Haskell Skyline - <AUTHOR> http://pykello.github.io/programming/2015/12/12/haskell-skyline/ <comment><USER2> Perhaps I've misunderstood the problem, but the second solution shown here doesn't seem to be correct: it always adds a trailing 0-height entry to the skyline, yet there could be an existing building touching or overlapping the newly added building, whose height is then lost.

For example, the code given appears to make

        skyline [(1, 2, 3), (2, 1, 4)]

evaluate to

        [(1,2),(3,0),(4,0)]

when if I've understood correctly it should be

        [(1,2),(3,1),(4,0)]

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right. Thank you. Going to correct this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I was given this exact problem at a Google interview. In fact it was virtually the only high level, real code programming exercise I was asked to do in many hours of interviews.

<comment><USER4> I too got this problem, though not at google. White-boarded it and came up with the n^2 solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those of us not particularly skilled at Haskell, could you add some comments on the actual code, or at least explain some of the lines? I get the English part of the algorithm, but I don't think I'm up to speed on some of the syntax being used in your solutions.

<comment><AUTHOR> "foldl" works like aggregation in databases. When you say "fold func init values", the result is calculated as:

      result = init
      for value in values:
         result = func(result, value)
      return result

So, "foldl add_endpoints [] bs" will translate to:

      result = []
      for (x1, h, x2) in bs:
         result = add_endpoints(result, (x1, h, x2))
      return result

If you expand the 3rd line, you get:

      result = []
      for (x1, h, x2) in bs:
         result = result ++ [(x1, height x1), (x2, height x2)]
      return result

where "++" is the list concatenation, and "height x" is a function which finds the skyline height by finding the tallest building with "x1 <= x && x < x2".

I think the 2nd solution should be easy to understand if you understand the 1st solution. Probably the only new thing is that I've sorted the buildings by height before passing them to "foldl".

In the 3rd solution, the following lines:

      skyline bs = (skyline (take n bs), 0) `merge` (skyline (drop n bs), 0)
                    where n = (length bs) `div` 2

mean:

      first_half = first_n_elements(bs, length(bs) / 2)
      second_half = remove_first_n_elements(bs, length(bs) / 2)
      result = merge ((skyline(first_half), 0), (skyline(second_half), 0))

You may wonder what are those 0s? In the merge function I need to keep track of current height of each half, and the initial height of left and right skylines are 0.

Then, in merge function:

      merge ([], _) (ys, _) = ys
      merge (xs, _) ([], _) = xs

means return the other list if any of the lists become empty. The underscores mean a variable whose value is not important for us. We don't care about the current height values here, so I've put _'s instead of real names.

Then the other cases:

      merge ((x, xh):xs, xh_p) ((y, yh):ys, yh_p)
        | x > y = merge ((y, yh):ys, yh_p) ((x, xh):xs, xh_p)
        | x == y = (x, max xh yh) : merge (xs, xh) (ys, yh)
        | max xh_p yh_p /= max xh yh_p = (x, max xh yh_p) : merge (xs, xh) ((y, yh):ys, yh_p)
        | otherwise = merge (xs, xh) ((y, yh):ys, yh_p)

First case, "x > y" simply swaps the two args. This ensures that in the following cases we have x <= y.

Second case is probably easy to understand.

In third case, we know that x < y. Just before reaching x, skyline has height "max xh_p yh_p". When we reach x, height of skyline changes to "max xh yh_p". If these values are not equal, we have a height change. So we a construct a new list with head "(x, new height)" and the result of merging the rest of skylines.

If the height doesn't change, we just ignore the change at x and continue with the rest of skylines.

<comment><USER6> Upvote for a really accessible explanation. I wish I had posts like these to read when I was learning Haskell half a decade ago. You've got a knack for conveying concepts! Write some texts or at least a blog!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wrote a really nice merge function (in Haskell) when I helped a friend prepare for an interview. Perhaps I should send it to the author.

</comment><comment><USER8> I believe integer sorting doesn't have a lower bound of O(n log n), because you can do more with them than just comparing.

<comment><USER9> Of course. But nowadays, space complexity is more and more important, which makes every sorting algorithm that is > O(n) not sufficiently efficient.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best bookmark and archiving service? - <AUTHOR> I bookmark a lot of tweets. But, because I've had the bad experience of going back to an old tweet that I bookmarked to find it deleted, now I always copy out the tweet text and save it.
I've had a similar experience with blog posts, too, so I save them also using Evernote.
Is there a nice service that does bookmarking/organization of notes and automatically saves an archive of any web thing that is saved? <comment><AUTHOR> It'd be really neat if there was one that I could take notes and paste links in, and for all links that I pasted it automatically saved the contents of that link on my local device.

</comment><comment><USER2> Pinboard with the archiving addon, perhaps?

[https://pinboard.in/](https://pinboard.in/)</comment>


A farewell to Erlang - <AUTHOR> http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/2014-January/076422.html

<comment><USER2> "just remember 1) we all got into programming because it was fun 2) nice syntax is sometimes more important than program correctness and 3) great things often begin life as dirty hacks."</comment>


The problem with the gender gap in technology - <AUTHOR> http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelors-degrees-conferred-to-women-by-major-1970-2012/ <comment><USER2> And to make sure the "other" gender gap is considered as well: [http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/15/the-double-edged- sword...](http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/15/the-double-edged-sword-of- gender-equality/) by the same author</comment>


How Not to Use Git - <AUTHOR> https://adityasridhar.com/posts/how-you-can-go-wrong-with-git <comment><USER2> Rebasing your branch with the master/release branch is fine as long as there is coordination. I much prefer rebasing as it keeps the history clean. Also, you're more than okay to rebase your branch with remote, providing your commits haven't been pushed yet (i.e. git rebase origin HEAD).</comment>


Ask HN: What recommendations do you have for ad networks? - <AUTHOR>

It seems there's a huge number of options out there for publishers now.  I'm looking in to the possibilities for placing advertising on my site (which shows a variety of tweets).<p>Do you have any recommendations, or suggestions on what I should be aware of when looking for an ad provider? <comment><USER2> Nothing that moves. (Or talks. Or does anything but sit unobtrusively in a corner waiting to be glanced at.)

The only ads in which I've ever been sufficiently interested to click, even out of curiosity, have been Google text ads.

</comment><comment><USER3> For a number of reasons, adsense seems to be the only viable option nowadays. Smaller providers aren't just as reliable and in-context.</comment>


Great Teams Are About Personalities, Not Just Skills - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2017/01/great-teams-are-about-personalities-not-just-skills <comment><USER2> Title says it all. Saved you a click.

Personalities and skills impact a given team's success. Pretty sure this was already obvious. What is not addressed in this article is the implications of this. It might not be very PC to research or discuss how personality matters.

But if skills alone are not enough when hiring, then one implication is team's can't really hire blind - they will have to get into personality as part of the interview. I have seen people push for more blind hiring practices, that is to focus on grades, experience and skills and downplay personality or other character traits - but this doesn't appear to be a competitive solution. That also means all the workplace studies that don't include personality when comparing success in the workplace will not be telling the full story. Sorry I have no solutions, but I do see hiring based on personality or "fit" remaining a target even when it makes sense and is done appropriately and the right intentions.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure, I often find that it's the 'anti-PC' crowd is keen on making writing software all about programming skill and a pure meritocracy regardless of people's actual interactions with each other.

<comment><USER4> Everybody wants a pure meritocracy. The social justice crowd believes it doesn't and can't exist, while the anti-PC crowd believes it does exist and in fact they and their friends are members of it.

I'm happier in teams where people try to promote people and work due to some shared understanding of merit, but realise that a lot of success in a group is due to its member's preferences and behaviours, and not to any objective measure of value. People should be able to concentrate on doing what they consider to be quality work, without getting depressed over not being seen as 'objectively good'.

<comment><USER5> Does everyone really want a pure meritocracy? The original intent of the word was not positive, Michael Young coined the term as a pejorative description of a new kind of discrimination. Silicon Valley then seems to have embraced the concept without the slightest hint of irony.

But that semantic issue aside, I agree with your point but would take it a step further. I chafe a bit even at the idea of "shared understanding of merit". Not that there aren't objective differences in performance, but that they vary across roles, and even within a specific type of job, different employees may have wildly different yet equally successful approaches.

I've come to believe the concept of A, B, and C players to be fundamentally flawed. The truth is that people perform differently in different situations. If you are hiring for a major brand-name corporation you obviously need some aggressive filtering to get through all the applicants, so I don't really fault the Googles and Facebooks of the world for their hiring approach. But I have always had success by shaping roles around the employee's strengths in practice, not based on some abstract ideal I'm searching for. Many of my best hires have come from unfamiliar backgrounds which I could not evaluate objectively, but whose diverse experience ended up paying huge dividends to the entire team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4>
      > Great Teams Are About Personalities, Not Just Skills

Personality is also about team fit.

There are plenty of people that are excellent to work with in some groups but awful in others.

People often antagonise each other: perhaps they join a company in which somebody else used to be 'top dog' and feels threatened. They become passive aggressive about each other and the bad vibe festers.

Other times their personality is too passive for a new group. Perhaps in their previous company they were a fountain of good advice, but in the new group they're afraid to speak up and have difficulty being listened to. Their ability to positively affect the work of others decreases.

You can't just do a personality questionnaire without understanding the context of the group in which they'll be working and these people's own sensibilities and behaviours.

      > "They show that different cliques form
      >  in the crew based on values similarity
      >  and that higher agreeableness and lower
      >  neuroticism predict better team cohesion
      >  and cooperation."

Agreeableness and values similarity are actually bad though -- or at least they can lessen the feasability of innovative thinking. Also, clearly, low neuroticism is good for the overall group, however a lot of people have mental health issues from time to time and we should try to accommodate this.

<comment><USER6> Agreeableness and values similarity are great. You have to consider the opposite as well, if they are low you get lots of conflict and possible hostility. Innovative thinking is especially at risk in hostile environments.

Agreeableness may be confused with "yes nodding", i.e. agreeing superficially while withholding commentary. This can happen especially in hostile environments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> As soon as somebody invokes "values" , I know we're done.

They're mostly irrelevant. They're mostly post-hoc rationalizations. They are just-so stories. They are given the role of axioms in supposed geometries of governance, and it simply doesn't work.

Culture is what matters. Culture isn't necessarily conscious. It's emergent. And the mechanisms for enforcing and controlling culture are just messy. It, effectively, cannot be changed. A culture has to play itself out. This is why new firms are important.

<comment><USER8> I recently read a blog post [0] about self improvement, which describes a cycle of goals-processes-values. An example of values is the Agile manifesto, which says "individuals and interactions over processes and tools".

[0] [http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2014/09/03/how-to-fall-off-the- wag...](http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2014/09/03/how-to-fall-off-the-wagon/)

<comment><USER7> I believe that that is a positive - don't get me wrong. And values in technology are easier to come by than general values.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think that certain personalities are more likely to develop certain skills as well, but not in an archetype kind of way.

It has something to do, that people can see in communities around certain technologies, such as programming languages or databases. Idioms that develop result in certain ways of thinking, and often those are considered traits about a technology, when they are actually traits are mostly caused by the community, for example, but not only because certain techniques are applied.

When someone for example compares C with communities around more modern languages you see that C has a way more fragmented community and despite people agreeing that C per default doesn't come with strong security measures you know that in the OpenBSD, djb, Colin Percival, community despite all of them using a lot of C you can find extremely secure communities. Of course one might argue that they also develop technologies around that, but then again, that's a community led effort and not a strength of a community.

For personalities it appears that certain personalities or rather constellations of personalities, be that around an open source project or in a company lead to certain "values", that even when they are not outspoken and maybe not even thought about push things into a certain directions.

I think that constellations of people might even be more important, as I've more than once seen people and personalities behave differently in relation to other people.

To give an example, a programmer can have certain values and have a set of technologies that he commonly uses to approach certain problems and might be the perfect developer for the team, the same person might do a horrible job, because of being too opinionated, despite having the general knowledge for leading a team. Of course one might equal that to bad team leading skills, as the person is unable to let these things go, and that might be true, but then which personality trait isn't also a skill?

</comment><comment><USER10> I feel that a lot of this talk about "fit" and personality types is completely off the mark. The most important personality in a team member, in my experience, is emotional maturity (though perhaps there is a better name).

What I mean by that is the ability to accept criticism in work without feeling personally offended, being able to discuss a topic with the goal of reaching the right answer instead of your answer. If a team of people have that, they can make it work, even with different personality types. In fact, different personality types make for more dynamic teams.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think the big five personality traits make much more sense than Myers-Briggs personality types and similar others.

<comment><USER12> There is research based evidence for the validity of the Big Five.

Myer-Briggs is pop psychology driven by marketing.

<comment><USER13> You could define a mapping between both sets of personalities, based on correlation. So basing any theory on Myers-Briggs could be just as scientific as any other set of traits.

<comment><USER14> Correlation doesn't guarantee that the mapping preserves meaning. In a group of people there could be a correlation between dietary preference (for example) and personality type, but that doesn't mean that a mapping from one to the other lets you treat the former as a proxy for the latter.

<comment><USER15> Especially since the 'big five' has five (independent) metrics and MB has four...any mapping would be lossy.

<comment><USER16> PCA of personality traits hints more at 3 dimensions rather than 5. Big five are practical but not completely uncorrelated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I can vouch for this completely.

It's a pretty well ingrained idea, and I imagine for a reason, that skill and talent are useless without being able to interact with people well and with a good personality.

At the place I work, most of the developers are eccentric, reclusive, position-protectionist, "geniuses". They are smart, theoretically very knowledgeable. Basically...academic.

And their code? Some of the shoddiest I've seen. Let's just say, we have a database that _EIGHT_ API's are reading _and_ writing to...

In the end, without a decent personality and ability to interact with your fellow work mates, you work increasingly more isolated, on your own, not communicating, and this leads to your produce becoming increasingly isolated and not aware of other people's produce. In the programming world, that's suicide, hence why where I work is losing customers and money FAST from system breakages.

It's sad to see these washed-up 40 year olds drag the place under with their poor team work. I mean, there's 40 jobs that have gone because we have lost so much revenue we couldn't afford the better developers that _were_ here.

Interact and communicate folks.

<comment><USER18> You have some good points there, but keep an eye on those biases ;-)

One day you might be the 'washed-up' 40 year old programmer who the younger guys curse for your outdated skill set.

<comment><USER19> > One day you might be the 'washed-up' 40 year old programmer who the younger > guys curse for your outdated skill set.

Or who the younger guys curse for being stubborn and not adapting to reality. I've seen plenty experienced engineers think they can get away with not knowing git (released 2005) or ISO C99 (released 2000) because "they have seen it all and done it all".

The skill set is not outdated because of age; it's outdated because someone refuses to learn. It usually happens at graduation: "I learned my job and now it's time to earn money". The reason it only shows up at 40yo is that it takes a while for one's skills to become antique enough to become a burning problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Agreed. I've even left jobs after a new hire is toxic.

</comment><comment><USER21> [insert you don't say meme here]

<comment><USER22> I had the same reaction to the title. Luckily I read the article anyway and learned something. Nearly every company violates this research with nearly every hire - trying for some ideal, or "fit"=identical-to-previous-hires rather than a very disparate mix of hires. Titles are generally more trite than their articles of course, else why even write the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> To start, I'm pretty biased on this topic, but I still believe that teams can and will provide a valuable resource in years to come. I can't tell you how many times I've heard my friends jump ship at their company to work on a project or join another company as a whole team. They do this because they've worked together, they have a good understanding of HOW they work together rather than their specific skills. As an experiment I created a team with my own startup consulting with those I wanted to. I didn't do it because they had the best skills I knew of, I did it because I knew I could work with them. Their personalities and my personality worked in a way that if they disagreed, I knew they did in the right mind set.

The Table Group has a great book about "The Ideal Team Player," that mentions what an effective team member can look like, but ultimately I think it is about the personalities and the relationship they bring. This is very much like the Psychological Safety that a comment above had.

Again I am very biased, as I even founded a company about teams to better understand how to help them and support them in today's workplace (goelevator.com).

I would rather work with someone that can learn from me or I can learn from where the personalities are conducive to success rather than a skilled person that I will never mesh with.</comment>


Highschool Reunion, Bulllies and Being a Nerdy Kid in the 70's and Early 80's - <AUTHOR> http://jacquesmattheij.com/highschool-reunion

<comment><USER2> I got in sooo much trouble in school for standing up to bullies. It was totally bizarre. NONE of the teachers understood basic bully psychology, and so when I hit back (after which the bully predictably left me alone for good), _I_ was suddenly the bad guy. My first suspension was in kindergarten, and it solidified my disdain for most (but not all) teachers.

That's really what ruined school for me, and set me on an independent path. Actually, now that I think about it, that's probably for the best. I do my own thing no matter how nerdy and I don't take shit from anyone. Plus, learning to box was a big help.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps it was a different time, the '70s, perhaps a different location, very Red State and culturally part of the South extreme SW Missouri, but the teachers and administrators understood discipline and bullies. With one exception there were no repercussions when I fought back against bullies, who did indeed leave me alone for good afterwords, perhaps even becoming a bit friendly.

Once we were both sent to the principle's office and told to cut it out, that was a low level thing but in class (shoving a table in art class). And once in my senior year in high school I came close to possibly putting an assailant into the hospital, I was armed with a dog choker chain, but he ran away into a unoccupied part of the building guarded by a teacher.

He whined about my having that choker as I simply put it into my pocket in front of at least one teacher and 10s of students, and I was later told _sub rosa_ that as far as the school administration was concerned, I could have beaten him up without repercussions.

Had a lot to do with who he was, who I was and how I'd _never_ caused any problems in the high school. And again, the local culture, this is a place were a few years ago the police praised someone who had used lethal force against home invaders, and said she had an "absolute right" to do that, which is not a common thing for them to say elsewhere in the US.

But the less overt harassment I did receive had similar effects on me as with Jacques, maybe the physical bullying was limited because I steadily developed the _CONSTANT VIGILANCE!_ one fictional character advocates due to it, and was generally known to be a hunter and target shooter (in my father's days in the late '40s/early '50 it was routine for students to store their hunting long guns in their lockers after early morning hunting or before hunting after school, to save time), and on the high school JROTC rifle team.

Who knows? Although one of the biggest disappointments in my life was having to credibly threaten lethal force to stop a hazing kidnapping in my first semester in college, despite it being the best school for its specialty in the world it seems people were still people....</comment></comment>


The Difference Between a Programmer, a Hacker, and a Developer - <AUTHOR> http://danielmiessler.com/study/programmer_hacker_developer/

<comment><USER2> The diagram is completely different from what the text says. Specifically, the text says:

       "People can be any combination of these."

And yet the Euler diagram[0] shows no intersection between "Hackers" and "Developers", and it's claimed that all "Hackers" and "Developers" must also be "Programmers."

        When code and comments disagree,
            both are probably wrong.
            -- Norm Schryer[1]

In short, while there may be elements of truth, I think the whole article is ill-thought through.

[0] It's not a Venn diagram, because not all intersections are present: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler_diagram](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler_diagram)

[1] [http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Norm_Schryer](http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Norm_Schryer)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good points.

The main point (which I think was still conveyed) was to show that hackers and developers were programmers, but not necessarily the same.

<comment><USER2> Then you need at least to have some overlap between the "hackers" and "developers" areas. And there are hackers who aren't programmers. And there are developers who aren't programmers.

And are the programmers who are neither hackers nor developers?

Or perhaps you are only considering the world of programmers. It's really not clear.

I say all this as a mathematician who occasionally hacks, occasionally takes on the role of "developer," and while I believe that there is space for an article that makes the differences and commonalities clear, I don't think this is it. It feels like you have truth to convey, but this article doesn't do it.</comment></comment></comment>


Meteorites pummel the Moon far more than expected - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/meteorites-pummel-the-moon-far-more-than-expected-1.20777 <comment><USER2> I found this a very interesting paper. But given, 722 impacts over 7 years with a median sized 25 meter diameter crater, that is about 490 m^2 getting hit every 11 days. If such impacts were perfectly randomly distributed that is like 20K years before you have hit everywhere on the planet. You still have a much better shot at getting hit by an natural disaster that destroys your Earth base than this.

That said, it does mean you should keep watch for incoming impacts. Even a couple of kilograms of Chondrite coming in at 27,000 miles an hour is going to leave a mark on your fancy moon base. Subterranean safe rooms and auto sealing atmosphere preservation doors are going to be required equipment.

<comment><USER3> Given that the moon is tidally locked to the Earth, all you need to do is put the base on the near side of the moon and you'll dramatically reduce the chance of being hit by a meteor.

Compare the far side [1] to the near side [2].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_side_of_the_Moon#/media/Fi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_side_of_the_Moon#/media/File:Back_side_of_the_Moon_AS16-3021.jpg) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_side_of_the_Moon#/media/F...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_side_of_the_Moon#/media/File:Moon_nearside_LRO.jpg)

<comment><USER4> > dramatically reduce the chance of being hit by a meteor.

As seen from the moon the Earth is only 2 degrees across - that leaves the other 178 degrees wide open for hits.

I doubt it makes much difference to the hit rate - and certainly not "dramatically reduce".

<comment><USER5> Even though earth's direct shielding is only 2 degrees, its gravitational pull will deflect meteorites coming towards the moon from a far wider angle

<comment><USER4> I thought of that, but Earth's gravitation pull will also deflect meteors toward the Moon.

Averaged over the entire sky it's a null effect.

<comment><USER6> Is the distribution truly random as the article states? For instance, aren't the poles bit more safe?

<comment><USER4> Mostly random. The poles would have less direct hits, but equal number of sideways hits. Mainly because I think most meteors orbit in the same plane as the solar system. So there would be less "from above" hits on the poles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _" Meteorites have punched at least 222 impact craters into the Moon's surface in the past 7 years. That's 33% more than researchers expected..."_

It's unclear from the article whether they are saying that they _observed_ 222 impact craters, or _calculated_ that there were 222 impact craters across the moons surface.

222 impact craters across the entire moon over 7 years, is an insignificant number.

<comment><USER8> It's not unclear at all.

> Speyerer's team used a computer program to automatically analyse 14,092 of > these paired images, looking for changes between the two. The 222 newfound > craters are distributed randomly across the lunar surface, and range between > 2 and 43 metres in diameter.

<comment><USER7> I read that paragraph a dozen times before writing my comment. Still not 100% certain that the analysis _saw_ the newfound craters, or calculated that they existed based on visual data (such as splotches). I'm leaning 80/20 to the fact that they visually identified the 222 craters, but I wouldn't give 20:1 odds on it.

<comment><USER8> What's the difference between _seeing_ and "calculating based on visual data"? If you're looking for live observations of impacts as they happened, this paragraph makes it pretty clear that they're counting "splotches."

<comment><USER7> "Seeing" \- You physically see the crater on the moon.

"Calculating" \- you don't actually see all of the craters, but you can infer, based on various new deposits/splotches of ejecta, that in the time reviewed, that approximately 222 new craters were created on the surface of the moon.

The difference between the two, is that in the case of seeing 222 craters, it leaves open the possibly that many others, particularly on the "Dark Side" also occurred. In the case of calculating, it may be the case that they are suggesting that a total of 222 major craters were created during that window of time.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Developer Productivity - The Red Pill - <AUTHOR> http://www.bestinclass.dk/index.clj/2010/08/developer-productivity--the-red-pill.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+bestinclass-the-blog+%28Best+in+Class+-+The+Blog%29 <comment><USER2> I agree with most of the article, but this –

"But in the time he has booted to his Desktop I've already answered 3 emails [..] Vanity slows you down, whether its your choice of VM, OS (read: OSX or Windows) or anything else".

– is hardly an argument when choosing desktop OS.. just put your PC to sleep and next day it will "boot up" instantly, especially OS X.

<comment><USER3> The implication that you can't really be productive, or at least as productive as him, without using Linux with emacs and a tiling WM really tainted the other, better advice in this article for me.

<comment><USER4> The good thing about product related blogs like this is that it reminds me of which products not to buy. I would have a hard time buying a product from someone who wrote a blog entry lacking as little content and exhibiting as much as ego as that one did.

To put another way, there was nothing in the article that didn't fall into one of three categories: 1) Are obvious to most developers. 2) His/her opinion, but not substantiated by any evidence, and probably disputed by as many as would support. 3) Look like possible outright lies.

Not a blog entry I'd consider writing, much less on my company's website.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> #1 tip to improve productivity is to not read productivity posts.

</comment><comment><USER6> 1\. Get around 7 hours of sleep every single night: 10+ is better 2\. Avoid caffeine entirely (coffee & tea): Blasphemy. Please remove this item 3\. Maintain your tools: 100% agreed 4\. Dont be vain: Be vain when it counts. You don't want the perception of your work to suffer when it's among people who don't quite understand technology. 5\. Avoid Social Networks: I hate to say it but avoid hackernews also. You can sink hours into this site. Hackernews is entertainment not actual work. Good entertainment though! 6\. Work off a TODO list: 100% agreed 7\. Use a tiling WM: OK 8\. Use Emacs for Everything: To each his own 9\. ...Use Conkeror for the rest: DITTO 10\. Always keep looking: 100% agreed If you do something the same way every time you will be left behind

<comment><USER7> HN is mostly entertainment, but I read it for posts like this that give an insight into the tools that people use. If you find out about some awesome tool this way, it's time well spent.

<comment><USER6> I get insight from it also but I'm saying spending an hour a day on social news is not working.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "If you get regular Facebook updates, Twitter updates, or any other kind of updates which steals your attention, even if its just for a few seconds, I'm willing to bet that you're working at 50% of your full capacity."

Leechblock is incredible for this reason, its saved me so many times. Great read although I disagree with cutting out tea, forcing myself to take tea breaks every few hours of the day has lead to some great discoveries.

<comment><USER9> I agree with the caffeine comment. Believe it or not there is a balance when it comes to coffee. Having a cup of tea/coffee every day is not the same as having a cup every 2 hours. As in everything, it is not strictly an on/off switch.

Other than that I totally agree that sleep exercise and food make a great difference. Eating fat with carbs for 3 meals a day will not help you get the mental focus either.

<comment><USER10> I took it to mean that the author is either on or off with such things, and couldn't merely cut down. I'm the same way. One cup of coffee a day is an impossible dream for me, I'd have to totally quit instead.

<comment><USER9> If you are in an environment where there is decaf coffee I suggest mixing half caf/half decaf. You cannot _really_ taste the decaf and get in half the caffeine, although it's not a real fix, it should help a little :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > A means 'will loose significant value if not done today', B means > 'important, but will not loose significant value if not done today', C means > 'optional'.

I find that very often, 'optional' means 'will eventually cross off because it doesn't get done'. I hate having a to-do list that just piles up. Be honest about whether you're going to get something done or not.

</comment><comment><USER12> I gave up caffeine myself a few months ago. It was rough for the first two weeks but now I sleep better, have a more even energy level throughout the day, and find I'm more patient with both people and machines.

The only thing I miss is the _smell_ of coffee and having something warm to drink on cool mornings.

<comment><USER13> I got off coffee for two weeks to as an experiment. Note I currently drink about 2 cups a day.

My energy was much more balanced - could wake up fully alert. However, I felt depressed the entire two weeks. Generally just very SAD.

So I got back on the drug after two weeks and with the first cup of coffee I just burst out into laughter. I literally could not stop laughing for about a minture (huge smile on the face).

Now that I'm back on the drug my energy levels are up and down but I'm not in my depression hole.

Anyone else experience depression when going off coffee?

<comment><USER14> Not coffee, but, I had a similar experience with Coca Cola a few years back. I went from drinking 1.5-2L a day[1] to none[2]. Of course, I dropped caffeine and picked up sugar instead (turns out, its really cheap to grab a Brita filter and a large jug of sugar flavored like Iced Tea to mix into water..).

Now, its _slightly_ more balanced. I try to only have sugar or caffeine when I'm not at home.

1\. A glass when I came home from school (around 1:30-2pm), a glass when having a snack (around 4:30pm), and a glass at dinner (around 7pm)

2\. My college has a deal with Pepsi -- none of the dining halls have Coca Cola and there is only one or two vending machines that have it on campus.

<comment><USER13> Interesting, I ran through the numbers and 2L of Coke is about the same caffeine as two cups of 12 oz coffee.

<comment><USER14> Huh. Didn't realize it was that much. I thought it was only equal to 1-1.5 cups of coffee/day. Thanks for doing the math!

<comment><USER13> 2 Liters of Coke has 300mg of caffeine. That's right about 4 shots of Starbucks espresso, one 16oz cup of Starbucks drip brew, or two regular coffee (non starbucks) drip brew.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > If you're not on a tiling WM, you're constantly switching between the mouse > and keyboard.

Can someone explain what the author is talking about? I'm not up to date in the latest Linux WM fads. (honestly, I thought the problem was finally solved years ago)

When I'm working, 95% of the time I launch apps and select windows with the keyboard, on both OS X and Windows.

<comment><USER16> A tiling window manager (such as dwm, wmii, awesome, ion, and xmonad) automatically tiles windows for you, and has multiple workspaces. Usually, you can just switch between them by alt-1 to alt-9, move windows between workspaces w/ shift-alt-1, etc. If you're mostly working with shells & reasonably large emacs / firefox / etc. windows, they're really nice. With a little muscle memory, the whole window UI thing suddenly becomes a nonissue.

If you ever used ratpoison, it's a better design in the same general space.

I'd personally recommend xmonad if you use Haskell, dwm otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> About sleep: I recently read that the typical American gets about 6.5 hours of sleep per night and that most people need about 8.

Over the last year-and-a-half, I've averaged 7.5 hours of sleep although I do best with 8. On weeks where I average 7 hours of sleep per night, I notice a decrease in thinking speed.

</comment><comment><USER18> Reading the preface (matrix like), I thought: You as me are here in the bed for sleeping so do it well. Vanity, emacs and other comments are not the red pill IMHO. Clojure rocks, so I hope the author go back to blogging about clojure, examples and applications that I enjoy reading for free.

</comment><comment><USER19> coffee, vim and screen do it for me :-)

<comment><USER20> Another poster mentioned "tmux" in reply to this comment but they deleted their post before I could reply. I had not heard of tmux before. Apparently it's an alternative to "screen". I would have upvoted you for making me aware of it.

<http://tmux.sourceforge.net/>

<comment><USER16> Tmux is fairly new, BSD-licensed, and has a much smaller/cleaner codebase than screen. It's quickly gotten features that people have been struggling to add to screen for years. (It comes with dwm/xmonad-style layouts out of the box, for one.)

If you already use screen and are happy with it, it's probably not worth switching, but if you're starting new, I'd suggest learning tmux first. You might want to get a fairly recent version of the source, though - it's in the main OpenBSD tree now, and it has been improving pretty quickly.

If you use Unix & ssh at all, _definitely_ learn one of them. Yesterday, if possible.

One of these days I _really_ need to write about getting started with tmux...

<comment><USER21> > If you already use screen and are happy with it, it's probably not worth > switching

I switched from screen a few months ago and have been much happier, but I literally spend 80% of my day on multiuser terminal sessions. tmux is much nicer than screen for sharing a session.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Ignoring the fact that I prefer to multi-task--- I do not have 5 minutes of downtime with context switching. If I'm thinking about a certain problem--- it helps to stop and skim my twitter feed for a couple minutes while thinking about it.

<comment><USER20> I agree. While interruptions in something like watching a movie in the theater might break my concentration for several minutes, I find context switching to help my productivity at work. I can get stuck on a problem without a distraction where changing my focus briefly usually helps give me a fresh perspective and allows me to solve the problem faster.

<comment><USER23> This is actually a good point. Something that is fun and engages my mind when it's dulled and flat is actually quite a useful tool. When I get back to work I am much more switched on.

I think you just need to remember to define your breaks properly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> So what about this NEO keyboard layout. Did anyone tried it? While I understand where from performance can come when you are typing email, I am not so sure about keyboard shortcuts. Anyone?

<comment> loup-vaillant This layout is for Germans. If you don't write German, don't use it. Use either Dvorak or an optimized layout for your language (if one has been done). Personally, I use Bépo[1] a Dvorak-like layout optimized for French (same principles, different stats). It also happen to be far better than the Qwerty layout even for English.

[1]: <http://bepo.fr>

Ah, and most short-cuts are independent from the layout. But if you set up you software such that short-cuts are optimized as well (Alt + home-row-key for instance), then they'll become easier and faster too. That's probably what the guy did (he uses Emacs almost exclusively). A good place to start would be <http://xahlee.org/emacs/ergonomic_emacs_keybinding.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> No caffeine huh.. I guess I'll be moving on to alcohol[1].

[1] <http://xkcd.com/323>

</comment><comment><USER26> The LudumDare developer that impressed many folks the other day was using Eclipse!

</comment><comment><USER27> Self-Discipline is a great productivity boost.

</comment><comment><USER28> In regards to number 7:

>7\. Use a tiling WM

I recall reading a Plan 9 pdf on the Acme editor (sorry cant find it right now). A unique feature to that text editor is that it is heavily mouse-based. This is contrary to many peoples (myself, at the time, included) belief that both hands on the keyboard equals increased productivity.

I used to be 100% dwm. The euphoria of navigating around with your home row was great (vim + vimperator + dwm). When I purchased a MB, I left my tiled-wm ways and have not really missed it. Switching my hand from keyboard to mouse feels more natural than a lot of awkward <Ctrl+__> or <Alt+__> commands. Plus, most TWMs I have used require a decent amount of time upfront to become accustomed to all the keybindings. The time difference in switching between mouse and keyboard vs just using the keyboard is so trivial that it really isnt worth the plunge in my opinion, though if you think you might like it better, by all means try it.

Something such as a unified desktop (OS X, Haiku, Gnome, KDE) will make you more productive rather than a window manager that optimizes for pixel real estate.

<comment><USER29> I'm reminded of a tidbit from an old AskTog[1] article:

"We've done a cool $50 million of R & D on the Apple Human Interface. We discovered, among other things, two pertinent facts:

* Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than mousing.

* The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than keyboarding."

There are probably all sorts of caveats to this (and the research may have changed since then) but I'm reminded of it whenever I see people extolling the virtues of their ascetic, keyboard-centric dev environment. I'm not saying they're wrong, just that in lieu of benchmarks and studies, I'm skeptical.

[1] <http://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html>

<comment> loup-vaillant Interestingly, I don't feel faster with the keyboard. I do, however, feel more _comfortable_ when I stick to one mode (keyboard-only or mouse-only). It's switching that feels awkward. I also don't use Xmonad out of pure Geekiness (though I started that way). I use it because I find it more comfortable. I work at the same time with OSX, and while moving windows with the mouse is probably just as fast, it annoys me.

Now the reason why the keyboard is slower than the mouse may be sub-optimal short-cuts. For example, when editing, one very often needs to change lines, or otherwise navigate the text. A sensible short-cut to support that could be alt + jkli (assuming a Qwerty layout). Then you don't have to leave the home row at all. But if you have to use the actual arrows, it's slower, and that may make the mouse the better choice.

<comment><USER30> You seem to be describing vim's hjkl (left, down, up, right, IIRC)

<comment> loup-vaillant I am, except modifier key, makes the trick possible on (customizable) mod-less editors. The idea is not mine, by the way: <http://xahlee.org/emacs/ergonomic_emacs_keybinding.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> He lost me at "avoid caffeine entirely."</comment>


Show HN: High Quality Web Design and Startup Resources - <AUTHOR> http://webdesignrepo.com/ <comment><USER2> Nice collection - very useful. I also like the clean design. Thanks for sharing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - any suggestions are more than welcome. Also happy you like the design, took me a while to get that right.</comment></comment>


Idea Per Diem - <AUTHOR> http://ideaperdiem.com/

<comment><USER2> Nice, here are 3 great Seth Godin posts/influences on ideas:

Where they come from: [http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/11/where- do-ide...](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/11/where-do-ideas- come-from.html)

Why spread?: [http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/10/ideas- spread...](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/10/ideas-spread- when.html)

999 ideas from his 'MBA' program: <http://www.sixmonthmba.com/2009/02/999ideas.html>

Execution > Ideas - start spreading!

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly- ideas matter, execution matters much, much more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You might check out <http://www.halfbakery.com/> for lots of fun ideas.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is fantastic. I'm tempted to also do this, just so I keep my creative juices flowing, and my eyes open to new opportunities!

<comment><AUTHOR> You should, I find that idea generation really encourages creativity.

<comment><AUTHOR> How do you think people would respond to a challenge where anyone can have their own subdomain on IdeaPerDiem if they commit to posting one idea every day for a month?</comment></comment></comment>


Apple paying music labels $100M-$150M for iCloud - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2011/06/03/apple-paying-music-labels-100m-150m-for-icloud/ <comment><USER2> That is quite a barrier to innovation. Labels still seem to think only the established players will create the next big thing.

<comment><USER3> I'm curious as to what this has bought them - there are many comparably small music services (Rdio,Napster,Rhapsody,Spotify, etc.) that I'm assuming could not have paid amounts of this magnitude. As those services I just listed indicates, there's really no shortage of competition in the cloud music space...

<comment><USER4> All the streaming service pay by usage. My guess is that the usage for Apple is a lot higher. Look at how much Netflix and Pandora pay for their licenses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Original: [http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/apple_pays_music_bigs_...](http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/apple_pays_music_bigs_OcxlGqT1E0P5P9vzosxtyK)

<comment><USER6> "A Google cloud service could now be in the offing as soon as September, said sources familiar with the talks."

Wait, what? Different than Google Music?

<comment><USER7> Google Music doesn't currently let you stream music that you don't already own, and it's also not tied to any particular music store. I think they're referring to Google launching a legit streaming service together with the music labels in a few months.

<comment><USER8> Judging from this sentence from the article

> The Cupertino, Calif., tech giant has agreed to pay the labels between $25 > million to $50 million each, as an incentive to get on board, depending on > how many tracks consumers are _storing_.

sounds like what Apple is launching is also a music locker service akin to what Google Music is now, and not streaming arbitrary music. Perhaps the author is referring to when Google may remove the invite-only aspect for their service, or maybe just confused.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I honestly don't get the point behind this. Neither do I see the point of subscription services like Spotify.

I want to actually own my music. Have the file RIGHT THERE on my computer, so I can do whatever I want with it - whenever I want to.

Why do I need to have my songs up in the cloud? What about when I'm on holiday - and typically disconnect from the world for a week sans internet - how am I supposed to listen to my music then?

It's just ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is that all?!

$150 million seems nothing these days (maybe I'm just tainted by the Skype- Microsoft acquisition...)

<comment><USER6> I think it's just an advance against future royalties. So if it completely flops, and Apple makes not much money, the labels still get $150 million.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's one way to use up their big pile of cash.

<comment><AUTHOR> $150 mil is 0.25% (1/4 of 1%) of Apple's cash & cash equivalents. They have so much cash it's absurd -- sometimes I wonder why Apple doesn't just buy all the major music labels (they could easily do it).

[Edit] This was a joke! Jeez.

<comment><USER11> Companies fail when they deviate from their core purpose. Apple's purpose is to sell "walled garden" hardware. Taking over the music industry is too big a move to remain focused on selling their hardware.

<comment><USER6> The former Apple Computer Inc. isn't really the best example of that. They make an awful lot of money selling music and apps nowadays.

<comment><USER12> They dropped "Computer" from their name awhile ago, just for that reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> That's pocket change for Apple.</comment>


Dive into Python 3 - <AUTHOR> http://diveintopython3.org/ <comment><USER2> Skip to the bottom: This site is optimized for Lynx just because fuck you. I'm told it also looks nice in graphical browsers.

<comment><USER3> I always enjoy it when you see the reasonable friendly people you get to know through their writing turn out to have a healthy dose of attitude.

<comment><USER4> "[T]urn out to have"? Hasn't Mark Pilgrim always been this way?

<comment><USER3> Maybe, but I was never exposed to it :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Dive into Python was one of the first Python books I read. It's filled with small (and Pythonic) tricks, has excellent examples and great explanations. I especially like the simple way it's written. It made Python click for me.

I am looking forward for the successor.

</comment><comment><USER6> So let's say you have a CS background and want to pick up python today - is it worth it to read up on the 2.0 stuff or just go right for 3.0 seeing as 3.0 is "backwards incompatible"? Is there a mass exodus to 3.0 happening or are there going to be a lot of people (e.g. researchers in other disciplines whose life is only peripherally programming) who are going to stick with the 2.0 that they already know and love?

And is this (<http://docs.python.org/3.0/>) the best place to look for 3.0 learning material or is it better to do the Dive Into Python (for v2.0) thing then figure out the 3.0 differences?

<comment><USER7> I would suggest learning Python 2.x first. The v2 branch is not going away overnight, and you're going to pick up Python 3.0 fairly quick after you know 2.0, so you may as well learn the version you can use straight away (with frameworks, libraries etc.) and learn your way up to 3.0 proficiency from there.

<comment><USER8> Agreed, with the addendum that you should learn on Python version 2.6, which lets you import many of the features from 3.0 on a per-file basis to make the transition to 3.0 easier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is a thread on Reddit where Mark Pilgram states that the final manuscript is due in June. He also states that if you have any suggestions/feedback, you should speak up.

Check it here : [http://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/7sj39/dive_into_pyth...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/7sj39/dive_into_python_3/c07a7ld)

</comment><comment><USER10> Sure, there's no text yet, but I have high hopes. Given that one of the aims of Python 3 was to remove more confusing and unnecessary features in lieu of better-designed alternatives, teaching Python 3 from the start seems like a really good idea.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd love to know if there are any good completed online books about python. I'm oddly new at programming (being a mere IT consultant for about 6 years now and finally deciding to concentrate on something) and I'm loving it a lot. I've learned a fair amount of php, taught myself objects, mvc, a couple different sqls (tsql, mysql), and a few different php frameworks.

I keep trying out other languages (I liked python's intro) but when it comes time to making something I fall back into php because I know it very well. I feel almost stuck. Like a need a python project. =p

<comment><USER12> So, not <http://www.diveintopython.org> ?

<comment><USER13> I always recommend Dive Into Python to people who already know some programming (if they're interested in Python).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> From the TOC, it looks like DIP3 is going to be even more fun to write and read than the original.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'll dive into Python 3 once Django moves to it (soon I hope).

<comment><USER16> I'll dive into Python 3 once App Engine allows it. GvR sugggested that won't happen anytime soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I just tried papayawhip on the navbar of my blog :)</comment>


Ask HN: What is your ideal career? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER3> I believe it's VC or being a CEO that is a part-time mentor. As much as I love software development, I also love marketing, design, business and networking. I spend a lot of my time connecting people in my local community, connecting companies I think are cool with possible customers and hires, mentoring juniors (both devs, PM's and more) and helping a few pre-launch startups focus their vision. Some of them have told me that I've taught them more than their college professors and incubators, which I find inspiring to keep on moving.

But at the end of the day, I just love impacting the world and providing people a chance at doing the same.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd really like to start a software consulting business providing enterprise modernization and application security vulnerability analysis to corporations. Basically going in telling people where the security holes are and what needs to be modernized and help them choose / create solutions.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have a long term vision of which I am carrying out the necessary first steps now.

I want to create an organization that is essentially a 6 week retreat for students before they begin college. Selecting the best applicants possible, they will go through rigorous training to become their most successful selves, covering Academics, Social life, Health, and Lifestyle topics. Elements of secrecy will help it's applicant pool, I was heavily inspired by the Bohemian Club.

Long term, the alumni network itself will more than make up for the cost, in turn making the applicant pool stronger and stronger.

It's an aggressive plan, and requires years of building up from the ground. But it's my dream to make it happen.

And if it doesn't work, I'll fall back on becoming an accounting professor. Pretty similar jobs anyhow.

<comment><USER3> Love it! Is there a way one could track how this is going?

<comment><USER5> Hmm, I haven't built the site yet (not my expertise so somewhat putting it off) and am working on a base set of posts that cover each small topic. After that I'll throw together a site on wordpress and get them all posted.

Send me an email (in my profile) and I'll send you an update when I finish the posts (few weeks). I'd love to have someone to bounce ideas off of - <USER2> judging by your profile and comments you may be able to offer good feedback!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 1) Helping people. Doing interesting and creative things.

2) Not actually, nor having to perpetually severely worry about, being screwed over with respect to basic quality of life. Access to reasonable and effective health care. A decent place to live (for me, that means mostly quiet and hopefully with a decent portion of friendly neighbors). Knowing that when I can no longer work, I won't end up in a hell hole.

Sounds pretty modest, doesn't it?

Yet today, in the U.S., it's becoming increasingly illusive and uncertain.

A major downside of categorizing into "winners" and "losers" and focusing on some dystopian fervor for a modern-day "manifest destiny."

In my case, some crap health care (despite my relatively affluent circumstances) set the stage early for additional struggle. Things just kept spiraling down, and the advice I received only reinforced this.

Now -- too late -- I believe you can't have these things, unless you make your primary job learning how to and practicing sticking up for yourself.

I think a lot of my generation got quite fucked over by unrealistic instruction such as "the bully is only hurting himself", "collaboration [undifferentiated, un-qualified] is the future", "things will turn out all right in the end", "you're so [smart|pretty|special]", etc.

So now, my ideal career would be teaching all this by example.

Whatever you do, teach by example.

</comment><comment><USER7> It'll never happen (due to a lack of any formal on-paper education), but my ideal career would be me researching new things that are interesting to me in regards to math and programming. I'd love to research news things in the Join and Pi process calculi (and other interesting things with distributed computing) and write papers in LaTeX and whatnot; honestly, the more theoretical, the better.

Sadly, I think those jobs are mostly reserved for people who went through academic programs and have a bunch of letters after their name, so I stick around in the land of pragmatism.

<comment><USER8> Why don't you get those letters?

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure I have the mental tenacity to stick with a degree program for 8 years. Knowing how I am, I would probably do well enough in the actual courses directly related to the major, but become disinterested and do poorly in everything else.

I am not saying that people are wrong for requiring these credentials, I'm just saying that that's what precludes me from a research job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My ideal career is actually a split one.

I'm working on turning my garage into a fully licensed winery so I can start producing hard cider commercially.

So in a perfect world, my time would be split 70/30 where 70% of my is spent making/distributing/marketing hard cider. Then 30% of my time is spent on lifestyle software businesses/applications

</comment><comment><USER10> my ideal career would be to have a position probably related to tech where my work is to have a direct impact on people's life.By meaning tech i would love to have a job i which i am facing new challenges every day and solving them.Also my job should give me time to meet best minds around the world :)

</comment><comment> UK-AL Running a small software business (5 - 10 people) in some niche area.</comment>


Ask HN: Any tips for staying focused while working from home? - <AUTHOR> Starting January 1, the company I work for is involuntarily remoting all of us greybeards.  The plus side is that with my daily commute eliminated, I will get an entire day of my life back every two weeks. But I worry about the potential downsides of working from home, especially that I suspect I will be easily distracted by non-work things during working hours (we are required to maintain the same hours as those working in-house).  Can any current remote workers suggest strategies for staying focused, or point out any lesser-known traps that come with working from home? <comment><USER2> Something that has worked for me consistently is to keep a sticky note on the desktop that lists my tasks (as I see them, not necessarily as they are in any tracking system) in descending order (from top to bottom) by a combo of ease, priority, and interest.

At the end of each day I spend about 15 minutes grooming the list, moving completed tasks/items below the lowest rank todo item, and often breaking ambiguous tasks into smaller pieces that are easier to chew.

I try to combine no-brainer tasks with interesting but abstract ones so that each morning depending on my mood I can either grind through the simple ones or research the weird ones.

One of the best things about this is that it serves as a handy record for things done and at the end of each month can be referenced for reporting accomplishments as needed.

Also, if your company is hiring please let us know!

</comment><comment><USER3> Set a schedule and follow it. Always start at the same time, take your breaks and day's end at the same time. It's easy to lose control of your day and have a situation where you mix work and your life and there are no boundaries. Also get out of the house for lunch and breaks.

</comment><comment><USER4> It was not work, but I spent 8 months learning how to code by myself from home

You will probably find your own routine, but an essential thing for me was to have very clear when you are on a break and when you are not.

When you are not on a break, you do not allow yourself to browse aimless on HN, or Reddit, or whatever. No checking messages on the phone, no snacks, no chatting with the family.

Breaks longer than 15min should always be planned at the beginning of the day.

Unscheduled breaks should not be longer than 10min.

But when you are on a break, you are on a break. Rest, chat browse. Just honor the time you stipulated for the break.

Good luck! Let me know if your company is hiring frontend devs! :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Lucky you. Remote is great!

Some points to share:

\- headphones are must (in case you are not alone / rooms)

\- good music, good coffee, good internet

\- discipline

\- discipline

\- discipline

\- time management / time boxing

\- enjoy the benefits of free time / your own schedule

</comment><comment><USER6> I've been working from home for the last 2 years. It used to be tough since I was an avid procrastinator. What I learned is that a disconnect can form from your work and the reward you feel when you do a good job. This can especially happen on long tasks where the right solution keeps evading you.

So what I do now is this, if I'm feeling like the motivation is not there, I'll look over all the tasks I have to do and I'll work on the easiest task that will provide the largest amount of visual feedback.

For example, if I'm working on the front-end and there is a task to update the style of a generic button, if I update that button the whole app will look different since it's a generic and it's everywhere.

This provides a sense of accomplishment and usually kicks me back into gear and gets me excited to work on something harder with a potentially much larger reward in the end.

An important caveat, the task should only be associated with the project. Working on your editor config should not be part of that task list.

</comment><comment><USER7> One thing I try to do is remember that onsite people take breaks too.

I very rarely go on a coffee run working remote, but I do go on a "do dishes" run.

It's a little late now but keeping a log of what you are actually doing at the office is very valuable.

</comment><comment><USER8> Have a dedicated workspace. ... Stay off social media. ... Dress for success. ... Set boundaries. ... Avoid procrastination. ... Save household chores for later. ... Create a schedule. ... Take a gym break.

</comment><comment> Pete-Codes I would always start with the hardest tasks you have to get them out of the way. If you are prone to distractions then I guess just work in a room without TV etc. I work from home and cafes on my business and I am able to get work done. If anything I think remote works helps you work harder as you don't want people thinking you aren't working :)

</comment><comment><USER9> Give yourself a commute at the beginning and end of the day to get some exercise. I take 15-30 minutes to get breakfast and go for a walk in a nearby park. In the evening I will walk around a nearby lake.

My daily step goal is 11K. When I work from home, and don't make the "commute," I'm lucky to have 1K steps by lunch.

</comment><comment><USER10> Work in limited time but keep focus because it's mandatory.If you can't focus then leave it.

</comment><comment><USER11> Start looking for a new job.</comment>


Ask HN: How to Make Money from Open Source Mobile App? - <AUTHOR> I'm currently working on a mobile app to be released to both the app store and play store. I am thinking about making it open source, cause OSS Rocks!
But some extra bucks wouldn't hurt, so how do I make some (coffee money) while making the App Open Source?
It's a feed reader, so not the next billion dollar idea <comment><USER2> Just sell it in the App/Play store. (Unless something restricts that in store policies,) you can still provide an open source license and the code in Github while charging money in the stores.

I'm willing to bet most people will rather pay small fee to have it installed from store and have automated updates than compiling it from the sources and running it themselves.

People who want to fiddle with the code or get the app for free can use the code and compile it themselves and people who value ease of use, can just one- click buy it.

<comment><USER3> What would be the license to prevent other devs cloning it (and putting/selling on app stores themselves)?

<comment><USER4> I don't think any such thing exists because then what does the community benefit from. A no-clone licence is pretty much a 'You can look and build for yourself and make PRs for me' deal.

<comment><USER3> "and use". Why not... And this has implicitly happened/happening to many open source projects - people are downloading (or "buying disks") from the original author anyway. e.g. back then, I doubt anyone would buy an Emacs distribution from other person than RMS - so why not have a license which would enforce such usage - this is just an alignment to fact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a former iOS developer and even I don't care enough to save a couple dollars by compiling my own app, when I could get auto updates from the app store. I don't suspect it'll hurt your sales with customers too much in that sense because they aren't making this choice.

I'd think more about other developers taking your code, slightly theming it differently, and selling it in the app store for a dollar less than you.

If you're ok with that, then go ahead. And no license in the world will help simply because you actually have to mount a legal challenge, and who's going to pay for that?

I'd say a better strategy to scratch your OSS itch is to make the underlying libraries OSS, but not the UI, that way you have some kind of value proposition you're offering.

</comment><comment><USER6> In my opinion, it's fine to just include your monetizing code in your repo. You can use config files or environment variables or something to hide private details. As long as the ads you publish are fairly standard, I don't think anyone would mind - and it also leaves people who really don't like the ads the option to compile an ad-free version. If you really wanted to curry favor, you could even post a separate ad-free .apk release on your repo and just push a version with ads to official app stores.

<comment><USER7> This is what I currently do with my app. The code is open source, it's free for anybody to build and install, the build steps are simply clone and build with Android Studio. I upload the debug .apk as a GitHub release with no valid keys (so no ads), but there are ads at the bottom of the screen on the play store version.

It makes a little change every month and I've not had any complaints about the ads, except to offer a pay-to-remove option, which I mostly just haven't gotten around to yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> From what I've seen work, most of the OSS projects make money off of 'convenience'. This can be split up in many different tactical things, from consulting to charging for hosting, support, etc.

</comment><comment><USER9> Ad supported or consulting services related to it.

You can also dual license it - for instance, put a public facing GPL version on Github and a private proprietary fork with proprietary extensions (such as advertising embeds) that you put on the App Store.</comment>


You are using a video conference application mostly developed by Chinese – Zoom - <AUTHOR> https://pandayoo.com/2020/03/10/zoom/ <comment><USER2> An interesting thing to also note is that their public signing key has a typo on it ("Zoom Video Communcations", missing an 'i' in 'Communications'). It might be a benign mistake, but as an occasional tin-foil hat wearer, this raises some flags.

I reported it a couple of months ago, but the initial support rep. didn't seem to know much about cryptography. I forgot to reply then, but seeing this article pushed me to remind them to look into it with an explanation and request for escalation.

<comment><USER3> This means nothing for TLS,but a bit suspicious for code signing

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Putting R&D in China is basically asking the question, "can I make more money before an employee expatriates my product?"

Interesting thing about zoom though is that the technical side of it doesn't seem particularly complex so I guess their value is their enterprise customers and aversion to change.

Also if someone at zoom can answer this for me: why do you require a desktop app to function? Can you please kill it if you're only going to legitimately support windows? Just use a webpage.

<comment><USER5> A desktop app is able to access much more of your local system than a web page, so... :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What exactly is the point of this article? It ended and I don't understand what this guy is trying to communicate

</comment><comment><USER7> Any non free software tool (or open source), USA on Chinese, would be a risk, no?

<comment><USER3> No. Specifics matter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This failed to mention the fact that Zoom was caught planting malware on people's computers last year.

[https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/10/apple-silent-update- zoom-a...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/10/apple-silent-update-zoom-app/)

</comment><comment><USER9> So what? What point is the author trying to make? Do we need a followup expose revealing what language the code was written in?</comment>


What Happens When You Talk About Salaries at Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/07/happens-talk-salaries-google/

<comment><USER2> I was really hoping that the article would have in-depth reporting and fact checking. Tweets are not a very effective means of communication, and anyone can tweet anything without editorial review, so it's hard for an outsider like me to verify what she says.</comment>


Hearing Heartbeat in Audio and Video: A Deep Learning Project - <AUTHOR> http://www.samcoope.com/posts/reading-faces <comment><USER2> What a cool project! I'm working with UCSF cardiology on various projects involving Apple Watch's heart rate sensor, and here are a few applications you might consider for your technology:

      1. Atrial fibrillation (you mentioned arrhythmias—this is probably the highest-impact heart arrhythmia since it causes about a quarter of strokes and is frequently undiagnosed)

      2. Sleep apnea (if you can also measure oxygen saturation)

      3. Heart rate variability for stress reduction or mindfulness.

      4. Tracking tachycardias from Adderall usage.

      5. Heart failure exacerbations (probably if paired with a scale)

      6. (Perhaps) other arrhythmias like supraventricular tachycardia or atrial flutter.

      7. Irritable bowel syndrome. Believe it or not, IBS is connected to heart rate variability via the action of the vagus nerve.

There are also all sorts of non-medical, but fun, applications you could pursue. For example, rating which scenes in Game of Thrones get your heart pumping the most: [http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/08/13/what-game-of- thrones-...](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/08/13/what-game-of-thrones-does- to-your-heart-rate/)

</comment><comment><USER3> The idea is from Eulerian video magnification

[http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/vidmag](http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/vidmag)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm not very up on CNN/RNN models yet, beyond the basics, but I do a fair amount of signals analysis. Is your truth data in git? I'd love to work with it. Second, did you try whitening the [audio] data prior to training your network? That might help with exposing some more salient features of your signal. Pretty neat work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the ideas!

The data we used is not on our repo. It came from a database given to us by our university, and there was confidentiality issues when it came to making it publicly available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's nice. It doesn't work well enough to be useful yet, but has promise. If this can be made to work, it will be a feature in video chat apps.

<comment><USER6> Or maybe security trying to detect if someone is in stressful situations. Or maybe in some sort of augmented reality device. May valid use cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What is the accuracy of detecting?

<comment><USER8> From the video they have on youtube, Arnold has over 200bpm and the kid at the end has a 0bpm. That's a pretty useless territory.

<comment><AUTHOR> That video was just a mock of our product. If you would like to see the results of the performance of the models, have a look at the slides we made for the project (at the bottom of the post). The best performance we got was about 0.7 r.

<comment><USER9> 0.7 r is a bit optimistic I would say. We only got 0.7 for people we have been able to train on. For completely different people it learned nothing with audio spectrograms. I speculate that convolutions on raw audio would be better.

Estimation from video seemed much better. There we actually got 0.5 r on unseen people, which I find very promising.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just curious on why your username is shown in green on HN homepage?

<comment><USER11> New users don't make the front page very often, which is maybe not something to be proud of. You'll see more at [https://news.ycombinator.com/newest](https://news.ycombinator.com/newest), and [https://news.ycombinator.com/noobstories](https://news.ycombinator.com/noobstories) if you want the motherlode. It looks like one has to be logged in to see green usernames, which I'd forgotten.

In the current case we saw CaHoop's earlier submission of this project, which got killed by an overzealous spam filter, and invited him to repost it.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Share Your Ideas and Profit! - <AUTHOR> https://dudeigot.it <comment><USER2> I didn't have much of an issue with the UI as a first-timer, however when I wanted to understand how the system works I was a bit overwhelmed by the "How this works" page. I think for newcomers you may benefit from reducing the number of unique keywords and streamline your explanation of user flow/interactions. Seeing certain words treated as proper nouns that aren't in the Terminology section makes me wonder if I actually know what you're talking about.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Dude, I Got It! helps you share ideas you do nothing with and get paid for them. Or, if you're looking for inspiration, check out the idea market place! It's free to sign up, and you get ten free Penny on us!

I posted about Dude, I Got It! a couple months ago, and I was told that it's ok to resubmit. We're still in beta, and yes there are a lot of ways to improve the site. If you find any bugs, please let us know.

</comment><comment><USER3> The idea is great but the UI does not work imho. No visitor will understand the idea. It is no self explanatory enough.

<comment><AUTHOR> Vozze thanks for the feedback. Do you have a specific suggestion for improving the UI?

<comment><USER4> I agree with @Vozze. What problem is this share your idea solving? Is it just for people to make extra $$$? So for example, how much do I get for sharing this quick idea after going to your site. Idea: Help prisoners fulfil their dreams. Why this? "While at Alcatraz, I was able to take nightly classes to get my medical degree. In addition to my dream coming true, I used the warden's computer and was approved for a credit card from Capital One for $200. In 2 months, I requested a credit line increase and it was increased to $10,000. For the skeptics out there, people life do change while firmly tucked away." So, how much do I get if I post this on your site?

<comment><AUTHOR> Pavornyoh, Dude, I Got It! Helps people share ideas that they normally do nothing with. This can help people feel more expressed and could possibly act as a cathartic way to anonymously let go of a thought. In return, money can be made.

Your idea is perfect for Dude, I Got It!. You pay one Penny to create the Gotit (idea), and it starts at 1 Penny. Someone else pays 1 Penny to see the Gotit. If they like it, it goes up to 2 Penny. The next person pays 2 Penny to see the idea. Once it reaches 11, you make 90%. So, if your Gotit is at 100 Penny, you get 90 each time someone pays to see it.

Does that make sense? Do you want me to explain anything else?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Half of Millennials say they often feel isolated even when surrounded by friends - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/despite-social-media-generation-z-millennials-report-feeling-lonely-n980926 <comment><USER2> We jammed a ton of intermediate layers and hacks into social interaction. Of course they are removed from a natural social habitat. And they will rebel against it. There will come a generation who completely discards everything tained by valley tech.

<comment><USER3> It's easy to blame tech. I'm someone who is borderline Millenial/Gen Z and I'm actually finding myself, both internally and externally, through the use of Twitter. Still very alone at times, think Mr. Robot, but I've actually found hope through the internet. Strangely enough, I had actually wasted time and developed maladaptive traits by trying to find myself in the "real" world, as in the people I was forced to bond with through school and sports.

My take on this is different and many people will disagree. Here it goes. The "intermediate layers and hacks in social interaction" you speak of isn't technology but actually our myths of diversity and multi-culturalism. Real multi-culturalism is really REALLY hard, might be impossible given human nature. The only diverse thing we can all agree on is ethnic food. The other is probably college, careers, etc. Everything else is gone. Our culture is absent of anything internal or metaphysic. Religion and local communities are gone. Political correctness destroyed art.

I'm happy that some people can thrive in this world and good for them. There's the other half who pretend to be part of the trend; the ones that feel isolated. Then there are those like me who are lost in this world. Don't need pity, I've decided to make my own.

Here's a short video capturing the loneliness of the young today: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uuYm7KDm_A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uuYm7KDm_A)

Sorry to link to a scrappy 4-Chan esque video but Hollywood isn't exactly getting the people at the bottom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> s/Millennials/People/g -Seriously, although its perhaps stronger in young people, has this not always been a "thing" and had we a time machine, what would we find asking this of the same age cohort in times past?

Memory imparts a rosy hue: you can't ask people now about the past and expect an un-biassed answer.

<comment><USER5> I think I can give an unbiased answer - I remember The Offspring wrote a song about the same thing back in 1994 (ie pre-modern-internet, pre-smartphone) called So Alone.

 _" Look at the crowd and tell me whether / All are surrounded / But none are together / If you're awake, look all around / At all of the people / Still you're so alone / So alone"_

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=-fFflDhuVuA](https://youtube.com/watch?v=-fFflDhuVuA)

<comment><USER6> Could it be that this general truth about the difficulty of maintaining close bonds as we grow older clashes with the myth of social media -which is to be more connected to people that matter to you?

I think the superficiality of such tools is becoming more and more apparent. It has become so effortless participate in the social game (for a lack of a better word) such as wishing an happy birthday or some words of support for grieving folks that it's getting hard to gauge whether people do actually care about you. It's about the work you put in.

Personal anecdote: Had to hire a guy with a van on a public holiday as I was moving to a different part of the city (Dublin). Asked my fellow French friends for help and sure enough we were loading the van at 11 am. The driver admitted that he wouldn't have had as much help if he had asked his own -Irish- friends because they'd be too hangover to bother.

I found that quite sad, especially given that all my friends are not lifelong friends, we've know each other for 5 years or less.

<comment><USER7> >we were loading the van at 11 am.

>he wouldn't have had as much help if he had asked his own -Irish- friends because they'd be too hangover to bother.

6pm might work with irish folks, though.

I mean, I love my friends but moving their furniture at, say, 9am on Saturday is just... not gonna work.

<comment><USER6> Nah, at 6 they're back on the piss ;)

We probably got started with the van later than 11 actually, they were around from 11 to help get stuff out of the flat. But my point still stands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Several years ago I worked with a young intern who grew up in the suburbs of the bay area but was going to school in NYC. She said there was nothing in the world so lonely as being surrounded by thousands of people in a big city. I think it has to do with our assumption that everyone around us is more connected than we are.

</comment><comment><USER9> Has any study been done on how food and diet changes in the past twenty years is affecting our minds, the whole gut brain axis?

</comment><comment><USER10> I have a hunch this might be related to the way American friendships work. The structure of the educational system encourages many weak friendships rather than a couple strong friendships. This then translates into other life.

Facebook is fundamentally a tool for managing these weak friendships.

I generalize of course.

<comment><USER11> > The structure of the educational system encourages many weak friendships > rather than a couple strong friendships.

How so? Please elaborate.

<comment><USER10> In Europe, you basically share 8 hours a day for how ever many years with the same group of 20-30 people.

In the US, every class is with a different group of people and also your classes change periodically.</comment></comment></comment>


Tailor. A static analysis and lint tool for Swift - <AUTHOR> https://tailor.sh <comment><USER2> I would be more impressed if it were written in Swift, and not in Java.

<comment><USER3> I would be more impressed if it were called Taylor.</comment></comment>


Disgraceful Dashcam Video Proves Uber Is the Theranos of Self-Driving - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedrive.com/opinion/19504/disgraceful-dashcam-video-proves-uber-is-the-theranos-of-self-driving <comment><USER2> _all of the following points are perfectly clear:

Uber is guilty of killing Elaine Herzberg. Uber's hardware and/or software failed. Many people at Uber need to be fired. The Arizona officials who greenlit testing need to resign. One or more people need to be prosecuted. The SAE Automation Classification System is vague and unsafe. Uber is the Theranos of self-driving. Volvo—one of the few car makers that truly cares about safety—is innocent and shouldn't be in bed with their craven opposites._

Thst sounds about right, especially the culpability, need for firings and resignations, and especially prosecutions. I really don't see any of it happening, but it should.</comment>


Ask HN: Feedback on Startup Idea – digital business card - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I'm thinking about an idea for mobile application and I wanted your advice. Here is my hypothesis:
We are living in a high-speed economy. The paper business cards provide static engagement. So modern business men / women want a more dynamic branding and marketing tool to enable vibrant mutually beneficial partnerships that take full advantage of internal and external synergies by sharing up-to-date information with each other, referring each other based on a face-to-face meeting initialized visually creative digital business cards.
Does it make sense? What is your opinion? Would you buy a product like this? <comment><USER3> Been there, done that: [https://github.com/BjoernKW/Freshcard](https://github.com/BjoernKW/Freshcard)

Digital business cards are one of those ideas that just seem natural, especially to digital natives, and hence come up again and again and yet none of these countless implementations - including my humble attempt - <USER2> succeeded so far.

The reasons for this are numerous, e.g.: \- chicken and egg problem: How do you convince people to use your business card replacement when nobody else is using it? \- lack of perceived benefit / pain point for casual business card users: While they're a source of needless clutter to anyone accustomed to using technology for keeping data most people simply couldn't care less. \- lack of reliability: Paper at least works everywhere and under most conditions. How does your solution fare when there's no reliable network (which is surprisingly common even in industrialized countries, e.g. at most larger conferences ...)?

If you'd like any further information on this subject just drop me a note.

</comment><comment><USER4> 1\. Your pitch is too full of marketing fluff. Get to the point, use simple words to explain what your product would do, and don't oversell the idea.

2\. If you think about and iterate your idea a bit more, you get LinkedIn. You'll need to take a different direction that offers some other value/convenience that LinkedIn doesn't. Your differentiator might be allowing users to personalized the design of their "virtual card", but that might not offer enough added value over LinkedIn.

</comment><comment> J-dawg > enable vibrant mutually beneficial partnerships

> take full advantage of internal and external synergies

Sounds like marketing speak. What would the product actually do?

Also, based on what I've witnessed in meetings recently, the current norm seems to be to exchange traditional cards, then add each other on LinkedIn, either immediately or later that day. Some people have started to skip the traditional cards step. I think your product would need to offer a clear benefit that LinkedIn does not have.

</comment><comment><USER5> People have been building software products to try and replace the business card for close to twenty years. I don't wish to discourage you but spend some time researching the companies that tried first.

If you can offer something truly novel or can articulate how a certain idea didn't work before but would work now you may see success.

</comment><comment><USER6> Asking "Would you buy a product like this?" is empty. There is no "this" and therefore there is no way of knowing if what you mean by "this" is consistent with what I think you mean by "this".

My advice: build a mockup or prototype. Make a "this".

Good luck.</comment>


Why Ionic Is Reigniting the Native vs. HTML5 Debate - <AUTHOR> http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/ionic-reigniting-native-vs-html5-debate

<comment><USER2> React Native with all the components being developed for it looks unbeatable.</comment>


Torrent search engine Mininova earning €1 million a year  - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/03/torrent-search-engine-mininova-earning-1-million-a-year.ars <comment><USER3> Fact is it is _a lot_ more than that. I remember reading on a forum that it is $4-5M a year, which would make more sense because that is what you get when you multiply out 19M pageviews per day by 10c CPM and 50% sales rate.

They are, like a lot of other companies, simply under-reporting on their tax obligation, since ad revenue is easy to manipulate/hide.

Launching sites like 'snotr', on the other hand, assures that these guys are going to be one-hit wonders.

</comment><comment><USER4> Lets say you spend 5k/month on servers which seems low and have 5 employee that get 60k/year each after taxes that only leaves 700k or so. Tax that a bit and maybe split that between 2 or 3 founders and it is not much more than a normal salary for a lot more risk.

<comment><USER5>
      Mininova is running on 4 webservers, 4 database servers, 2 search servers,
      one NFS server, and one load balancer (plus 5 additional servers for the forum, blog and the ads).

Its probably a little higher than 5K for servers. But I bet the 5 employees includes the 3 founders, so the overall profit per founder is still fairly high.

1 mil - 10-20K for servers/bw - $120K for the 2 employees -10K for misc stuff like office/pens= ~850K

Corp tax rate in netherlands is 25.5% = $633K profit

So if the 3 founders split evenly, each would get €211K euros or $271K dollars. Hardly peanuts, and worth the risk

<comment><USER4> I disagree. If they are smart and a good developers they could earn €100K in a normal job (10yrs experience lets say).

Is 2-3x increase in salary worth the risk of possible jail time? Also instead they could do other entrepreneurial things and get much higher upside profits.

In general it just seems that if you are going to do gray/black things at least have massively super-normal profits. But maybe they are just doing it out of principle.

<comment><USER5> You don't need to be smart and good to start a torrent site. There are thousands of them online at this point.

The 2-3x salary increase is also faulty. A salary is pretty much capped to a tiny raise...year in, year out. Businesses on the other hand grow more or less exponentially. So yeah, 2-3x salary may not be worth it, but you need to take the long term view, a few years from now that # will be 5-6x salary...more or less guaranteed without major effort.

Also, I don't really buy the going to jail argument, these guys aren't in the USA, so they are a lot more protected from RIAA etc. And worst case scenario, they'll have to shut down the site and pay a small fine. And the most extreme scenario where they go to jail...its not like they'll end up with the general population, they'll go to some white collar prison instead.

<comment><USER6> When RIAA 'thinks' that people outside US fall under US laws - <USER2> ignorance. But when people think that those outside US do not have copyright laws - well, thats kind of ignorance too.

You're only guessing the 'worst' or 'extreme' scenarios. And as for 'white collar prisons' - just google the stanford experiment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder when the day will come that public torrent trackers start earning more than old media publishers?

</comment><comment><USER8> My comment about Pirate Bay makes much more sense now: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=500440> (and from what I know TPB get a lot more traffic than Mininova).</comment>