Things Highly Productive People Do - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/ilya-pozin/7-things-highly-productive-people-do.html

<comment><USER2> Though not applicable to every job situation out there, I found the biggest leap in productivity for me was to crate a rule of "write down 3-5 things you must do _today_. When those are complete, you are done working for the day".

I find myself completing the tasks around lunch, and aggregately accomplish 2-3x more than when I had fuzzy goals. Procrastination is limited, knowing I can (go to gym/eat with kids/play golf) when the work is complete.

<comment><USER3> This is exactly the philosophy behind LazyMeter. We help people focus on one day at a time and feel accomplished. It's all about working towards a clear goal. <http://www.lazymeter.com>

We automatically build your daily to-do list, and we provide the only workflow that lets you clear out your to-do list everyday. We also show you your progress add up. It's very satisfying.

I was a chronic procrastinator before co-founding LazyMeter. Now, I get more done in less time, and enjoy my evenings without worrying I've forgotten something. We have over 12,000 users so far.

<comment><USER4> This looks like a bare-bones version of GTD. Which may be better than the more complicated versions e.g. doit.im.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My take on these. I'm curious what others think.

1\. Work backwards from goals to milestones to tasks. I have no idea why more people don't do this.

2\. Stop multi-tasking. No, seriously—stop. See my response to #1

3\. Be militant about eliminating distractions. I'm not militant enough. Hence this post.

4\. Schedule your email. I need to try that. Setting a filter to only alert when my boss emails me has helped in the past. Other emails get answered between 60-90 minute tasks.

5\. Use the phone. I despise the phone. Email conversations provide a written record of the exchange and allow me to cut/paste responses if it's something for work (like a URL or code snippet). That said, I will force myself to pick up the handset.

6\. Work on your own agenda. My new job and situation allow for a lot more of this. It's life changing.

7\. Work in 60 to 90 minute intervals. I do try to do this. It works very well, although I usually don't make it to 90 minutes, just 60 minutes of just coding goes a long way. Do that a few times in a day (with meetings and such filling the balance of the day) and you're getting somewhere.

<comment><USER6>
      > 5. Use the phone. I despise the phone. Email conversations provide
      > a written record of the exchange and allow me to cut/paste responses
      > if it's something for work (like a URL or code snippet). That said,
      > I will force myself to pick up the handset.

My problem with e-mail, texting, and all other asynchronous means of communication, is that they encourage multitasking. If I'm discussing something on an asynchronous medium I'm always tempted to poll on the discussion while doing something else. When something gets important enough I usually try to force myself and the other party into a synchronous medium of communication, or if I can't, try to completely ignore the issue until all people involved have enough time to proactively solve it.

That being said, sometimes the written record really helps, or the other party involved in a discussion or planing of something can't cope with their own anxiety, and the whole planning of something e-mails into hell... but well, I try hard enough to avoid it.

<comment><USER7> I have sort of the opposite view: asynchronous modes of communication promote single-tasking by letting me batch up replies at my convenience (I can spend an hour answering 7 different people), whereas synchronous modes of communication promote multitasking/fragmentation by making it hard to batch them (and in the worst case, ringing RIGHT NOW demanding I interrupt what I'm doing and answer).

<comment><USER6> It's not the opposite view if those 7 people are sort of like the same task. Then you are not multitasking.

Normally stuff I discuss on e-mail has nothing to do with what I have to code, that at the same time has nothing to do with what I get text messages about, and even that has no point of comparison to what I get talked on IM about. Maybe my whole life is hell... but I hope i'm getting my point through.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Former support tech here. Phone calls are not getting things done. Phone calls are usually telling someone else to do something. Information passed on phone calls is mostly lost as soon as the other side hangs up. I've had many 30-45 minute time wasters with clients when they called instead of thinking about what thy were trying to say and replying to their ticket. The phone kills the productivity of two or more people at once, so it's as bad as a meeting. Stop calling people and start finishing stuff.

<comment><USER9> Not exactly sure where I got this from, but I once read: "Call me - it's simpler" translates to you wanting to do your thinking inside my ear instead of your head.

That being said, from my own experience, the only thing that phone calls get done like no other medium (apart from a direct conversation, of course) is build interpersonal trust. It can further be a good way to diffuse tension right away because instead of having a customer write pages of mounting tension, they get a reaction immediately and that alone is usually enough to make the first steps towards reconciliation.

<comment><USER10> I've found that phone calls are good when people ignore or are bad at reading email (miss questions, fail to respond/read, don't read it completely, etc). For people who are good at email, phone calls are good (or the same as IM) when you need an in-depth back and forth conversation, for example, discussing some software bug.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sadly, it's ironic to get advice which reads "AVOID DISTRACTIONS!" while participating in HN, the biggest distraction I have.

<comment><USER5> PG has an interesting approach to this: <http://www.paulgraham.com/distraction.html>

There's also the "noprocrast" setting in your HN profile which won't let you use for more than a certain amount of time.

I haven't implemented either approach. I've found that plugging in my headphones and listening to music or even spoken word gets me into one of those 60-90 minute zones of one-task productivity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is why I'm such a big fan of the pomodoro technique: the majority of these 7 things are taken care of automatically.

1\. Tasks are already broken down into manageable chunks

2\. There is no multi-tasking during your pomodoro

3\. No distractions either

4\. Ok, so I actually check email at the end of every pomodoro and not 2-3 times a day, but close enough

5\. This is the one that is not really handled by the pomodoro technique

6\. I plan out all my pomodoros at the start of each day

7\. I get up and walk around for a few minutes at the end of every pomodoro

<comment><USER13> OTOH, if one had the willpower to follow with the Pomodoro strictly, he wouldn't need it...

<comment><USER14> I think one of the best things about using pomodoros is that they're fairly short. It isnt THAT bad to have to restart one, if you get distracted. I find it more motivating; you always have a short-term goal to work towards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> >When you multitask, it drops by an average of 10 points, 15 for men, five for women (yes, men are three times as bad at multitasking than women).

I would like to see a citation on this.

<comment><USER16> Women who occasionally paid attention at math would like to point out that assuming an average IQ (100), that means it drops 15% for men, 10% for women. The OP would be better of reading that as men being 50% worse than women, not 3 times.

If there's _any_ merit to it at all. As you said, [citation needed].

<comment><USER17> Should we be deriving the percentages from the IQ points that are _left_?

e.g. 100 IQ becomes 90 for women and 85 for men, so men are 100 -85/90*100 less good than women as a result of multitasking?

<comment><USER16> That would measure the overall usefulness of men[^1], not the capacity for multitasking, no?

[^1]: Yes, I giggled ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Work on your own agenda."

This is the only point that matters, though the explanation after is idiotic and should be ignored. But just by following this list, or even this one point, you won't become highly productive. Perhaps more productive, as its a drive inside you that makes a person highly productive. That can't be taught, it has to be unleashed by a passion and a dream (which this list misses).

I was business assistant (at VP level) to a Very Highly Productive Person who worked on what he wanted, when he wanted, much to his staff's detriment. Which was likely the point, he was more than able to afford staff and could delegate what he didn't want to do to us. His focus was on doing what was best for himself and privately owned his company.

The compulsion for achieving goals, be they deals, launching a new product or company, can have significant impact if there isn't a good work-life balance, and as his staff, we had to force him, and his wife, to take breaks to avoid burn out. This is often a hidden problem that can manifest other issues and bring the downfall or public embarrassment of highly productive people.

<comment><USER19> Get your agenda right and the rest will fall into place, you wont have to work at being productive

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Another good one is sleep. Optimally, you'll go to sleep at the same time every day and wake up without an alarm. You might lose some waking hours, but you'll more than make up for it in the productivity.

<comment><USER21> Absolutely. I used to think I had a problem waking up on time. Instead, it was a problem with going to sleep early enough. Now that I've sorted it out, a regular sleep schedule has been fantastic for me.

One thing that has really helped has been taking seriously the influence light has on my biological clock. Dim evening light, bright morning light, and extra effort to get plenty of sunlight in the winter. And for coding, I really like f.lux, which changes the color temperature of my screen in time with outdoor light:

<http://stereopsis.com/flux/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Re: No. 5: I know some people hate taking on the phone, but when you are working remotely and are trying to work through a problem with someone, there's no substitute (at least for me) to getting on the phone (or voice chat via Skype, etc.) and talking through the things you're trying to figure out. IM works to a degree, and email is better for larger exchanges that you'll need to reference back to, but for brainstorming and group problem-solving, I still feel like an actual spoken conversation is still the most effective way to go.

</comment><comment><USER23> I have found this list more valuable:

[http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/02/nine_things_successful_peopl...](http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/02/nine_things_successful_people.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> The thing that's always missing from these articles is the definition of productivity. Is it doing more? Is it working more hours?

What most people don't realize is that productivity is not about how much you do - it's about how you feel at the end of the day. Don't forget why you're working in the first place. Effective productivity is simply doing what needs to be done, one day at a time. The key is turning your overwhelming to-do list into an actionable today list - so you're working towards an achievable goal each day. When you're working towards an end point, you'll get things done much more quickly, and you'll have no reason to procrastinate.

Productivity doesn't need to be stressful or overwhelming; it can actually be very fulfilling if you look at it the right way. Stop focusing on "work" and focus on progress instead.

</comment><comment> steve-howard "if you're required to get eight hours of work done each day, plan to be there for 9.5-10 hours."

No. If this is actually effective nobody will expect you to be there longer than 8 hours. Either way, there are more important things in the world than being productive.

</comment><comment><USER24> #1 Don't read articles like this.

I must be on the way to being cured I didn't even click this one, now if I can just wean off hacker news and reddit I might be half way to becoming highly productive.

</comment><comment><USER25> What I've found for myself is that there's a certain part of my mind that just needs constant distraction, and if I can somehow _parallelize_ that distraction with the continual work that the rest of my brain is capable of, I'd be in good shape.

That's where music and podcasts come in. One steady IV drip of distraction to placate the rebels while the rest of my brain gets down to business and stays there.

</comment><comment><USER26> Read articles on productivity? Is that one of them?

<comment><USER27> I read two so far and have only managed to write this comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Number 7 is a favorite of mine.

Sometimes you just need a nice long walk to clear your mind and reset your focus on the task at hand.

</comment><comment><USER29> 8\. drink caffeine

</comment><comment><USER30> This is such fluff, guys. These things have been vomited up by writers with nothing to say for forever.

Basically, stop getting distracted. Multitasking is impossible. Okay, we get it.

The real question should be "why is this same old, same old advice not working despite being common knowledge"? I know not to do this stuff. I try to follow the rules. I end up screwing up eventually. How come? Is there a way to cut that out? What we really need is an advice article about how to make sure we stick to the advice of other advice articles.

I'm not trying to be sarcastic so please don't take it that way. I'm really just so frustrated with the same old advice that just doesn't add anything new or special. It's easy to tell me not to get distracted and offer up a few half-hearted ways to follow through but what about pointing us to the root of the problem. I think this generic advice is best left for the trash. What we really need is something each of us will have to work out on our own.

<comment><USER3> Being in the productivity space, I read many articles like this each day, and you're right - it's the same advice.

With LazyMeter, we sought to build not just a new philosophy, but also a tool that helps you adopt it. Our goal is to motivate you by making your to-do list achievable and showing you how much you've done. We also show you how much you procrastinate - it's amazing how powerful a little awareness can be. Would love to hear what you think. <http://www.LazyMeter.com>

<comment><USER30> Haha that shameless plug almost sounded natural. In all seriousness though, I get what you're saying and I actually _have_ used LazyMeter! I think I even sent you guys an email on what I thought about it (I promise I didn't say anything mean). I stopped using it. It's a great idea but it only works if you work it. I haven't checked it out lately but back then the lack of a mobile app was a real barrier to usage. Without one you limit people to only checking up on themselves when they're at work or basically stationary. That's just not enough. But I hate to criticize so much without letting you know it's a cool app and I think it's really cool how you built it in AWS

<comment><USER3> Sorry for the plug, I won't make that mistake again. I did think/hope it would be relevant to the writer. Thanks for trying LazyMeter and for the feedback; we have a lot more planned, including native apps.

<comment><USER31> I think the problem was not in what you said, but the way you said it. Rather than slipping in a plug at the end of your post, I've noticed that posts with the style of "I agree this is a problem, here's a company/project I've founded to do something about it" are generally well-received.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Garbage Collection Optimization for High-Throughput and Low-Latency Java Apps - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.linkedin.com/garbage-collection/garbage-collection-optimization-high-throughput-and-low-latency-java-applications

<comment><USER2> JVM tuning is very touchy and perfectly specific to the application. Why not let the computer figure it out for itself?

"Groningen is a framework to run automated experiments on servers that run on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) such that the most optimal JVM settings outcome can be reached with the least amount of human effort and time while maximizing safety."

[https://code.google.com/p/groningen/](https://code.google.com/p/groningen/)

<comment><USER3> I went thru the code and some of the info on GitHub (1) and it is still not clear to me how it tests all the different JVM settings for a specific application.

(1) [https://github.com/sladeware/groningen](https://github.com/sladeware/groningen)

<comment><USER3> Just found some more details on [https://github.com/sladeware/groningen/wiki/Design](https://github.com/sladeware/groningen/wiki/Design) that explain it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Having spent a fair bit of time optimizing JVM GC, I understand that there is a bit of dark magic to it. That said, with a little bit of work you can typically find the right configurations for most use cases.

This is due to a wide variety of GC options and a long history of iterating on best practices. I'm curious how well newer languages that focus on performance but offer GC (Go, Rust, etc) have dealt with this. Is it a case where they have just jumped to some "best of breed" GC configuration set? Or do programmers in these languages just get left without all the lessons learned on the JVM.

I'm honestly curious, what is the state of the world in non-JVM languages and GC optimization?

<comment><USER5> In Rust, garbage collection is just a library type (akin to the Boehm GC for C++). And because the language expects to get by 99.9% of the time without any GC at all, other facets of the language design will necessarily restrict the strategies of GC that can be supported. For example, Rust allows you to store pointers directly into data structures, which means that a moving GC would need to be able to know about all references to any data that has been moved and update all pointers in memory appropriately. Rust isn't a language that's willing to pay that sort of dynamic bookkeeping cost, so the GC in Rust's stdlib will probably never be moving or compacting.

Disclaimer: not a GC expert!

<comment><USER6> There is scope for moving/compacting GC, as long as creating a reference from a GC pointer is registered and pins a GC allocation in place until the reference disappears (i.e. it will theoretically only be a cost with GC pointers, not anything else).

Also it's worth noting that Rust does not have a GC yet, and I don't believe anyone has really got in there and iterated on possibilities yet. (Graydon, Felix (pnkfelix) and I have all done some experimentation with it, but all proof-of-concept/very basic, not really bullet-proof/production-ready things.)</comment></comment></comment>


Sony Digital Paper DPT-RP1 - <AUTHOR> https://www.sony.com/electronics/digital-paper-notepads/dpt-rp1 <comment><USER2> I would really like this if I felt that the software could be trusted to work well. I'd only buy this from a company with a good record of creating usable interfaces.

For instance, when I clicked on the "Where to Buy" button it took me to a screen that did not list places to buy this. Nor did it ask me for information about where I live. I had to click a link called "Where to Buy" on the "Where to Buy" page.

</comment><comment><USER3> The only thing that kept me from going to Kindle e-Ink was that I could not use it as a note taking gadget which I want badly. But then the price at $700 of this digital paper seems a little steep.

</comment><comment><USER4> Without a non-pre-rendered demo video actually demonstrating how it works (and to a lesser extent, without color), it seems like a pretty steep price point for paper.

</comment><comment><USER5> The price-point is what really has me excited. Their last e-paper reader / annotation tablet was nearly $1000!</comment>


FCC Screws with Its Complaint Process–and You'll Still Need to Pay $225[Updated] - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/fcc-ditches-plan-to-screw-with-its-complaint-process-bu-1827538871 <comment><USER2> Maybe we need a 3rd party hosted solution that is public and transparent with semi anonymous posting. Maybe with a pgp proof of authorship.</comment>


Destroy All Software. Screencasts for Serious Developers - <AUTHOR> https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts

<comment><USER2> Serious developers do Not like to 'sign up' with an email/password form -- offer something else please.</comment>


Windows 10 1803 Update Failure - <AUTHOR> http://sdbr.net/windows-10-update-failure/ <comment><USER2> I'm running two machines (a recent laptop and an older desktop with Windows 10). I've wiped both drives and did a fresh install of a recent Windows 10 vom USB Stick.

I haven't had any problems updating and even big updates are fast. This is in contrast to a Dell laptop I got for work and which regularily took 45min to update.

If you have problems with your Windows 10, get rid of the crapware that came with your PC and/or do a fresh install from a clean image from MS (not one of the OEM rescue partitions/disks).

I with MS would do something about all the preinstalled crapware, because it has gotten out of hand and is hurting the brand.

<comment><AUTHOR> Best I can tell the Dell image for XPS 9550 is just Windows 10 with minimal drivers. I think I'll try the fresh Microsoft Windows route, but I want to mirror the drive first, because I don't want to install windows all over again and set up all my apps if it doesn't work. What's a good alternative to something like Carbon Copy Cloner for Windows? I used to use Ghost, but that was a decade ago.

<comment><USER3> Live boot linux and use dd

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll give that a shot, that should work, theoretically. I don't really know all the ins and outs of the new secure boot stuff on windows, would have to read up on that. But theoretically that should work.

<comment><USER3> ubuntu works fine with secure boot

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've had a lot of issues with Windows update myself but the author's solution of "Murdering Windows Update" is not my cup of tea. I like my software patched.

So while I don't have a good solution for Windows Update issues, re-installs are a LOT less painful with choco[0]. I have one choco script for my home machine, one for work, one for the wife, and one for the parents. It makes things so much easier!

Edit: I am not affiliated with Choco in any way

[0]: [https://chocolatey.org/](https://chocolatey.org/)

<comment><USER5> I gave up on chocolatey after constant issues with permissions and never being sure which package to install for a particular app. Not sure if it has improved recently but it seemed like every app had multiple packages to choose from, and some features were only available in a paid plan.

<comment><USER6> Try scoop.sh

I've had much better luck with it than Choco.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Windows 10 puts Microsoft's needs ahead of the users.

There is no easy way to avoid updates interrupting your work, always when you need to use your PC for an urgent work issue.

The home screen adverts, and preinstalled junkware are insulting.

It is impossible to interact with the OS for more than a few minutes without finding another bug you have never seen before.

On Friday I was using a test laptop. The start menu stopped working, so I do a restart, but Windows decides to do an update (ignoring the configured "don't update between 8am and 6pm" setting).

I can't believe they don't have a professional version with a yearly subscription. I want my tools to work, not interrupt me, or fail randomly.

<comment><USER8> > Windows 10 puts Microsoft's needs ahead of the users.

So _stop using Windows_.

It's really that simple. Until people stop buying Windows, this will never change.

<comment><USER9> > It's really that simple. Until people stop buying Windows, this will never > change

As simple as halting climate collapse by 'people' greatly reducing their car & electricity usage. Then lets stop war by 'people' refusing to fight or manufacture arms.

Much would be simple if there existed a decision-making unit we could label 'people'.

<comment><USER8> The Microsoft is doing _exactly_ what they should be doing--extracting money from people who will simply refuse to move.

Look, I do a lot of embedded work. And that's about as Windows-y as it gets with drivers and tools. And, yes, I have more than a few virtual machines with Windows.

However, I can minimize the amount I use Windows outside that arena. Linux with a Windows VM when you absolutely need it is a solid choice. OS X with a Windows VM when you absolutely need it is also a solid choice.

Funny you should mention climate change. Cutting down on your "Windows footprint" is like cutting down on your "carbon footprint". 100% is never achieved in one jump--it is a gradual process. And, quite often, benefits appear much sooner than you expect. (Less Windows means less ransomware exposure, for example)

<comment><USER9> It can be fairly simple for many individual persons to not use Windows, that's hardly in dispute.

But _any_ sentence starting with "X would be easy if people [or 'everyone'] did Y .. ", directly entails "X is difficult".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I may be the only one with zero problems on Windows 10...

Sometimes I think the adjectives to describe some situations are too harsh.

<comment><USER11> I, too, rarely have major issues with Windows. However, I did come across the login issue in the article, which was fixed with a restart. When people shit all over WinOS I'd like to instead give Microsoft credit for creating an OS that works as good as it does on virtually endless amounts of hardware configurations.

<comment><USER12> It's stunning to me that Microsoft can do this but we tolerate excuses from other companies about why they can't guarantee all devices running their OS can get a given software update. Or that each manufacturer's update needs to be released separately.

That being said, as someone who repairs Windows for a living, I've seen a lot of major issues with Windows. They take a two steps forward, one step back approach to everything they do. QA has gone down the toilet of late, but most of the core product is actually better.

<comment><USER13> I've heard a rumor going around that Microsoft has either downsized their QA engineers significantly or laid them off entirely in favor of having devs and sub/misclassified contractors do it instead. I hope I'm wrong, though.

<comment><USER14> You aren't wrong. Someone mentioned this to me Thursday right before my interview at MS. During my interview, testing came up so I asked about it. I was told there are no more QA engineers. Developers will now be handling testing/QA themselves.

<comment><USER13> So the same guy that wrote the code is also testing it? Or are they having other team members test each other's code?

Either way, I'm not surprised the quality is going down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I actually try to avoid to boot on Windows 10 on my dual boot computer (kubuntu 18.04 + windows 10) because the fucking updates of windows.

I got stuck with falling updates like 5 months . Every time that windows try to update, I lose like 2 hours. And only to see Windows failing to update and reverting it. And another issue is that Windows really hits hard my hard disk along like half hour, every time that I boots on Windows. I don't understand why does it. It's a shot experience, specially compar d against my Linux experience on the same computer, where everything just works out of the box, and I don't need to lost like half hour seeing how my hard drive is being smashed by the OS.

So this article really it's helpful for me.

<comment><USER16> Reinstall Windows 10 from a USB stick (MS provide a tool to create them). You will jump straight to the latest build with no updates at all.

However I will agree, I dual boot Windows 10 and Ubuntu anad I know I will have to suffer updates if I boot Windows. On the other hand I am not too happy with Ubuntu's updates right now...

<comment><USER15> I control when I update my Kubuntu installation. And GNU/Linux updates are far less intrusive that Windows updates. Not enforces you to reboot the machine to apply it, and you can work at same time that you updates.

PD: This kind of fix, remember me to the times of Windows 95/98 when a full reinstall of Windows every few months was a good practice to keep the computer working nice. I don't have to do this on a Windows 7/8 or on a GNU/Linux. Why I need to do to this on Windows 10 ?

<comment><USER16> I get the idea that at some point in the Windows 10 project they made a kind of breaking change, which when compared to Kubuntu is more like moving to a new release than just a set of patches. There seems to be some cruft attached to that that the fresh install solves. I genuinely think it is a one time thing.

My last Ubuntu distro upgrade caused the sound to stop working, a problem with graphics drivers and an issue with window management. I am no MS fan, but everyone can get caught up in update problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Windows Update is in need of a massive overhaul, but these 'feature updates' are actually an entire new OS that gets installed.

While it normally works great, when it doesn't, it's very difficult to fix in most cases, as seen here.

<comment><USER18> There is one weird trick to solve at least 20% of the angst again Windows update.

> It forces them on you, sometimes in the most inopportune time.

Let users reboot when they want. I don't care if you show a bright red bar warning people to restart but goodness gracious don't reboot computers without positive consent!

Yes, there are more difficult problems like reducing the number of things that require a reboot to update (without sacrificing backward compatibility) but not rebooting the computer without consent is such an easy thing to do. Just be upfront and tell people to leave their computer connected to a power source and ask them to press a button when they're ready.

<comment><USER19> Agreed 100%. Always prompt before rebooting a logged in user or updating a freshly started machine. It boggles my mind that Microsoft can't figure out how to use better UX to solve their update problem.

Start with notifications and offering to schedule an update. Don't reboot automatically with an active user when the scheduled time rolls around. Display a prompt and allow the user options to schedule another reminder.

After a couple weeks (security updates only) add a "warning bar" along the top or side of the screen. Nothing drastic. Just visible enough to be a constant reminder to update. Eventually, replace the desktop background with a visible warning.

<comment><USER16> Maybe because they are focused on enterprise users, who get forced silent updates from their admin? Maybe the UX for home users is an afterthought?

<comment><USER13> Assuming home users are still buying PCs from Best Buy and the like, they really can't buy a non-Windows PC (not including Macs unless someone makes another Pystar). MS has a monopoly there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I thought 17.09 allowed you to defer feature updates for 1 year. It's an advanced setting under the update manager. No fiddling around needed.

Is that not available on Home editions?

<comment><USER21> Doesnt look like it is (I'm on W10 Home 1709).

I managed to defer my update to 1709 by like... 5 months by hitting 'later' on the nag screen though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The author openly admits to jailbreaking their iPhone. These kinds of users tend to install many types of "tweaks" on their computers, and I would bet that this is the cause of the update failure.

<comment><AUTHOR> You would bet and loose. I did do a clean install from a Dell recovery USB image, that's part 2 of the article. Also, I don't "openly admit" to jailbreaking my iPhone. I nonchalantly mention this :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> 2018 and MS is still heavy. Running Antergos (Arch Linux flavour) with ZFS and not looking back. Rolling updates, speedy. Everything just works.

Luckily forgot about the long hours spend on reinstalling and reinstalling Windows back then.

*Is there any form of compensation from MS for fixing computer after broken update ?

Productivity ? Go for Mac or Linux

<comment><USER24> Frankly they are both super heavy these days, I'd pick mac over windows given the choice but i'd pick linux or a BSD over either of them for the lightweight factor and actually having control of my computer in the most basic way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Microsoft has become very hostile. Recently I have upgraded my PC and that tripped the activation. For some reason I was unable to reactivate (I own full retail licence btw), after wasting time on Google I tried Microsoft support. For a couple of days and a number of consultants trying to force me to give them full access to my machine, asking to upload invoices for the new parts, treating me basically like a thief, they eventually generated me new license key. Now I am scared to upgrade anything in my PC again and then there is that update coming. How on earth it is possible to treat customers like this in 2018? Sadly I use some software that only works on Windows so I have no option, but now I have separate PC only to have those apps and on all other machines I installed Linux. Fuck you Microsoft!

<comment><USER26> Try the phone based activation next time, it's usually a lot more forgiving for activations + they have a free number in most countries

<comment><USER13> Or just buy a gray market key for $10-15 so it's not a big wallet hit if it gets deactivated.

Like always, piracy is an access problem. And I need to be able to access my computer's functions without MS locking me out because I decided to overclock my thermal paste.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I suppose it is worth saying that this is not the same for enterprises as it is for single users. If you run a domain you can completely control your updates from WSUS (or a myriad of third party options). You can test the updates on a subset of users before letting them loose on your whole domain. MS are supporting a _much_ wider range of hardware than Apple have to, and there will always be surprises. I can only think of two major update issues on my domain.

1) Conflict with a driver for an extremely specialized printer

2) A weird update about 4 years ago for W7 which seemed to forget to close the 'Windows is updating' screen. ctrl-al-del resumed normal service!

I believe some of the clunkier updates for Windows 10 (like the forced reboot) are actually part of a patch to improve the silent update feature! Install afresh from a USB as sddfd suggested and you wont have to suffer that patch.

</comment><comment><USER27> My dad, who still uses Windows, sent me this pic of his Windows upgrade trials and tribulations:

[https://i.imgur.com/MwWenDA.png](https://i.imgur.com/MwWenDA.png)

He still hasn't been able to upgrade. I live hundreds of miles away and can't attempt to help him troubleshoot it in person.

<comment><USER28> Windows Updates are simply broken. If you're using windows then there is no way around reinstalling windows regularly. I've had update issues on vista, 7 and 10. I could fix some of them on vista but the time investment has always been higher than simply reinstalling windows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Humorously written, but the situation is no different on OS X these days. I could not update to high Sierra and the new filesystem and after trying, it required a complete os x install which takes about six hours after starting using time machine. The only thing that's better on os x is that Apple finally seems to have stopped trying to push high Sierra on users, after even aggressively downloading it without permission. It's really rather depressing that the state of desktop operating system is thus. That includes all desktop Linux distros I've tried also unless one gets a lucky combination of hardware (aka Linux distros run like shit on Apple hardware if they even run at all).

</comment><comment><USER30> One of my desktops keeps failing to update Windows 10 for 2 years now, the recent v1803 doesn't fix it either. Too ineffective to do a fresh install and just about tried everything out there to fix it. Complete waste of time.

On the other hand the desktop which always worked flawlessly now cannot even get past the initial installation boot screen from a freshly made v1803 DVD/USB (within 5sec of booting) likewise the update from inside Windows itself fails. Waiting to see if MS address this issue before I waste any more time trying to fix it myself.

</comment><comment><USER31> By the way, I've had those top menus that open to left happen when windows installs a touch/ink/stylus input device. There's a control panel setting somewhere for input devices like these, where there's a checkbox (that sometimes magically self-re-enables) for making menus appear to left for the purpose of accomodating on-screen hand-writing for right-handed writers. It's a bit weird that it ends up affecting the menus even when you stricly use a mouse to open them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! That was driving me crazy. It's in the "Other" tab of the "Tablet PC Settings" in Control Panel. One problem solved :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've found that I avoided most of issues other people often encountering by reinstalling OS every few monthes. Usually after big updates. Might not work for everybody, I just like to configure OS from clean state. Works for anything from macOS to Linux.

</comment><comment><USER33> I also had that problem with my password not working after the 1803 update (until I rebooted).

By using the password reveal button, I found out that windows was not letting me enter any digits. I tried both the numpad and the number row.

<comment><USER4> I wonder whether it's the same issue I had, but with both numbers AND letters.

All I could enter were spaces until I rebooted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What I want for Xmas is an OS usable for laptops. Windows? Dealt with by comments here. Mac? Only runs on a limited range of crippled hardware. Linux? Life's too short.

2018 is sad, with no light on the visible horizon.

</comment><comment><USER34> Got my 1803 update installed on a 4.x years old Lenovo g50-45 AMD, low powered machine in an hour.. no issues at all.. machine restarted few times during the installation.. and it was done..

</comment><comment><USER35> I've update my VirtualBox VM from Windows 7 to Win10 1703 then 1709 and 1803 without any problem, don't understand where the problem is.

</comment><comment><USER36> Windows 1803 is causing a lot of havoc for Google Drive users. It has hosed a lot of working configurations.

</comment><comment><USER37> I literally stopped using windows because of windows 10. I'm lucky enough that I don't need it for anything work-related. In the rare occasions I do need something to run in win10, I run it on my old air-gapped laptop running a vanilla windows 7 installed from it's original DVD. I wouldn't trust windows on network-connected hardware. Not anymore.

</comment><comment><USER38> It sounds like this user should spring for the USD$7/month LTSB Windows: [https://www.howtogeek.com/273824/windows-10-without-the- cruf...](https://www.howtogeek.com/273824/windows-10-without-the-cruft- windows-10-ltsb-explained/)

<comment> m-p-3 I wish LTSC was a version normal, licensed users could get access to... I normally go with LTS versions when using Ubuntu, and ESR for Firefox. Being able to use that kind of version for Windows 10 right away would be great.

<comment><AUTHOR> That would be perfect! But I am not paying MS $7 a month so they can remove features. I like my kill updates solution for now. This really should be a default on business products like Dell 9550.

<comment><USER39> If you change the Network to Metered Connection it will only give you updates for Windows Defender and Security Updates. Doesn't seem to do any download by itself.

Also, if you are a developer LTSB edition is a non starter. You can't install Visual Studio 2017 on it :).

<comment><USER40> LTSB user here: I had zero trouble installing VS and other software on it. Relating to the article, it was the most painful install I've ever had to deal with, precisely because of Windows Update

<comment><USER39> Wow, you were right, now it works! Thanks for the heads up.

<comment><USER40> However, it is not (officially) supported[1] I still can't understand what's wrong with Microsoft locking up users and developers to what I consider inferior ("consumer", as they call it) release of Windows, knowing LTSB is not that different from Enterprise

[1]: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/visualstudio/productinfo/vs...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/visualstudio/productinfo/vs2017-compatibility-vs)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Windows must die.

</comment><comment><USER42> Like all good Windows developer, I do my work in a VM on a Mac!</comment>


Apple Special Event – September 10, 2019 (YouTube Livestream) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=996wliAI_y4 <comment><USER2> Great pricing for services. $4.99 each for tv+ and Arcade is fantastic.</comment>


Signed HTTP Exchanges - <AUTHOR> https://wicg.github.io/webpackage/draft-yasskin-http-origin-signed-responses.html#rfc.section.3.7.4 <comment> lle-bout Uh, is that not already possible with TLS? Design bloat?

<comment><USER2> > These signatures can be verified against an origin's certificate to > establish that the exchange is authoritative for an origin even if it was > transferred over a connection that isn't.

So not possible with TLS (unless you tunnel TLS inside TLS). I can't think of any killer use cases that would (IMO) justify the complexity, but Appendix A does list use cases.</comment></comment>


Researchers show that an iron bar is capable of decision-making - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2015-08-iron-bar-capable-decision-making.html <comment><USER2> I hope someone can provide a deeper indication to what is going on - on first reading it looks like the iron bar is simply recording past events. The observer would be the one who decides to use this information to extrapolate into future events - the iron bar just sitting there.

<comment><USER3> Exactly this, the bar doesn't move towards the machines by itself, its just a tool a sentient being is using to record data. Isn't the proposition analogous to proposing that a typewriter is able to compose a novel or that a violin is capable of playing a song? Neither the violin, the typewriter nor the iron bar work without a sentient human using them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's a weird analogy, but it makes sense in the context of the paper's authors' statement:

> "The most important implication that we wish to claim is that the proposed > scheme will provide a new perspective for understanding the information- > processing principles of certain lower forms of life," Kim, from the > International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics' National Institute > for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan, told Phys.org. "These > lower lifeforms exploit their underlying physics without needing any > sophisticated neural systems."

<comment><USER5> Iron Bar for President!

I think it's a very weird analogy, and a terrible title for an article on phys.org.

<comment><USER6> I heard that on Facebook, more people "liked" a pickle than the band Nickleback. So maybe an iron bar for President isn't so far fetched...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The decision is still made by the human evaluator(s). (Presumably, to declare one slot machine the "easiest".)

Terrible headline.

Are they even suggesting that the bar is somehow affected by the output of (perhaps) coins from the slot machine... electromagnetic interactions? Or is the slot machine example simply a thought experiment? I suspect we may be attempting to process bad input here...

<comment><USER7> I read the article again. The researchers simply seem to be saying that what seem like complex decisions can be made in simple organisms as long as the ability to increment a "counter" when a certain condition occurs is possible. The slot machine example actually requires a "counter" that can increase and decrease when opposing conditions occur. This seems very obvious...

<comment><USER8> It is obvious. We call them machines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is this a thought experiment or something, or an early April fool's joke?

<comment><USER10> Instead of 'decision-making', they could have said 'computation'. Does that make it less ridiculous? I think it's a little interesting.

<comment><USER11> It's interesting, but I'm at a loss as to what's even remotely _new_ about it. Unless the computer that you typed this on is very, very different from mine that I'm typing this on, there isn't any living components in it, yet it is "computing" and "deciding" quite a bit. There's a ton of natural processes that incorporate some feedback element and can be said without much stretching to be doing a computation. We're beyond science on that matter, we're decades if not centuries into engineering with these facts. (It's not hard to say a steam engine is "computing" parameters to keep itself running, for instance, and h

Maybe it's just my bias as a computer scientist, but I would never dream that they would find anything but what they found. Having read the paper, they're basically proposing alternate models of computations, but computer scientists have hardly been blinded by transistors; proposing alternate models is a hobby, and there's at least one large one getting a lot of study to the point that I expect everyone will just understand the acronym without my expansion, QC. We've computed with water (both macroscopic and microfluidics), mechanical machinery (i.e., cogs not transistors), chemistry, DNA, analog circuitry, and light, and I'm sure that's not a complete list. We've hypothesized computing with mechanical nanotechnology, von Neuman replicators (up to and including converting entire astronomical bodies), black holes, closed timelike curves, and the fundamental structure of spacetime itself. If this was proposed as a Master's thesis in computer science, the advisor would advise the student to do something less pedestrian.

That doesn't make this paper "bad" in some absolute sense, but I'm surprised it's _publishable_ , since for better or worse that incorporates a certain amount of novelty in its criteria.

<comment><USER12> Science is composition.

We build a bit, we test, if it's solid, we build a bit more. We don't need to come up with hypothetical black hole computers.

The paper and the concept of TOW dynamics has been referenced in [http://www.nature.com/articles/srep13253](http://www.nature.com/articles/srep13253) which shares one of the authors and is interesting in a different way.

I get tired of people saying things that aren't exciting enough shouldn't be published. It's not the exciting things that make the breakthroughs, it's understanding a bit more about the things we've always figured are obvious. To me this is more interesting than some hypothetical black hole computer. Sure it's not blowing me away.

It's just a block. A little block. Other ideas can choose to use that block or not. I haven't seen that system of tug-of-war dynamics described before. It seems solid, so why not describe it?

Or does it need to be antimatter hoverboards to be worth publishing?

<comment><USER11> Read my post more carefully before leaping to conclusions, please. You appear to have been blinded by some words and failed to read through them properly. You're trying to lecture me about how science works, when in fact you're the one who is being quite wrong about it. Especially re-read my last sentence, carefully.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> After reading the original publication, the analogy to an iron bar is just confusing the point.

The article states: "Every time the outcome of a play of machine A ends in a reward, the bar moves to the left a specific distance, and every time the outcome ends in no reward, the bar moves to the right a specific distance. The same goes for a play of machine B, but the directions of the bar movements are reversed. After enough trials, the bar's total displacement reveals which slot machine offers the better winning probability." There's no locomotion reinforcement which can apply to the iron bar.

Something (either a physical mechanism or a guiding hand) needs to move the bar. Now the math of problem solving seems to still work out, but the mechanism of locomotion needs to be included in the system to get a proper description of the entropy at play.

<comment><USER14> Not to be too thick but wouldn't it seem like a banal point if instead of "iron bar" we were to say "measurement dial" and instead of "specific distance" we say "number of units on dial" and if instead of "left" or "right" we said "positive" or "negative".

So if we then say "after enough trials, the measurement dial's positive or negative reading tells us which slot machine offers the better winning probability", would that still seem like something worth publishing a paper on?

Or have I just totally missed the point?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Next up, digital arrows next to headlines is capable of decision-making (removing physicality).

I'm sorry but this sounds more like a way of measurements and calculations than actual decision-making, as that's been decided by the maker or user of the object.

</comment><comment><USER16> Analog computing by ascribing meaning to motion, and cognizant of directions (in this case); while the bar may be 'just sitting there', an embedded device within, imbued with a human way ('intelligence') of 'reasoning' about lateral movements would be able to support decision making. Take another analogous case of a twig moving in a brook: the twig doesn't 'need to know' the parameters of water flow in a brook as humans do, to determine which way to turn and tumble as it meanders through the water; it need not care about 'calculations' of water pressure, the topology of the ground beneath, obstructions in its path, spin induced by local eddy currents and what not to merrily cruise along; from a human perspective, an immense amount of computation (should) be involved. Yet, as the water rolls along, equations of continuity needn't be solved, no moments need be calculated, as pure physical properties and forces do the trick. Lot to learn from analog computing: digital computing is after all, a subset of it at the electronic level, could one say? :-)

</comment><comment><USER17> This is really about inference, and less about "decision-making."

First, the bar is has a action-response rule-based mechanism based on the input of winning or losing combined with which direction it came from right or left. That's it.

An externality can then _infer_ that the bar has made a decision, but of course, the bar has made no such decision.

This is still useful, but it's overblown to call this "decision-making" outside of decisions made exclusively within a strict framework of primitive rules. That said, many fundamental human reactions and decisions follow a pretty strict framework of primitive rules. That's why most people fail to grok the ladder of inference: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJLqOclPqis](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJLqOclPqis)

</comment><comment><USER18> Add a couple more iron bars and you may recreate the 1938 Zuse Z1 [1]. Not sure what's the news here.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z1_(computer)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z1_\(computer\))

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Link to journal article referenced: [http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/17/8/083023/](http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/17/8/083023/)

</comment><comment><USER19> So, basically, a small set of rules for keeping score over time works?

</comment><comment><USER20> The simplest Braitenberg machine to date?

</comment><comment><USER21> tl;dr: the iron bar prefers the taste of Coke to Pepsi, and wants to "make America great again".

<comment><USER22> Aw, they were about to show a close-up of the bar!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Reading the article, it appears to me the researchers are talking about harnessing physical fluctuations in a process to achieve an outcome similar to some sort of computational modeling of the same process.

I don't think they're literally saying the iron bar is making a decision, and I'm a little surprised that would have flown over the heads of most of the readers here.

<comment><USER24> Yeah, but that is what the title says (that the iron bar is making a decision). It seems like the title is completely out of whack with the contents of the article.

<comment><USER23> I totally agree. However I would hope most people can see past a poorly worded title.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I really dont understand this...

</comment><comment><USER26> This feels structurally similar to Searle's "Chinese room" argument.

<comment><USER27> True, but simpler in scope. Searle's Chinese Room is paradoxical because it involves trying to combine mechanical processes (of rote symbol-copying) with supposedly higher-order thinking (speech/understanding).

But the "decision-making" here is dubious. If Searle had written an "Iron Bar Gambling Room" argument, I bet most people would have rejected the notion that the room was "deciding" anything. This is little different from light- sensitive cells in primitive eyespots accumulating energy from photons to "decide" the direction of the sun.

In short, this paper is what happens when people chase the Minimum Publishable Unit for their career.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is just called Trend Following.

</comment><comment><USER29> so, side channel analysis? Or am I missing the point?</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best free file syncing storage similar to Dropbox/OneDrive? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I've got Syncthing ([https://syncthing.net/](https://syncthing.net/)) for syncing 40+GB between my machines and Android smartphone.

It's not quite the same as Dropbox/OneDrive in the sense there is no central service storing and backing up your files, but rather more like BitTorrent Sync which requires at least one other participating device to be online in order to send/receive/sync files.</comment>


Remote work is reaching unprecedented levels of popularity - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1161017/remote-work-is-reaching-unprecedented-levels-of-popularity-and-thats-a-good-thing/ <comment><USER2> AT&T marketing piece written by Quartz Creative.</comment>


Sellsumers - <AUTHOR> http://trendwatching.com/trends/sellsumers/ <comment><USER2> From the graphic design I thought this was a spam, but actually it's a real phenomenon:

<http://airbnb.com/>

<http://bountii.com/pricehunts.php>

<http://popcuts.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup.

Cf. [http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1662-hot-trend-part- time-...](http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1662-hot-trend-part-time- entrepreneurs)</comment></comment>


India's Chandrayaan-1 helped discover water on moon's surface - <AUTHOR> http://beta.thehindu.com/news/article24296.ece

<comment><USER2> And it only cost $78M, less than what Google paid for feedburner. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7679818.stm>

<comment><USER3> _Ouch_.

Someone linked to a wikipedia list of "most expensive objects" and I couldn't help but notice how many of them were a waste of good money.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world%27s_most_expensiv...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world%27s_most_expensive_single_objects)

<comment><USER4> I'm intrigued.

Firstly, what's bad money?

Secondly, of that list, which ones do you think were a waste?

<comment><USER3> The war toys and stadiums.

<comment><USER5> Hmmm... The ISS seems a waste.

How can the ISS cost 37 times more than the MIR space station?

Also, why isn't the birds nest staduim in Beijing on the list? Was it cheaper? What about the different canals that was built in the USSR?

It is interesting to see that a single B-2 costs more than a space shuttle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The correct URL is <http://beta.thehindu.com/sci-tech/article24322.ece>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link. The site seems to have dropped off the original URL (verified Google Cache).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Actually it was NASA built instrument that did the discovery but it doesn't really matter to me. Science is science, irrespective of the countries/parties involved.

<comment><USER6> What surprises me a little is why NASA would install the spectrometer on-board a spacecraft by an agency launching its maiden lunar mission.

<comment><USER7> Why wouldn't they? They have not much to loose but the instrument. Lunar missions are not scheduled daily and if they are, it is a good idea to send your instruments with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The link seems broken. This is the right one: <http://beta.thehindu.com/sci- tech/article24322.ece></comment>


Annual survey of book recommendations - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2017-best-books/ <comment><USER2> For those of you getting motion sick but still want to browse the list:

1) hop into your browser console

2) enter this: document.getElementsByClassName("glActive")[0].classList.remove("glActive")

3) enjoy the motionless black background

Also, can someone please let Bloomberg know about this thing called "inclusive design"?

<comment><USER3> wow, that background has to be the most annoying background I've experienced in say last 10 years on the web

<comment><USER4> I ended up reading the comments here before the list (habit with HN). I was thinking 'it can't be that bad' before going to the article and in fact it is worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A side comment about the nausea-inducing motion background. The Bloomberg story credits shown at the bottom include: _" Design and development: James Singleton"_

When you go to James' website showing off his portfolio[1], you see the websites he creates have busy motion and pulsating colors. Apparently, there are lots of media buyers that like that and keep paying for his services. (E.g. a previous Bloomberg feature with the disembodied head of Elon Musk bouncing around and a flashing "CLICK TO ENTER".[2])

It's definitely a different design aesthetic from Mike Bostock (d3.js) of The New York Times.

[1] [http://jamespants.com/](http://jamespants.com/)

[2] [https://www.bloomberg.com/features/elon-musk- goals/](https://www.bloomberg.com/features/elon-musk-goals/)

<comment><USER6> To give the designer the benefit of the doubt, it might be optimized for tablets or TVs or something. On a desktop, the combination of motion and content resizing with scrolling is fundamentally irksome.

<comment><USER7> I largely judge the design based on my device. It's an iPhone and fairly common. If the design still makes me nauseous, I blame the designer. Perhaps it was designed for a tv or tablet or whatever, but they showed it to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I guess the title is misleading... It should be "The Best Books of 2017 according to finance people and CEOs"

<comment><USER7> They aren't even books published in 2017. Just books the respondents read in 2017.

Sapiens is great and I was late and read it this year. But it was published in 2015.

I prefer this kind of list, but the title should be accurate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Extreme Ownership

Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

> Grant

Ron Chernow

> Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy

Dani Rodrik

> Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought

Andrew Lo

> The Best Investment Writing, Volume 1: Selected Writing From Leading > Investors and Authors

by Meb Faber (editor), Jason Zweig (contributor), Patrick O'Shaughnessy (contributor), Morgan Housel (contributor), Corey Hoffstein (contributor), Barry Ritholtz (contributor)

> Janesville

Amy Goldstein

> The Man Who Could Be King

John Miller

> My Own Liberator

Dikgang Moseneke

> Hillbilly Elegy

J.D. Vance

> Small Great Things

Jodi Picoult

> Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Yuval Noah Harari

> Born to Run

Bruce Springsteen

> The Content Trap

Bharat Anand

> The Gene: An Intimate History

Siddhartha Mukherjee

> Shoe Dog

Phil Knight

> Attitude: Develop a Winning Mindset on and off the Court

Jay Wright

> The Euro and the Battle of Ideas

Markus K. Brunnermeier, Harold James, Jean-Pierre Landau

> 7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy

Hamilton Helmer

> Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change

Ellen Pao

> Bellevue

David Oshinsky

> The Woman Who Smashed Codes

Jason Fagone

> Stealing Fire

Steven Kotler

> Hit Refresh

Satya Nadella

> Thank You for Being Late

Thomas Friedman

> Supernormal

Meg Jay

> The Inevitable

Kevin Kelly

> Economics for the Common Good

Jean Tirole

> It's What I Do

Lynsey Addario

> Gotham: 1898-1919

Mike Wallace

> The Good Daughter

Karin Slaughter

<comment><USER10> I don't quite understand why this comment got downvoted. I thought the information in the article could have been presented in a MUCH more concise way, (and certainly less vertigo inducing).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Disclaimer: Non native english speaker - I am doing my best so please ignore my errors...

I read a bunch of the books on the list the most interesting to me that I have not read for now are:

\- The Content Trap: A Strategist's Guide to Digital Change

\- Stealing Fire

\- Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought

\- The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

Has anybody here on HN read those? Are these any good? I am usually quite sceptical regarding Amazon recommendations (or some random CEOs thoughts), but most of the time love books recommended on HN...

In turn my thoughts about some of the books on the list:

\- Shoe Dog: Probably the best and most inspiring biography/memoir of any entrepreneur I have ever read. If you are thinking about starting a company or are a founder you will love it!

\- Sapiens: Fantastic book that completely shattered parts of my worldview. In my opinion a must read for everyone! (Gave it away as a present for many of my friends - almost everybody liked it)

\- Extreme Ownership: The best book regarding leadership I have ever read. At first I was skeptical about the "military-parts" of the book, but they have been useful in illustrating the underlying principles the book covers. If you are in any leadership position (top management, middle management or leader of a very small team) it is definitely worth your money.

<comment><USER5> _> The Content Trap: A Strategist's Guide to Digital Change -_

I read that book and it's not bad. The main idea is that having a mindset of being protective of your content is flawed. The bigger opportunity is "network effects" like community, crowdsourcing, etc. It's the platform, not the content.

If you already agree with that, your time would be better spent reading _" Modern Monopolies"_ because it has more tactical ideas for execution: [https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Monopolies-Dominate-Century- Ec...](https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Monopolies-Dominate-Century- Economy/dp/1250091896)

<comment><USER11> Thank you for the recommendation - never heard of it but sounds promising!

Ordered it and am looking forward to reading it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Recommending "The Inevitable."

Bloomberg's recommendation list last year was superior. [https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-bloomberg-book- list/](https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-bloomberg-book-list/)

Also check the recommendations from McKinsey, [https://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/leadership/what- ceos-...](https://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/leadership/what-ceos-are- reading-in-2017)

</comment><comment><USER13> This list ommits "The Spider Network" \- to me, one of the best books of 2017. It tells the inside story of the LIBOR scandal in a riveting manner.

</comment><comment><USER14> And for math, reddit has you covered [https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/7i9t5y/book_recommend...](https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/7i9t5y/book_recommendation_thread/)

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm not sure if this is relevant but that background is causing me motion sickness and disabling js removes all of the information. I can't read it very easily when I really want to...

<comment><USER16> Completely agree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> these are so contrived...the correspondence of highbrow book <-> endorsement is just too well-aligned...I would find these lists more amusing and insightful if they included trashy sci-fi fantasy pulp, The Far Side compendiums purchased in an airport bookstore just to lighten a day, biographies of total idiots, etc etc. you know, things people ACTUALLY enjoyed

I also get suspicious of any high-intensity CEO telling me about 1000+ pages books they read within a short period of time after publishing. "Grant" (which I will soon start) is over 1000 pages and was published in October. No, no Lloyd Blankfein, you have not read this to completion yet while simultaneously running a huge bank, sorry. No one with ANY day job is going to have that book finished any time soon, let alone a Fortune 100 CEO

Going back to my MAD magazine backlog....

<comment><USER18> _No, no Lloyd Blankfein, you have not read this to completion yet while simultaneously running a huge bank, sorry. No one with ANY day job is going to have that book finished any time soon, let alone a Fortune 100 CEO._

Why? Reading 1000 pages takes what, 12 hours, if you're not particularly fast. If you just read for 30m a day, that's less than a month. What's so unbelievable about that?

<comment><USER19> Is ~80 pages per hour an average reading speed? That sounds fast to me!

<comment><USER20> It is absolutely not average. 200wpm would give ~22 hours. In this crowd, I can imagine 10-12 hours would be feasible (especially if you skip/skim the occasional boring paragraph). Anyway, who needs retention when you get to announce you read a 1000+page book?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cyborg Unplug - <AUTHOR> http://plugunplug.net/

<comment><USER2> If this actually works, it's a security hole in both the devices in question and the wifi access point, for allowing a random device on the network to break its connection and block access.

Detecting devices by MAC address and warning about them makes sense, but it should not be possible to block a device without cooperation from the access point, and the description on this site makes it clear that that isn't the case.

<comment><USER3> They do say that "blocking" access points you aren't the owner of might be illegal.

I guess this is functionally similar to ddos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They have a mode allegedly capable of disconnecting Glass from its owner's tethered phone WiFi. If you do that to someone wearing Glass, I believe you're no better than the so-called 'Glassholes' you're fighting against.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if it's possible to use this on someone else's open network? EG, I walk into Starbucks, plug this into the wall, and deauth everyone else's devices?

<comment><USER6> You could do that easily with mdk3 - Actually from what I've seen this is just mdk3-in-a-box</comment></comment>


Could someone recommend a good physical Bitcoin maker for gift purpse? - <AUTHOR>

I want to buy some for gift. <comment><USER2> I've given some silver Titan bitcoins as gifts and they've been a pretty big hit. They're more of a high end collectible. If you want to print your own private keys, silver wallets are kind of a DIY coin kit. [http://www.titanbtc.com](http://www.titanbtc.com) [http://www.silverwallets.com](http://www.silverwallets.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi,

I'm the CEO of GogoCoin.com, and we sell Bitcoin Gift Cards. Right now they're only available for sale in San Francisco at Cups and Cakes Bakery (451 9th St, San Francisco), but we are going to be launching in LA this month.

Let me know if you have any questions, our email is email@example.com.</comment>


DNSSEC authenticated HTTPS in Chrome - <AUTHOR> http://www.imperialviolet.org/2011/06/16/dnssecchrome.html

<comment><USER2> The other post linked from this entry notes that this is based on Dan Kaminsky's DNSSEC presentation. Dan has a pretty interesting line of articles describing doing this kind of stuff in DNSSEC starting here: <http://dankaminsky.com/2010/12/13/dnssec-ch1/>

</comment><comment><USER3> LOL <https://dnssec.imperialviolet.org/> is self-signed

<comment><USER4> That's the point; it uses DNSSec instead of the CA system.

<comment><USER3> host -t cert imperialviolet.org

imperialviolet.org has no CERT record

Still LOLing

<comment><USER5> > The DNSSEC stapled data is embedded in an X.509 certificate (as opposed to > extending TLS or using a different certificate format) because every HTTPS > server will take an X.509 certificate as an opaque blob and it Just Works. > All the other possiblilies introduce significant barriers to adoption.

It's not in the CERT record. The DNSSEC signature chain is carried in the SSL cert.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Financing Options: Preferred Stock - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/07/financing-options-preferred-stock.html

<comment><USER2> As an employee, understanding the liquidation preference and total shares outstanding are the two most important factors in valuing your stock options.

Good to see more explanation of the role preferences play.</comment>


Ask HN: 2 page or 1 page resume? - <AUTHOR> When an applicant sends you their resume, do you prefer it to be one or two pages? Why? <comment><USER2> One page. Regardless of experience.

The point isn't to list everything you've done (it's not an academic CV). The point is to convince me that you're worth interviewing, and give me a bit of context for the interview. You can do that in a page no matter who you are.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've looked over hundreds of resumes and it's never hurt the candidate for submitting 1 or 2 pages.

If it takes the applicant 2 pages to convince me they're worth the time to talk to, then that's fine.

</comment><comment><USER4> I do a ranking on the first page where I show my experience with various technologies. I also put a legend off to the side.

5 stars for Python and SQL. (8-10 years experience), 4 stars for C#, web frameworks like Pyramid, or flask (5-8), etc.

That's a grid that takes about a third of a page. I spend the rest of the page explaining what I have done and where that's recent and relevant to the gig I'm applying for.

I don't have a resume that I would send to anyone. I have a resume template that gets customized for whatever job I'm looking at.

I keep the relevant stuff on one page and I put references on the the second.

Your mileage may vary, but this has worked extremely well for me.

On the flip side, when I'm looking to hire, I don't care if your resume is 1 page or 4. Honestly, I'm looking for a reason to toss it in the trash and get to the next one. I'm looking for typos and stupid shit like that.

Don't tell me your list of things that you've done. It's probably bullshit anyway. Tell me the kinds of things you are interested in doing. Tell me what you are excited about and why and how it fits into why my company is doing.

That will make me pick up the phone and call you.

Your cover letter is far more important to me than your resume.

Edited to add: As a hiring manager, your resume needs to show me three things: Can you think? Can you write? Can you work well with a team.

If you can do those things, I will hire you and train you.

And also PPS: I'm hiring right now. :)

</comment><comment><USER5> From my point of view, it doesn't really matters a resume should be a single page or couple. But the thing that matters is how you market yourself.

A resume is a very similar to a marketing brochure. Imagine the scenario when you get a brochure from second's car dealer and from BMW dealer. The purpose of both are same, sell the car. Take the second's car dealers brochure, It contains a lot of offer banner, a list of cars based on price range and more. But when you get a BMW brochure, even you can't afford the vehicle but still you admire, re-re-read the brochure, keep it in a good place etc. Why because of its presentation. The presentation creates a storytelling mode which increase the interest of the viewer as he turns each page.

Coming back to the resume, you can apply the same rule. Remove the constraint of pages and start thinking from a different perspective of how to sell yourself?. Give more focus to you strengths and the thinks you have done which make you stand apart from the other candidates. A lot of people use different ways to achieve this like improving the layout, visuals, Typography.

A resume filtering is the first process. There your resume should come in a different category. By looking into the resume, the interviewer should feel promising, trustworthy and creativity. A couple of years before I experimented this same technique of shifting my typical resume to another marketing brochure. And it worked. When I appeared for the interviews, the first thing the interviewer said was my resume looks different from all other resumes that we got, It's interesting and nice. now I am more eager to know about you. Same scenario happens to me three times after that.

This experience taught me a lot of lesson's regarding marketing, psychology and design. Now happy to shared it.

Peace

</comment><comment><USER6> Doesn't matter. I wouldn't reject an applicant based on whether their resume has two pages or whether they try to squeeze a ton of info in 10pt font. Frankly, it wouldn't even affect my impression of the applicant in any way.

What matters is the contents. If you add a hobbies section to fill space, it'll make you look very junior, for example. A long education section or overly specific explanation of previous roles will have a similar effect.

If you have a ton of experience and need space to highlight experience w/ different stacks and/or team management aspects, then by all means, make a long resume to make your seniority show through. In that case, covering a broad number of aspects might reveal early that you're not a good fit for my particular needs, but it might also help pass your resume around internally to other teams where you could be a good fit.

Just don't BS it. It's pretty easy to catch buzzword-slinging w/ a phone or face-to-face screening.

</comment><comment><USER7> It depends. Some locations or cultures will favour one page, while others will prefer more information on why they should care about you. But in my experience, the cover letter will have way more impact than 1 vs 2 CV pages.

</comment><comment><USER8> Two, I want to read between the lines.

A CV has to be perfect, with a longer CV there is more chance for it to have a mistake and weed that person out.

So many CVs are similar, picking people to interview is about removing those with flaws up front.

</comment><comment><USER9> Two (or more) is perfectly fine, on two conditions:

First format it so that everything vital is on page one, even on a multi page resume I should get a good idea about you are from just the first page.

Secondly, and more importantly, only write a multi page resume if you have actually done enough stuff relevant to the position to warrant a multi page resume. Don't pad your resume with irrelevancies just to make it look long.

</comment><comment><USER10> I would try to stick to one if at all possible. If you have to go to two it wouldn't be a deal breaker for me. The biggest problem is now days staffing firms and recruiters pad and keyword stuff resumes so much that most of the ones I see are basically meaningless (and most of theirs are two pages).

When I do get a one page resume it tends to be direct from the candidate and generally more honest which sticks with me.

</comment><comment><USER11> I have 2~3 pages. I write quite a bit about what I did at my last positions and list the most important projects that I worked on and explain briefly what I did for those projects. So far the only comments I have received on my resume are that it's impressive.

</comment><comment><USER12> Usually two is the optimum for me, with one for entry level positions. I like a clean, tasteful design that stresses focus and brevity with a small dose of creativity (pointed eye candy, unusual hobbies, etc.), but not overdone. CTO at a small to medium startup here.

</comment><comment><USER13> My resume is four pages or more, and I have zero problem getting hired.

<comment><USER14> Same with me, I don't understand why it should only have 1 or 2 pages, if I have a lot of experience I want to put it there otherwise it will look like I have less experience than I actually have it is impossible for me to fit everything in 2 pages

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> General rule seems to be one page unless you have a decade+ of experience.

</comment><comment><USER16> 2 pages if enough experience. A listing of positions is not really interesting, I want to know more about what the candidate did in each firm and probably expand on one or two.

</comment><comment><USER17> 1 page because recruiters didn't have time for you to turn to next page. Make use of appropriate font size and font style to cover as much as content as you can

</comment><comment><USER18> 1 page for every 7 to 10 years of experience.</comment>


Parallelizing PNG: choosing Rust for mtpng - <AUTHOR> https://brionv.com/log/2018/09/09/parallelizing-png-part-5-choosing-rust-for-mtpng/ <comment><USER2> ,,I ended up not using the fancy iterator systems (yet?) but the ThreadPool is perfect.''

Please give Rayon iterators another try instead of using thread pool + message passing, it's one of the best features of Rust.

<comment><USER3> > Please give Rayon iterators another try (...) it's one of the best features > of Rust

Isn't it possible to implement these iterators in any language? Why are they a feature of specifically Rust?

<comment><USER4> Sure, but when you use a parallel iterator like Rayon in Rust, memory and data-race safety is guaranteed at compile time. And using Rayon is as simple as changing ".iter()" to ".par_iter()" in your code thanks to the trait system.

Not that you lose that safety doing the thread pools and such manually, it's just unnecessary.

<comment><USER5> Is there any reason to use .iter() over .par_iter()? Does the latter have higher constant costs that only amortize on lists larger than some value? Or could you just replace .iter() with .par_iter() under the hood and reap the benefits for free?

I guess if you are iterating over something declared unsafe? But the compiler should be able to recognize that and fall back to the linear version automatically.

<comment><USER6> Rayon has relatively small overhead, but that doesn't mean you can find'n'replace iter() with par_iter():

\- not every collection/combination of iterators supports parallel work. For some it doesn't make sense, for some it's just not implemented.

\- while Rust prevents data races, it can't prevent deadlocks, so you need to be mindful of locks.

\- .iter() is allowed to mutate state outside of the iterator and use non- thread-safe objects, but .par_iter() isn't (without explicit synchronization primitives). So par_iter() will force you to use more expensive atomic and mutex-locked objects.

For data-bound problems most of the time it just works great. I've ran into problems with some networking libraries having global state, which prevented use of par_iter() (but no crashes - caught at compile time!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really enjoy posts like these. It's pleasant to read and gives you some insight into what people do to get their idea materialised.

</comment><comment><USER8> > But it adds the C++ standard library as a dependency, which might or might > not fly for GNOME.

You can also statically link C++'s standard library, just as you do now with Rust's.

<comment><USER9> This might not always be an option. GCC's libstdc++ is actually under the GPLv3[1]. There's an exception for code that's done via some Eligible Compilation Process, but I'm not sure if this also counts static linking of the libstdc++ into it. That said I'd be a little surprised if statically linking changed things here, I don't see any language about it like there is in the LGPL since it also considers replacement of the LGPL code without needing to touch the original inputs.

[1] [https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/libstdc++/manual/license.html](https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/libstdc++/manual/license.html)

<comment><USER8> It isn't under plain GPLv3, but a license which includes the following exception:

> When you use GCC to compile a program, GCC may combine portions of certain > GCC header files and runtime libraries with the compiled program. The > purpose of this Exception is to allow compilation of non-GPL (including > proprietary) programs to use, in this way, the header files and runtime > libraries covered by this Exception.

See [https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/libstdc++/manual/license.html](https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/libstdc++/manual/license.html)

<comment><USER10> Does that include libstdc++ or just libgcc? In any case, I guess you could always use libc++ instead.

<comment><USER11> As the page says, that license and exception apply to libstdc++. I don't know if they apply to libgcc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Rust's type system is powerful, with a generics system that's in some ways > more limited than C++ templates but much easier to grok.

I'm definitely not experienced enough in C++ to know the details around this but I would love to hear about it from someone who is. I know some of the limitations of Rust's current type system but there is a decent amount of work underway to implement things like constant generics.

<comment><USER13> There's two core differences.

The first is what happens when you get something wrong. Let's say you write a templated function. This is Rust syntax, mapping it to C++ is left as an exercise for the reader:

      fn foo<T>(x: T) {
          x.bar();
      }

Rust checks the types _before_ expansion, not after. So you get this error:

      error[E0599]: no method named `bar` found for type `T` in the current scope
       --> src/lib.rs:2:9
        |
      2 |       x.bar();
        |         ^^^

In C++, this stuff is checked _after_ expansion, so if you only pass things that have bar to foo, you're all good! It will compile. But when you pass something that doesn't, you'll get an error then.

This is a restriction, but one that leads to better error messages, and stronger checks. You'd need to write

      fn foo<T: Bar>(x: T)

where Bar is a trait that provides a bar method.

The second difference is what is allowed in generics: Rust only lets you use type parameters. We have accepted an RFC to allow constant expressions (the most straightforward of which is 'integers'), but it hasn't been implemented yet. C++ lets you do this today [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/499106/what-does- templat...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/499106/what-does-template- unsigned-int-n-mean) and [https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/template_paramete...](https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/template_parameters#Non- type_template_parameter) (they also have "template template parameters" aka higher kinded types [https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/template_paramete...](https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/template_parameters#Template_template_arguments))

<comment><USER14> It is worth adding that the C++ community has wanted to add something called "concepts" since a very long time. Rust traits sounds similar. So C++ will likely move in the direction of Rust here.

<comment><USER13> Yes. They're similar in ways, but also very different. I know that they have been added to the C++20 draft, but haven't gotten a chance to really dig in yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is good work. Widespread parallel png codecs are a practical need that we've had for a while, everyone benefits.

Not interested by his implementation strategy but would only recommend this get merged into libpng to make the largest impact.

</comment><comment><USER16> Compression time is heavily mentioned, but how about the output file size?

Over the years there've been wildly different PNG file sizes And a good encoder can secure something like 50% file size against a naïve implementation.

<comment><USER13> [https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/9evdyt/parallelizing_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/9evdyt/parallelizing_png_part_5_choosing_rust_for_mtpng/e5s0ydg/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> To be honest, I hadnt expected a speed problem here.

However,

* gzipping 7680×2160x3 bytes from /dev/urandom on my thinkpad x220t takes 1.6 seconds (not mutch difference between -1 and -9)

* gzipping /dev/zero takes 0.4 seconds

So it turns out this might be a problem after all!

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure what you expected?

Random data doesn't compress well, and requires a lot more effort by the compressor.

Images aren't anywhere near that random.

<comment><USER17> I expected the throughput of the gzip process to be a lot higher, to be honest. Bot the random data and the stream of zeros took a noticeable time to compress.

In a video game or real-time mpeg stream decoding job, the video card has to generate this amount of data 30-60 times per seconds. So 0.4-1.6 seconds to compress the result seems long in comparison.

I tested the 2 extreme situations I could think of: ultimate random and ultimate order. Images will fall somewhere between these 2 limits, so on my PC, the PNG compression has a lower bound of 0.4-1.6 seconds to write an image with the current algorithm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I must admit I upvoted for the puns.</comment>