In CSS, "px" is not an angular measurement and it is not non-linear - <AUTHOR> http://omnicognate.wordpress.com/2013/01/07/in-css-px-is-not-an-angular-measurement-and-it-is-not-non-linear/ <comment><USER3> This article makes some good points but it's missing a bit of history. The reference pixel is defined at 96dpi because that's how Windows treated the screen in the days before high-dpi support. Mac OS treated the screen as 72dpi in the pre-retina days but most early websites were built to look correct on Windows. That's why MS Office fonts look too small on the Mac to this day: 26% too small to be precise.

This explains why CSS uses a human-eye based definition of the reference pixel: to escape from the Windows and Mac OS idea of the having a "logical dpi" which differs from the screen's actual, physical dpi. Indeed, Windows and Mac OS can not agree on what an "inch" is!

Go ahead and open up Word and Pages on the Mac and create a 12pt font - <USER2> the difference! This is the mess that the CSS reference pixel fixes.

<comment><USER4> > This article makes some good points but it's missing a bit of history. The > reference pixel is defined at 96dpi because that's how Windows treated the > screen in the days before high-dpi support. Mac OS treated the screen as > 72dpi in the pre-retina days but most early websites were built to look > correct on Windows. That's why MS Office fonts look too small on the Mac to > this day: 26% too small to be precise.

The only way I can understand this is backwards -- a Windows "pixel" is 1/96 of an inch. (?) A Mac "pixel" is 1/72 of an inch; much larger. Wouldn't a windows font appear too _large_ if displayed on a Mac?

<comment><USER5> 1pt = 1/72 of an inch, therefore a 12pt font is 12 pixels high on a Mac, but 16 pixels high on a PC (12 * 96/72).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can we abandon these inches and miles please?!

<comment><USER7> Given that 1 inch is approximately equal to the width of one's thumb, I would have thought that Imperial units are the natural ones to use in this context...

<comment><USER8> 1 cm is about one pinky width.

<comment><USER7> Do you navigate with your pinky?

<comment><USER9> Yes. When I have my phone resting on a flat surface in front of me (say, a bar) I use the outside side of my pinky to scroll. I find it very natural since when my arms are in a neutral position in front of me, my palms are facing inwards and my pinkies are therefore closest to the bar (and the phone).

Also if I am eating a sandwich, my pinkies stay the cleanest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> whilst the detachment of 'px' and screen pixels is a no brainer in the modern world with its proliferation of pixel densities and viewing distances on different devices, the CSS standard could probably do a better job of explaining this.

<comment><USER11> Is it really the place of the CSS standard to define it? Is that even remotely necessary?

I mean, every device is different. You don't want a "px" on your phone to be the same as a "px" on your desktop, which also shouldn't be the same as a "px" on your projector.

A "px", right now, is whatever the device+OS combo wants it to be, but that works, because they all try to make things the "right size" given the device size, resolution, and distance from your eye.

And it works fine. Just accept that "px" is device-defined, and it all works, just like it does now in practice.

<comment><USER3> > Just accept that "px" is device-defined

Nope! "px" is defined by the CSS spec. The physical pixels are device-defined as is the exact anti-aliasing algorithm but the spec dictates the dimensions of a logical ("px") pixel in the real world. Devices are _not_ free to make "px" whatever they want it to be, because "px" is a _logical_ pixel not a _physical_ one. (Though it is a physical length).

A classic example of why this matters is that Windows treats the screen as 96dpi but OS X treats it as 72dpi. If the CSS spec did not dictate the size of a "px" then all web pages on OS X would look 26% smaller than on Windows.

<comment><USER12> The article says,

> The way the CSS authors handled this problem (again, sensibly, IMO), was to > allow the user agent (ie. the browser) to choose a useful precise size for > the "px" unit and then size all the other units relative to that "px" unit.

So I'm a little confused about what you mean when you say, "Nope! "px" is defined by the CSS spec."

<comment><USER3> These are both correct. The CSS 2.1 spec actually defines a CSS pixel ("px") as " _the whole number of device pixels that best approximates the reference pixel_ ". It's to allow a little leeway for devices with low-resolution screens. On a high-resolution screen a CSS pixel should be = the reference pixel.

<comment><USER13> To the best of my knowledge, on iOS, 1 CSS px has been 2 device pixels for a while. Might even be 4 device pixels on Retina devices.

<comment><USER3> Right, so a CSS pixel is equal to the reference pixel in size.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Don't really understand why is it such a big deal how browsers internally define the size of pixels, do they use dpi or angles (it would be more correct to say trigonometry)? It is an interesting fact that I've never before really gave a thought, but complete irrelevant to anyone but guys building the browser rendering engines. And still now you have people calling for new "better" units and what not? Why? What am I missing?

<comment><USER15> It is really helpful if you are web developer. For instance, if you need to alter some layout that was made some other units, it is good to know how the units relate to one another.

<comment><USER14> yes, sure, but this is not about that, all CSS unit have the fixed relations clearly defined. Angular pixels are just about relative scale between the size on the screen and the real-world size (whatever that would be, because a print size is again relative to the chosen dpi, so it's not an absolute measure)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Here we go again. IMHO, we need a new unit to unambiguously describe angular measure. But also we need to start demanding resolution independent units that map to real world measurements as well.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4236429](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4236429)

<comment><USER3> > we need a new unit to unambiguously describe angular measure.

That's a nonsense unit. You'd need to know where my eyeballs are and change the measure as I move my head around! What happens if two people are looking at the screen?

> we need to start demanding resolution independent units

That's what CSS pixels _are_. A pixel is 0.26 mm, period.

<comment><USER17> > That's what CSS pixels are. A pixel is 0.26 mm, period.

For some definition of "mm". Did you read the part about "anchoring"?

<comment><USER3> Right but that's just "for lower-resolution devices", i.e. devices with a resolution lower than the reference pixel. There's no use demanding to have units of measure which the device is incapable of displaying! What possible use would it serve?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So should you just use em for everything?

<comment><USER19> em or relative font-sizing seems like a good choice. Also see rem [1] which was introduced with CSS3 to combat issues with font size compounding. Use pt for print stylesheets [2].

For a bit of ancient internet history: [http://style.cleverchimp.com/font_size/points/font_wars.GIF](http://style.cleverchimp.com/font_size/points/font_wars.GIF)

[1] [http://snook.ca/archives/html_and_css/font-size-with- rem](http://snook.ca/archives/html_and_css/font-size-with-rem)

[2] [http://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/007/units.en.html](http://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/007/units.en.html)

<comment><USER20> The rem unit is awesome! All the benefits of em (relative to browser text zoom level) combined with the benefits of px (does not change depending on parent element font size).

If you don't need to support IE8 you should start using rem today.

<comment><USER21> But note that px is also relative to the zoom level, as unintuitive as that sounds.

<comment><USER20> Not to the text zoom level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> We spent time juggling between em and px before but from few months we are using "rem" unit.

It works nicely as we are also using font-icons everywhere.

See: [http://snook.ca/archives/html_and_css/font-size-with- rem](http://snook.ca/archives/html_and_css/font-size-with-rem)

</comment><comment><USER23> Most of our problems would go away if mm was actually a mm and the dpi differences were taken care of by the OS + screen + browser... Ugh. Sounds like we're stuck with inconsistency for various dpi devices for many years to come still :-/

</comment><comment><USER24> The reason the standards don't speak of 2D euclidean geometry is because they (Very sensibly, IMO) left room for yet unknown devices that might not fit that description but still are able to conform.

</comment><comment><USER25> Key takeaway: "1px is always equal to 0.75pt."

</comment><comment><USER26> This response is taking issue with the words used, rather than the underlying claim of the original article. In fact, this response contains a whole section and a diagram which are effectively supporting evidence for the original!

The most important thing to take away from the original is that the css unit "px" has no relationship to the actual size of a pixel on the screen, and all the physical units (inch, cm, pt) are defined in terms of the csspixel. So marking a button as "width: 1cm" will almost never render something over 1cm of the screen geometry.

Incidentally, this is why designers like device models with only a few geometries, such as the iPhone. They can do the math themselves to work out how many iphone-pixels are in a cm, and write their styles accordingly.

<comment><USER27> Hi, I wrote this article (the response, not the original). though I didn't post it here - I just noticed the pingback email.

I am indeed responding mainly to the wording, and you'll see at the start and end of the article statements that I think the original author does at least kind of understand what is going on (though I don't think his understanding is very solid).

Your statement that 'the css unit "px" has no relationship to the actual size of a pixel on the screen' exemplifies why I am concerned about the wording and thought it necessary to write a response. This statement is just not true!

The CSS px unit was carefully designed to embody as closely as possible the intuitive concept of a "monitor pixel", while retaining sufficient flexibility to allow implementors to accommodate a wide range of devices. The whole concept of unit anchoring was invented to support this. To pretend the px unit has no relationship to actual pixels is to waste all of this work.(*)

I would suggest people aim for one of two levels of understanding:

1\. Really understand the rules. Read the standard, and/or a proper CSS book like "Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide" by Eric Meyer. Be an expert and design with confidence.

2\. Altenatively, just think of 1px as a monitor pixel. The standards authors put a lot of effort in to allow people to do so.

For people that are currently in state 2 and are uneasy about retina displays, printers and the rest, my advice would be that they are going to need to go to state 1. It's not that hard. Just getting a vague idea (as many people are) that "px" is angular, or worse that it's in some way "unreliable", is not going to help anyone.

[PS. Here's an ironic aside about the lengths people have gone to to make 1px correspond as closely as possible to a real pixel: As you say, 'marking a button as "width: 1cm" will almost never render something over 1cm of the screen geometry'. But why exactly is this? It's because the whole system of units has been anchored to the screen pixel size (or a simple multiple or fraction of it). On a printer, where there is no "pixel" worth anchoring to, the units are typically anchored to physical units, and width: 1cm really does mean 1cm. The reason that on your monitor screen 1cm is not 1 real cm is because your browser is resizing everything - it's bending over backwards to make 1px match the screen pixel size! (or a simple multiple or fraction yadda yadda yadda...)]

<comment><USER26>
      > The CSS px unit was carefully designed to embody as
      > closely as possible the intuitive concept of a "monitor
      > pixel", while retaining sufficient flexibility to allow
      > implementors to accommodate a wide range of devices.

The closest match to the concept of a "monitor pixel" is a unit which represents one pixel. In other words, an element styled as "width: 100px" would be 100px wide regardless of the size of each individual pixel.

The issue with declaring that one csspixel is a monitor pixel is that it's only true for a very narrow range of monitors. It's not true for my phone, or my tablet, or my laptop, or my desktop. There is not a single machine I own for which 1 css pixel is 1 monitor pixel, and that situation is unlikely to change unless I decide to start building my machines with ancient 96-DPI LCDs.

      > On a printer, where there is no "pixel" worth anchoring
      > to, the units are typically anchored to physical units,
      > and width: 1cm really does mean 1cm. The reason that on
      > your monitor screen 1cm is not 1 real cm is because
      > your browser is resizing everything - it's bending over
      > backwards to make 1px match the screen pixel size!

No, it's not. My browser is bending to make "width: 1px" match some arbitrary size defined in the CSS spec, which is nowhere near the size of a pixel on my machine.

The browser is entirely capable of rendering css pixels as screen pixels, obviously. It's also capable of rendering with real-world sizes, by querying the physical size of the display from the OS and dividing by the current display resolution. But it doesn't do any of those things, because someone on the CSS committee wrote the equivalent of "pi = 3".

<comment> mark-r HTML+CSS is designed to make things as device-independent as possible. If the definition of "width: 100px" were to be vastly different on different devices this goal would be unobtainable. As long as the definition of px is some _integer multiple_ of device pixels I think it's a useful compromise. If you really need precision at the level of device pixels you should be writing a native app.

<comment><USER28> It's a useful compromise for the OS to make, but does not belong in CSS. If I'm running on a non-native resolution, I expect the image containers to scale on websites to fit the images, which they won't if the browser overrides my 1.4 pixel pixels.

Whatever did happen to screen pixels, anyway? Did non-native resolutions die with CRT screens? It's nice to have a unit for 0.27 mm-ish, but I'd really have more use for a pixel.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Typefont – An algorithm to recognize the font of a text in a photo - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Sirvasile/Typefont <comment><USER2> It's a neat implementation for a _very_ annoying (and common) scenario. I've used various font ID tools in the past and always found them rather limited. The vast majority are manual ones that ask you to identify particular characteristics of the font in question and then go from there. While that might be helpful, it's also pretty limited. Most of the time, I wound up posting an image to a typography forum to get an ID.

A few sites like My Fonts have an API that lets you generate font samples.[0] You could probably use that to automate generating your font database. Throw in a few other APIs (Google Fonts[1], Typekit[2], etc.) and some other type stores--along with some of the foundry websites that don't sell their fonts on other sites (Hoefler & Co., cough)--and you could build up a _very_ rigorous database/recognition tool in short order.

0\. [https://dev.myfonts.com/#font_sample](https://dev.myfonts.com/#font_sample)

1\. [https://developers.google.com/fonts/docs/developer_api](https://developers.google.com/fonts/docs/developer_api)

2\. [https://www.adobe.io/apis/creativecloud/typekit/docs/overvie...](https://www.adobe.io/apis/creativecloud/typekit/docs/overview.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> My Fonts had a tool for doing this back in (at least) 2009... I remember because I tried to run the burning "NERDS" sign from "Revenge of the nerds" through it. Didn't work very well though: I had to resort to human intervention. [http://www.mrspeaker.net/2009/01/21/revenge-of-the-font- nerd...](http://www.mrspeaker.net/2009/01/21/revenge-of-the-font-nerds/)

Keen for an online version of this project so I can see if it fares any better!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I changed the description of the repository and removed the AI tag, thank you and don't be evil!

</comment><comment><USER4> Please stop using "AI" to describe simple algorithms like this. This has nothing to do with the field of artificial intelligence. The code just extracts individual characters from the image and compares them visually to a prepared database of known fonts, using the hamming distance. You wouldn't call OCR an "AI algorithm", would you?

Edit: "nothing to do" is not accurate, but AI is definitely not an appropriate term to use here

<comment><USER5> "The code just extracts" please. Do you think extracting letters from a image is a joke? There is a engine in development since 1985 for doing that. [http://www.kloover.com/publications/Kluever_- _OCR_using_ANN....](http://www.kloover.com/publications/Kluever_- _OCR_using_ANN.pdf)

<comment><USER4> Yes, I know it's a hard problem. Tesseract (the OCR library that is used in this project) is in development since 1985, but even google doesn't dare to call it an AI algorithm. OCR is of course a part that is required to build an artificial intelligence, but the term "AI" is just to overused nowadays and calling every single algorithm capable of recognizing something in some data is poison to the field itself. Solving AI is a huuge and daring problem and we should use the term appropriately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This problem is nice because unlike other datasets i think you could automate the creation of the data. I'm thinking you could generate a couple million photos with text captions all with known fonts.

</comment><comment><USER7> Can this technique be used for recognizing handwriting of individuals?

<comment><USER8> Yes. You wouldn't need to worry about breaking it down to individual letters, though. Not necessarily. You would need pages and pages of writing from the individuals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice project, but:

> An artificial intelligence [...]

Really?

<comment><AUTHOR> The term "artificial intelligence" is applied when a machine mimics "cognitive" functions that humans associate with other human minds. Understanding the shape in a image, reading the text from a photo can also be considered AI.

<comment><USER4> Extracting characters from an image and comparing them to a database of known fonts using a naive distance metric can be called AI? Really?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> this is amazing ... how is this even possible?</comment>


Homebrew based package installer for unprivileged users - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/pvtmert/3b9220892d7618e2adf635991891be5f <comment><USER2> So why one should try Lanka instead of brew again? Thank for clarification

<comment><AUTHOR> if you are unprivileged user (eg. working in a bank, pci-dss regulations) easier to setup and use then remove everything without hassle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice stuff!</comment>


Real Programmers Trust Their Instincts - <AUTHOR> http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/programmers-should-trust-their-instincts/

<comment><USER2> If you read this and it causes you even the slightest twinge of doubt as to whether you are a "real programmer", please remind yourself about things you read on the internet, forget you ever read this self-indulgent blog post, and go buy yourself an ice cream cone.

<comment><AUTHOR> One of the comments to the article references the Dreyfus learning model (described at <http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000203.html>) which should - somewhat - allay those fears :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> In my opinion, no one without serious programming credentials has any business writing articles like this one: telling others what "real programmers" are like (and often implying that the author is one of those programming demigods).

Fair enough if you share something you've learned that helps you be more efficient, write less buggy code etc -- I like reading that kind of essays. Making generalized statements in god mode like in TFA -- I just find that amusing.

Who is this guy? Writing a MIPS cache simulator is hardly a challenge -- we had to write one for the computer architecture class at uni (<http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/teaching/courses/car/>)

Where's the downvote button when you need it?

</comment><comment><USER4> Great method for making your facebook app, not so great for flying the space shuttle.

There are different kinds of code and different kinds of programmers. So much so that "real programmer" is like likely a nonsense statement, especially if it has anything to do with "gut feelings".

</comment><comment><USER5> "Of course, every once in a while an impromptu idea may not be perfect; indeed, it's possible that they're fatally flawed."

Fooled. By. Randomness.

</comment><comment><USER6> Trust but Verify</comment>


Tutorial: How to push data in a Google Sheet via "API" - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@cburgdorfer/collecting-iot-temperature-sensor-data-in-google-spreadsheets-tutorial-e9fea92d2ae2 <comment><USER2> This is a creative solution! You can also create a proper HTTP API using Google Apps Script and expose it to the web:

[https://developers.google.com/apps- script/guides/web](https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/web)

This allows you to parse all kinds of payloads, including ones not specifically tailored to your app. For example, I wrote a script that could receive webhooks from PayPal and record them in a spreadsheet.</comment>


Does it make sense to send all kids to schools in India? - <AUTHOR> http://akshar100.wordpress.com/2014/07/15/is-public-education-worth-it/

<comment><USER2> Basic education is needed to give every child the opportunity to a good life. Parents are thinking in short terms compared to a government who is thinking of the future. Parents will rather make sure their family got good money by making their children work than by having them educated. Education makes children more aware of the world around them and they have the chance to choose which profession they want.

A government controlled and founded school is needed to give everybody the chance of a good education, rich as well as poor.

To the contrary I think that a school is very economical, a single teacher can educate many children compared to homeschooling. In homeschooling parents only educate a few, and have to repeat the same education as they get more children. A parent have to spend a lot more time as a teacher, time that could be spend more productively on work and by having some one else acting as a teacher.

</comment><comment><USER3> Profit is not the purpose of education. Its a societal Obligation to carry your fellow men along.

The Country Must Fund Public Education.

Help them fish.</comment>


Google's advice for newspapers: "Experiment, Experiment, Experiment" - <AUTHOR> http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/03/newspaper-economics-online-and-offline.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm a little skeptical of this advice, since there are two tracks in newspapers _I_ see right now: Bunkering down and hoping for a savior (Bailouts! Strong copyright! Google!) and experimenting and hoping for a savior (Micropayments! Internet Magic! Google!), but I'd love to see what advice the HN community would give to non-NYTimes/USAToday/WSJ local papers.

Is "Experiment Experiment Experiment" just an appeal to throw spaghetti on the wall or is it a viable business strategy?</comment>


Oregon Senator effectively kills Internet censorship bill - <AUTHOR> http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/oregon-senator-vows-block-internet-censorship-bill/ <comment><USER3> Send him a thank you for defending freedom of speech on the internet:

<http://wyden.senate.gov/contact/>

<comment><USER4> Here's what I sent; please feel free to pick and choose. I hope this'll help anyone contemplating sending a letter but too busy to do so.

 _Dear Senator Wyden,

I would like to thank you for taking a stance for defending freedom of speech in a society that has forgotten what that phrase means. COICA is the digital equivalent of a lynching, allowing people in positions of power and favor to manipulate the internet and limit our freedoms, in the name of limiting piracy. Like similar measures in the past (such as the DMCA, which is the first to come to mind, but many others as well), it is a misguided attempt at reducing piracy at the cost of individual liberties; usually furthered by politicians who don't really understand the way the internet is run and the implications their decision/support would have, or else are trading the constitutionally-protected liberties and freedoms of their constituents in order to please big businesses across America.

We've seen with the DMCA that these measures, first and foremost, don't work. When treating a disease, doctors will try and treat the root cause - <USER2> stifling the symptoms rarely works. But COICA goes even further, and we feel it is akin to treating a flu with radiation and chemotherapy. Thank you for saying "No" to a bill that would have been misused (the DMCA has a history of being used by businesses to shut down competitors and to limit Fair Use) and abused (people pushing through requests to companies and in local courts, taking advantage of the ignorance of many company owners as to their constitutionally protected rights and the definitions of Fair Use) to scare people and organizations alike into giving up their liberties.

Thank you for standing up to freedom in America.

While I'm not lucky enough to be one of your voters (as I do not reside in Oregon), I thank you all the same.

Sincerely,

xxxx_

<comment> m-photonic >COICA is the digital equivalent of a lynching

The analogy isn't obvious to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Senator Wyden is a good man. I told this story in yesterdays post but I have a friend that used to take the same Portland to DC flights every Monday (to DC) and Friday (to PDX). senator Wyden, even though he had probably earned millions of frequent flyer miles, always sat in coach, always in the same spot.

If any of you were paying attention to the national health care debate, it was Wyden and then Senator Bennett's proposal before Obamacare that made the most sense. In fact we would be much better off if Congress would consider their changes instead of complete repeal.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is the part of the story where folks acknowledge how great the U.S. Senate is for allowing one member to block offending legislation.

But I doubt that will happen.

<comment> brown9-2 So often the story is that the U.S. Senate has stupid rules that allow one member to block legislation when the legislation being blocked is thought of as a good thing - such as unemployment extension, aid to Haiti, etc.

So it cuts both ways. We should be careful about praising this rule too much since often we criticize it when we _like_ the legislation being blocked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> i wish i was a US citizen so I could send him a note of appreciation and some chocolates, or a box set of mad men, or something... this bill would have gone global (and might do, one day)

<comment><USER8> I'm from England but I still sent him a short email in thanks. Just use something like 90210 for the zip code on the form.

<comment><USER9> I already sent him a message from England, and depressingly 90210 was the first zip code to come into my mind too. (But went with 90017, last ZIP code I stayed in.)

<comment><USER8> Yeah it's pretty embarrassing/depressing but there's not really any other famous zip codes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wouldn't be surprised if this was a direct result of the Senator hearing from his constituents about this issue. Regardless, job well done!

</comment><comment><USER11> Well done by Senator Wyden! The headline's a little too optimistic, though. The bill will be back next session -- and the new Congress is likely to be just as friendly to the content industries (who are driving the bill). So it's a great time to support Wyden, EFF and others who are on the right side of this issue.

<comment><USER12> He was reelected right? So he can block it next congress too.

<comment><USER11> i'm not an expert on the processes, but i believe it only gets blocked for a finite period of time

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sadly it appears as though the only legislation which unifies both sides of the political aisle (be it in favor of or against a given piece of legislation) is that which is completely asinine and backward. The seemingly basic bills are inevitably deadlocked in recent years.

Then again, that's not entirely unexpected.

<comment><USER14> I think this is mostly due to the low impact on votes that these kind so of bills have. These bills can usually go undetected.

<spam>I think this again shows that groups like the EFF are invaluable. Donate today! </spam>

<comment><USER15> Yeah, sadly I don't think this is a priority for most of the public, and many who do have an opinion support the "shut down the pirates, whatever it takes" approach.

Take Wyden in particular: he just won reelection two weeks ago, 57-40%. If this sequence of events had taken place before the election, would he have won by a larger margin? I think it's unlikely. Probably it would've turned out the same, but if anything it's possible he would've done slightly worse, since his opponent could attempt to portray him as a pro-piracy "extremist" who blocked a bipartisan bill that had passed the relevant committee unanimously.

<comment><USER5> I live in Oregon. Wyden had that election won long before election day. The focus was in the governor's race here and even Wyden's opponent, a Lewis and Clark University law professor named Hoffman, admitted the state Republican party put all its money into the gubernatorial race. The outcome of this bill wouldn't have made a difference one way or the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Deploying this statute to combat online copyright infringement seems almost like using a bunker-busting cluster bomb, when what you need is a precision- guided missile," Wyden said.

As far as I understand the article does not explain Wyden doing anything else than saying that particular sentence. How is that effectively killing Internet censorship?

<comment><USER17> Individual senators may place holds on legislation and there are only a few woking days left in the congressional calendar this year.

If it doesn't pass this year, it will have to be reintroduced by Lahey next year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Would this system block websites at the IP level or at the DNS level?

Doing it at the DNS level would mean you could roll your own DNS or use a non- US DNS provider.

Doing it at the IP level would mean banned IPs and reverse-lookups of IPs back into domain names, checking against a list of banned domains. This one could only be bypassed through proxies.

<comment><USER19> My understanding of it is that US nameservers couldn't resolve banned domains. Anyone with the tiniest bit of technical knowledge could use an untainted nameserver, or run their own. However, the spirit of the bill is terribly misguided, no matter how easy it is to circumvent.

<comment><USER12> Thats exactly what they did with the free-speech filter in Denmark (which they said was only supposed to block child-porn). I know at least one dorm where the geeks just changed the DNS servers for everyone.</comment></comment></comment>


The Social Origins of Inventors [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/aghion/files/social_origins_of_inventors.pdf <comment><USER2> Interesting paper, but they're very open about their limitations of just running this on Finnish data. From the conclusion:

 _We plan to extend our current analysis in several directions. A first extension is to replicate our analysis for other countries_

There are many things unique to Finland, which makes this hard to generalize.

Also - they mention the interaction between father's income and child's IQ as a misallocation of resources. Is the implication that the parent is misallocating resources, or that Finnish society is misallocating resources by not funding the potential innovators who don't have wealthy dads?

<comment><USER3> Looks to me like the authors are lamenting the lack of society's resources devoted to enabling the pursuit of innovation for those intellectually capable whose personal resources fall below the level needed for unbroken progress toward achievement of patents. And that's a very high level now arrived at seemingly decently with the data they had to work with.

The paper is fascinating but to me it just confirms what should have been obvious to any natural innovator since childhood.

Once I found out about Edison (and patents) I didn't see much purpose in patents until after I would happen to have solid support for my efforts to begin with. Employers and others have made millions due to my innovations, but that was not truly solid support as long as I am still tasked with diverting so much of my time and effort to survival activites.

If I had patented some of my most promising inventions they would have expired by now anyway, as it is I can maintain readiness indefinitely.

It takes a great individual to overcome the kind of adversity that Edison did, and somebody like that does not come along every day, so I am with WalterBright on this one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Economists Hyytinen, Toivanen, have been publishing some good papers with good methodology and interesting results.

Some examples:

Public Employees as Politicians: Evidence from Close Elections, American Political Science Review, forthcoming [with J. Meriläinen, T. Saarimaa, O. Toivanen and J. Tukiainen]. [http://aalto- econ.fi/toivanen/Hyytinen_Meril%C3%A4inen_Saari...](http://aalto- econ.fi/toivanen/Hyytinen_Meril%C3%A4inen_Saarimaa_Toivanen_Tukiainen_ASPR2017.pdf)

Cartels uncovered (2017) with Ari Hyytinen and Frode Steen. American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, forthcoming. [http://aalto- econ.fi/toivanen/HST_2017_07_07.pdf](http://aalto- econ.fi/toivanen/HST_2017_07_07.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm disappointed that people are getting their "agenda" retaliation in early, disregarding most of the content of the paper.

Rather surprisingly this is limited to male (!) inventors in Finland (!), seemingly because that was the easiest place to get a whole-population IQ dataset in an otherwise fairly equal country. One of their conclusions is that involvement of the father is a positive and that divorce is a negative. If you're going to dismiss this as lefty nonsense then that is not the kind of conclusion to expect from it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Researchers should stop producing this type of misleading content that clearly started out with a hypothesis driven by an agenda.

There are so many things that drive people to become what they become. Even using the "inventor" example, not everyone whose parents are rich has desire to invent something. If anything, it's the opposite. Most rich people are satisfied with the world around them so they just "fit in" to the world. There's not enough motivation for them.

The ones that do come up with world changing inventions in many cases are outsiders. These people are not satisfied with the world around them, that's why they invent something to fix what they think is broken.

So while I do agree that if you're too poor, you probably don't get enough education to know what you can or cannot fix, and you probably don't have the money to sustain yourself, I do not like what this "research" will be actually used for--it will be used for people who want to use it as an excuse not to invent something.

"See some Harvard researchers proved that you can't become an inventor if your parents are not rich, my parents are not rich and look what i have become. it's all my parent's fault! (while doing nothing but sitting around living a pathetic life)"

If you look at a lot of people who actually achieved things that made a difference, a lot of them were at the bottom of their lives before they created their masterpiece. J.K. Rowling was broke when she was writing Harry Potter. Van Gogh died before any of his art became famous. Nikola Tesla had a sad life. Howard Schultz grew up in a housing complex before going to build the Starbucks empire. Larry Ellison grew up in a poor family under adoptive mother.

I don't see any value this type of research adds to society. If anything, it will only make one more person give up her/his dream because "some Harvard researcher said you won't become an inventor because your parents are poor."

<comment><USER7> > Researchers should stop producing this type of misleading content that > clearly started out with a hypothesis driven by an agenda.

Don't you find that your comment is, eh, just as like the research but without any statistical data. Anyone can have an opinion. It is very dangerous to censor people because we disagree with them.

More dangerous to shame them for it.

<comment><USER6> Like you said, anyone should have an opinion. I shared my opinion that "they should stop printing out this type of propaganda material disguised as research", and that's my opinion.

When it comes to social stuff like this, I believe "statistical data" is the weapon. Most people don't truly understand statistics so it's easy to fool the general public just by using percentage numbers.

My point was NOT that they should have provided more statistical proof.

Instead it was that they started out with an agenda so the research was flawed from the beginning. Just like how most research funded by cigarette companies to prove that cigarette was OK was flawed from the beginning.

Of course, you can't get away from social agenda when it comes to social science research, but all the real valuable social science research results come from genuine curiosity whereas a lot of bad research results come from a clear goal to convey their existing message.

I just can't imagine how one could have come up with the underlying hypothesis of this paper WITHOUT starting from an agenda. If you disagree with me, please share your thought on why you think there was absolutely no social agenda when these people started their research.</comment></comment></comment>


'Falling For Science': Obeying All The Signs - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97825059

<comment><USER2> For me, it was the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, Il. It was all about getting to be up close and personal with the science, especially the body slices! Science is so much more fun when it's interactive. I've never left science since...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> while signs didn't stand out in particular i do remember distinctly learning about the idea of "rules" and the way they define a social context. and when i first saw a command line, i couldn't help but think it was a pretty strange way to order things around, which led to a prolonged interest in interface design/how our societies are affected by our command of technology (or its command of us). hacking, for me, is the ability manipulate that relationship or at least be curious as to how it manipulates me. what's your story? how'd you first think about hacking?</comment>


Did You Hear That? - <AUTHOR> https://did-you-hear-that.com <comment><AUTHOR> Over 100 levels of guessing the gibberish for free. A good way to waste time during quarantine.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you stay focused while programming/working? - <AUTHOR> I often find myself "needing" to take a mini-break after just a few minutes of concerted effort while coding.  In particular, this often occurs after I've made a tiny breakthrough, prompting me to reward myself by checking Twitter or HN. This bad habit quickly derails any momentum.  What are some tips to increase focus stamina and avoid distraction? <comment><USER2> Find something else to reward yourself with. For example, a drink of flavored water or a sip of coffee/tea. Also, try coding offline. I always do my best programming when offline– pencil and paper is the best.

If you've already implemented a method in pseudocode, you can use StackOverflow/documentation/Google/etc to look up the actual API calls once you're translating the program into code.

<comment><USER3> Do you have any examples of good pseudocode? I have tried this method but feel as if I am not doing it in an effective manner?

And while writing pseudocode how do you know the level of depth and detail to include.

<comment><USER4> Not OP and no examples at hand I can share, but I'll try and describe my process:

While not pseudocode per se - my offline coding is predominantly outlining structures and data flows; so how I would structure the application (classes etc - where what code would reside etc). Then I expand from the structure to start moving the data objects themselves around (also giving an overarching structure to the data objects as well), where the flow / control logic starts coming again. Sometimes I'll write a few transformers / mappers there as well if they're needed when sending / fetching data from a few places.

Usually you can speed this up greatly by following the conventions of a framework; for webapps I would design the models/controllers/routes/views, mobile apps would be navigation tree, views (screens), components, and if there's a lot of data, then mappers/reducers etc. So it's usually small descriptions (even one or two words) of what a given class/object/action is doing, where it's coming from and where it's going. I can then expand this to be very specific with fields, routes etc, and what they're all doing.

Having that basic, overall structure done offline means I can approach the coding with purely an implementation mindset and don't have to worry about the "big picture" when doing all the small bits - when you start coding immediately you're on a bit of a discovery path with the big picture, and the implementation details, and changing stuff on the fly etc, which can be rather time consuming / side track into different places and so forth.

Most of what I do is just take data from one place, change it somehow, and present it somewhere else - so it makes the above fairly easy and effective for my work.

<comment><USER3> This is helpful. Going to try this today!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's not exactly new and exciting, but I found that listening to calm, instrumental music helps me focus. Mostly Ambient. If you do not like electronic music, Stars Of The Lid or Bohren & Der Club Of Gore are very much worth checking out.

Also, [https://mynoise.net/](https://mynoise.net/) has worked wonders for me.

In both cases, it seems that unstructured audio input, like, occupies the parts of my mind that would otherwise distract me.

<comment><USER6> > It's not exactly new and exciting, but I found that listening to calm, > instrumental music helps me focus. Mostly Ambient.

Same. Lounge, Ambient, Chillout, Chillstep ([https://di.fm](https://di.fm) has a bunch of great streams. SoundCloud and MixCloud have complete replayable sets, too.)

I've heard that videogame soundtracks are designed to not be distracting; to help focus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I normally leave everything until the last minute which means I have no choice but to be incredibly focused and motivated to deliver on my commitments.

I've always had a reputation for delivering late but this has gotten better over time as I learn to account for unknowns and my definition of "last minute" has gotten more realistic.

Over the years I have tried fruitlessly to make myself more proactive and have consistently failed. I do my best work under pressure and am now focused on embracing who I am and finding a way to make that successful instead of trying to change it. There is a name for this - the Eisenhower method - but it's not a strategy I do deliberately, it's just naturally who I am.

So how do I focus? When there's no time to waste it just comes naturally. I take mini-breaks too, but then my subconscious very quickly kicks me back into gear.

</comment><comment><USER8> Mini breaks are fine. Just blacklist certain things from your breaks if you find they're bad for you. I find "boring" breaks to be the best - sleep, looking at nature, chatting with a co-worker.

Discipline only goes so far. This doesn't happen if your motivation is high enough as you'd just lock back into the project once you've regenerated.

Treat motivation as a supplement. You might be looking at HN as your mind craves more motivation.

Think of people, not cash rewards. Who will this project help? Users? Stakeholders? If you have to think of cash, think of how you could spend it on making other people happier... donations to the poor, buying mom a gift, taking your child to a theme park.

You might also be motivated by creative impulses. Bookmark projects you admire. It can be roadmaps and devlogs. Open them up again when you're feeling demotivated or need a break.

</comment><comment><USER9> I go for a smoke :-) But you could walk around the house or block. I get so many good ideas while sitting there smoking for a few minutes, in the backyard gazing into the trees. I think when/if I stop smoking, I'll pick a spot outside to go to and sit for a few minutes. Its pretty amazing, usually the answer to the next problem pops into my head. Probably the vast majority of my good ideas come in those few-minute breaks.

</comment><comment><USER10> I signed up for brain.fm ([http://brain.fm/](http://brain.fm/)) after it was posted here a year or so ago. Can absolutely recommend it!

<comment><USER11> Had a quick look, but don't like that they appear to hide their pricing. I will not sign up just to find out their pricing or "learn more".

<comment><USER10> Odd :-/ It was pretty transparent at the time. I believe there is a trial period. From memory, they hit the front page of HN, and the founders offered a lifetime membership for anyone linked to them from there for $30 or some such. Extremely good value for money, it turned out. Unfortunately, that means I don't actually know what current other plans cost...

</comment></comment></comment><comment> taw-an Prescribed stimulants.

<comment><USER8> A lot of the good stuff is off the shelf. L-Theanine for focus. Creatine monohydrate for more RAM (thinking faster, less brain fog).

<comment><USER12> About stuff off the shelf: I bought Focus Pep ([https://www.amazon.com/Addrena-Stimulants-Boosting- Dietary-S...](https://www.amazon.com/Addrena-Stimulants-Boosting-Dietary- Supplement/dp/B00J302UY2)) a year ago or so off Amazon (I believe they are only sold through Amazon). Well, they helped me tremendously. I would take them minutes after I would wake up and I would then consequently have a want and go for a three mile run every day of the week. Then I would go to several of my classes and be focused to the dot. You could even say, I felt I was in a confident "flow" state when I took them. I ended having an all time best sleep schedule, since I took them in the morning so by nighttime I was so exhausted I would fall asleep early and wake up early. But the period when I took them, I would get sweaty easily, my entire being would be jittery, and I would not feel hungry throughout the day. I eventually got off them because I didn't feel natural and at ease, I always had an anxious need to do something. Though now that I'm not on them, I'm more prone to: being sad, overthinking about things, having trouble falling asleep and getting out of bed, not having a want to exercise, etc.

<comment><USER13> Interesting formulation.

Try getting your hands on the tyrosine and the bacopa individually. Those two can be very useful. I take both.

The Vitamin B12 is potentially interesting; I have that in a spray form (on my table right here actually) which I'm trying to remember to take in the morning.

The caffeine is likely added as "energy sugar", ie to give the product a noticeable boost. Caffeine does work, but the toll it takes (and its predominantly psychological effect) is well known.

The Guarana seed extract, Bitter Orange Fruit Powder, DMAE, White Willow Bark, and Huperzine-A I can't comment at all about, but have been filed away.

The Carnitine and Choline I can't remember about right now... I think those are interesting, but I haven't properly tested my reaction to those just yet.

I'm guessing the pepper was added to increase absorption (it's supposed to rev the gut up and help digestion, and not in a bad way, but everyone works differently and sometimes this plan backfires).

\--

When it comes to natural health, getting all the compounds individually and then figuring out the doses you need generally has the best effect.

This also means you shard your requirements between a bunch of different suppliers, so when one decides to go switch to a cheaper upstream and a week later you go "hangonaminute" and start suspecting your supplements as the reason your brain felt like it went out to lunch... well you can just switch the single compound. Comparatively, if you shop around different suppliers for a product you don't seem to react great to, you might find you eventually go "wait, what... how..." once you finally find the one supplier that prepares the product such that it _actually works_. (Don't forget these two. They happen to me more often than I would like. :<)

This is generally more expensive (agh, so expensive...) but the results are worth it. I have quite a few issues (anxiety, cognition/problem-solving, mood, memory, stamina, nervous system, ...) and, well, the only reason I'm not 100% on top of my game is because I can't afford to take more than I'm taking right now (which ironically is the reason I don't have the mental consistency to get a job at this point xD). The products do work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> you haven't demonstrated that you need focus, what you have tho is shown that you have a bad habit. Kill the bad habit, you are aware of it. So new Twitter or HN or any win. Replace it with something else, pump your fist. Have a win book, write down your win and move on to the next. If you have a todo list, cross it off. Best of luck.

<comment> t-rav right on, break the habit and focus will follow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> SelfControl.app is still my favorite Mac app ever. Add a list of sites to block, set a timer, go. I have a huge blacklist. I enable a 24 hour every night. This way I don't even have a chance to start procrastinating the next morning.

The crazy thing is how many times you'll try to go to one of your addicting sites even though it's blocked. SelfControl acts as a great circuit breaker in this case, and can also show how bad the addiction is.

If I want to read HN, I have to do it on my phone. If I'm looking at my phone, I know I'm screwing around, so it doesn't last long.

<comment><USER16> Could you share your blacklist? I've a very minimal one

<comment><USER15> It's pretty personal by its nature. Basically every site I enjoy. Social networks, blogs, news aggregators, etc. One exception is that YouTube is allowed, since I never procrastinate by watching YouTube videos (thankfully it seems I've been spared from that particular vice).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Try the pomodoro technique, the concept is 25 minutes of work to 5 minutes of break time.

</comment><comment><USER18> If anyone's interested in neuroscience and machine learning, we're working on a fun little project to use EEG to track focus and optimize productivity here: [https://github.com/neurotechx/neurodoro](https://github.com/neurotechx/neurodoro)

<comment><USER19> As interesting as an idea as this appears, I am hesitant to think that it would do anything other than distract me even more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've found FocusAtWill invaluable -- it's music designed specifically to keep you in flow. I use the timed function to ensure I take breaks at proper intervals, and you rate how focused you were during the session. [http://ssqt.co/mQbYXSq](http://ssqt.co/mQbYXSq) (this link gives you $20 bucks off your first bill if you decide to sign up after the trial)

paper: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.04255](https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.04255)

"how it works" (with citations): [https://www.focusatwill.com/app/pages/science-of-focus- conce...](https://www.focusatwill.com/app/pages/science-of-focus- concentration)

</comment><comment><USER21> I use [https://www.focalfilter.com/](https://www.focalfilter.com/)

Its not 100% effective since I can still use my phone, but it helps. Unfortunately I haven't found a good Mac alternative that allows you to update your filter list in bulk.

</comment><comment><USER13> IMO, the specific situation you're describing (wanting to check in on HN) does not have a 1:1 relationship with the bigger picture you're associating it with (focusing in general).

I've discovered that I also periodically want to check HN, imgur, etc periodically.

Fundamentally, this is because I really (really...) need to setup an intelligent social tracking system that tells me about interesting things that I will probably want to intervene in RIGHT NOW, whether inconvenient or not, because of some ascribed value (for example being able to comment on a relevant discussion, reach out to someone in the context of some opportunity, etc). I primarily check in on HN for this reason; "is there relevant discussion happening right now." While I don't have the system I just described, I'm trying to be it myself.

Of course this doesn't really scale or work, but it's incredibly fun to pretend I'm competently keeping up with everything because the activity of "just making sure" is one of those simple, predictable activities that has statistically low chance of disappointment (or concrete negativity/malice) and statistically high chance of low-effort reward (except for those 183 times where it was boring, which I ignore those because superstition is powerful), and... oh hey, there goes my day.

When I realized this recently I was able to at least stare the problem in the face. Now I can work on swinging in the direction of closure for this whole... _thing_ of "keeping up" that I've deliberately been cultivating _lack_ of closure of, for the sake of addiction, and hopefully get myself focused and back on track.

I guess the "one level up" scope/domain from this would be "online distraction", rather than focusing in general. I said a few related things on the subject a couple months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15418671#15423170](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15418671#15423170)

And I commented on the value of supplements in this thread over here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15904764](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15904764)

</comment><comment><USER22> 12 minutes of meditation* before starting work. Keeps me laser-focused for longer periods. (*=sit comfortably, eyes closed, focus on breath, gently resist mind wandering)

</comment><comment><USER23> Nobody else goes for a nice sativa?

</comment><comment><USER24> Do try to get evaluated for medical conditions; stuff like sleep apnea, ADD, smoking, depression etc. can all affect this. If you are suffering from something beyond bad habits that's very important to know. And I know several of these are cpnsidered to be overdiagnosed so try to see a serious therapist who will see you over multiple longer sessions before coming up with a diagnosis to get rid of you.

</comment><comment><USER25> I've actually had a bit of luck with:

"brew install sbagen"

"sbagen /usr/local/share/sbagen/examples/focus/focus-03-a.sbg"

(Linux packages exist too.)

Don't expect anything huge, but the effect that I see with simple binaural beats is a slight calming and improved focus. It seems to quiet the urge to goof off and compulsively check sites like this. No it's not on right now.

</comment><comment><USER26> Disclaimer - I wrote this [https://betterself.io](https://betterself.io) to help me out here. It's helped me get much better, but certainly isn't perfect. It's open-sourced at [https://github.com/jeffshek/betterself/](https://github.com/jeffshek/betterself/).

Someone posted this quote a while back, and it stuck with me. "Think of your mind every morning as a clean desk, and every time you get distracted via social, game, etc, you put something on it. It then gets progressively harder to do work with a messier desk. The best way is to just always have a clean desk."

I logged habits and supplements for over a year. Things that were effective were having a lot of strong routines that pull you in the right direction.

So things that helped were

X) Have some type of metric you are measuring to. For me it was RescueTime and WakaTime. How productive was I for this week compared to last?

1A) Have your phone on DnD or Airplane Mode.

1) Start the day off with SelfControl app. Add the timer to lock out all disractions until X PM every day.

2) Use a cold shower to wake up

3) Meditate

4) Eat the same foods that won't make you groggy / crap. This sounds masochastic in some way, but it's much easier than it sounds once you get used to it. For instance, the same oatmeal for breakfast is a great way to set a routine.

5) Track what supplements and food you were taking that improved productivity.

6) Inversely, see what supplements or diets you might be taking that does the opposite.

7) Set up a sleep routine. Melatonin at 3mg is a sweet spot. Getting six hours of sleep every night is the perfect amount for me. Everyone varies. The point is don't take "one size fits all advice" for something so crucial to your life. Less than 5 and I was easily distracted. More than 7 and I was groggy. There's a lot of information about how to sleep better. The point is to find a way to maximize sleep quality ... six hours in a city is going to be very different from six hours of sleep in a quiet area.

8) I've tried a lot of supplements. The most effective ones on productivity were ones that helped me with anxiety (so the opposite of caffeine). I eliminated a lot that didn't do anything.

9) Have a track / music that you listen to that starts you in a groove. For instance, I have a EDM Mixtape that I've probably listened to over a thousand times this year. You'll find that a lot of high throughout writers do something similar. The music helps build a habit of "okay, it's time to do work now"

10) Find the right setting / environment that makes you productive. Face a wall. Accept the fact if you can't work from home, then don't.

11) Go for walks when you're bored. Admit to yourself when you're not being productive and you're just spinning your wheels.

12) Exercise. Missing gym workouts (even though it was like 1-2 hours) was a sharp drop in total productivity.

13) Pomodoros. Start with 25 minutes and keep on going up (I average hour long Pomodoros now). When you get distracted in a Pomodoro, have a note card called "Distractions" and write what you want to to do there. That way your mind can stop obsessing about "New Avengers Trailer" if it knows it's going to get there after the break.

When you first start with Pomodoros, have a notebook of how many Pomodoros you did. Make it a goal to do just five pomodoros a day. You'll be impressed how hard that is initially.

14) No lying to yourself. Everytime I've said "this time is different for a YouTube video about anything mildy interesting", I've regretted it.

15) Plan for a social night at least once a week. You do need some rest. Self flagellation about not having earned it is almost a recipe of more anxiety and procrastination. (I'm not great at following this yet)

16) Have a deadline to finish something.

To give some backdrop, this has made me really productive throughout the last year without burning out. I've worked 60+ hours before at startups and just BURNED out, whereas now I can definitely push that easily without hitting that same wall. I integrated all these habits one by one when I was certain through quantitive evidence it was working.

Can't say much about helping social life though. This definitely takes a hit when you try to maximize productivity and flow at the expense of social life.

</comment><comment><USER27> At work, I put on Moby for a few hours. At home, I just keep telling myself I'm not a millionaire yet, keep going.

</comment><comment><USER28> Take on a more challenging project with deadlines, hopefully with a project manager that calls you at odd hours asking for updates. Your desire for twitter and hn will vaporize :)

<comment><USER29> I wish that's all it took, but there are some severe procrastinators for which that's not enough.

For others, yes, some people you have to remind to eat :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Found a new job. Went from funding it hard to work 3-4 hours a day to 60 hour weeks being easy. Don't recommend that long as family everything.

</comment><comment><USER31> Spotify. Some of the playlists are really good for focus(Deep focus, Mellow beats etc). I generally listen to ambient/postrock.

</comment><comment><USER32> Use Pomodoro timer to help, give some short break after a long-time focusing.

</comment><comment><USER33> I don't know if this will help you at all, but perhaps it will.

First off, I think there's a myth about productivity. That you are only productive when you are writing code. That's not true.

The way I work is that I need to have a fully formed idea of the solution to a problem before I start writing code. That doesn't mean it's the correct solution. But I have to start with an idea of how I'm going to solve the problem.

Sometimes that takes 10 seconds, if it's a new feature. Sometimes it takes 10 days if it's a bug I don't understand. Sometimes it's 10 hours for a totally new project. Could be anything. But I always start with documenting things in my way: offline. Your notebook and a good pen are your friends.

I do my best thinking at this state away from the computer and away from code. I do it best walking around. Once I think I know how to solve the problem (usually wrong for larger projects and bugs; usually right for new features in an existing project), write down what you intend to do on paper. I know Project Management tools exist for this task, but they don't have the same connection for me as physically writing something down.

As I'm doing that writing, I'll realize a lot of things that are bad about this approach and correct myself. And then my brain will start to organize tasks and group them. While I'm going through this exercise, I will set checkpoints for myself. If it's a ticket for a bug that needs to get fixed today, well, maybe I'll get lucky, and it's one and done. Other times, not so much.

I also try to organize my work segments vs. my thinking segments around my meeting schedules. Because even when my day is broken up by meetings, I'm still probably thinking about my problem.

Building in your checkpoints by planning your work this way has been very helpful for me, not because I need to check facebook or twitter or HN, but because it represents tangible progress.

But if you actually look at my workflow, it's a constant iteration of think a lot, followed by pounding out some code for a few minutes. Sometimes that ratio is very small on the code side, and sometimes it's quite large on the code side.

Without making comments as some other people have about medical or mental problems, I would suggest this: that there's a lot to be gained from working in very small chunks and that if you're worried about momentum, perhaps that's the problem you should be trying to address. Momentum is a tremendously overloaded word, and you shouldn't be trying to evaluate yourself based on your ability to obtain or maintain it.

I have a fairly similar pattern to what you are talking about. Solve a thing; then think about the next thing; then solve that. No one has ever complained about my productivity. On the contrary, people sometimes wonder how I can get so much done when I spend so little time "working."

Different people work in different ways, and I don't think that's a thing to worry about. I've really never very much experienced what people call the zone in programming. I certainly do as a musician when I'm practicing my violin. My girlfriend hates when I practice violin because I absolutely cannot be taken out of that mental space.

As a developer, I don't care about the context switch or the momentum or focus. I can go back and forth. No big deal. So I can understand why this can be problematic. But it might not be.

Questions to ask: are you being told that you aren't productive enough? Are you feeling like you aren't doing good enough work? Or enough good work? Where is this criticism coming from? Is it external or internal? Why do you want to change your patterns?

One of the things that technology companies need to realize is that there are more ways to be productive than just by being in your chair.

I'm my most productive when I'm not writing code. I'm my most productive when I'm solving the problem. And then the code is just a translation of what I've figured out.

When I follow this path, I find that my thoughts are more often wrong than right, and I don't have to worry about getting up and thinking or rewarding until I've fixed my thinking about the problem and proven it to myself through code and tests. And when I get into that mindset, I can't stop until I've corrected myself and crossed everything off the list in my notebook.

Take that for what's it's worth. I'm just one person. And I could be wrong about all of this. But I think I understand a little of what you're talking about, and this is how I deal with it.

</comment><comment><USER34> A short walk and breath of fresh air is one of the more consistently serendipitous things that help creative work. Music helps too, though silence can help too - it depends on your emotive response at the time I guess.

"Brain dumps" \- the act of transferring mental information to another medium can itself be a great mental relief. eg.:

\- drawing diagrams w/ pencil and paper. things are more complicated than we first imagine them, often... remember, "the right perspective is worth 80 IQ points" \- alan kay

\- debugging by talking to yourself out loud

\- post-it note reminders everywhere -> your short-term/working memory doesn't feel cramped

It is possible, maybe, that you are a bit concerned about enjoying programming/working to the fullest extent.. because you expected it to be more enjoyable. All that said... good focus is not just maximum momentum -- what you are _really_ asking about, imo, sounds like a question of laminar vs turbulent flow :) To go "down the rabbit hole" with great momentum, versus a fragmented mind pulled apart in every direction with equal momentum :P Well, we all know how time flies when you're having fun, or enjoying good company, right? Yet it almost seems you are asking for tips on how to make time fly when it shouldn't, hypothetically kinda like this:

> _" if -- while I am working on something difficult -- I had the capacity to > just make time fly quicker, then I'd have no problems with stamina or > keeping focused, by design. Furthermore, it would be a momentary-enough > challenge to /become fun/. So how do I hasten the passage of time when work > is hard?"_

The answer to this is: unimpeded flow = mastery. Extrinsic obstacles are easy to spot but one's intrinsic obstacles take much longer to become aware of..

Only after intuition replaces the tendency to hesitant deliberation will deliberate action come easily. As you gain experience, you subvocalize less and operate 'fluidly' at the right mental level of semantics.. With mastery comes the use of "the voice as an object that can be seen as the lever of thought" [0]. Just think of the last time you were amazed by a display of talent or performance by someone that left you so amazed you wished for a few minutes more of their time.

imo, to solve your problems, you have a few options:

\- you could improve to the point that coding gains a new and desiring appeal.

\- you could find something (or _somebody_ ) with exceptionally inspiring talents to code with

\- or, you could look deeper into yourself, and see if the focuslessness is really just a desirelessness

[0] [https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/voice-and-nothing- more](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/voice-and-nothing-more)

</comment><comment><USER35> pomodoro

</comment><comment><USER36> I don't stay focused. I'm a human not a code robot.

</comment><comment><USER37> Pomodoros, and brain.fm</comment>


New Programming Jargon - <AUTHOR> http://www.globalnerdy.com/2010/05/09/new-programming-jargon/ <comment><USER2> Mostly just in-jokes, but I loved "yoda conditions" and "stringly-typed". Those deserve wider usage.

<comment><USER3> What he calls yoda conditions is actually considered best practice in C-like languages, as it will result in a compile time error instead of wrong run time behaviour if you forget to type the second equals sign. The name is still funny, but the way he has written it up betrays a certain lack of understanding.

<comment><USER2> Perhaps I was unclear -- I and probably over half of HN are familiar with that trick already. However, to my knowledge there was no pithy, memorable name for this practice before.

It's a good practice in almost any language, BTW. In scripting languages, the error will either be caught at parse time or maybe at runtime, but at least it will be noticed.

<comment><USER4> > It's a good practice in almost any language, BTW.

In any language that's susceptible to this kind of bug, yes. Python and Haskell solve it in different ways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm actually guilty of using Yoda conditions in anything but Lisp. It is now hardwired in my brain since I learned it early. I'm using it for the same reason as all other Yoda conditioners are, -Wall wasn't really an option then since the source code normally spouted 50+ warning lines due to some included header file.

<comment><USER6> I use them too, but can't figure out if TFA is being derisive or not. I always thought Yoda conditions were good defensive programming, especially in C-type languages.

<comment><USER7> I use Yoda conditions all the time. Never knew there was a name for it besides 'a good defensive programming convention to keep you from doing something stupid when programming C.'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great, but perhaps would have been better to simply link to the SO thread. Loved "hot potato/hot potatoes" for http/https.

<comment><USER9> But it has pictures! Funny pictures!

Actually, yeah, it would have been better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Yoda Conditions: if (5 == count)_

Folks, conditions != condition _als_.

<comment><USER11> _5 == count_ is the condition, so _if (5 == count) ..._ uses a Yoda condition in a conditional.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was surprised not to find "heisenbug". It's on Wikipedia, along with other families of bugs.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unusual_software_bug>

<comment><USER13> Why were you surprised, then? It's already been coined.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> My favorite is "mechanical issue". I use it all the time whenever the build team on my robotics team blames me (i.e., the coder) for an issue on the robot.

Build Team: DAVID! The robot is continuously driving in circles whenever we turn it on. Me: Must be a mechanical issue

</comment><comment><USER15> I've been called out for Yoda conditions with comparisons, but it's actually just number-line order. I.e. instead of writing "x > 0" I write "0 < x", but I read both as "x greater-than 0."

</comment><comment><USER16> I successfully used a duck when designing a site for my old company, who insisted I place the CMS in the root directory, so users don't get confused when the URL shows up in the address bar.

I told them it would get addressed immediately.

It got addressed via an .htaccess file that masked the URL.

Ducks ftw

</comment><comment><USER17> I've just put a web app into production and one of my client's associates is driving me nuts with his "shrug reports" ('A bug report with no error message or "how to reproduce" steps and only a vague description of the problem. Usually contains the phrase "doesn't work."'). So I really enjoyed this list.

</comment><comment><USER18> The Duck is genius.

</comment><comment><USER19> Bloombug is my favorite</comment>


Ask HN: What do you wish you could measure/track... - <AUTHOR>

.. better, or differently?<p>Thank you. <comment><USER2> Anything about my app -- shouldn't matter to you, but I need a nice way to graph # of events per day / hour / minute and drill down into the details of each one. Perhaps like Splunk or Loggly but much cheaper / less enterprisey. Simple way to know if certain metrics (code errors, # of new users, downgrades, 404s, etc. are going up or down over time)

</comment><comment><USER3> \- My productivity levels

\- Hours of sleep per night (Wakemate does this?)

\- My happiness level?

</comment><comment><USER4> I have bipolar disorder, so my mood is all over the place. I built www.ThoughtPlot.org to help keep an empirical record of my mood changes. I've found it incredibly useful.</comment>


Simple app that lets you browse, create and vote up your company values - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/posts/values-creator <comment><AUTHOR> Values Creator Plus is a simple way for companies to vote up their company values. • Browse the values of top companies, or create your own • Create a shortlist & send invites for the team to vote • Send reminders & view results

Why did we build this? We have many Hi5 customers who don't have a set of company values, so we decided to launch a simple, online & asynchronously collaborative tool to help them create and vote up company values.

Values Creator is not only for Hi5 users, but for everyone. It can be used by founders, CEO's, HR or anyone who is taking the lead in Culture at their company. More info on Values Creator here.

We're offering a 50% Discount for early adopters with a special code for Product Hunters (follow link to claim).</comment>


How Nasa makes those incredible high-res images of Earth - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-02/07/how-nasa-makes-earth-hi-res <comment><USER2> Same interesting article as previously submitted

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3559527>

(from the Wired Science wired.com domain, hence no trip of HN's duplicate detector).

<comment><USER3> That would be useful, except that there's not a single comment on the link you posted. Also, it looks like you submitted it. I'm not trying to imply anything here, but nonetheless, it seems like you have a stake in pointing out this is a duplicate in that you made the previous submission.

I would really like to see these kinds of comments stop. They don't further discussion and coming from the people who champion better discussion, it seems like an odd pattern of behavior.

So in the spirit of seeing this change, I'd like to say that these photographs are absolutely phenomenal. I'm currently using them as my background. Given their extremely high resolution I can imagine there being a number of creative uses for them as well. For instance, it would be really interesting to experiment with printing these out on large posters.

<comment><USER4> I agree. It can be frustrating to see a story you submitted do well when your submission didn't merit any points, but life goes on. If there is no discussion there is no reason to point out the previous post.</comment></comment></comment>


Internet as a Public Service - <AUTHOR> Where can I find a countries list that has Internet access as a public service? <comment><USER2> I can find only finland where internet is a legal right.

"Since July 2010, Finland has become the first country in the world to make Internet access a legal right"

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Finland](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Finland)

Other country like Estonia and Croatia have a very large free wifi access for everyone.</comment>


Learning martial arts: are you a student or a customer? - <AUTHOR> http://internalstyle.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=82:-learning-applications-vs-training-for-real-skill&catid=10:articles&Itemid=28

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been to clubs where there's a big push to pay membership, buy tshirts/sashes ("We don't do coloured belts here", though seniority was signified by tshirt/sash colour...). In some cases, it was clearly commercial - I've heard of another club in London having direct debit (not sure what you call that outside UK) for membership fees, regular gradings for batches of students, and the franchising of teaching to senior instructors at best, or to senior students at worst.

In other cases, clothing was available, less to make money, but so that they could wear something they'd be proud of. I'm proud to say I've never had a teacher in silk pyjamas though!

Here, [http://internalstyle.com/index.php?option=com_content&vi...](http://internalstyle.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=135:questions- about-cma-one&catid=10:articles&Itemid=28) , the sifu writes of a further distinction between student and disciple.

</comment><comment><USER2> Depends on if you attend a "McDojo" or not. For example, the fees for attending my dojo don't go to the sensei, they goes toward using the dojo room at the rec center. The classes are small and personal, and we study a technique until our sensei is satisfied for the day. We do drills and practice, as per normal, then we work on applications. As my sensei says, the difference between practice and application is angle. That is to say, you move a lot more in a fight than you do when you study and practice in a dojo.

Contrast that to my unrelated studies of karate as a child where we were the class size was huge (30+) and we were pushed toward buying training gear from the sensei. In that instance, you become less like a student and more like a customer.</comment>


Python's logging overhead - <AUTHOR> http://assorted-experience.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-logging-overhead.html

<comment><USER2> Really? Its "very disappointing" that a method call that obviously has to do a more complex conditional check has more overhead than doing a narrow purpose specific conditional check outside before calling the method?

Isn't that what you'd expect in pretty much any language? It would only be newsworthy if it _wasn 't_ the case.</comment>


Scientists Just Discovered a 6,000-Year-Old Italian Wine - <AUTHOR> https://www.cntraveler.com/story/scientists-just-discovered-a-6000-year-old-italian-wine?mbid=social_partner_twitter_AtlObscura&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=atlas-page <comment><USER2> considering that the "Italians" are a younger grouping of people than the Romans (2200 years ago), one has to wonder what else in the article is lacking accuracy.</comment>


Ask HN: How would you improve my SoundCloud developer challenge submission? - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bss/soundcloud-developer-challenge

<comment><USER2> I would begin by not trying to cheat.</comment>


Will the Real Jesus Please Step Forward? - <AUTHOR> http://bigthink.com/21st-century-spirituality/will-the-real-jesus-please-step-forward <comment><USER2> We know that Jesus was not a white European.

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


BBM Protected – For secure instant messaging - <AUTHOR> http://ca.blackberry.com/business/products-services/e-bbm.html

<comment><USER2> people still have Blackberry's? I thought they were extinct by now...</comment>


What irritates you about shopping online listed out loud - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/oktium/how-online-shopping-is-inconvenient-1619c5c264fa <comment><USER2> 1\. US Websites with high international shipping costs. It appears to be common for the business to just put up a 'cover my ass' flat fee instead of doing the homework of discovering the cost of shipping for a different country.

2\. Import duties and taxes so high that when added to shipping they're equal to the price of the product. This is usually discovered at the last minute.

3\. Amazon's policy of listing dozens of product providers - with sometimes no visible way to detect if they ship to your country - so you have to hop back and forth to check if you may really buy it. I'm amazed Amazon does not provide a method for a user to send a message saying "I'd buy x if your shipping to country y was lower than z".

(1) and (3) are laziness. (2) could link to third party retailers to make an end run around the taxes.</comment>


DIY wallpaper cut from what is now said to be the world's most expensive book - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/12126174/DIY-aristocrat-wallpaper-project-could-have-cost-7.3m.html <comment><USER2> I've been lucky enough to have handled one of these books in the rare books room at the Natural History Museum in London, and have also been involved in developing reproductions for The British Library.

The really surprising thing about the books housed in public collections is that each of the pages is unceremoniously stamped with the mark of their owner, much as I would expect they would mark a more easily replaceable text book.

</comment><comment><USER3> Now that's how you live!</comment>


RuLu: Ruby Conference in Lyon, France (June 25-26th) - <AUTHOR> http://rulu.eu The Lyon Ruby Brigade is pleased to announce its first Ruby Conference in Lyon, France. This conference will take place on June 25th and 26th.
Saturday 25th will host the conference talks (all given in English) of Konstantin Haase, Blake Mizerany, Joseph Wilk, Elise Huard, Nick Sutterer, Sven Fuchs and Michael Bensoussan. The keynote talk will be given by Joshua Wehner "Must It Always Be About Sex?".
Sunday will be dedicated to both French and English talks (conference or lightning talks), hacking, coding dojos and the local Startup Weekend group will organize a pitch contest.
If you're interested in talking, participating in any way, please feel free to do so! All the information you need are on our website http://rulu.eu or on Twitter https://twitter.com/rubylug.
Help us spread the word and see you in Lyon! <comment><AUTHOR> The Lyon Ruby Brigade is pleased to announce its first Ruby Conference in Lyon, France. This conference will take place on June 25th and 26th.

Saturday 25th will host the conference talks (all given in English) of Konstantin Haase, Blake Mizerany, Joseph Wilk, Elise Huard, Nick Sutterer, Sven Fuchs and Michael Bensoussan. The keynote talk will be given by Joshua Wehner "Must It Always Be About Sex?".

Sunday will be dedicated to both French and English talks (conference or lightning talks), hacking, coding dojos and the local Startup Weekend group will organize a pitch contest.

If you're interested in talking, participating in any way, please feel free to do so! All the information you need are on our website <http://rulu.eu> or on Twitter <https://twitter.com/rubylug>.

Help us spread the word and see you in Lyon!</comment>


Covid-19 Is Transmitted Through Aerosols - <AUTHOR> https://time.com/5883081/covid-19-transmitted-aerosols/ <comment><USER2> Can someone explain to me how the quote below doesn't undermine the main argument? If aerosols were so effective at transmission, wouldn't more people cohabiting get infected? By the given analogy - living with a smoker makes it hard to avoid smelling smoke. I would guess droplets as a method would be an easier one to avoid while co-habiting, since they don't linger in the air: you just need to avoid being in the same space at the same time. That wouldn't work with aerosols.

      ...but that many people who share the same home with an infected person do not get the disease. To understand why, it is useful to use cigarette or vaping smoke (which is also an aerosol) as an analog. Imagine sharing a home with a smoker: if you stood close to the smoker while talking, you would inhale a great deal of smoke."

</comment><comment><USER3> the sources [0] and [1] that form the foundation of the article

[0] [https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article- pdf/doi/10.1093...](https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article- pdf/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa939/33478095/ciaa939.pdf\[PDF\])

[1] [https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6498/1422](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6498/1422)

ventilation is a critical factor in preventing spread among many individuals over prolonged period from a single location.

if the air is stale then bail.</comment>


Offer HN: Free Tax Help from a Pro. - <AUTHOR>

Hi.
I'm a tax accountant.  I'm a CPA, an Enrolled Agent before the IRS and a future attorney.  I've worked with the major accounting firms (PwC and KPMG) and I've created a profitable accounting firm within 12 months of opening its doors.  Plus, I'm 24 and I've saved companies like Pfizer and TIA-CREFF more than 30 million.
Now I'm an upstart throwing my hat into the ring. My technical partner and myself are experiencing the hardships and the highs from disrupting markets.  Its awesome.
I know how hard it is to get things done on a tight (nonexistent) budget.  So, I wanted to keep my promise to the Hacker News community from six months ago and offer my advice to anyone that might need it on anything tax or business related.
Sorry I couldn't do this sooner but its been an insane ride thusfar.
Original Offer: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1837299 Help on Incorporations: http://cameronkeng.com/podcast-ep-1-incorporation/
You can email me directly at firstname.lastname@example.com if you want to ask something privately.
Best, Cam.
Ps...Can we bring back the "Offer HN" pass it along attitude back? I missed how the community was really trying to help each other so openly... <comment><USER2> I have a question: I am receiving stock (not options) in a publicly traded company for part of my compensation in a project. I believe that is considered by the SEC to be restricted stock, so to sell it I will need to follow Rule 144.

However, as I understand it, from the perspective of the IRS, it is no restricted as it is an outright stock grant with no vesting or other such provisions.

So, given the above, let me lay out a scenario:

I earn 100 shares of the stock at a rate of $1/share. On the day that I invoice for this stock, it is worth $1.50/share. After six months, when I am able to sell the stock, I sell it at $2/share.

As best I understand it, under section 83(a), I have to report the full $1.50 as income on the day I receive it. Section 83(b) does not apply as it is not restricted stock from the perspective of the IRS. As such, when I sell the stock at $2, it is taxed as capital gains.

Is my understanding correct?

<comment><AUTHOR> You're correct in your analysis. You'd be required to pay tax on the income received based upon the value of the stock (the object received is always going to determine the value or income you've received). A Section 83(b) election doesn't apply in this situation because of the stock isn't restricted under Title 26 of the United States Code.

Restricted in the tax code means that it is either (a) undeterminable in value or (b) legal right to title or authority has not been transfered.

You seem to have a perfect understanding of the issue. =)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the confirmation. I appreciate your help.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you use LinkedIn's PRO features (InMail)? - <AUTHOR>

Just wondering how many of you use the premium features of LinkedIn. Specifically, have people found InMail useful for sales or biz dev?<p>I'm trying to gauge if people receiving InMail would think it's annoying or would actually be more likely to read and engage. <comment><USER2> Why don't you put a poll in here? You'll likely get more feedback.</comment>


What (not) to wear on an IT job interview: real-life examples - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/it-management/424433/what-not-wear-it-job-interview-six-examples-you-can-learn?page=0,0 <comment><USER2> I used to get paralyzingly anxious at interviews, as it's really intimidating for an introvert like me to sit in a crossfire of questions for an hour. It feels as if the interviewers are deliberately looking for a reason NOT to hire me, although I know this is not actually the case.

Then I stopped dressing up for interviews and just wearing whatever I usually wear, e.g. very casual. For me, it turned the tables. I'm no longer just sitting there sweating, hoping to answer all the questions "correctly", but rather evaluating wether this is a workplace _I 'd_ be happy to work at.

The idea of dressing up just seems superficial. After all, if I do get the job, I'm certainly not going to dress up in a suit every day. Not only that, but wearing my usual clothes also gave me more confidence to be myself, instead of trying to be the ideal of a guy who gets the job. And if I miss a job opportunity just because I didn't dress the "right" way, then it's obviously not the kind of workplace I'd want to be part of anyway.

Dammit, I've worn shorts made from ripped jeans and a Boozembly t-shirt ([http://i.imgur.com/UJeKRz1.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/UJeKRz1.jpg)) at an interview. Nobody cared, the interview actually felt good and I was later told the only reason I wasn't chosen for that particular position, was that (and I'm paraphrasing here) it would've been too boring for me. Still, I'm expecting to hear from them soon about another, more fitting position :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I hear you.

Anything you can do to make yourself more comfortable in an interview (or other stress-filled situation, such as speaking at a conference) is worth doing. If you're comfortable, you're more confident and thus better able to represent your abilities -- and that's what they ultimately want to hire.

Which is why I made a point of buying an outfit that both looks professional _and_ is comfy enough for me to relax in.</comment></comment>


The Benefits of Getting Comfortable with Uncertainty - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/the-benefits-of-getting-comfortable-with-uncertainty/409807/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> My core takeaway is that we each of us have needs for order and tolerances for uncertainty and that the theory and research shows how these vary under environmental conditions: A higher threat level edges us away from our tolerance of uncertainty and toward our need for order.

Awareness of this may help prevent overreactions (personal and political) to circumstances with which we are uncomfortable (discomfort being perhaps subconsciously as threatening).

</comment><comment><USER3> Great article. If anyone hasn't read comfortable with uncertainty you Pema Chodron, it's also a great perspective on the matter. Don't need to be a Buddhist to appreciate the core idea.</comment>