Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator? - <AUTHOR> I'm a chronic procrastinator, and I want to change. I have hundreds of ideas jotted down on a notepad I keep on my table, but I never get around to implementing those. There just seems to be this inertia that stops me from ever starting to work on my tasks. "I'll do it next month, I have exams right now", "Now? I can't work in this state of mind!", "Let me just finish reading my RSS feeds. I got to keep myself updated" are some of the excuses I give myself.
Of course, once I do start working on something, I get in the zone and completely lose track of time. Once in the zone, I'll work at a task until I've completed it. Overcoming the "inertia" is the difficult part.
This is what I've done to combat my situation: I've started keeping a TODO list. I've also cleared my desk of unneeded items and removed useless feeds from my RSS reader. I'm getting into the habit of putting my MacBook to sleep when I'm not working. That way, I can't wander off to Digg or the WTF subreddit. I feel I'm about 2x more productive now, but I'm still far from the stage where I can spend more than 50% of my computer time doing productive tasks.
Tips? Links? Blogs? Also, I love anecdotes :) <comment><USER3> Suck it up. Stop reading blogs, stop reading HN, stop making excuses. Start working. There are no tips that will break you out of it - just self discipline.

I was you once. GTD by David Allen helped. Going to the gym daily with my brother (who is a gym rat) helped, but I finally realized that I had everything in the world that people are dieing to get and I was squandering that gift by wasting my time.

Procrastinating is not an illness, it is a decision. You have chosen to be _lazy_ , only you can change that.

Everything else is just smoke and mirrors.

<comment><USER4> I've found this _never_ worked for me. By attacking the problem head on, I made it more of a big deal than it already was, which just made it more stressful and unpleasant, which made me less inclined to do it.

Instead, I noticed that almost all instances of my procrastination fit into three categories:

1.) I was trying to do something too ambitious, which I didn't have the skill level for, and so I _couldn't_ complete it, yet wasn't able to admit that to myself.

2.) I was trying to bite off too big a chunk at once, so I'd get confused and wouldn't know where to start.

3.) The task is really boring and takes no real skill to complete, so I just wouldn't bother.

#1 is fixed by backing up and doing something easier - and oftentimes the "something easier" ends up being far more useful than the original task. For example, I spent like 3 years on FictionAlley.org (a PHP/MySQL rewrite of a website that had previously been 40,000 hand-written HTML pages), vs. a week on Scrutiny (Amherst's course-evaluation system). Once I'd done Scrutiny, though, FictionAlley was quite a bit easier for the practice.

#2 is tricky until you get some practice in breaking things down, but then it becomes quite manageable. For example, I was starting a new project for work this morning, one of those unsolicited I'll-build-it-and-then-show-my-manager things. Spent a half hour or so doing nothing but checking HN, then I created a git repository and figured "Hey, I can create a Django app. That's no problem." Then I figured "Hey, I create a basic HTML page with just the app's name on it. That's no problem." Then I figured "Hey, I can wire it up with django.views.generic.simple.direct_to_template", and suddenly I've got working code that just needs to be refined. The rest should be smooth sailing.

#3 is best solved with habits and routines, so that it really does become thoughtless. For example, I think paying bills and opening mail is about the most boring thing ever, so I always do it Saturday morning before going to the supermarket. It gets done, and since it's always at the same time of week I usually don't have to think about it. Same with responding to e-mail - usually, I make sure to respond immediately after reading or else not respond at all.

The smoke and mirrors can be quite useful. It works for me, at least.

<comment><USER5> I think for most people your advice will work a lot better than the parents. I've had the same work behaviors myself, but never identified them until I read your post. Every time I've made something great, it's been from hacking on something that's manageable and then expanding. When I bite off more than I can chew, that's when I fail.

I suspect I'm note alone. Thanks for your post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hope you would find the following links useful at least in some ways.

PG's Brilliant Essay: <http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html>

How to Procrastinate Like Leonardo da Vinci: [http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=zs61txc4kwr4kd1q1rj...](http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=zs61txc4kwr4kd1q1rjbfxt41952gdmf)

Procrastinating Again? How to Kick the Habit: <http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=procrastinating-again>

Letter to a Young Procrastinator: <http://www.slate.com/id/2190918/pagenum/all/>

Also, a quick search of HN using Google, should provide a lot of food for thought and anecdotes. There have been a number of discussions on this topic here.

[http://www.google.com/search?q=site:news.ycombinator.com+pro...](http://www.google.com/search?q=site:news.ycombinator.com+procrastination)

<comment><USER7> From pg's essay: _One reason is that you may not get any reward in the forseeable future._

I find it helps to spend some time laying out a plan of attack that will yield results along the way - like an adventurer laying out a route with ports/oases/base-camps for reprovisioning - and ruthlessly cutting out nice- to-have features that don't contribute (while keeping some nice-to-have features that _do_ contribute). A side-effect of getting results is that they act as a check on whether you are on the right track. There's still the basic fear, of " _will_ I ever get to the end"; the cure for that is to clarify the mission. If things get confusing, step back and simplify, because _that is the way to move forward_.

And laying out the approach actually also begins the journey (because I think about the issues I'll encounter), without feeling like it, so it is easier to start on this than on the task itself. So this is one way to overcome procrastination, and get started: "I'll just have a little daydream about the cool little outcomes along the way"

<comment><USER8> I'm currently in the progress of writing a novel (not my first, but the one I want to get published) and I believe your quote from pg is possibly the most influential factor upon me.

It's extremely difficult to sit down and write when I can easily make a living with what I can already do. However, writing is what I've always wanted to do and when I first committed I knew I was not going to get paid for it for a long time. I believe it's been about 7 years now, and I finally know it's time to finish the job.

Right now, the reward for my current actions is likely to pay off in maybe 2-3 years. There's always the chance I could make a tasty advance, however this is highly unusual. The first book usually doesn't matter anyway, it won't be until my third that I get a true pay-off.

I believe you have to have incredible determination, planning skills (so you do feel somewhat rewarded, I do this by printing out a chapter as soon as it's complete to give to my wife to read). It's very hard to do, however it helps a lot that I find doing it incredibly enjoyable. When you wake up dreaming from a different world, it's quite an amazing feeling.

I also don't believe that sitting at a computer screen is work. My brother is an excellent programmer and from what I can perceive is that his processes are entirely the same as mine. In fact, I learnt a few tricks from him. Ideas and solutions usually appear when your mind is relaxed, simply piling on the pressure by stressing out isn't likely to help.

However, if you don't have the motivation to start a project, I wouldn't necessarily call it procrastination. It's quite possibly it could be atychiphobia (Fear of Failure), as not starting a project is entirely different from losing your way during it as the start of a project is usually immense fun, until the real work kicks in.

If anyone has a fear of failure, I don't believe I know how to help with that. I have no real fear of failure, I jump into everything from the deep end. I've lost a large number of projects along the way to attrition, all are failures but a failure teaches you and I have learnt a great deal. The first time I'd ever hit a golf ball was when I went out with my future father-in-law who had no clue I _didn't_ play golf. I've found that sheer confidence can usually make up for nearly all lacking. So to anyone with a fear of failure, I'd say _fail on purpose_ because after that it can only get better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well, you said you already had some ideas, but maybe these help as well. Things that work for me:

\- Tasks you really don't like doing are harder to start with. But, are the tasks you have to do really important? What happens if you don't do them? Eliminate as much as possible.

\- Start working on a task as late as possible. The pressure, it helps. (See: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law>)

\- Break it up in small steps. Working on a task "Build the next google" is not going to get you started. Split it up in smaller steps, and associate little milestones or 'victories' to completing a small step.

\- Another reason for procrastination is feeling overwhelmed (decision paralysis, action paralysis). If you have so much to do that no matter what you finish, it still feels like you have a lot left, it's impossible to start. Again, try to eliminate or make a feasible schedule for yourself, such that you are able to finish your list for the day.

\- Stop feeling bad about procrastination. Actually, plan in some procrastination time. Forcing yourself to work all the time and feel bad about not doing it will cause you to procrastinate more. Plan in some time for 'slacking', or even better: exercise, do some sports and get back to work afterwards.

\- If you would give yourself 1 hour/day for procrastination; what would you rather do? Read digg about lolcats or sit outside in the sun, and talk with some friends? If you go at it like this, you'll notice how valuable your limited time actually is, and you'll stop reading those websites.

\- Again, more sports! Clear mind == more productive.

\- If you allow yourself the time to 'procrastinate' (i.e. reading websites, RSS, email, etc.), it will also make it easier to read news/mail in batches. Limit it to max. 3 times per day or so.

\- If you want help to get into some new (productivity) habits, start a "Seinfeld calendar" (Google it if you haven't heard of it before)

\- Do NOT, _EVER_, start your day with reading news/mail/etc (or keep it to offline news -- yes, news papers ;).

\- Unplug. Information overload == bad.

\- Start the day with an easy task. It's not hard to start with and it will get you in the "getting-s __*-done mood". Once you start ticking of tasks - <USER2> matter how little it was - it feels like getting done more!

Hope this helps!

</comment><comment><USER10> Block all those sites at your router. My firmware (tomato) lets me block some sites all the time (digg) and some for certain times of day (hn).

Convince yourself that every line of code you write is worth $10k.

Finally, make this your mantra: <http://seoblackhat.com/2007/01/29/do-it- fucking-now/>

</comment><comment><USER11> I have the same problems. There are two tricks that i find quite helpful:

1\. Find a team partner - and you will be cornered to start "get things done". Otherwise, you can't keep show up everyday without any progress

2\. Have a weekly team target - we have it as weekly iterations. Always release something out every week.

Well, the good news are, you realize your problems and looking for solutions.

Bill Gates seems to have the same problem with procrastination, early on in his career: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ic1Ro4LkKw>

</comment><comment><USER12> Instead of aiming to do 1 thing and failing to do it, aim to do 20 things and accept that 5 of them will slip.

Do that and basically shift to whatever you feel like doing at the time (with the only caveat that it should be relatively productive stuff - ie. not "play WoW", more like "write a blog post" or "design a new homepage").

You probably will still get stuff done just before the deadline when it has a hard deadline, but the result is that you'll do a LOT of other stuff along the way.

<comment><USER13> Funny, that's exactly the opposite of what I would suggest: Work on only the most important thing and nothing else. It's helped me maintain focus no matter how crazy things get.

pg says it much better here:

<http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html>

"What's the best thing you could be working on, and why aren't you?"

Just goes to show you: Ask 2 hackers a question and get 3 answers. You'll just have to figure out what works best for you.

<comment><USER14> I didn't read that before...brilliant!

I would add one more category of procrastination: doing something when the time is right. It's an idea I borrowed from "Zen and the Art of Archery" where the author was struggling with how to know the right moment to shoot so that his arrow will have the right trajectory. His instructor told him that "it" will shoot when the time is right (what I've written doesn't do justice to the lesson I learned in this simple example - so I highly recommend reading this ~96 page book).

Many might translate this behavior to doing it whenever I feel like doing it (or procrastinating), but most of these downtimes are spent thinking or designing in my head what needs to be done. It would seem that "it" has a life of its own in my mind and perhaps at the right moment, I am compelled by something do get "it" done. I must say that this is merely a model (that works well for me) about transforming procrastination from a negative to a positive.

I suppose my answer to the original posting would be that if I feel like I'm "type-C" procrastinating, then this can be remedied by thinking about the more important tasks that need to be done. Usually when the thought gets translated into action, the results are much better than if I forced myself to take action without properly preparing myself mentally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd say that your issue doesn't need a organizational solution, it's a deeper question. I go by "when why gets bigger, how gets easier". I would suggest sitting down and writing out 100 (or however many) reasons for what you are trying to accomplish. As you have those done, your motivation will grow and get you past the little distractions. The more reasons you have for accomplishing your goals, the easier it will be to get desciplined.

<comment><USER16> That's also been my experience. There is a really good book that can help you get a handle on why precisely you procrastinate: "Procrastination: Why You Do It, What to Do About It" by Jane Burka and Lenora Yuen. It was published in 1983, but I still haven't seen a better one on the psychology of why people procrastinate.

EDIT: The problem is big and complex enough to need a book to cover it. Blog posts and magazine articles usually only cover a specific, narrow aspect of the problem. This book as well as covering the field is readable enough that it doesn't take too long to read through.

<comment><USER17> They have recently come out with an updated edition (2008). It still covers a lot of the same ground but has been updated with current research in neuroscience. I would also say this isn't a book that you read once, but rather is something to refer to/re-read again and again as you are working through your procrastination.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It depends what works for you. In my experience the first thing you need is motivation. Without you have nothing to drive you and all the will in the world will get you nowhere.

Here is something that helped me: [http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/03/the-cult- of-d...](http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/03/the-cult-of-done- manifesto.html)

Seriously though, find your motivation and all else will fall into place...

</comment><comment><USER18> It depends what works for you. In my experience the first thing you need is motivation. Without you have nothing to drive you and all the will in the world will get you nowhere.

Here is something that helped me: [http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/03/the-cult- of-d...](http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/03/the-cult-of-done- manifesto.html)

Seriously though, find your motivation and all else will fall into place...

</comment><comment><USER19> 1 word...routine. If you go into your day without a battle plan you'll get distracted by every little thing. Create a schedule and stick to it

</comment><comment><USER20> My mind works exactly the same way. Best thing for me is to commit to a deadline and have consequences if I miss. Involve third parties somehow (angel investors or get it approved as a school project). Make a deal with another entrepreneur where you owe him money if you miss your deadline. If you don't produce, don't fool yourself - you're not an entrepreneur just a dreamer.

<comment><AUTHOR> > If you don't produce, don't fool yourself - you're not an entrepreneur just > a dreamer.

I think I ought to write that down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Three books have really helped me:

1) Getting Things Done by David Allen gives you a system that works for keeping track of things and choosing what to work on when.

2) The Now Habit by Neil Fiore teaches you how to get rid of some stupid things we do and think that keeps us procrastinating.

3) Tribes by Seth Godin inspires you to go out and do great deeds, big and small.

</comment><comment><USER7> <http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/>

</comment><comment><USER22> My advice isn't for procrastination in general (e.g. putting off paying bills or mowing the lawn), but for that special kind of procrastination that stops you from getting a business or important project going.

Read "The War of Art" by Steven Pressman and internalize its message. You can finish it in a day. In a nutshell, the book describes procrastination and some other vices as embodiments of Resistance, an evil spirit that plagues anyone who tries to do anything worthwhile.

The strategy Pressman outlines for fighting Resistance dovetails nicely with the techniques described in the other book I'd recommend, which is "The Creative Habit" by Twyla Tharp. With respect to procrastination, Tharp talks about recognizing (1) that creative work is still work and (2) the importance of developing solid daily routines and rituals so that you stop treating your work as something you do only when you're "inspired." She more or less adds details to the Pressman's description of the "hard hat mentality" necessary to get anything done.

The hard hat mentality is that you don't procrastinate on your job or wait until you "want" to do it, you just put the hard hat on every day and do the work so that you can get paid (whatever "paid" means for you). You're doing it not because you're inspired or motivated; you're doing it because it's your job. Period.

[http://www.amazon.com/War-Art-Through-Creative- Battles/dp/04...](http://www.amazon.com/War-Art-Through-Creative- Battles/dp/0446691437)

[http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Habit-Learn-Use- Life/dp/07432...](http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Habit-Learn-Use- Life/dp/0743235274)

</comment><comment><USER23> I'd recommend The Power of Less by Leo Babaute. It's written by the Zen Habits guy, and it offers a productivity system designed for people like you (and me).

</comment><comment><USER24> I've come to believe that online distractions are legitimately addictive in the same way that gambling is addictive. I.e. a behavior that becomes all- encompassing to the point where it negatively affects the rest of your life.

I say this because I used to think I was a major procrastinator and looked for all manner of tips and tricks to solve the problem. But I was trying to solve the wrong problem. if I turn off the internet entirely, I have no problem at all doing what I want to do during the day.

However, if the internet is on, i can get into states where I not only don't do any of the work I need to do, I don't leave the house, I don't hang out with friends, I forget to eat, etc.

I realized my online behavior was a bigger issue when I started screwing up dates because I was doing something on the internet. Blowing off a boring work task to watch youtube videos is one thing, but when I started missing out on getting laid because I was refreshing HN and getting sucked into a Wikipedia vortex, it realized I had a real problem.

So, maybe you're not really procrastinating, maybe you're addicted to the internet. Maybe not, but it is something to consider.

</comment><comment><USER17> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acceptance_and_Commitment_Thera...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acceptance_and_Commitment_Therapy)

The term therapy here might seem a bit off-putting, but the approach of being a mindful observer of ones thoughts, accepting them and then taking action in accordance with your values seems like it might be of help in getting you over the inertia you are dealing with.

</comment><comment><USER25> Eat the frogs: [http://www.amazon.com/That-Frog-Great-Ways- Procrastinating/d...](http://www.amazon.com/That-Frog-Great-Ways- Procrastinating/dp/1583762027)

Full of practical advice. In the same vein, it's good to read all e-mails / blogs after lunch. Keeping IM, Twitter off till that also helps.

In a nutshell, the mind, like money, is an excellent servant, but a terrible master! Hope this helps.

</comment><comment><USER26> Well, I have had a similar problem. I haven't beaten it but here are some things I have found helps:

1) Exercise: spending time going running or cycling helps relax and really makes you feel like you have more energy for other things.

2) Being Organised: When you are organised you know what has to be done by when and what you can start working on right now. I find this lowers the amount of energy required to get started. A TODO list plus calender are probably enough but more high powered systems like GTD also might be worth considering.

3) Embrace your fears, create safety: In my experience this is the root cause of procrastination. In my case it is the fear of failure, so we try to avoid the experience temporarily be engaging in other activities that don't remind us of our fear. This is covered in "The Now Habit", in which is called "creating safety". You might also might consider looking at something called "Acceptance and Commitment Therapy" which provides strategies for accepting which is aimed at overcoming "experiential avoidance". There is a good self help workbook "Get out of your mind and into your life".

4) Internet blocker: I was unhappy with with Leechblock as its approach was a bit authoritarian. I wrote a firefox extention that made me type in "this browsing is for the purpose of completing my degree" or "i have worked hard and deserve a break", which unlocks the internet for 20 minutes. I can still browse the internet as much as I want but this helps remind me that some sorts of browsing can wait. It helps but I still don't win constantly (right now for instance).

5) Time off, sharpen the saw, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. You could combine this with 1) and take up a sport, running, cycling, yoga, tai chi, etc. "The Now Habit" recommends scheduling free time to look forward to after your work is done.

</comment><comment><USER27> In early high school, I was a chronic procrastinator. I became really freaking good at it too.

Then I got to college and had to start doing work. Not because college is hard (it's actually easier than my high school), but because I'm much busier now.

To help balance things, I did a number of things. For one, I started putting everything into The Hit List. This works great and it helps me stay sane. Everything gets out of my head, which is important. The second was that I began practicing a process known as gatekeeping. Basically, you have to start making conscious decisions about what you allow into your work flow. (Shameless plug here: I wrote about gatekeeping on an introductory level here: <http://loganleger.com/effective-gatekeeper/>) This really helped me get down to business and focus.

</comment><comment><USER28> I've overcome procrastination by doing the following: 1) Never make a long TODO list. Having a long list makes choosing something on it overwhelming because you're simultaneously not choosing the other things. Often the path of least resistance is to choose nothing from the list. So keep short lists. After all anything that's really important will get done whether it's on a list or not. 2) When sitting down at your computer do a tiny bit of work first. Do this before surfing the net, checking email, etc. Often times this tiny bit of initial work will make doing more work easy. 3) Simply don't surf the net on 50% of days. Getting things done really comes down to choosing your project over, say, learning things by reading HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have started making TODO lists which deal with what I have to do the next day instead of writing long lists for the entire week or month. I review my list before I go to sleep and write down the tasks for the next day.

I find this helps a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> When you have to work, disconnect your Ethernet cable.

<comment><USER30> For many, that's not an option. My work requires Internet access.

<comment><USER29> For that there's leechblock : <https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/4476> It's analogous to noprocrast.

<comment><AUTHOR> Any idea where I can get something like LeechBlock that works system wide (on OS X Leopard)? I usually access news feeds via NetNewsWire and my primary browser is Opera, so LeechBlock is not an option for me.

<comment><USER29> For news feed you should use a planet aggregator like Planet Venus: <http://intertwingly.net/code/venus/> It generates a static html page that I read once a day.

And why don't you switch to ff ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Planet Venus looks nice. Thanks :)

> And why don't you switch to ff ?

I like Opera better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> \- Set lots of deadlines. Weekly, daily, hourly, even minutely.

\- Plan out your daily deadlines the day before and stick with it.

\- Do NOT extend a deadline. If you go over a deadline, stop the activity and move on to the next one on the schedule. This will condition you to prioritize more effectively next time. (e.g. Knowing that you only have two hours to code something really boost up your code productivity.)

</comment><comment><USER32> I had the same problem, a bunch of ideas without focusing on any particular one of them. I think you have to sit down and analyse:

1) The market for the idea

2) Feasibility

I wouldn't advise against reading, the more knowledge you acquire should result in a more sound understanding of the current situation around you.

</comment><comment><USER33> It could be a chemical imbalance, have you looked into adderall for ADHD? I know it sounds weird, and nobody wants to think of themselves as having any type of disorder as if their a defective piece of software, but seriously talk to a doctor and be sure.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sure it's not a disorder. As I said, I manage to get a lot done if I just _start doing it_. The only problem I'm having is overcoming the "inertia".

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> External deadlines and accountability. I tell people what I'm doing. Then if I fail to do it I have the guilt of disappointing them on top of my own frustration at inertia. It's more or less cured the latter. :p

</comment><comment><USER35> Note: for the faint of heart not interested in reading my stupidly long post, feel free to scroll to the bottom to see the summary+

One thing that drives me absolute crazy is waiting. I am very impatient. So any time I am performing a programming or administration task that requires waiting for more than 10 seconds or so, I end up looking for ANYTHING to ease my boredom. So when I need to kill 30 seconds while something processes, I end up distracted by reddit, blogs etc. Then, 30 minutes later, I realize I have been off on some tangent instead of working, and have essentially wasted 29 minutes of my work day.

One recent approach I tried was less effective but perhaps still interesting thing I've done lately is fill in the gaps by learning my editor during long waits. In my case, this is vim (specifically macvim). You end up sometimes missing the completion of the task, but at least its arguably more productive than getting lulled to reddit sleep. And how else would I know that zomfg, vim has a built in genafyngr gb ebg13 command ("g?").

But then one day I accidentally stumbled across a very profound idea. If I have something happening in the background that is just interesting enough to prevent me from getting bored, but not interesting enough to consume my attention, then I don't end up off on tangents every time I have to wait 30 seconds to 5 minutes for something to finish.

Several different approaches work and I'm sure their efficacy varies according to individual habits and taste. I used to put on a movie in a tiny window and turn my attention to it when I get bored for a few minutes. But that takes up screen real estate and can be distracting. You're also less likely to notice that the task you were waiting for has completed...

So how do I prevent the tangents but still manage to focus on my work? AUDIO BOOKS. Especially audio books that I've already read in paper or audio form. If it's the first time you are listening to it, it's easy to get distracted by the story since you don't want to miss it. But if you already know what happens, it's easy to completely ignore it while its playing in the background. Then, as soon as you click a button and strike a key that fires off a task that is going to take some time to finish, you turn your attention mostly to the audio book, but keep one eye on the task so you know it's over.

This approach has done wonders for my productivity. Now, I tend to look at reddit, hacker news and google reader as a planned task, or just to kill time when I'm not already coding. Try it my friend. You will love it!!

As an aside, about six months ago I switched from Windows land to Mac land, mostly because: 0) linux has caused me too much pain in my short cruel life 1) I am a languages geek, and it seems like they're available for mac before Windows 2) as a web developer, I often deploy my products on a linuxy server and macosx is much closer to linuxy then windows is. So until recently, I had a much more difficult time staying on task than I do now. Part of the motivation to change came from a reasonably careful assessment of my days, and how each was spent. I downloaded Slife <http://www.slifelabs.com/> and Rescutime <http://www.rescuetime.com/> ++, both of which can give you a pretty accurate picture of where your time goes when you are sitting on your computer.

\-----

\+ Summary: Listen to audio books that you've already read while you code.

++ Unfortunately, I don't feel comfortable recommending one over the other. But I will say that Slife required less time to configure and maintain, but at least felt less flexible. I'd recommend either at least in the short term to help you exorcise your procrastination demons. My macbook was stolen about a month ago and I haven't (yet?) installed them on my new one. They were definitely instrumental though in inspiring me to become more productive.

</comment><comment><USER36> This worked pretty well for me:

[http://www.43folders.com/2005/09/08/kick-procrastinations- as...](http://www.43folders.com/2005/09/08/kick-procrastinations-ass-run-a- dash)

</comment><comment><USER37> Randy Pausch on time management: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTugjssqOT0>

</comment><comment><USER38> Take an Adderall pill one time every day for two days. Heh.

You'll work like a machine from that point forward.

<comment><AUTHOR> No. No drugs, please. My problem are my habits. I do not have a disease.

<comment><USER38> Oh. Eh, well, I wrote a small blog post a while back about little things that help me stay on-track:

[http://whitepaperclip.com/blog/post/2-Avoiding- Procrastinati...](http://whitepaperclip.com/blog/post/2-Avoiding- Procrastination)

Everyone is different, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Just starting makes the task 50% done. That gave me motivation to start.

</comment><comment><USER40> Get rid of distracting bookmarks / hide your bookmarks bar.

</comment><comment><USER41> Read "The Path of Least Resistance." It's not about procrastination, but I assure you, it will change your life, in a small but critical way.

The other books scratch the surface, vainly trying to solve the problem at the level of the behavior. They're like slapping bandaids on a stab wound.

But the Path attacks it at the next lower level, just like that quote from Einstein: "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it."</comment>


Prehistoric Human Brain Found Pickled in Bog - <AUTHOR> http://news.discovery.com/history/preserved-brain-bog-england-110406.html <comment><USER2> I'm not sure 2600 years old is particularly 'prehistoric' is it? I appreciate I might just be being English ('in america a 100 years is a long time and in england 100 miles is a long way' etc) but I mean that's not far off being contemporary with Plato and about contemporary with Parmenides. Prehistoric in the UK, in my anecdotal experience, is more like >=5000 years old (for example Stone Henge falls squarely into being 'prehistoric'.) And I'm sure the Mesopotamians felt pretty old by then anyway.

Any historian HNers know more about if there are any culturally specific definitions of prehistory?

<comment><USER3> Technically 'prehistoric' could fit. The remains are from a time before written records existed there.

But when you consider that written records had already long existed elsewhere in the world and that 'prehistoric' can go as far back as ancient mammals and even dinosaurs, it becomes a rather vague term.

However, in this case it's useful to describe it as prehistoric because this is the only type of evidence we have of their culture. Since there are very few written records, archaeological remains are the best bet for learning more about them, which is why finding something this well-preserved can be particularly exciting.

Otherwise, as far as I know human the brain belonged to is pretty much anatomically and genetically the same as modern humans.

<comment><USER4> > The remains are from a time before written records existed there.

As William Gibson would certainly say, the future has never been evenly distributed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If anyone didn't notice, this story is from Wed Apr 6, 2011. It is linked from a larger story about hundreds of warriors being found in the bog which was posted yesterday:

[http://news.discovery.com/history/army-danish- bog-120816.htm...](http://news.discovery.com/history/army-danish- bog-120816.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> There has been some work saying that you can preserve life by immediately removing oxygen from the cells. The theory is that the damage from death happens as the oxygen levels slowly decay, causing all sorts of damage. If you could exsanguinate a body immediately, then preserve it in an oxygen-free environment, it might have a chance of being revived. (Wish there was more news about this idea)

If that's true, perhaps future generations might view finding this guy's brain as a great tragedy, because we lost a chance to actually bring somebody back from the Iron Age.

Admittedly this is highly-speculative BS. But hey, it's the internet.

<comment><USER7> I just want to add, the subject was hanged and decapitated. For what, we'll probably never know. But just think about that with regard to bringing him back to life.

<comment><USER4> I am not convinced the people who killed this guy were particularly cautious when applying capital punishment.

But, again, nobody can be sure how good his lawyer was, since there is no written record of the criminal process that led to his execution in such... creative ways.

<comment><USER6> Since it's Friday evening, a great book on creative executions is "The Executioner Always Chops Twice" -- fun and quick read.

<http://amzn.to/OnxaU7>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This really isn't pre-history since there are Sumer tablets that are dated around 2500 BC. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Letter_Luenna_Louvre_AO423...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Letter_Luenna_Louvre_AO4238.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER9> Scientists described the brain as not dissimilar from one found pickled in a local pub.

</comment><comment><USER10> Little hint for the next time.. "bog" is british slang for "toilet". At first I read "blog", then "toilet", and by the time I got to the article I was already in quite the silly mood, which is inappropriate for science.

<comment><USER11> bog |bɒg| noun

1 an area of wet muddy ground that is too soft to support a heavy body: a peat bog | figurative : a bog of legal complications | [ mass noun ] : the island is a wilderness of bog and loch. • Ecology wetland with acid peaty soil, typically dominated by peat moss. Compare with fen1.

2 (the bog) Brit. informal the toilet.

<comment><USER10> I didn't mean to imply it means ONLY toilet, so I, uhm, thanks, but I knew that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Do we have any dna samples of humans from 2500 years ago? I'd like to see What has changed genetically since then.

<comment><USER13> Mitochondrial DNA has been extracted from samples found in the UK which are up to 12,000 years old:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheddar_Man></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is a second master's degree worth it? - <AUTHOR> I just finished a master's degree, and I discovered that my school offers a second one about cryptography and security and I'm thinking about doing another year in order to get it.
I got pretty tired of the specific domain I studied and I don't see myself doing it in 10 years.
The school offers the opportunity to do the courses in parallel with an internship (so that should cover for my expanses during the year)
I'm interested in hearing from anyone who has pursued a second master's, and whether it was valuable to your career.
Thanks <comment><USER2> Even if the actual monetary cost is paid for through an internship, the opportunity cost is still monumentally high. You're still paying for it mightily in terms of one less year spent collecting an actual salary or pursuing your dreams.

Now, if you'll be miserable doing what you studied for several decades, then yeah the equation is a bit different. But most people are fairly burned out by the end of a normal 4-year college, to say nothing of adding a master's degree on top of that and this might be the feeling you're experiencing.

In an ideal world, you could probably take a few months off and pursue something fun or travel and refresh yourself mentally. I bet you'll approach your current field with a renewed sense of passion and be able to evaluate what you want to do then much better with a little break.

<comment><AUTHOR> So the basic idea is : A year in a company is better than a year in school?

But you're probably right, I can hardly remember my last vacation, a few months off sound like a good idea either way.

<comment><USER3> Something to consider is the fact that the vast majority of people who say they're going to go back to school after a break never do [citation needed].

<comment><USER4> For the record, I returned to school after 6 years from graduating. Supporting a family (sole income) (one 3 year old boy, one 1 month old baby girl.) This in a third world country with practically 0 safety net. Just don't give up. Universities are the best place to learn from the masters by proxy (not the professors per se, but the ones who first wrote about new domains.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Do you value your education as a way of learning, or as a way to gain better employment opportunities? What do you see yourself doing after school, what what is your motivation for pursuing that path? What country are you studying in, and wanting to work in?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that it is a bit of both. I understand that there are stuff that you can learn "better" in school. But I also think that this degree could open a different "security oriented" jobs that I wouldn't have the qualifications for otherwise.

I see myself working for a big company for a while (learning the trade).

After that, maybe in 5 to 10 years I'd leave for a smaller thing where I could have more impact.

PS: I live in France and I'm mainly looking for work in EU.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So it seems you are not satisfied with your first Master's Degree. I am curious, why do you think a second one would be more satisfying? Perhaps you should move on to a new phase in your life?</comment>


Ask HN: What timezone is HN running on? - <AUTHOR>

I sometimes miss some good articles from the previous day, that were around earlier in the current day.
Is it subjective to the number of new stories being submitted? Is there a daily reset of top stories at some point? If it does, Is it possible to change it to use my timezone?
I am trying to reduce my visits to HN to max once a day. I'd like to come in around the last hour of the day. ;-)
Thanks. <comment><USER2> I don't think there is a reset. Articles are ranked using two factors. One is the number of upvotes that the article has, and the other is how old the story is. The older an article is, the higher the "decay" factor.

Thus, an article with 100 points might stay on the front page for quite a while. An article with five points has a chance to make it to the front page if it gets those votes fairly quickly and the front page is not too crowded with higher-point articles.

So what seems to be important is the time zone of the readers/submitters. From the point of view of submitting stories, if you can get a potentially-popular submission in before the east coast wakes up, it has the best chance of getting to the front page. Votes of readers in Africa and Europe will possibly give it a boost.

So what this means for a reader is that stories submitted at 0700 east coast time will possibly roll off by mid-day as the pressure of good submissions from Central (go tqbf!) and further west push them off. So if you read HN at 1100, you are likely to catch those early stories and some of the west stories. But will the stories from yesterday still be there?

I wish you great success in reading HN just once a day, a problem that I find personally unsolvable.

The best way to be sure you get all the stories is to use an RSS feed reader, like google reader.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, good stuff.

I am going to give the HN once a day a real go for a few weeks, see how it goes..

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Have you tried this site

<http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. I saw that I few days ago. It's a nice site. Wouldn't that mean 2 separate timezones, HN's and the Daily's?

I would still love to know how the rollover of each day happens.</comment></comment>


It's raining plastic: microscopic fibers fall from the sky in Rocky Mountains - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/12/raining-plastic-colorado-usgs-microplastics <comment><USER2> This era will be marked by a layer of plastic in the geological record.

<comment><USER3> I read in this one report where the life expectancy from 1890-1960 increased from 40 years (of age) to 65. The highest increase ever in human history. During this time the US was going through an industrial revolution I believe? I'm not sure. With tons of factories and smoke stacks polluting the air. Yet quality of life was fine? I guess if we pair that with plastic falling from the sky there is nothing to worry about? Also the article mentioned the plastic particles were super small. Not sure if that would really hurt anyone. Likely marginal? What do everyone else think?

<comment><USER4> The increase in lifespan is more due to childhood mortality falling sharply in those years.

I've always found average lifespan to be problematic. Most of the deaths weren't from 65 being the age where old age started to kill. It was on account of how many more infants and children started reaching 5 on account of vaccines.

<comment><USER5> To flip this completely on its head, I'd be interested to see how childhood mortality rates have been affected by major events in plastics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm sure they can also be found in the air we breathe already. I wonder how much damage they cause. Plastic as such is quite a inert material. I would guess smoking a single cigarette a day is way worse

<comment><USER7> > Plastic as such is quite a inert material.

Certain plastics are used for implants - there must be a good reason for it? Bioreactivity, rejection, degradation? Those and other reasons might be a concern to be thought about in regards to inhaled plastic fibers.

Not to mention if there were issues with the fibrous nature itself (like "fibrous minerals" cause certain diseases)...

<comment><USER8> Nearly everything you put in body like silicone, plastic, titanium have known negative effects.

<comment><USER6> Even food they say!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I guess our only hope to ever clean this up is for evolution or bioengineering to give us some microplastic eating bacteria.

<comment><USER10> sadly that will also eat your smart phone xD

<comment><USER9> Yes, and filling the environment with lots of plastic eating bacteria will also make it useless as a durable packaging material.

<comment><USER11> Maybe? Wood is useful even though there are things that will eat it under the right conditions.

<comment><USER12> Maybe we should use wood instead of plastic.

<comment><USER13> Hemp

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So how dangerous are microplastics to the lungs? Will microplastics become the asbestos of the future?

<comment><USER15> It troubles me that there are man-made particles in the air and everywhere, but I was shamed on HN 4 months ago for worrying about it. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19673894](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19673894). Not sure how to feel about it now.

<comment><USER16> It's hard for me to write this well, so before I begin I hope you don't take offense. I think it's easy to feel shame if someone disagrees with you and especially if they take the time to back up their argument with some evidence as the responder to your statement did. However, I think it's kind of an unfortunate reaction. That person gave you a gift -- they spent time out of their day to explain to you why they disagreed. It's not meant to beat you back, or to make you seem stupid (at least from my perspective). Your original comment didn't have any supporting evidence: it was just a statement. While it may very well be true, it's really hard for a reader to judge. I don't know you. I don't know how well you understand the field. If you make a statement, I'm always going to be a bit wary -- because there are a lot more people who are mistaken on the internet when they think they know something, than people who actually know something.

As much as possible, I'd like to encourage you to take the time and effort to back up your statements and to share your knowledge in a way that people like me can appreciate. I know it takes time and you may be thinking, "If I need to back up everything I say, then I won't have time to say anything!". However, I think it's fine to pick and choose your moments (BTW, as you might gather from this message, this is something I also struggle with!) If everyone who read HN posted their opinion without spending the time to show how they arrived at that opinion, we would be buried in meaningless arguments. That's why it is so important for people like you, who seem to know something about the subject matter, to spend that time to make a really quality reply. Everyone will benefit, I feel.

Perhaps you will disagree, but at the very least I hope you come away with the feeling that it is not necessary to experience shame if someone disagrees with you -- indeed, even if you happen to be wrong. Especially if you are wrong, _you_ are the one that benefits the most because you can learn something new. It really is all good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The photos don't show a scale. What magnification microscope should I get to look at the rain droplets falling where I live so that I can see how much plastic there is?

<comment><USER18> The linked study says 40x [https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2019/1048/ofr20191048.pdf](https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2019/1048/ofr20191048.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> And we've known this for some time, in other areas:

>Scientists recorded a daily rate of 365 microplastic particles per square meter falling from the sky in the Pyrenees Mountains in southern France.

[https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/04/micro...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/04/microplastics- pollution-falls-from-air-even-mountains/)

<comment> semi-extrinsic In other research, scientists found that approx. 100 microplastic particles fall on a dinner plate during the course of a meal. If that's a long meal (1h) and a very large dinner plate (0.25 m^2), it gives us a lowball estimated rate of 10 000 per square meter per day, every day inside the house where you live.

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026974911...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0269749117344445?via%3Dihub)

<comment><USER20> I do worry about atmospheric plastic particles, but...

I suspect that reported air quality metrics like PM10/PM2.5 measure this already. I'm doubtful that 10k plastic particles are landing inside your house simply because external air turnover isn't that fast (only a few per day). Either it's coming from inside your house or the density outside is anomalously high.

The total volume would be <10m3 and peak PM10 is typically less than 5ug/m³ (often less than 1 where I live). A 10um diameter particle is a few nanograms so 10,000 would mean all of the particles in the air are plastic. We know that dust, smoke, and other sources are significant as well.

<comment><USER19> > I'm doubtful that 10k plastic particles are landing inside your house simply > because external air turnover isn't that fast (only a few per day).

In your house they are likely much higher as they're coming from your shoes, your synthetic fiber clothes, your carpet, that 25 year old plastic dog your gran gave you.

The carpet fiber dust at my job is insane, I wipe down my plane model every day, and 24 hours later you can see little red/blue/green/tan carpet fibers already accumulating from the foot traffic in the office, if I let it go a week it (and skin/hair etc) will cake on my finger if I run it down.

<comment><USER20> Wool carpets on hardwood floors. I see plenty of dust outside (construction?) but very little in the house. If I don't wipe the table for a week, I can't tell other than animal foot prints. I leave windows and doors open hours every day. At work the office seems about class 100k, but I guess the aircon system if filtering well enough.

I don't doubt it's possible to create such an environment, but it's not "natural" or environmental other than in the sense of what you choose (as much as circumstances let you) to live in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> With the amount of Patagonia Polar Fleeces going through the dryers, not too surprising.

<comment><USER22> And the number of cars on the roads

>The relative contribution of tyre wear and tear to the total global amount of plastics ending up in our oceans is estimated to be 5–10%.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5664766/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5664766/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> There is a lot of bad science here. Possible contamination from using plastic bags to collect samples. Results not matching the expected distribution between rural and urban samples.

</comment><comment><USER24> Reading this scares me to the point I want to wear a Surgical Mask everywhere like I'm in a Tokyo subway station.

<comment><USER25> Then you'll simply be breathing in even more loose particles from the inside surface of your mask.

Surgical masks are made to redirect the _exhaled breath_ of nurses and doctors away from hospital patients.

<comment><USER26> He/she probably meant a particle filter mask, but it's always good to point out that this is something comoletely different from a surgical mask. Sadly a lot of people that really should depend on the particle filtration don't understand this, and wear surgical masks instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Whelp, I guess it's time to start breeding dragons...

<comment><USER28> ref: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pern#Thread](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pern#Thread)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I read about plastic raining from the sky years ago. …From people who posted in a conspiracy theory forum because no one would officially acknowledge the problem and they were desperate to bring attention to it. They had photos of people developing serious health problems from it. One case I remember: Someone developed a skin condition with what looked like tiny plastic threads growing on the arms. These people lived in the mountains.

<comment><USER17> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgellons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgellons)</comment></comment>


2(048) - <AUTHOR> http://wegnerdesign.com/2048/ <comment><USER2> I was able to get into a situation where holding down the left key allowed me to get into a cycle of the tiles being split and then combined. This meant that I could get as high as score as I wanted. I got bored at 2662784 points.

Edit: Just realized lower scores are better.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I got the same with the down key..

[http://imgur.com/EQ3qS2n,JfIL6Ln](http://imgur.com/EQ3qS2n,JfIL6Ln)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Too easy, just spam two directions and you win almost always.

5000 points. [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/58437091/2(048).PNG](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/58437091/2\(048\).PNG)

<comment><USER5> Seriously - it took me about 10 games before I won 2048. This I won in 30 seconds just by hitting left and right a bunch of times.

<comment><USER6> Only 10 games to win 2048? That's pretty amazing. Did you have a particular strategy that you think is non-obvious?

<comment><USER7> Anybody who has played 3s a lot probably wins in 2048 within the first 4-5 games (I won on my second attempt).

I usually get 2048 on about 30% of my tries - the general strategy of only moving Right/Left/Up (never down) gets you to 512 in about 45-60 seconds of button mashing, and then following that strategy with a bit of attention solves 2048 thereafter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I won on my first try in under a minute. That was super fun though, great work on the game mechanic, but I think it needs work.

It is possible to get the game into a state where holding one direction makes to score climb forever.

<comment><AUTHOR> The scoring mechanics are reversed in this version. Lower scores are actually better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Keep going, I got the 0.5 tile once, but having trouble repoducing. Who can get the 0.25?

Edit: Also fun to play this reverse 2048 backwards :-) Got a 32768 tile.

<comment><USER10> [http://imgur.com/Gn3fJEs](http://imgur.com/Gn3fJEs)

<comment><USER9> 0.125 Nice!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This one is very good!

And some more ideas: throw the numbers using slingshot, arrange falling tetris-blocks-numbers, make 3+ exact numbers in row disappear, the same but on the moving spiral track, farm the numbers (feed, buy supplies).

</comment><comment><USER12> The first 2048 game I've won!

<comment><USER13> Yeah, this is quite a bit easier.

<comment><USER14> Disappointingly easy even.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just managed to get down to a 1 tile, with only 5168 points. Is that supposed to happen?

[https://www.dropbox.com/sc/aedhjuk2bbta8yp/nwzf1-CLhv](https://www.dropbox.com/sc/aedhjuk2bbta8yp/nwzf1-CLhv)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh! You should have won once you got to the 2 tile. I'll check it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Too easy. Score 55200 in first game.

<comment><USER17> Yeah I can easily win just pressing random buttons

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> 10 seconds into the game and I won. The key is to press only three directional keys randomly and you'll win.

Hell, this is the first 2048 game in which I've won!

</comment><comment><USER19> Next iteration of 2048: build 2048 2048 clones to win.

<comment><USER20> When two clones touch, they merge into one!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Got 226048 score, and both "You win" and "Keep going, try again" in my first try, by making random moves.

screenshot: [http://imgur.com/gGfS5Yn](http://imgur.com/gGfS5Yn)

</comment><comment><USER22> Try this reverse version of 2048.. Let's see if you can end up in fractions :P [http://ajnas.in/one/](http://ajnas.in/one/)

</comment><comment><USER23> There is probably a bug, I manage to have a '4096' tile. The sum of all tiles should always be 2048 if I understand the rules correctly.

<comment><USER24> If it didn't do this, there would be no way to split the numbers any lower than 512 on a rectangular grid.

<comment><USER23> Indeed, but it should be explained in the rules then.

        How to play: Use your arrow keys to move the tiles.
        When two tiles with the same number touch, they merge
        into one! Edge tiles that don't merge will split into
        two tiles!

It seems a new 2048 tile is added when no split is performed during a move.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I can't figure out the rules of this game but I can get an arbitrarily high score most of the time by holding down a key :)

<comment><USER15> I think the idea is meant to be that you split tiles until you get a 2, with as few points as possible.

<comment><USER25> I got 0.5 btw

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've got 16384 tile. I have a strange feeling that I might be doing something wrong...

</comment><comment><USER27> Good twist, won this one. score 15168

I guess I should get my karma up with the pending comments coming.

</comment><comment><USER28> First 2048 game where i won!

</comment><comment><USER29> way too easy, but i love the twist :)

</comment><comment><USER30> should save the low score

<comment><AUTHOR> Unless I've got a bug, it should be saving t low score. Is that not what you're seeing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Too easy.

</comment><comment><USER32> So this 2048 is the new Flappy Bird.

</comment><comment><USER33> Stop with the 2048, please!

Edit: I guess pending comments is disabled still?</comment>


Show HN: CoinBuzz.stream – Cryptocurrency News Aggregator - <AUTHOR> https://coinbuzz.stream/ <comment><AUTHOR> Greetings, hackers. Want to share with you my sideproject - CoinBuzz.stream. It aggregates 110 altcoins and allows to track their news.

I made this SPA with PHP and jQuery. API used: [https://coinmarketcap.com/api/](https://coinmarketcap.com/api/) and [https://github.com/CoinCapDev/CoinCap.io](https://github.com/CoinCapDev/CoinCap.io)

CoinBuzz.stream got 350 upvotes on Product Hunt and won #4 Product of the Day.

Really appreciate your feedback.</comment>


U.S. Proposes Ban on 'Flash' Trading on Wall Street - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/18/business/18regulate.html?_r=1&hp

<comment><USER2> "When buy and sell orders come into an exchange, they are first flashed to those paying to see them for 30 milliseconds — 0.03 seconds — before they are available to everyone else."

One thing I don't understand about "flash trading", and what I've never seen an explanation of in the media: How does this interact with price-time priority?

In a regular old auto-matching system, if the spread is two ticks wide and a buyer sends an order to lift best offer (instead of just improving best bid):

1\. If you had a sell order at best offer in the front of the queue the time the buy came in, you're matched, and it doesn't matter if you try to cancel your sell a nanosecond later.

2\. If you had no sell order, it doesn't matter if you improve the sell price a nanosecond later --- you're not matched.

So does "flash trading" change either of these? Or is it just a fancy name for "getting market data real fast" --- similar to what you'd get by colocation, but artificially enforced (e.g. they delay everyone else's data by 30ms so the "flashers" can see it first)?

(edit - formatting and grammar)

<comment><USER3> I found this article useful: [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/business/24trading.html?_r...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/business/24trading.html?_r=2)

It has a timeline diagram which explains it well.

<comment><USER2> Thanks. So the exchange really are messing with price-time priority in exchange for cash? Wow ...

But then why would any non-flasher ever place a single order on these exchanges? Couldn't a boycott could solve this problem without any legislation --- they could just go to an alternative venue which wasn't selling them out in exchange for more fees?

\--- Appendix: Bear with me while I think out loud so anyone can point out mistakes I'm making.

Time n-1, Order #0: Some seller posts an offer of size N > 5000 at $21.00. (It has to be $21.00, otherwise Order #2 would have nothing to buy at that price).

Time n, Order #1: Mutual fund sends buy 5000 "at market" (i.e. fill me at any price from here to the moon).

Time n+1, Order #2: Would-be flasher sends buy N at $21.00.

Time n+2, Order #3: Would-be flasher sends sell 5000 at $21.01 (and prays that no other flasher beats him to it).

Time n+3: Repeat from time n-1.

Under normal price-time priority, #1 matches #0, #2 matches #0 and becomes best bid, #3 doesn't match anything, and your new market is $21.00 / .01. The total traded volume is N. (The would-be flasher is now long N - 5000 and has to trade out at a loss of fees + stamp duty, so the first time around the total traded volume is 2N - 1, but that doesn't happen again: he either stops doing this shit or goes out of business).

With "flash trading", #2 matches #0 (despite #1 having time priority) and #3 matches #1 (despite not even being in the market at the time #1 arrived). The total traded volume is N + 5000. The exchange earns some extra fees, the flasher gets the arbitrage profits, the mutual fund gets screwed, and the sellers (#0) don't care either way because they were willing to trade at $21.00 all along. Weird.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, we're getting ever closer to the era in which:

\- you step out to home depot to buy a $20 hammer

\- when you get there "The Flash" (of dc comics fame) figures out you're looking to buy a hammer and buys _all the $20 hammers_

\- he leaves a post-it note saying "if you want a hammer meet me in aisle 7"

\- you get there and he offers to sell you a $20 hammer for $21

\- either you buy it or you don't; once you've made your decision he returns either (N-1) or (N) hammers back to the store (30 day return policy and all that)

\- if you head over to lowe's instead well he is "The Flash"

Not an exact metaphor for "flash trading" (as sketched it's riskless) but it's imho a relevant thought experiment.

At the individual level the winners and losers are pretty obvious. At the systemic level it's unclear any actual efficiency is gained; differentiating between actual "efficiency gains" and "red queen" scenarios is tricky.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> About time. It's total cheating and should never have been allowed.

[http://bellringer187868.wordpress.com/2009/07/25/the- bingo-b...](http://bellringer187868.wordpress.com/2009/07/25/the-bingo-bin/)

<comment><USER6> > The programs can gauge market response and, using pre-programmed manoeuvres, > called algos (for algorithms), catch the demand before the public (that's > YOU), grab lots of it cheap, enter and cancel hundreds of small orders in > order to find out the public's limit for a stock's price and dump all it's > holdings to them at a penny below their limit, but above what the computer > paid for it, for a small ($10,000, say) profit, in a matter of seconds.

This isn't flash trading, this is just high frequency trading. All the stuff mentioned in this paragraph about "cheating" has nothing at all to do with flash orders. bellringer seems to suggest that high frequency trading is "cheating". This argument that guys with faster computers and better connections are beating at home traders is nonsensical. If I tried making cars at home in my garage, of course Toyota is going to beat me. They have state of the art factories, trained engineers, and years of experience. Toyota isn't cheating. Similarly, Goldman Sachs, along with lots of smaller guys, has huge computing clusters, blazingly fast and connections and they're going to beat you, a guy with a laptop at home. But it's not cheating.

<comment><USER7> Do you really consider that a useful analogy?

Cheap cars are useful. A super liquid stockmarket is a zero sum game in which everyone is encouraged to participate but a few sharks basically have extra cards.

Its really not obvious why such a responsive market is necessary, it is simply said to be a good thing and a progression, yet it moves at speeds that clearly do not reflect the underlying fundamentals.

<comment><USER8> Why do you say the stock market is zero-sum? People put money in & take it out all the time.

<comment><USER9> Because the stock market doesn't generate money. Money changes hands based on rising and falling values, but the money hasn't just appeared out of thin air, nor is it destroyed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Simply force purchasers to hold stock for at least 6 months, or some other long period, so that fundamentals will have to be carefully looked at. Buying a stock signals confidence in a companies stock price for the duration you expect to hold the stock. If you make people hold it longer, the signal becomes more meaningful. Finally, market manipulation becomes much less rewarding, since you can only flip your money twice a year (profit from manipulation is % gained each time * capital * number of manipulations), and you can't foment at all really.

Perhaps it would also be helpful to put a 5 (or more) day delay on any sell orders. I would personally be in favor of a 2 year delay or more. Currently, if you get really bad news (like a companies only drug was not approved, making the company worthless) you can sell the stock immediately via a market sell order, and get whatever the highest offer is. This is no different than collecting pre-signed contracts to buy your house, then signing the best one when you see smoke coming out of the windows. The person offering to buy the stock has obviously not had time to adjust their order based on the news, and so you are selling them something they weren't bidding on. If you give buyers time to adjust, selling on a panic would be completely retarded, since you will either lose all value (selling into a market with buyers who have adjusted their offers way down), or the panic will subside and you will get a fine price, but then could have just held it as you were planning before the panic anyway. Discouraging panic selling makes prices more stable (does anyone honestly think that the best estimate of the value of a large company could possibly vary 50% in a few days??) Also, automated trading triggers would be eliminated, which would be great. If a firm can setup computers to sell a stock if it drops 5% in 1 minute, then they are taking much less risk than someone who has to hear news, find a computer, put in login information, etc. However, the firm's buy order signals the same confidence as the careful stock researcher, while in reality they can buy stock with far less confidence since they are taking less risk.

Both of these measures would reduce market volatility, if not effectively eliminate it over short periods. This would mean that corporations could borrow money on much better terms, since their stock prices would be more stable, meaning that stock is better collateral. It would also mean shareholders would insist on things like dividends and long term profitability and planning, since they are going to be holding the bags if things aren't good in the long term.

<comment><USER11> I'm against flash trading but 6 months (or even 6 days) is throwing the baby out withthe bathwater. Look, I'm broke - lend me $10/ thanks. OK, I paid my rent and got paid, here's $11, thanks a lot. That's what liquidity is, and it's important - with your suggestion everything would become glacially slow and tiny credit hiccups would become hugely amplified. You should be able to buy when you see an opportunity and sell when you need cash, even if your need of cash is to finance another buy.

The problem with flash trading is that its practitioners are in effect paying the exchanges for the right to join in on a trade after it's been proposed and they can see whether it has profit potential or not. Sure, they are making tiny margins of a fraction of 1%, so they say it's not greedy. Good point. But you can only afford to do that if you've got fat money to participate and to make up for those tiny margins they're putting up big money on every deal that does show profit potential.

I find it hard to believe it's been legal up to now. Every time I study it, I'm reminded of some old movie where a gangster has paid out money for a private telegraph line to get the results of the horse race while the betting is still open at a remote location.

I think the long-term quantities you propose like 6 months and 2 years are absurd, but I agree with your basic premise that too much speed trading undermines the market's price discovery function and evaluates arbitrage over considerations of fundamental value. It would be interesting to model this behavior with an agent-based simulation of a virtual market.

<comment><USER10> Ok, I'm not sure why my post was modded down, it obviously shouldn't have been.

The market _should not_ be liquid. Liquidity is great, but you haven't provided any reason it's better that the market be liquid. Your first example (loaning you money) is credit markets, not stock. And credit markets become looser if stock markets become stricter, since stock is better collateral for loans, so here your example supports my scheme.

Credit hiccups would not go away in my scheme, but day to day sensitivity to credit markets would be reduced if executives were incentivized to look after long term stability of companies instead of quarterly profits. Do you believe Ford or Standard Oil, in their heyday, would have been crippled by being unable to get loans from WallStreet? If a company fails for inability to get a loan, they have been painting themselves into the corner with bad decisions for years.

Finally, why shouldn't the stock market be glacially slow? Stock _prices_ could change just as quickly as they do now, since buy orders could be entered and removed instantly, just as now. The only thing this would prevent is people flipping stock as short term investments, and so stock _would not_ fluctuate as much, since there would be so many less trades overall. Short term investments are always (no exceptions) an attempt to game the system or trade on inside information, and there is certainly no way to profit in the short term except by fomenting, using inside information or trading far quicker than the average investor so you can respond to news more quickly. All of these activities hurt the efficiency of the market, so the market becomes more stable and prices more accurately signal company health than they do currently. When you have a stable market, price ratio's can increase since risk is reduced, and that is good for everyone when it is sustained.

<comment><USER11> IT's true that my first example is a case of credit rather than stock, but I kind of wrote it as a throwaway example of why you'd want to be liquid.

Rather than a loan, suppose that in the case of being broke I instead opted to sell something - a book or a guitar or a car, say. Now, would it be fair for someone to say 'no way, you can't sell that because you haven't owned it long enough?' I do think your heart is in the right place - managing for the long term and so forth - but your 6-month hold is extremely unfair to the individual investor, and would just result in the creation of unregulated off- market exchanges, like pawnshops for stock certificates. I mean suppose I buy IBM but next month they are hit by some financial scandal, I have to sit with my bad investment for another 5 months and watch the price crater as most of the existing shareholders sell?

 _Short term investments are always (no exceptions) an attempt to game the system or trade on inside information_

I don't agree. I can think o a wide variety of reasons for short-term buying, and don't think regulators should be in the business of judging motives. I'm afraid I think this forceful imposition of long-term ownership criteria would only cause the market to become bloated and sclerotic and the cure would be just as bad as, if not worse than, the disease.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Flash Trading = <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_running>

</comment><comment><USER13> Will this leave a bunch of C++ and OCaml programmers unemployed?

</comment><comment><USER14> Wall St has too much political power for the government to stop this. If they can get the Glass-Steagal act repealed, they can squash an inconvenient policy initiative.

</comment><comment><USER15> Maybe it's my programmer's mindset... I never really understood why flash trading is such a problem. If I buy a stock, and you buy a stock the next hour, is it a problem? What if I buy half an hour before you? A minute? A second? A us? Where do you draw the line? Why would you draw the line?

To me, it seems like a scrub argument. Note the usage of 'cheating' and 'fair' in this thread and article.

> Critics say flash orders favor sophisticated, fast-moving traders at the > expense of slower market participants.

Why shouldn't someone who moves fast have an advantage?</comment>


PhoenixFS - a versioning filesystem inspired by Git - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/artagnon/phoenixfs

<comment><USER2> Can you please give some examples where this would be useful, and how it can be used?

Does it mean you can just 'mount' a git repository, instead of working with commands? Or is git just used as an incremental backup system?

<comment><USER3> Any normal directory can be mounted with the PhoenixFS filesystem driver. It essentially traps all the normal filesystem calls like readdir, opendir, read, and release to transparently keep revision history for every file. Since all the calls are finally passed through to the underlying filesystem, the end- user needs to do nothing extra to use it. The final result is that a `.git` directory is created on the underlying filesystem with all this information.

Motivation and target audience: End users who don't want to bother with versioning their files, but still want transparent backups of everything they edit. Flashbake is a project that takes a stab at solving this issue, but every solution that doesn't work at the filesystem level will have to rely on "polling for changes", which is rather inelegant.

How PhoenixFS works: No, it doesn't use Git at all. This is because it aims to be much faster than Git at the cost of advanced functionality. It has an in- memory B+ tree that's updated everytime the directory tree changes. It's a true content tracker like Git: the tree only references SHA1 hashes. There are three pieces of information in the `.git` directory from which the entire filesystem can be rebuilt: the B+ tree persisted in a file, a packfile containing deltified historical content, and a packfile index for looking up a certain SHA1 in the packfile.</comment></comment>


Steve Wozniak speaks out against NSA spying: this is not my America - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130617/11133123507/steve-wozniak-speaks-out-against-nsa-spying-this-is-not-my-america.shtml <comment><USER2> Looks like some people are flagging this. It just dropped from 1st place to 10th, even though it has 72 points in 40 minutes.

To those who think the NSA stories shouldn't be brought back up towards the top of HN until this mess is sorted (for months if it needs to be), for those who think the future of our world is not more important than some change of license on MySQL documentation, I hope you lose your flag privileges, you traitors.

If we can't focus on an important story for a few months, we deserve all the crap we're gonna get.

<comment><USER3> Usually I'm one of the first to complain about such things, I don't like it when HN gets too political. But this is too important of a discussion to ignore. We can still talk about the latest JS framework or NoSQL engine and some quirky startup and still dedicate some mindshare something that threatens it all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> At a fundamental level the questions we have to answer are:

      What does it mean to be free?

      What is the proper role of government in that context?

      What do we allow government to do in that context?  What are their limits?

This, in a way, is what I feel is lost.

As a simple example: Why is it that a total stranger (TSA) can touch every part of your body and even have you strip searched just because you are travelling? Why is it that I, as a parent, can't tell that person to keep his/her hands off my little girl? What happened to the presumption of innocence?

At any US airport you are presumed guilty and have to demonstrate your innocence by being subject to search and seizure (swiss army knives, shampoo, etc. taken away --your property).

This TSA problem is an analog of the surveiilance problem. The vast majority of the people logging 1.6 billion person-trips per year [1] are not terrorists. Yet, 100% of them are presumed guilty and subject to search and seizure. And we allow it.

Now we have a situation where 100% of Americans are presumed to be potential terrorists in the future [2]. Based on that We now justify logging and tracking your every move and every communication.

Steve Wozniac is right, this is what we were told others did to their population, not us. We were above that, better than that. Right.

[1] [http://www.ustravel.org/sites/default/files/page/2009/11/US_...](http://www.ustravel.org/sites/default/files/page/2009/11/US_Travel_Answer_Sheet_March_2013.pdf)

[2] Senator Dianne Feinstein explained that we need this data in case someone becomes a terrorist in the future

</comment><comment><USER5> He makes some solid points. To return to the America he remembers, we need to repeal the Patriot Act.

</comment><comment><USER6> There is a technology solution to the crisis of trust caused by the NSA revelations: Internet services could start offering secure email and communications.

Yet not a peep about that.

<comment><USER7> It would be much better to not trust Internet services with your security, because you'd still have to trust them.

A better solution would be to add your own encryption on top of all of your communications, and to toss out your cell phone. Patterns can still be created by what websites your IP visits (or any VPN exit that is linked to you), who you contact, and where you go. Deploying a relatively secure communications system ends up with you talking to a few people "securely", but not anonymously.

It also depends on how much you trust your OS (Microsoft has been working with the NSA since 2007, in what ways, we may never know).

<comment><USER6> Google or any other online service could gain a lot of trust by offering open source clients that enable encryption by default and easy to use ephemeral-key systems for real time communication and PKI for email and documents in their cloud.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I want to hear Steve Wozniak on a podcast or tv show, he is such a smart dude.

</comment><comment><USER9> He's one of the gentlest people I know. If Woz is up in arms, something is really going on.

</comment><comment><USER10> My stomach churns at many of the outrageous over reaches of the US Government: secret kill lists; secret criteria to get on secret kill lists; indefinite detention without due process; warrantless wiretapping; warrantless collection of all electronic communication; illegal wars (perhaps the most debatable, but I would go toe to toe with anyone in a real discussion on this vis-a-vis the UN Charter)

I agree it is our duty to speak up, be heard and demand better of our government; however, my stomach churns equally at the notion of people thinking they grew up in a country so much different than it is today. It does not matter how far you go back there have always been these kinds of governmental abuses: the genocide of Native Americans; slavery; indefinite detention of Japanese in internment camps; apartheid (separate but equal/Jim Crow Laws); covert wars (support the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet war in Afghanistan; Nicaraguan contras; installing the Cuban Batista regime; installing Saddam and the Ba'ath party); illegal wars: Vietnam (again debatable); war time atrocities (May Lai Massacre); torture (during Vietnam US military had interrogation handbooks that directed stipping POW's naked in the forest and covering their orifices with honey and allowing flys and bugs to swarm); Watergate (manipulated elections); CIA infiltrating organizations such as the ACLU.

We can not blindly look at our current state of affairs and yearn to be what we once were, because we were never anything different, it is far more important to look toward history and not allow the same mistakes to continually be repeated. I think one of the most important things to take away from Wozniak's words is how the dialogue has changed and we will not blindly fall in line to the tune of patriotic propaganda but ordinary citizenry will stand up and be the true check on the government that was always intended. When I look at the US Constitution I see two things, rights and powers, and I must say I feel a lot more comfortable when the balance is greatly in favor of rights over powers. Allow me to end with one of my favorite political quotes, "Every generation needs a new revolution." Thomas Jefferson (Note, I believe revolutions can be accomplished through non-violent means)

<comment><USER11> > however, my stomach churns equally at the notion of people thinking they > grew up in a country so much different than it is today. It does not matter > how far you go back there have always been these kinds of governmental > abuses

I think you get it wrong. Because even if they were abuses before, they were clearly illegal and you could make a case against them. Now, they enact laws to make constitutional rights null and void. It's way worse because it opens up the Pandora box on all new kind of abuses with no way for the Law to protect yourself.

<comment><USER10> >Because even if they were abuses before, they were clearly illegal

Not the case. Some of the examples I give were in fact codified into law. Examples: slavery; Jim Crow Laws; Vietnam.

Try telling those people affected by separate but equal, that we have it so much worse today, because they could make a case, and that they had law protecting them. Long before Brown v. Board and Brown v. Board II the Supreme Court heard cases on separate but equal/Jim Crow laws and found them constitutional.

You are correct that some of my examples were not codified into law, but we have those examples today such as the IRS having directives to target certain groups for additional scrutiny, it does not make it any better that such behavior is a directive only and not codified into law. I believe there is no answer that fits every situation, but in theory at least there is a mechanism to challenge Unconstitutional laws, but good luck challenging a secret directive that violates Constitutional rights.</comment></comment></comment>


An award-winning LCD with an Arduino built-in (using only 2 pins) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.arduino.cc/2014/01/30/an-award-winning-lcd/ <comment><USER2> I know people are saying this is a bit steeply prices, but I think this is perfect. I've been looking at the various options and they typically all require three components- the touchscreen/lcd itself, a controller board of some sort, and then the Arduino itself. Then you have to actually put it all together, and as people have mentioned you end up with a lot more than two pins being used.

This one at Adafruit costs $40, uses five or six pins, is smaller and doesn't have the Arduino built in.

<comment><USER3> It's a nice project. I've purchased stuff from EarthLCD before and they're a good group. Those complaining about the price probably have never tried tooling their own kapton/copper flex circuit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> On a side note, I like how the product is presented by two young girls. Is this intended for educational purposes?

<comment><USER5> I can't tell whether you're being a feminazi or just a creep. Either way, stop it.

<comment><USER6> (S)He is pointing out that the presentation is done by two people who are usually not associated with technology and development (they are young and female) as a positive example.

He then posits that this is to show the educational possibilities.

Any negative connotations are coming from your mind, not theirs.

<comment><USER7> Agreed, it's clearly scripted but when she moves onto presenting the project you can tell she actually built it or has the understanding of a maker

I love that the target audience is advertising the product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > 320 x 240 Resolution

Aside from the fact that's for an arduino, which probably mean very low power available, does anybody knows why all those hobbyist LCD are so low in term of resolution?

It seem impossible to find something higher than VGA on mouser or even Alibaba, much less a reasonably priced HD screen. Where are all those glorious smartphone screen?

(I'm talking about small screen, but even larger one are not that much better)

<comment><USER9> Well, you'll find the glorious smartphone screens are sold as replacement screens for smartphones.

But of course, smartphones tend to have an LCD controller on the SoC, so you just get a raw LCD parallel interface. That means the LCD has a tiny connector with dozens of wires. Hobbyists are often enough scared of soldering SMD parts, they won't try to solder that .4mm pitch connector.

Then you realise that even for 800x600 @ 60Hz you need a pixel clock of around 36 MHz, so you probably need a hardware controller, you can't really get away with DMA and/or bit banging. Since you have an external controller, you can't do any of the memory efficient drawing like Nintendo NES or sifteo[0], so you'll need external buffer memory, probably at least 2 MB to fit two (16 bit colour) frames for double buffering.

As the resolution grows, pixel clock frequency and memory size requirements grow quite quickly. Soon enough you get limited by the bandwidth between your MCU and controller, by limitations of parallel interfaces and have to switch to LVDS and so on.

Most of these issues become much less relevant if a (even small) company wants to design, manufacture and sell something like this. But I'm not sure there's a demand. For most projects a small screen (with a controller chip and available for cheap because it was designed and manufactured at scale for older phones) works well enough (and you can get away with using a wimpy 8 bit MCU). If you need a larger screen, it's probably cheaper to get a low cost single board computer and a computer monitor. Economies of scale and all that.

[0] [https://www.adafruit.com/blog/2012/12/05/how-we-built-a- supe...](https://www.adafruit.com/blog/2012/12/05/how-we-built-a-super- nintendo-out-of-a-wireless-keyboard-sifteo-sifteo)

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the explanation.

That's something I wondered, taking a smartphone screen, but it seem pretty daunting, indeed. Such a shame in a way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It looks cool, but the price is a bit steep. You can get a touchscreen LCD from Adafruit at $39.95 ([http://www.adafruit.com/products/1651](http://www.adafruit.com/products/1651)). You still need to buy an Arduino, but they're cheaper than $45,-. I've bought Chinese Uno V2's for less than $15 a piece.

<comment><USER11> The advantage of their integrated LCD and Arduino is that it would only use 2 pins instead of the 6-7 that would be occupied by the shield you linked. This would allow you to connect other shields and have more room for add-ons. I agree that $89 is steep though, hopefully that price can come down as more are made.

<comment><USER12> I don't understand how this board only "uses 2 pins". The schematic shows the ezLCD component still uses 7 pins for I/O. Using the SPI bus requires 4 pins and the other 3 are presumably for the touchscreen sensing. The board still has the full Uno footprint, so you could connect other stuff to those pins at the same time, but you couldn't do anything with them while driving the LCD.

<comment><USER13> Dallas 1-wire? Haven't looked at the schematic or anything else, but that's an example of an interface that just requires 2 connections - signal and ground.

<comment><USER12> That's not what this uses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Okay, how do they run that color picker sketch with only 2 KB of RAM available on the Uno? I tried to do some _string parsing_ and it failed at 200 byte-long strings due to lack of memory, how can they show an entire picture composed of thousands of pixels?

<comment><USER15> Could be a more powerful ARM Cortex, rather than the insanely out-dated Atmel chips. If anyone ever makes a 5V ARM processor Atmel will be finished.

Also I'm going to rant about Arduino for a bit: Yes it's very simple and easy to get started with, but their API documentation is bad, and the IDE is objectively and irreparably _awful_ and has not really improved since it was first released. Making things even worse they don't provide a decent way to integrate it into other IDEs because lots of the build logic is tied up in the IDE.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm all for supporting small business that create hardware, especially open source (heck, I'm working on some stuff myself), but they must make an effort to make their products affordable. I can buy a 3.2" touchscreen LCD for $12 in single quantities[0], shipped locally in the UK. The BOM for an Arduino is somewhere around $10 in single quantities. Their selling point about only using 2 pins? Yeah, shift registers or i2c I/O expanders are _so_ fancy...

[0] [http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3-2-TFT-LCD-Display-Module- Touch-P...](http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3-2-TFT-LCD-Display-Module-Touch-Panel- Screen-PCB- Adapter-240-x-320-Pixels-/331106884444?pt=UK_BOI_Electrical_Components_Supplies_ET&hash=item4d17821b5c)

</comment><comment><USER16> Does anyone have any idea of what it will cost? I can't wait to get my hands on one of these.

<comment><USER17> It's a bit steep at $89.

[http://earthmake.com/product/arlcd/](http://earthmake.com/product/arlcd/)</comment></comment>