How practical minimalism helps me focus - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-mission/how-practical-minimalism-helps-me-focus-8d204d60ae63#.chhgv8e3b <comment><USER2> To offer a counterpoint, years ago the wife and I moved from NYC to California and purged quite a lot of stuff. We shipped everything we owned via UPS, to give you an idea of what we pared down to.

There was no sudden bursts of creativity or inspiration in our new life on the west coast. If anything, it was kind of annoying living out our daily lives without some items that didn't survive the move.

I have nothing wrong with minimalism, or owning fewer things. In fact, I'm all for it, but don't fool yourself that throwing out the fondue pot is going to help you finish that novel.

My guess is that the stimulation of such a new environment is more responsible.

<comment><USER3> > My guess is that the stimulation of such a new environment is more > responsible.

This. Environment means so much to productivity. For example, the reason why I frequent my local hackerspace is that being there puts me into a getting- things-done attitude, whereas at home I usually end up chatting on IRC, watching Youtube or playing video games. And sometimes, all of the above at once. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The younger me will agree but now that I have more practical experience in life I see things differently. The stuff that you own are for convenience. If you install some furniture you don't need to think about them - they are there ready to accept the stuff you want to stash in. There is very little maintenance as well (dusting, etc.) which you could outsource if you want to free more time for yourself.

In terms of the comment that your things own you, I cannot see how this works. Of course if you need to be mobile, then you need to give up on these things or you need to be prepared to take a loss. Those things should have been factored from the very beginning. Buying a car has a huge upfront cost but perhaps lower transportation cost in the long run if you use it regularly. Solar panels vs nuclear vs fossil fuel , laptop vs desktop, own server vs cloud are manifestations of the same thinking. Everything has advantages and disadvantages and unfortunately, regardless of the framework of life you choose to live in some things will not work out the way you want them to but that is fine :)

To unclutter your mind you really need to go beyond that kind of thinking. Minimalism cannot be defined in such a simple terms as much as you cannot define minimalism when you are building your next product. Minimalism does not mean lack of features. It means lack of unnecessary features but to find out what falls under this category you need to try them out first to see what works.

</comment><comment><USER5> I can kind of understand where these types of articles are coming from but I wish people would stop framing them as some sort of generational paradigm shift in living. It's simply a response to a changed set of incentives.

Cheap consumables + high property values + cheap travel + low job security = consumerist minimalism makes sense

This isn't about "cognitive freedom" it's about low interest rates (causing high house prices), low tariff trade (meaning dirt cheap manufactured consumables) and the corporate culture of treating labor as disposable (frankly: due to union destruction) meaning you have to be able to move often.

Assuming all of those things reversed and:

* High tariff trade means that you can't just buy a new Bangladeshi-sewn wardrobe for $200.

* Suddenly you can buy a huge house relatively cheaply because of a drop in house prices.

* The "job for life" becomes a thing again.

Then again, consumerist minimalism would make much less sense.

</comment><comment><USER6> Going digital is a big help. My legacy collection of books, CDs, DVDs or records still takes annoyingly much space and it's a pain in the butt when you move. Books are heavy!

I wish there was an easy way to instantly get a digital version of a book you own. Publishers always claim that you don't really own a book or record, it's just a license. I've already bought a license to read a novel or listen to an album, why can't I just transfer the license to a digital format without paying full price again?

And it's even more painful when you acknowledge that a lot of books are still unread, it's like a wall of shame of good intentions. Thankfully you can easily hide digital books in a subfolder.

<comment><USER7> I keep working on digital minimalism. What's the cleanest, simplest organizational schema/stack I can use to make sure all of my digital material is findable and secure? It's a rabbit hole for sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> prediction, as an aside: sometime soonish, there will be widespread adoption of something between renting an AirBNB, and owning furniture. Maybe it's a service where you rent furniture. An AI-assisted interior decorator gives you a proposal, and the furniture is delivered and arranged. You pay a monthly fee.

I won an Ironhack hackathon based on this idea. Tricky to execute though as furniture is big, heavy and logistics become expensive. If you have 100 customers renting sofas for 6 months (because ifthey rent longer, why should they not buy one themselves?), you will end up moving a lot of furniture.

And how do you manage offering? Products from your own warehouse, or P2P, or both? Pure P2P would require no stocks, but also reduce the amount of products available on the portal which would make it less attracting.

For an early market research test we created a profile on the local craigslist and asked people selling their sofas if they were interested in renting it out instead.. Then we also created a profile offering to rent out a sofa. Limited interest but we did get some fun response..

<comment><USER9> If there were a personal possession I'd like transformed into a service, I think it might be clothing rather than furniture.

With furniture, once you have the appropriate pieces, you don't really need to do much with them. Also, it's easy enough to buy / sell furniture as needed, i.e. whenever you feel like moving.

As for clothing - with changing seasons, drycleaning, different dress codes, polishing shoes, etc, etc... wish there were something where I could order the next week or two's clothing for hire, and send it back dirty, and let someone else figure out when it needs replacing, polishing, etc.

<comment><USER10> Yes, clothes drive me mad.

I'd find something comfortable in a decent fit and buy half-a-dozen of them all at the same time, then attempt to wear them until they wore-out. But when I went back to the store they'd changed 'seasons' or 'styles' and the same items were no longer available. I'd defer searching for and purchasing new items until my wife would force me to do so due to holes in my pullovers etc. I'm not sure how Steve Jobs overcame this problem with his turtle-necks, unless he had them custom-made.

My solution to this was to start shopping in country-life ( farming / horse- riding etc ) and workwear shops. Not only do the items last longer but those ranges have much lower churn. Not as fashionable as high-street stores I suppose but functionally sufficient and less stressful for me overall.

In comparison furniture has zero cognitive burden for me once selected and installed. I've moved house once and it was just a case of hiring a removals company with a big van, they did all the work.

<comment><USER11> _But when I went back to the store they 'd changed 'seasons' or 'styles' and the same items were no longer available_

Stick to classic designs from classic brands and you won't have that problem. The basic white dress shirt/blouse for example works for all occasions and if you find a fit that works for you from an established brand you'll never have to worry about fit again (until you change size).

<comment><USER12> This.

I buy 2 pair of Levi's 501 on sale each year for ~$35, a single brand/style of underwear, single style/brand under shirt, single brand/style of athletic socks, 2 pair minimum of any style/design of non-athletic socks, etc. Button up shirts purchased as needed (trying to limit to 5-7) from same brand, and all matching jeans. I can blindly grab first item in each stack and have consistent results. haven't felt need to simplify any further. I try and stock up on the socks/undergarments during sales, and then replace in drawer once showing signs of excessive wear. so far so good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So the premise of this post seems to be that owning things that may one day need to be moved introduces a cognitive load extreme enough that daily creativity is reduced, but reducing easy access to purchases to the point where buying things is a 'scavenger hunt' is 'actually great'.

</comment><comment><USER14> It depends on which kind of person you are. If you are the type of person that likes to have parties at home, invites friends to dinner, etc. and you care about their comfiness, you will like to have a comfortable sofa, a nice coffee table, etc.

But it's true that you feel some kind of relief when you have fewer things. Specially if you travel frequently, you can go without worrying about leaving something important behind.

</comment><comment><USER15> It is very much in line with [http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html), on essentially that in the times of plenty things usually have negative value.

</comment><comment><USER16> There's a lot of changes happening when moving to a new place, so I'm not sure why the author assumes his burst of creativity is due to minimalism only. It might just be that it's exciting to be somewhere new and start fresh.

</comment><comment><USER17> Reminds of me of a scene [0] in the movie "Fight Club", where they talk about the meaning of owning things.

[0][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVxM0gryue4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVxM0gryue4)</comment>


Attended Max Levchin & Peter Thiel: VC in 2011, tonight in SF - <AUTHOR>

Just wanted to see if any other HN members attended Max Levchin and Peter Thiel's talk tonight at the Commonwealth Club in SF? It was great to finally see them both and hear their thoughts on startups, investing, and the world generally. The three criteria they look for in startups:<p>(1) must be a radical, revolutionary idea<p>(2) with a narrow focus and solution<p>(3) targeting a huge market <comment><USER2> What's a good site to use to discover these events around the bay area?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good question, thank you to the reply below. I discovered it when my friend sent me the invite.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Remote employees, how are you paid (contract, US-payroll, etc.)? - <AUTHOR> Hi everybody,
I am getting a job at a US-based startup but will be working from The Netherlands as a remote worker. We are trying to figure out how to properly organize this but there is so much conflicting information out there on what you should do, and what you can't do.
I'd love to hear from somebody who is currently working remotely for a US-based company to get some insight in how to organize this.
A massive thanks for you help and all the best,
Valentijn <comment><USER2> If you were employed by a local company what would you expect they pay for (that includes an office!) or provide as benefits? What would be compulsory by law? (in fact what is the law in any case?) What would that cost you if you had to pay for it by yourself? What would you miss out on as an independent contractor/freelancer?

You need to have answers to these questions so that you can decide what to ask for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

Thanks for the reply. Good points, I have tried to cover these things as much as I could so that I can cover insurance, pension, and a co-working space. I am more looking for the nitty-gritty part of it, regarding how they organize the agreement (contractually). I think I have found another post that shed some light on this:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18289932](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18289932)

Thanks again,

Valentijn</comment></comment>


Should we colonize space to mitigate existential risk? - <AUTHOR> https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/17/acc-should-we-colonize-space-to-mitigate-x-risk/ <comment><USER2> Sounds good in theory, but we don't have the expertise to do that. If we did, trips to Mars wouldn't be classified as 'one-way suicide' certainties. The only way people can survive in space or on Mars is if there is the whole of Earth's backing behind them. No Earth, No Survival.

<comment><USER3> Actually, one would be fine with just Elon backing them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Everyone agrees that we should try to avoid extinction"

Perhaps I'm an outlier here but I don't see why we should do anything in particular to ensure the survival of humanity.

<comment><USER5> You're only an outlier because of how rare logic is today ...

I think we should get our own house in order before wasting money on, literally, pie in the sky.

We're on our way to polluting every square inch of the only known habitable planet, and already causing mass extinction.

Thus how can anybody prioritize sending a few people to Mars?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> no. we should use our knowledge to harden our planet against our kind so that we can have security and longevity to develop real space faring tech

</comment><comment><USER7> Yes.</comment>


W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2013/10/02/w3c-green-lights-adding-drm-to.html

<comment><USER2> How come this isn't getting more visibility on HN?

<comment><AUTHOR> see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6491144](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6491144)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> That is just bad. And will accessing a web site with non compliant DRM ignoring browser will be violation of CFAA and DMCA?</comment>


Swiss Fortress -- a review of La Place de la Concorde Suisse - <AUTHOR> http://bldgblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/various-forms-of-lithic-disguise.html

<comment><USER2> The pictures linked by Bossi in the comment section are really interesting looking:

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/thisisbossi/3062674949/in/set-7...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/thisisbossi/3062674949/in/set-72157610430130046)

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/thisisbossi/3062675425/in/set-7...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/thisisbossi/3062675425/in/set-72157610430130046)

Quite impressive level of camouflage.</comment>


Ask HN: What are ways to prevent distractions and stay focused on the project? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> You can beat distractions, but you can't avoid them. The trick is to divide the work into small enough pieces that you can finish one before being distracted. Once you have organized the pieces, you can finish one, let it go, accept a distraction, then resume working on another.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Start with your goals.

2\. Make sure you have multiple non-contradictory goals pushing you in the same direction.

3\. Connect your daily actions to those goals.

For example, as an employee:

1 and 2. "I have this job because I need to pay bills, and I care about what the company does, and I don't want to let my teammates down, and I am learning new technology I am interested in."

3\. "Building this piece of infrastructure, even if boring, is critical to project's success because <reasons>, and will enable me to meet my goals by building on it."

Longer version here: [https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/05/20/staying- focused/](https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/05/20/staying-focused/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Time-blocking could be a help. You block a few hours where no one should interrupt you, shut down your phone and close your e-mail client and just focus on work. In the beginning, it´s a bit wired because you don´t need to do anything else while working but you get used to it and become more concentrated. More Infos: [https://zenkit.com/en/blog/why-you-should-be-time- blocking-a...](https://zenkit.com/en/blog/why-you-should-be-time-blocking-and- not-just-writing-to-do-lists/)

<comment><USER5> I finished reading "Deep Work" recently (book mentioned in the article) and have started using this time-blocking strategy to great effect.

The book also suggests scheduling time specifically _for_ distractions, the idea being to turn the situation on its head so you have something to look forward to rather than something to avoid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was actually reading this article a second ago [https://medium.com/the- mission/how-to-design-a-lifestyle-tha...](https://medium.com/the-mission/how- to-design-a-lifestyle-that-eliminates-distraction-and-enables-hyper- focus-c1f350d5b5ba)

so I thought I will share

</comment><comment><USER7> This is probably the best advise I've read about this topic. It has helped me tremendously

[https://medium.com/swlh/theres-no-such-thing-as- motivation-e...](https://medium.com/swlh/theres-no-such-thing-as- motivation-e02edd7de30)

</comment><comment><USER8> By "preventing distractions" do you mean avoiding procrastination or not giving in to the shiny object syndrome and starting to work on other projects?</comment>


Ask HN: Freelancing? How's Work? - <AUTHOR> I've been freelance Rails developer for 8 years and have never wanted for work. Over the past six months, however, things seemed to have dried up. And it's not just me. I've spoken with devs in other languages, designers, devops, and writers and everyone's saying the same thing: work's slowing down.
A couple people think it's because companies are more optimistic and are therefore hiring full-time workers instead of contractors.
What do you think? Are you seeing the same downturn? <comment><USER2> There is a bit of nervousness in the US market right now...

I talk to a lot of retailers (not job related I just talk a lot) and most of them are lamenting that things are slow right now.

The problem is that there isn't a problem, just the perception of one. If you cut the fat now your saving money for the bad thing that MIGHT happen.

</comment><comment><USER3> Doing Ruby/Rails/JS/Nodejs for past 4 years roughly. Things did dried up a bit over the past ~3 months, But I'm sure if I were to do some sales outreach, I'd be able to find work in a couple days. (Good that I have some of my clients on retainer contracts for supporting and maintaining their projects which keeps the bank balance and cashflow stream healthy)

Not too worried about the downtime though, because I always wanted to take a few months off from consulting to build our own product. So, i've been happily utilizing this time to build: [https://servicehq.ca](https://servicehq.ca)

Once we roll out with 3-4 customers, My plan is to do a time split between consulting gigs and my own product.

PS: I'm based in Toronto, Canada.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm not seeing it, but then again I only work with 2-3 companies for months at a time, so I'm less sensitive to minor ups and downs. I also consult on software marketing and not development, so I wonder if there's more demand for consultants in the former than the latter. That would be surprising.

Instead of labeling yourself a Rails developer, could you switch to consulting on business problems? It may be that you use Rails to solve them, but that shouldn't be relevant to the client.

See: [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a- pro...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I've been doing freelance SAP work since 2005 and there have been ups and downs. A couple of years ago was rock bottom, due to companies afraid to spend and H1B abuse. It's picking up a bit now but after 2015 I'm always a bit nervous.

</comment><comment><USER6> No slow down in NYC

</comment><comment><USER7> Things are fine in Sydney, Australia.

<comment><USER8> They are horrible over west, in Perth. Everything is basically dried out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How do you go about finding new work?

</comment><comment><USER10> No slow down in Madrid or Edinburgh :)

</comment><comment><USER11> No slow down here, (US South East)

<comment><USER12> Curious. What state.

<comment><USER11> Charlotte metro area, which straddles NC and SC.

I'm on the SC side of the line. Less taxes. :)

<comment><USER13> Greenville?

<comment><USER12> I've been unable to find a job in SC

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Super busy in Berlin!</comment>


Scheme's Metacircular Evaluator ported to CoffeeScript - <AUTHOR> http://dmitrysoshnikov.com/coffee-lisp-eval/index.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Direct link to the source (which is nicely commented): <http://dmitrysoshnikov.com/coffee-lisp-eval/eval.coffee></comment>


Show HN: Intent – A browser extension for fighting digital distractions - <AUTHOR> http://browsewithintent.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi there,

One of the developers here. The spirit with Intent is to use light touches to help you become more aware of how you spend your time online and thus make better decisions. We just released this and our number one goal is to get feedback about what is or isn't effective for folks. We believe it's a bit of a different take compared to products that either do heavy-handed blocking or focus on quantification without tools for follow-through, and we're excited to see what people think!

</comment><comment><USER2> Hello, another developer here. We thought it would be interesting to build something that didn't depend on winning a technology war against distractions online. We'll never be able to fully block sites (my fav example: the fb mobile apps are bundled with an ever-changing list of IPs), and we're not sure we'd even want to, so instead we focus on the user and work to build a healthier relationship with the online world.[1]

It's not going to work as quickly as blocking seems to, but we think it will be more effective over the long term. Hope folks like it!

(Personal anecdote: in building this I have completely changed my news consumption habits. I used to hit up the New Yorker/NYTimes/WaPo when boredom struck -- when I woke up, at lunch, in between tasks, etc. Working on this helped me realize that the return wasn't worth the time investment, so now I set larger time chunks to read the physical New Yorker magazine and books. Much better!)

[1] Cal Newport calls this 'controlled use' -- [http://calnewport.com/blog/2017/10/02/are-you-using- social-m...](http://calnewport.com/blog/2017/10/02/are-you-using-social-media- or-being-used-by-it/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been beta-testing this for a while and have found it very useful for its stated purpose (and have found the developers very responsive when reporting issues).

The feature that I feel lacks is that there's no way to properly quantify time spent on the iOS Twitter app (which I imagine could be approximated by looking at when I posted tweets or faved tweets); but besides that it's been a significantly useful browser extension.

</comment><comment><USER4> Awesome! Just installed. I saw in the privacy policy that you only collect domains, not full urls. Do you also only collect/store domains of sites we're opting into track, or do you store all visited domains?

<comment><AUTHOR> We store all visited domains (when not in incognito mode), minus a couple hardcoded categories like adult sites. We want to show you charts that reference your overall browsing habits during the review periods, and our settings panel gives you knobs to recategorize urls from your history, rather than sticking to our initial buckets.

As we mentioned in the privacy policy, we don't store your email address or any identifier that you'd typically associate with your account. We very much do not want it to be possible to tie a history back to a person.

Thoughts?

<comment><USER4> Thanks for clarifying! Sounds good to me

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Loving it so far, thanks intent team</comment>


"How Can You Talk About Space Exploration at a Time Like This?" - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/outthere/2014/07/18/can-talk-space-exploration-time-like/

<comment><USER2> I completely see both sides of this -

On one hand if we just gave up research of space exploration, we end up caught with our hands in our pockets when the timing becomes even more critical. Not to mention the awe and wonder the study of science creates to forward us as a species.

But still at the end of the day, there are A LOT of issues right here in front of us that we barely try and tackle. One of my favorite spoken word artists, the late Gil Scott Heron, wrote about the same issue here, and if I were him, I'd be pissed off:

Whitey on the Moon - [http://www.gilscottheron.com/lywhitey.html](http://www.gilscottheron.com/lywhitey.html)</comment>


Three signs you have a management problem. And that problem might be you - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/three-signs-you-have-a-management-problem-and-that-problem-might-be-you-2011-4?page=1 <comment><USER2> Great point here: "One simple jewel of advice given to me by one of our senior software engineers, Joseph, was that if we shared our motivations as decision makers (e.g. "We're working on this project to generate revenue in the short term, instead of infrastructure improvements because we're trying to hit a short term revenue goal of X") it helped him understand why he was working on a project, and which aspects of that project to spend time thinking about improving."

Sources of Power by Gary Klein[1] is a great read about decision making and there's a whole chapter about communicating intent and motivation.

"When you communicate intent, you are letting the other team members operate more independently and improvise as necessary. You are giving them a basis for reading your mind more accurately."

The U.S. Army actually uses a Commander's Intent statement, which was streamlined into:

\- Here's what I think we face.

\- Here's what I think we should do.

\- Here's why.

\- Here's what we should keep our eye on.

\- Now, talk to me.

Obviously this can be applied to any organization. It's always in your best interest to tell someone why they should be doing something and not just what they should be doing.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Sources-Power-People-Make- Decisions/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Sources-Power-People-Make- Decisions/dp/0262611465)

<comment><USER3> I second _Sources of Power_. A truly fantastic read.

As a adjunct to learning about "Commander's Intent", the USMC's _Warfighting_ provides a fairly simple background of theory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Having a hierarchy isn't a bad thing. Having no idea who has the final say > is a bad thing.

This is an absolutely classic rule of managing any organisation where competing priorities must be settled.

Chains of command have a very high cost, but they can ameliorate internal politicking and remove uncertainty about what, if anything, has been decided.

However, decision making power _must_ come with accountability for the decisions, or it will NOT turn out well.

A purely flat organisation will wind up with de facto bosses, minus any institutional constraints on their activities and minus any accountability. If you're dealing with a sociopath the damage they can wreak will be magnified by the lack of structure to constrain their power.

<comment><USER4> How does a purely flat organization lead to no constraints or accountability? In a flat organization every member needs to be responsible for actively upholding the organizations vision in the same way that this article is advising the managers need to actively uphold their companies vision.

It's the lack of an active vision that creates problems not the hierarchical or flat structure of the organization.

For example a democratic process can be used to maintain an organizations active vision including resolving disruptive people and processes.

<comment><USER3> It leads to unconstrained, unaccountable behaviour because nobody has any clear procedure for punishing divergence from the group's interest. There is, if you like, no "immune system". In such an environment parasites thrive -- and indeed a major driver of both evolution and civilisation is adaptation to parasitic behaviour.

The idea of a democratic process presupposes an _institution_ , which includes _explicit divisions of power_ , which is independent of the individuals taking part.

It is still a hierarchy as _someone_ will hold the power. It is an _explicit_ hierarchy because those powers are enumerated. That the process of replacement is democratic is slightly besides the point (though not entirely, as it prevents all-or-nothing power acquisition).

Whereas a loose, "flat" organisation with no differentiation between the rights, responsibilities and power of members is utterly vulnerable to the first sociopath who happens upon it. Such a person will wind up with an informal dictatorship and everyone else will be stuffed.

<comment><USER4> I was more referring to a democratic process like - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy>

I agree that a loose "flat" organization is prone to serious problems :)

<comment><USER3> The problem with direct democracy is the same as for voluntary voting: voters on the fringe, who are more highly motivated, will come to dominate the polity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh god, that is the worst. I have seen this plenty of times. Boss won't give direction because either he is intimidated or, he is the "idea man" who shouldn't have to be bothered by implementation. It's fine if you want the dev to just wing it, but you have to align expectations constantly. I ping senior management at least every couple days with screen shots or questions asking for input, even if they never read my emails, I want to be able to say that I informed them of exactly what direction we were taking and that they had input.I keep my PM looped in on almost every email I send just incase someone pops into his office he won't have to say "I don't know" if someone asks him where the project is.

Even then, we still run into "misfeatures". I have no idea how you could tell a dev to wing it, let him work for months with no oversight and then be shocked when he came back with something unexpected.

<comment><USER6> _I have no idea how you could tell a dev to wing it, let him work for months with no oversight and then be shocked when he came back with something unexpected._

I _hope_ he's exagerating the examples for effect. It can't really be that idiotic, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _" Instead, get rid of people you don't trust enough not to micromanage. If you look around and that's everyone, then the problem is probably with you... "_

Good stuff. I think leaders in general need to be more proactive pruning their employee tree if they want it to bear good fruit.

I'm amazed how difficult it is for managers to admit that they made a hiring mistake, even if the person that needs to go is just a contractor.

<comment><USER8> Most managers I know would love to have the ability to prune and rehire staff to rebalance teams and optimise skills, enthusiasm etc. However in many cases (particularly in big companies), managers have very little say in their headcount numbers - most of it being controlled by HR who in turn are watching the bottom line.

As a result, HR can often make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to hire backfills or additional staff and hence managers quickly learn that it is better to retain a 60% effective person than have no-one at all.

This lesson is even further reinforced when managers are forced to sack staff to hit some corporate cost take-out target which means they have to cut staff regardless of the teams actual resource needs and without the 'low performers' in the team, you would have to cut the good performers.

It's a sad state of affairs, but one I've seen on so many occasions.

<comment><USER9> _Most managers I know would love to have the ability to prune and rehire staff_

I bet they would, but such a system would be wide open to abuse. So the market has fixed it: contractors. You can get rid of them easily when no longer needed, but you pay a premium while they are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is an excellent article for any CEO taking their company from about 25 to 60 people.

I forwarded it to my VPs of Product and Engineering, swearing I didn't write it myself. :-)

</comment><comment><USER11> _Empowerment does not mean letting everyone do whatever they want._

A real gem (describes many "ghosts of employers past"). Most employees don't even _want_ to do "whatever they want" since they know at the end of the day they have a job to do and if they're doing "whatever they want" it means they're flying blind and hoping they don't crash.

</comment><comment><USER12> This article hit a lot of buzzers for me from my last job. Especially the signs there may be a problem. Burnout was rapid and high, confusion abounded, and so on. If I still worked there I'd email it to my coworkers so we could ruminate on how spot-on it described the office.

</comment><comment><USER13> Justin, what a great story about self-realization and growth. This is a very common problem among young, successful, technical entrepreneurs. But it seldom turns out as well as it did with you. Good luck and Godspeed.

<comment><USER14> Your comment is condescending and uninformative.

<comment><USER13> Was not meant to be at all. Hang around the valley long enough and you'll see this happen a million times. I've been that technical founder and I've worked for the same type of guy. Self realization is difficult as is forced growth. Justin struck me as a real leader and a real example to technical founders. Job well done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Part of this reminded me of [1]. Most of the book is about how employees can deal with different boss personalities. [1] [http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1564147045/ref=redir_mdp_mobil...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1564147045/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/186-5844091-1466565)

</comment><comment><USER16> One simple sign that you might have a management problem, you feel like you can't trust anyone.

</comment><comment><USER17> Yes, good points all. It's also one of the hardest things to do when it's your business. I've been running my company for over 15 years. It's STILL hard to let go sometimes.

The best you can do is try, and ask your employee's forgiveness when you slide back into micromanaging.

One good way to move the process along: Never let an employee come to you with a problem unless they have 2 possible solutions. The solutions can be ridiculous, but they need to have 'em.

It gets them involved in the decision-making process from the get-go, and tends to prompt discussions among team members before you, the manager, has to get involved.

</comment><comment><USER18> Although great points were made in the article, I find this to be a failure on the part of the CEO and COO. Their individual profiles on justin.tv are both vague and lacking in focus; public statements often reflect management styles and objectives. If the key directors of a company don't direct, the whole company will suffer regardless of the number of management books they read.

<comment><USER19> "Vague problem definition: "Create an automated test suite for the website.""

This is not a vague problem definition. And "Create an automated test suite for the website." is not "I just wanted something that pinged five URLs and checked for 500s."

<comment><USER20> The problem definition lacks concrete measurable goals that identify when the problem solved. Without those, there is much room for interpretation and disagreement and the actual problem isn't well-defined. It only seems well defined, because you instantly fill in the gap in your mind.

It's unclear when the manager would consider the website 'tested'. If a manager said something like this and the first thing that came to mind was 'Selenium, full test-suite, 1 month', then the next thing to come to mind would be "that's probably not what he meant, since he doesn't want me gone for a month'.

<comment><USER3> This is a case of where "commander's intent" would have been useful.

"We need to ensure that the site remains up. It would be helpful to know very quickly when it goes down. I need you to write a test suite to do that."

Without the framing of knowing _why_ something is asked for, the risk is that the work will zoom off in unexpected directions, or, just as bad, get stuck on a triviality.

Staff can do their bit by _asking_ for intent, if the corporate culture allows it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fire and Fury in the Amazon - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/fire-and-fury-in-the-amazon-11566861685?mod=rsswn <comment><AUTHOR> Another opinion piece in the WSJ today:

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-save-the- amazon-11566859...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-save-the- amazon-11566859544) How to Save the Amazon Natives can't be expected to care about ecology when they're living in poverty. By Leandro Narloch Aug. 26, 2019 6:45 pm ET

The author's suggestions:

• Support the legalization of sustainable mining. • Favor new hydroelectric power plants. • Encourage good forest management. • Support intensive agriculture and livestock.</comment>


Apple Joins Wireless Power Consortium - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/13/14596932/apple-iphone-8-rumors-wireless-power-consortium <comment><AUTHOR> It's pretty amazing how Apple can singlehandedly hold back the mass development of a useful technology. That's not to say there was any nefarious intention in doing so. Jony Ive will probably serenade us with a good reason in short order. I'm just glad that the network effect problem of wireless charging tech adoption will end. You'll know it's the future when you can put your laptop, phone, headphones, and AR glasses on a table and have them all automagically charge.

There are so many implications of this development. Smart devices will proliferate more rapidly, since the cost of having to charge yet another "dumb smart device" will become negligible. People will hang around public spaces longer. In addition, mobile device and laptop use time per person will get a decent bump.</comment>


Game Consoles Are Already Dead — And Developers Know It - <AUTHOR> http://readwrite.com/2013/03/04/game-consoles-already-dead-developers-know-it <comment><USER2> Yup. The $50 price-tag for console games isn't enough to pay for their bloated $200 million budgets. At best, the big studios make a very small margin of profit. Most of those big budget games put the studio in debt (or transfer the debt to the third party developers who actually create the game). This is why they're bankrupt and dissolving.

I'm glad to see the game industry stretching to accommodate more indie developers. It's about time.

</comment><comment><USER3> No they're not - PS4 is to be 'PC-based' amd everyone and their uncle now appreciates the value of the Indie movement, so any gains made on PC will regurgitate back on to consoles.

Author seems to conflate fad, fashion and hazy cylicity with epoch-trashing existentialism.

Unless mobile gaming comes up with some seriously Wii-like interaction shift over the next generation or two, it'll mire itself in the limitations of the platform - at best being a satellite to a central home entertainment system (choose your flavour—they're all the same).

<comment><USER2> Only a very successful PC game ("World of Warcraft" level of success) could earn enough profit to pay for a big budget console game.

I don't think the average person understands how much labor goes into console games. They're on the level of Hollywood films, with teams of hundreds of people working over periods of years, in perpetual crunch time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Author moans that all console games are sequals conviently mass misses the new ips that happened in last 2 years whilst goign on to praise mobile gaming market which if anything is just cut down rehashes of console games along with angry <insert> birds games that are not generic at all...</comment>


Generic Programming in PureScript - <AUTHOR> http://www.purescript.org/learn/generic/ <comment><USER2> Back while I was looking into full stack Haskell web app tech (we ended up sticking with Clojure), Elm and PureScript both seemed incredibly powerful and beautiful. But that was a few years ago. Is there a modern comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of each in relation to each other? Like, when would we want one vs. the other?

<comment><USER3> My answer to this has changed quite a bit over the last year. It used to be the case, at least as I saw it, that Elm had a UI focus, and PureScript tried to be a general-purpose language. So it came down to typical expressiveness vs. tooling/analysis tradeoffs. You could use Elm and maybe sacrifice some general-purpose language features like dealing with arbitrary effects, but buy yourself best-in-class tools like their excellent time-traveling debugger, and hot code reloading. Or you could pick PureScript, and have a general-purpose language which ran in a bunch of environments with lots of native libraries, but at the expense of tooling.

Now though, Elm has become a more general-purpose language, adding effects and various other features, and PureScript has better UI libraries and tooling/editor support. So the gap has closed somewhat.

Speaking generally, the goals of the two projects are pretty similar. I can't speak for the Elm community, but "bring strongly-typed FP to the JavaScript community via the web platform" seems to approximate the goals of both projects pretty well (maybe someone from the Elm side can correct me here?) So the goals are similar, but the execution is very different. I think Elm and PureScript differ greatly in opinions regarding _how_ to bring strongly-typed FP to JavaScript. This is not just a question of language features (type classes and HKTs are often mentioned), but also things like how the language should present its foreign function interface to JavaScript, what the entry point to an application should look like, whether to build features into the language or in libraries, how to grow a language community, etc. In practice, these make the experience of using each language very different.

> when would we want one vs. the other?

Elm provides tools with which you can become productive quickly. Also, it's used in production by NoRedInk and others, so it's clear that it is general- purpose enough to be used for real applications. I think there will be two paths to PureScript for most users - from Haskell, and from JavaScript, quite possibly via Elm. Just as users might move to Elm because they want type safety and expressiveness, they might move to PureScript because they find themselves wanting even more type safety and expressiveness. Certain abstractions are possible in PureScript, but (I think, again, would be glad to be corrected..) not in Elm - free monads, monad transformers, monadic tail calls, van Laarhoven lenses, etc. SlamData is an example of an (open source) company putting these tools to great use.</comment></comment>


Chan-Zuckerberg's Chief Of Staff Reveals Plan For Big-Bet Philanthropy - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/11/the-chan-zuckerberg-initiative/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29#.xutgnk:Q1H2 <comment><USER2> It sounds great - $40B+ can do a lot of good. I'm disappointed to see they're also trying to "reimagine" school - Gates's attempt has been a disaster.

That said, Gates's work with diseases in third world countries has been absolutely magical. Hopefully this isn't ushering in an era of billionaires all trying to stake out their own social issues, but will see organizations working together where there is overlap.

But I can armchair QB tens of billions of dollars in "making the world a better place" all I want. I can also be cynical all I want (as is at least partially my nature) but I'm going to try to remain happy about this one. I'm not a fan of how Facebook makes its money, but I don't mind seeing that money go somewhere that helps in any way.

<comment><USER3> Fixing schools is probably the single biggest thing that could be done to move the western world forward. It warrants more than a single attempt.

<comment><USER4> "fixing schools" is a fundamentally different kind of problem - it's one where we can't even agree on what a "big success" would look like. For who exactly? (only "low-performing" children?) To what end? (jobs? liberal sentiment?) How mandatory?

"fixing diseases" and "fixing poverty" are things where maybe we don't agree on the best way to go about them, but we probably mostly agree on what a "big success" would be.

<comment><USER5> I would really like to see an emphasis on education rather than training. No child left behind sort of moved us to this pure metrics approach that makes things kinda sucky. it's hard to measure education.

Rather than define precisely what i mean, consider the difference between sex education and sex training, i think you'll get the idea.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nexus 7 Jelly Bean 4.2 Easter Egg - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/ben_hutchins/status/269323599855353857 <comment><AUTHOR> Click on the version a few times for the jelly bean world.</comment>


Idea: Using Bitcoin-style Publicly Auditable Ledger for Electronic Voting - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1g350g/could_bitcoin_the_blockchain_and_p2p_currency/ Saw this thread pop up on reddit and felt I had to share it to some extent.
So, the idea is not well developed yet at this point in time, but I believe that bitcoin-style encryption could be used for better security in electronic voting machines.  Keeping a distributed  record of votes cast, maintained in the same manner as the blockchain, would provide nearly unbeatable security against the rigged voting machines that conspiracy theorists/ whistleblowers (justified or not) talk about today.
Admittedly, I am no expert in this topic.  So I decided to bring the idea here, just in case it has legs.  Anybody have any input? <comment><USER2> A crux is figuring out how to allocate wallets to citizens (and how to preserve anonymity).

<comment><USER3> You could still have people go to voting booths. Let the booth generate a random address per user. Keep generated addresses in booths to enable paper trail of votes to the booth.</comment></comment>


Show HN: MarkSearch - A Desktop Bookmarking App - <AUTHOR> https://darkle.github.io/MarkSearch/ <comment><USER2> Will there be a server I could run on my own hardware, that would allow me to synchronize bookmarks from multiple devices?

<comment><AUTHOR> No probably not sorry.

edit: although the bookmarks database is just an sqlite database file, so you could maybe run a bash script and use curl to grab another database file from another machine and use sqlite to merge the files maybe.

<comment><USER2> Maybe ill just run a public db server for my own use with some auth, and have all my instances just point to that. Any reason you can think of for why a remote instance wouldn't work (would just try to swap in mysql or something)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This looks great! If you browse a lot you're definitely going to feel the need for an app like this.</comment>


Safer to Puff, E-Cigarettes Can't Shake Their Reputation as a Menace - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/02/health/e-cigarette-vape-njoy-bankruptcy.html <comment><USER2> For anyone looking to quit smoking I can't recommend e-cigarettes enough. As a very passionate former smoker I got off the habit pretty much accidentally and without even trying in a timeframe of about half a year. And it actually started with the intend to find a cheaper alternative to expensive cigarettes without any desire to quit.

The key is to steadily reduce the amount of nicotine in the liquid you're using. Once you aren't using nicotine any longer all that is left is the social ritual and habit of going out for a smoke, which isn't a very convincing reason after a while. Soon you'll forgot to take your e-cigarette with you one day - you'll use it less and less. Until it simply doesn't matter any longer.

<comment><USER3> As a former smoker I believe that the best way to quit smoking is cold turkey. Sure, the withdrawal phase is a hell but in my case that helped me realize just how addictive that shit was. Before I'd never imagine that quitting would cause me depression or sleeping problems. All that, and a lot more, helped me understand how much my body was reliant on cigarettes. From my experience most smokers don't realize how addictive and dependent they are on their habit. If they were perhaps they'd think twice before lighting another one.

<comment><USER4> And yet the numbers say that people who go through phased withdrawal using e-cigarettes are more likely to give up...

<comment><USER5> If I remember correctly, cold turkey has worse rates for initial quitting but the lowest rates of people returning to smoking for those who "made it"

<comment><USER6> IIRC it has to do with the anguish of quitting - if you went through the difficulty and pain of quitting cold turkey you probably don't want that to be for nothing

<comment><USER7> Sunk cost strikes again? This time for good.

<comment><USER8> I wouldn't say sunk cost so much as you now have a better understanding of what the price is now that you have paid it once.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The reality is that tobacco taxes fund a lot of the government, and there is no replacement for that income source if people stop smoking cigarettes. Thus the tobacco companies are happy to lobby against e-cigarettes to protect their revenue stream and the government is happy to support them because it's their revenue stream too.

It's unfortunate, because it's largely a tax on the poor. The rich can afford prescription nicotine replacement and the higher healthcare costs for smokers. The poor can't, so they just die.

(I don't smoke, so I have no skin in this game. But I feel like if the government needs money, they should tax people proportionally to their income, rather than according to their bad habits. People are self-interested and will always want more income, so there's a steady revenue stream. But if we want to tank public infrastructure because people decide they want to break an unhealthy habit, that's ultimately self-destructive to society.)

<comment><USER10> I realize this often isn't the case, but the pursuit of taxing specific behaviors is supposed to only be used to fund things caused by that behavior: that way if some people are costing the government money, they pay the price rather than all of society, making everyone's incentives align. If those people stop doing the thing, then the cost is gone and the government should not care that they aren't collecting the money to pay for it anymore. As an example: taxing people who use roads to pay for roads encourages people to use roads less, which puts less wear on the road surface and means you need fewer lanes and thereby less road. If this mechanism is used correctly, and I realize it often isn't, the real problem is only when there is no good way to directly tax the damage and so a proxy is used: we don't tax people for miles driven, we tax them by the gallon of gas purchased, and while that works for pollution control (and people thereby think it makes sense that people who use less gas have to pay less gas tax, under an assumption that the goal is to encourage less burning of gas), the taxes are used to fund roads, and electric cars still put as much wear on the road as gasoline cars; this screws up the incentives and makes the government kind of want people to keep burning gas so they keep getting taxes to fund the roads they continue to need. But this is a slightly different problem than what you are describing. In the case of cigarettes, I was under the impression the goal of the tax was to fund public health infrastructure due to the cost to the public of caring for victims of smoking, and so while I realize the government always mixes their accounts and crosses purposes and generally screws this up, if e-cigarettes are generally safe then that should have been a case of working incentives.

<comment><USER11> >>I realize this often isn't the case, but the pursuit of taxing specific behaviors is supposed to only be used to fund things caused by that behavior:

That is only for the press release.. It is never actually that way. Almost all taxation applied to a general fund, meaning all taxes are simply put in a large pool, then various programs are funded from that pool.

There are almost never any actual legal rules that requires say a Gasoline tax to only be used for roads, or a cigarette tax to only be used for Health Programs

For this reason, and many others, I never support using Taxation for social control

Government should not be using tax policy to incentive or decentivize any activity. Taxation should be used to fund X program period.

Taxation should be generalized, AKA a income tax, a sales tax, etc. There should not be special taxes applied to individual products or product types

<comment><USER12> I have no problem with taxes on harmful products like tobacco and alcohol since they are a harm to society and a burden on society.

<comment><USER11> That is a slippery slope, if you want to talk about products or activities that "harm society"

Further then you have to define what "harm" it is doing.

I also suspect part of that "harm" you talk about is Costs associated with healthcare that is paid for by the taxpayer, meaning you likely support government run socialized health services. I do not.

<comment><USER13> Are you seriously requesting an explanation of what harm cigarettes are doing to society?

I suggest you have a trip to to a respiratory ward sometime.

<comment><USER11> I do not question the harm cigarettes do to individuals, but individuals make choices every day that cause harm to themselves. That is not a reason for government involvement

I do not believe it is my place to tell individuals what chemicals they can or can not consume

I am 100% against the War on Drugs as well, and believe that all drugs, including crack, cocaine, and all prescription drugs should be legal to buy if the person desires it.

I am an individualist, not a collectivist

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> " _Americans tend to value abstinence above all else, an all-or-nothing approach that British advocates see as rooted in the United States' Puritan culture, said Deborah Arnott, the chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health._ "

This is true.

You can see the same thing during the (alcohol) prohibition era: because ethyl alcohol is necessary for other uses, it was mandated to be "denatured" by adding chemicals that made it less appealing to drink. When they found people still drinking it (or managing to separate the alcohol from the denaturants), they increased the toxicity of the chemicals until they were actually poisoning people.

In this case, the primary goal is to prevent new smokers. Since many of the e-cigarette flavors are pleasant, they regard it as attractive to children. Now, getting someone who doesn't already smoke to vape is bad, but I haven't seen any significant evidence that vaping leads them to smoking, so there's that.

On the other hand, if you are already smoking, your soul is lost and, to a first approximation, it would be better if you were to die as soon as possible ---outside of pharmaceutical companies, there is no serious interest in cessation. Inside those companies, making nicotine gum and patches is big business, and I know people who have been chewing the gum frequently for nearly a decade.

There is a certain amount of the same feeling in those who have quit smoking. To paraphrase an old joke, how do you know someone quit smoking? Don't worry, they'll tell you. If you can quit cold-turkey, good; if you can't, you are weak willed and a lesser human.

In any case, the bottom line is, like in all Puritan situations, that results matter less than perceptions.

<comment><USER15> _Americans tend to value abstinence above all else, an all-or-nothing approach that British advocates see as rooted in the United States' Puritan culture_

I think that's hugely simplified. There are plenty of drugs which are exceedingly difficult to use recreationally:

\- Crack

\- Meth

\- Nicotine

\- Heroin

People who use those at all are very likely to use them a whole hell of a lot, and they have terrible health effects. I don't think it's Puritanism to recommend staying away from highly addictive substances.

 _Now, getting someone who doesn 't already smoke to vape is bad, but I haven't seen any significant evidence that vaping leads them to smoking, so there's that._

According to HHS ([http://www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/adolescent-health- topics/substanc...](http://www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/adolescent-health- topics/substance-abuse/tobacco/trends.html)):

"Eighth grade students who use e-cigarettes are 10 times more likely than their peers who do not use e-cigarettes to eventually smoke tobacco cigarettes. This trend continues to a slightly lesser degree for older adolescents. Tenth and 12th grade students who use e-cigarettes are eight and six times more likely, respectively, than their peers to smoke tobacco cigarettes. This suggests that youth who use e-cigarettes are likely to become tobacco cigarette smokers as they age."

<comment><USER14> " _There are plenty of drugs which are exceedingly difficult to use recreationally:_ "

Certainly. And the proper response is to discourage their use. But how do you treat those who do use them? As a health problem or as a moral failure?

Thanks for the HHS link!

<comment><USER15> > Certainly. And the proper response is to discourage their use.

Totally agree, but that's an entirely different conversation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is purely anecdotal but I have made the switch almost a year ago, also by "accident" after buying a starter kit to see what this thing was people around me started doing. Without actively trying to quit I just was not interested in regular cigarettes shortly after and managed to lower my nicotine content from 24mg to 6mg and am now planning to go lower with the next batch of liquid that I will order.

This was after many failed attempts to quit from around a pack a day with the longest cessation time being around half a year.

I don't think that vaping is harmless and I would not be surprised there are adverse long time health risks. But compared to real cigarettes this was a godsend for me. It is much cheaper, it does not have that disgusting smell, and it is much easier from the logistics side compared to having to buy cigarettes every day, feeling like some lowlife addict in the process. What I have now is a hobby, tinkering with my devices, building coils, trying juices (since some time I got rid of any flavours and just vape pure VG/PG). Gone is most of the shortness of breath when working out, disgusting mouthfeel in the morning, cold hands and feet and this permanent feeling of being poisoned. I gave my father a starter-kit for Christmas and he managed to quit cigarettes completely on that very day after heavily smoking for 30 years, trying to quit and suffering from the effects of smoking much more than a relatively young person does. I might have saved his life that day.

So yes, maybe vaping is bad, maybe it will kill you when you are not able to quit timely. But the time spend with the addiction is a whole lot more pleasant with vaping than with cigarettes and I cannot imagine it being remotely as deadly as smoke/tar. Banning vaping because of unknown health risks is complete madness in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER17> Safe or not for smokers, non-smokers should certainly not have to inhale the same substances that smokers do. I find it alarming that e-cigarette marketing managed to convince smokers that what gets exhaled is just "water vapor", and thus they can now smoke anywhere they want.

<comment><USER18> I don't understand. In my experience these vaporizers don't have any sort of smoke that lingers around and there is no unpleasant sensation associated with breathing around ecigarette users like there is with tobacco. Even if there is more than water vapor in there, I feel like it's very unlikely that I'd be getting any sort of significant dose from their exhalations, so why should I care if they smoke inside?

<comment><USER13> Do you have any proof it is safe, or are we just basing our decisions on feelings?

I'm personally not comfortable inhaling your random unknown vaporizer gases. Many chemicals are dangerous at levels you are not able to smell, or indeed have no odor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> As long as people keep playing the sub-ohm game, thus keeping the majority of heat dissipation in the battery (I've seen 5 milli-Ohm coils, imagine where the heat's going when an 18650 has a typical resistance of 100 milli-ohms fresh) then yes, these things will be a menace. Just the other day a sub-ohmer at the mental health facility I was re-wiring had his battery explode on him. POPFIZZLE! It was just sitting on the concrete in the shade, he wasn't even using it and it hadn't been used for at least 10 minutes.

Ohm's law really needs to get more exposure in the classroom.

<comment><USER20> You scared me a bit, as I'm using 0.25 ohm. Can you explain what's the problem or provide some resources to read?

I was pretty scared of ecigs before, seeing so many exploding.

<comment><USER21> Okay, so... Extremely simplified (slightly incorrect) but good rule of thumb for you at the end.

What happens when you hotwire a battery (a wire between positive and negative)? Current flows, discharging the battery but also often melting or exploding the battery. Normally current flow is the whole reason for a battery, but why is hotwiring bad as opposed to tossing a LED+resistor in the circuit?

In a circuit, heat accumulates where majority of resistance is. So when your element has less resistance than your battery, more of the stress is going there than on your heating element. So it's hard on your power supply. If it's a cool 5v hobbyist power supply, you're probably cool. They're durable. Don't stress too much, you're more likely to break the element. But if it's a battery, you're sinking heat into something that is ultimately full of volatile chemicals and has limited capacity to fight back.

You can engineer circuits around this problem in a variety of ways, but the cavemun solution is just to give the battery time to discharge the heat by transferring the charge to an intermediate element (obviously your ecig rig hasn't popped yet).

<comment> vertex-four > You can engineer circuits around this problem in a variety of ways, but the > cavemun solution is just to give the battery time to discharge the heat by > transferring the charge to an intermediate element

Of course, most people use regulated mods which do just that.

As someone who vapes, I wouldn't be opposed to banning the sale of mechanical mods (i.e. mods which are literally just a battery, a button and a resistance element in a circuit). They're dangerous. On the other hand, people would just build them themselves, they're not difficult.

<comment><USER19> Mechanical mods are only dangerous if you're using a volatile power supply - e.g. a lithium cell. NiMH (what's used in the mechanical MFLB) doesn't do this, those tend to burst/leak rather than go up in an incendiary ball.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Do e-cigarettes really have a reputation as a 'menace'? I've never heard anyone express any significant concern about them on an individual level (certainly nowhere near as much as about traditional cigarettes), and yet I've read countless news articles decrying them.

It seems odd.

<comment><USER23> Only in U.S. cities will I see scare-tactic advertisements against e-cigarettes. What's strange to me is that the Truth campaign is sponsoring some of them. The Truth campaign is a result of a liability suit of several states vs the cigarette companies, and it is intended to pay for anti-smoking advertisements and smoking cessation programs. It appears to be a blatant violation of the terms of the judgement.

<comment><USER24> Wow, that's a dirty tactic. Especially when you consider that what's bad about smoking is tobacco and e-cigs don't necessarily have tobacco.

<comment><USER25> What's bad about smoking is _burning_ tobacco.

Important distinction.

<comment><USER26> You can be even more general than that. Inhaling burning organic matter is probably worth avoiding. There is some good evidence that wood smoke is also quite bad for you.[1]

[1] [https://www.uvm.edu/~susagctr/Documents/Woodsmoke.pdf](https://www.uvm.edu/~susagctr/Documents/Woodsmoke.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think that the two properties--that it is safer than cigarettes and that it's a menace--are not a contradiction. It's certainly not _as_ bad to be around a vaper than a smoker, but that doesn't mean it's not _bad_ to be around a vaper. It's relatively better, absolutely still on the "gross, don't do that around me" end of the spectrum.

I try pretty hard to not subject people to my disgusting habits. How is it that people expect inhaling chemicals to be any different? They act like they are surprised that you don't want to be exposed to their disgusting clouds of stink.

<comment><USER13> But it isn't _nearly_ as stinky! And I _have a feeling_ that it's much less noxious! And the vapour _hasn 't even been proven yet_ to kill everyone around! It's totally amazing and we should all be encouraging everyone to vape!

If you can't tell, I'm agreeing with you. I pray something is done about vaping before the horse has bolted like it did with cigarettes. Just because it _could be_ less dangerous doesn't mean it should be encouraged or indeed allowed at all. Every vaping liquid being sold should have to be tested thoroughly for safety IMO, and really I'm amazed that it doesn't have to be.

Vaping is too new for long-term studies to have been performed, and also with the zillions of different kinds of vaping juices, each one with a different formulation, how can we know that they are all safe?

It's an absolute joke how much secondhand smoke a non-smoker is forced to inhale nowadays with what we know about how dangerous it is, and I live in Australia, with relatively progressive smoking laws. I don't want to be subjected to secondhand smoke in public places, and I don't want to be subjected to secondhand vapor either, regardless of whether or not the inhaler considers it "safe enough".

Actually it is illegal here to sell nicotene-containing liquid. I do think that nicotene-containing liquid is being sold however, as I do see people vaping around the place, and just quietly, they don't seem like the kind of people who could get their stuff together enough to make their own ecig juice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> How do you know they are safer? My understanding was that many ingredients, particularly for flavored formulas are proprietary and unknown.

<comment><USER29> It's true that flavorings are the biggest variable and it's a risk that people are taking because many feel that risk is extremely low.

For example; some flavorings contain diacetyl which, if inhaling too much, will lead to Bronchiolitis Obliterans or "popcorn lung", but the amount actually inhaled in e-cigarettes is 750 times less than cigarettes and vastly less than the amount inhaled by people that have developed popcorn lung.

Yes, there are some chemicals in the flavoring, but the amount is fractions of that in cigarettes (flavorings usually account for less than 10% in my liquid, and much of the flavoring is more base liquid; VG and PG). I've taken the risk assessment and decided that e-cigs are much safer. Each person must do that for themselves.

<comment><USER14> For anyone who hasn't followed this, "popcorn lung"[1] is named that because it was found in workers at factories making (microwave?) popcorn products. In other words, they were dealing with diacetyl in industrial quantities.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Of course it's great if you're replacing normal cigarettes with it. But why should we pretend it's healthy to do if you weren't smoking to begin with? Nicotine is still highly addictive and causes heart disease. If you're not currently using nicotine, why start?

<comment><USER31> Lots of reasons! :)

[https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine](https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine)

<comment><USER32> Wow, that's crazy. The most interesting part is that for Tobacco, it's MAOIs, not nicotine, that is the most addictive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I know many people say short term use of e-cigarettes have helped them that's great but I have to wonder about those who have no plans to stop.

There seems to be a vocal battle between e-cig users and scientists each having their own claims about diacetyl. It's the famous fake butter compound for microwave popcorn that caused lung cancer in the workers who handled it.

My dad has IPF and COPD two lung diseases from years of working a blue collar job breathing in small damaging particles over time. Sawdust, paint drops, metal from grinding, probably welding fumes, etc. any small particles may seem harmless but over time damage lungs.

What concerns me about e-cigarettes is maybe the damage doesn't appear until 30 from now. Will we see an increase of lung disease 30 years from now?

<comment> vertex-four Note that diacetyl has been removed from almost all flavour compounds used in the creation of ejuice, aside from some custard ones, and even then there's variations without diacetyl.

In any case, I doubt there's a very significant amount of people who've started ecigs who wouldn't have started cigarettes, and cigarettes are well known to cause lung damage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I wonder about the culture around vaping. From my observations, pretty much everyone I see doing it is young and from appearances seem to be counter- culture. Doesn't mean they're bad people, but if they're the only one doing it, it doesn't make it mainstream.

<comment><USER35> It also leads to the vape being classed in the same breath as "neckbeard" and "fedora"... which is unfortunate as hell for people just trying to quit cigarettes. The problem is, the person who quietly vapes out of sight and mind doesn't make an impression. The guy with a fedora and a neckbeard who's blowing huges clouds of vapor in a public space makes a lasting and terrible impression.

At the end of the day though, if you're a smoker, the choice is pretty straightforward, and you should use a "vape". You should however, be considerate of others, and unfortunately also accept that for a while you're going to be lumped in with the more anti-social element of society.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I quit smoking 7 years ago and helped a dozen people to quit as well.

NONE of the people I know who used e-cigarettes were able to quit for good.

Here's my recipe:

1\. Quitting sounds hard but it isn't. The majority of people who try to quit, actually succeed. 2\. Don't use ANYTHING as a substitute (no chewing gum, no patches or e-cigs). Substitutes usually can never replace the original and will just keep you "hooked". 3\. Read affirmative stuff (like news stories, studies). Reading about a study that showed most people quit for good, actually helps. As does reading about the consequences for continueing to smoke.

That's it. Just quit. It's easy, you'll be off cigarettes in no time.

Everyone can do it. Smoking is totally a 90s thing.

<comment><USER37> And the one person I know who had tried various ways to quit over the years got a vape set, tapered down gradually to no cigarettes over about 6 weeks (I think on day 1 she only had half a pack instead of her usual ≥ 1 pack habit), and hasn't had an actual cigarette in over 2 years. Different people seem to respond better to different approaches.

<comment><USER36> I know the initial success is great. The question is, will she be able to stay off cigarettes for good (and ecigs, too). Most ecig-users I know went back to cigarettes without hesitation when they forgot to bring extra liquid to the party and they got drunk. Even after years of abstinence from real cigarettes.

Everything anyone here will say is anecdotal of course.

<comment><USER38> I think (as someone who hasn't touched a cigarette in two years, and hasn't touched an ecig since February) that the most important part is that you have to taper down the nicotine content of the ecigs, otherwise you're just replacing one nicotine delivery system with another and not making any progress. The leap between being nicotine and tobacco free and a cigarette is far greater (mentally and physically) than between a nicotine supplement (ecigs) and a cigarette.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It's only briefly alluded to in the piece, indirectly at that, but one of the most frustrating things about vice taxes is that they are sold as methods to disincentivize behavior, but as governments use the revenue, as that behavior falls, there's a tendency to try to create an equivalent tax on the new behavior. The worst of these are the periodic proposals for a "mileage tax" on high efficiency vehicles in states like California, which has actually been pitched (unsuccessfully) for the explicit purpose of replacing the revenue lost on gas taxes from the shift towards electric and high mileage cars.

<comment><USER40> Gasoline taxes aren't "vice taxes." They're usage taxes that pay for the maintenance of roads and bridges.

<comment><USER39> If the gas tax was pitched and passed as a usage tax, rather than as an incentive for purchasing more efficient vehicles, I'd have a different perspective on moving to a mileage tax. However, in California, at least some gas taxes were pitched and passed as vice taxes, and the mileage tax here was explicitly pitched to replace the revenue generated by it (by at least one CA representative). Thankfully, thus far we've resisted.

Related: a usage tax for maintenance of roads and bridges has a far simpler option than taxing gas that may be used in boats, tractors, and other non-road uses: toll roads, which tax everyone who uses the roads equivalently. And before anyone argues that such a tax is regressive: a gas tax is far more regressive, as those with older, less efficient vehicles are hit harder than those with the money to buy a Tesla.

<comment><USER41> Because diesel is commonly used for non-vehicle purposes, diesel fuel is frequently marked with color to indicate if it was taxed at the vehicle rate or not:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_fuel#Taxation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_fuel#Taxation)

However, if you're talking about a carbon tax instead of a roads maintenance tax, burning diesel or gas is the same, whether it's in a car or not.

<comment><USER39> A carbon tax is a vice tax, not a use tax.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I find it really interesting that the bulk of the comments here are about folks using them as a smoking cessation aid.

In my case, every friend I know who's started using e-cigarettes took them up without having an existing tobacco habit. Some of them add nicotine to the vape juice, some don't.

I don't know how common this is, but it's certainly given vaping a negative impression for me. At the very least, it seems like an unnecessary risk given how little public health data there is.

<comment><USER43> You sure they're not vaping weed?

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> We actually don't know that they're safer to puff. We simply don't have any evidence that indicates that they're as or more dangerous.

Every variety of plastic or food additive that ended up being proved harmful was thought safe for years. People are right to be skeptical of them for the next thirty years or so.

</comment><comment><USER45> I used e-cigarettes to quit smoking and I can attest that they did work for me. Although my friend and brother tried it as well without any success - so I guess its an individual thing.

Although I would recommend e-cigs as a temporary quit smoking aid only and not as a replacement. I noticed I got more lung infections while vaping and my brother noticed the same thing. Also I wouldnt trust some of the flavors out there, they put anything in there. So if its a temporary measure taken as a quit smoking aid, great, as an alternative to cigs - that Im still on the fence about.

</comment><comment><USER46> For anyone looking at e-cigarettes, I have recommend the JUUL [0] as it is by the far the safest, best pulling, and sleekest looking e-cigarette I've tried. The only downside is that there isn't a simple way to reduce nicotine content. That aside, it's a wonderful little piece of hardware.

[0] [https://www.juulvapor.com/](https://www.juulvapor.com/)

</comment><comment><USER47> Pretty sure I would rank immunodeficiencies [1] as a menace, but I'm not a doctor of any kind..

[1] [http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/306444.php](http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/306444.php)

</comment><comment><USER48> >Use of the devices is slumping because they are not as good as cigarettes at giving a hit of nicotine

This is total nonsense. You can use e-juice at a level that will give you nicotine poisoning.

<comment><USER49> I find that I sometimes still crave a cigarette. I suspect that has more to do one or more of the 599 additives (4000 when burnt)[1] in them being addictive.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> A slow paced serial killer is safer than a fast paced serial killer.

<comment><USER25> Also harder to notice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> No. The media can stop dissing them at the behest of their corporate masters. That's all that's going on.

</comment><comment><USER52> That reputation as a menace was purchased with a huge amount of tobacco industry money.

</comment><comment><USER53> the malboro man does not smoke e cigarettes. they're not cool. they're a medical tool for addicts. being an addict is not cool. as smoking is just silly herd behaviour of putting burning stinking sticks into your mouth and somehow being part of something cool, it's no surprise e cigarrettes don't take off.

only a big shift in marketing of these things can change that. if e cigarettes where seen as the Apple of smoking surely they'd sell better.

<comment><USER54> It's 2016, cigarettes aren't cool anymore.

I used to date a girl who used an ecig and would exhale a cloud of vanilla cookie aroma everywhere we went. I thought that was pretty cool to be honest.

<comment><USER13> It's 2016, being addicted to something that kills you (regardless of flavor), isn't cool anymore.

<comment><USER55> Interesting, except for the fact that nicotine is not carcinogenic and doesn't kill you. It is about as dangerous as caffeine, and we can look around us and see how uncool that dangerous substance has become over the past few decades...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Plan That Could Give Us Our Lives Back - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/08/how-to-test-every-american-for-covid-19-every-day/615217/ <comment><USER2> Testing everyone won't "give us our lives back" but it will make billions or trillions of dollars for unscrupulous corporations that promise us salvation from Covid-19 if we use their product(s).

Testing everyone won't do anything useful b/c there is no Covid-19 vaccine or "cure" available and we will not be able to do tracking. But again it will make beaucoup $$ for medical charlatans.

For each person one of two things will happen:

1) They will be exposed to Covid-19 and survive or

2) They will be exposed to Covid-19 and die.

Most people are unlikely to die from Covid-19 but can only "get their lives back" by catching the virus and surviving. Once they do then they will have happy normal lives. The small percentage of people likely to die from Covid-19 should "shelter in place" and pray for a vaccine. [I suggest prayer b/c of the sad state of science at this time and the way in which prayer seems to calm some people. I'm not much of a prayer person myself, but ask me about it later when I'm in front of the firing squad.]

We should re-open schools and businesses, let people make their own choices and provide assistance to those who must remain sheltered _instead of trying to buoy up the entire frigging economy with dollars_. _That_ would "give us our lives back"!

Again, people at risk should "shelter in place", e.g., teachers at hi risk should stay away from schools, children should stay away from elderly persons at risk, etc.</comment>


Water Found on the Moon - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/07/water-found-on.html <comment><USER2> Wait... didn't the Apollo program end like 30 years ago? And they're just now finding water in the material brought back?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, and according to the linked wiki article secondary ion mass spectrometry has been around for a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Obligatory joke: "Beachfront properties to follow."

The moon has a weak atmosfere, right?</comment>