What Startups Are Really Like - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulgraham.com/really.html <comment><USER2> I sometimes wonder if the Valley culture doesn't socially construct some of the startup pathologies. For example, startups taking over your life: why does this happen? Is this because startups take over your life and nothing can be done about this? I am skeptical of this: I run a small business, the time demands are rather modest, and I live a life outside of work. I'm surely not uniquely in a position to do this.

Now, step back: who here wants to say any variant of "That isn't the same thing!", "That isn't possible!", or "You are insufficiently dedicated and will never be truly successful!" You see, _that_ is why startups take over your life: because you expect them to take over your life, everyone you know and talk to and model your behavior on expects them to take over your life, and if they're not taking over your life you are told you are doing something wrong.

<comment><USER3> Patrick, I definitely both respect and admire the business you built. You can also say I'm pro the 37 signals mantra.

But I think your advice is specific to the model you've built and the output you are yielding. I don't remember the numbers but I think you are somewhere around 100k (or less) in yearly revenue? Startups, whether logical/warranted or not, seem to be aiming orders of magnitude more than this, yes?

<comment><USER4> "But I think your advice is specific to the model you've built and the output you are yielding."

This is equally true for what pg is saying, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> #13 My advice is generally pessimistic. Assume you won't get money, and if someone does offer you any, assume you'll never get any more.

I´m a business wannabe from Brazil and i just laugh when i read that one. Here we dont have ANY chances of getting money from VCs so when we start something new, specially with technology, we never expect to get money. Ramen profit system is not an option at poor countries, it´s the law.

<comment><USER6> I've been unconsciously practicing number #13 since the beginning of our start-up. Every time I close a deal I'm thinking, "it's not over until we start getting paid from these guys."

That attitude has served me well, I mean, I've had groups back out on us after they signed an agreement. What are we going to do? Lawyers cost to much and who wants to work with someone who doesn't want to work with us? Our customers are our partners and we love them--but if the feeling's not mutual I'd rather cut it off.

It's funny, I'm so optimistic about our success--I'm an entrepreneur after all --but I'm always waiting for the other shoe to drop when closing a new customer.

BTW: I should mention that our customers are newspapers, who are notorious for taking a long time to make bad decisions . . . so when we close someone, it's time to break out the scotch.

<comment><USER7> We counted the times our Founder announced "We're funded!" - total of 21 in 2 years. We never got ANY money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of the big problems I have with PG's essays is that, though I like the content, I have a very hard time believing everything he says without evidence. When you are in an emotional low, it's very difficult to think, "I should just persist because PG says it usually works." So it was great to see his points actually backed up by other founders' experiences.

As a side note, does anyone have a transcript of Jason Fried's talk? His was another favorite of mine from yesterday.

<comment><USER9> _When you are in an emotional low, it's very difficult to think, "I should just persist because PG says it usually works."_

I usually take the opposite approach: I should persist because PG says that single-founder startups don't work, and I'm going to prove him wrong, damnit.

<comment><USER10> There are a lot of explanations why one is not enough. Think about practicing a foreign language - how it's much better when you have someone to talk to. That's also correct for almost any kind of evolving processes. Even a reading (which is a classical example of a lonely activity) could do better if you will develop the habit of reading aloud, like Tibetan and many other cultures have.

<comment><USER11> I wonder though, with the comments about how the character and commitment of your co-founders matters so much more than ability or output that, in the case you can't get someone you know well to join you, that you would do better not having a co-founder rather than spending time looking for one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _18\. You Get No Respect

There was one surprise founders mentioned that I'd forgotten about: that outside the startup world, startup founders get no respect.

In social settings, I found that I got a lot more respect when I said, "I worked on Microsoft Office" instead of "I work at a small startup you've never heard of called x."

Partly this is because the rest of the world just doesn't get startups, and partly it's yet another consequence of the fact that most good startup ideas seem bad:

If you pitch your idea to a random person, 95% of the time you'll find the person instinctively thinks the idea will be a flop and you're wasting your time (although they probably won't say this directly).

Unfortunately this extends even to dating:

It surprised me that being a startup founder does not get you more admiration from women.

I did know about that, but I'd forgotten._

\-- I totally agree with that. My previous job was in a startup, and when I told them "i worked on real-time location based mobile communication", and tried to explain what it was, it will usually go over the head.

Now I tell I write the software of Kindle, and girls just dig it. I also heard apple people that work on iphone/ipod get a lot of attention in parties. My dating life has improved a lot.

I was thinking why is this, but it might have to do with "everyone has a dream". As children we dream to be rich/famous artist/rockstar/soccer players, etc., but actually few people achieve this status. And girls, the good looking ones, during their lifes will get bombarded with "guys with dreams", and will see them more often to just fail, than go anywhere. So the dream/vision is just that, but normally doesn't pay the bills.

Plus, the "dream of a startup", it is a very selfish one.

While saying I "work for big corp/famous product", it makes you competent in their eyes, and as you achieved something tangible, and not just dreaming.

Maybe I am overanalyizing it, but girls just like a provider, than somebody with a 'dream', but nothing to show for it yet, unless your startup made it, and you have something famous to show.

<comment><USER13> You're not overanalyzing it - you're making generalizations about women that are naive and, in my view, offensive.

<comment><USER14> It seems to me that honest advice about what actually works in dating usually offends people.

Go pick up virtually any book by and for pickup artists. (Or start with a website like <http://www.seductiontuition.com/.>) You will find it full of incredibly crass generalizations about women that are guaranteed to offend. _But it works!_ Pickup artists aren't worried about being politically correct, they are interested in getting attractive women in bed. And they have found strategies with a high success rate.

For the converse go pick up dating advice aimed at women like _The Rules_. (You can find much of it summarized at <http://www.topdatingtips.com/dating- rules-for-women.htm.>) It is full of nasty stereotypes about how to treat men that I find horrible and awful. _But it works!_ The advice is popular because it has helped many women land relationships they are happy with. No matter how much I wouldn't like being treated that way, it clearly works on a lot of guys.

Now let me be clear. I don't like either of those sets of advice any better than you appear to. Nor is either relevant to my life - I was lucky enough to fall in love young, and have now been married close to 20 years. However I accept that there is empirical evidence supporting those theories. And the lesson I take from that is that many people don't work like I'd like them to.

<comment><USER15> Wow, your second link (remove the period from the end) made me feel _exactly_ the way women say they feel about PUA/game advice. Good stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The line about how "it's like we're married, but we're not fucking" makes me curious about the correlations between a founder's relationship with co- founders and their relationship with romantic partners.

You might get some good insight by observing a potential co-founder's behavior toward their romantic partner, or toward potential romantic partners if they're single.

<comment><USER17> I'm going to get blasted for this, but here goes anyway.

I'm willing to bet that the majority of founders are single males who do not understand what marriage is all about. I have not had the experience of being part of a start-up, but I do have 6 years of marriage under my belt. I cannot imagine any circumstance where being someone's co-fonder is in any way like being married to them.

<comment><USER18> However, the wannabe founders reading it are _also_ probably single males who don't understand marriage. We do, however, probably all share a very similar _caricature_ of marriage - and thus the analogy is useful in communicating the bizarre mix of love, hate, co-dependence, shared depression and elation, occasional jealousy and careful maintenance that characterizes the relationship between two guys in a foxhole with laptops.

<comment><USER19> it's particularly interesting when your co-founder is female. (or, you're a female co-founder teaming up with a guy.)

<comment><USER18> That _is_ interesting - have you done this? How did it go?

<comment><USER19> Yes. I'm the XX. It just seems a different dynamic than you'd get between two guys or two women. (Obviously I've not directly experienced the former, but I've seen it from the outside enough - it's kind of the model.)

I'm a kind of bloke-ish girl, but even so I think I worry about feelings and opinions and perceptions a bit more - I bring that aspect of looking at situations to the startup. 'Course, my "job" is to code, whereas my cofounder is meant to be thinking about other people; it gets interesting.

There's also an entirely different dynamic: minority programmes. I took part in Astia, a women-in-business networking and training group. All the contacts from that equate the startup with me (the woman) and my cofounder's not being treated very well by them at all. (There are a few other reasons beyond gender there but it is something I doubt two-guy startups have to face!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "If your first version is so impressive that trolls don't make fun of it, you waited too long to launch."

<comment><USER21> They should print this at the top of the comments on each TechCrunch article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> #15, "You May Have to Play Games", resonated the most with me. I think even though we all know this its still a bitter pill to swallow because hackers generally don't have time/patience for smoke & mirrors. I think this is why customer development seems so _wrong_ at first blush.

One nitpicky little thing:

 _"If you are persistent, even problems that seem out of your control (i.e. immigration) seem to work themselves out."_

Should be e.g., not i.e. I know its a quote and pg shouldn't fix it, but it drives me nuts when people get this wrong. i.e. is roughly equivalent to "in other words", and e.g. means "for example."

<comment><USER19> Could be a specific reference to a particularly big problem the quoter had, in which case i.e. is just about o.k.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> _Running a startup is not like having a job or being a student, because it never stops._

I was fraternity president for a while. I distinctly remember being surprised by this "feature" of my job. Especially when I am awoken at 3AM with news that a (fully sober) member had driven his truck into the lake across the street.

This job was the best experience I had prior to running a startup, and I'd never do it again.

</comment><comment><USER24> #18 REALLY depends on where you live. If you're in the Valley, definitely. Everyone who is not in a startup there works at somewhere like Adobe and has 10 coworkers who previously founded a Web 2.0 social search engine for pet clothing which promptly flopped. People used to ask me "what do you have to do to become a professional poker player?" and my reply was always "quit your job." It's a lot like that with startups, and everyone within 100 miles of San Jose knows it.

If you live in Ohio, however, "I own a software company" goes a lot further. If only I were single...

<comment><USER25> I guess it depends on how you describe it, eh? "I own a software company" does sound like it'd be more successful than "I run an internet startup."

<comment><USER20> I say "I own a company", exactly because "I have an internet startup" seems like an eye-roller. I agree with the previous comment: the fact that we're out-of-the-ordinary in Chicago is one of the things I like best about Chicago.

<comment><USER24> It's basic salesmanship. Phrase things in the way that sounds best (within the bounds of honesty of course). "I have an internet startup" sounds a lot like "I fell for a get rich quick scheme. Would you like to buy some vitamins?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> One theme in this essay is that Paul keeps drilling these concepts into founders, and almost every time the founders don't believe him. Paul then reaches the conclusion that it's probably because the founders are too optimistic. I think this bit is wrong.

It's not that we're too optimistic, it's that the process is so subtle that the English language is too coarse to describe it. For example, what exactly does it mean when someone says 95% of the VCs are incompetent? How exactly are they incompetent? To what degree and in what ways? What exactly do they do that makes them appear incompetent? If you've never talked to VCs before, reading that they're "incompetent" probably won't give you a good idea of what an average interaction with them is like.

It's sort of like describing what making love is like for the first time. Very eloquent people have written volumes on this, but it's far too subtle for a written or spoken language. Until you actually do it, you'll only have a very poor approximation in your mind of what it might be like, no matter how much you read. Startups are like that.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'd like to (slightly) challenge #8: it seems to me that Dropbox is a counterexample. The Dropbox guys took quite a long time and their first release was quite polished. Not perfect, certainly, but way, way ahead of just minimally functional.

<comment><USER28> I think that's in no small part due to the problem Dropbox solves. Don't forget this problem has been "solved" about a gazillion times before, but the lack of polish made those "solutions" unusable in practice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> My Favourite soundbite"

 _"Over-engineering is poison. It's not like doing extra work for extra credit. It's more like telling a lie that you then have to remember so you don't contradict it."_

</comment><comment><USER6> Very timely post for me as I started up earlier this year--amazing how many of these things I've already learned the hard way.

#1 is aptly chosen. I've always heard that picking the wrong business partner is worse than picking the wrong spouse and I have to agree. Some days I spend more time talking with my co-founder than I do my wife, and right now he is currently six states away.

But I wanted to add that #5 also plays a role here. I vividly remember the first time my co-founder and I had a disagreement: we were both pissed and thought the other was pretty stupid. Some things were said and I got offended but we were both able to take a step back and remove our emotion. I told myself, "this is how start-ups die." Once we both removed our emotion from the situation we were able to address the problem and ultimately make the product better. We needed to be persistent not only in our work, but also in our relationship.

Ever since that time we've decided that while we may at times offend each other (it is a natural reaction), we just need to get over it, and quickly. Now we can say things like, "you're doing this wrong" or "that looks ugly" or "we need to completely rethink this" and no one wants to take their toys and go home. By removing emotion we can more direct, more efficient. And our product is better and we have more clients because of it.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'd like to see pg write more about #12: Getting Users.

<comment><USER31> Getting users is such a topic that it is radically different from one startup to the next. Even two start-ups in the same area are likely to have very different plans for attracting and retaining users.

<comment><USER30> I don't believe thats true. your messaging to users [why do you want this?] and so on are good rules that can be learnt and iterated upon other peoples experiences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw

</comment><comment><USER33> One of the reasons startups aren't for everyone is that most people strongly prefer a steady moderate income over a risky and sporadic one no matter how great (though they still buy lottery tickets).

This helps explain #18 as well as #4 :)

<comment><USER34> So are you saying that running a startup is like playing the lottery?

<comment><USER35> P(winning the lottery) * winnings - (cost to play) < 0

I think this is false with startups, but the chances of succeeding are still low.

<comment><USER7> Actually the lottery can do better than that. The expected value of a lottery ticket can exceed the cost to play ($1) when its in its third or fourth round without a winner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I would love to hear how other founders have worked their immigration issues out. That's probably the biggest thing from stopping me right now -- all of my potential co-founders are American but I'm Canadian without a green card.

</comment><comment><USER37> Mostly, I like this article. But... :

"This is the same phenomenon you see with defense contractors or fashion brands. The dumber the customers, the more effort you expend on the process of selling things to them rather than making the things you sell."

At first I thought this was funny and smart... but now I think it's rather glib. "Fashion brands" is almost by definition entirely a marketing exercise... tautology is a pretty boring type of argument. Now... the industry in wearable items is huge and not entirely oriented around marketing at the expense of value...

Defence contracting... I think it's a lot more complicated than dumb customers. For one, there are only a few customers... typically governments. So in a market with a low ratio of buyers to sellers, clearly you have to invest a lot in getting attention. And given the nature of contracts, once you have their attention (and their contract), the profit motive is then to satisfy the contract as close to the line as possible... that is... to skimp and make your product as crap as you can get away with.

Witty insights should really have some grounding in reality, and point the way to other interesting thoughts. This just seems to be a collective geek snigger at the aggressive and the fashionable.

</comment><comment><USER38> Paul says asking what is surprising is equivalent to asking what he got wrong, but it may be that some things are impossible to communicate in essay format. Things like "persistence is key" are accurate textual representations of the underlying lesson, but the important part of that lesson is the unassailable gut knowledge of its truth, which is hard to get from an essay.

</comment><comment><USER39> _All the scares induced by seeing a new competitor pop up are forgotten weeks later. It always comes down to your own product and approach to the market._

This quote and the other comments about overestimating your competition really stood out to me. It's true that as a Founder, your own ability to execute and find what customers want is what matters.

<comment><USER7> Remember its a survivor that said that. The ones that got squashed dead by competition aren't in the conversation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> > _[Over-engineering is] more like telling a lie that you then have to > remember so you don't contradict it._

Meaning that you have to keep justifying that extra bit of complexity, by thinking in terms of it - and therefore making it "true", even if it's not appropriate? Like a theory you have committed to ahead of the facts?

Reminds me of YAGNI and "do the simplest thing that could possibly work" - except applied to solving a real-world problem, instead of a pre-specified technical problem. I would like to add that doing this also increases iteration speed - that is, the speed of learning and adaptation.

<http://c2.com/xp/YouArentGonnaNeedIt.html> \- [http://c2.com/xp/DoTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork.htm...](http://c2.com/xp/DoTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork.html)

</comment><comment><USER41> Well, it's nice to know that the last two or three years of my life are pretty usual in this game.

</comment><comment><USER42> _If wrote a new essay with the same outline as this that wasn't summarizing the founders' responses, everyone would say I'd run out of ideas and was just repeating myself._

The Super-Pattern, 2nd para needs "If _'I'_ wrote a new essay".

<comment><USER43> Fixed; thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Off topic - why the Yahoo favicon?

<comment><USER45> probably has something to do with pg's sale of viaweb to yahoo

<comment><USER43> In a sense. It's because my site is made with Yahoo Store, and there is no obvious way to change the favicon.

<comment><USER44> Add this to your in the head tag and it should work --

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico">

I just emailed you a vanity favicon :)

<comment><USER43> Unfortunately Store doesn't give you access to the head. Is there something I could stick in the body that would work?

<comment><USER46> Here's how to get access to the head (took some googling and tinkering):

1) Put editor in advanced mode by clicking on red arrow on top right (you have to be in advanced mode to override a variable)

2) Click 'Variables' link (now it is possible to 'override' the missing Head- tags variable).

3) Override the 'Head-tags' variable by clicking the "Define New Variable" button (even though we want to override)

4) Now you can paste in a tag like this: <link rel="shortcut icon" href="<http://enter-url-here-to-your-store/favicon.ico> type="image/x-icon" />

I love yahoo store, but it has some serious usability issues right now ;)

<comment><USER43> This is the weirdest thing. You're explaining my own software to me. (The editor is the part of Viaweb I wrote.) I'd forgotten there was a head-tags variable. But thanks to you I've finally been able to get rid of the annoying Yahoo favicon.

Incidentally, you don't have to override head-tags. You can just change the global value on the Variables page.

Sorry about the usability issues. It was pretty good for 1997.

<comment><USER44> I love it that you and the many people you surround yourself with are brilliant web developers - and your site has a 90's almost craigslist asthetic.

But like craigslist, it's a very ironic cool and minimalist design that I hope you don't change.

<comment><USER43> Actually the design of HN derives from the (old) design of del.icio.us/popular. So it's at least an early 2000s aesthetic.

<comment><USER44> Ok, early 2000s aesthetic sans a flash intro. But we're talkin' internet years here so you're still rockin Air Force 1s, but their as popular as ever. And like I said earlier - it doesn't matter. Not like Buffett and his famous annual letters to shareholders are looked down on because he has a "thrifty" site either <http://www.berkshirehathaway.com>

Looking at it with firebug, the whole nav is one tall .gif and all the links are mapped via rectangular coordinates. The title for each essay is also a .gif, though they have alt description tags.

I know its your baby, but if you managed this with wordpress or another CMS, it would be really easy and you could be much more flexible to add new things. With wordpress, you could make a theme just like your current, but with CSS styled text links and you would just make static pages for all your new essays and whatnot. I could recreate your whole site in about an hour if you'd like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> #14 strikes me as the most startling. It's not that I hadn't guessed VC cluelessness, despite never having talked to them myself.

Rather, it's that so much pretense has been acceptable for so long. If technology knowledge isn't necessary to make successful technology investments, why do the asset managers put up with the charade?

Is it all just an effect of VC rewards being too loosely coupled with results?

(#15 seems to me to follow as a matter of course, and is, arguably, the other side to the same coin)

<comment><USER48> If it so happens that their primary concern is financial developments, "market trends" etc., is that really news to anyone? I mean I'm a developer myself but I acknowledge that if they don't have as much of a clue as we would like them to have, maybe it's because the market(s) reward their other qualities and it Just Doesn't Matter (or make such a big difference to their returns). (The fact is that not everything that matters to us personally matters on other scales just as much.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> _The reason not to put your all your eggs in one basket is not the usual one, which applies even when you know which basket is best._

The last paragraph of 7 has an extra 'your' (but otherwise you're not repeating yourself ;-)

</comment><comment><USER50> There are a bunch of passages surrounded by asterisks. Shouldn't that be italics?

<comment><USER43> Fixed, thanks.

<comment><USER51> At the beginning of section 6. Think Long Term, you say "shear stress", but I think the word you intended to use is "sheer".

<comment><USER52> It's correct as written. See sense 9 at <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/shear> \-- shearing stress is the stress between two blocks pressed together along a plane and moving in opposite directions parallel to that plane.

It's a very nice analogy: the startup is moving fast in one direction and the VC or whatever is moving slowly in another one.

<comment><USER9> _It's a very nice analogy: the startup is moving fast in one direction and the VC or whatever is moving slowly in another one._

Personally I prefer the phrase "impedance mismatch".

<comment><USER52> It's much harder to explain impedance concisely. I, for one, never took a circuits class, and I wouldn't expect other CS programs to require one either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Such a great presentation from Paul. I particularly like the piece on competitors, not worrying about them, and believing in your approach to the market and product. Go get em!</comment>


CVE-2019-11815: The missinformation around this vuln and a brief analysis - <AUTHOR> https://stazot.tk/CVE-2019-11815.html <comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/bsja7c/a_brief_anal...](https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/bsja7c/a_brief_analysis_on_cve201911815/)</comment>


Show HN: GeekTime (Event Tweet Scheduling) - <AUTHOR> http://geektime.tweetypi.co/

<comment><AUTHOR> For anyone interested, in the very hacked together way, here is the code: [https://github.com/sirwolfgang/unix- tweet](https://github.com/sirwolfgang/unix-tweet)

Basically, we send out N number of tweets at the same second by queuing up and spin locking the workers. The real trick is getting all the connection pooling so that you don't blow your connect limits on everything.</comment>


Is Productivity Growth Becoming Irrelevant? - <AUTHOR> https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/is-productivity-growth-becoming-irrelevant <comment><USER2> From the article:

 _The growth of "zero-sum" activities may, however, be even more important. Look around the economy, and it's striking how much high-talent manpower is devoted to activities that cannot possibly increase human welfare, but entail competition for the available economic pie. Such activities have become ubiquitous: legal services, policing, and prisons; cybercrime and the army of experts defending organizations against it; financial regulators trying to stop mis-selling and the growing ranks of compliance officers employed in response; the huge resources devoted to US election campaigns; real-estate services that facilitate the exchange of already-existing assets; and much financial trading._

 _Much design, branding, and advertising activity is also essentially zero- sum. ..._

 _Such zero-sum activities have always been significant. But they grow in importance as we approach satiation in many basic goods and services. In the US, "financial and business services" now account for 18% of employment, up from 13.2% in 1992._

What's interesting is that it's the UK's former top financial regulator saying this. It's not a new idea, but it used to be the sort of thing you saw in Mother Jones, and occasionally heard from Warren Buffett. This is a concept that needs to become mainstream and start influencing tax policy.

There's a lot that could be done through tax policy to push capital in more productive directions. The elephant in the room is zero-sum financial activity. Buffett used to say that short-term capital gains should be taxed at 100%. Taxing them at top-bracket personal income tax rates might not be a bad idea. It's a start.

Hedge funds get a completely unnecessary tax break which has a small but powerful lobby.

All the ways that businesses pay for capital should be taxed at the same rate. This includes dividends, interest paid, and stock buybacks. There's a bias towards borrowing rather than dividends, which generates unnecessary banking activity. It's the relative tax rates that matter, not the absolute ones, because they drive business decisions.

Maybe advertising should not be a tax-deductible business expense. US consumer advertising just moves demand around. It doesn't add demand because US consumers are spent out, as the CEO of WalMart says.

Politically, the key to doing this is to do it all at once, with the overall corporate tax rate adjusted to make it revenue-neutral. There will be losers, and they will have lobbyists lined up halfway down the Mall to get into the Capitol. But there will be winners, too, mostly in industries that actually do something. It's politically possible.

<comment><USER3> > What's interesting is that it's the UK's former top financial regulator > saying this. It's not a new idea, but it used to be the sort of thing you > saw in Mother Jones, and occasionally heard from Warren Buffett.

I believe the canonical exploration of this idea belongs to he-who-shall-not- be-named. Rich people playing zero-sum games while the poor starve is the natural outcome of building an economy off of the notion that value creation is about doing what wealth-weighted-people want as opposed to what uniformly- weighted people want.

Obviously the best answer lies between the extremes and is a function of an economic sector's structure, growth rate, etc, rather than a single universal solution. The real tragedy is that the school of thought which pursues this angle has been so thoroughly demonized and shunned that its principles have to be rediscovered and rebranded before they can enter the arena of public discourse. On an absolute scale the ideas are simple and fundamental enough that they really ought to be a starting point for discussion rather than a conclusion.

<comment><USER2> Yes, there's an echo of Marx and Veblen here, but this becoming a big part of the economy is a recent phenomenon. It's a result of having vast manufacturing capacity.

Basic fact: for thousands of years, the big problem was making (or growing, catching, or mining) enough stuff. In the 20th century, that problem started to be solved. By the second half of the 20th century, the leading industrial nations had it solved. Then Asia caught up - Japan, Taiwan, S. Korea, and finally China. China was the big one, being a huge country. Suddenly there was overcapacity in almost everything.

Now, as I write occasionally, it just doesn't take that many people to make all the stuff. It's now possible to have a successful economy with a huge non- productive underclass. Economics and politics haven't caught up with this yet.

<comment><USER3> Oh no, you said his name, and like clockwork my precious upvotes have started to turn to downvotes :-)

We agree, though. Capitalism is really, really good at growth and really, really bad at steady-state. We've never really come up with a good alternative for steady-state. I think Marx got the diagnosis right and the treatment wrong, which seems like a pretty modest hypothesis given the relative difficulty of the two. Regardless, we had better figure this out or things will get messy. Very messy.

TBH I have higher hopes for a couple more industrial revolutions to push the meltdown out beyond my lifetime. Bio and space, maybe? :/

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The idea of "zero-sum" economic activity sounds sort of plausible. And it _feels_ like there's a lot of truth to it, but when I think about it harder I find it really difficult to nail down what that actually means.

Most of the examples given in the article are of things that you could argue provide a sort of "infrastructure" service: Legal services allow businesses to have confidence in their contracts, financial trading serves to allocate resources efficiently, advertising solves the problem of discovering new goods and services.

Yes, I know that sounds like a crazy optimistic view of these industries, but how do you know which parts are useful and which aren't? Do we know it's even possible to remove the useless parts and keep the important ones?

It seems to me that one interesting definition of "value of this activity" would be: How many _other_ activities depend on it? By that particular definition, any activity that provides some sort of "infrastructure" would be particularly valuable.

<comment><USER5> Legal services aren't infrastructure. They're legal services. We know what that means. It doesn't need metaphors to be comprehendible, especially not completely wrong ones.

<comment><USER6> "We know what that means."

I don't. I found the parent's post a bit thought provoking.

If you'd expand your thoughts, it might be interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Put simply, the things economists tried to measure when they created the GDP measurement system are no longer a proxy for what they want to measure, which is welfare.

It makes sense that this should happen. Economic growth was still a relatively new thing when economics was in its infancy. Back then it was obvious that you wanted more food. Nowadays more food is bad for you, amazingly. But we still have the baggage of the old apparatus.

What you can know is that when you look at a system that is outside of its observed parameters, there's a fair chance that it will behave differently to what you've observed. You may observe something completely new, who knows? Interpolation vs extrapolation.

The problem is a lot harder now, for the reasons he writes. Certain activities are clearly zero sum, but are measured as positive. Other things are positive, but are not measured.

There's going to need to be a lot of thinking about what we really mean by welfare in the future. There are already everyday situations where you're not better off, but the numbers think you are:

\- You go into a shop, and there's 50 kinds of toothpaste. You spend time researching on the internet, coming to no conclusion about the dozens of variables. If there was just one kind left, you'd have bought it.

\- You invent something, so now you need a patent lawyer, in case the other guy hires one first. That's money you can't spend on R&D. And one of you will lose his stake.

<comment><USER8> The first bullet point you wrote about the 50 kinds of toothpaste becoming debilitating is a good example of the "Paradox of Choice". A good TED talk is given [0], or a shorter animated one: [1].

Essentially, too many options leads to paralysis and second-guessing yourself. Good videos if you have the time to watch them.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO6XEQIsCoM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO6XEQIsCoM) [1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4QzhSlqmqg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4QzhSlqmqg)

<comment><USER9> I kind of buy random average costing toothpaste and never suffered for it. Neither mentally nor physically.

Human's are adaptable and most of us adapted to toothpaste choices just fine. The suffering from having to do irrelevant choices is a bit overstated imom

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One aspect is the quantity vs quality issue.

If the farming industry finds a way to make e.g. twice as much food (or electronics industry twice as many smartphones) with the same land/people/resources, then we see it as a productivity growth - either you double the consumption (more GDP) or you do it with half the people/resources, and whatever else these people/resources produce will increase GDP.

However, if the farming industry finds a way to make the same food twice as tasty (or the smartphones twice better) with the same amount of labor and resources, then that won't necessarily increase the prices (everyone's product gets the new feature, supply is the same, and demand is mostly the same if other industries advance as well) - so there's no observable growth; the economy produces the same number of widgets, trade happens for the same total amount of dollars, even though people's needs/wants are satisfied better.

</comment><comment><USER11> >> The growth of "zero-sum" activities may, however, be even more important. Look around the economy, and it's striking how much high-talent manpower is devoted to activities that cannot possibly increase human welfare, but entail competition for the available economic pie. Such activities have become ubiquitous: legal services, policing, and prisons; cybercrime and the army of experts defending organizations against it; financial regulators trying to stop mis-selling and the growing ranks of compliance officers employed in response; the huge resources devoted to US election campaigns; real-estate services that facilitate the exchange of already-existing assets; and much financial trading.

>> Much design, branding, and advertising activity is also essentially zero- sum.

That's a remarkably short-sighted view of economic activity.

A functioning legal system is critical for the operation of an economy. Without one, markets don't work and neither do various sophisticated financial services we enjoy (insurance, loans, mortgages, etc).

Financial fraud, regulation & policing are the cost of having a dynamic and sophisticated financial system. It's had a tremendously positive impact on our societies and individual lives, which we're almost completely oblivious of.

Ditto every other item in his list.

If you think that some popular, ubiquitous sort of human activity creates no genuine value to individuals or the society, you probably haven't thought about it long enough.

<comment><USER12> Bang on. New instruments of finance/investment (public companies, bonds and shares) and the legal institutions that arose at that time to protect investors were one of the most important catalysts of the industrial revolution, possibly the most important driver of productivity growth in the history of mankind.

You could argue that eventually the finance industry becomes so large that it reaches equilibrium within the markets it operates (Mervyn king has suggested the same about the City of London), thus becoming zero-sum, but this nuance is completely absent.

<comment><USER5> The article doesn't require _all_ financial services, legal services, advertisement etc. to be zero-sum. It only needs some aspect, of some of these activities, to be zero-sum.

<comment><USER11> It sure claims that they're all mostly useless though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The article is saying that productivity growth has become disconnected from increasing human welfare. I think part of the problem is that when economic science was getting founded, economic growth did translate it welfare increases, at least to a considerable extent, and so economists never worked out good measures of human well being, much less how it relates to productivity growth.

</comment><comment><USER14> I've been thinking about this a lot lately. How is it that so many people work so hard and are still struggling to pay rent? This is definitely one of the factors I have come to. While I certainly wouldn't make the same arguments as the article, I feel like so many people devote so much time to work that doesn't _really_ improve people's quality of life.

The amount of time and energy spent on advertising, clickbait garbage, video games, sports (specifically broadcasting, discussing, writing, etc.), drugs, gambling, cosmetics, television, and other pointless time wasting technologies is truly staggering. Sure, people enjoy many of the things I've listed, but we have certainly reached the point of diminishing returns on investment in these things. The sheer amount of infrastructure these things have created to essentially take money away from people while providing nearly no social benefit is mind boggling. People can enjoy baseball or football without billion dollar industries being built around them and the same is true with video games or television/theater/movies (just think what could be done with the average budget of a blockbuster film).

</comment><comment><USER15> Maybe this is a better way of measuring progress instead of GDP and productivity?

TED: Which country does the most good for the world? Simon Arnholt

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X7fZoDs9KU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X7fZoDs9KU)

And maybe instead of re-distribution of wealth (which is zero-sum) it should be a redistribution basic food, housing, entertainment and access to education (which is non-zero sum and can be optimized for).

</comment><comment><USER16> Very interesting article. Would this mean that it would be a good idea to develop a better metric than measured GDP. Is there anything existing that could be a better metric?

</comment><comment><USER17> It's irrelevant for creative work for sure. But for anything that can be automated, yes.

Of course, there will be new kinds of work that will use all the new tools we are creating. But I don't have a lot of faith that government can understand and measure these changes fast enough to provide any meaningful insight.

</comment><comment><USER18> Not sure if the author of this link is responsible for this page, but it does not work in Firefox :(

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm not convinced all the activities enumerated as "zero sum" are really zero sum. Justice is worth something, crimes would happen even if there weren't any polices so policing is also worth something.

However, looking past this weaker aspect of the argument, there is a lot that is worth talking about here. There can indeed be competing processes that are so optimized and near maximally productive that doing one process depletes the small amount of resources that would make the second process possible. The limit that technological progress pushes us towards is not that of people all going to manual one-to-one, face-to-face labor but of getting near the physical constraints of energy, space and matter. Pushing towards these limits means that everything starts competing for natural resources and energy.

We are starting to see very high competition for space in technologically advanced urban areas. Energy and raw materials have always been subject to competition. This is where the true "zero sum" game lies (until we colonize other planets I suppose).

To illustrate, imagine we lived in a world where labor was unimportant because machines did most things better than humans could. These machines would still required time and natural resources (space, energy and matter) to produce goods and services.

For most people, "working" in this world would consist of going online, buying or trading an amount of energy, buying raw materials or spent matter that is ready to be recycled and pressing a "Start" button. Machines would produce some new goods or services.

Some people may also work on designing new better machines that produce finer goods. This would be mostly creative work as the technical part would mostly be automated. The machines could be specialized for maximum efficiency and quality.

People wouldn't have to go out to work. Machine owners could watch webcam feeds of their machines working in an industrial park somewhere. The finished goods, spent matter (trash) and the machines themselves, would be picked up and delivered by self driving delivery robots.

To get some variety, people would trade the production of different machines and they would trade excess spent matter. They would also trade the machine designs and the land or space to host the machines. The machines would sometimes have to be replaced when worn out or obsolete.

Total energy production might be constrained globally to a more or less fixed rate based on what could reasonably be captured from the sun. Total production would be limited by this. People might own and trade shares of energy production capacity.

There could be a level of inequality in this society. This depends on how much governments would allow ownership of things to be concentrated, especially ownership of energy production. The key thing to combat inequality would be to not allow too concentrated ownership of energy, matter and land and also make sure everyone owns or have access to the robots that turn the raw materials into goods and services.

It is true that as we get closer to maximum efficiency, it becomes more and more difficult to raise productivity. We should start to think about how a society can run under these types of limitations.

</comment><comment><USER20> No, productivity growth _as measured by economists_ is becoming irrelevant.

<comment><USER21> How should we measure it?

<comment><USER22> It's not really measurable.

Whatever it is, GDP / hours worked isn't it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> All business is aimed at "human welfare". Even if the people in the business are not fully aware of it.

<comment><USER13> You are absolutely correct. So for instance, corporations never attempt to make money doing something they know would be bad for society.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The military is another largely "zero-sum" activity. If all militaries were disbanded immediately, no change in economic value would occur. In fact, the economic value of "winning a war" is questionable, let alone losing one. I'd extend this argument to the "war on drugs" as well. And the "war on terror" (as currently fought).

<comment><USER25> _If all militaries were disbanded immediately, no change in economic value would occur._

Not sure I agree. If you define economic value to include future value generation, I would argue that getting rid of a countries military might turn their future value from $XXXB to $0B pretty quickly. South Korea is a good example.

<comment><USER26> How is South Korea a good example? They have a sizeable military (huge for their population), and have a high gdp.

<comment><USER27> Yes, exactly. And if the did away with that military, the whole country would become a giant gulag within a few years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think the main problem now is the trade deficit. Many countries invest the FX reserves in things like bonds, driving the yields down and encouraging investment in things like stocks. This is part of why higher profit margins are good for the US economy.

<comment><USER29> More directly, methods of GDP calculation add exports and subtract imports, so the trade deficit is part of the GDP value presented. It's really not an effective measure.</comment></comment>


Amazon Promised Drone Delivery in Five Years Five Years Ago - <AUTHOR> https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/amazon-promised-drone-delivery-in-five-years-five-ye-1830818625 <comment><USER2> I remember in 2013 when Amazon announced their 30 minute drone delivery system, the British bookshop Waterstones announced their competing O.W.L.S system [https://www.waterstones.com/blog/introducing-o-w- l-s](https://www.waterstones.com/blog/introducing-o-w-l-s)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not Amazon but drone delivery is becoming a thing, a startup called Zipline is currently (successfully) running trials in Rwanda of drones that are used to deliver blood to hospitals where it would never be able to arrive in a timely fashion otherwise (because of terrain, poor access etc). From what I remember delivery time was about half an hour. It is however clearly not as elegant a solution as Amazon was proposing with their quadcopters, Zipline uses scaled model airplanes with an old-school tail catch system for "landing" (same concept on aircraft carriers). Not "elegant" but certainly gets the job done. I know I saw a YouTube video covering this recently but cannot find the link sadly.

<comment><USER4> I never heard of this before, made my day, thanks :)

[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=zipline+rwanda](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=zipline+rwanda)

[http://www.flyzipline.com/](http://www.flyzipline.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Five years ago, just before Christmas, everyone was taking about Amazon drone delivery. My hairdresser brought it up to me. My dad was talking about getting his guns out of storage so he could take a pot shot or two. A lot of people who had never ordered a single thing from Amazon were bringing it up. Just before Christmas. Pretty effective if you ask me.

</comment><comment><USER6> Well... Drone delivery _may_ work in countryside, where people live in personal homes not apartments, perhaps with a bit of green flat area suitable for landing and leave a small package.

It's essentially unfeasible in cities where nearly anyone live in apartments, with dense roads, no clearly identifiable landing site, no place to fly without being on to of many people's head etc.

I dream a society in which we are few enough to live all in large are and we can easily travel with personal STOL small planes and goods can travel longer paths on waterway/railway to be delivered by truck or planes only for the last small trip. But that's a dream really hard to realize especially these days.

It's the same for electric cars: I'd love them if they have small rechargeable batteries like water bottle basket that I can simply change by hand and their charge last long as traditional car range or better. I'd love to have small "generators" on board like Star Trek reactors, but that's a dream. And I do live in reality, at least last time I checked...

<comment><USER7> my apartment in Seattle has a specific drone landing spot

<comment><USER6> May I ask how a drone can locate your apartment? Because I can easily imaging to give coordinates of a garden with a precision suitable for a delivery but I can't imaging something that can really work in apartments... Perhaps penthouse apartments, perhaps some new apartments with specially crafted sign to be identified with reasonable safety by the drone but certainly not something that can work at a scale...

</comment></comment></comment><comment> zupa-hu So many negative comments. I still think it's cool, and hope it will be a reality soon enough. Definitely not a stupid idea.

<comment><USER8> The article was overly negative IMHO. Guy sounds like a whiner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's not technology problem but execution problem. The 5 lbs/20 mi drones are quite feasible in wide urban areas to pre-selected customers. FAA is no longer a problem. It's all about deploy to small group, iterate and expand. But team there seems to be taking extra-ordinarily cautious approach until everything gets perfect - which it probably never will. Typically you don't see media to follow up on 5 year old promises of a CEO so this could very well might be hit piece generated by some insider. Anyway, I suppose Paul Viola's days there are numbered now. It's surprised they survived this long under Bezos without delivering anything at all.

</comment><comment><USER10> The whole thing was always for PR purposes anyway. It's not a coincidence that it was announced on December 1st, right at the beginning of Christmas shopping season.

I have no doubt they hired real engineers to build a real prototype. Maybe they even hoped it could turn out to be practical. But the primary motivation and the end game was always to get people talking about Amazon during the critical shopping period.

(On a side note, the whole thing has a striking symbolic aspect to it. How does Santa Claus deliver Christmas goodies? He magically flies to your house and delivers them directly from the sky. And the drones do exactly the same thing.)

<comment><USER11> As an engineer with Amazon, I can say with 100% (edit: 99.99%) certainty (without any insider knowledge on the drone program), that PR was not the primary driver of this. I would say you have it backwards. Amazon hired engineers to build it (and probably still are) THEN used it as a PR opportunity.

To say "The whole thing was always for PR purposes anyway" is a fundamental misunderstanding of how Amazon works internally.

<comment><USER7> More likely, somebody wanted to have fun with drones, then went about trying to sell it to amazon higher ups

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> ...and it's still no closer to being practical, legal, or safe.

Small drones have a very limited range and payload capacity. And how would they deliver to offices or apartments (with no private garden or driveway to land or drop the parcels)? How would they avoid collisions with anything from skyscrapers to trees to power lines? (Does that level of 3D map data exist yet)

How do they prevent the risk of propellor related injuries, or of stolen drones (perhaps even shot down 'for the loot')

Then there's the FAA (and other aviation regulators worldwide) to deal with.

Still seems like a marketing stunt for now, or a much-longer-term goal

</comment><comment><USER13> There's a 2014 episode of Parks & Recreation (set in 2017) where Ron shoots a delivery drone from a fictional company called Gryzzl, because it was flying over his property.

How on earth would drone delivery work in a country where there are more guns than people? And for places where there aren't that many, there are plenty of pranksters that would happily try taking one of these down to reignite their failing Youtube channel.

<comment><USER14> It is illegal to discharge a firearm in almost all incorporated areas in the United States, barring a very unusual emergency need. Almost all drone flights would be, statistically, in these areas. So probably not even worth worrying about as a problem.

<comment><USER7> in Canada up north, people shoot at passing airplanes fairly frequently

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Contemporaneous hn discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6830566](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6830566)

</comment><comment><USER16> Given the FAA rules on this (line of sight from operators), there's just no way that this could work. It basically defeats the whole purpose of using autonomous drones in the first place. Even if the rules were modified in their favor, it's dubious whether the infrastructure investment and potential for liability would be worth it for Amazon.

<comment><USER17> Which is why Google is testing theirs in Australia.

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/17/alphabet-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/17/alphabet- google-tests-project-wing-drone-hybrid-delivering-burritos-rural-australia)

<comment><USER16> Yep, Amazon is testing in other places as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Stupid idea still stupid idea and they're hoping everyone will forget.

<comment><USER19> Amazon has no fear of failure. The Fire phone comes to mind. They roll with the punches and just go on to the next product. They also have the scale to explore every 'stupid idea' to some degree. Good for them.

I doubt they're "hoping everyone will forget". More they just abandon what doesn't work.

<comment><USER3> This is pretty much the spirit of Google too, start a service, have no users, discontinue service. The problem with this is that most of these ideas don't work because they are usually too early for their time. Which is quite stupid when you think about it retroactively. If they kept going at it, Google could of had a successful social media platform (Dodgeball), they discontinued the v1 of Instagram, Picasa and they could of been Foursquare with Hotpot... Now the question is was it a good idea to stop these and maybe save a couple hundred K a year ? Retroactively, of course no, but I would argue that even at the time it was a bad idea, why waste RnD when you can easily afford to keep it going for decades without it generating any profit... Move fast and break things but don't trash them...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> the same as 2020 for self driving cars. more like 2030 or 2040.

</comment><comment><USER21> Didn't this start as an April Fool's joke by Amazon?

<comment><USER22> Their recruiters used it to show how cool they were - so I don't think so.

</comment></comment><comment> xkcd-sucks Five years ago drones were faddish, now they're not

</comment><comment><USER23> The first Prime AIR stuff was just a marketing attack on the Apple Air tablet to spike traffic for its own tablet. All Apples Air name maketing got lost in the Prime Air story's.

<comment><AUTHOR> I vaguely recall it was a PR attack against multiple reports about the work conditions in their warehouses, especially in the UK.

One example that appeared the week before the reveal: [https://www.bbc.com/news/business-25034598](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-25034598)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can I reclaim some of my commute time? - <AUTHOR> Right now I spend around 2 hours a day in traffic commuting to & from work. I don't have a viable public transportation option to get back and forth from work.
I feel like I'm wasting 10 hours a week on autopilot. What do you guys do during your commute? There's got to be something that I can do to make better use of that time - audiobooks, or a tape recorder, or something.
What do you guys do to make use of long commute times? <comment><USER2> Here are my preferences:

1\. Move closer to work.

2\. Find a way to work from home as much as possible.

3\. When you do need to drive in, podcasts are much better than the radio.

4\. Find a car that you love to drive. This may be easier for me, since I generally enjoy driving, even in traffic.

Now, I'm in a situation where I can easily move, it's easy for me to work from home and I can afford cars I love to drive.

</comment><comment><USER3> I moved considerably closer to work and positioned myself nicely in relation to the public transit infrastructure. 20-30 minutes driving, 45 minutes if I ride my bicycle to an express bus stop a few miles away, 1 hour by bus using the closest bus stop to my home and 1 hour if I go by bicycle.

This is awesome, because I have so many options available. If there's a huge thunderstorm or a blizzard, I can walk a block to a bus stop and get picked up by this horribly slow bus that takes all side-streets and stops at practically every major intersection to pick people up or drop people off. But it beats driving, and I can read, or crack open my laptop and do whatever.

If I want a good workout, I have a 14.5 mile bike ride to work, and I can pull it off in about an hour, which is great cardio. In the summer time, I can get 2 hours of cardio, save money on gas and parking fees, and spend only an hour more on my commute than if I drove to the office. I essentially get a two-hour workout in one hour.

Then, in cold or rainy weather that's not terrible, I can ride my bike to the express bus stop and get downtown in time to hang out with some friends over a cup of coffee before work.

Moving closer to the office is probably the best thing I ever did for myself.

</comment><comment><USER4> Some podcasts are excellent. Check out radiolab.org

edit: I have family+friends 4 hours away and gf 2 hours away, so I spend a huge amount of time behind the wheel as well. I download courses from iTunes U, OCW or individual universities' web sites. I also follow a few podcasts. The skeptic's guide to the universe is decent, radiolab is great. I'm half way done through Yale's Bob Schiller's "Financial Markets" class, and its been great.

<comment><USER5> I agree. I also listen to Planet Money and This American Life regularly. Both great shows, but Radiolab is awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Audiobooks.

I've listened to probably more than 20 in the last two years ranging from the Count of Monte Cristo to all of Malcom Gladwell's work to Investing for Dummies. It's a great way to make the most out of your commute because if you're like me, you probably don't have time to read all of those in your free time anyway.

You can pick up an iTrip (<http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/itripauto>) for about $60 at Target to use with your iPhone and audiobooks usually range from about $10 to $30.

As a start, I highly recommend Bill Byrson's unabridged A Short History of Nearly Everything, which I've listened to four times now (and counting!).

</comment><comment><USER7> In addition to the ideas for what do to while driving, consider avoiding driving during rush hour to cut down on the time it takes. Even if your work schedule isn't flexible, this might still work for you. Depending on what kind of exercise you're into, maybe you you can do the drive earlier to avoid rush hour and then spend that pre-work time at a gym near (or, if you're lucky, on site at) work. I've worked at companies that had on site gyms and showers. One site I was at had a huge building complex large enough that just walking different routes in it, including stairs, etc. was a viable exercise option, and quite a few people took advantage of that, particularly when the weather wasn't good enough to walk or run outside. You could do something similar after work, too, depending on how desirable that is with respect to your personal life - spending time at or near your work location while the evening traffic gets past its worst. Doesn't have to be exercise - could be reading or working on some personal programming project on a laptop at a Starbucks or some similar place near your work. Maybe you could find (or start) a chess or go club that meets some evenings near your work, etc., depending on what you're into.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm in a similar situation:

1\. Podcasts - Venture Voice and The Moth are two easy recommends. You could try to get old Radio GoDaddy podcasts back when they had entrepreneurs on.

2\. Audio Books - Audible.com/Amazon/Library/etc. are great sources. I've managed to listen to quite a few.

3\. Satellite radio: I got a cheap XM set and rigged it up to my car a couple months back. I haven't listened to terrestrial radio since. Just about any music you'd want, plus news from all kinds of sources.

Edit to add Satellite radio

</comment><comment><USER9> That sucks. Any way to work a 4-day week? Or pry a telecommuting day out of their cold hands? [Unless you're the boss, in which case strike that last remark.]

<comment><AUTHOR> I could work from home on some days if I really wanted to, but I've got a team of people that get their direction from me which complicates things.

<comment><USER10> Do you have the clout in your office to switch from a 5-day-8-hour week to a 4-day-10-hour week? The effect on your working day is negligible, especially as it can often take you out of rush hour traffic and you'll likely leave and arrive home around the same time (supposing you don't live in an area where the rush hour is more like three-hours).

You then have an extra day, essentially a 3-day-weekend every week. This can actually dramatically decrease costs, not only time wise and fuel wise, but if you have children who have to go into daycare or to a babysitter after school then it means lower childcare expenses. Not only that, but having a friday or monday off means you can get groceries and such done during the day and well out of the supermarket rush hours; you wouldn't believe how empty stores can be even before a major holiday.

Swapping, not only yourself but your workers too, to a 4 day week could keep you able to be there directing people, it'll at least take 1/5 of your wasted commute time and it could potentially shorten your commute dramatically if you commute time gets pushed outside of rush hour. It could seriously raise the happiness level in your office, and thus the productivity ('a happy worker is a busy worker'). Hopefully this is a suggestion that could work for you.

<comment><USER11> Did you try it yourself? I am asking because I was thinking about that for myself, and I could do that, but then, if you work 10 hours + 0.5 hour (lunch) + 2 hours travel, then for those 4 days, you are off for the whole day, basically. For example, when you leave home at 8am, you will return at 8:30pm. In that case I would come home when my kid is already going to sleep. I am not sure if that's better comparing to 5d-8h.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's an added benefit in terms of time for me. Most of my commute time is due to traffic. Without traffic the commute is 25 or 30 minutes each way. If I were to switch over to a longer schedule like this, my commute would probably drop from 2 hours a day to 1.25 or 1 hour a day due to missing rush hour.

<comment><USER12> In my last position, I worked a somewhat later schedule for precisely this reason. My communte wasn't as long as yours, but it still saved me probably 15 - 30 minutes each day.

<comment><USER10> I remember at one of my jobs, the commute for a 9am start took ~45 minutes. The 9:30am start took 15 minutes. Instead of leaving at 8:15 and arriving home at 5:45, I left home at 9:15 and arrived home at almost 5:45, usually 5:50.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Get this (unless you have a very small laptop, like a netbook) and put it on your dash: <http://www.ecrater.com/product.php?pid=4205894>

Then, get this: <http://www.nuance.com/naturallyspeaking/landing/consumer.asp> (DNS will probably fail in a noisy car, but worth a shot)

Dictate code on the road.

Edit: Be sure to configure a bunch of commands/templates in DNS so you can generate blocks of helper code.

Edit: Potentially related video (haven't watched, just found it while Googling) [http://revver.com/video/348539/driving-writing-with- dragon-n...](http://revver.com/video/348539/driving-writing-with-dragon- naturally-speaking-9/)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is an interesting idea, but honestly I'd probably end up rear-ending someone if I did it.

However, have you ever tried programming using text-to-speech? It strikes me as an experience that would be maddening.

I have thought about taking a voice recorder with me just to dictate ideas though.

<comment><USER13> "This is an interesting idea, but honestly I'd probably end up rear-ending someone if I did it."

Yes, this idea works best for long stretches of road with little traffic. The 45 mile stretch of highway I drive on is isolated.

"However, have you ever tried programming using text-to-speech? It strikes me as an experience that would be maddening."

Try downloading the evaluation version of DNS and give it a spin. I think you'll feel the potential pretty quickly, especially if you try making custom commands. The cumbersome nature of the speech-to-text interface may prove too much, but it's worth a try right?

What is maddening to me is giving up ~2 hours of the most productive time of the day. I was even desperate enough to try programming on a phone (a Peek email device).

"I have thought about taking a voice recorder with me just to dictate ideas though."

I've tried this as well, and it is not ideal. If you have ever sat down to design something and within minutes you abandon the design to start coding, you'll understand. Coding is the low-energy state.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Podcasts. Lots of them. Get a wide variety (I have documentaries, language lessons, venture voice, this american life, word of the day, historical, social science, comedy etc.). If you're worried about iPod/iPhone space, set it to just sync only the last 10 of each podcast. That way you always have something available, no matter what your mood.

I take it you are driving, but for people that get public transport I would plead _Do Not Read Newspapers_ \- they will only make you feel anxious, depressed or angry at the start of the day. It's more enjoyable and effective to read a book on a subject you want to learn about or something fictional for escapism.

</comment><comment><USER15> I have around the same commute time. Lectures in the car don't work for me. Language audio lessons such as Pimsleur were a little better but still require a bit too much concentration. I can however listen to audio books and follow along.

<comment><USER16> Glad I did a text search before commenting so I could vote you up for Pimsleur: I found the Pimsleur language learning approach great for the car when the commute is mostly on a freeway rather than a road with traffic lights.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've had a 2 hour commute for about 5 years now, and over the years I've used Pimsleur's language cds to learn Japanese and Italian. Today I just didn't feel like driving, so I'm typing this while riding a commuter express bus.

<comment><USER18> Beware--some people may be better at multitasking than others. I've tried Pimsleur tapes while driving, but didn't feel I could both adequately maintain situational awareness of the road, and have the slightest idea what the speaker on the tape just said--let alone repeat it with the correct accent.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a good point; I already know I can't use the cellphone while driving because it turns me (and most people I guess) into a terrible driver.

Pimsleur language courses are a pretty cool idea though. My Spanish has deteriorated to the point of essentially useless (I was never fluent).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> For $20 a month you can get two books from audible. Their catalog is pretty decent and it is a good way to keep on top of your read list.

I've also been enjoying the "How Stuff Works" podcasts. Their "Stuff you missed in history class" is especially interesting. Lots of stuff from the well known "Pompeii's excavation" to the esoteric "The great molasses flood of 1916".

<comment><USER10> The great molasses flood? Try the great beer flood of 1814! <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Beer_Flood>

<comment><USER20> Wow. Both of those events are incredible! I wonder how many large storage tanks like that are in urban areas nowadays..

<comment><USER10> Probably vastly more, but AFAIK most large storage tanks are required to be inspected for structural weakness every so often.

The big concern for urban centres today are LPG storage tanks as they can BLEVE. It doesn't usually require any structural failure, just plain bad luck.

> > [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__1Ym_F94CE&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__1Ym_F94CE&feature=related)

This was in north Toronto last year. IIRC a tanker caught fire at a propane refuelling facility, you can actually see the shockwave caused by the BLEVE, which was quickly followed by the massive fireball (not all BLEVE's explode, it can happen with any heated liquid from superheated water in a boiler to liquid nitrogen warming to room temperature in an enclosed vessel).

> [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl- > JgyQA7u0&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl- > JgyQA7u0&feature=related)

This is a demo video, with a decent explanation for anyone who doesn't know what a BLEVE is. It sometimes seems like the safety mechanism doesn't help, but it really does by controlling the release of energy. Fire fighters usually try to cool the tank rather than put out the fire (usually in these cases it's too dangerous to get close enough to actually try to fight the preliminary fire) as the longer the tank stays intact, the less dangerous the explosion will be. If it doesn't vent at all, you eventually get this supersized and with authentic flames:

> > [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGWmONHipVo&feature=fvw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGWmONHipVo&feature=fvw)

<comment><USER20> Yeah, I actually live in Toronto and there was news coverage for days after that explosion...

I can see your point about LPG storage tanks. It's interesting how many dangers lie all about us in the modern world but we either don't know about them or simply ignore them...

<comment><USER10> Large portable propane tanks can only be changed by licensed operators for exactly this reason, because people negligently allowed valves to either get damaged or corrode. This creates the potential for a BLEVE, which if it occurs next to the house (which _all_ these tanks are inevitably placed) it can either burn the house down or, in case of solid brick houses, has actually destroyed the walls.

I know back in England an old house on the main road had a BLEVE from one of these large tanks, it collapsed the rear wall and the interior structural walls, meaning the entire place was torn down. Virtually every window on the street, and the adjacent street, were shattered by the blast (including vehicle windows). The fire fighters believed the tank had been damaged by a falling slate roof tile, and the fence provided the fuel to cause the BLEVE. A year or two later and the UK brought out a law requiring large tanks to be changed by professionals, I believe Canada has similar regulations as well.

I only know I wouldn't want an explosion like that happening near a cottage (where I've also seen a lot of the larger tanks).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Depending on the kind of transportation, audiobooks, or a kindle with some good PDFs.

If you can manage the latter then you can look at what stuff gets posted to HN that ends up on scribd, put them on your e-reader and you'll have your commute fly by, you might have to take detours :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Does text-to-speech work in a reasonable fashion on the Kindle?

<comment><USER22> Text to speech is surprisingly not-too-bad on the K2. I recently was reading a book, and pretty seamlessly moved it over to speech while I did some laundry, then picked up where I left off.

If you played with speech synthesis in the 80s or 90s, you'll still hear that faint Swedish? accent, but really, it's totally usable in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't want to hijack this thread, but I'm in the same boat. Does anyone have any recommendations for podcasts or audiobooks that discuss/teach various concepts in computer science or software development without being impossible to follow while in a car?

I tried listening various lectures, but at some point it becomes too difficult to follow because I'm unable to write down/work through anything as I'm driving. I found a few podcasts, but the content was largely hit or miss.

Any suggestions would be awesome.

<comment><USER24> Not quite Comp Sci, but I like to listen to NPR's Science Friday podcasts. I have to rewind a bit once in a while if I have to pay attention to traffic, but it's nice to be able to listen to them, instead of "wasting" time listening to the radio.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The Teaching Company; sometimes I look forward to traffic.

</comment><comment><USER26> 1\. Become a freelancer.

2\. Get a spacious car where you can work in the back,

3\. Get a high-speed UMTS/HSDPA subscription.

4\. Get a driver that earns at least 50% less per hour than you.

5\. Work from your car and bill the time.

<comment><USER22> This sounds totally nausea inducing. I get a little ill just thinking about it. Blech..

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I mostly listen to jazz or public radio, sometimes business podcasts. It's not a waste of time: it's time to relax, especially the commute home.

Sorry, just saw you're in traffic. My commute is mostly on rural roads, no traffic to speak of and much more relaxing than city/crowded interstate driving.

</comment><comment><USER28> Listen to college lectures in the Great Courses series. Your library probably has some. <http://www.teach12.com/>

</comment><comment><USER17> LA has vanpools...maybe you could look into that in Phoenix?

</comment><comment><USER29> I work with my notebook and 3G modem. It works well enough to VPN into work - wish I could do some paid work on the side while telecommuting :-)

</comment><comment><USER30> If you can cycle your commute then you're getting fit and can save on your gym time (and membership fees).

<comment><USER31> I'm a huge fan of riding one's bike around. However, if it's one hour by car, it's likely to be significantly longer by bicycle unless traffic is _really_ bad.

I'd probably look at moving close enough to where I could ride my bike.

<comment><USER32> I don't know where the op is situated, but it's surprising how frequently bad enough traffic occurs in Atlanta. Even what seems to be a decently long distance (20 mi) can be covered on bike faster than that commute.

Hills and unsafe roads permitting anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> It may not work for your company, but what about making sales calls or taking support calls?

<comment><USER34> Please don't. It's dangerously distracting.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/01/technology/01distracted.ht...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/01/technology/01distracted.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> What makes your public option unviable?

</comment><comment><USER36> Audio books.</comment>


Moxie Marlinspike: SSL And The Future Of Authenticity - <AUTHOR> http://blog.thoughtcrime.org/ssl-and-the-future-of-authenticity

<comment><USER2> I think the notion of "trust agility" is really insightful.</comment>


Launch when you feel comfortably uncomfortable  - <AUTHOR> http://fr.anc.is/2012/07/18/comfortably-uncomfortable/

<comment><USER2> 'If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late.'- Reid Hoffman</comment>


Java EE and Microservices in 2016 - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/news/2016/02/javaee-microservices <comment><AUTHOR> This seems like a contradiction in terms to me. I'd have thought that using a container, even a relatively lightweight one like Wildly, pretty much removed all the advantages of the mciroservices approach because you need so much machinery along with it. What do people use for Microservices in Java shops - Spring Boot?</comment>