How to overcome resistance to work  - <AUTHOR> http://www.dextronet.com/blog/2012/06/how-to-overcome-resistance-to-work-4-techniques/ <comment><USER2> Some great suggestions here, but I find the best method for me is to just crank some music, down a couple swigs of coffee and dive in. About 95% of the time the issue isn't about getting stuck partway through, or approaching the problem wrong, it's about getting through the first ten minutes of work. Resistance crumbles after that and motivation and focus kick in to full gear.

<comment><USER3> [http://lesswrong.com/lw/3kv/working_hurts_less_than_procrast...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/3kv/working_hurts_less_than_procrastinating_we_fear/)

<comment><USER4> You know, if a task isn't particularly urgent, I have no problem with procrastinating for a couple days on it (and working on other things in the mean time) as long as I keep coming back to it.

This resembles the Feynman method of how to be a genius, but sometime if a task is hard, and seems insurmountable, sometimes all you need is some time for your mind to grasp the task. I have occasionally tackled a problem, given up as it seemed hard, come back a couple days later and discovered a trivial solution, completing in half an hour what I figured would take me 3. So I call this "productive procrastination" and it's a good thing. Another function of my complex to-do list is that it gives me a chance to think about tasks before I start (again, I don't worth through it sequentially). The difficulty is in figuring out when to procrastinate and when not to. There are a lot of things you never want to procrastinate in doing (if you take a long time to bill your customers, they will usually reciprocate when it comes to timeliness of payment, for example). But there are a lot of cases where procrastination can be helpful. So the challenge is when to and when not to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I quit my job 6 months ago to travel and learn programming. And the greatest personal frustration has been staying productive in a work-from-anywhere, no- boss environment.

What I've realized is that discipline is not only about buckling down, but also about using mental hacks such as the ones listed in this article. Its also been helpful to realize that transitioning productivity from a cubicle to a self-directed path is difficult. It has also been the biggest surprise.

<comment><USER6> There's something to be said for the ceremony of grooming for work, travelling to your workplace, interacting with coworkers, during approximately the same time each day.

Work is the "2nd space" in the Starbuck's "3rd space" advertisements.

Have you tried working in the same seat at a library or other public place each weekday?

<comment><USER5> That's a good suggestion. I use a spreadsheet to monitor the # of hours worked each day and my goal is to keep that on an upwards trend. Its based on Seinfeld's 'dont break the chain' tactic. This has worked the best for me.

<comment><USER7> Is the number of work hours really what you want to increase?

<comment><USER8> It suffers from what a lot of metrics offer: it's easily measured, easily gamed, and not particularly correlated with output.

I'd say it's probably useful to measure, but also key to keep in mind when you're warming a seat just to move that number up, rather than actually getting things done.

Including other measures of work _output_ would be a very good modification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is great advice for overcoming procrastination and I use it daily. It has significantly improved the way that I work. I think I learned of the trick from GTD, or possibly Pragmatic Thinking and Learning. A TODO list by itself isn't helpful for me -- in fact, in can increase my procrastination by seeing a giant list of tasks because it's just so overwhelming.

What has worked is coupling the task with the next immediate action. Depending on the level of procrastination, this next immediate action does not have to be a grand vision. It is often as simplistic as "open the lid to your laptop", then, "open a text editor", then "think of the file you need to edit", then "type hello world three times" (just to get me to start writing __something__). Passing that initial hurdle usually gets me to the desired state of flow.

Similarly, I now have the following written at the top of my TODO list at all times: "Direct the Rider. Motivate the Elephant. Shape the Path." This psychology comes from Switch by Dan Heath and Chip Heath, and it's hugely impacted my outlook on work, especially as a researcher.

</comment><comment><USER10> This reminded me of those long sales pages with an email list signup box at the bottom. This is what I got from the article. Break it down into small tasks. Work out what the next easiest actionable task is, like say "Opening an application". Set yourself a time limit on the task. Discover and remove any internal resistance you may have. Use you new found insight now. Maybe on this link to download our to-do list software.

Don't get me wrong the advice will no doubt help some of us, most likely more then the software would.

</comment><comment><USER11> The technique recommended in the article is similar to Kaizen, the method that Toyota implemented in the 50's to overcome quality and productivity problems. It's the practice of using continuous small incremental changes to lead to larger improvements. It also happens to be a great way to overcome many psychological hurdles.

</comment><comment><USER12> Social media bar floating _above_ the article's text on my Android phone.

I cannot remember just how many articles I did not read because of this. Guessing one word per line lowers my reading enjoyment.

<comment><USER6> This is why I often browse (sites other than HN) with JS turned off in the Android browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I still find the ticking of a pomodoro timer to be the best way to make me start cranking out work. There's just something about tik tik tik tik that springs me into action.

<comment><USER14> I've just discovered Pomodoro (on Day 5) and I have to say it's completely revolutionised my productivity. I've gone from 3 or 4 hours of unfocused time a day, to 12 hours of laser like focus on stuff that matters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Step 1:

Realize that if you don't work, you'll fucking starve.

Step 2:

Close HN.

Step 3:

Work like fucking crazy, to put as much distance between yourself and starvation as you possibly can.

<comment><USER16> Step 1 is not really true for a large number of middle-class Westerners, though, and even less true for middle-class Westerners with tech skills. There are a lot of unpleasant things that would happen if I stopped making money tomorrow, but it would be a _long_ time, if ever, before I starved. Between savings/friends/parents/foodstamps/etc., I would have to seriously run through about 20 fallback plans before literally not having food.

And in particular, it doesn't solve the independent-motivation problem. There are a lot of people who can work a regular job who have trouble, at least initially, getting into a productive self-directed work mode. If someone is trying to figure out how to transition from regular employment to self- directed productivity, telling them that their motivator should be money- making to eat misses the point, because they could do that via the "failure" option of just giving up and going back to a 9-5, too.

<comment><USER17> If I stopped working tomorrow, it would be months before anyone even noticed. Probably much longer before they got around to stopping my pay. This doesn't help with motivation at all.

This doesn't help with motivation. You folks who are living on the edge of starvation have it easy!

<comment><USER18> "You folks who are living on the edge of starvation have it easy!" Where did you assume that from?

<comment><USER19> I think it's a joke.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wish a psychologist research all the suggestions and laid out the effectiveness of each approach.

For now, I guess we goes with "whatever works for me".

<comment><USER21> I know what you mean. Most of the time such advice like this makes sense, and some of it is indeed backed up by psychological research, but it's hard to see that unless you know of the research yourself. A lot of the time what seems like common sense is actually contrary to findings in psychology research. The book 59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman is a good starting point here and it offers lots of advice which is backed up with research and data. For example, the book talks about how smiling can make you feel happier, which I had discovered to be true for myself on my own accord.

One thing I'm looking into is using self-administered Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) to overcome various problems, such as procrastination. I have found this, which I posted on HN earlier:

<http://www.threeminutetherapy.com/chapter6.html>

This uses REBT, or Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy, which is a form of CBT and, apparently, the most extensively researched form. See here for more details:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_emotive_behavior_thera...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_emotive_behavior_therapy)

CBT has been proven effective for a number of psychological issues such as anxiety and depression and I'm really interested in its potential applications to other problems. There's more info here with a ton of citations:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think non-monetary reward is important issue here. Trying to focus not only on smallest but most pleasurable thing if when the result is there is important. It helps to reduce friction to get yourself to get momentum going. Pomodoro is a great way to keep the momentum. Having a realistic checklist with some cool and some less cool things to accomplish for the day has done wonders form my productivity as well.

Remember you've got to treat yourself well while doing work and work will treat you well in return.

</comment><comment><USER4> My approach is horribly more complicated and involves a set of two TODO lists. The first is my immediate list, and always has 12 items on it (4 harder ones and 8 faster tasks). 3 tasks (1 hard and 2 fast) are always marked as current works in progress. 3 more are listed as next up. The next six I choose freely from to promote when I complete a task.

Then I have my mid-range to-do. Tasks usually stay here for days to weeks (my short-term I get unhappy when something is there for more than a few days). Items here are coded with a * for a bigger item and a % for an item I think I can do quickly. The % are moved to my short-term list in chronological order (with some exceptions) while the * ones are moved in based on what I think i can tackle next.

This gives me some variety and some freedom to jump around between tasks and stay productive. I have ADD so thats a good thing. It also lets me set goals that I can usually meet and procrastinate constructively. More than once I have had tasks I really had resistance to starting become trivial after thinking about it for a day or two. But yea part of that is breaking the task down, thinking about it, maybe making a couple abortive attempts to complete it.......

<comment><USER23> I don't have ADD, but this is absolutely true for me. I prefer seeing exactly what I need to do and having the freedom to tackle components of them one at a time.

With that said, are you using any special applications for your TODO list? I've been looking for a good one (I'm on Linux) that fits my workflow better, but so far, I keep going back to RTM which isn't exactly the most optimized for me.

I want something that is a desktop application that also syncs with Android/iOS that is lightweight and at my fingertips. I want it easily editable and possibly with a checklist rather than just deleting finished items. I want the list to be rearrangeable rather than static. If anyone knows of a good TODO application, please let me know!

<comment><USER4> I am using gedit. I would use vim but doing more visual copy/paste seems to work better for me here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Holy hell I'm reading this instead of working. What has my life come to.

</comment><comment><USER25> Programmer here, I usually start to procrastinate when I find something difficult/too tedious to do. Whenever something like this happens, I find that taking my dog out for a 20 minute walk really refreshes me up and motivates me to do the task!

</comment><comment><USER8> NB/offtopic: this page design is _horrible_.

On mobile, there's a "social sidebar" which hovers _over_ the text, as others have noted, to the left side of the page, obscuring the first word or so of each line, in a manner that it cannot be dismissed.

Reading with NoScript enabled on Iceweasel, the text is squeezed into a narrow 2-3 character column to the far right of the page.

My solution is to disable stylesheets and read the page unstyled.

Distractions such as this take a great deal away from actually being able to _access_ content.

</comment><comment><USER26> Get started at any cost.

You are ready.

Build it wrong, but _build it_.

Don't work too long, it's harder to get started next time if you flogged yourself into the ground last time. Pavlov rang and told me so.

</comment><comment><USER27> When I set to do a task for a few minutes in order to trick myself into working all day, it never works because I already know what I'm doing and why, and the trick fails. I have been struggling with this for a long time, and I, too, have discovered that the method that works best is to suck it up and just start working.

</comment><comment><USER28> "resistance to work" usually means that you don't have any passion for that work, and that you shouldn't be doing it. if you're running a business you should think of outsourcing any task that you don't want to do, unless it's mission critical.

<comment><USER29> This isn't necessarily true- for me, resistance generally means I'm scared I can't do the task well enough, or scared that someone else will look at my work and think it's awful.

<comment><USER30> I have the same thought process as you, and I find it quite debilitating. It often manifests as a need to know _everything_ about a problem space before even starting on a solution.

The upside is that on the whole I produce code that is logical, consistent, maintainable and relatively bug-free. But it takes a long time.</comment></comment></comment>


Hacker Newspaper: reformatted Hacker News - <AUTHOR> http://hacker-newspaper.gilesb.com/ More information about this here: http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2009/04/miniapp-hacker-newspaper.html <comment><USER2> Er... from [http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2009/04/miniapp-hacker- news...](http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2009/04/miniapp-hacker- newspaper.html) (posted by chrislo)

 _Hacker Newspaper is a superior user interface for Hacker News._

I beg to disagree - see below.

 _It's more performant, more readable_

It's hard to skim.

 _it doesn't turn visited links damn near invisible for some insane reason_

I don't need to read the same thing again. Visited links can be invisible for all I care. I visit them less than 5% of the time.

 _and it makes it much easier to skim the headlines_

No way. Suddenly I have to scroll through screens of large-font nonsense instead of just getting it all within about 1.5 screens.

 _and avoid getting into useless, time-wasting blather_

Comments, to me, are more than 50% of the value of HN. I often read the comments before the article, and sometimes don't bother reading the article at all.

To me, this "reformatted layout" is very, very inferior.

<comment><USER3> _I often read the comments before the article, and sometimes don't bother reading the article at all._

Same here. To me this is essential. The comments tell me quickly if the article is going to be a waste of time.

<comment><USER4> I find that actually looking at the article provides a far better indicator of quality, but to each his own.

<comment><USER5> In general, determining the quality of an article with any accuracy by looking at it is well more time-intensive than just looking at the comments.

<comment><USER2> Yep. Especially when the content is the longer kind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Random observations:

This needs to be cloned by someone who is willing to at least _link_ to the HN comment threads. I know that Giles regards such things as deadly dangerous OMG-someone-is-wrong-on-the-Internet time-wasting poison -- and he's got a point -- but some of us have an odd _love_ of the medium and primarily read HN for the comments.

Some headlines just work better in giant Newspaper Type than others. In his example, Giles has picked right up on "Bill Gates Applies for Patent on Electromagnetic Engine", which reads like a steampunk April fool's joke when you print it on a newspaper page. It's great.

This project is doomed [1] because the average article on the web is miserably structured for being teased on a newspaper page. My favorite example is up there right now:

 _HOWTO: Stop procrastination (Dan Ariely)_

 _We're sorry, but something went wrong. We've been notified about this issue and we'll take a look at it shortly._

That's so perfect it's like poetry. On the other hand, "Ruby Style Guide" reads like the Associated Press conception of a modern online newspaper:

 _This repository is private. All pages are served over SSL and all pushing and pulling is done over SSH. No one may fork, clone, or view it unless they are added as a member . Every repository with this icon () is private._

That's art, but it isn't exactly in the spirit of the actual Ruby Style Guide.

But, seriously, there's a reason why newspaper writing has traditionally been in inverted-pyramid form, with the most important sentence at the top and very little preliminary throat-clearing: Newspaper articles have to make sense when you chop off the first one or two lines and blow them up huge, or isolate them on the front page. Web links do not. And they don't.

You can't replicate the awesomeness of a well-designed newspaper with AI- mediated typography alone. The prose and the priority of the stories must also be carefully designed by humans.

The reason why HN is a big flat pile of headlines is that such a display _accurately reflects the output of its ranking algorithm_ : Most likely the top N stories include a certain number of interesting stories, but the algorithm doesn't know which specific ones they are. You don't want to blow up some stories bigger than others unless they really are bigger stories, and who is making that call? Some Python or Ruby script? Please.

\---

[1] But maybe not for long. Add a human editor tweaking the headlines and the teasers and I believe you might have something.

<comment><USER7> "[1] But maybe not for long. Add a human editor tweaking the headlines and the teasers and I believe you might have something."

I believe it is called "The Drudge Report." :)

<comment><USER6> Touché.

Obligatory 37signals link: "Why the Drudge Report is one of the best designed sites on the Web":

[http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1407-why-the-drudge- repor...](http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1407-why-the-drudge-report-is- one-of-the-best-designed-sites-on-the-web)

It's painful to contemplate. [1]

\---

[1] The truth embodied in the 37signals essay, that is. It goes without saying that the Drudge Report is painful to contemplate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe it's just me, but the layout is much worse for a link site. This is not a site with a bunch of articles, it's just a list of links. A simple list is easy to scan and it's easy to spot things you may be interested in. The left right laying out does not improve things in any way, in my opinion.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Giles talks about his motivations and the technology behind this on his blog: [http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2009/04/miniapp-hacker- news...](http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2009/04/miniapp-hacker- newspaper.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> While it's a neat experiment, you really should be using UTF-8 as your character encoding to mirror Hacker News. I'm already seeing broken characters.

</comment><comment><USER10> Maybe it's just me, but i see a little inspiration from <http://www.acrylicapps.com/times/> , one of the Apps in the last MacHeist, that is also a feed reader.

I added HN to my Times app. But i still prefer viewing it in Firefox.

<comment><USER7> Wow, if the screen shots are any indication, that looks like a much more polished implementation of this idea. I think if someone ripped off the interface ideas and implemented as a web app, they would get a lot of users quickly. (I don't know if a free web app is a better business model than $30 for a Mac application, however.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think having ~/.mozilla/firefox/$foo.default/chrome/userContent.css containing

        @-moz-document url-prefix(http://news.ycombinator.com/) {
            td { color: #000000 !important; }
            a { color: #000055 !important; }
        }

helps an awful lot with news.yc's appearance. The main improvement being the banishing of that awful low-contrast gray on gray text.

</comment><comment><USER12> So I had thought about using my modified RSS feed for HN (available at: <http://hacketal.com/#hnrss> ) for this purpose but decided against it because I have very different use cases for RSS versus the HN homepage. The homepage, for me, is great for going back to stories and seeing which ones have jumped up because of a great conversation while Google Reader is where I can quickly jump through all of the stories and quickly read the first paragraph of every story.

Giles -- thanks for linking to me in your blog post about this new visual.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't experience slow-downs as frequently with HN as I used to, so I can't quite agree with it being faster. Also while it is definitely quick (as it's static HTML) it could also get out-of-date, HNs low score threshold for front- page items means that the front page is updated more often than other sites, e.g. reddit.

However it is a different way to look at things and I'm very interested in learning about Typogridphy (<http://csswizardry.com/typogridphy/>).

</comment><comment><USER14> People are going to be nitpicking this to death, but I'm happy that people are willing to put it on the line and actually _experiment_ with things like interface and interaction.

</comment><comment><USER15> This execution isn't addressing the readers needs, but it would be interesting to see several different attempts at a redesign. It would be a fun challenge for interaction designers.

</comment><comment><USER16> Brilliant! Much better use of space. I can sort out the heap of information easily.

If I can get voting on there, I'll use this instead of vanilla HN.

Good innovation. He went further than simply displaying a pretty bullet list, like others do(digg, etc.).

Plus he included minors innovations that are very clever. For example, the size of the headlines are proportional to it's number of votes. It allows you to see how liked(important) a piece is regardless of it's rank.

It would be cool if the headlines would keep their current style and become links.

</comment><comment><USER17> Pretty cool. I'll try reading that for a couple of days to see how the experience compares to reading HN. Giles, can you add the link for the HN comments as well?

<comment><USER18> I second that. You could keep the link subtle, for example use the title as the hyperlink to the comment page, but don't underline it on mouseover.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if you could include comments and make the headline fonts smaller? Newspapers are meant to be readable to everyone; but the mean hacker age will be much lesser (there was a poll on this elsewhere on HN)

Also, I think the goal ought to be to make HN more readable (which you do, to some extent), rather than mimic a newspaper down to the pixel.

</comment><comment><USER20> Giles has been in this thread, but his comments are being deleted because he's an asshole.

<comment><USER21> Despite his rudeness, he's also making good points. His comments shouldn't be killed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> different font sizes (let alone serif fonts) are not more readable on computers

theres no alignment, it dynamically resizes - your eyes dont know where to snap to.

grey on white text, ugh why?

they aren't quite columns and they aren't quite not columns.

</comment><comment><USER23> Interesting study. I think that design is hard to read.

I would like to offer up a raw php "feed" of hacker news and let anyone redesign it with their own css & domain.

</comment><comment><USER24> Heh, I just want a view of Hacker News front page that sorts the list of links by the topics that have the highest-rated comment in them.

</comment><comment><USER25> Any insight about Why hacker news is not running on Reddit Open Source?

I think that is a more featured platform than arcforums.

<comment><USER26> The reason is simple: PG needs a middle size proyect to test his Programming Language (arc) and HN is the result.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> this is really interesting -- the process of automating a newspaper is quite a task. did you use any shortest path algorithms to make the articles fill up the whole line?

</comment><comment><USER28> Yuch. Go back to the drawing board.

</comment><comment><USER29> that's kind of fun to look at =)

</comment><comment><USER30> I like it!</comment>


Embryo selection for IQ both possible and cost-effective - <AUTHOR> http://www.gwern.net/Embryo%20selection <comment><USER2> Somewhat disturbing that when embryo selection for IQ comes up, _cost effectiveness_ is the one question they ask.</comment>


Ask HN: Any good resource on writing your own mmap allocator? - <AUTHOR> I've been experimenting with using mmapped files as storage. One thing that I'm trying out is writing variable sized records to an mmapped file. However, I'll also be supporting deletions and updates, so fragmentation can become a big problem. Moreover, there could be records written at different times that need to be physically "colocated" for efficiency.<p>My question is, are there good resources to get started on working on on-disk allocators? I don't want to get there in a day, but need a solid direction. Thanks! <comment><USER2> I collected some links to interesting and useful links about allocators here [https://github.com/rain-1/awesome- allocators](https://github.com/rain-1/awesome-allocators)

I think you would look into bitmap based allocators (which only handles fixed size allocations, but it's very simple) and then (more advanced) binary buddies system to start with.

* [http://sean.cm/a/tricolor-garbage-collector](http://sean.cm/a/tricolor-garbage-collector)

* [http://www.memorymanagement.org/mmref/alloc.html](http://www.memorymanagement.org/mmref/alloc.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! This is very useful.</comment></comment>


Windows 10 and reserved storage - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/filecab/2019/01/07/windows-10-and-reserved-storage/ <comment><USER2> I'm sure reserving 10GB of space will greatly "improve the reliability" of my Windows installation on a 60GB partition (on a 120GB dual boot SSD) with 5 GB free.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not sure how I feel about MS hijacking 7-10GB of a system as a "reserved space" to download Windows updates to.

I mean, if that's what they need to do to get Windows Updates to function with any degree of reliability then their OS is truly fucked.</comment>


Analyse Asia #18: The 500 Startups Footprint in Greater China with Rui Ma - <AUTHOR> http://analyse.asia/2015/02/20/episode-18-the-500-startups-footprint-in-greater-china-angel-investing-with-rui-ma/ <comment><AUTHOR> Podcast Synopsis: Rui Ma (@ruima), partner from 500 Startups covering Greater China, joins us to discuss her investment thesis and the kind of founders she back in a vibrant and dynamic ecosystem. She gives an introduction to 500 Startups and how they help startups with their mentors network and events, and discuss some interesting companies under her portfolio. She also added some insights on the angel investing ecosystem in China and provide some advice to how foreign founders can start up in China.</comment>


Stop Pretending You're Not Rich - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/10/opinion/sunday/stop-pretending-youre-not-rich.html <comment><USER2> I think the author misses some of the point of the "99%" rhetoric. It's not that someone in the 98th percentile making a 6 figure salary doesn't feel well off, it's that they don't feel any control over the political system. In the post-Citizens United landscape, multi-millionaires and billionaires who can afford to solo fund a PAC have outsized influence over politicians and government agencies. The impression that control has been ceded to such people is reinforced by their increasing monopoly on the accrual of tangible political benefits, which manifest in the forms of tax breaks and favorable regulatory decisions. And for those of us who are younger, student loan debt has delayed the meaningful accumulation of wealth via home purchases (plus not paying rent) and investment savings even when we earn such high salaries, so our annual incomes don't reflect our true economic status relative to prior generations.

<comment><USER3> Rich people has always had large influence in politics. Being rich means commanding a lot of resources, that's literally the definition. Having a lot of resources makes you influential. It's not the only way to have influence - one can be poor or average and still influential - but it's definitely one of the ways. Pretending that something - be it "Citizens united" decision or anything else - created this situation is extremely naive and ignores the whole human history and history of politics. Wealth, influence and politics are always interlinked, at least in a free lawful society - in a totalitarian one, property means nothing, and resources are distributed in other way, so influence is gained in other ways.

All that said, money don't matter as much in politics as some of the propaganda tries to tell. They are important, but they are not everything. There are numerous examples in US history alone where the candidate who spent the most lost, and the candidate who was the richest lost. By now, there's enough money on each side of any issue that the money on the sides is no longer the issue.

As for student debt etc. - this is the result of applying "feel good" solutions without considering the economic consequences. If you inject a huge stream of money into education system by providing unlimited federally supported loans, you get the prices go up, and you get the debt. And if you support home ownership and wealth accumulation by home ownership, house prices necessarily skyrocket and newcomers get priced out of the market. You can not have one without the other.

<comment><USER4> While this makes sense, I don't think you're going to make much progress convincing those suffering from oversized student loan debt that they are the expected "economic consequences" of a policy you believe to have been misguided. In this particular thread, it rings especially painful: the article discusses the way the upper 20% maintain their hold on power and resources; raising the cost of education clearly helps that goal. The poster to whom your responding points out that their loan debt is so large that they will not have the opportunity to have an income similar to those who graduated with similar credentials a generation previous, something unique in US history.

If we don't take steps to correct the situation, eventually only the upper 20% will be able to afford higher education. Regardless of how we might feel about government meddling, we all should be able to agree that it's anti-American to make higher education a privilege only the wealthy can enjoy.

You point out that the rich have always had more influence in politics then the poor, and this is obvious and has always been the case. By no means does this make the Citizens United decision less important, I'd argue that this is a tangential point. Citizens United has allowed corporations more weight to their voice then most of the US citizenry, wealthy or poor! In my opinion, the upper 20% have much more to fear from corporate interests than the lower 80%.

<comment><USER3> > I don't think you're going to make much progress convincing those suffering > from oversized student loan debt that they are the expected "economic > consequences" of a policy you believe to have been misguided

If they don't somehow get convinced of that, they will continue suffering, and their children would be suffering even more, until some catastrophic event forces the change of policy out of necessity. Or until some genius figures out that if we nationalize the whole thing, we could hide the spending inside the voluminous budgets nobody ever reads, and charge the same money now charged as loan payments through taxes, and everybody would be so happy for their "free" education.

> The poster to whom your responding points out that their loan debt is so > large that they will not have the opportunity to have an income similar to > those who graduated with similar credentials

If the price is too high, maybe it's time to stop buying and look for a different solution? Instead of declaring upfront "our aim is for everybody to buy X, no matter the price" and then acting surprised when the price of X is shooting up?

> By no means does this make the Citizens United decision less important

Oh, CU decision is very important. It recognized that if you have right to criticize Hillary Clinton privately, you also have right to criticize her collectively, i.e. band together with similar-minded people and create an organization dedicated to that goal. The alternative would be late-Soviet type of political life - where you could say a lot of things while you are in your own kitchen, but once you get out in public and try to make a difference, the state would control what you can say and how you can say it. I agree, it is a very important decision that confirmed citizens' right exist even if they start become a nuisance to the powerful people, and not only when they are inconsequential.

> Citizens United has allowed corporations more weight to their voice then > most of the US citizenry,

Corporations _are_ US citizenry (well, then can have foreign shareholders, but it's largely insignificant given US economy size dominates the rest so much). Who you think they are made of, Martians?

> Citizens United has allowed corporations more weight to their voice then > most of the US citizenry,

What are "corporate interests" and why should we fear them?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article seems to be stretching to find reasons for its existence. I am willing to accept that I may be blinded by my own income/position. But it makes wild accusations and the backup feels very thin.

I also disagree that a "meritocracy" does not exist, at least in the IT world. In my own life (anecdote, sure, but how many stories are similar?) I was raised by a single father who made 20-30k a year. I'm now in the top 20% that the article refers to, and seems to imply as very hard to do from the way I was raised. This happened not due to luck or privilege, in my opinion. This happened because I spend 12-16 hours a day in front of a computer screen, and because I do what I tell people I will do.

My son will certainly have access to more than I had when I was a child. Maybe I'm just an evil rich guy? The article seems to be prefer that I am.

<comment><USER6> This article seems to posit that most people who are in this top quintile haven't had to work incredibly hard for it, or that they have worked no harder than anyone else. From what I've seen the responsibilities I have for my salary are far greater and require a far greater amount of autonomy and personal responsibility for my work than most people making 30k/year.

<comment><USER7> > a far greater amount of autonomy and personal responsibility for my work > than most people making 30k/year.

I see a lot of jobs at the ... $50k-$80k mark which have a lot of responsibility but not much autonomy, and that's where I always have trouble (that mismatch).

The folks I know in the $50k-$80k range seem to work (measured perhaps by effort, stress and hours put in) at least as much as, often far more than, folks earning $100k-$200k. I don't have enough connections at the $300k and $30k ends to compare.

<comment><USER8> Many of my friends are in the $30k area, so I can put in a data point for you there. They work long hours, often on weekends, sometimes two part time jobs or one full time job and a side gig. The thing that's hard is there is more supply of unskilled workers than there is demand for them. If you don't put in the time and put up with your shitty boss and coworkers, someone else will, and now you're homeless because the US has no social safety structure. Coupled with our abysmal minimum wage, this results in working 60 hour weeks to acquire your barely-above-poverty wage. As someone with a very comfy job (hey, I'm posting on HN right now), it enrages me to see people who work harder than me paid less than half my salary. And I'm on the low end of the IT wage scale.

<comment><USER7> Thanks. I perhaps should have said I don't have many folks on the $300k side of things to compare against the $30k folks. I do know people in the $30k area, and yeah... you're spot on. And... while a few I know are just sort of 'content'(?) where they're at, most I know are wanting to "get ahead" but seem stuck - family/kids, long work hours... it's not _impossible_ to do more, but often physically... almost impossible. Go back to school and take more classes to hope to get a new degree in 2-3 years? With 3 little kids, two adults working 4 jobs, 1 car which breaks down a lot... yeah, it gets hard to see any easy way out of that.

I tell that scenario and get people saying "doesn't matter, get out there, make it happen!" and... yeah - we all know some success stories who succeeded against the odds, but... we all know someone like that because it's still fairly remarkable in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Posh Brits are more likely to see that their position is at least in part the result of good fortune.

This is true, and part of the reason I prefer the UK to the US. People can be humorous about their status in the UK. I've got at least one friend, child of a zillionaire, who quite causally jokes about how he'd never be able to afford his lifestyle were it not for a judicious choice in parents. Class is so constantly talked about in the UK that you can't really avoid the most common observations about it: it's undeserved, and it's hard to do anything about.

The other thing, which doesn't seem to be mentioned much in the article, is race. It's a truly unpleasant thing about America that race is a thing. I'm not psychologically scarred by it, in fact I thought it was somewhat funny, but I remember going to a NYC comedy club and the comedian started joking about me. "Why aren't you doing homework?". The point is race seems to be an alternative kind of class in America, one you can never work yourself out of. (And in that sense, class proper.) And because that's there, everything else can be fixed with hard work. Right?

The stuff about property prices causing gated communities is quite true in and around London. Even a very highly paid banking job does not buy you much in many parts of London, and private schools are not cheap either. However there are council flats in just about every area of London; it may be unrealistic that they end up socialising, but there is at least the physical chance that children of the poor will run into the wealthy kids in Kensington.

His point about Oxbridge entrance is a positive for the UK; it is quite unthinkable that an Oxbridge don will be forced into accepting some unqualified kid. My tutor was clear that it was her and her alone who decided who got into the four spaces she had. Maybe someone has a story about it, but I find it unlikely that the swirl around Jared Kushner's acceptance at Harvard would occur in the two British universities.

<comment><USER10> > I remember going to a NYC comedy club and the comedian started joking about > me. "Why aren't you doing homework?"

I don't understand this at all?

<comment><USER11> OP probably looks Asian and comedian thought it would be funny to make a play at the whole "Asians are all super good at school" stereotype.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As a counter example, I'd like to use the Cuban-American community in the US. All of our families came to this country with little more than the clothes on their backs, starting in the early 60s. Now, half a century later, Cuban- Americans are doing as well for themselves as non-Hispanic white Americans, with equally large proportions in the middle, upper middle, and upper classes. My mom's father had a fourth grade education in Cuba and was a self-made businessman who ran a country store in Cuba and a store-fixtures store in the US. My dad's father was a middle class computer technician in Cuba, who came to the US and was never able to work in his profession again. He worked two jobs at first, sweeping floors and taking whatever other jobs came his way, and eventually rose up to running a hospital department. My father never had his own bedroom as a child. He got almost all of his schooling at very tough (in the high-crime and high-apathy sense) NYC public schools in the 60s/70s. There were no silver spoons in their mouths.

My parents have had successful careers, despite being dead broke in their 20s. They were able to stress the importance of education and hard work to me. I had a great job at Microsoft for two years, which I've now left to pursue a career in law.

And this is more or less the same family story of countless Cuban-American families. So I'm not buying this narrative of a calcified class structure built on generational wealth. The most important thing you can do for your children is not to be rich, but to be good. Values and virtues, not trust funds and special treatment.

<comment><USER13> Except for the fact that the first waves of Cuban-American migration were almost exclusively made of the wealthy and middle-upper classes who were profiting from the Batista dictatorship, therefore it's a bit disingenuous to say that they came "with little more than the clothes on their backs" in the early 60s. That's not to say that your anecdote is false or romanticized, but it is still anecdotal."with little more than the clothes on their backs" in the early 60s. That's not to say that your anecdote is false or romanticized, but it is still anecdotal.

<comment><USER12> Yes, it was the middle and upper classes that came in that first wave. But almost all of them did come with nothing, only small portions of the ultra rich were able to sneak out any signicant amount of wealth. The Castro regime did not allow you to take your worldly possessions with you. Bank accounts were frozen, homes were inventoried, and bags were searched. But they all felt lucky enough to escape with their lives and freedoms. And they did bring the values and virtues that served them well in their previous lives.

I also reject your premise that all of these people were profiting directly from the Batista dictatorship. There was corruption in Cuba, but there was also capitalism.

<comment><USER14> >And they did bring the values and virtues that served them well in their previous lives.

And the skills, education, and practical know-how: how to manage money, how to start a business, how to get your kids a good education. And perhaps in some cases the vices that had served them well: how to find a loophole, how to trade favors, how to fudge the truth to your benefit.

In other words, the intangibles of privilege.

<comment><USER15> I think both you and the original commenter agree that the "intangibles" make a significant (perhaps decisive) contribution to the heritability on outcomes. But that's where you both disagree with the article, which argues for the importance of "tangible" factors (growing up in a neighborhood with exclusionary zoning; receiving an expensive college education; etc).

Like the OC, I've seen the dramatic impact of the "intangibles" in my own homeland, a former Communist state. Many of the leading businessmen and professionals today are descended from pre-communist elites, even though these elites were not only deprived of all their material wealth but actively discriminated upon during the five decades of communism (for example, by receiving "class background" penalties for university admissions). The idea that "money breeds money" is intuitively plausible, but turns out to be largely an illusion.

<comment><USER14> Mmm maybe. Are those intangibles themselves sort of a shibboleth indicating class membership? Could publicly funded education help transfer those "soft skills" to poorer people or would there be class-protective resistance?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For anyone curious about how they are doing relative to others around their age, here are two interesting calculators.

Income percentile by age: [https://dqydj.com/income-percentile- calculator/](https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/)

Net worth percentile by age: [https://dqydj.com/net-worth-by-age-calculator- for-the-united...](https://dqydj.com/net-worth-by-age-calculator-for-the- united-states/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Meritocracy is an interesting "religion", which we unconsciously believe in, and one can probably argue is the basis of the Republican ideology. "You're poor? That must mean you're lazy!"

I find Alain de Botton's essays enlightening, here's a 2+ hour documentary about it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1MqJPHxy6g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1MqJPHxy6g) , and a 4 minute summary: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iipn6yM43sM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iipn6yM43sM)

</comment><comment><USER18> _> The rhetoric of "We are the 99 percent" has in fact been dangerously self- serving, allowing people with healthy six-figure incomes to convince themselves that they are somehow in the same economic boat as ordinary Americans, and that it is just the so-called super rich who are to blame for inequality. [...] The strong whiff of entitlement coming from the top 20 percent has not been lost on everyone else._

Ok, since it's not clear from the title, Richard V. Reeves is directing his tirade towards people making $100k+ and not the Bill Gates and Warren Buffetts of the USA.

Since many HN readers earn $100k+, let's ask ourselves:

Do you feel "rich"? Richard Reeves is calling you out as the class of the "rich" and to stop denying it. You agree?

Do programmers and sysadmins feel like getting the job and six-figure salary was from luck or the result of a rigged system? (Attending the 4-year college, whiteboard interviews, etc, was "rigged" in your favor.)

If you want to live in a neighborhood that prevents disassembled cars jacked up on cinder blocks, it doesn't really mean you want a nice-looking environment. Instead, you're just using the rules as a smoke screen to keep out low-income blacks and Latinos. You agree?

If you take advantage of 529 deductions for your kids' education and mortgage deductions, these are financial games to keep the low-income people from achieving what you've accomplished.

Richard Reeves says you should feel guilty? Do you feel guilty?

EDIT ADD: Since none of the replies (so far) directly engage with what I was trying to ask, I'll try to pose the question more directly: Do HN readers agree with Mr Reeves that _you_ are to be blamed for the low-income people not moving up the ladder?

<comment><USER19> Consider my friend who did as he was told but sadly in his case that was to become one of the very best dancers in his time. Dancing doesn't pay. He now works 10 hour shifts as a Chef and just about gets by to provide for his family. Conversely I put an equal amount of effort in teaching myself how to code and can pull in over four times the salary he earns with slightly less effort and when I get home my body doesn't feel fatigued. So "hahahahaha", he chose wrong and I chose right? Right? I was just lucky that the money coincided with my interest in tech.

Damn straight I feel guilty and what makes me mad is when people claim its about effort and hard work. Sure that's definitely part of the equasion but you can work twice as hard and put in twice as much effort and it doesn't mean a damn if you didn't back the "right" industry horse. Save a thought for those that chose different yet still totally as valid fields like nursing or teaching and appreciate the benefit that tech has "unfairly" brought you. Next time you're up late and working super hard just remember you're not literally cleaning up shit and piss for 1/4 of the money.

<comment><USER20> > _it doesn 't mean a damn if you didn't back the "right" industry horse_

Was your friend bamboozled into thinking that he could earn $250k/yr as a dancer? Teaching is one thing - I think most people would like to pay (good) teachers more. Nurses are capable of making quite a bit of money between base salary and overtime, especially at higher levels of education and specialization. Despite what the folks writing VC-funded CRUD apps here would like to think, programming probably has one of the lowest effort-to-payroll ratios around. _Most_ people work harder than us for less money. Part of that's luck but part of it is the market. And part of it _is_ hard work, effort, and hustle.

I've worked sanitation jobs before. They suck. They pay next to nothing. But they also _require_ next to nothing aside from the willingness to do the work. They may pay "1/4 of the money" but they require much less than 1/4 of the skill, education, or experience.

<comment><USER21> > I think most people would like to pay (good) teachers more

In that case you're entirely unfamiliar with American conservative rhetoric and policy.

<comment><USER20> As an American conservative I would think I'm somewhat familiar with it. I'd love to pay good teachers more. I'd love to fire the bad ones. I'd love for good teachers to be able to earn more than bad ones, even if the good teachers have been there for less time! Imagine the horror of suggesting to a state teacher's union that someone there 10 years should make more money than someone there for 15.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Not sure how much I agree with the sentiment of this article as a relating class seemingly directly with salary.

In the UK its fairly well considered now that a working class 50 year old thats worked at UK average pay for the majority of their life, generally, has better standard of living than the 30 year old on 100k. The appreciation of housing and the current cost of things they got for free seem to matter far more than the salary you currently earn.

</comment><comment><USER23> A factor to consider is that vast majority of people still need to work to survive. There are very few people who can live off their investments.

<comment><USER24> Hmm, I'm missing your point. Are you saying that the definition of "rich" is "can live off their investments"? I would disagree with that.

<comment><USER25> I'm guessing his point is your lifestyle changes very little between the bottom and the top of the middle class. You have four walls and a roof over your head. Have home internet. Eat out a few times a week. Have a smart phone, etc.

You still have to go to work every day like everyone else to sustain this lifestyle. You just have nicer "things" and "fancier" experiences?

<comment><USER24> That argument is extremely broad, though. It's easy to live off your investments if you live in a hovel, eat ramen every day and never go out. Is that classified as rich?

Sure, it's a continuum, but "not having to live hand-to-mouth" is a hell of a lot closer to rich than to poor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's simply a matter of definition, and the most useful one will depend on the discussion being had. You could say rich is above certain income, certain wealth, etc. I would think this is most appropriate for discussions about income and wealth inequality.

However, if we're talking about state of mind, then rich can be how secure one feels in their lifestyle. If all your family and friends are doctors/lawyers/business and owners/engineers and everyone is making $200k+, then making $100k won't feel rich. You won't be able to engage in many of the activities they can. You might also not feel rich if your income isn't secure, there is working rich and then wealthy, where you can make a few hundred thousand from investments and don't have to worry about getting sick or taking sabbaticals.

<comment><USER27> However, if we're talking about state of mind, then rich can be how secure one feels in their lifestyle. If all your family and friends are hedge fund managers/CEOs/famous athletes and everyone is worth 50M+, then having a mere 10M won't feel rich. You won't be able to engage in many of the activities they can. You might also not feel rich if your wealth isn't secure, there is wealthy and then truly high net worth, where you can make so much off the interest that you can afford multiple houses and a private jet.

If "state of mind" is your standard then almost anyone can tell a story about how they aren't really rich. And this isn't just me screwing around. There is a bunch of research about how the vast majority of people, no matter their financial situation, don't quite feel rich because they can always see "the next level up."

Perhaps we should be using a better standard than "state of mind."

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> _> So imagine my horror at discovering that the United States is more calcified by class than Britain, especially toward the top. The American myth of meritocracy allows people on the highest rung to attribute their position to their brilliance and diligence, rather than to luck or a rigged system._

Conspicuously missing from this op-ed is the experience of millions of immigrant families who came to the United States and worked hard to make it into the top 20%. Many started with practically nothing. Did they all benefit from pure luck? Did they move to the U.S. to take advantage of a rigged system?

This seems to blow quite a big hole in the author's specious argument.

</comment><comment><USER29> I've always defined rich by whether or not you need to work to maintain your desired lifestyle. If your desired lifestyle has you spending $30k / yr, rich means you have about $750k saved up. If your lifestyle would put you at $100k / yr in spending, you'll need $2.5m saved up.

Rich is as much about being able to manage your finances well as it is about how much money you make. If you are living from paycheck to paycheck, it doesn't matter whether your monthly check is $1500 or $10,000. If you're bad with money, you aren't rich.

<comment><USER30> So if you're a CEO who collects sports cars, you're not rich because you still need to work because you couldn't retire without selling one of your five vacation homes?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> It was an interesting piece but now I am interested in how sensitive the Brits are to accent. Can someone point to an example of upper class speech vs lower class speech and stuff in-between?

Accent very much colors perceptions in America as well. There are "redneck" and "urban" accents that would absolutely be a devastating red-flag in many job interview situations.

</comment><comment><USER32>
        > Posh Brits are more likely
        > to see that their position
        > is at least in part the
        > result of good fortune

Quite, although it did take a millennium-long detour through the divine rights of royalty and so on

</comment><comment><USER33> > So imagine my horror at discovering that the United States is more calcified > by class than Britain, especially toward the top. The big difference is that > most of the people on the highest rung in America are in denial about their > privilege. The American myth of meritocracy allows them to attribute their > position to their brilliance and diligence, rather than to luck or a rigged > system. At least posh people in England have the decency to feel guilty.

Heh, riiiiiight. They feel guilty.

Color me skeptical.

</comment><comment><USER34> I cannot stress enough how excellent this book is. It's quite sad, but stirred something in me that I've not been able to quell since reading it.

$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America: [https://www.amazon.com/2-00-Day-Living-Nothing- America/dp/05...](https://www.amazon.com/2-00-Day-Living-Nothing- America/dp/054481195X)

</comment><comment><USER35> these upper middle class people (we) are the work horses of the tax system, right? Not rich enough to stop working, too rich for sympathy.

<comment><USER27> No, not really. The top 1% pay nearly half the income taxes.

<comment><USER36> (...and take in 99% of the income. Why not 99% of the income tax? Clearly at 50%, the system is massively out of balance in their favor.)

<comment><USER27> That is incorrect. The top 1% earn about 20% of the income in the US.

They pay about 40% of the income taxes (I went and looked this up after your comment. "Nearly half" was perhaps slightly overstating the case).

Given that we have a progressive tax system it makes intuitive sense that the higher percentiles (1%, 5%, 10%, whatever) will always pay a greater percentage of total income tax than they make in total income.

<comment><USER36> Ah! I was wrong; I was thinking 'net worth' not income. And the net worth of the top 1% is around 35% of the total national wealth. (Which is curiously close to the income tax number of 40%)

<comment><USER27> Ah, yes. Stock vs flow!

I noticed that curiosity as well. Not sure it means anything in particular but it was interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Why was this flagged?

</comment><comment><USER38> From the article:

> Most of the children born into households in the top 20 percent will stay > there or drop only as far as the next quintile.

And rewritten a bit, it sounds rather weak:

> More than 50 percent of the children born into households in the top 20 > percent will stay in the top 40 percent.

</comment><comment><USER39> pretending you're not rich is called SAVING UP

</comment><comment><USER40> I was wondering how long it would take for the attack on the solidarity of the precariat:

>The rhetoric of "We are the 99 percent" has in fact been dangerously self- serving, allowing people with healthy six-figure incomes to convince themselves that they are somehow in the same economic boat as ordinary Americans, and that it is just the so-called super rich who are to blame for inequality.

7 months after the election is actually quite long.

Here is what makes me in a $300k a year household and the $30k household on the other end of town the same:

>Your home is regarded as a model home, your life as a model life. But all this splendor, and you along with it... it's just as though it were built upon a shifting quagmire. A moment may come, a word can be spoken, and both you and all this splendor will collapse.

The rich cannot be ruined. I can. If I was to be fired from my job it would be a minor disaster, if I was to get an incurable disease I would slide down the income scale without a break.

I would happily pay 80% taxes if I knew that when I needed it most the welfare state would have my back, but I know that it won't. The rentiers have shown time and time again they would rather destroy the economy than allow everyone to have the luxury of stability.

That is why I am a socialist and I know I'm not the only one.

<comment><USER41> That doesn't mean you're not rich, that just means that you're spending your income on immediate comfort and flashy toys rather than security. If you lived further within your means and invested the difference wisely, within a year or two you would have far more security than the $30k household will ever have.

<comment><USER42> > _within a year or two you would have far more security than the $30k > household will ever have._

Within a year or two? I think you mean "after your first paycheck". The ability to have a grand or two 'cushion' money in the bank is an incredible difference between the haves and have-nots. And I don't mean "money in my day- to-day account", I mean emergency money of any kind.

It's bizarre that a 300k/yr household can even contemplate being similar to a 30k/yr one.

<comment><USER43> Depends on where you live. 30k in the Midwest compared to 300K in San Francisco is actually not too far apart.

2 Beds 1 Bath -- 650 Jackson MO or 7800 a year or 25% of the income gross

$4940 - $5160 /mo 2 beds / 2 bath 979 sqft say 5000 a month or 60000 a year or 20% of the income

add the huge differences in effective tax rate of CA to MO combined with the jump in federal tax rates and it is arguable that 30k in MO would actually be better off

<comment><USER44> ...even if we take this not-quite-equivalence at face value (note: 650 < 979 and 20% < 25%), most life expenses don't scale linearly with housing values - not even close.

Groceries may be more expensive in the big city, but not 10x more expensive. You're not paying 10x more for a car, or a plane flight. And insurance premiums / deductibles sure aren't 10x cheaper in a less expensive part of the country.

Plus, the "$300K in expensive place" household has the option of moving to the less expensive place. The reverse is hardly true.

> it is arguable that 30k in MO would actually be better off

1\. No. 2\. Even if we were to accept that $30K in one place went just as far as $300K in another, "better off" ignores that higher property costs are likely to indicate a more desirable place to live. (For whatever reason: access to jobs, lower crime rates, pleasant to live in, what-have-you.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> surrey-fringe Don't tell me what to do

</comment><comment><USER45> Stop Pretending You're Not Waging Class Warfare.

</comment><comment><USER46> I do find it odd that this writer and many think you have to have 200k incomes to be rich. That is a lie. If you are in the high eighties, let alone over one hundred thousand, you are doing damn well and rich by most accounts.

Gated communities evolved out of limited access high rises. there is no real difference other than one has a lawn. it is the same idea. zoning laws are just horrid in most cities and they tend to be disguised with well meaning names to keep people from challenging them; first trying protecting of historical interest, then trying the environment foil, and finally insufficient infrastructure purposefully kept that way.

For the majority of us here we are rich. Politicians are the real one percent, did any party have someone running for President who wasn't very well off? Actually that would have been two of the Republican candidates had 100k or lower, even the left's favorite is worth near a million and has three homes.

<comment><USER47> Yup, 80-100K is double the median, and 4X poor. It sure doesn't feel like very much when you're struggling to pay bills, imagine trying to live on half or a quarter of that...</comment></comment>


GoogolPlex gives Siri new powers - <AUTHOR> http://www.betterthansiri.com/

<comment><USER2> I found SiriProxy[0] right as I was switching to iOS 7 so I was never able to get it fully working on my phone. I did set it up on my iPad (while it was still on iOS 6) just to test and it was really cool but I never use Siri on my iPad and I eventually updated to iOS 7. This is really cool but I'm not going to route all my phone traffic to a server I don't control, any plans to open source this or at least parts of it?

Until then I'll just keep hoping that the SiriProxy guys can get it working on iOS 7 [1].

[0] [https://github.com/plamoni/SiriProxy](https://github.com/plamoni/SiriProxy)

[1] [https://github.com/plamoni/SiriProxy/issues/542](https://github.com/plamoni/SiriProxy/issues/542)

<comment><USER3> This is not actually a fix for SiriProxy because it intercepts requests to Google, not Siri. They use Siri for speech-to-text only and then do their own command processing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What's with the name? Did the author just have it laying around and decided to use it for a iOS app?

<comment><USER5> _When a user says "GoogolPlex, turn off the lights," Siri hears this as "Google 'Plex turn off the lights,'" interpreting that the user wants to Google something. Siri then searches Google for the words "Plex turn off the lights," and this is where GoogolPlex comes in. We are able to get the words the user was asking Siri by intercepting the request between Siri and Google with a man-in-the-middle exploit._

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Read the details of the hack. Impressive trick.

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice - voice will be everywhere soon! Here' a way to load Dropbox files by voice: [http://bit.ly/1maggeP](http://bit.ly/1maggeP)

</comment><comment><USER8> Go Quakers!</comment>


I am not a css hacker but please HN change your css. smartphone experience suck - <AUTHOR> http://pastie.org/8255933 <comment><USER2> The joke is that max-scale and initial-scale set to 1.0 in the viewport meta tag would probably be all that's needed to make HN better on mobile.

<comment><USER3> Yes, but unfortunately that would be a quick, effective solution. In no way does it entail startups being accelerated into making mobile apps that disrupt some trivial aspect of daily life.

As "Ricardo Montalban" used to say on SNL, it is better to look good than to feel good. Likewise it is better to reinvent the wheel than to fix it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm resigned to the fact this website will never improve at all.

<comment><USER5> Not only will they not make the website better they are incentivised to not make it better. With the current look/feel/behavior be it good or bad they have grown because of it. Any change they make is likely to make the number of users go down. And as much as the users care about quality the owners metric is always number of users so why change it if it is "working". I am on the watch for a new social tech news site that is optimized first for mobile to replace HN which I am 100% sure will be made and I will switch to at some point in the future.

<comment><USER6> HN isn't really a commercial venture. It has some pretty significant benefits for YC, but pg's mostly opposed to trying to grow the site. In fact, he seems to more or less resent the growth that has happened due to the concomitant decline in overall quality.

Even if you were consider only the benefits YC gets from HN (exposure for YC companies, recruiting, and cachet), the benefits to the first from larger crowds are, I'd bet, offset by the slow dispersion of high-value members that has accompanied the drop in quality we've seen over the last couple years.

I'd be willing to bet that HN would probably serve YC's purposes better with 5,000 - 10,000 users than with 50,000 - 100,000.

<comment><USER4> I agree with you but I think doing things like eliminating table layout and having some sort of improved experience on mobile would not affect usership at all. You could keep the look and feel the same. There are profound technical issues with the site that affect everyone that could literally be addressed in an afternoon if anyone cared.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Best mobile HN, by far: [http://hn.premii.com/](http://hn.premii.com/)

<comment><USER8> Doesn't appear to work on my lumia 800. Just says "Loading..." infinitely.

<comment><USER9> Same here :/ however typically stuff loads weirdly on Internet Explorer for Windows Phone (on WP7 at least).

<comment><USER10> It doesn't work for IE9. The author built it with HTML5 stuff, so sadly the IE9 WP7 won't work.

But you should be used to that for mobile websites, people kinda just build for WebKit on mobile.

<comment><USER11> Webkit is the mobile IE6 if you ask me. Very narrow minded design and testing from the people who usually bitch about IE6.

Oh the irony.

<comment><USER12> I don't understand the basis for that position and don't think it's true at all. Why do you think that's comparable at all?

<comment><USER11> Granted it works better but it's still developing for one platform only and excluding others.

Remember when sites were "optimised for IE". Well we're there again but it's not IE.

<comment><USER13> Actually, this was build for HTML5 browser to see if i can build native like experience. This works great on desktop and Mobile IE10/11\. I was also told that this works on latest blackberry and Firefox OS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Use the Mobile Github page: [http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/](http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/)

<comment><USER15> It's a blank white page in opera mobile whereas the normal hn style works pretty.

<comment><USER16> That's weird. I'll be looking into it.

<comment><USER15> before you waste time with some "software that does exist, just like there never was a matrix sequel", I use opera mobile classic or what's it called.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Actually, changing the CSS is not necessary. All that is needed are a couple of meta tags (viewport) in the head and switching textareas to css-based relative width instead of using cols...

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm pretty sure at this point that HN's markup is the way it is out of sheer bloody-mindedness :)

<comment><USER19> Or pg is trying to slow the site down to delay Eternal September. Keeping it painful to use on mobile would seem to accomplish that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think it looks fine. Everytime someone wants to make a mobile experience better, I want to kill a kitten.

More often than not it makes vastly worse. Why can't people just keep it to themselves.

Steve Jobs and Co. gave me a real browser so I didn't have to use a sub-par web. Now everyone is forcing it on me anyway. Stop. Please stop. Half of the websites I use have been ruined by responsive, and or enhancing, the mobile experience (GitHub and StackOverflow are worthless with their mobile defaults, text cannot be read because it overflows and zoom is disabled, formatting looks like shit).

Why, dear world, must people insist on fixing things that are not broken?

<comment><USER12> Are you against bad mobile implementations or just mobile implementations altogether? This seems like a weird position to take. It's not easy to read through comments and stories on most mobile browsers. It requires you to either squint to read the headlines or scroll horizontally just to read across the lines. That is a broken user experience.

<comment><USER20> I've actually found pinching and zooming to be more than adequate... And even a bit of squinting I find acceptable because it lets me easily skim a page for content. When I have to scroll forever just to find the content I'm looking for its frustrating and a waste of my time.

Or news websites that start hiding the actual content on mobile, so you're forced to "tap" the headline to even read the summary.

Or in the case of github or stack overflow, the formatting is so illegible, I can't believe they released 'em. They've made it harder to read.

Mobile is about fast access. Letting me get my information on the go... When mobile is a different experience it craps on that goal because I cannot access information as fast. I must now learn this new thing; which, is a the opposite of why I have a smartphone (fast information).

For my use cases is vastly worse. The desktop versions of most sites have more features and allow for faster access of information. Maybe I have to zoom in, that's okay! It's a better experience in the end.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> And cue the comments where it says HN is just fine and nothing about it never ever needs to be changed and every change you could possibly make to it would just make it worse and you just don't know how to use your phone and so on...

FWIW, I'm partial to HackerWeb ([http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/](http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/)) on the iPhone and [http://hckrnews.com/](http://hckrnews.com/) on the desktop myself.

<comment><USER22> Note that you can use HackerWeb for the comments on hckrnews.com by going to settings.

</comment></comment><comment> sid- Try ihackernews.com

</comment><comment><USER23> Have you tried any mobile app? There are a lot of great apps for HackerNews. I use HackerNews2 for my Android device and HackerNode for my iPhone.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the point, a whole app (maybe useless) because of the lack of 10 css lines.

<comment><USER23> For me is cooler this way, because it offers visibility on app list and when I have a few free moments, I look at my phone apps and I say "Great, let's see what's new on HN" :D .

<comment><USER24> Your phone is not able to put page shortcuts on the homescreen or whatever?

<comment><USER23> That's not the point :D. It works better than a simple bookmark, with slide to change from page to comments, etc.

<comment><USER24> > That's not the point

I fail to see how it could be anything else. You previously stated:

> it offers visibility on app list and when I have a few free moments, I look > at my phone apps and I say "Great, let's see what's new on HN"

I do not know about you — hence the interrogative — but I can (and do) put bookmarks on my home screens, right next to applications and thus with the exact same visibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Hacker News redesigns and mobile apps are popping up almost weekly here at HN .... I'm trying all them out.

Yet still using the original. Being a designer I was always thinking what makes this ugly design so time resistant.

One single answer comes to my mind: the character of its creator.

<comment><USER26> I think this "ugly design" as you say is resistant because it is a good design. It's functionnal and as such, I don't see any reason why it should change. A good design is a design we can read easily and use easily. For instance, I find Designer News far less easy to read than HN. HN's design might be ugly but it's convenient and it's all what matters. I agree that HN could have a better mobile experience. But the current design works particularly well on desktop.

<comment><USER27> >A good design is a design we can read easily and use easily

HN on mobile achives neither.

<comment><USER26> I agree, I was talking about the desktop version. I just wanted to say that the so-called "ugliness" of HN's design has nothing to do with the fact it's not convenient on mobile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I much prefer the current HN smartphone experience to some stupid thing that displays one comment at a time in a huge font and is missing half the options.

It _does_ suck on non-smartphones phones, but nobody cares about that anyway.

<comment><USER29> It looks fine on the iPhone 5 [http://imgur.com/i3fEdol](http://imgur.com/i3fEdol)

No massive text size , more than 5 words per line ,etc

<comment><USER30> The default HN experience isn't so great on Android's browser...

[http://i.imgur.com/TEUoGrT.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/TEUoGrT.jpg)

<comment><USER15> double-tap to zoom and all is good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> While it doesn't really help mobile users much, I have a rather buggy userscript that converts the horrible HN markup to something actually workable.

If anyone where interested, I could finish it relatively quickly...

</comment><comment><USER32> I suggest to do what 4chan has done some time ago. Rewrite the css & html in modern fashion optimized for all devices but keep the style the same.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm checking the mobile version right now. The "4chan-feeling" is conserved and the site is simple and readable without the need to zoom or scroll r/l

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> My commentary on this matter:

[http://stylebot.me/styles/2945](http://stylebot.me/styles/2945)

(Mostly only of use to desktop users, but it's quite an improvement IME).

</comment><comment><USER34> You can use [http://hackernews-mobile.tomodo.me/](http://hackernews- mobile.tomodo.me/) It's similar to the css you offered.

</comment><comment><USER35> working just fine on Windows Phone 7[1] Internet Explorer. Even better i think. It automatically make the text bigger, thus easier to read within the small screen size.

[1] Nokia Lumia 900

</comment><comment><USER36> I love using HN on my iPhone. It loads quickly even when the signal is weak and scrolls super nicely because of the simplicity. On mobile, I'm much more likely to read the comments before the articles because I know the comments will load super fast and the article will load super slow and be difficult to stretch into the screen.

EDIT: Go ahead and set up a site that implements your "slightly nicer CSS and HTML" that will make such a huge improvement. Publish the traffic stats so that we can all see when you get it right.

<comment><USER37> I'm pretty sure that slightly nicer CSS and HTML would not slow down HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> The saddest part is that if you resize a desktop browser to be narrow, it's a better experience than you actually get on a phone.

</comment><comment><USER39> Hacker News should be an API.

<comment><USER40> api.ihackernews.com/

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> If only there was a HN app...

</comment><comment><USER42> guess smart-phones aren't that smart after all...

</comment><comment><USER43> Hrm, maybe you need a better smartphone? It works really well on Opera Mobile on my N9…

</comment><comment><USER44> No it doesnt. You cant zoom in and scroll on your phone? Do you have broken fingers? Btw there are hn apps in different stores.

<comment><USER45> Zooming and scrolling left-to-right to read every link is a broken experience.</comment></comment>


The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/bipolar.htm? <comment><USER2> Hah, I can't help feeling that this describes me pretty well (not brilliant, maybe, but everything else :)). I should be worried about it, of course, but somehow I'm not--perhaps it's because I have limited ambition. Or maybe it's just the job market right now.

I used to really like Lisp. I still do, even. But now I've gotten caught up in Haskell which--despite being a _completely_ different language to Lisp--is actually more of the same. If I replace Lisp with Haskell in the article, then it fits even more. Eerie, really.

Now that I'm relatively depressed about my future "on a soda fountain or doing yard work" I can go do something useful and enjoy my break.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Often this kind of student never makes it to the end. He flunks himself by dropping out. He ends on a soda fountain or doing yard work, but all the time reading and studying because a good mind is always hungry.

Now one of the things about Lisp, and I've seen it before, is that Lisp is a real magnet for this kind of mind. Once you understand that, and see that it is this kind of mind that has contributed a lot to the culture of Lisp, you begin to see why Lisp is, like many of its proponents, a brilliant failure. It shares the peculiar strengths and weaknesses of the brilliant bipolar mind (BBM).

Why is this? Well, its partly to do with vision. The 'vision thing' as George Bush Snr. once described it, is really one of the strengths of the BBM. He can see far; further than in fact his strength allows him to travel. He conceives of brilliant ambitious projects requiring great resources, and he embarks on them only to run out of steam. It's not that he's lazy; its just that his resources are insufficient."

<comment><USER4> I can't seem to find where it originates, but there's a frequently mentioned saying to the effect of: the optimally productive person is really smart but not _so_ smart that they see too much of the big picture, because that's paralyzing, unless perhaps you manage to get yourself a job as a McLuhan-style public intellectual, or a novelist. Someone in an HN thread somewhere hypothesized that that might be related to the "Ballmer peak" in productivity after a beer or two, because alcohol sort of dulls the insight a little.

<comment><USER5> I think there's three groups. There's "smart enough", which is your fairly high-output productive person who gets shit done and may be somewhat dulled to the fact that the world is insane. (I wouldn't call them optimal but they're very handy to have around.) Then there's "too smart for your own good" which is as you and the article describe, seeing all the BS everywhere and feeling paralyzed and recognizing your own limitations (whether for how much BS you can put up with or even sharp intelligence barriers--it's not always too-big- an-increase in difficulty per se that kills a Lisper in college, but a dramatic increase in the amount of required BS to plow through to get anything done or get an acceptable grade). I don't think the monetary future for that kind of person is necessarily bleak, though, at least in the present times. There are so many startups you can join if you're smart enough to do even a little Lisp programming on the side, or you can start your own, you can also "float around" pretty easily and if you're lucky you'll get caught with a winner.

But then there's "John von Neumann" smart. I'd even lump the modest-in- comparison John Carmack in that distribution (not at the top end of course but I think he's earned a spot there), Dennis Ritchie and John McCarthy too, along with a bunch of other relatively modern figures like Linus. These mythical people are worth at least 20 of the first group, and maybe 5-10 of the second group on the second group's good days. This third group can make the second group's lives even more depressing, since someone in the second group is smart enough to see and understand what they might have been if they had only slightly better brains.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wrote a *nix kernel and shell for my OS class in 1997 in three nights. I also failed Intro to Philosophy, and got an A in 3D calc after sleeping thru the final.

I am still struggling with these issues to this day. We should try to figure out how to help ourselves and others like us manage these issues.

It's not 'bipolar disorder', specifically... It's not anything specific in terms of psychological disorders, so far as I have been able to determine. It's what is described in this article, to a tee.

<comment><USER7> > It's not 'bipolar disorder', specifically.

Indee it's not about actual bipolar disorder (a.k.a. maniac-depression) at all. It's just a figure of speech. It's describing more a combination of cronic procrastination, unwillingness to do "boring" things even when it arguably goes against their self-interest (e.g. failing Intro to Philosophy), etc.

(I wish I could make myself clearer but I have no time for that now, as that would be procrastination).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Follow-up (sort of):

[http://coding.derkeiler.com/Archive/Lisp/comp.lang.lisp/2006...](http://coding.derkeiler.com/Archive/Lisp/comp.lang.lisp/2006-05/msg00080.html)

(Pulled from past submission comments. Credit goes to HN poster "ced" over here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20140> )

<comment><USER9> I'm bipolar. The usenet post referenced contains advice that would literally be considered medical malpractice if a doctor uttered it: _Try to avoid medication if possible_.

If you're truly bipolar, you _need_ medication. This is not my opinion, this is the current obligated medical treatment.

What I have seen from my bipolar friends who go off their meds has often been horrifying. It's incredibly common, unfortunately, largely stemming from beliefs like this post posits: it's just a discipline issue, it's a phase, it's an attitude, etc.

As always, try to avoid medical advice from usenet posts. Your loved ones will thank you.

<comment><USER8> Yeah I don't quite buy the bipolar argument in this context, so I agree with you that its questionable advice regarding the medication. Thankfully I'm not bipolar, so N/A to me but its good that you pointed it out nonetheless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Past submissions: [http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=bip...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=bipolar+lisp+programmer&sortby=create_ts+desc)

<comment><USER11> Ah-- thanks for posting that. It is interesting to read the past comment threads.

All the same I'm glad the article was reposted as I am relatively new to the site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Thankfully I had a lecturer who recognized this & talked to me about it. He pointed out 2 things:

1) From a purely practical perspective I needed to suck it up & pass this course regardless of boredom.

2) Model solution driven marking (checkbox style) doesn't reward inspired answers. So the aim is not to answer brilliantly, but rather to answer as the other 120 people in the class would. (Its model solution driven because the professional exam is set up that way, so the lecturer wasn't in a position to stop the insanity)

Not exactly ground breaking insights, but I graduated a couple of weeks ago (barely) and I think that was partly thanks to that talk.

<comment><USER4> I've found #2 a pretty problematic part of education that I'm still sort of trying to unlearn. Once you realize that's what's going on, the goal becomes not to do things "for real", but instead to reverse-engineer the education system: figure out why the question is being asked, what it's designed to test, and what kind of answer it's designed to elicit, then answer accordingly. This often greatly simplifies the problem space, because using some heuristic meta-reasoning you can really narrow down what's "really" likely being asked and what forms the solution is likely to take (or even what methods the question is likely expecting you to use). But then that's a skill not easily transferable to "the real world" when working on problems that _aren't_ specifically posed to test a particular skill or with a specific answer in mind. Though it's probably a good skill for job interviews.

<comment><USER5> I actually think #2 is more of a hacker symptom rather than limited to the weird Lisp Programmers. Someone here put it fairly bluntly a while back in the form of a "How to tell if you're a hacker" quick quiz. At the end the answer was something like "If you intuitively tried to 'game' the test, you're probably a hacker. If you don't even know what that means, you're probably not one."

I think it's a useful skill to sharpen and definitely not limited to passing tests. There are diminishing returns to worry about for how much you want to try and game something, but having even a basic intuitive feel for it is pretty useful in "the real world".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Brilliantly written piece. Though I never knew about LISP back then (and I can't claim to be as brilliant as the guys he's describing), I do remember very clearly when in my final High School project I did a web application with Java and PHP and the bullshit of XML (back in the time when J2EE was the bee's knees) and unsound engineering almost turned me off programming. Haskell and Python got me back into it, though.

</comment><comment><USER13> There's a snippet of Neal Stephenson's `Cryptonomicon' which demonstrates this mindset quite well.

[http://books.google.com/books?id=qYAmfUBPN-UC&lpg=PA26&#...</a>

<comment><USER14> Your link didn't work for me. I assume this is the section you are referring to:

<quote>

They gave him an intelligence test. The first question on the math part had to do with boats on a river: Port Smith is 100 miles upstream of Port Jones. The river flows at 5 miles per hour. The boat goes through water at 10 miles per hour. How long does it take to go from Port Smith to Port Jones? How long to come back?

Lawrence immediately saw that it was a trick question. You would have to be some kind of idiot to make the facile assumption that the current would add or subtract 5 miles per hour to or from the speed of the boat.

Clearly, 5 miles per hour was nothing more than the average speed. The current would be faster in the middle of the river and slower at the banks. More complicated variations could be expected at bends in the river.

Basically it was a question of hydrodynamics, which could be tackled using certain well-known systems of differential equations. Lawrence dove into the problem, rapidly (or so he thought) covering both sides of ten sheets of paper with calculations.

Along the way, he realised that one of his assumptions, in combination with the simplified Navier-Stokes equations, had led him into an exploration of a particularly interesting family of partial differential equations. Before he knew it, he had proved a new theorem.

If that didn't prove his intelligence, what would?

Then the time bell rang and the papers were collected. Lawrence managed to hang onto his scratch paper. He took it back to his dorm, typed it up, and mailed it to one of the more approachable math professors at Princeton, who promptly arranged for it to be published in a Parisian mathematics journal.

Lawrence received two free, freshly printed copies of the journal a few months later, in San Diego, California, during mail call on board a large ship called the U.S.S. Nevada.

The ship had a band, and the Navy had given Lawrence the job of playing the glockenspiel in it, because their testing procedures had proven that he was not intelligent enough to do anything else.

</quote>

<comment><USER13> Strange. Anyway, that is indeed the relevant passage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm quite sure Dr. Tarver has been spying on me and reading my mind. This is me, every sentence.

</comment><comment><USER11> Did the author read out of my college diary to write this piece? It sure felt like he did...

</comment><comment><USER16> Question (as someone whose deepest depression was a 'bad day' at work ;)): the article states that

 _But also it goes with realising that a lot of human activity is really pretty pointless, and when you realise that and internalise it then you become cynical and also a bit sad - because you yourself are caught up in this machine and you have to play along if you want to get on. Teenagers are really good at spotting this kind of phony nonsense. Its also the seed of an illness; a melancholia that can deepen in later life into full blown depression._

I think that purely rational reasoning will easily lead to this conclusion, but emotionally this does not feel true: we all want to avoid suffering and live in happiness. So, the eventual goal becomes making yourself and other people happy.

I seems to me that such reasoning can only get to you if there already is an emotional imbalance (e.g. due to bipolar disorder or stress).

So, isn't it a trigger for illness, rather than a seed?

<comment> steve-howard This article rings quite true with me. The pointlessness of school resulted in me barely attending class at all this quarter; thankfully I did pretty okay this quarter. The kind of thinking we're talking about is neither a symptom nor a cause of depression. Rather, both are wrapped up in the personality of the thinker.

When I'm depressed, my thinking is skewed. I admit it. And here's an important point: if rational reasoning leads you to one conclusion and emotional reasoning suggests something else, then doesn't that mean that your meaning of life depends on how you feel in a given day? My emotions aren't predictable enough for me to accept that.

<comment><USER16> Sure, emotions are very temporal and frequently changing. But even if I am angry, bored, or excited, I know that I also want to and am capable of being happy. Evenmore, some other emotions are often strongly related to pleasant emotions. E.g. if child gets angry because he/she has to go to bed, it's usually because the child wants to play.

<comment> steve-howard People with depression are not always able to experience happiness. And I cannot explain why, but at the worst, I don't really want to be happy either.

<comment><USER17> Do you actively not want to be happy, or just not really care about attaining happiness? This is personally interesting to me. I do not think I am depressed, but I find I do not care much about being happy. I admit the experience is pleasant, but it doesn't bother me that it is rare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm a bipolar Lisp programmer, and I relate to this article a lot.

If anyone else relates too and has not been diagnosed, I am here for any questions at all.

Please, please reach out. It's estimated that 1 in 4 untreated bipolar people commit suicide. This is a physiological disease that is no joke, not a "mindset" or attitude.

<comment><USER18> How do you know if you're bipolar?

<comment><USER9> You get diagnosed, usually without you having any idea it's coming.

For me, I didn't get diagnosed until this year, and I'm 32. It gets worse as you get older.

It took one hospitalization and a treatment center for me to get properly treated.

Bipolar used to be called manic depression, because it is characterized by two main phases:

 _Depression_ : Usually more severe than even Major Depressive Disorder in bipolars. High risk of suicide. Suicidal ideation, inability to eat, complete loss of functioning, etc.

 _Mania_ or _Hypomania_ : Periods of highly elevated mood. May exhibit grandisoity, visions, hallucinations, increase in spending and sexual activity. Increase in irritability.

There's mixed states too, like a wired depression that is _lethal_. They're not as common.

The #1 symptom of all mood disorders is sleep disturbance.

<comment><USER19> Bipolar for 25 years here: mixed states get more common as you become more tolerant to your medication - frighteningly so in fact. The euphoria that comes with highs doesn't happen as before, leaving you wired and irritable but with the energy to do stupid things to yourself and others.

I haven't ever been suicidal but this last year I've allowed myself to think about it because of the complete pointlessness of just about everything I've done (or more commonly, not done because it was pointless). Sigh.

<comment><USER9> How long did it take you to get tolerant to your medication?

I went through a round of neurochemically-inspired regret for the things undone this year too. It's not true; it's just a figment of our mood-states. I've found it helpful to remind myself constantly that thoughts and feelings are transient; actions are what really count. So no matter what I feel like, I can still function in some capacity.

Besides, you're on HN, you must be doing something right.

<comment><USER19> True enough - thanks :)

I would guess fifteen years to get tolerant. Of course I might just be mistaking medication effects for creeping age when it comes to lack of programming accomplishments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Good god, I'm not alone.

<comment><USER21> Not by a long shot.</comment></comment>


Any suggested vendors for charging users micropayments? - <AUTHOR>

I want to charge users between 25¢-$1 for occasionally-used functions rather than a subscription fee for permanent access to those features.  Any advice? <comment><USER2> [https://payments.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/business?sn=devfps/agg...](https://payments.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/business?sn=devfps/aggregated)

With Amazon Payments you can either have your customers prepay a set amount and deduct from that as they go, or pay with credit, and you charge them when they reach a certain threshold.

That way you can avoid paying a transaction fee on each small purchase.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll check it out!</comment>


Facebook and Radical Transparency - <AUTHOR> http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/05/14/facebook-and-radical-transparency-a-rant.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Key observation:

The key to addressing this problem is not to say "public or private?" but to ask how we can make certain people are 1) informed; 2) have the right to chose; and 3) are consenting without being deceived. I'd be a whole lot less pissed off if people had to opt-in in December. Or if they could've retained the right to keep their friends lists, affiliations, interests, likes, and other content as private as they had when they first opted into Facebook. Slowly disintegrating the social context without choice isn't consent; it's trickery.</comment>


Zugzwang: When every move will make you worse off - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zugzwang

<comment><USER2> So you also read that cancer story...

</comment><comment><USER3> PSA for non-German speakers: it's pronounced "tsoog-tswaang".

:)</comment>