"Eat, sleep, code, repeat" is such bullshit - <AUTHOR> https://m.signalvnoise.com/eat-sleep-code-repeat-is-such-bullshit-c2a4d9beaaf5 <comment><USER2> I don't know if the author knows anyone who is an artist, but if they knew an artist it might add perspective on the t-shirt.

There is a type of person who is driven to express their ideas and emotions. They can be moody and quiet or loud and extroverted but they get consumed by the process of creation and go into something like a trance state while creating.

I have been that type of person and when I let myself go, would spend hours and hours writing and rewriting code as the design evolved. I thought I was just oddly broken until I got to college and met an art student sculpting a rock at 3AM on my way back from the computer science building (its a weird thing to hear a rock hammer going 'tink, tink, tink' at 3 in the morning.) I watched in amazement for a while until they stopped and we talked. Turned out they had a very similar "mode" that I did, thinking about the work and then suddenly they could "see it" and at that point they were compelled to chip away the rock and let the rest of the world see it. I felt the same way about programs, all at once it seemed I just "knew" how it should go together and would work through the night banging it out.

It isn't a terrible or horrible thing, its something which is very satisfying. And its also true that no one else may appreciate your creation so you have to be ready to just be happy with creating it :-).

Later in life I met people who were programmers who just "turned it on and off" like a spigot, they go into work, get their assignment, turn on the programming spigot and write code, then turn it off again and go home to their life. Their t-shirt might read "code, get paid, go home."

I read the headline and disagreed, I read the article and realized the author isn't driven to create with code. That is totally understandable, it is a small percentage of the population that is. But the phrase speaks to that small percentage and not to them. Like art, if it doesn't speak to your soul then just ignore it and move on.

<comment><USER3> I think something that needs to be discussed then is not to exclude the spigot people from the hiring process just because they aren't driven to create like you are. Unfortunately, it comes across as attacking you, the creation types while it should be attacking employers who think Mr. or Ms. or Mrs. spigot would be a worse worker than you.

<comment><USER2> I think that is a really important point. I got dinged[1] on my Intel review for "sand bagging" because I had estimated it would take three months to write an instruction assembler for a chip I was working on validating, I got it done but my manager claimed I had spent almost all the time "goofing off" and then wrote it in the last couple of weeks. Unlike hardware which had all these great milestones to indicate progress, creating a new program was think, think, think, blammo!

This has always been a challenge for me (and at this point I suspect always will). I don't know exactly how I come up with the stuff I do, it just sort of pops into my head. More rigorous people who can write down a series of milestones and check points are great at giving visibility into the process. My workaround has been to work with good project managers when I can and talk to them about what I know and don't know about a project. The "don't knows" become future deliverables, the "knows" become steps that can be done now and shown as progress.

Looking back on my career I have been the most successful in a group which is a mix of types, call them artists and engineers. There is probably a management book out there somewhere that addresses that question.

[1] Or "constructively criticized" using the Intel vernacular.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Generally, this is an easy stance for young, unmarried, and otherwise unattached people to approach their career. A warning to those that think this will enhance their opportunities later in life. It won't. Sure there are a few great employers out there that will reward you with loyalty (or massive sums of money) but that is the exception.

After a life of nothing but work, no matter how much you love it at the time, you fill find yourself middle-aged and burnt out - and possibly regretting your entire career choice. This is coming from a person who was the class computer nerd, who ate, slept, and drank everything computer and software tech related for 25+ years.

I'm not saying tech is bad career choice - it isn't. But once you get burnt out at something, digging ditches out in the sunshine (or rain for that matter) looks much more appealing.

<comment><USER5> I distinctly remember sitting in yet another dull sprint retrospective and thinking, "Boy, I wish I were a firefighter."

Granted, that line of work comes with its own drawbacks and I would certainly get bored of it the same way I get bored of software (or else worn out from the demanding physical aspect), but some days I'm surprised to find myself wishing I could "dig ditches out in the sunshine" or something of the sort for a living.

This combined with the "eat, sleep, code, repeat" mentality I see in others makes me wonder if I'm really cut out for a software development career.

<comment><USER6> I have had a literal ditch digging job, and I hated that even more. But I still find myself longing for such a thing. Maybe if I could just have 3-4 days per year? xD

<comment><USER4> My ideal would be a mix. One sprint of code. One sprint of building houses.

<comment><USER7> Buy a house. I love doing yard work on the weekends after 50+ hours of tech startup bombardment all week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think the OP misses the point of the shirt. Lot's of different subcultures and activities have this type of shirt. Someone could just as well wear a shirt that says "Eat. Sleep. Hike. Repeat." And people wouldn't actually think the person _only_ hikes. The shirt is completely ironic because to suggest someone _only_ codes all day is ridiculous. The OP misses the irony.

<comment><USER4> The difference is, Hiking is good for you.

<comment><USER9> Money can be good for you.

<comment><USER10> What's the point of money if you have no time to spend it?

<comment><USER11> You can drive a BMW and wear a Rolex on your way to work and feel better about yourself.

<comment><USER12> Don't wear a BMW nor a Rolex but I imagine that the novelty and the "feeling good about yourself" caused by the possession of these two items would fade out pretty quickly.

<comment><USER11> No problem. You just buy a suit then. And then a huge telly. And then a new pair of shoes. Believe me, you'll never run out of shiny stuff to buy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm married and have four kids, though two have now left the nest. When I read this, I think about all the times I set aside my code to do something more important - interact with my kids, nurture my wife, and pursue hobbies outside the technology world (I run, bike and sail).

But ... you might be surprised to learn that I love that tee-shirt. I think there are many who are misguided enough to ignore balance in their lives completely (this shirt is not for them). For me, technology is my main hobby. I get paid for it at work (aren't I lucky), sometimes I get paid for it at home (I have a consultancy) but most of the time at home, I'm coding (or even building electronics) for fun. Other times, it's a project I'm playing with that I wouldn't otherwise get to do at work.

In any case, I'm not advocating living an unbalanced life. Nor am I describing a life of crunch-time (my home projects very rarely have deadlines). What I'm saying is that I truly love the time I spend on technology and identify with the shirt as a statement of that affection.

EDIT: It's a rainy Saturday morning here ... I got the lawn cut last night, my daughter is away playing viola at a concert and I'm kind of chilling with my wife and son. While we're siting in the living room watching the rain, I'm updating the Ansible scripts I use to keep my laptops, and workstations up-to- date [1].

I've got two hardware projects planned for next winter - I'm going to get my COSMAC ELF [2] running again (my first computer based on an RCA 1802) and I'm going to turn my old Sun E450 [3] into a TEC-based mini-fridge for my office (if anyone needs Sun E450 parts let me know).

[1] [https://github.com/selesy/workstation](https://github.com/selesy/workstation)

[2] [http://www.cosmacelf.com/](http://www.cosmacelf.com/)

[3] [http://www.tech.proact.co.uk/i/sun_enterprise_450.jpg](http://www.tech.proact.co.uk/i/sun_enterprise_450.jpg)

<comment><USER14> I'm married with a 11 month old son, but definitely identify with this perspective on it. I'd never sideline my family to squeeze in an extra bit of work for the sake of work, but still strongly identify with the passion for technology that got me to where I'm at today. I hope I can raise my son to appreciate an appropriate balance.

<comment><USER13> I've had a lot of fun working on technology projects with my kids. I'd say these projects are too numerous to mention but as an example, my daughter and I wrote a program (well ... I wrote it and she specified and QA'd it) that finds CRISPR sites in a mouse genome for her lab project at Johns Hopkins (she's a doctoral candidate in molecular genetics).

So share your passion for technology with your child(ren) ... it's really never too early to let them touch it if you're careful. My daughter once deleted C:\Windows because she never "played that game" and wanted to install another game before I got home (her mom told her to wait). That OS never booted again ... we switched from Win98 to WinXP that night so that I could have a bit more control.

In general, I think it's good to let your children fail at things they want to try themselves - my job as a parent is to keep them from failing at things that are fatal, or have long-term consequences. And you'll find that they're fearless around your computer. They'll just click until it works if they have to. It's a funny contrast to teaching computers to senior citizens, who are afraid any wrong keystroke or errant mouse-click will permanently break something.

Of course, if they're not interested, you can't effectively force your love of technology on them. But I'll bet you can find something that they _ARE_ passionate about that you find interesting too. And isn't that a better way to spend time together than sitting in front of a TV?

<comment><USER15> > we switched from Win98 to WinXP that night so that I could have a bit more > control.

That sucks, poor kid. I knew my Windows 98 activation key by heart in my early teens :)

<comment><USER13> She was five at the time ... she obviously didn't know what she was deleting. And there have been plenty of times I've "paid extra" (in money and/or time) to allow my kids to keep a fearless curiosity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Yeah, fuck enthusiasm! /s

I can understand that we might want to avoid the obsessive behaviors of some developers that could be considered unhealthy, but blaming a simple catch- phrase isn't going to get us anywhere.

What if the shirt said, "Coding is rad" ?

I say that all the time, and people just give me that look that says, "Ha, what a nerd" and it's fine for me because I can maintain my enthusiasm. Other people need a little bit more of a push to continue to push themselves to be the best developers that they can be.

Should developers be monks that only exist to program? No. Should developers take pride in spending their time learning and improving? Yes. Should developers be upset over a t-shirt that has no impact whatsoever on their life? No.

I hate this sort of reactionary outrage, it's more counterproductive than buying the stupid shirt is.

<comment><USER17> It's not the shirt that bothers me, it's the fact that Google tries to create this kind of work culture internally with perks designed to keep you at work longer, and then they sell this shirt so they can profit even more from the wider developer community's passion.

I know that Google pays their developers well, and personally I am a bit of a workaholic myself devoting long hours to my company, but still there is something that I find unsettling. I wouldn't deny anyone their passion, and I wouldn't judge someone for spending all their time programming; the hair I want to split is doing so as part of a cheerleading exercise for a major corporation just feels exploitative somehow. Maybe that criticism is unfair, but Google is no stranger to handing down unfair decisions ;)

<comment><USER16> Don't they have the right? I mean, a developer that's talented enough to attract attention from Google then surely they'd be smart enough to know what constitutes working 'too much.'

I don't think Google exploits its workers anymore than they exploit themselves. If you think you've worked too much, then go home? If they ask you "hey, do you want to pull a 80-hour week this week?" why should you say anything other than: "fuuuuck no"

Going even further, it wouldn't shock me if at least a subset of Google programmers go home and -- sit down and start programming something else. If they were going to do it anyways, and Google's going to pay them their dues, hell, I'm all about it.

Eat, sleep, code, get paid, repeat.

<comment><USER18> > I mean, a developer that's talented enough to attract attention from Google > then surely they'd be smart enough to know what constitutes working 'too > much.'

Of course not, not at all. We all have different skillsets, and good coding ability does not mean you're good in everything else.

<comment><USER16> Which is not at all what I said. I didn't even mention coding abilities.

A developer does a lot more than just write code, but let me clarify: Anybody that's smart enough to hold a job should know when they are being asked to work too much.

<comment><USER19> I don't think knowing when you're being asked to work too much is a thing that comes automatically with whatever job skills you're hired for. Even if you work in management or HR, where having a sense of "too much work" is part of your job, you might not be objective enough to apply that expertise to yourself.

And even if you know you're working too long, you might not feel empowered to do something about it. This could be because you literally don't have the power—your employer requires everyone to work unreasonable hours—or because you lack the confidence or skills to use it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I get the feeling those t-shirts were thought up by someone who doesn't "code" for a living (i.e. a higher up management type). Before I got professional full-time work as a developer I was obsessed with "coding". Now, I've become a little jaded through working with horrible spaghetti code legacy systems, solving problems I don't care about, whilst doing all this "agile" stuff. Now I've become obsessive trying to think of business ideas / products I can create to help me escape it all (and just program for fun, or as a means to run a business or supply a product).

<comment><USER21> A business will consume you in ways you'd rather not think about. If you're a founder, you won't be sitting coding all day long for happy customers. You'll be juggling tons of crappy responsibilities and shipping code that is good enough to work (kinda).

Just find a better company or work on Open Source and then grow this into a business (look at how Ansible or GitLab pulled that off for example).

<comment><USER20> I guess I mean I'd like to run a "lifestyle" type of business; something where I don't make a ton of money, but enough to get by (rather than a startup where I'm hoping to solve humanity's problems with a single app and make millions or billions from it). Actually the company I work for is the best company I've ever worked at! I think I just don't find satisfaction in the 9-5 corporate grind.

<comment><USER21> Yep, but even that mystical "lifestyle business" (otherwise known as "a business") is a lot of non-coding work. For a healthy dose of realism, I suggest you watch some of the MicroConf videos [1] (and definitely go there if you can).

[1]: [http://www.microconf.com/videos](http://www.microconf.com/videos)

<comment><USER22> Meh, it's all about how you choose to run your business. I run a small business and spend a few hours a month on non-technical tasks (accounting, etc...).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> One day, everyone has to decide what they want from life...

We only have finite time and need to use it carefully.

I was a big nerd in school and from 11 - 17 I put most of my time in video games and coding. This helped me greatly in my carer, but I ended up without any of the typical experiences people have in that age.

Later I decided I also want different things from life. Finding partners, learning instruments and getting fit was a huge cut for my coding skills.

What I learned was, that there are always people better than you, but they bought this with their lifetime. You don't need to be the best developer around, it's okay if you're average.

But I have to admit, my girlfriend made me an ESCR shirt and I like to wear it, so people "think" I'm 100% dev, haha.

<comment><USER24> > there are always people better than you, but they bought this with their > lifetime

This is so true. Unless you spend your life doing something you will never be as good as them. You gotta choose what you want, but being the best at something is a heavy life decision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I didn't see anything alarming in this phrase, but from responses in this thread it's clear it strikes a nerve with some people.

And that's really helpful to know. I came into the thread seeing nothing wrong with it, but now have a sense that it might be a bigger issue than I had realized.

Another commenter mentioned that many groups use the ol' "Eat, {VERB}, Sleep, Repeat" slogan on t-shirts to express enthusiasm for something, rather than a top-down expectation. But maybe the issue of separating work / personal time is hot enough in tech that the slogan ends up reminding people (like OP) that there's a risk others will try to convince you to take it seriously as a requirement for your career.

This kind of thing comes up in academia, too--where there's a pervasive I-love-science-so-much-I-work-late-into-the-night-every-day mentality. Eat, research, tell people how late you were up researching, sleep, repeat.

</comment><comment><USER21> The first featured post from the same author reads "How I fell in love with a programming language" [1] and dissect his "love" for Kotlin (the same way DHH "loves" Ruby).

Being a dad, I'm pretty sure he's able to appreciate the difference between him saying "I love Kotlin" and "I love my son". Well, that t-shirt is no different.

I've often liked the no-nonsense talk coming out of 37Signals/Basecamp, but this sounds like over-reaching.

[1]: [https://m.signalvnoise.com/how-i-fell-in-love-with-a- program...](https://m.signalvnoise.com/how-i-fell-in-love-with-a-programming- language-8933d5e749ed#.p7shka3un)

</comment><comment><USER26> While I don't agree that programming needs to be all consuming, spend enough time around new programmers and you'll see a difference in passion. Someone who does programming because they can earn a pay check vs someone that does programming because they truly enjoy it.

You don't get that passion by doing it 9-5.

Programming CAN be all consuming if you let it and for a while, I did. I had so much work to do be it at my day job or side projects that it left 0 time to do anything else. Because of that, I gained weight and generally feel like crap most of the time (let's not even talk about actually sleeping through the night)

It's important to take some time and do something else. I'm trying to make it a point to spend at least an hour a day bike riding or roller blading or just even spending time with my wife. You'll go insane otherwise.

The eat, sleep, code, repeat may be originated from this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBoRkg5-Ieg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBoRkg5-Ieg) but I don't think that's the first occurrence of a "repeat" phrase...

<comment><USER27> > You don't get that passion by doing it 9-5.

You can't get passion for a subject by dedicating a majority of your daily hours on it? Seems like that could be the very definition of passion.

I get what you're trying to say, but I firmly believe you are wrong.

> I'm trying to make it a point to spend at least an hour a day bike riding or > roller blading or just even spending time with my wife.

One hour out of 15 you spend awake? Seems like your hobbies are getting the short shaft here. But then again, so are you - having a diversity of experiences will make you a better programmer by opening your mind to other experiences, rest, and the time to allow your brain to bake a problem into an elegant solution.

<comment> bad-joke > You can't get passion for a subject by dedicating a majority of your daily > hours on it? Seems like that could be the very definition of passion.

I've been wondering this myself lately too. What's the difference between someone who spends 100 hours doing something with rigorous discipline because they're trying to cultivate a passion, and someone who spends 100 hours doing something because they're passionate about it? Warm fuzzy feelings?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think the larger issue here is that few people are going to drop $25 for a t-shirt that says, "EAT. SLEEP. CODE. MAINTAIN A HEALTHY BALANCE OF BOTH PROGRAMMING AND NON-PROGRAMMING RELATED ACTIVITIES."

<comment><USER29> I created a Teespring shirt campaign to test that here. I think we definitely need a lot more counterpoints to these CODE ALL THE TIME movements.

[https://teespring.com/eat-sleep-code-go-outside](https://teespring.com/eat- sleep-code-go-outside)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm against long hours as much as the next guy but these shirts are just meant to be enthusiastic. Pick your battles guys...

<comment><USER31> And the author says as much. He's saying that the choice of slogan seems to have a larger subtext. There's no battle being waged. Maybe reread the article?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I share the sentiment of the article, but have another issue. What is this obsession with "coding"? As in producing lines of code? I'd encourage programmers to "code" less and think more. And the best time to think is away from the keyboard, perhaps on a walk, or with your family.

Consider that some of the cleverest things in programming, be it algorithms like sorting, hashing or whatever, ideas and inventions that actually make the computers do what they do can usually be implemented in very few lines of code or explained in a page of text, but may have taken collective lifetimes to come up with.

</comment><comment><USER33> At least it is still "eat, sleep". Soon it will be "soylent, provigil".

</comment><comment><USER34> I never forget the years working Christmas and Thanksgiving at the movie theater, or bagging groceries at Harris Teeter pretty much every holiday(that was actually a huge step up because I didn't have to work Christmas day). Sure work sucks sometimes but I keep those days in the back of my head at all times and I never take what I have for granted. While my roommates in my late teens and early twenties, sat around smoking weed and playing video games and racking up student debt, I worked on paying cash for community college and learning more and more about programming which I had already started learning at an early age.

I still get up every day happy to go to work. I haven't dreaded work in 9 years. I have a 10 month child now and yea I don't eat sleep code, but it's actually given me more motivation to start a small Saas companies on the side. Just side projects to see if they stick. Bring in a little extra cash. If my employer wants a little extra work here and there that's fine. If they begin to expect it every day then I'll just go to the next thing, but I sure as hell rather sit at a desk and do something I enjoy than bag groceries or do construction.

</comment><comment><USER35> That's a funny sentiment, because I'm here on a saturday morning (like all mornings for the last 30 years) browsing the internet for news with a particular interest about programming.

</comment><comment><USER36> There is a song called "eat sleep rave repeat" which is about taking drugs and going to raves every day. Eat sleep code repeat is, I think, just an attempt to make a funny play on that song. Obviously eat sleep anything repeat is not a healthy life style. Pretty funny how this joke was lost on the author and the entire thread.

</comment><comment><USER37> The OP is overreacting big time. Offended and horrified by a humorous shirt. First world problems.

</comment><comment><USER38> We should be careful to not conflate intensity (at one's work) with being a one-dimensional human being. Intensity is generally a good thing. Being one- dimensional is not.

Regardless of whether you're just starting out and are the most intense programmer ever, or if you've been at it for 20+ years, there's immense value in understanding and being proficient at many things other than software.

Many big discoveries happen at the intersection of two fields. A lot of our latest breakthroughs in AI are based on our newfound understanding of the human mind. Same with computational genomics. Black Scholes for option pricing. The list goes on.

</comment><comment><USER39> I am bothered as-well by the "Eat, sleep, code, repeat" phrase. We must not make things complicated just to create work. Work should lead to freedom. I understand it is scary when a work is no longer relevant. But this is not a technological problem, it is a political problem.

BTW, I think Universal Base Salary is a great answer to the speed at which work gets irrelevant. UBI gives exactly the confidence to evaluate work without pressure and bias, which I believe leads to even greater freedom and productivity.

</comment><comment><USER40> I know this phrase from the electronic music artist Fatboy Slim's "Eat, Sleep, Rave, Repeat"

(Warning, explicit lyrics)

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wBoRkg5-Ieg](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wBoRkg5-Ieg)

It's a fun dance song, but the literal total opposite of a healthy lifestyle.

</comment><comment><USER41> What's with the articles lately discouraging hardcore programming? Are we hackers or not? I just want to sit in a cellar with a big Unix beard, drink Jolt cola and do programming 24/7.

</comment><comment><USER42> One hard issue I've been coping with is the fact that coding was my hobby before it was my profession. I think that's a fairly normal thing for developers. I mean, who wouldn't take a job doing what they were already doing for enjoyment.

It's not that I want an unbalanced life, but when your hobby merges into your career it becomes hard to diversify. I'm fortunate that I have a wife and kids to help balance me out; without them I'm sure I'd be coding for most of my free time.

</comment><comment><USER43> It's Bullshit but... the exception to this is if you're consulting corp-to- corp hourly or doing you're own startup that's fine but otherwise it is exploitive culture propaganda praying on the naive. (overly dramatic, its just a fucking t-shirt). Also, "hump" should be added to this list prior to "sleep" and possibly inserted after "sleep" and after "code" as well to cancel out the long durations of solitary activity.

</comment><comment> a-guest The "Eat. Sleep. Code. Repeat." mentality, if understood in the context of workplace environments where for all practical purposes this is the expected modus operandi, should give any person who thinks the unexamined life is not worth living reason to pause.

This story helps illustrate the mindset from a particular angle. [http://www.hobodrifter.com/the-fisherman/](http://www.hobodrifter.com/the- fisherman/)

</comment><comment><USER44> I think the post might be misinterpreting the intent behind the phrase. My first impression was that it is a parody of the famous electronic dance song with similar lyrics.

<comment><USER45> No I think most people get that, but even recommending it in a joking manner is worrying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Even if you want to eventually you won't be able to code around the clock.

I', now 29 but working for startups putting in 8-14 hours a day takes its toll, and now I can't sit at a desk or my acid reflux will kindly tell me to take a walk.

That or too much stress is hit, I'm out for the day with chest pains for the next day.

Whats worse is you tell this to others and they don't understand because those that have not experienced it don't understand.

<comment><USER47> I understand. You're probably sick of hearing it, but try meditation. Either a few minutes a day, or an app like Headspace, or jump in the deep end with a 10-day retreat, it doesn't really matter. You need to exercise your brains ability to observe without reacting or that ability becomes weakened. It's worth asking why it's so hard for the average person to do something as simple as sit still for 5 minutes. The benefits of practice compound rather quickly.

Personally I found that a 10-day silent Vipassana retreat had huge lasting benefits even after I fell away from a regular practice. To be honest, just preparing for a structured environment where there was no way for me to be reached, and no reading material let alone Internet, was all by itself a revelatory and detoxifying process. The ten hours a day of meditation made it possible to get through it.

<comment><USER48> Is just sitting there doing nothing enough, or do you need some technique? Do five minutes have any effect?

<comment><USER47> 5 minutes does have an effect. A lot of the published research uses a dose of 20 minutes a day, and it can be a struggle to work up to that, but it is a good goal. In a 20 minute session it can be common for me to feel distracted and fidgety for most of it, but get a few glimpses or a minute or two of detachment from the "monkey mind", and it has a big impact on the rest of the day, and a compounding impact over time.

I think the easiest way to try mindfulness meditation out is the headspace app, but there are a lot of different styles if that doesn't appeal to you. Most mindfulness-oriented meditation taught in the west today won't demand a set of beliefs and compatible with a secular rationalist perspective on the world.

There is definitely technique; it's quite different from just daydreaming or following every thought that enters your mind. You will typically have something to focus on, usually the breath is used to start, but it varies by tradition. The idea is to have something neutral that you can pay attention to so that you can begin to observe the thoughts that arise in your mind without reacting to them. There's a popular free book available online in various formats called Mindfulness in Plain English that lays out the basics of Vipassana style meditation, if you want a decent primer. The retreat I mentioned was offered by dhamma.org aka the Goenka school.

Feel free to message me if you have any questions I might be able to answer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Every subculture that requires some level of above normal commitment has a phrase like this. Basbeall, ballet, musicians, dancers. It seems the current Medium post flavor of the month is some semi formed shot at a tentative of programmer/tech culture. Most end up being so overblown, like this one, it just sound like middle schoolers in the cafeteria.

</comment><comment><USER50> Just be sure to love the shit out of most of what you do, otherwise what you're doing just isn't sustainable for you. There are only a very, very few exceptions to this.

Edit: also, it's almost never good on you, to blame others for when you are stuck; it's better to be active yourself and fix things and try to get yourself into a better place.

</comment><comment><USER51> Personally, I like to focus on one thing for a long time, and then focus on another.

Unfortunately, it is very hard to do so in a society that tries to level everyone in the same way.

The best possible situation to me would be working nonstopping for months, then do something else for months and so on.

</comment><comment><USER52> I have been trying to be a 10x engineer for the past 10 years and only been somewhat successful.

<comment><USER53> What do you feel is limiting you from getting there?

I can tell you one thing that will get you close to a 10x developer almost immediately: when you're at work, turn off your phone, and never open distracting websites (like news.ycombinator). Most programmers are so severely distracted, you can level up several times above the average just by focusing.

Another trick is to slow down somewhat, think more, and write fewer bugs (and less repetitious code). Because fixing a bug after it hits QA (or a customer) takes longer than testing it quick while you are writing it.

<comment><USER52> I do that, but my anxiety kicks in when I face a tricky problem. Much time goes into bringing focus back. I don't think I have ADD. But something's wrong. Or I m just a slacker.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Everyone figures out that balance is the key to happiness in life. Some are wise and learn from others while they are young. Some of us have to spend many years and figure it out the hard way ourselves, which brings some regret. Be wise!

<comment><USER55> I disagree. Balance doesn't bring happiness. First of all I do not believe balance is a definitive state but rather a constant work. You need to constantly put things back into balance which is exhausting and time consuming.

Secondly nothing great ever happens when things are in balance. Everything is just average. You work enough to be able to do enough "life" things.

I strongly believe you need to be out of balance to really enjoy things. You need to go all in at work for the necessary period time to be great. This is when you really get pleasure out of it. But at the same time you must counter balance by doing every life events available (i.e. never turn down a friend diner, the gym, a date, a concert, ...). Go long at work and short in life basically.

<comment><USER54> > Go long at work and short in life basically.

Does that mean work late hours? If so, I very much bet you are young. As the saying goes, nobody lies on their deathbed wishing they had spent more time at the office.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> This guy must be overworked to take such issue with something so innocuous.

</comment><comment><USER57> Many really good programmers "eat, sleep, code, repeat," some of the time. Highly intelligent people tend to have intense focus. That's how they got to be so intelligent.

</comment><comment><USER58> I used to be like that, then I realised there's better things in life. So my conclusion is that you need a balance. Too much work is bad but too much family time is as bad.

</comment><comment><USER59> Man, people really do get butthurt over all kind of stupid shit.

</comment><comment><USER60> Similar opinion I've had about the phrase "never stop learning", which is a common sentiment but can also be menacing threat depending on your situation.

<comment><USER61> Learning is extremely broad and diverse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I think this whole "you need a work life balance" propaganda can be as misleading as "eat, sleep, code, repeat", especially for younger programmers who have no idea and rely on more experienced idols (such as the guys at Basecamp).

It really depends on what kind of life you want to have. If your priority is more towards making a huge dent in the world, I think trying to have a "work life balance" is a terrible idea. Here I'm speaking statistically because there are rare cases where people stumbled upon success even without putting all their life into it, but I would say these are exceptions, not the rule.

Most extremely successful people have had very abnormal life--far from a balanced life--(Maybe you hear about them talking about having a balanced life here and there but that's them speaking after they have achieved success. Of course if you spent all your youth on working on something you would want that time back. But I doubt they would be where they are if they actually did what they say).

Take a look at Basecamp for example. I don't want to pick on them but there's no better way to argue with their philosophy than what's going on with them. Sure they were one of the pioneers in their space, sure their co-founder created Ruby on Rails, and I totally admire what they have achieved, but what have they achieved in the last several years otherwise in terms of their own product innovation? They have killed most of its other products, and their main product--Basecamp--is not exactly the mainstream product that everyone uses. If anything it's Slack that will become what Basecamp could have been. I watched one of their interview videos where they were talking about how they thought about building an awesome new product but decided not to because they didn't want to waste time maintaining a new product. Personally I cannot sympathize with that at all.

Of course, it sounds like this is exactly the type of business these guys want, which would let them live the lifestyle they want, but if you ask me, I would choose a life where I create something that has extremely huge impact in the world--hopefully even after I die--even if it means sacrificing a lot of my "lifestyle". The Basecamp guys decided to live a life where they are mildly successful and enjoy their life, but they probably won't achieve anything world-changing if they keep doing what they do. That's fine and I'm sure they don't care, and I'm not saying everyone should live a crazy life, but I'm just saying it's as "such bullshit" to say everyone should live an unambitious life as saying everyone should give up their life to be successful.

</comment><comment><USER63> Such bullshit. With Soylent you can code while you eat :)

</comment><comment><USER64> They were all sold out of "Eat, sleep, code, travel, meet friends, shop, shower, jog, date, travel, watch GoT, procrastinate on HN, repeat" t-shirts.

</comment><comment><USER65> > horrifying

is definitively too much. And also the interpretation is too strict. Why being outraged for something like this?

<comment><USER66> The author sounds like he's defending himself ; but from what attack?

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Eat, sleep, work, complain about working, distract yourself, repeat.

</comment><comment><USER68> Hyperbolic slogan contains hyperbole, news at 11!</comment>


The Self-Made Beauty of the Centriole - <AUTHOR> https://www.knowablemagazine.org/article/living-world/2018/self-made-beauty-centriole <comment><USER2> Url changed from [http://nautil.us/blog/the-self_made-beauty-of-the- centriole](http://nautil.us/blog/the-self_made-beauty-of-the-centriole), which points to this.</comment>


Age and the entrepreneur, part 1: Some data - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/08/age-and-the-ent.html

<comment><USER2> I read an absolutely fascinating paper that suggested a further connection with crime: <http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/MES/pdf/JRP2003.pdf>. Basically, the paper's thesis was that males are biologically driven to do extraordinary things when young in order to impress females. For people who have the ability, this can take the form of scientific achievement, or entrepreneurship, or arts or music. For people who don't have the ability to succeed in "socially acceptable" fields, it usually takes the form of crime. The age curves themselves look very similar, and they don't see similar distributions with females.

After a man has children, the odds are significantly lower that he'll contribute some world-changing discovery. This is not because his ability level has decreased - Marc's article suggests that quality of work remains constant. Rather, it's because he has no _reason_ to. He's already reproduced, and likely found a lifetime mate. His children's genetic legacy is set in stone. There's no reason for him to expend the extra energy needed to perform at the top of his game.

Curiously, men that continue to produce at top-of-the-field levels also seem to have multiple successive wives/lovers. Look at Rudy Giuliani, Richard Feynman, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Graham, etc. Perhaps they remain geniuses because they see the reproductive game as not over yet, and hope to continue to impress younger, more beautiful women.

<comment><USER3> I think the reason men do less dramatic stuff after they have kids is not just that they don't need to impress women anymore. After all, women also get less done after they have kids. The kids themselves are a big part of the reason both parents get less done. Maybe the main reason. And not just because they take up all their parents' time. Once people have kids, they often think of their kids as the most important thing in the world. And that means whatever project they were working on before is now at best number 2.

<comment><USER2> All true, but the paper included graphs of women's "productivity" over time too, and the dropoff was nowhere near as severe after peak childbearing years. If it were just a matter of time spent taken care of kids, you'd expect women to suffer a larger output decline, as the bulk of childrearing duties falls on them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reminds me of "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas S. Kuhn ([http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Scientific-Revolutions- Thoma...](http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Scientific-Revolutions-Thomas- Kuhn/dp/0226458083/)). Kuhn dissects the idea of the "paradigm shift" in scientific thinking in the context of classical physics. It is basically argued that it takes people who aren't indoctrinated with the "old thinking" to come up with the "new thinking."

In physics, this usually turns out to be people younger than 26, often through seminal PhD theses. But not always. Sometimes people dabble in secondary fields at older ages and come up with significant breakthroughs, like Linus Pauling (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Pauling>).

I'm not sure what I think about this regarding entrepreneurship. It seems that very successful entrepreneurs are not always coming up with revolutionary thinking, but instead executing well and paying attention to small details that make things work where they haven't before. As such, the age indoctrination barrier may not be as present as it is in physics. But of course there are the risk and drive barriers--people get settled and less willing to take risks and go through the arduous process of starting something new later in life.

</comment><comment><USER5> "If you want to increase your success rate, double your rate of failure." \- Thomas Watson (thought I heard it attributed to Edison as well)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is a classic case of making a really simple analysis complicated.

The reason for age was simple - as you grow up there are more dependencies which demand a share of your time and more responsibilities to live up to - which is what pulls you down. The age question was not about productivity. Given equal circumstances and responsibilities, there is no question that this thesis would hold true - however that is not the case !!

Sorry Marc - this time it was thought through a little tooooo much and the original reasons that started this debate were largely ignored. I hope you read this comment.

<comment><USER7> You can't overemphasize the age issue though to the point that business success becomes a matter of how much you're not distracted by other commitments.

<comment><USER8> Hmm... actually you can probably do precisely that.

<comment><USER7> heh, well, you can, but you'd be missing a huge part of the puzzle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I remember a Forbes article on a new small airplane business, featuring profiles of the 5 founders. The youngest, if I remember correctly, was in his 40s, and he was an accountant. The engineers were all old. There is very, very little innovation to be had in the airplane business (the US military is, remember, still flying planes designed in the 70s) and success is dependent upon age--which brings a tendency to 1) Not make fool mistakes 2) Understand horrendously complicated, but mature, technology, 3) Have critical contacts, 4) Have personal wealth to risk.

Something like...say...Twitter. What 50-year-old would even consider doing something like that? And if a kid does it, and botches it, no one gets hurt. Clearly the trade-offs between enthusiasm and experience are at work.

 _Dr. Simonton points out that the periods of Beethoven's career that had the most hits also had the most misses_

I can't find that in the article. If by "hits" he means contemporary hits, perhaps. But Beethoven's late stage was both sparse, and choked with his greatest works. Compare that to rock music...the rolling stones' past 30 years can't compare with any 3 consecutive months in the 1960s.

<comment><USER10> _There is very, very little innovation to be had in the airplane business_

Have you heard about the Boeing 787 (<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6282820.stm>)?

<comment><USER9> For all intents and purposes, that's a 737 with an efficiency tweak. It's like going from merge sort to quick sort.

Have you heard about the concorde? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde> (maiden flight: 1969, when the Rolling Stones were peaking.)

<comment><USER10> _For all intents and purposes, that's a 737 with an efficiency tweak. It's like going from merge sort to quick sort._

Is it? It's an all-new design, using a new material for the first time, etc.

I didn't mean to be so blunt in my first reply, but there _are_ tons of improvements that can be made in that industry, especially if you look at old problems with new eyes.

<comment><USER11> Bizjets have been using those materials and avionics for years.

If you want to talk about all new designs and brilliance in aerospace, look at Burt Rutan.

<comment><USER10> You're right, there is innovation in that industry.

And the point is: if a generalization about an industry is incorrect, it's not a good idea to use that as a logical foundation for predicting the age of entrepreneurs in that industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "The odds of a hit versus a miss do not increase over time. The periods of one's career with the most hits will also have the most misses. So maximizing quantity -- taking more swings at the bat -- is much higher payoff than trying to improve one's batting average."

Of all the conclusions, this one threw me off quite a bit. I realize Marc is going to be following this article up with a part 2, but I d be interested to see just how a "swing at the bat" is defined in the start-up context. If a swing is defined as one iteration, then seeing no "systematic developmental trends" in the "quality ratio" goes very much against the grain. I would argue that every iteration teaches us something that is quite applicable in the "general" sense to future iterations (for different products/services and across markets).

In any case, even if this conclusion is considered in a non-startup context, its still very bothersome. For example, if a "swing at the bat" is defined as one complete work, such as a Book or a Musical Piece, why arent there developmental trends in the quality ratio?

</comment><comment><USER13> Conjecture: the fields with late peaks are those where success requires insightful planning and consideration, whereas the fields with early peaks are those which require discrete strokes of inspiration. The distinction between the two skills is similar to PG's description of the distinction between intelligence and wisdom.

<comment><USER2> Another conjecture: fields with late peaks define success in terms of "convincing people of what they already know", while fields with early peaks define success in terms of "convincing people that everything they know is wrong."

I'm thinking in terms of authors vs. physicists: you absolutely _cannot_ write a novel until you have the life experience needed to write a story that resonates with readers. However, performing an experiment that resonates with other physicists isn't a paradigm shift; it's normal science. Valuable, but not world-changing.

It seems like it applies to many other fields though. CEOs peak in their 60s; their job consists of internalizing the culture of their organization and making wise decisions based on that experience. Lawyers peak in their 40s and 50s; their job consists of internalizing court precedents so they can predict how a judge or jury will rule. Musicians peak in their late 20s and early 30s; their job consists of internalizing the conventions of existing musical forms and turning that into something new and fresh. Entrepreneurs peak in their 20s; their job consists of recognizing ideas that others have overlooked and convincing the world that those are _good_ ideas.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think it comes down to passion, no matter the age.

<comment><USER8> Passion is emotional/hormonal and therefore age is a major factor. People do crazy, irrational things when they're younger, just to entertain their buddies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How about the premise that younger people are less tied down by "spouse and kids" and mortgage, etc... I think that younger people have an advantage with this regard, but then again, those who are more "tied down" may take more time to analyze a market opportunity because there is more at risk.

</comment><comment><USER15> Is _"enthusiasm"_ the same as _"determined"_?</comment>


Thomas Friedman: Start-Ups, Not Bailouts - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/opinion/04friedman.html?hp <comment><USER2> High-IQ risk taking does not just come from the school system or immigration. It also comes from the freedom to fail. Increasing the safety net and taking the edge off failure will help people step out on the tightrope.

<comment><USER3> I've heard this said many times - that in the U.S. there is less of a "stigma" against founding a company that happens to not work out (for any number of reasons). Can anyone here give examples of how this stigma is more severe in non-U.S. countries? Is it that no investor will ever give money to anyone who has so much as touched an unsuccessful business? Or are there more subtle social factors at work? (i.e. people stop being your friend if your business doesn't work out) I'd really like to hear some stories about how failure was more severely stigmatized that in the U.S. especially in countries that have much stronger "safety nets" than the USA

<comment><USER4> From what the German business press has reported and my personal contacts with many entrepreneurs have confirmed, in Germany (which still has a strong "safety-net") you'll be stigmatized.

On the level of your personal contacts, when you start up, you'll mostly not be (morally for example) supported in your intent by your family, friends, peers. Most Germans want a secure job, working hours from nine-to-five, their (circa) 30 (working) days vacations etc. And will most likely aim for that (or eventually fall into the safety-net of the social state) than risk starting their own business.

Second problem is your future: If you start a company and it fails many doors will be (in many cases firmly) closed afterwards making it harder and harder with every failure for you to start again.

I'd say that a safety-net everywhere (!) isn't good. Because, when you put safety-net everywhere, everything becomes overregulated. Favorite joke in Germany is that, because most garages don't have windows and laws forbid working environments without windows, Apple, Hewlett-Packard and many other garage start-ups wouldn't be possible.

<comment><USER5> I actually had this debate once when I was a member of my local town council (in germany. A small business started by a woman in her garage had to shut down and I cited HP and other famous "garage" companies and asked if we would have shut down their business. The answer I got was "Yes of course" the vote afterwards was 12-1 for shutting it down.

On the other hand there is a lively startup scene and especially the online business is quite forgiving so it's not the same everywhere in germany.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What Friedman should be asking is as technology commoditizes, what other high- growth areas can the US be competitive in?Apart from some narrow niche (OS and productivity software, chip design), it seems the US is content with shifting certain types of hardware design and fabrication to foreign nations, while enjoying the role of brand marketing. Cost is usually cited as reasons. I think the question should be: what other growth areas remain and how can they be exploited by these risk-takers?

</comment><comment><USER7> I liked the idea that if an immigrant create a company that gainfully employes 5-10 people, they get a green card.

That would get more entrepreneurial immigrants come and stay in the US.

<comment><USER8> What would be his legal status while he is doing that ? Or does he have to create his company in his home country and move it to US to get a green card.

<comment><USER7> It can be anything from H1B to illegal immigrant. As long as he is here and is putting into the system more than he is taking out then why care about how he got here?

<comment><USER8> H1B's and illegal immigrants cannot start companies . Let alone a successful company .

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> He's not the first to make this claim and I question whether it is so clear cut. For instance, it seems very likely that some of those 40 million jobs created by start-ups had an effect on established business. Either through competition for growth or even competition for existing market space.

<comment><USER10> Obviously the people who work in those jobs need to come from somewhere. Are you implying that competition isn't a desirable outcome?

<comment><USER11> Slack and inefficiency keeps people employed and spreads the wealth. Until we've got Utopian redistribution, every technical improvement puts someone out of work. Like, say, travel agents. What do people like that do now?

<comment><USER12> That's silly, zero sum thinking. Unless the market for a good is saturated (everyone who would buy it will), making the production process more efficient creates both wealth and (often) new jobs as the producing company can now grow.

As an example, imagine someone develops a bit of tech that improves software development by 100%. Would a dev shop with this tech fire half their programmers, or would they expand their speed and scope and grow faster as a result?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Immigration and education? It could be years before those things have an effect on the job market.

Why not ask people who want to start startups, or are currently starting them what would make it easier to get going quickly?

Personally, I would start hiring tomorrow if it wouldn't cost me any money or part of my business. Perhaps a program that helps startups by paying the wages for the first 3 or so employees for up to a year? That would certainly kick start my business, probably many, many, others.

<comment><USER13> I thought a bit about this, and a loan system like federal student loans but that can only be used to pay employee wages would help me.

<comment><USER11> Isn't that a bank, small business loan? You go make your case to a loan officer, you get it or not on the merits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm going to controversial and ask : if successful entrepreneurs are relentleslly resourceful, shouldn't they be able to find a way around the immigration laws? Everyone I ever met who wanted to live in a country found a way to make it happen.

<comment><USER15> Selection bias? I might not be the best example, but I haven't emigrated yet (to Canada, Australia, the US or the UK) because I am looking to work within the existing inmigration laws (and I'm not motivated - or resourceful, proving the point - enough I guess, but I'm definitely not moving illegally anywhere). For me, they're a powerful deterrent.

<comment><USER14> That's a fair point - selection bias. I thought about that later after I wrote it. I was thinking about people I knew who wanted to move to a country and was successful in doing so, through visa applications, finding jobs with sponsorship or whatever. I realise it's not easy, just trying to play a little devils advocate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> PG-13 There was a painfully high occurrence of "high-I.Q. risk-takers" in this article.

</comment><comment><USER16> Mr. Friedman adds to his lengthy list of stories in which he lobbies (it has gotten to be numbingly repetitive, Tom) for increased immigration from India and China.

<comment><USER17> Why do you single out India and China? This article cites Brin (Russian) and Khosla (Indian); it nowhere mentions China. The immigrants the author plainly argues for are high-aspiring educated risk takers, regardless of where they come from.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What bookmark manager do you use? - <AUTHOR> Please feel free to mention your experience and how long you are using it.<p>I have heard good words about Pinboard and I am thinking to subscribe for their plan. Please share your experience about that as well. <comment><USER2> pinboard

Works for me. Try it.

I use the Firefox addon at work and home.</comment>


Chip-to-chip quantum teleportation and multi-photon entanglement in silicon - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-019-0727-x <comment><AUTHOR> >Our work lays the groundwork for large-scale integrated photonic quantum technologies for communications and computations.

</comment><comment><USER2> Talk about a decentralized Internet</comment>


In a Parallel Universe, Data Warehouses Run on GPUs - <AUTHOR> https://www.nextplatform.com/2018/10/04/in-a-parallel-universe-data-warehouses-run-on-gpus/ <comment><USER2> Ignoring and dismissing the clear industry leader (MapD) makes me wonder about the article. Seems like it was straight from a marketing department.

<comment><USER3> Can you explain this "industry" then? What industry? In-memory databases? GPU accelerated visualization? Which one are you referring to?

Comparing MapD to SQream DB is akin to comparing VoltDB to Vertica.

Disclaimer: I was interviewed in that article by the author. It didn't come from our "marketing department".</comment></comment>


Computer Glitch brings Melbourne traffic to a standstill - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com.au/national/traffic-chaos-deeps-as-citylink-admits-major-melbourne-tunnels-may-stay-closed-all-day-due-to-technical-malfunction/story-fndo4cq1-1226486984920 Traffic is at a standstill in Melbourne , Australia. A computer glitch has shut down the automated traffic signs, and in turn caused the closure of main tunnels and traffic routes. What's worse, they still don't know what is causing the software glitch! <comment><USER2> I've done work at CityLink, and their IT shop is just totally clueless. This does not surprise me one bit.

This is the same company that was doing "mirroring" with Veritas Volume Manager across a metro fibre link, rather than using their TrueCopy licenses. For no reason. Two fibre cuts rendered their entire production database (tolling) environment inoperable and nearly irrecoverable, on two separate occasions. I worked about 36 hours straight getting everything back online and was given a pair of movie tickets as a thank-you gift.

<comment><USER3> I've worked with State Transit in NSW (buses & ferries) and they were awful. The most embarrassing part was the UNIX team and Windows team refusing to talk to each other _even though they were only one cubicle partition away from each other_ so any communication had to go up through two levels of management and back down.

The scariest part was every single database of user information was transformed from another database of user information; there was no source of truth, just a great big never ending circle of import & convert that had reached equilibrium and was now stable, provided nothing changed.

<comment><USER4> This is unfortunately normal in most public and corporate bodies. They are afraid that if they talk then information will filter across and they'll lose their remit or hold over the solution at hand.

It's silly really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "... growing whisper within the security industry in Melbourne that there weak security might have been breached from China. ..." ~ <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4605335>

Any idea what type of systems they are running?

<comment><USER6> In IT security here in Melbourne, first I've heard of it. Also why would _network_ security specialists need to fly over 30 hours from Europe? We also have some pretty capable teams on the ground here already.

Given the time frame of when it happened it's more likely a change that has been borked in some way with difficulties in rolling back.

<comment><USER5> thx for the insight @bennysaurus. That's what I dislike about rumours, especially with so little info and in areas I lack understanding.

<comment><USER6> No trouble and agreed - rumours flying around like that don't help the problem. If there was that level of security breech, outsiders would probably do more than lock everybody out anyway.

Finding further information about it: looks like a core switch died with the backup not kicking in. 12 hours to work around is a but much though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm having a really hard time seeing how this is any different than a traffic light being out. If "me-go-you-go" fails, why don't they just have a traffic officer out there directing traffic manually?

<comment><USER8> The ABC has an article with a quote that explains it better ([http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-03/tunnel-closures- cause-...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-03/tunnel-closures-cause- traffic-chaos/4292378)):

      CityLink spokeswoman Kate Murphy says the tunnels had to close as a precaution.

      "It's not just overhead signs [that are not working], it's also our safety systems
      as well," she said.

      "For example, in the tunnels the deluge systems or the smoke extraction systems
      which we may use in an emergency, we can't actually operate those as well,
      which is why we've had to take the dramatic measure of actually closing the
      tunnels."

<comment><USER9> The fact that their safety systems (Which anyone would expect to be separate from the traffic control systems) are also affected makes me wonder about the "computer glitch" angle.

<comment><USER10> Like 99% of news reported computere glitch's it is some human mess up that caused it, either by design or error or a homer moment were somebody pressed the wrong button. Could even be somebody overloading the electrical phases in the datacentre and tripped the UPS into action for it to barth at the imbalance (seen that one).

This is why they say computer glitch and count on the majority of non technical people to not question it.

<comment><USER11> _> Like 99% of news reported computere glitch's it is some human mess up that caused it_

If the system allowed the user to do something that impacted safetey in such a way, then the computer glitch is that the computer _should_ stop that sort of thing happening. Human error happens a lot and you have to account for it in your designs.

Of course there are times when you have to trust the user because it is not practical to do those tests (in which case the human should have procedure to follow that mitigates the risk), and instances where the user wil override the checks (when the machines say "I really don't think you should do X because Y, click 'I understand the consequences of my propsosed action' to proceeed") - then it is genuinly human error is something goes wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> See, this is why we need to hurry up and deploy networked computerized automobiles. We won't need stoplights anymore, so this kind of stuff won't happen!

<comment><USER3> We will still need safety systems in tunnels though, and lack of those is why they shut the tunnels down. Ignore the misleading quotes about the variable limit signs not working, the real issue is the tunnel is not safe if there is a problem like a fire of fume buildup.

<comment><USER13> I think he was being sarcastic, hinting that network computerized auto- mobile's having a similar glitch would be truly devastating.

If mankind can't get a tunnels systems to work all the time, then what about our plans to introduce computer controlled cars? A glitch could wipe out millions of lives before being patched, and even then if they get patched that also introduces huge areas of vulnerability.

I'm sure a stealth program that loads onto a car and waits till a date to kill the occupants will be used by someone or a nation-state in the future.

<comment><USER14> A bicycle would be good in such circumstances!

<comment><USER3> Only if you're nimble enough to dodge all the cars trying to run you down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> According to a post on the citylink twitter account, "the Burnley & Domain tunnels will begin the re-opening process @ 4pm"

<https://twitter.com/774melbourne/status/253371401212403712>

</comment><comment><USER16> Apparently the reason the tunnels were closed was that Transurban could not operate the emergency sprinkler system and smoke extraction fans. Surely it would have been cheaper for Transurban to pay a few MFB fire trucks to be stationed outside the tunnels and close a lane to guarantee them access in case of an emergency. That way traffic could flow, tolls could be charged, and nobody would be as upset. I am sure Transurban make more than the fire brigade would charge them per hour.

</comment><comment><USER17> Man that is going to be one epic lawsuit when you factor in the cost for each of those commuter hours.

</comment><comment><USER18> Bring every police officer on-duty, making a fair percentage of them as a manual fallback to traffic direction. Have the officers play the part of the traffic lights.</comment>


Jeannie, an API for building Siri-like apps - <AUTHOR> https://www.mashape.com/pannous/jeannie <comment><USER2> I wonder if the folks programming Inform[1] and Prolog are going to have the advantage when it comes to Siri-style apps.

[1] <http://inform7.com>

</comment><comment><USER3> Did anyone compare it to Zypr? Which one is easier to use / more complete?

</comment><comment><USER4> The free API limits it to 30 calls/day only.</comment>


Show HN: Go from Docker-Compose to Kubernetes with a simple tool - <AUTHOR> http://kompose.io/index <comment><USER2> I used this to get an idea how K8s looked when I wanted to migrate ~500 lines of docker compose YAML config to k8s.

The result was sufficiently confusing that we threw it away, but it was helpful to get an idea what we were looking at, and why. We rebuilt the stack from hand, using all the files from the kompose tool as a guide/reference.

Later we found that kubectl can dump yaml, I found `kubectl .... -o=yaml[ ...]` to be super helpful, for any command you run from the tutorial or elsewhere, it'll generate you the equivalent YAML which you can commit/apply at your leisure.

I'm glad the tool existed, but idiomatic stuff in docker-compose is unidomatic in k8s (namely secret handling is completely different) which is a hurdle, and the "links" concept as used in docker-compose is essentially absent from k8s for our purposes (and, replaced wth much, much better and granular dns services and "expose"s)

<comment><USER3> You can also add the `--export` flag to get kubectl to omit unique metadata that would be ignored on import; keeps your exported files a bit tidier.

<comment><USER4> Export needs more work.

<comment><USER3> Go on?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While I appreciate the effort, as a Kubernetes user I can't really recommend this tool.

As a migration tool, it _might_ save some time building your YAML files, but the differences between Compose and Kubernetes are large enough (secret management, for example) that the mapping will be incomplete. But more importantly, the tool itself doesn't lead to a great understanding of Kubernetes itself. In my opinion, the better approach is to learn Kubernetes, then put together your YAML files piece by piece until it all works. Learn by doing.

And it's not useful as a general-purpose tool that abstracts Kubernetes; you _need_ all of the stuff you put in the YAML files. The only way to abstract it is to move one layer up, into a PaaS.

<comment><USER6> Some people learn better by putting everything together from the ground up.

Some people learn better by starting with a working example and going from there.

I suspect you and I are both in the first group, but for the second group, this seems like a nice way to get started.

<comment><USER5> Of course. I personally prefer learning by copying from examples rather than reasoning through reference documentation. But that doesn't mean you need a tool to generate examples. All you need is a small list of "this is how Docker Compose declares X, this is how K8s does it". Compose's surface area is much smaller than K8s, so it doesn't require a lot of examples.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think it would make more sense to do the opposite, generate Docker compose + files starting from a Kubernetes configuration. k8s features is a superset of Docker Compose, for instance networking, importing files, managing secrets is imho easier and superior in k8s. With docker-compose and Mesos often one has to find workarounds, change the topology, install additional pieces (e.g. service discovery) etc.

To be honest, I don't see a reason to use docker-compose anymore, because minikube gives the full Kubernetes experience locally. It might take a bit to learn k8s, but it's definitely worth it.

"docker-compose up" is perhaps still easier to start with, but as soon as you start working, rather than playing with demos, you hit limitations and want more.

</comment><comment><USER8> I was part of the team that started kompose. The main idea was to help developers who had adopted docker-compose moved to Kubernetes. We understand that this is not a perfect match and there will always be semantic mismatch. Personally, I don't expect folks to use this for production. But, if you started down the road of docker-compose and want an easy way to generate Kubernetes manifests then kompose does the trick. This will get you on the way, and you will start learning Kubernetes primitives.

</comment><comment><USER9> Hoping this helps with the Kubernetes learning curve. We've just started migrating and keeping track of the terminology has been tough.

<comment><USER10> Is there a reason to go from docker-compose to kubernetes?

<comment><USER11> Kubernetes is a more robust tool and has a great community around it. For example [https://github.com/kubernetes/charts](https://github.com/kubernetes/charts). You can launch any of these applications in one line

[https://github.com/kubernetes/charts/tree/master/stable](https://github.com/kubernetes/charts/tree/master/stable) [https://github.com/kubernetes/charts/tree/master/incubator](https://github.com/kubernetes/charts/tree/master/incubator)

and then very easily tweak them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This looks neat! I'd mirror what codebreaker said and probably in the long term you want to use something like helm.sh to manage your kubernetes yaml, but this may help get started. Also possibly useful for getting started (especially if coming from Heroku or using Foreman with a Procfile) is a gem I built, more or less in anger, out of inability to get a supporting partner to agree to using helm but not wanting to have duplication across deployment files and across environments, so while I don't necessarily reccomend as a long term tool, if you can't or don't want to initially use helm, ky[0] may be a useful stepping stone/bridge solution to avoid a ton of seperate manually maintained, unDRY deployment files with similar or identical env vars and small differences for web vs worker deployments etc.

[0]: [https://github.com/stellaservice/ky](https://github.com/stellaservice/ky)

</comment><comment><USER13> This looks really well put together and easy to understand. A lot of the people I've worked with understand Docker-Compose well. The Compose model seems to stick well in the mind.

One of the nice side effects of this tool will be mapping existing Compose knowledge into the Kubernetes config model. It's like a mini translator.

I have a feeling that this will make a big difference in the usage of MiniKube.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm still pretty new to docker and docker-compose. I've setup a few dev environments but how do you all deal with your app code? Do you mount it or do you copy it. I'm having permission problems with mounting. If you copy what's the workflow like and does kubernetes help at all with any of this?

<comment><USER15> If you use the desktop editions of Docker (Docker for Mac or Docker for Windows), it will handle permissions correctly when mounting.

Currently the server and cloud editions (Docker for Linux, Docker for AWS, Docker for Azure) don't solve the permission problems for performance reasons. But in production you typically don't want or need to mount source code anyway.

If you want to copy instead of mounting, just use the COPY operation in your Dockerfile. [https://docs.docker.com](https://docs.docker.com)

Whether you use Kubernetes or Swarmkit for deploying to production, that takes place later in the workflow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> One of the nice things about AWS ECS is that the command line lets you create services via compose files (usually with some small modifications)

</comment><comment><USER17> I red Go as Golang, that title made little sense

</comment><comment><USER18> Now you can take a really simple Docker compose file and make it complicated with Kubernetes, happy day! Seriously, the complexity and learning curve of Kubernetes will eventually kill the project.

<comment><USER19> "The complexity and learning curve of vim will kill the project"

"The complexity and learning curve of Emacs will kill the project"

"The complexity and learning curve of LaTex will kill the project"

"The complexity and learning curve of Sendmail will kill the project" <\-- The only one that's partially true and it took 35 years.

<comment><USER18> Expert tools are for experts, they can be hard to use as long as they are really good at doing what they do. If you haven't noticed though, these modern times are all about convenience. We even have delivery services for gasoline, and there was already a gas station on every corner. If Docker (or someone else) makes this stuff super easy, they are going to win.

<comment><USER19> Sure, and MS Word is way easier to use than Vim or Emacs or LaTex, and has a much bigger market share, but it didn't kill those projects.

Exchange is a lot easier to use than Sendmail, but didn't kill that one either.

When you need power and flexibility, which is generally the case when your project gets to any reasonable size, then you go with the pro tool with the learning curve.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amazon's Rekognition Misidentifies 28 Members of Congress as Suspected Criminals - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/amazons-face-recognition-misidentifies-28-members-of-co-1827887567 <comment><USER2> Reading the article, I think this was not a good faith experiment. I can easily see many ways to improve the accuracy of the results, and I think the authors should have done a better job of following up on that.

</comment><comment><USER3> duplicate: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17617210](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17617210)</comment>


Show HN: Sanic – A Comprehensive CLI for Kubernetes - <AUTHOR> https://sanic.io <comment><USER2> The name is rather unfortunate as there is already a software project with that name: Sanic, Python async web framework.

[https://github.com/huge-success/sanic](https://github.com/huge-success/sanic)

<comment><USER3> Also the Sanic the Hedgehog meme: [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sanic- hegehog](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sanic-hegehog)

<comment><USER4> Pretty sure they're both based on the meme. Go fast and all that.

<comment><USER3> It makes a lot more sense with the web framework linked above. I don't see the connection with this new Sanic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://sanic.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html](https://sanic.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> Many of the environment-specific functionality provided by this tool can be more declaratively achieved by kustomize ([https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/manage-kubernetes- objects/k...](https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/manage-kubernetes- objects/kustomization/)) as well as direnv ([https://direnv.net](https://direnv.net)) by automatically running commands to change environment etc when changing directories.

<comment><AUTHOR> Kustomize is the closest thing to an alternative to Sanic, but I've found it's hard to teach new developers how to read and use patches correctly, and it doesn't really solve the "build and push to a specific registry per environment" problem

<comment><USER6> I see. That's also somehow solved by Skaffold. [https://skaffold.dev/](https://skaffold.dev/)

skaffold.yaml has a notion of "profiles" that define a default registry per- environment. Like, you can have a local profile that doesn't push images (as it detects docker-for-desktop, or minikube etc), and a "prod" profile that specifies a registry for images to be pushed and kubectl manifests to be auto- applied with the updated image:tag.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN!

At the startup I last worked at, we used a Docker/Kubernetes stack for our SaaS product.

We found the lack of environment / concurrent build support a huge bottleneck though, so I developed a tool to make it much easier to deploy kubernetes projects.

I recently open sourced it and launched it, take a look! [1]

The website itself is also using sanic and open source, in case you want an example [2]

Please let me know if you have any feedback! I'd love to know which features are most important to work on next.

[1] [https://github.com/distributed-containers- inc/sanic](https://github.com/distributed-containers-inc/sanic) [2] [https://github.com/distributed-containers-inc/sanic- site](https://github.com/distributed-containers-inc/sanic-site)

<comment><USER7> This tool looks useful, but the first thing I see when I hit the landing page is this:

> Tired of kubernetes tools that don't prioritize user experience?

This is quite a loaded sentence. It ignores whatever reasoning there may be (design, resourcing, differences of opinion) behind the state of Kubernetes tooling, and even assumes that the tooling is bad, and assumes that you have the answer.

I'm all for simple, strong statements to pitch a product, but this instead feels adversarial, derogatory, and potentially naive.

I'm sure this is not your intention, so it would be a shame for this to be the first impression the community gets of Sanic.

Perhaps "Ready for the next evolution of Kubernetes tooling?" might be a bit more positive?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I might be a little slow here, but I don't think I totally understand the use- case.

The parallel docker build / pushing to a registry is definitely cool.

Isn't the parallel Kubernetes deployment the same as `kubectl apply -f .`?

My experience has always been: GitOps w/ version controlled yaml so when a deploy is triggered all the tests run, if that's successful then a sed is performed to replace some placeholder with the new image tags then it's just `kubectl apply -f .`

<comment><AUTHOR> Take a look at the sanic-site project's deployment.yaml [1]: Since it's a go website, the yaml is written in go templates, but the goal is that you should choose whatever templating language you already use for your website

I've used sed in the past, but it's a huge hassle to do more complicated things (i.e., use different namespaces / taints / resource limits / ... per environment)

I disagree with the way kustomize and jsonnet approach this, learning a new templating language is almost never the right solution. As a bonus, sanic spits out exactly the files it applies so that you can easily find the error in your template without needing to go across multiple files

Finally, this allows you to volume mount your source code folder to avoid having to rebuild after every little change (see the "devmount" part in [1])

[1] [https://github.com/distributed-containers-inc/sanic- site/blo...](https://github.com/distributed-containers-inc/sanic- site/blob/master/deploy/in/sanic-site.yaml.tmpl)

<comment><USER9> > ...but the goal is that you should choose whatever templating language you > already use for your website

most common templating languages (especially textual templating languages like go's text/template lib) are not great at templating structures (yaml, json, etc.). you quickly run into indentation, escaping and similar problems.

> I disagree with the way kustomize and jsonnet approach this, learning a new > templating language is almost never the right solution.

i've recently open sourced a tool ytt ([https://get-ytt.io](https://get- ytt.io)) that is yaml structure aware, to avoid problems mentioned above. i do agree that learning new tool/language is an overhead but it's been interesting to try to build a tool on top of common tech, yaml and python-like language (starlark), to ease the learning curve.

good to see that your tool allows integration with other templating tools.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you'd like to integrate your templater with sanic, feel free to adapt the existing golang templater [1] and push your version to docker hub -- Let me know if you do, I'll maintain a list of available templaters.

[1] [https://github.com/distributed-containers-inc/sanic- template...](https://github.com/distributed-containers-inc/sanic-templater- golang)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Based on the name, color scheme and use of the infinity symbol (∞), I'm assuming the name is based off of this fella? [https://www.google.com/search?q=sanic](https://www.google.com/search?q=sanic)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sanic's promise is that your builds will be _so fast_ \-- that's why it's named after the character

<comment><USER11> Isn't that Sonic?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sonic is a trademark so it was murkier to call it that, there's a popular image macro called "sanic" [1] which made a good enough alternative

[1] [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sanic- hegehog](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sanic-hegehog)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Any particular reason you chose that name? I keep thinking about the meme by the same name

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a story there: I first worked on it because we had a bunch (20~) docker images to build in parallel, and the goal was to "build them fast" (we succeeded: builds from scratch went from ~40 mins to ~15 mins when combined with multi-stage builds)

I suppose it's the same reason there's a python HTTP server of the same name

<comment><USER13> Do you have any concerns about giving it the same name as the web framework? Sanic is one of the more popular Python web frameworks with over 12k stars on GitHub. I would guess that a significant portion of your potential users already associate the name with that established project. I'm not trying to police the name or anything, but it seems likely to cause confusion.

<comment><AUTHOR> In practice I've found it's not really a big deal, because if you google "sanic" neither this project nor that one shows up. My users will search "sanic tool" or "sanic build" and their users will search "sanic web" or "sanic python"

I guess it's sub-optimal that there are two projects with the same name, but I grew too used to typing "sanic build" over the years to seriously consider renaming it

<comment><USER14> I immediately thought of the web framework as well, but who knows what will happen if this tool takes off. It's good to see that you had at least considered it and recognized it was sub-optimal.

Concurrent builds alone make this worthwhile while developing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nice tutorial and idea. Definitely like the focus on UX. I think that's an important aspect of any dev-centric tooling that often goes neglected, as has some of the lower level tooling around this in the past. IMO, Config and deployment management seems like one of those things where the barrier to entry is low enough that each opinionated developer reinvents it rather than work within the constraints of some existing tool.

</comment><comment><USER16> some honest feedback from someone avidly using K8s since 1.1.

\- im not sure what k8s problem this is solving. the first thing your talking about is building docker images, which k8s has nothing to do with. \- are the k8s config files accessible? where are they? \- the sanic.yaml file looks like yet another DSL i need to learn. how is that simplifying things for me? i have no idea what your example config file is doing either, none of it seems to obviously map to anything in kubernetes.

This feels like more of a docker build cli than a kubernetes cli. also, does this actually create clusters? like kops does? if not, this just seems to add a tool to the toolchain rather than simplifying anything.

idk, maybe it's cool, but it seems complicated.

</comment><comment><USER17> Im very interested in trying this! Looks like the download page only supplies a linux binary at the moment: any plans to offer a Mac OS version too?

For what it's worth, I was able to build a Mac OS version locally.

<comment><AUTHOR> Go works really well with macos, I don't see why it wouldn't work. I'll likely officially support it once I set up a mac VM for CI

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Looks good! Kubernetes has historically been a huge pain to deal with; If this smooths out the process I might use it for my next project.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm using an OpenDyslexic font and your page elements don't seem to recognize the bounding boxes of the text in this font.

<comment><AUTHOR> Could you open an issue with the specific font and screenshots of the affected pages?

[https://github.com/distributed-containers-inc/sanic- site/iss...](https://github.com/distributed-containers-inc/sanic-site/issues)

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I like the tutorial.

</comment><comment><USER21> Does it work with K3S?</comment>


Ask HN: How do I add store credit to an online shop? - <AUTHOR>

Is there an easy way to do this, or an App? We're using Shopify, I know there's nothing built in. Interesting start-up idea... <comment><USER2> Shopify has an App Store so it's possible to code this functionality. If you can't do this yourself, you could outsource it to a developer per their API documentation <http://wiki.shopify.com/Shopify_App_Development>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you - I will take a look.</comment></comment>


TINTAG, the First Rechargeable Item Tracker - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/tintag-the-first-rechargeable-item-tracker#home

<comment><USER2> Hm, so as long as I lose things more often than every 4 months (battery lifetime) I will be reminded to recharge the tag. Not sure that works for me.

</comment><comment><USER3> How does this match against [http://thetrackr.com](http://thetrackr.com) ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems to be same concept but cheaper and with rechargeable battery so even cheaper on the long run. (and more environmentally friendly, arguably)

Also the campaign is flexible funding, I have contacted them and they said they are shipping in November whether it gets funded or not, the product is mostly ready.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What Linux distro are you using (personal/workstation)? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Arch on both laptop and server. I use i3wm so no "desktop environment" per se.

<comment><AUTHOR> ^^ This guy's my hero.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you are referring to...

/

My workstation and laptop are both libreboot'd and running Debian XFCE/i3wm. I am also enthusiastic about Trisquel, but prefer to use Debian.

</comment><comment><USER4> Mint for personal use, Fedora for work use, and CentOS 7 for servers.

</comment><comment><USER5> Mint for work and personal Still develop Windows Software in a VM

</comment><comment><USER6> debian stretch / i3wm

The first linux distro I used was slackware (I don't recall the version, but I think the kernel was 1.1.59). I switched to redhat as it was easier to install new packages. I switched to debian after renting my first dedicated server: the smart people at the hosting company used debian and I figured there must be a good reason.

</comment><comment><USER7> opeSUSE Leap with i3wm on my main laptop, Debian Stretch with exwm on my old netbook - but I'm looking to replace SUSE with Debian on my laptop, too.

I'll do it as soon as I'll have found all the files I actually want to keep. Any day now.

</comment><comment><USER8> ubuntu 18.04 for both

</comment><comment><USER9> On my desktop computer I use the Gentoo distribution and the i3 window manager.

</comment><comment><USER10> Still Fedora with KDE for now.

</comment><comment><USER11> Debian for server, OpenSUSE TW for desktop

</comment><comment><USER12> Arch/Gnome

</comment><comment><USER13> openSUSE Tumbleweed and Gentoo on desktops, KDE Neon on laptop. All with KDE Plasma desktop.

</comment><comment><USER14> Sparky with Awesome as my WM

</comment><comment><USER15> CentOS 7 / Gnome-Shell

</comment><comment><USER16> Solus/Budgie

Fedora/Gnome

</comment><comment><USER17> Pop OS

</comment><comment><USER18> mint mate

clean and spartan</comment>


OnePlus 5 Is the First Android Phone to Beat the iPhone in Speed Test - <AUTHOR> https://techviral.net/oneplus-5-beats-the-iphone-in-speed-test/ <comment><USER2> It's pretty interesting the iPhone holds up so well given that it has basically 1/3 the RAM and the animations seem to be slower (as the narrator keeps mentioning).</comment>