at least some people can function well for short-term periods of sleep deficit, at least when performing stimulating activities.

However, we also have studies showing that people are very poor at recognizing when they are being affected by sleep deficit, so you would need to run this experiment on yourself first before concluding it applies to you!

</comment><comment><USER47> I discovered that about 1/3 of people can be sleep deprived without any ill effects, which is the bucket I fall in. Another 1/3 will be disgruntled but can function at a lower level, but for the last 1/3, it's catastrophic and can't function at all. That's my wife, and what exemplified this the most was after having kids. She was almost immediately a wreck but I was able to hold together with the lack of sleep and spent most of the time being the caregiver for our kids during the toughest parts of the night.

Previous, I had another incident of sleep where I got 4-5 hours of sleep a day for about a year, and then it all came crashing down on me eventually.

About 10 years ago, I was doing algorithmic trading globally and would sometimes watch my trades until 1-2am, and then wake up at 6am to be ready for US trading. I was doing fine with no problems from lack of sleep, and then one day after about a year I stopped being able to think clearly. I was having real trouble thinking or learning new things and had a bad headache. I went to my doctor and she immediately scheduled an MRI because she thought I might have a brain tumor. I was scared shitless, but I was able to get the MRI the next day. After the results came back negative for brain tumor, I thought maybe it's sleep, so I left work in the middle of the day and fell asleep and slept for about 16 hours. I realized right there and then I was sleep deprived, so I stopped trading immediately and focused on trying to sleep properly.

These days I need close to 7.5 hrs of sleep a day and if I get less, I'll feel it pretty quickly as opposed to 10 years ago when I felt nothing.

<comment><USER36> Almost exactly the same experience here with me Vs my wife with children. She _needs_ at least one or two significant maps and an early bedtime or she simply just cannot function, but I seem to be able to handle it a bit better.

I wonder if it is a gender thing, or a coincidence?

<comment> globular-toast I have read studies that say men benefit more from micro-napping and therefore can handle shorter nights as long as they can micro-nap. I sleep significantly shorter nights than my girlfriend. She can sleep for 10-12 hours every night. I only sleep for 7-8 which means I go to sleep 2-3 hours after her. But I do micro-nap sometimes. If she naps it's for a long time, usually because of lack of sleep the night before. She is younger than me, and when I was younger I used to want to sleep for 10 hours or more, but when I did it messed up my sleeping pattern (gave me a >24 hour rhythm). So I'm inclined to think she really does need more sleep at night than me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I am fascinated by this, when I was younger I was obsessed with cutting out sleep, experimenting with polyphasic sleep, energy drinks etc.

I'll add one other anecdote that I don't know what it means, but I had a project I was working on that was tight deadline, as a result I was only able to get two hours a sleep a night for about a week. For some reason once I got past the third day my tiredness and desire to sleep seemed to dip considerably, and I found that staying awake when engaged in any activity or discussion was easier. If I was just sitting in a meeting or presentation that I wasn't very interested in I would doze off, but as long as I was engaged I felt like I didn't need to sleep at all.

I really wish we knew more about sleep.

<comment><USER30> this is very interesting. Have you tried doing it again?

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Back in the 1980s this was expected of MIT undergrads. Took me over a decade and some difficult effort to extract myself from chronic lack of sleep. I feel likeI was a lot smarter and more productive when I get 6 hrs minimum. I am a lot healthier on other metrics as well.

Perhaps this shows that a coupled weeks is OK. Certainly it helped me in my 20s — I could hold down a job and still spend evenings at clubs with my gf and then wife. So in that way I was a good spouse(!)

A broader study would be interesting too — according to my pediatrician mother I didn't sleep much even as a baby / toddler.

</comment><comment><USER50> > However, for the entire duration of the experiment I had to resist regular > urges to sleep and on several occasions when I did not want to play video > games was very close to failing the experiment, having at one point fallen > asleep in my chair and being awakened a few minutes later by my wife.

I don't really believe this, and I find this interesting and impressive,but this sounds like a George Costanza scheme after getting caught playing video games or sleeping too much

<comment><USER30> I'm not sure why you don't really believe this. I didn't really have to mention this, did I?..

<comment><USER50> No I meant I didn't believe it was a scheme

<comment><USER30> Ah.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> This may be anecdotal [and sleep deprivation may impact different people differently] but it has a huge impact on me.

I used to use memrise [flash card style memorisation] to learn new words/concepts for years [25minutes, the first thing after waking up, every single day] and I know from experience how sleep, food, hangover, etc. impact my performance.

Sleep has a gigantic impact on my memory, focus and creativity — I believe it is responsible for really high variation in IQ points [10 - 20, but that's my rough guesstimate]. This is a more qualitative assessment but whey I sleep 4 hours it resembles a high level of depression — I lose motivation and all of my natural curiosity is gone [eg. usually, reading/learning brings me happiness, but it's all gone when I'm sleep deprived].

That's why I haven't used an alarm clock for years now.

<comment><USER25> I have similar results and opinions. I feel that there is some kind of "back- end processing" that happens during sleep that is crucial for learning. Also, my sleep tends to be better when I'm doing some kind of workout regularly, although I need to sleep more. If I'm not working out, I can get by easily with 6 hours but if I am, absolutely need 8 hrs min. Makes sense to me since a lot of repair, healing and growth occur while sleeping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I definitely couldn't do it. After about a week, my body would just crash/go to sleep by itself, world be damned.

Same, or rather, worse, when working 12 hours a day for more than ~2 weeks. I just start thinking "what the fuck am I doing? Why is this worth it?", and if it's not worth it it would just drive me into a serious depressive mood.

Maybe because I know I could do better than this, that there are other options. Maybe it's because I made peace with death already. But I think it's just that I'm physically not made for this kind of overload.

<comment><USER53> Lack of sleep amplifies stress. That's why people argue more frequently and are more easily agitated when they're sleep deprived.

A lot of the people who say this doesn't affect them seem to be bored video gamers with no career focus and no stress.

I feel like they'd feel it too if they had to work 12 hours a day and had some moderate stress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> > The Effects on Cognition of Sleeping 4 Hours per Night

I lived like this for nearly 5 years. I knew I was taking my health to an extreme so I did intermittent fasting (but ate one large meal with 7:5:1 fat- plant/carb-protein ratio and it was all organic) and worked out on a regular basis before I slept 3-5 times a week. I also had physical labour jobs with some driving involved on top of typical tech based startup stuff at night while trying to maintain relationships. It was taxing to say the least.

What I did noticed when I stopped living that way was that it felt like a fog was lifted and I stopped hearing what had become an omnipresent high pitch sound like the kind you get when you get hit hard in the head, also before I could only work optimally for maybe 7 hours max a day so I had to prioritize/schedule my day accordingly as the rest was a sluggish grind by comparison. I took cheater naps where I could, but simply put: those were brutal times.

Also my raw strength got way better, likely because of re-introducing a recovery period, and my PB and max lifts went up 35% in almost all of my lifts and exercises. I think I'm at higher than my peak years in early university at this point on single max lifts.

Personally, I realized my most optimized sleep-work schedule follows a 6-3-6-3-6 routine (6 hours of work, with 3 hours pause to eat/sleep in between). I've cranked a ton of things that way, its not ideal as it doesn't allow for much leisure but if I need to get things done and I can afford to have that schedule I'll do it and get amazing results I can't emulate any other way.

</comment><comment><USER55> This reminds me of Steve Pavlina who successfully slept 2-3 hrs per day for 5.5 months and reported no ill effects.

source: [https://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic- sleep/](https://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep/)

We definitely need more people to try variations on this. If you're in confinement, this is actually a great time to try.

<comment><USER52> I used to really like that guy... But I got a suspicion that sleep experiment may have been fabricated. There is zero proof beyond the blog posts :/

<comment><USER55> Seems lot a lot of effort for seemingly no return at the time.

Without evidence to the contrary, I'm unwilling to doubt him.

<comment><USER52> You're right, there doesn't seem to be much payoff for lying on that particular topic, especially at that time. Just my suspicion, nothing more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> An academic study (2007):

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2656292/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2656292/)

</comment><comment><USER57> Is it just me, but how can this be taken seriously when the author was trying to show no result. While I love self experimentation, publishing it as if it's valid science is unfortunate.

<comment><USER30> Yes, I believe that you should take this factor into account while reading my experiment. As I write:

>Lack of effect on cognitive ability is surprising and may reflect true lack of cognitive impairment, my desire to demonstrate lack of cognitive impairment due to chronic sleep deprivation and lack of blinding biasing the measurements, lack of statistical power, and/or other factors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> The 12-14 days is crucial here, I think: The US Army tested battle readiness and effectiveness off and on since WWII and found that you can keep a unit working well for a couple of weeks with about 4.5 hours a night. After that, they start to have serious problems. Less than 4.5 hours a night and the problems start a lot sooner.

<comment><USER53> Do you have a link to this study? Seems like an experiment actually worth reading about.

<comment><USER58> there are literally dozens of them out there

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> The guzey_arena_0 test could be biased by his skill level improving over time by playing it regularly, though if he was an avid FPS gamer prior to the guzey_arena_0 tests, the asymptotic growth of skill had probably leveled off in time. I didn't see this addressed in the paper outside of this section:

"I will give myself a sleep opportunity of 8 hours (23:30-07:30). I will practice the tasks I'm going to use in order to mitigate the most extreme practice effects during the experiment. I will perform all tasks as follows:

Aimgod guzey_arena_0 at 12:30-12:50, 15:30-15:50, 18:30-18:50 and 21:30-21:50 (I also played about 2 hours of guzey_arena_0 on 2020-03-31 and 2020-04-01 while designing the experiment)"

That might not have been enough to blunt the practice effect.

Still I think it's valid data - might have been better if he played guzey_arena_0 for a period beforehand on normal sleep until his improvements leveled off.

<comment><USER60> It looks like he played the game one week before the experiment, during it, and after three days of recovery and did not find a significant difference

<comment><USER30> Exactly -- practice effects should have been averaged out by this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> I'm totally baffled by people claiming to be able to function with less than 8 hours of sleep.

Even 1 night of 6 hours is enough to reduce my mental capabilities immensely. It is like a fog closes on my mind. Memory suffers particularly, have much greater difficulty recalling words for things/people(and if the sleep loss is severe it can become impossible), and any code I write in this state is subpar when I look at it later. Additionally it often takes me exponentially longer to write the code when tired..

Also recovery from sleep deprivation requires extra sleep for me. If I follow up a night of 6 hours with a night of 8 hours, I still feel like I only had 6 hours, requiring me to sleep extra until the 'fog' goes away.

And age has nothing to do with it, had the same problem as teen.

</comment><comment><USER62> It seems like the author tested rote activities that were well within their comfort zone; I'd be curious to see how well they'd perform when trying to learn something new or work at something that they hadn't practiced before.

<comment><USER63> Given that sleep deprivation is commonly assumed to lead to worsening reaction times, rote tasks should show an effect. It is interesting they didn't.

Apart from that, I agree that there is more to sleep deprivation than reaction performance. For example, some of my most creative moments were in highly sleep-deprived states. But how am I supposed to measure that?

<comment><USER62> It's interesting, but it doesn't look like the reaction time windows are particularly tight. 500ms is a generous reaction time. And the FPS scenario didn't really test snap accuracy or reaction time, the limiting factor on completion time seems largely dependent on movement.

I think a more interesting metric of reaction time would be using a competitive FPS or fighting game, that require tight reaction times and decision making. That way, any change in reaction time will be reflected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> I'm amazed by how thoroughly he wrote up the experiment.

<comment><USER65> yeah, with a sample size of 1 and the subject at a prime point in maturation.

What's the lesson learned from this?

Disclaimer: this experiment would destroy me (but I'm old enough to be the author's father).

<comment><USER59> > What's the lesson learned from this?

That sleep is complicated, and that people doing scientific case studies contributes to the overall corpus of material we have to inspire others.

There need not be a breakthrough everytime you do a case study for science to be useful and we should stop expecting that.

<comment><USER65> I understand that sleep is complicated, and also that there's a wide variance in how people respond to sleep (and lack of same).

I wasn't trying to shit on the OP, just that this made it to the front page of HN and has no takeaway from it. All I learned is some 22 year old guy was able to function fine on minimal sleep.

Did I miss something else? I'm genuinely curious because this is actually a subject of great interest to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> If you are doing any sleep-deprivation experiment on self, only thing I ask of you is to not get behind the wheel and drive. I beg you please not to do any driving, even if you feel alert and not tired. I had a friend's teen who blacked out while driving after not sleeping much in 24 hours, causing a minor accident on the freeway. Falling asleep behind the wheel is most common, especially around 2-3pm, when the effect of sleep deprivation really starts to kick in, and brain decides to sleep without a warning.

</comment><comment> globular-toast Like many a geek I've "experimented" with my sleeping patterns both intentionally and unintentionally. I used to drift out of sync with my own time zone until I was completely nocturnal and would regularly change phase by staying awake for more than 24 hours. I found this quite hard and while my cognitive ability might not have suffered, I found that I could think about nothing but sleep past the 24 hour mark. At the 16-20 hour mark I've done some of my best ever work.

Going several days with little sleep has always been easier. A single short night of only 3 hours is almost unnoticed. A second short night becomes difficult. But I've also noticed my cognitive ability isn't really impacted. However, my physical performance is degraded heavily. I'm far weaker, clumsier and my fine motor control is completely shot. I also become really irritable and just generally not pleasant to be around.

Nowadays I maintain a regular circadian rhythm. I get up at the same time every day, even on weekends. I try to go to sleep at the right time, but do sometimes get carried away with something I'm doing. But more importantly, I try to make sure my sleep _quality_ is high. That means the room at the correct temperature (as far as I can manage), minimal light and noise pollution (I moved house specifically for this), and no drugs (it's one reason I stopped using alcohol). I find that everything is better. I'm stronger, have better endurance, I'm funnier and more sociable, sex is better, my work is better. Everything is better.

</comment><comment><USER67> A properly constructed experiment wouldn't alert the subjects sleep is being measured and instead simply prompt them for how much time they slept in a questionnaire taken _after_ the tests, or better yet have them wear a tracking device prior to the study to measure their regular sleep pattern, and only select subjects for testing that have deviated from their regular sleep pattern.

My theory is that a sudden change in sleep habits is what causes the cognitive decline.

</comment><comment><USER68> I'm a simple man, I see an N=1 experiment, I ignore it.

</comment><comment><USER69> YMMV, but I've found anecdotally, that qualitative aspects of my sleep have an outsized impact vs. the # of hours, to a point of course.

For instance, in my teens/early twenties, I (like many) was able to sleep quite a bit less. Lots of late nights traipsing around the internet, lots of midnight projects.

In my mid-twenties, I suddenly found that I needed much more sleep. If I didn't get at least 8 hours, I woke up completely drained. Other adults I spoke to confirmed that this was normal.

Then, I switched apartments and got a new bed. Suddenly, I was waking up much easier, even with few hours of sleep.

This pattern has repeated a few times throughout my life. I'll notice I'm waking up more tired than usual, and then something will change—a new room with more natural light, a better mattress, the loss of something I didn't realize was stressing me—and I'll suddenly need less sleep.

I'm sure none of this is shocking to anyone, but the key thing for me was that even when my sleep quality was apparently deteriorated, I didn't notice it. I still fell asleep easily, I still had dreams, I was still comfortable in my bed, etc. The sleep cycle, it seems, just wasn't as restorative due to other factors.

I have a little pet theory that some of the "Super CEOs" we hear about who get by on 4-5 hours of sleep a night are:

1\. Slightly exaggerating the rigidity of their superhuman schedule (I used to work in media, and I've worked with an outsized number of people who have public reputations for this kind of stuff. Anecdotally, I've found that nearly all exaggerate and sometimes outright lie.)

2\. Adept at compartmentalizing stress and environment, to the extent that they're able to get quality sleep regardless. This skill would naturally track other responsibilities in their life as well.

</comment><comment><USER70> Hours of sleep may not necessarily reflect how well rested a person is.

There are levels of sleep: NREM ("quiet sleep") and REM ("active sleep"). NREM has 3 stages: 1 (almost awake), 2 (light sleep), 3 (deep sleep).

The deeper your sleep, the most rested you will be. Some people require fewer hours of sleep because they spend more time in deep sleep.

</comment><comment><USER71> I find the cognitive tests in the experiment to be insufficient, to make the argument that _practical_ cognition did not suffer and that the experimenter was 'productive for 16 hours'. The experiment uses two computer games and a 3 hr test, not much of a comparison to all day non-stop creative software development. The SAT is one neat little question after another, every challenge carefully crafted and nicely wrapped. Time to completion is always relatively easy to calculate.

Creative coding requires a level of alertness that I find is most similar to a chess game. A working day is around 8 hours. A 3 hour assignment feels like a half-day.

I wonder how many hours the author could play chess against a good opponent, on 4 hours of sleep a night? I doubt it approaches '16 productive hours'...

<comment><USER30> I don't know about chess but I coded a lot during the experiment (on day 7 I spent 11 hours coding, starting with a big block between 8am and 2pm) and felt great.

<comment><USER71> Hmm, might give it a try then. I was once sleep deprived for about a year in an old job, and I remember it being so painful I was really turned off to it. But perhaps it bears a second look. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Speaking of declining cognition, I just spent 4 hours wearing a mask at work. Wow! I'm woozy, dizzy, muddleheaded and really cranky. Definitely not at my sharpest. Definitely not in the right frame of mind to be using power-tools.

</comment><comment><USER53> When I was younger, I somewhat involuntarily got 4 hours of sleep a night for about 2-3 months.

I remember the first month was fine, but by the second month I'd started to hallucinate in the day time.

The reason this happened was that I took a night job suddenly (midnight til 8am, but sometimes as late as noon because the overtime was good). I couldn't get used to the schedule and seem to get more than four hours of sleep during daylight.

The job was a truck driving job, delivering huge pallets of newspapers out in time for the paperboys/girls at 5am-7am across a few cities from the printing press. I remember it was a sweet job, relatively high pay compared to what I'd had recently and very low stress since the factory was empty, you grab the clipboard with your route, forklift the pallets onto the truck and listen to music the rest of the night.

I started to get extremely tired while driving sometime in the second month. I fought it hard and would stare straight ahead jerking myself awake every couple of minutes eventually. Not long after that the lines in the road would insidiously become snakes and I'd be following a river in a half dream sort of zone.

By the end of the second month I knew I had to quit or I'd end up getting myself killed on the road, no matter how good the job was. I forced myself to stay on the extra two weeks because two weeks notice is something my parents instilled upon me that you always have to do. I kind of agree but feel like I should have made an exception then.

I was probably 20 at the time.

Some points I'd like to raise: 1\. I don't believe two weeks is long enough to feel anything. Particularly not if you're young. 2\. Loss of cognition is really really obvious if you're operating a large metal box that can kill you. The ability to play video games seems like it could easily fool you into thinking you're coherent. 3\. Lack of sleep amplifies stress. If you don't have much stress, it's going to be way easier. Someone falling behind on their loan payments, working overtime, and taking care of dependents would likely see a much bigger effect on their life, even with smaller margins of sleep lost.

</comment><comment><USER73> This should contain a big fat caveat, this appears to be a very young person, maybe early 20's based on photos? My friend group could pull all nighters and 3-4 am weeknights playing beer pong just fine in college. When we have done so sparingly in our 30's the next day is completely shot so far as productivity, we can operate but at greatly diminished capacity.

I'd love to see the author try again in 10 years, I love comparing my current physical ability, e.g. number of push ups, chin ups etc, to where I was years ago, its a fun thing to see your body change over time.

<comment><USER30> >This should contain a big fat caveat, this appears to be a very young person, maybe early 20's based on photos?

The _second_ sentence of the abstract:

>I'm a 22-year-old male and normally I sleep 7-8 hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> I believe sleep to be one of the most underrated and underutilized health strategies, I know so many who diet and do all sorts but then are proud of the fact they only sleep 6 hours a night. Study after study shows how incredibly deterementail even a slight lack of sleep can be, so much so that I usually don't believe I've read them correctly to begin with.

I would suggest this book to anyone interested in the topic: Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams – Matthew Walker The author was on Joe Rogan at some point too but I haven't listened to it.

</comment><comment><USER75> >> Subjectively, I felt that I gained somewhere between 2 and 3 hours of productive time every day.

>> I found that I was able to go from "falling asleep" to "fully alert" at all times by playing video games for 15-20 minutes. I ended up playing video games for approximately 30-90 minutes a day

Does this mean the actual amount of time gained from this was 2-3 hours or do we subtract out the amount of time spent playing video games? If we subtract out the video games there is not much benefit to being sleep deprived, sometimes only 30 additional productive minutes are gained.

<comment><USER30> Actual amount of time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> I sleep for 4-5 hours, get up for about an hour or so, and then try to sleep another 3-4 hours. Previously, I'd wake up after 4-5 hours and spend 2-3 hours trying to fall asleep again. An hour of activity during the night seem to be much more efficient as I get more sleep in total, and obviously feel rested afterwards.

Occasionally, I've stayed up, and while I've usually felt quite well for several hours without noticeable decreases in my cognitive abilities, I've been completely exhausted by lunchtime instead.

Perhaps it is an age thing?

</comment><comment><USER77> I spent one of the hottest summers on record couchsurfing around Europe. The heat and the casual accommodations both truncated my sleep significantly. I thought I'd cool off by going mountain biking in the Alps.

I didn't realize how tired I was until I got to the top of the lift. It was fucking terrifying!

Doing regular vacation stuff like eating and talking to people was totally fine - I hadn't even noticed I'd accumulated a sleep deficit. But the attention and the quick reflexes extreme sports require are another matter entirely.

<comment><USER78> Don't you think it could have happened because of lack of oxygen in high altitude?

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> My first tour in Afghanistan I started at 3 hours and couldn't keep that up after a month or two so I went to four hours for most of the year. It was crazy but very structured and focused so it worked. I couldn't do this in the civilian world; it's too complicated to deal with relationships and looking after yourself and big life decisions and existential questions and everything else. Exhausting. I'll take 10 if I can get it. I go back to this schedule when camping and feel great.

</comment><comment><USER80> Interesting, I tend to agree about the cognitive capacity, but raters than focus (as many others here seem to have a problem with under sleep deprivation), I find that the biggest challenge for me is motivation. Any task that is inherently rewarding (coding fun stuff, games,...) is no problem. Anything remotely boring, or just challenging, I just don't find it in me. If push comes to shove I'll do it, but if I'm allowed to procrastinate I will

</comment><comment><USER81> You can't fool me, I know this was just an excuse to improve your FPS aim!

Jokes aside, really good read. I had similar goals of cutting out sleep when I was younger. I'm curious what the authors mood was throughout the experiment. That's the main thing I've noticed when not getting enough sleep. My output may be good, I may feel engaged, but every second of the day is torture.

<comment><USER30> Thanks! I didn't notice any effects on mood but I wasn't measuring them either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> Anecdotally, playing a high-intensity video game like an FPS or RTS, wakes me up and allows me to fend off sleep for a long period of time.

</comment><comment><USER83> 12-14 days sounds like just enough time to finish taking exams, and my study/sleep schedule was rather like his during some periods in university.

Sleep deprivation can lead to me being more creative, particularly with abstract concepts like free will and subatomic physics. I wouldn't want to do it long-term though.

</comment><comment><USER84> Tesla sleep by taking 20 mins naps (they said that he sleep just 2/3 hours per day by taking naps) a la polyphasic way. He is compared to Da Vinci which also did the same thing, Edison who sleep 4/5 hours ..

Does someone relate to polyphasic sleep ?

<comment><USER85> About 15 years ago I tried polyphasic sleeping for about two months. I was on a horrific work crunch and I threw myself into it. I believe my schedule was a 20 minute nap every 3 or 4 hours (I forget now), with one nap being two hours instead of 20 minutes, a total of about 4 hours a day.

The first week was horrible, but then I got in the groove and I actually functioned and got work done. I'd often wake up a minute or two before the alarm went off.

There were a lot of problems. If I ever found myself killing time, eg, waiting for a test to run, and not actively doing something, I'd want to crash badly. Sometimes I'd be in the zone working a bug in my code and my "time to take a nap" alarm would sound and I'd be tempted to keep working. I learned it was important to stick to the sleep cycle even if I was feeling alert. It was terrible for family life because if I had to, say, take the kids to the zoo on Saturday, I'd have to schedule it to fit my sleep pattern, and it wasn't always possible.

<comment><USER86> I don't want to sound racist, but your last sentence is something that struck me as something oddly european/american. At least in Asia it is just normal to take a nap somewhere for 30 minutes or so. Just imagine what you could've achieved if napping wasn't a problem :-)

I'm european but I really like the asian culture where napping is in general socially acceptable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> > assessed via Psychomotor Vigilance Task, a custom first-person shooter > scenario, and SAT

Now try work.

<comment><USER53> Couldn't agree more. Try doing something actually stressful while sleep deprived.

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> I would approximate working with only 4 hours sleep to working with a post- hangover fuzzy head.

Sure you could function like that, but doing so regularly isn't healthy for you and has a cumulative negative effect on productivity/output.

</comment><comment><USER89> I normally have always slept for around 4-5 hours a night since I can remember. Only noticeable health consequence I've noticed is pre-hypertension, but that could be a mix of anxiety and/or hereditary.

</comment><comment><USER90> Experiment with n=1: proves subject did not _seem_ impaired during this one stint when he knew he was being measured, and chose the measures himself, and had control over the situation and experiment.

</comment><comment><USER91> What if I also sleep a couple of hours during the day (+4 during the night)?

</comment><comment><USER92> About 20 years ago I slept an average of three hours a night for three years straight. No ill effects that I could discern. Just another anecdote; not suggesting that the plural of anecdote is data.

<comment><USER30> Why did you stop?

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> I find the title misleading. The post should add "for me" at the end of the title, or "for me as a young healthy male".

This is a personal experience written up as a blog post.

</comment><comment><USER94> I find I think different when I don't have enough sleep and I come up with ideas I normally wouldn't. It is sort of useful actually.

</comment><comment><USER95> It would be interesting to see resting heart-rate plotted vs this as well -- from my observations lack of sleep tends to impact that a lot.

</comment><comment><USER96> I have noticed if I go many days without sleeping, it is easier to make simple mistakes.

Also, creativity seems to degrade.

</comment><comment><USER97> The tasks he's chosen is uninteresting at best.

Did he attempt to learn anything new while sleep-deprived?

<comment><USER30> I spent the majority of my time coding (learning a lot of JS) and learning biology during the experiment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER98> Submarine crews have been working with these cycles for a century.

</comment><comment><USER99> Programming does not need too much cognitive ability.

</comment><comment><USER100> Not a good ideas, just ask the Shadow people

</comment><comment><USER101> Incidentally, I've been sleeping polyphasically for some time now. Of course, there have been no real studies done on polyphasic sleep and it must be taken on anecdotal evidence alone. However, I don't feel any ill effects after a year. My schedule is tamer than others, however; the Everyman 2 consists of a 4.5 hour core sleep and two 20 minute naps [0]. Schedules like Uberman (six 20 minute naps equidistant in time, every 4 hours), Dymaxion, Tesla, and other nap-only sleeps do not seem to be stable, at least for most people who are not genetically mutated to sleep less [1].

There are quite some pros as well, such as more time for one; instantly falling asleep (got rid of my insomnia); removal of substances such as alcohol, marijuana, and caffeinated drinks like coffee; and lucid dreams with nearly every sleep. The latter is very useful for me as I can test out ideas in dreams and see how they could fare, a sort of omnipotent virtual reality.

As I wrote in another comment, the fact that many think polyphasic sleep is only Uberman or other nap-based schedules with ~2 hour total sleep time is disappointing to see. There are other schedules on that site that are far tamer, such as Everyman 1: sleep 6 hours at night, one 20-min nap during the day, which you could do on a lunch break. There are whole gradations from 9 hours (two 4.5 hour sleeps, not necessarily reduction of total sleep time, but it gives better sleep for some) to Uberman or Tesla (~2 hour total sleep time), which by the way is not known to be stable over a longer time period, a fact that the polyphasic community willingly accepts.

It is particularly disappointing to see because, as another commenter said, I'd like to see more research on sleep and perhaps synthesizing its effects into a compound, but if people dismiss these alternate sleep schedules, we may not fully understand what the brain is doing during sleep, as fewer researchers are incentivized to study it, thinking it's just BS, which hurts the field overall.

I do wonder though if the main advantages of polyphasic sleep are that it enforces a more rigid structure than monophasic sleep; if you miss a nap, or you oversleep, you're done for. If one could enforce the same level of scheduling in monophasic sleep, I wonder if they wouldn't have the same advantage of increased time. It's too easy to make excuses with monophasic sleep however, saying that you'll just sleep after one more drink / turn of a game / line of code, so polyphasic sleep acts as an enforcer of such a schedule, and here is where its true strength lies.

[0] [https://polyphasic.net/schedules/everyman/](https://polyphasic.net/schedules/everyman/)

[1] [https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/gene- id...](https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/gene-identified- people-who-need-little-sleep)

</comment><comment> non-entity I've probably done a month or two of 4 hours a night at least. My sleep is all over the place. At times, I'll slip into occasional microsleeps at the office where I basically pass put for a split second ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsleep](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsleep)) Very recently however, I had a two night bout of nearly total sleep deprivation (I maybe got 3 or 4 hours in a 48 hour period) and it was absolutely terrible. The second morning it was incredibly difficult to concentrate and I couldn't keep a coherent thought for a couple hours. However normally when I'm sleep deprived I can power through the morning hours and be ok the rest of the day. I did not want another night of that so I grabbed a variety of otc sleep aids hoping to find one or a combination which would knock me out. Luckily I was able to knock myself out the next night and ended that for the time being.

<comment><USER102> What did you find that helped you get to sleep?

<comment> non-entity I tried a mix of Unisom (doxylamine) and melatonin that night and I managed to fall asleep, although it took a good while and didnt think it was gonna happen at first.

I've had mixed results with melatonin before and DPH based sleep aids (benadryl, Zquil) tend to make me drowsy as hell for a few hours without falling asleep If something like that happens again though, I'll probably see a doctor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER103> This completely contradicts my experience with reduced sleep. If I sleep 6 hrs instead of my usual 8.5 I'm good for nothing that day. I can code for half a day maybe but thats it. My workouts are also severely affected in terms of max intensity.</comment>


Reddit gets a material design makeover - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/shine-for-reddit/acoiihnnfofnpbnofdcgcapbjlcopifa?hl=en <comment><USER2> Why does everyone feel the need to remake everything in Material Design these days? I think there's something wrong with me because I absolutely hate Material Design. I find it to be pointless and confusing minimalism that prioritizes form over function. And I find it to be really ugly too -- excessive white space and margins and those god awful drop shadows. With that stupid floating action button that I haven't once found to be intuitive or helpful.

I also see a lot of demand for uniformity across all the interfaces people use. Everything must look the same, or your app or site is crap. I get that consistency can help functionality because it may meet certain expectations of where things are or how to accomplish certain tasks... but I actually like seeing different looks every once in awhile.

I don't remember people complaining about websites having different layouts back in the day but now there's a push to make everything the same. Every blog post is now a Medium post or a medium-like layout. Every commercial site has a stupidly huge header (with optional 100mb video) and GIANT text littered with buzzwords that take forever to get to what the product being sold is.</comment>


How 'The Social Network' Saved Mark Zuckerberg - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2011/02/how-the-social-network-saved-mark-zuckerberg/71742/

<comment><USER2> Some great points. Zuckerberg has really weathered the storm well. I am glad The Atlantic points out the split between what the generations think of Zuckerberg.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone else suspicious re the timing of the magazine & Oprah appearance? Wonder which PR Mgmt firm suggested these remedies? Brilliant!</comment>


Online Sharing With StumbleUpon and Gmail Is Outpacing Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/online-sharing-with-stumbleupon-and-gmail-is-outpacing-facebook/68695/ <comment><USER2> If I was to judge by my habits, this stats can be really broken. The only option I use AddThis for is sharing by email. In stats it'd be that I share by email 90% of the time, while I use 'share on facebook' buttons all day long, and AddThis I got installed only to save clicks when sharing with people who are not on fb.

</comment><comment><USER3> Could it be that websites like del.icio.us and StumbleUpon _generally_ have better sharing methods already than e-mail, which is not as quick of a method? Sites that are dedicated to sharing generally have bookmarklets, browser toolbars, and other programs to make it easier, whereas e-mail is something that it may be easier to do with AddThis.

</comment><comment><USER4> the trend I've been seeing (very limited view) is people creating a tumblr and sharing stuff through there.

i guess there's an opportunity to attack facebook around here.

people who create tumblr blogs usually are not only following people who they know, but mostly people they don't know. since tumblr is not social network in the sense that you don't have to give them your private info, there's not much of a privacy issue. you can follow random people and get followed back by randoms (but not necessarily) you can also share all kinds of stuff you probably don't want on your facebook.

plus it's customizable with themes.

i guess it's myspace gone right? or maybe twitter/friendfeed for non-techies?</comment>


Tech Industry Pursues a Federal Privacy Law, on Its Own Terms - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/26/technology/tech-industry-federal-privacy-law.html <comment><USER2> This is _entirely_ predictable. These people profit from monetizing users' data, so of course they want rights to freely do that.

Notice, by the way, that Apple isn't mentioned :)</comment>


Kickass high-tech electric motorcycle, battery stores more power than Prius battery - <AUTHOR> http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/09/brammo-enertia-electric-motorcycle-10-million.php

<comment><USER2> This isn't such a surprise. The battery in a hybrid vehicle needs to be no larger than needed to buffer the kinetic energy of typical stop-and-go traffic. Anything larger is just dead weight that you're carrying around (and expending energy to do so) in the vain hope that a big downhill slope is in your future. I know from personal experience that my Prius needs to roll down about 800 feet vertically to fill its battery.

Vehicles that need to actually power themselves exclusively (or mostly, as in a plugin hybrid) with their batteries need bigger ones for their weight, or better ones (this thing is using a Li-Ion instead of the NiMH battery in the Prius).

</comment><comment><USER3> Yeah I think the best buy thing is valid. If they were going to sell them in dealerships the GPS would have been an option. Since it looks like it'll sell as a single package the retail store option might be right

</comment><comment><USER4> It's quite a nice design: light construction, good layout. Also, they're claiming to integrate riding modes and wifi into the bike somehow, which was our idea, so it must be good. :-)

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://www.evdeals.com/BidwellSecrets.htm>

Don't spend $12,000. You can hack one out now for $2k. :)</comment>


Ask HN: Best way to support community for small open source projects? - <AUTHOR> At some point, StackOverflow is the place for user-to-user support, but with a small project, user questions would disappear in that vast ocean, I think. Github, sadly, has nothing for this.
I have a modest project with a growing user community (https://github.com/lwhite1/tablesaw), but it would be great if they could talk to each other. I would also love to be able to see what their issues are so I can address.
Suggestions greatly appreciated. (Also, I don't want to host anything, this thing is already eating my life.) <comment><USER2> Some time ago I met the people behind SmartGit (a cross platform git client) and they told me that using Google groups worked quite well for this purpose.

Here's a link to their group so you can get an impression: [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/smartgit](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/smartgit)

<comment><USER3> We had a Google group for Codename One: [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/codenameone- discussi...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/codenameone-discussions)

Google Groups suck as a forum. They flag valid comments as SPAM and miss good comments, they reject and delete posts for no reason and without traceability. They have no SEO value so they don't help product discoverability and to make matters worse they are really hard to search properly.

We still have it but try to focus on stackoverflow which is no panacea due to its own problems but at least it works properly.</comment></comment>


Forget far-right populism – crypto-anarchists are the new masters - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/04/forget-far-right-populism-crypto-anarchists-are-the-new-masters-internet-politics <comment><USER2> The only mention of _far-right_ is in the title, article [correctly] talks about _right_ populism.

Far-right populism is imho these days a kind of oxymoronish syntagm.</comment>