How to learn to stop being constantly stressed under pressure as software eng? - <AUTHOR> I am (senior) software engineer and I can tackle most of the problems easily (not trying to brag just underlying that it's not really the case of being worried that I wont be able to perform next task, as its often in junior devs). I work 100% remotely but I've noticed that I am constantly stressed. I feel constant (big) pressure on me and the team from managment, to deliver new features, and usual.
Even taking vacation is strain, as we are distributed remote team, and I am already taking much less vacation as I would (peer pressure, and classical managment methods of "we depend on you do do this until unreasonable deadline).
I have meaningful hobbies (including gym) and friends outside of work, but work is still major part of my life (which I guess is ok).
I feel most of this stress is very self inflicted, as there are not _real_ threaths (I work in niche field and can get a another job easily). I often work many hours on weekend, holidays, public holidays (I live in Europe), just because of this stress. I worry that maybe managment knows this and is manipulating me towards it.
I feel like "not being stressed under pressure from peers/managment" is a skill that can be learned, and I'd like to learn it. How? Can you recomment some book or course? I think many people pick this up naturally, but I am failing to do so, and I fear Im falling towards workoholism (including working long hours, on vacation, holidays...constantly checking slack, unable to work on my own project, unable to study because I feel guilt of not working on company's stuff...).
We are small company (+-40people), with only few +-3 backend engineers (actually less than designers and product managers).
Thank you, any tips are appreciated. <comment><USER2> It sounds like your management is pushing you to give more than it's reasonable for you to give. You need to really understand that it's _more than is reasonable_. (You yourself described it as "unreasonable deadline".)

And, based on that, you need to become comfortable saying "no" _without feeling guilty_.

I mean, in a crunch, sure. For a couple of weeks, sure. For six months? That's a management failure. It's not your fault, and _you can 't fix it_. You may be able, by heroic effort, to temporarily prevent catastrophe, at great cost to yourself. But it's actually OK to not do so. It is not reasonable for you to pay the price for management's failures.

<comment><USER3> "A lack of planning in your part, does not constitute and emergency on mine."

<comment><USER4> Famous last words of someone who will be put on probation so they can be fired.

On the other hand explaining why things take time, documenting change requests and establishing solid trusting relationships can be very productive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It sounds like you're under abusive management. If it's within your power, you should probably start looking for a new job. If you want, you should use some of those vacation days you have saved up to go on the job hunt.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would like to get stock options first, and I kind of like the engineering part of the work. I also take great ownership for things I built. The job would be perfect if I didnt feel so stressed out.

<comment><USER4> Consider adding your own needs to "management."

Your mind and body need rest, you have a need for social interactions with friends and family, a need for at least 8h of sleep (see why we sleep) etc.

Your body is your ultimate manager because when at some point it says no, you're out of luck and choices. Respect that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Others have said said it: learn to say no. However, tooling helps. Some will not like this suggestion: look into scrum or kanban agile. A single backlog of tasks and units of work. With scrum, you tell the business "we can do the following stories/tasks in the next two weeks." It is on you and your team to only commit (ie, say no) to work you can reasonably finish in that period. This gives the opportunity to the business to give priority to things they feel are important. If you find that you are over committing, commit to less the following iteration. Understand that, as you said, it is unreasonable to pull heroic hours. Stick to 36 to 44 hours a week. If work is not completed, you alter the following iteration to do less.

Finally, a quote that I internalized as a kid: if you can do something about a situation, do so and don't worry. If you cannot do something, then don't and don't worry. Applied to this context, I would take that to mean you can put limits in place and you shouldn't worry if that makes the business upset.

This is your life. Time lost with friends and family can never be gotten back. Finding reasonable balance with work is paramount.

It is not just that easy. It requires work and discipline. I'm still working on taking the same advice and not working crazy long hours. Fortunately, my manager helps me here and says, "dude. It's late. Go home. Family time."

</comment><comment><USER7> Dale Carnegie has a pretty good book about managing stress. It's called "How to stop worrying and start living". Wikipedia has a summary of it here: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Stop_Worrying_and_Sta...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Stop_Worrying_and_Start_Living)

Main thing that is got from it was thinking about the worst possible outcome of whatever is stressing you out and realizing that it's probably not as big of a deal as you're making it out to be. The project deadlines set by your management are made up and missing them won't be the end of the world, so you should treat them that way. A website going down for an hour will also not matter a day after it happens.

Do your best at work and learn to say no. If you're good at your job they will respect your work, and if they don't there will be a lot of other companies ready to hire you.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think this is one of the pitfalls of working remotely. It's hard to gauge how your work is being received and similarly how managements requests are being received.

Have you talked to management about this concern? I think the solution is more about communicating expectations and consequences rather than something that you should be fixing just on your side. At this rate, you will burn out, it sounds like it's already starting. No one wants that to happen. They probably need to hire more backend devs which is another discussion. You should also be careful to distinguish what you interpret from requests from their intentions. It's possible management has no idea that you're being overworked unless you somehow let them know and they're just keep giving you work because you perform so well. I wouldn't however call them blameless.

</comment><comment><USER9> A good therapist can help you manage stress levels and give you tools to manage your particular situation.

Some tools are breathing techniques, learn how to communicate with management, learn how to push back and learn why you aren't doing it now.

I'd urge you to consider it before something worse can happen (e.g. panic attacks). Like you said, most of the times, the stress is self-inflicted. Remember, health should be your number one priority.

</comment><comment><USER10> I am guessing back end work and dealing with performance issues is causing stress? If this is the case fixing the back end team will help.

It also sounds like you are worrying too much about what management thinks. They will let you know quick enough if you are a problem and let you go if the business is suffering...irregardless of you being the special one :-)

</comment><comment><USER11> Problem is that you don't have completely clear directives regarding what's expected of you, and you therefore infer those expectations by some kind of subjective (and perhaps subconcious) reasoning.

</comment><comment><USER12> The lowest impact solution will be to start and end your days earlier (7-3 is a common bounds) next is to lobby for a 9/80 schedule and don't do overtime.

9/80 can change your life, barely felt burnout when was on a 9/80

<comment><USER13> Had to look this up.

> _" 9/80s work schedule" is a compressed work schedule which consists of > eight 9-hour days, one 8-hour day, and one day off in a 2-week period._

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hi,

You should add "Ask HN:" to your title, like so:

      Ask HN: How to learn to stop being constantly stressed under pressure as software eng?

That way, it's clear that you are asking something, and it will also appear on the "ask" tab.

<comment><USER2> I think it shows up in the "ask" tab based on not having a URL in the submission. At least, there are entries in there that do not begin with "Ask HN".

I agree that it is customary, and helpful.</comment></comment>


GoboLinux at a glance – the alternative Linux distribution - <AUTHOR> http://gobolinux.org/at_a_glance.html <comment><USER2> this is exactly the right direction, Linux needs to become a lot more like Windows = more user friendly</comment>


Iowa Spent $50M to Lure IBM. Then the Firings Started - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-19/iowa-spent-50-million-to-lure-ibm-then-the-firings-started <comment><USER2> > It's a blow to Dubuque and Columbia, cities that spent a combined $84 > million on tax breaks and other incentives to lure Big Blue in the hopes of > attracting other technology firms and incubating a startup scene.

Anyone who would pursue IBM in hopes of 'incubating a startup scene' is, not to put too fine a point on it, grossly incompetent.

> Instead, Ross found herself toiling on what she described as a new-age > assembly line — each employee solving a narrowly focused part of a corporate > customer's technical problem and then passing the baton to the next person. > As a result, said some of IBM's Dubuque workers, they became experts only in > a narrow set of skills that weren't easily transferable.

That's exactly IBM's MO: try to solve problems with a smart process executed by low-skilled people. Never mind that a process can never execute judgement, and that low-skilled people executing a process never get the experience needed to develop their own judgement. Never mind that deep knowledge is necessary to solve complex problems.

From IBM's perspective, it's good to have low-skilled people who can't easily find jobs elsewhere: it means lower wages and less turnover (and when there _is_ turnover, imparting a few low skills to new hires is easy!). Never mind that if other places wouldn't want to hire them, then one probably doesn't have a reason to hire them either. Never mind that if one's company is composed of low-skilled employees, then customers don't have much reason to use one's services.

<comment><USER3> > Anyone who would pursue IBM in hopes of 'incubating a startup scene' is, not > to put too fine a point on it, grossly incompetent.

Indeed -- and just one of the most painfully obvious illustrations of why the "high taxes with favored big companies getting tax breaks" strategy is a lot less fair and efficient than the "medium-low taxes for everybody" strategy. (Of course, the latter doesn't give the politicians any chances to dole out favors and toot his own horn for getting his constituents jobs!!!, so expect ongoing cronyism well into the future. why capitalism gets a bad name...)

<comment><USER4> There's a multitude of interpretations there, but to me the obvious(TM) takeaway is that corporate taxes should be zeroed out for everyone, and income/consumption/environmental taxes (take your pick of weighting) increased to make up for it.

<comment><USER5> The company fucked over the communities is received tax breaks from, so they should be rewarded with simply not having to pay taxes at all? What kind of backwards ass thinking is that? If I don't pay my taxes next year, can I get the same deal?

<comment><USER3> > The company fucked over the communities is received tax breaks from, so they > should be rewarded with simply not having to pay taxes at all?

More like: "the politicians responsible for setting tax policy _routinely_ end up abusing small companies with high taxes while rewarding big companies with low taxes and claims of Jobs Jobs Jobs (re-elect me!). the jobs are frequently a lie so mostly the big companies just get unfair advantages. this is manifestly unfair to small companies and to communities. maybe politicians shouldn't tax corporate activity at all -- besides the problems mentioned already it reduces incentives to invest and to have jobs in a location -- and we should get our taxes from economic activity once the money's left the corporation, like the executives' property, or a sales tax that penalizes excessive consumption, or carbon taxes -- which might also help the environment! and then maybe we should charge companies fees for the services that they use instead of general-fund spending so that companies have a harder time offloading costs onto the jurisdictions where they're hosted."

This is a fairly common economically-conservative public-policy position. It can be debated as desirable or undesirable, but!!! it is consistent and coherent and does attempt to achieve equity under the law. It's probably hardest to implement in a place like the US where there are multiple jurisdictions involved and the revenue from a sales tax or property tax could end up far away from the communities where the corporations impose costs (though the fee-for-services model does mitigate that).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can't believe no one mentioned this gem:

"Grassley, a Republican, wrote to Rometty on April 16 to express concern about "reports of mass layoffs" even as IBM requested H-1B work visas to allow 5,800 foreign employees to be authorized to work for the company in the U.S."

<comment> at-fates-hands I saw that too and was going to comment on it.

I'm starting to see a lot more companies who are starting to outsource their work to H1-B's and even moving a lot of their work to India.

My sister worked at Cargill for 20 years and just recently found out her entire department (enterprise application development) with all her developers were being canned and the jobs sent over to India.

Hell, the current project I'm on, we have a team of 23 people and myself and one BA are the only American born people on the team. The rest are all from India and have to go back in a few months when their H1-B visas expire.

Two years ago, I found out Thomson Reuters were in the process of outsourcing 80% of their development in a combination of H1-B's and work going directly to India.

I always thought as a developer my job would be relatively safe and I could work in a nice stable corporate environment - guess I was wrong.

<comment><USER7> H1B is not outsourcing. They are full time local workers by definition.

It's amazing companies can get away with firing people and then hiring H1Bs, who, by the government requirements, can't take a citizen's job place.

<comment><USER8> The problem with H1B is that it is half-sourcing. Sure, they are full time local workers, but they also lack the ability to quit and stay in the USA. So they aren't truly part of the local job scene either.

The system needs to be changed so that a tech worker who gets pulled over can quickly get residency and a path to citizenship.

I'd also make sure that anyone graduating from an decent American university gets permanent residency. If we are going to let Stanford or UIUC charge these people 40k a year to go to school and become some of the finest engineers, they should be able to be American Engineers.

<comment><USER9> H-1B status is a form of slavery for the visa-holder, unless they are smart and get a second visa somehow. If an H-1B is terminated, they must leave the country immediately - the employer's final responsibility to the visa-holder is to buy them a plane ticket hom. They could potentially sue their employer for wrongful termination but if they cannot stay in the country to pursue their case, this is extremely difficult.

What is all means is that for an abusive employer, H-1B employees are perfect. They are supposed to get paid more than the prevailing wage, but can be worked to death, and effectively deported if they won't and can't do what they're told to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 'Spent' is an interesting word here, given that this was entirely done in tax breaks. It's not as if the state's coffers have $50m less than if they hadn't done this deal at all - in fact it was still likely a net + for them.

If they hadn't given the tax breaks then IBM wouldn't have come at all - bringing zero dollars with them. At least this way there are hundreds of people employed, land being rented, utilities being used etc.

Oh, and according to the article the tax breaks were suspended when the number of employees dropped too low - perhaps that minimum number could have been set higher?

Obviously this didn't turn out as well as the state wanted it to, but it's not like it actually cost them any real dollars in the long run...

</comment><comment><USER11> "Instead, Ross found herself toiling on what she described as a new-age assembly line -- each employee solving a narrowly focused part of a corporate customer's technical problem and then passing the baton to the next person."

Can anyone decipher the above and explain what kind of work IBM employees in these kinds of offices perform?

<comment><USER2> Mostly operations, I imagine: OS, database & storage administration.

While other companies were investing in their employee base, IBM was cutting costs. Much like a farmer who eats his seed corn and then has nothing to plant while others steward their resources carefully and see a bumper crop, IBM is seeing the results of over a decade of underinvestment: who here would choose an IBM cloud solution over AWS, Google, DigitalOcean or Linode?

While those companies were hiring smart people to design & implement well- crafted systems, IBM was cutting, cutting, cutting, using human beings to do work which is better scripted, underinvesting in automation and generally setting itself up for failure.

<comment><USER12> > who here would choose an IBM cloud solution over AWS, Google, DigitalOcean > or Linode?

Why do you think IBM bought Softlayer?

<comment><USER13> Who?

<comment><USER12> [http://softlayer.com](http://softlayer.com)

Surprised you haven't heard of them -- they're a pretty big player in the datacenter space. Also, I know for a fact that a good chunk of Linode's servers are actually hosted at Softlayer DCs (e.g. any Linode server hosted in Dallas is physically at Softlayer's DAL-2 location, which used to be called The Planet).

My best friend is a tech there, he joined right after the acquisition, and he tells me that the word around the office is "IBM wanted to have a good cloud business, so they bought one".

<comment><USER14> Yup. Between Softlayer as an IaaS provider and BlueMix as a PaaS provider, IBM has top-shelf (not the best, but close) cloud talent and tooling.

They aren't sexy, which is probably why they don't get much play on HN, but they're important and influential.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I live in Dubuque Iowa, and I'll say this, everyone knew IBM was only coming for a short period of time. This was expected from everyone here.

Dubuque has a long history of trying to lure people here, and it's horrible. First it was luring blacks from Chicago with free housing and prepaid credit cards to up the minority count so the city could qualify for grants. Then it was IBM.

Not much smart people here.

<comment><USER16> > Not much smart people here.

I hate to break it to you..

<comment><USER15> Story of my life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> " _cloud computing, which allows IBM's corporate customers to fix problems online rather than deal with human beings_ "

That's a new definition of "cloud computing". And you'd think that Bloomberg would have figured it out by now, since the term has been around for years.

<comment><USER18> Cloud, as in Blowing Smoke.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If city officials bothered with a little research (assuming they don't already know), they'd find several examples of Big Co. entering and leaving small cities and towns without creating economic value equivalent to the huge incentives used to lure them in. Very similar to how officials chase Olympic hosting bids, even when history clearly shows that the legacy is additional debt and underutilized facilities (e.g. purpose-built stadiums/villages that only get used during the occasion).

Everytime I read of such schemes, I can't help but wonder how much lasting value could have been created by using just a minute fraction of the money wasted to foster the local startup/small business scene instead.

<comment><USER4> Or even just leaving the money in people's pockets. I'm not a person who thinks that all government destroys value, but this is a pretty clear example of a time when the government extracted millions of dollars of productive resources and poured it into an idiotic scheme.

Everyone would be better off today (except IBM's investors) if the city officials responsible for this fiasco had just been given a free lifelong vacation starting the day they started planning it.

<comment><USER10> Why do you think any money was actually spent on this? These were tax breaks - a reduction or elimination of tax payments that IBM wouldn't have made is they hadn't moved in anyway. How is that taking money out of people's pockets?

<comment><USER19> Tax breaks are just some of the incentives. E.g. Dubuque also renovated a historic building for IBM, which cost money upfront.

That said, I think tax breaks ultimately cost money, especially when the locals hired earn less than projected (thus, contributing less in income tax to city and less in spending to local industries) while company enjoys little to no tax, makes money and uses other municipal resources without adequate contribution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It was basically just a call center with sys admins that would remote into servers and give them a kick when needed. Oh an a handful of developers. It was clear as day they weren't going to stick around, since the more interesting positions were being held in other IBM offices. It's a bit of a shame really, there's plenty of smart/technical kids from Dubuque, they just go to Des Moines and Cedar rapids to work at places like John Deere and Rockwell Collins -- because even with IBM, there was no reason to stay.

</comment><comment><USER21> Still waiting for a state's voters to pass a ballot measure that constitutionally prohibits the state or any municipality within it from establishing preferential/discriminatory tax regimes. If you want to put this pandering to bed, it's surprisingly easy to do. Just be sure you're prepared for the corporate money flooding in from all points of the compass to defeat you with scare ads. Megalocorp knows it can't afford to let even one state do this; then their game will be up.

</comment><comment><USER22> > "Four years is light years in technology," [the local official] said.

I wonder whether the journalist purposely used this as the article's final sentence to demonstrate that politicians don't "get" science/technology... or maybe relating a length of time to a distance slipped past the writer and editor(s) as well.

<comment><USER9> I thought that was a bit ignorant to throw in there too, but sadly, have gotten used to seeing nonsense like that in "serious" articles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Motorola basically did the same thing in a Northern Illinois community. I think the massive site stayed open a little more than a year. It still today remains a huge empty space sitting in the prairie some fifteen year on.

<comment><USER24> Similar outcome, but happened for different reasons. The CEO lived in McHenry and, essentially, wanted work to be closer to his house. When the plant was closed, it was because Motorola had been fundamentally mismanaged, which is different from IBM's cost-cutting to maintain its successful strategy.

I am in the Rockford area and saw a lot of friends suffer financially because of Motorola's missteps. Rockford also competed with Dubuque to get IBM, and for the same reasons (vague intentions to anchor a tech scene), but was disqualified early in the selection process because it didn't have a minimum threshold of college graduates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's the same for small suppliers as well, not just locations, depending on large companies for business.

If the large company takes their business away, trauma normally ensues for the small supplier/location.

I worked for an oil major who wouldn't do business with small suppliers for this reason.

</comment><comment><USER26> _incentives to lure Big Blue in the hopes of attracting other technology firms and incubating a startup scene_

Based on unsatisfied ex-IBM employees? :-) they surely have the numbers.</comment>


Google bans BitTorrent clients - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/torrents/comments/6obxsa/google_bans_bittorrent/ <comment><USER2> I don't know that this title is accurate. It doesn't seem like Google is banning BitTorrent clients. It seems like the qBitTorrent page was falsely marked as an illegal file-sharing site so Google Ads aren't allowed. It's not like Google is refusing to list BitTorrent clients in search results. There are far too many legitimate uses of torrent clients for that to be a reality.

</comment><comment><USER3> More like Google AdSense banned one BitTorrent client.</comment>


Open Source Is Eternal - <AUTHOR> https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/open-source-eternal <comment><USER2> The last few paragraphs discuss file format conversion. Unfortunately, many companies have weaponized data representation as a way to force customer lock- in. What should have been simple data has been muddied in a way that prevents users from switching to other applications. The only real answer is to do what many people do: keep old machines running the software necessary to open the old data.

<comment><USER3> HTML5, a 'living standard' is a similarly weaponized version of HTML. Just the part of the specification that deals with parsing is prohibitively complicated and expensive to implement for new browsers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Plain text is eternal. If you're worried about prose formats, use that.

I can't help quibbling with the lead:

> Open source has won the present, but what about the future?

Open source has only "won" for programmers. With rare, beautiful exception, open stops just shy of end users, at the point where they have to pull out their credit cards. And GDPR notwithstanding, it's still impractical for most end users to get most data about them in any practical, continuous fashion.

Great time to be a software producer. Not such a great time to be a software consumer. Unless you're willing to trade nearly everything off for convenience and more freemium.

<comment><USER5> >> _Open source has won the present_

> _Open source has only "won" for programmers_

Both statements are true.

Open Source was always about _developer_ benefit. The movement around _end- user_ benefit is called Free Software. The one promoted by Stallman and the FSF, the one practiced by people releasing software under GPL family of licenses. This movement has definitely _not_ won.

<comment><USER6> > Open source has only "won" for programmers

This is completely false. Corporations and Venture Capitalists are the ones who capture most of the value from open source projects. Independent developers got screwed over big time. We are the biggest losers. To the point that we probably would have been better off without open source. I've met popular, very skilled open source developers who can't even make a living as developers.

The top 10 open source developers in the world only earn a high/normal salary (e.g. Evan You of VueJS earns about $200K from Patreon; probably less than what he got at Google as a regular employee). He probably also makes money from conferences and talks; it's not bad, but if you look at the top musicians in the world, the 200th most popular musician alive probably earns millions per year.

The 200th most popular open source developer alive is probably a homeless person.

<comment><USER7> This is sort of like saying the only people who benefit from music are the music industry. A lot of the benefit of open source isn't easily measured in dollars, so it's difficult to say who benefits more, businesses or users.

Nearly everyone builds their software on top of open source libraries, so the beneficiaries or "free riders" if you prefer include both lots of other programmers and the end users who download their software.

But, that's the choice you make when you choose to work for free and give away your stuff. Isn't it a bit weird that we expect anything else? And yet occasionally it works, you can sometimes capture a small fraction of the value through Patreon or whatever.

If you want a less precarious income, there are jobs working on open source software. The 200th most popular open source developer probably works at Google.

<comment><USER6> >> But, that's the choice you make when you choose to work for free

Choice is a relative thing. A lot of developers go into open source as a last resort because they believe that it's the only way that they can get access to users. Corporations have a near monopoly over users.

<comment><USER7> Since we're on Hacker News, I'll point out that starting your own company is another approach, though it can also be a hard way to go.

Sometimes the real issue is that the market is very competitive and user expectations are high, which is the opposite of a monopoly, though it can still make it very tough to break in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Legacy is eternal. Open or closed makes no difference.</comment>


Sweden's ice hotel told it has to have smoke alarms fitted - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2507716/Swedens-ice-hotel-told-smoke-alarms-fitted--actually-goes-off.html

<comment><USER2> Well, it's not that unreasonable - even in an ice room where fire won't spread, if a hotel guest, say, falls asleep with a cigarette and the mattress starts burning, the smoke can easily kill him if there are no detectors.</comment>


Texas to Ban Critical Thinking Skills? - <AUTHOR> http://thediplomat.com/the-editor/2012/07/12/texas-to-ban-critical-thinking-skills/

<comment><USER2> As far as I can see, they in fact oppose specific programs, not critical thinking skills in general (clarified e.g. here: [http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/06/texas_gops...](http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/06/texas_gops_2012_platform_accidentally_opposes_teaching_of_critical_thinking_skills.php)) - the phrase about critical thinking was a mistake. I couldn't find much detail about the programs, but it looks like it is specifically geared towards having students challenge accepted beliefs and authority, which may be both good and bad, depending on maturity level of the students (imagine student that refuses to accept arithmetics or grammar because it's all enforced authoritarian rules and he wants to self-express by making 2+2=5 and riting wiz no gramor it al - probably not a very good idea). Also, wikipedia article on HOTS states:

Many forms of education reform, such as inquiry-based science, reform mathematics and whole language emphasize HOTS to solve problems and learn, sometimes deliberately omitting direct instruction of traditional methods, facts, or knowledge.

The last part of this phrase - about omitting instruction of traditional methods, facts and knowledge - can be very dangerous. It is important to question and challenge existing conventions and authority, but this can be productive only when based in solid background of knowledge, understanding and facts. Otherwise it may easily lead to nihilist know-nothing attitude in which disdain for conventions and self-importance replaces any need for knowledge, rational thinking and relation to facts. It could also put student that do value traditional values, methods and knowledge as somehow defective and failing to achieve "higher", "cooler" stance where these things are irrelevant.

It'd be very interesting to know more details about the specific program(s) in question, without these details it is impossible to know if there's any justification for RPT's opposition to it.

<comment><USER3> I was just about to post that link. While my knowledge of different teaching techniques is limited, from what I can tell they are mostly opposed to more freeform education which is likely to deviate from the set education standards and curriculum. Not totally surprising for a conservative perspective.. but it's less likely to do with challenging religion than most hackernewsers would think. They probably see these alternative forms as hippy free-thinking ways that will produce individuals that want to live within a different system, mostly by deviating from traditional workforce paths and not respecting existing authority and hierarchy.

<comment><USER3> I should say the rest of the PDF contains much more interesting nuggets... from the obvious opposition to 'normalizing homosexuality' to the not-so- obvious opposition to the patriot act due to large government.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (...) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority."

Obviously we can't have children questioning authority or the fairy tales they're fed in Sunday School. That would be anarchy!

</comment><comment><USER5> Also:

"We oppose any sex education other than abstinence until marriage."

"We support school subjects with emphasis on the Judeo-Christian principles upon which America was founded and which form the basis of America's legal, political and economic systems. "

The full platform document is an interesting read. I didn't realize that Judeo-Christian principles formed the basis of America's economic system.

I knew that the republican camp includes many religulous Christian conservatives, but I had no idea that it was formally written into their documents. How can one seriously be opposed to teaching critical thinking? I wonder what percentage of republican voters completely agree with all of this.

<comment><USER2> >> Judeo-Christian principles formed the basis of America's economic system.

To some extent, yes. E.g. concept of private property, rule of generic impersonal law, prosperity through individual achievement, etc. Not all societies accept these principles to the same measure. Of course, you can accept the same principles without agreeing with the rest of conservative Christian platform, but they can claim these principles as part of their cultural heritage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is this really a place for politics?</comment>


Facebook bends the rules of audience engagement to its advantage - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/06/business/facebook-bends-the-rules-of-audience-engagement-to-its-advantage.html?src=busln&_r=0 <comment><USER2> > As a company spokeswoman, Jessie Baker, told me: "The time people spend on > our site is a good measure of whether we're delivering value to them."

Eh, the same argument could be made by Philip Morris or a casino: "The time people spend using our products is a good measure of whether we're delivering value to them."

<comment><USER3> Exactly. Usage patterns and "deriving value" seem like very different beasts.

<comment><USER4> Well, value in sating a compulsive or addictive behavior, but not all values are equal.

<comment><USER5> That so many exceptions and alternative interpretations are possible makes "value" a meaningless term. Perhaps some day reporters won't go MEGO[1] when hearing it.

1\. [https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/mego/](https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/mego/)

<comment><USER4> Value is just like a variable, it is a place holder for what matters. And the value of the _value_ can vary depending on the person or the situation. It could be a positive or a negative value, a value of high importance or minimal importance. Assigning something a value just basically means you're not entirely disinterested in it.

<comment><USER5> Thanks. Well said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Kill your Facebook. Seriously. You'll feel so liberated. And showing people pictures of your recent life when you meet them or email them is so fun and you get so much more attention and conversation out of it. Best decision of my life!

<comment><USER7> I mean, it sounds okay to be liberated, but what if you just don't spend 50 minutes on it per day? Also, what about the argument of keeping in touch with all your high school friends and distant relatives? What about all the things I would've found out on facebook that I'm now missing out on?

<comment><USER8> Facebook doesn't just keep you in contact with old friends, it encourages you to stalk their public facing persona. There's none of the mystery and personal discovery that creates the bonds of friendship. It's not real friendship. It's like being a super fan to an amateur musician - a one way street with occasional responses.

The fear of missing out? That's just one of the many addictive strings that Facebook tugs to manipulate you. The things that happen on Facebook don't matter. If something is important then it is far better to discover it outside of Facebook. In the end, nothing is _that_ important.

There are other ways of keeping up with old friends and relatives. Listen to gossip from other friends and family. Keep in contact with them using email, telephone and post. If you don't maintain some link then they should be resigned to the past - until some event occurs to trigger a re-established connection.

<comment><USER9> > The things that happen on Facebook don't matter.

In my own experience, that's just not true. Facebook has facilitated lots of social interactions for me that simply would not have happened otherwise. Some examples:

\- I was doing an internship in Australia for a few months. I posted a picture of the beach on Facebook, an old friend from highschool whom I hadn't talked to in years saw it, commented that I should come visit her in Melbourne. I did, and we met and caught up on life.

\- A friend of mine invited me to go to a music festival with her friends. She added me to a group message on Facebook that they were using to plan logistics, etc. After the festival, we continued using the chat to plan other social activities.

\- Casual acquaintances that I met once or twice invite me to parties, etc.

Can these things happen without Facebook? Technically, I suppose so. Realistically, I think they would happen less frequently. IMO there's a big difference between Messenger/Events/Groups (facilitates a lot of real interactions) vs News Feed/Profiles (stalking other people).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Knowing it's within Facebook's financial interest to self-report this unverifiable number as high as they can, I wonder what's included.

Are they only including when a user has the mobile app or browser window open and is engaging with the content or are they measuring the total time the page is open regardless of whether it's being interacted with or not? [1]

Are they only including engaging directly on facebook.com or would looking at say, powered-by-facebook comments on a third party site add to this tally?

If that's game, what other things are open to this interpretation?

I'm not saying these metrics are fraudulent, just underspecified.

\---

1\. Under the more permissive metrics, I could be considered "on" stackoverflow, github, or wikipedia perhaps 4 hours a day - because I, like most, don't judiciously close every browser window immediately after I'm done. Although I certainly visit these sites a lot, tallying the numbers like this is probably disingenuous.

<comment><USER11> Tons of services have "log in with Facebook" features. Last I checked, Tinder required a Facebook account. I wonder if those logins are included?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> While people are spending more and more time on FB, I find it that there is less and less original content uploaded. It's all likes and re-shares.

<comment><USER13> Facebook is actively trying to deal with that truth: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-07/facebook-s...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-07/facebook- said-to-face-decline-in-people-posting-personal-content)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This should be a wake up call. This site really doesn't deliver anything of value. It doesn't really make you more social and it doesn't really connect you to people in the real world. So basically you spend 16,800 minutes a year on Facebook. That is 11 days of your life lost a year.

<comment><USER15> I spend 50 minutes a day on Hacker News.

<comment><USER16> Hacker News is for me a news and discussion portal. Reddit is something that might show up from a Google search. I block most of the distracting internet during the day - except FB and HN - so of course those two get the majority of my allocated distracted time. I should measure it, but I'd not be at all surprised if they each got an hour a day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why is this remotely bad?

> "They're doing a tremendous job of finding ways to keep people on the site"

Could also be phrased

"Facebook provides such great value to its unpaying customers that they are willing to spend 50 minutes per day interacting with their services"

... a spin/PR/sales person could word it better I'm sure

<comment><USER18> Please don't feed the turd-polishers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I suggest you to read Momo by Michael Ende[1], it is basically about this topic. Obviously, not only Facebook is guilty.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momo_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momo_\(novel\))

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't think we should expect Facebook to change. We need better tools that allow people to stay away from it (and other such distractions in future). We need tools that help people understand how to manage their internet time better. They need to understand what kind of emotional costs (which will vary a lot) are associated with extended FB usage. And such tools will ideally be browser addons.

Imagine a browser that I can configure based on my weekly goals. There are domains I want to avoid. There are domains where I most want to be (for that week). And some neutral domains like search engines. Maybe assign weights to these. Then over the week, browser reminds or guides us towards most productive behaviors. If our behavior is inconsistent with our initial goals, it assigns heavier penalties (like block domain for a week) for those negative domains.

There are many interesting implications once someone starts thinking about some of these options. But at this point, I don't see exciting innovation on this.

<comment><USER21> RescueTime does exactly this.

<comment><USER20> First of all, separate app isn't the same. Secondly, it just gives reports. That's a passive action. The "guide towards more productive behavior" part of my comment meant that actively tries to stop you from negative domains or push you towards better domains.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I still don't see ANY value in using facebook besides giving to the market my personal data. I just don't understand why this is so popular.

If I wanted to use a social network, I would use one where I can contact new people of interest, not the one I can talk with when I open my window but I won't because I use facebook.

<comment><USER23> The value for many people is:

\- Being able to easily communicate with a large group of your friends at the same time

\- Being able to contact old acquaintances who you otherwise wouldn't have been able to find

\- Being able to finely control they way you present yourself to your peers

\- Being able to easily coordinate events

...to name a few.

There are other ways to accomplish the same tasks, but Facebook is coherent and easy to use.

I personally don't use Facebook either, but I do see the value in it.

<comment><USER22> Only your second point is valid to me and not worth the use of the system by itself. This is not worth the encapsulation around your acquaintances you are supposed to cultivate the relation face to face, not through a "wall" and mediocre public interactions.

There is a lot of means to communicate and coordinate things efficiently (it was already possible before facebook) and the "fine control" over your "present yourself" is either an illusion or proof of your superficiality. I think it is the point around what facebook was built: the superficiality of people and their need to show off everywhere and think of themselves as some public figure. I guess that's also why instagram and selfies are so popular. It's all about network connection, not about the meaningful content the network is supposed to carry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wonder how much of an overlap there is with "waiting in line." because that's a big use case for me.

</comment><comment><USER25> Last year, I was spending roughly ~25 minutes / day on Facebook (according to Rescuetime). I've never had the app, or messenger on my phone. So on Chrome, I added News Feed Eradicator ([https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news- feed-eradicat...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed- eradicator-for/fjcldmjmjhkklehbacihaiopjklihlgg)) and my usage dropped down to about 5 minutes / day (still more than necessary).

Unlike a lot of people here (it seems), I get a lot of real usage out of Facebook though. For example, it's the number one source of events for my favorite hobby / workout. I wouldn't really be connected to the community and know what events are going on if I didn't have it.

<comment><USER26> A slightly less drastic / more tweakable extension: [http://www.fbpurity.com/](http://www.fbpurity.com/)

I use it to delete game + app stories from the newsfeed; I will sheepishly admit I haven't disabled 'Deleted Friend Alerts' either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Criticisms of FB notwithstanding (and it's interesting how that dominates this discussion), time-on-site is a _horrible_ measure of "value added" to me.

I've found highly-directed, highly-filtered, low-noise, low-distraction envrionments are what give me return.

Interfaces and services like ... _Books._ A notebook. Index cards for noting thoughts and ideas. Tangibles which I can hold, flip through, sort, take outside, read in sunlight, and _don 't_ offer me the option of clicking over to see my feed or who's responded to me.

(And no, I don't have a FB account either, never have.)

</comment><comment><USER28> All i think of when I see the word facebook is who would use that data mining, censoring, manipulative product. To each their own but I think many dont see whats going on with it.

<comment><USER29> > many dont see whats going on with it

I think we need some realistic examples of what could go wrong. To many, online privacy issues are a bit too hypothetical and abstract.

<comment><USER30> Indeed; a common response I encounter if I complain about Facebook is along the lines of "I don't see why it matters that FB knows stuff about me, and I think I get more value from them than they possibly could get from me for the trivial information they learn about me."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It seems like in general massively scaled technology companies don't get much love on HN. Seems odd to me as so much of what is discussed on HN is how to massively scale your own technology company.

Is it that they become othered once they pass a certain size, or go public?

What gives?

I mean, I get it that people don't like the influence of VC and finance, but that's part of the game with scaled companies.

</comment><comment><USER32> _" Facebook Has 50 Minutes of Your Time Each Day"_

FaceBook has none of my time ever. (Unless we're talking about their contributions to OSS.)

<comment><USER33> Considering the widespread use of their open source projects like react, I'd say we have 50 minutes of THEIR time each day

<comment><USER34> Certainly 50 minutes of mine! More than half of my days go to open-source React.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Sadly this estimate seems on point. I think the jump in time spent is largely because of Instagram though - there are many who check both daily

</comment><comment><USER36> That includes Messenger. Is Messenger just IM? If so, that estimate makes more sense. Do they serve ads there too?

</comment><comment><USER37> I was never an active FB user, and it has been years since I deleted my account. On the other hand my wife is using it every now and then and I can see the entertainment value in it.

I know everybody loves to hate it, but I don't see it as being inherently worse than TV, or Reddit...

<comment><USER38> People who love to hate Facebook love to hate TV and Reddit equally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Facebook gets about 10 minutes of my time each day, thanks to heavily muting many friends' posts, FB Purity, and uBlock.

Meanwhile, Tesla has 120 minutes of my time each day. I'm fine with that.

<comment><USER28> I am not someone who uses facebook, if you would not mind could you explain briefly what you mean by "muting friends posts"?

<comment><USER40> You can "unfollow" people that you have added, so that their posts no longer show up on your news feed. You still have them added as a friend, you just don't see their posts without visiting their profile page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> People spend 5 hours on average watching tv, so Facebook has a long way to go! Seriously, is this really something to be proud of?

</comment><comment><USER42> If they _really_ want to dominate then it would be prudent for them to buy reddit and imgur.

</comment><comment><USER43> is it really user engagement or the time you spend scrolling through your feed to find something worth checking out, that dwarfs the time spent on twitter?

</comment><comment><USER43> the time spent looking through your FB feed to find something worth checking out largely contributes to it's dominance over time spent on twitter...

</comment><comment><USER44> Yeah not gonna happen. Literally the only thing I use it for is chat.

</comment><comment><USER45> How is this news?

<comment><USER46> Apparently Facebook is so good at user engagement, they can get people to spend time talking about how much time is spent on the platform ;)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Review my startup, thestudybox.com - <AUTHOR>

Its an online platform, strictly academic for students. Use for sharing questions and answers and a great tool for learning. Please i want feedback, thanks www.thestudybox.com <comment><USER2> Wow it cool. Where is your startup located in Nigeria?and far have you extend your plan?

<comment><AUTHOR> Its in Lagos, right now it has not much users. still trying to get more users and seriously need help with the technical part. I single handedly coded it, now i need a techncal person to help build it into something much bigger and better

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Wow it cool. Where is your startup located in Nigeria?and far have you extend your market in there?

</comment><comment><USER2> contact me: 08160181838. Let talk

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried calling but its not going through. email hello at thestudybox.com so we can talk asap. thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> \- I like it. Seems like you have alot of Nigerian traffic to the website. What are you plans for it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Am actually in Nigeria, and i plan to make it a community of students learning from each other. thestudybox is to a students academic life, what facebook is to their social life. I would appreciate any advice, thanks.</comment></comment>


Taser stuns law enforcement world, offers free body cameras to all US police - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/taser-announces-free-body-cameras-cloud-storage-to-all-us-cops-for-a-year/?comments=1 <comment><USER2> This is an obvious revenue ploy for their cloud storage service.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely, but it's a brilliant revenue ploy, think back to Microsoft in the 80's

<comment><USER2> It's going to get messy when people discover their public records have "retrieval fees".

<comment><USER4> From the Ars technica comments: (ArcSyc) -->

 _Fortunately, they put pricing right up on their website._ [https://prismic- io.s3.amazonaws.com/axo](https://prismic-io.s3.amazonaws.com/axo) ... +plans.pdf

 _$15 /user/month for basic access to their server and 10GB of storage per user._

 _$39 /user/month for pro and 30GB/user._

 _$55 /u/m for ultimate which includes a new camera every 2.5yrs and 40GB/u._

 _$79 /u/m for unlimited which includes all of the above plus unlimited storage and HD quality storage._

Also, aren't these videos privileged information in the sense that access to them requires court / legal process to allow access?

As long as there the PDs have ability to retrieve the data, can migrate out of the service when they choose to, and there are sufficient, declared tech standards that ensure tracebility & (digital) chain of custody for the recordings, I don't know that this is a bad idea (excluding privacy / data mining concerns, which again needs a legislative / policy solution).

I think as a business solution, this is possibly a win-win for the company as well as the PDs - the devil is in how the contracts are drawn up, and how policies are established to prevent abuse. But that's going to be an issue with almost any such video recording service, unless the PD manages the IT infrastructure on its own --> which is expensive, inefficient, and has its own risks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Master stroke. _This_ is strategy.</comment>


Ask HN: Is an economic crisis approaching post Covid-19? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Short answer: yes, we will see another financial crisis. Probably in fall 2020. In terms of economic cycle, covid was just bad luck and did not lead to corrections - on the contrary.

To make myself eligible for some precog society I say we will see a major downturn worldwide in Oct 2020.

</comment><comment><USER3> Depends on who you ask. Nobody can predict the future, otherwise they'd be a stock market Billionaire.

I see an economic crisis brewing in the distant future. Our economies are based on consumption. I don't think we can grow consumption indefinitely, especially if that means growing the population.</comment>


Amazon AWS Servers Might Soon Be Held for Ransom, Similar to MongoDB - <AUTHOR> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/amazon-aws-servers-might-soon-be-held-for-ransom-similar-to-mongodb/ <comment><USER2> So the problem is not with AWS but with the devops on client end who manages AWS. This in not an technical problem. If you didn't protect your cloud resources properly, you will be hacked and data will be held for ransom.</comment>


Facebook and Oculus exec leaving to work on wearable MRI - T-A http://www.digitaltrends.com/health-fitness/wearable-mri-jepsen/ <comment><AUTHOR> > Jepsen, whose background and resume could leave most people gasping, is one > of tech's true, long-haul, entrepreneurial visionaries.

AFAICT, Jepsen has been more of a seagull [1] than anything. The reality is... she's been a high profile participant in a series of short-term, failed endeavors -- from OLPC, Pixel Qi, a failed Google[x] project, and now a very short stint at FB. All of these failings are well documented on Wikipedia [2]. They sound good in principle, but have never delivered.

The MRI goal is laudable, and I hope for humanity's sake that it works. But I'd hold off on the admiration until it's more than vaporware -- especially with Jepsen at the helm.

 _Throw away account since I 'm too close to her past endeavors to speak publicly._

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagull_manager](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagull_manager)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Lou_Jepsen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Lou_Jepsen)

<comment><USER2> So, in your estimation, what's an acceptable success rate for someone who only really works on moon shot ideas? I'm curious why you think she's a bellwether for failure as opposed to someone who is driven to take on world changing ideas.

If you're only going to say "I'm too close to her" and call her some bad things with an anon account, well, you probably just shouldn't have posted. I'm all for learning from the experiences people have interacting with the technocrati, but this post feels petty and lacks information.

<comment><USER3> "once, you're lucky. twice, you're good" could be a reasonable metric for execs who take on high risk projects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Current MRIs need liquid helium to keep their electromagnets superconducting. Short of room-temperature superconductors... how are they planning to pull this off?

Screw wearability, being able to make an MRI machine smaller than a small car that doesn't need helium would be worth $$$ on its own.

<comment><USER5> There are a number of machines that don't use superconducting magnets and hence don't have such stringent cooling needs. These machines typically need these sort of cooling setups to support higher fields but imaging is still possible at low field. Some years ago, and I'm by no means up to date with this, there was a group working on imaging using the earth's magnetic field as the main field [1]. While this is the extreme MRI has been functional longer than superconducting magnets have been feasible.

On the flip side of this things like compressed sensing and MRI fingerprinting [2] reduce further the need for a traditional 'full' scan. We are still some way off seeing these sorts of things in clinical MRI but that may be more attributable to the pace at which companies like GE and Phillips move in this space. That and the sheer cost of R&D.

Overall it is a pretty exciting time to be in MRI, despite the outside view being that it has changed very little in recent decades.

disclosure: PhD candidate in electrical engineering, focused on MRI

[1] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16828566](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16828566) [2] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4376817/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4376817/)

<comment><USER6> How is the patent situation? Does a well funded startup have a chance to disrupt this field ?

Because if the potential were seeing in research on fmri neurofeedback for example does work, we might be talking about something that will make virtual reality look insignificant.

One example is accelerating mental learning processes that take experienced meditators decades(they call it enlightenment which leads to development of deeply happy and caring human beings ) into a period of weeks/months of a much less intense effort, so the experience may be available to everyone, not just a rare few.

<comment><USER5> MRI like a lot of other med tech is very heavily patented. The core tech has long since expired but any of the cutting edge work will probably have patents around it. I do believe that an MRI startup has a chance to disrupt but it may be more of an innovation in application, or accessibility than in pure technology.

<comment><USER6> >> innovation in accessibility

Do you mean business model innovation ?

<comment><USER5> Yeah essentially, I meant that in the sense of innovating how people access MRI scans and the data associated with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Mary Lou Jepsen gave a talk about her ideas at the Media Lab 30th anniversary:

[http://www.media.mit.edu/video/view/ml30-2015-10-30-03](http://www.media.mit.edu/video/view/ml30-2015-10-30-03)

Her talk starts at about 45:20.

<comment><USER8> Jepsen intends to build a "Diffuse Optical Tomography"[0] system using liquid crystals as a means of achieving both miniaturization as well as a dramatic increase in the emitter count. A beanie hat was used as a visualization of the final consumer-facing product.

Suffice it to say, there will probably be no use of low-field MR, nor anything like MEG—let alone both.[1][2]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffuse_optical_imaging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffuse_optical_imaging)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoencephalography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoencephalography)

[2] [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120726102756.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120726102756.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder how much of this is due to Oculus's clear lagging behind it competitors.

HTC and Sony both have platforms that a more robust and better positioned to capture gamers than Oculus.

I wouldn't want to stick around either.

<comment><USER10> I'm not so sure about that. Once the touch controllers start shipping out with the second camera, they will be equal if not better than the competition.

They are also researching inside out tracking for mobile VR which is very exciting!

<comment><USER9> Have you used an HTC Vive?

I have a couple oculus and they are nowhere near the HTC Vive in terms of immersion.

<comment><USER11> I've recently used both and think they're equal in terms of immersion when the Vive is roughly around the minimum space requirements. For gaming, I could take either; for non-gaming experiences, I haven't seen anything on the Vive that wouldn't feel similar on the Oculus or vice-versa.

If you have a large open space the Vive may pull ahead, but I haven't tried anything that could take advantage of that.

FWIW, I was sold on VR when I first tried DK1, but now having tried the consumer version and the Vive (years later), I'm even more excited.

<comment><USER9> I found the vive to be much more immersive, and the games being developed for it felt like they truly understood the capabilities of VR.

I'm really excited about the competition in the space, it is only going to be good for VR enthusiasts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think the undercurrent behind this is the new magnetorheological technologies now available...before, the solid state physics behind the magnets necessitates the huge size of the things...

<comment><USER13> Please would you elaborate on this? Or provide some sort of reference?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think that it is more likely the exec is going to apply Augmented VR for viewing MRI imaging. So, 'wearable MRI' is somewhat Misinterpreted. I doubt it is an actual MRI scanner, just a novelty way of augmentation

<comment><USER14> But I suppose you've got to try to generate billions somehow :)</comment></comment>


Do It Now – RPG to Do List and Habit Tracker - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.levor.liferpgtasks <comment><AUTHOR> Do It Now is a fantastical to do list which helps you to add game elements into your everyday tasks, make schedule, add reminders and organize your life with built-in skills, characteristics and level ups.</comment>


To the Moon! (Clojure Conj 2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Sso4HtvJsw <comment><AUTHOR> "We all have moments that change the way we think, the way that we look at the world, the things we want to do with our lives. On July 20, 1969 a whole generation of Americans had one of those transforming experiences: Two men landed on the Moon and nothing was ever the same again."</comment>


Medicare for All: Leaving No One Behind - <AUTHOR> https://live-berniesanders-com.pantheonsite.io/issues/medicare-for-all/ <comment><USER2> To call our healthcare a market system is laughable. There so many protections and regulations and distortions. In addition, when your house is in fire, you don't shop fire departments.

In a life or death scenario, you certainly aren't shopping hospitals. And so they can gouge you hundreds of $$ for even simple things like ice packs and Tylenol. Our system is a scam. One hour in the ER should not cost $5000

<comment><USER3> But what about when it isn't an immediate emergency? There are plenty of healthcare needs where you totally do have time to shop around and find the best bang for your buck, if the system let you do that. (There could be a startup idea in there, even. A simple website to help find the most effective, cheapest endoscopy or wisdom tooth extraction or STI test or mole check or whatever.)

<comment><USER4> That is the underlying problem though. There is no "shopping around". Either your plan allows it, or does not. If you need a procedure, your choices are effectively limited to who is on your coverage list.

FWIW, I live in an area where there is ONE healthcare option (Racketeering/monopoly). I (as an independent consultant) pay $1640/mo for a $5,000 family deductible. So basically, I pay over $19,000/year for the PRIVILEGE of paying another $5,000 and that's assuming I only go to the doctors "they allow" me to go to. (it was $800/mo for a $1500 family deductible prior to ACA). Obama can EABOD.

The only people who like the ACA are the people who don't have to pay for it.

Edit: Also I was in an MVA in July, the Emergency Dept. didn't accept my insurance at all - so who gets the bill? I do. The MVA wasn't my fault, but that bill is still my responsibility.

<comment><USER5> The auto insurance company. That is why you have medical on your policy. Of course you may have to sue someone to get it.

That's another crazy part of our system. Medical coverage is baked into your health insurance, your auto insurance, your property insurance, workman's comp insurance. A medicare for all plan, should require comensurate decreases in all of those policy areas.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, it _will_ take a lawsuit, and that, I am told will take ~18 months +/-. I'm on the hook until then. So far, with lost work, PT and imaging, I'm already out almost $20k

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If I had a say, I'd like to see universal coverage for all Americans (and market rate buy in for workers on visas) but provide it at several levels.

Everyone working or non-working gets some kind of base coverage --to which they can buy a ala carte additional coverage/perqs. At the base level people who behave healthy (but not necessarily healthy) get breaks (premium perqs) for trying to be healthy in terms of diet and activity (activity monitors, etc.)

In addition to some base coverage, people can opt in to more premium coverage with shorter wait times, additional non-essential care, opt out of lifestyle monitoring, etc.[1]

That way the system can be streamlined to be efficient in handling 80-90% of cases and then have the second, premium system available for those who want or need less ordinary medicine.

If you can keep 80-90% of your pop healthy efficiently and then you get the rest to pay extra for their added needs, I think that could make the economy more effective, overall.

</comment><comment><USER7> I own a medical clinic with my brother who is a physician. He has opted out of medicare and medicaid because of the increased overhead and cashflow issues that are incurred when dealing with the government. Instead we charge $50 per month for a base membership to the practice and bill patients slightly above cost for labs, and supplies. I think this will be the model for most Americans in the future. Most medical costs are not emergency related and people just need someone to give a quick medical opinion when they are concerned. For people with a chronic condition like COPD or diabetes they get a monthly visit have their vitals checked and can come back next month without paying crazy high fees. For emergencies, people usually also carry a high deductible plan so they are only using insurance for costs that can't be paid out of pocket.

</comment><comment><USER3> The primary mechanism by which money is saved is price controls, under a single payer system. This should be extremely scary. And I'm saying this as someone who voted for Obama in 08, 12 and HRC in 16.

Healthcare products are complicated. Getting the price right is a very hard problem. Markets, generally speaking, have proven to be a fairly effective way of settling on price. This is basic economics.

<comment><USER8> From my experience the US health care market is not a functioning market. No price transparency, widely variable prices for the same thing, huge and inefficient bureaucracy.

It would be interesting to see if there was regulation for open pricing, billing standards and others. If that doesn't happen, Medicare for all is definitely a good option.

<comment><USER3> I totally agree with everything you said except that last sentence. Insurance seems to be something of a failure as is. That said, MFA seems like just another insurance system. Except customers can never opt out of it, never develop a competing system, and are now bound to its inefficiencies forever.

<comment><USER4> Medicare & Medicaid has always been an option for everyone - its just that if you made too much money, then you didn't qualify. It was a safety net for the poorest people. It was not meant for students just out of school (who presumably had skills to get a job with benefits) or people who are perfectly happy not progressing or producing in their lives (which is fine, just don't demand that "society" pays for everything).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Who is pantheonsite.io, and why isn't this linking straight to [https://berniesanders.com/issues/medicare-for- all/](https://berniesanders.com/issues/medicare-for-all/)?

</comment><comment><USER10> The only moral way of providing healthcare is based upon need not ability to pay.

If you introduce any pay structure into healthcare you are saying that those with money can reserve scarce resources ahead of those without.

You are saying rich people are more important than the poor and the poor should die more quickly to get them out of the way.

If you live in a society that takes that view, how long before you become the poor?

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm a Bernie supporter.. and like the single-payer idea... but if that can't get passed--how about we get rid of Insurers--and make HOSPITALS provide insurance.

You pay your local hospital $x per month based on income... something like 4-6% of your income if you earn > $30k.

The hospital might get some gov't subsidies based on # of insured patients it carries.

When you travel your hospital covers the bills at other hospitals. Since each hospital = insurer they will work/negotiate with other hospitals for faired deals than they would w/ insurance companies.

This also will do away with some of the billing requirements and could streamline that process a bit.

A good startup might be creating the billing systems that manage all of this, and centralizes everything between different hospitals.

No HMOs, Networks, etc... Hospitals could choose what extras they might cover like infertility/etc... as a bonus so patients might pick a different local hospital that has better coverage..

The boon for the hospital: Monthly recurring income from all it's patients - past, present, and future.

</comment><comment><USER12> Happy to see this. Free market health care has failed, glad there is a critical mass of people willing to get something new.</comment>


The Many Ways of WeChat - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/26/the-many-ways-of-wechat-how-messaging-is-eating-the-world/ <comment><USER2> I'm biased working on the thing, but speaking purely a user, I feel WeChat gives us a peek of the phone OS we'll see in 3 years.

The recent "messaging apps will eat everything" spin is burying the lede. What's happening, broadly, is that in some places (esp. Asia), OS/phone vendors are losing in the early stages of a war between platform (iOS, Android) and meta-platform (things like WeChat, LINE, FB).

Yes, its central function is nominally an SMS replacement, but as a meta- platform it plasters over a bunch of gaps in the OS level. The central UI is a common, semi-hierarchical stream for notifications/news/messages with a consistent set of controls for deprioritizing/blocking things. Then you have services like payment, authentication, and social graph. A lightweight Instapaper/Evernote shared by all my apps. Handling for things like QR codes which western-designed OSes don't do on a system level. Universal search for chat and non-chat content alike. A health/activity data feature for the various Bluetooth gizmos my friends and I use. Then, on top of that, you have tons of light-weight third-party services/apps which, while the experience can shoddier than a native app, for 50% of apps is far more convenient than actually downloading and updating so many 100MB+ apps on my phone and spotting their various red badges in a sea of icons/groups.

In effect, it's a nascent vision of an OS oriented around a thread-based UI paradigm instead of an app-based UI paradigm. Some day, I'm certain some kind of sensible central "inbox" will replace my home/lock screen (as well as the push notification tray).

<comment><USER3> Very interesting angle. I am heavily using WeChat on a daily basis for all purpose: keep in touch with friends, read news, share content (audio, video, articles, pdf, etc.), call people worldwide (very good video stream in China), get alerts from servers, quickly reach distributed teams, pay in restaurants or bars, order train tickets, transfer money to friends, pay online, top up my mobile, etc.

It is by far the app that I use the most on my mobile. For a lot of my contacts, I do not have their phone numbers, email address or full name. I also believe I do not know anybody that do not have a WeChat account (from my landlord, the restaurant down my work to the legal contact of some of our contracts).

I will be leaving Asia soon, I am not sure what will replace this while settling in Europe. My phone could only use WeChat, I will not see big differences, save for emails. What other apps are so central for other markets? I merely use Whatsapp but it is far from having the same extend of functionalities nor such a complete experience.

<comment><USER4> While anecdotal, I've noticed that WhatsApp use and use cases are steadily increasing in my surroundings.

At first it was just an sms replacement. Then people started using the group chats for (mostly) silly stuff or family groups. Then the group chat function started to be used more functionally for work and, say, flatmate-type stuff coordination and communication.

I wouldn't be surprised that if (or perhaps _when_ ) WhatsApp adds more functionality, it will quickly be picked up by everyone around me. I'm mostly surprised what WhatsApp hasn't done this already, especially considering that Facebook already offers a number of functions that I'd love to see integrated (to a limited degree) into whatsapp's paradigm (event creation/planning, more advanced photo sharing, 'blogging').

Does anyone have any idea why WhatsApp _isn 't_ becoming more like WeChat?

<comment><USER5> I listened to a talk by Jan Koum from WhatsApp right before the acquisition by Facebook. His key point was that WhatsApp success comes from the fact that they only do messaging (as an sms replacement) and keep the app simply. He was talking about a lot of functionality that he did not want to add (desktop client, video chat, games, anything commercial or e-commerce related) and said WhatsApp wants to keep the surface are of it's app and developer team as small as possible. I don't know how much that changed after the acquisition, though.

<comment><USER4> That strikes me as primarily an 'operational' success.

It seems entirely possible to me to integrate a significant amount of features into the 'stream of messages' paradigm without making it complicated enough to turn people away. And clearly the existence of WeChat shows that doing more than just messaging can be hugely successful.

It just happened to be smart for WhatsApp specifically, because of its circumstances and ability and whatnot, to focus on the core product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just a small reminder that the reason WeChat (and Baidu) are so popular in China is because Facebook, Twitter, Skype and Google are blocked there. It's easier to grab a local market when free competition is made illegal. I'd be more impressed if they were forced to compete with the rest of the world and in fact, they are doing pretty badly in most of the rest of the world where they are forced to compete.

<comment><USER7> Yes and no. KakaoTalk, LINE, and WhatsApp were not blocked in China at the time, and WeChat was, in its early stages, essentially a Chinese clone of those others. WeChat's success had a lot more to do with

* Being able to login with your QQ account and import your QQ friends (WeChat and QQ are made by the same company, and for many people, WeChat replaced QQ)

* Catering to Chinese users, including Chinese payment systems, Chinese train/plane tickets, Chinese taxis, and pretty much everything else local

* Network effects within the Chinese community

* Aggressively targeting Chinese distribution channels

<comment><USER6> Note that QQ itself was popular because facebook messenger and msn before were blocked, and so was twitter. Chinese payment systems were themselves blocking foreign competition. The digital economy is basically a walled garden where only local companies can thrive with very few exceptions.

<comment><USER8> I hope it was true, but no.

In 2006, I have both QQ, Skype, MSN, Yahoo messenger installed and they all work in China at that time. QQ for friends and family, Skype for Voip calls, MSN for friends in university, well, Yahoo messenger, mostly was used to chat with people outside of China, to practice English.

QQ was huge popular among younger populations at that time, in way I could not understand.

I used MSN most of the time to communicate with my friends in university, but almost all my friends or relatives that were below 20 at that time, who have an IM, is on QQ.

But now most people in China are on WeChat, people are moving away from QQ. And WeChat becomes many people's first IM, for example, my mother in-law who is retired, does not know how to use a computer or how to use QQ, knows how to use WeChat.

I have to say these guys are onto something. Yes, they were copycats in the beginning, and yes, their current counterparts outside are blocked in China, but I strongly doubt the theory that if facebook, google etc are not blocked in China right now, they would be successful in China. After all, they had their chance before, and they blew it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In India, Whatsapp almost enjoys the same status as WeChat. Only that Whatsapp isn't really doing what WeChat is, but it could very well do that too. Then again, it raises question about how much should an app really do... someone posted a blog to HN that complained how Evernote is trying to do too many things, and is getting the note-taking part wrong, which is core to its product.

Whatsapp is touted as a SMS replacement. But calling it that is downplaying it prowess in handling multimedia content. Almost everyone I know use it as an "email replacement" instead (after the advent of "100 people groups," I must admit). Think about that for a moment-- a replacement to email! As Whatsapp continues to get better at handling more and more content, it will start replacing the "browser" on the phone. That's upto Whatsapp of course to make it more powerful and realise that vision, flawed or not.

Look at how powerful the browsers have become. Tomorrow, if Whatsapp starts offering in-app embedded browser experience, I am pretty sure the dynamics will change again.

Oh, and e-commerce happens over Whatsapp as well. So, its kind of a craiglist replacement too.

<comment><USER10> Unlike SMS, Whatsapp need Internet

<comment><USER9> WWW and Internet are two very different things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My biggest gripe about WeChat is that it doesn't support multiple logins. It's tied down to 1 mobile device and there is no desktop or web-based client that can login using a simple username and password. I switch devices very often and very much prefer that information flow with me as I switch from place to place, device to device, transparent to others around me, and not require me be attached to a single piece of hardware. This is something that Facebook chat does very well. Unfortunately, my entire social circle uses WeChat so I don't exactly have a choice.

<comment><USER11> It works as designed. WeChat is focusing on mobile phones. Everyone has a phone and it's always with him/her. PC and tablets become the extensions of the phone. There are WeChat clients for PC and Mac. But you still need the phone to login. It always reminds you that WeChat is a mobile app.

<comment><USER7> "Everyone has a phone and it's always with him/her"

Except me. That's the point. I would much prefer it offer a protocol and let me choose how I wish to use that said protocol. Some people walk around with 1 mobile phone. I have several mobile phones I use at different times and places. Most services permit multiple logins and seamlessly display all information on all devices. Also, at times when I have my computer around, I want my computer to BE my phone, so that everything is consolidated. It's quite ridiculous that I have to peck at a phone when I have a laptop staring at my face. Facebook lets me just use that laptop to continue conversations seamlessly, without even having to carry my phone, and without needing to re- login to anything. And I can move from room to room several dozen times a day, having all conversations simultaneously open in all of my rooms. Information flows with me.

Unfortunately, because WeChat wants to dictate how they think I should use technology, I don't really have a choice but to create separate WeChat accounts on every device, launch Android emulators on PCs, and create a chatroom for every contact I have, inviting all of my other accounts. It's a super-cumbersome way to use technology but they don't offer me a choice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wechat is way more than just a SMS replacement. You can pretty much run your life on it. In China, you can book hotels, buy train tickets, pretty much everything on it as well.

What I really like about it is you can create different circles of people (kinda of what Google+ tried to popularize and failed) and communicate with all of them at once. A lot of people are part of circles with their grade school friends, with all their relatives (distant cousins too), etc. etc.

</comment><comment><USER13> I thought it was just for meeting up or online chat.

<comment><USER14> Just like Facebook is just for keeping a contact list of friends and family.

Sarcasm aside, wechat is a full social network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A lot of messaging applications originating out of Asia seem to have a similar set of traits. They have minimal data costs, they have both audio and video (although Line's audio is terrible) and they also are building their own payment systems.

At one point, this recipe is going to get old.

</comment><comment><USER16> Egads, what a linkbaity title. I prefer a16z's survey of the WeChat world: [http://a16z.com/2015/08/06/wechat-china-mobile- first/](http://a16z.com/2015/08/06/wechat-china-mobile-first/)

<comment><USER17> How is this clickbait? I think it sums up the content of the article nicely. Clickbait would be "We compiled 15 of the coolest WeChat features. #3 will shock you!"

</comment></comment><comment> a-dub So basically it's the Yahoo business model, on mobile, for Asia.

<comment><USER18> It's a lot more like Facebook, which is why Messenger is such an important app for them.</comment></comment>


Crypto horror stories (2016) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://cr.yp.to/talks/2016.06.23/slides-djb-20160623-16x9.pdf <comment><USER2> A great presentation by DJB ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_J._Bernstein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_J._Bernstein)).

And yes, this is about crypto. Not blockchains.

<comment><AUTHOR> More about RC4 and good ciphers:

[https://cr.yp.to/talks/2015.10.05/slides- djb-20151005-4x3.pd...](https://cr.yp.to/talks/2015.10.05/slides- djb-20151005-4x3.pdf)

(previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10345965](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10345965))

 _ProTip: switch to presentation mode to view horizontal slides._

More about constant-time code:

[https://cr.yp.to/talks/2018.07.11/slides- djb-20180711-sortin...](https://cr.yp.to/talks/2018.07.11/slides- djb-20180711-sorting-4x3.pdf)

More about Post-Quantum Cryptography:

[https://pqcrypto.org/](https://pqcrypto.org/)</comment></comment>


LastPass now free on all devices - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/3137971/data-center-cloud/password-manager-lastpass-now-works-on-all-your-devices-for-free.html <comment><USER2> Paid user of Lastpass here. I am happy to see them open it for masses as it will help more users get on Password Manager instead of using same password everywhere.

Now will I stay paid user, yes, because I like and use following feature heavily, which is paid only :

ability to share folders with up to five users

This allows me to have all shareable logins at one place, and sharing with team or family member is so easy instead of sharing each site one by one, which is painful process for users on both sides.</comment>


Ask HN: Tax tips for Soft. Eng. making more than 250k in Washington/redmond? - <AUTHOR> I recently started a new position in the Redmond area with a total compensation (base+bonus+shares) a little more than 250k. I am new to the US and Washington state.<p>To the people making around the same what are you advice in term of optimizing the amount the taxes i will be paying ? Any books,blog,article or general advice is welcome <comment><USER2> 1\. Buy a house on mortgage.

2\. Have children.</comment>


Samsung 870 QVO SATA 2.5" SSD 8TB - <AUTHOR> https://www.samsung.com/nz/memory-storage/870-qvo-sata-3-2-5-ssd/MZ-77Q8T0BW/ <comment><USER2> The cheapest SSD per TB I have seen was 2TB @ $159 from Sandisk[1], which is an one off price, but most of the SATA non NVME PCI-E SSD can go as low as $90 - $100 / TB.

I dont mind QLC / PLC or Speed limited by SATA Port. Some day I would like to replace my NAS with SSD, but it has to be a price point that is worth it. May be around $60/TB.

The problem is I dont see any roadmap to suggest we have tech to bring it to that price point in the next few years. ( ignoring economic irregularities )

[1] [https://wccftech.com/sandisk-ssd-plus-line-of-solid-state- dr...](https://wccftech.com/sandisk-ssd-plus-line-of-solid-state-drives-start- from-a-1tb-capacity-for-just-95/)

</comment><comment><USER3> The speeds are pretty mediocre, as this is a SATA drive.

Intel has a much quicker (and much more expensive) NVMe equivalent.

[https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/memory- stor...](https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/memory- storage/solid-state-drives/data-center- ssds/d7-series/dc-p4510-series/dc-p4510-8tb-2-5inch-3d2.html)

<comment><USER4> I don't get your comment. If its more expensive and much quicker, then this doesn't sound like a fair comparision at all or alternative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was having a look at NVMe SSDs yesterday and noticed the cost per TB premium is now only ~4x over hard drives for a much faster device. How quickly should I expect my home NAS to be feasibly SSD only? I'd probably dump hard drives and never look back at ~1.5x premium. Is that soon?

<comment><AUTHOR> How big is your home NAS? I've been transitioning to SSD for a couple of years now, though I still use Seagate 5TB HDDs for cold-storage backups. The speed and lighter physical weight makes a huge difference to me.

<comment><USER5> I have two at 4x4TB, so it's still much too expensive to go SSD. I was planning an SSD cache with 2x512GB SSDs in RAID1 for the next build but now I'm wondering how long it will take to be able to go all SSD.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Samsung 870 QVO 1 TB Review - Terrible, Do Not Buy

> > [https://www.techpowerup.com/review/samsung-870-qvo-1-tb/](https://www.techpowerup.com/review/samsung-870-qvo-1-tb/)

2+TB SKUs have slightly better performance but I would still choose TLC everyday over this.

A hypothetical 6TB TLC version would cost the same but perform much better while having much much longer endurance.

<comment><USER7> It's impressive how well the caching in these SSDs works to still provide good performance until the cache is full and performance falls off a cliff.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think this is the second 8TB SSD on the market. I'd been eyeing the 8TB Sabrent Rocket M.2 as an upgrade for my 2014 MacBook Pro, but the price is eye-watering. I'd need to buy 2, because there's no bus-powered hard drives that size to backup to.

Now Samsung's made this an affordable backup option, I just need to start saving up.

</comment><comment><USER8> 360 erase cycle QLC flash.</comment>


How I Set Up My Development Machine - <AUTHOR> http://www.sitepoint.com/set-up-development-machine/

<comment><USER2> Not the core topic but the author says: "The most important extension is AdBlock Plus, to remove ads from the web"

Out of all the extensions this is the most important? I never get this, most web ads just sit there, it is not like TV where I have to listen to them. Ads pay for a lot of things that he probably uses.

<comment><USER3> Including the site he works for.</comment></comment>


A genius boy shot himself in the head after calculating the benefits of life - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/brilliant-pupils-logical-suicide-1188778.html

<comment><USER2> My condolences to the family, but something seems horribly wrong here, and it starts with those scare quotes around the "logical" in the headline. Actually, it starts with that headline.

"...mathematics he has used are indisputable." I don't care to argue with the boy's ethics, and by saying this, I hope it is clear I'm not arguing with his form of realism or his utilitarianism. What IS interesting is that the child may have worked under such sophisticated concepts. But my point is that logic =/= mathematics, which is suggested by the scare quotes.

I think the author is a cynical asshole or British culture should have something to say about such blatant mockery of a suicide victim's views. It's surprising to me that any two editors who looked at the headline of this and failed to question it.

But seriously, I'll go down as the person who nit-picks about language if it means expression of opinion about THIS particular linguistic atrocity is all I have to my name.

<comment><USER3> Imagine the headline without the quotes. It would essentially say, "he committed suicide, just as he should have". The quotes indicate that it was the boy's opinion that his suicide was logical, not the article's.

<comment><USER2> The assumption that "logic" and "mathematics" can be used interchangeably is what suggests to me that the author is couching in an additional point. This is why I attack the headline all together, and not just the use of quotation. This is why I used to term "scare quotes" (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes>)...twice.

Did you read my post at all?

I'm attacking the article for exactly the point you're trying to educate me about. I'm saying it is wrong to do this sort of writing under some circumstances. I'm saying trash the whole headline. I'm saying "should we use these quotation marks?" should have been noted as "bad form." I'm saying I'd take the OP's long-ass headline before I come off sounding insensitive.

"Brilliant pupil's 'logical' suicide." It makes me wrench just reading it out loud. Read it. Read the "distance" the author strongarms into the headline. It's forced. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth just reading it out loud. You know that one point people often try to make that goes something like, "Couldn't you have said it a better way?" Or "Maybe we just shouldn't talk about that here and now?" Or the whole motivation behind PC-speech? I'm saying this article's headline comes off as crass because of the use of exactly that which you are now trying to describe to me.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: open sourced idea management system? - <AUTHOR>

Recently there was a post here about a big U.S. retailer that open sourced their idea management system. I can't find the link. Does anybody have it? <comment><USER2> It's from Best Buy, here's the link: <http://bbyidx.com/>

<comment><USER3> Is there a demo anywhere? I don't want to download, get an account on Heroku/etc, just to see if I want to go through and implement it.</comment></comment>


The Rust FFI Omnibus – Soliciting Suggestions and Feedback - <AUTHOR> http://jakegoulding.com/rust-ffi-omnibus/

<comment><AUTHOR> I've seen a lot of interest recently in using Rust in an FFI context. I started the _Omnibus_ to collect a set of examples that people can just use to get going. I'd love to get feedback (here or in the github issues[1]) about missing parts, better techniques, or what more stuff you'd like to see.

Thanks!

[1]: [https://github.com/shepmaster/rust-ffi- omnibus/issues](https://github.com/shepmaster/rust-ffi-omnibus/issues)</comment>


HN Show: I've built a crypto alternative to Airbnb for the global tech community - <AUTHOR> Over the last year I was mainly living out of Craigslist short-term rentals and Airbnbs. I always preferred Craigslist because there are no fees and it feels more authentic, but Airbnb is more convenient when you need something quick and want to avoid scammers. However, after a while I got so upset with the fees on Airbnb and the fact that they make you work around their censorship (emails, phone numbers etc. are redacted). I thought that there must be a better way of doing this. What I've come up with is a decentralized version of Airbnb where guests pay hosts in crypto. After a few transactions, through which users are vetted, travelers can book through a smart contract without any fees. The site is called https://www.cryptocribs.com. I've launched it on Reddit about two months ago and by now it already has around 500 listings. <comment><USER2> I started to respond with a skeptical comment saying: There are good reasons the emails, phone numbers, etc. are redacted... how does your platform address these issues?

But then I looked at the site and skimmed the white paper, and it seems you are pretty serious about this :-). Congrats getting traction with some hosts apparently. Will be interesting to see where this goes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comments, I see your skepticism and I would probably have reacted the same way. My white paper isn't technical at all, it was more of a personal attempt to add some clarity to my thought process. I truly believe that there's a way of making flat-sharing frictionless or at least less centralized compared to the current state

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Love this.

From a visual standpoint, it's hard to read all the text. I understand the font choice for your site/brand, but maybe explore them being for headlines only. H1, H2, etc

<comment><AUTHOR> good point, i agree

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool. You have some hosts in Sydney. I wasn't expecting that!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, had some unexpected uptake in Australia

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > where guests pay hosts in crypto

Is that acceptable use of the word "crypto" now?

<comment><AUTHOR> not sure, probably not</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Doc-comments... over each code block or grouped at the end? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I'm having one of those moments when you need some light...
I'm writing a big project, and by definition it's on an interpreted language.
Lets say I did a "documentation from comment blocks" system too, because this language did lack such functionality on a standard way.
And now, I've to choose if I let the documentation blocks stay _over_ each function, or I group all the documentation, at the end, after the code and normal comments.
I did just benchmarked this change, and there are performance gains grouping it at the end, and inserting a "return" (or "exit" in the case of apps) before the documentation.
My question here is because, working with the code in both ways, I'm still not sure which one I prefer.
On one side, seeking for code, and seeking for code context, I prefer to have all without splits.
On the other side, when reviewing code, sometimes you need to remember some details on the interface (or update it's description) and you need to move to the end of the file, and move back when done.
I've see some frameworks using separated files (even extensions) for doc-comments and code, but at the end of the day I think it's too much hassle for the benefices...
What's your opinion about this? <comment><USER2> If there's a benefit to putting comments at the end, why not remove the comments entirely in the production version (i.e. minification)?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll discard using separated files, because that supposes the double of files.

        $ echo $(( $( find ./src -type f | wc -l ) * 2 ))
        938

And growing each day...

I've make a cli tool to query the docs once everything is installed, it should not be too much work to adapt to the change.

That's the main reason.

I love minification where it hurts, and I'll consider it for "runtime" version.

But my doubt is more about the "development" stage of the code, when you work with it.

update: edited previous no-sense</comment></comment>