Burnoutindex.org - <AUTHOR> https://burnoutindex.org/ <comment><USER2> Be really careful with these surveys.

The problems of these, among other things:

\- mixing up burnout risk with burnout

\- mixing up burnout with physical or mental fatigue

\- not serving any purpose (i.e. not providing good directions)

Burnout is primarily a negative change in perception, and it's a spectrum, obviously. You get burned out when your perception of the same situation gets progressively worse. This can be caused by various factors -- exhaustion, doing stuff that doesn't match your values, etc. It can also be prevented in various ways; i.e. you can do very exhausting work and not get burned out.

A really simplistic, but fun/useful way of detecting burnout (not the risk): if you regularly think that you and your team/company/environment work hard, but your customers/broader company/other teams are stupid/not intelligent/not constructive, then that's the first phase ('us vs them'). This can progress to the next phase, where it's more like 'me vs them', so you despise most of your environment. This is when people tend to leave. The last step is apathy, people rarely end here.

It's not really possible to move backwards on this scale without changing roles/work/colleagues.

<comment><USER3> The first time I heard about burnout was from a colleague that was just trying to go back to a job after about two years being mentally unable to do any job. It started when one day, arriving at the work, they just froze and started crying uncontrollably.

It was a diagnosed condition. I am always unsure of what people are talking about when they talk about burnout. Is this panic attack that makes someone temporarily incapable of working or is a strong stress feeling that might be solved just by changing jobs?

The spectrum idea makes sense, but the situation, consequences, and ways to help are _very_ different on different parts of this spectrum.

<comment><USER4> I think the term burnout was first applied to social workers. Just imagine the situation they are in: a steady stream of people with serious problems in their lives comes to you and you are supposed to help them. But you have so little time and power to help any particular case that you hardly seem to make any difference. And no matter what you do that stream never ends. No wonder that feelings of sheer helplessness, ineffectiveness, meaninglessness of your work, cynicism, ennui, and extreme aversion to the work can appear. That's burnout. I don't think it is specifically associated with panic, aside from the panic that if you start working you will experience all the negative emotions that you associate with your job.

<comment><USER5> > ineffectiveness, meaninglessness of your work, cynicism, ennui, and extreme > aversion to the work can appear

Jobs in corporate software development can feel pretty much like that, at least for me. Startups are better, but, on the other hand, they work you harder.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, exactly.

My own totally unscientific theory of burnout is that with scarce positive reinforcement and lack of progress towards some higher goal your lizard brain just stops understanding why on earth you continue to expend energy on this job thing. Of course your job pays the bills but this may be hard for the lizard brain to understand (and in case of volunteers where even this positive reinforcement is absent, burnout hits them especially hard).

Many corporate jobs share this dynamic. Support, obviously. But every position where there is a lot of routine maintenance and lack of any kind of satisfying milestone ahead carries the risk. Also, opensource maintainers (Unpaid? Check. Never ending stream of maintenance work? Check. Lack of some higher goal? Well, their project is already popular, there may be no other definite goal.)

Startups are better in this regard because growth provides positive reinforcement and the possibility of an exit provides a higher goal. But what if growth stops and the satisfying exit never materializes? Burnout will hit you like a hammer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I got a 2.1/6, which is less than 50%. Apparently this is a "high" risk of burnout... Why not replace it with a button that says "Do you work in tech?" Yes -> High Risk of Burnout, since that's the vibe they're going with.

<comment><USER7> I got 0.6 / 6, and it said the same. Is it possible to not be at high risk of burnout according to this survey?

<comment><USER8> I was surprised when my 1/6 gave me high risk. I am very thankful for what I do and I enjoy going to work.

If you answer "None" to everything, your burnout risk is low (0/6).

Answering a single question with 1 (A few times a year or less) puts you at .1/6 (Mid), which goes up to .5/6.

I find the results reporting of this to be rather sensationalist and the whole thing pretty useless. If you're burnt out, you probably don't need an online quiz to tell you.

<comment><USER9> Think it depends on the category. I scored a 'mid' with a 1.3.

<comment><USER10> I scored 'mid' with 2.1, which was rather surprising after reading the parents comments.

<comment><USER11> I scored 3.4 and got mid. When I read the parents comments I thought that might have meant a lower score was higher risk. I suspect it depends on the categories you answer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> When I joined the tech industry in my early 20s and for years after, I noticed that many in their 30s or older seemed burned out. It didn't make much sense to me, because to become a tech worker takes drive and ambition and how would you just lose that one day? Now, 12 years on I can definitely see how burnout is so prevalent.

It's like living in the desert and hearing about people drowning. You'd ask yourself, "how is that even possible?" But now I feel as if I've moved to the beach, and can easily see the waves and how it's a real problem. I don't think I'm burned out, but I'm conscious enough of the possibility to keep an eye on the tide.

<comment><USER13> For me it's a bit similar to how I felt as a kid playing with legos. Who _wouldn 't_ want to play with legos many hours a day, most days every week? It never occurred to me that there'd come a point where I wanted to know that my work genuinely improved lives. It turns out that being good at something and getting paid for it isn't always enough. It's hard to avoid the question of meaning forever.

<comment><USER14> It's something I hear almost every day now.

1) 20 something not willing to live office or blue collar job lives and go for driven passion

2) realize how any regular obligation will lose the art/passion side and will become a system ..

3) realize that a job is a job

4) many wants to improve lives of others.

I think our generation (I suppose we're both from the 70/80s) was pushed too long into pupil mindset (leaving college at 23 if not more) and too focused about our passions. Adult life is adult life and there's no cutting corners, the previous generation didn't really have a choice and learned it earlier.

Also 'improving lives of others' is somehow a metaphor for having a society being a large team. There's a weird pivotal time where we lose this trait.. we want to make it, become anxious.. and then realize 'success' would just be making something useful for the group.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I immediately went to do this quiz, but then I couldn't help but wonder if this might be one of those Cambridge Analytica style "quizzes" where they're harvesting psychological data for unknown purposes. I'm not sure if this makes me sound savvy or insane.

<comment><USER16> No personal information is asked, so the dataset will be pretty useless for monetization (you could just computationally generate a couple of thousand of responses and pretend it was the real deal).

uBlock Origin blocked one weird tracker-like third-party I didn't recognize: fullstory.com. The rest were the usual Google analytics crap.

<comment><USER17> Marcos here, one of the members of the team behind this. Fullstory is to understand this project as a product and to see where it needs to be improved (because users don't understand or try to do things that we didn't considered, etc.). Only personal data (mail) is asked for those interested to stay in the loop in some way. The dataset without those emails will be on Github soon :)

<comment><USER16> Why not just add a link add the end or in a footer where users can submit suggestions and report bugs? When you are engaging users in mental health related questions, any tracking is suspect and creepy.

<comment><USER18> In my experience, users don't report minor UX flaws.

These kind of recording services can show, for example, users rage clicking what looks like a button for a couple seconds before finding the real button.

For startups that don't have the resources to line up tons of user testing sessions where you watch the product being used, these can help make a less frustrating experience for users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I got 0.5/6

and still it says "Your burnout risk is HIGH"

I feel, it was because of little high Self-inefficacy.

I experimented with different answers, once I got 0.6/6 and it said: "Your burnout risk is MID", but for that Self-inefficacy was LOW.

It seems like Self-inefficacy has been taken as a high factor for Burnout.

<comment><USER20> The quiz is at best propaganda and at worst psychologically damaging. Besides, you can't laugh at the optics of 1%ers whining about how hard their insanely profitable jobs are.

<comment><USER21> Optics are real, of course, but burnout isn't necessarily whining. It can be seen as a kind of "business risk" for your career.

Ignore it or otherwise fail to manage it, and you can end up stagnating instead of advancing, souring your relationship with your employer, or letting the situation build to a crisis where you must have relief and decide to chuck it all and mow lawns for a living instead.

Also, every person needs to understand their own balance between the value they place on dumptrucks full of cash and sacrifices made for work. At some point the additional $50K in salary isn't worth it, or maybe it is. Or maybe $50K less in salary is a good trade-off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't think burnout is really about overwork so much as spending even 40 hours a week doing something that is contrary to your own personal values. I suspect a lot of people work on things (ads, selling more crap, getting people in more debt, etc.) that they ultimately don't think really matter or are a net benefit to society.

<comment><USER23> I think it's possible to burn out working on things you think are important but that are chronically underfunded or ignored. For example, I can imagine working on cleantech or green NGOs only to be consistently frustrated that people don't want to pay for better recycling and cleaner energy, or want to reduce their water usage.

<comment><USER24> Also, that theory does not work with the fact, that a lot of burnout victims are social workers.

<comment><USER21> Exactly. Burnout can happen because you have a cynical malaise about your mission. But it can also happen because you are so passionate about your mission that where a normal person would understand reasonable boundaries between work and life, you can't resist the temptation to push right past them. (Which violates the principle of taking care of yourself first, so that you can take care of others.)

Sorry to bring up religion in polite conversation, but an interesting theory I've heard about church pastors is that sometimes they have extramarital affairs (partly) for an unusual reason. They feel called to do their type of work, but it's all-consuming, so they end up feeling conflicted. Part of them wants to quit, but another part cannot justify it. So instead of quitting, they do something which might or might not get them fired. It's a moral failing, but less of a moral failing than abandoning your mission. (Ultimately, it's just a way to not take responsibility for your choices, but that's human beings for you.)

<comment><USER25> I feel like the cynical malaise is maybe more healthy to go in with, and also what your impression of everything turns into after getting burned out because you went in with a ton of personal investment (passion or whatever)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This misses so many nuances it's not even funny.

I'm mentally and physically exhausted, yes. However, I'm exceptionally happy. I enjoy what I do. I want to do it all day long.

We're working on something I think is useful, I think people need it, and I want them to have it sooner rather than later. This might mean I burn out and need a weeks rest come like... June, but fuck, I'm running straight towards that and I'm so happy I don't care.

<comment><USER25> A few weeks rest!? You certainly might need that, but it ain't burnout—and yes I'll gatekeep it, because burnout is a different degree. I genuinely hope it doesn't happen for you, and getting out while you're happy is probably a great way to mitigate, but it's risky. One of the things about burnout that is so deceiving, is that combination of feeling great about it and sacrificing so much personally or investing too much personally, then you get hit hard when your expectations stop aligning. Could be anything, like you thought based on your work that you were way more valued, then someone new comes in and fires you or changes direction and all of a sudden the last two years are tossed in the garbage. That 3 weeks you would have spent relaxing turns into 2 years spent figuring out wth you were thinking and what to do next.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I feel this industry is burned out due to the fact that the magic doesn't feel like it's there anymore. If we want a salary we're forced to sign NDA's & NCA's and forego all our personal ambitions to the company.

We have endless pointless tooling for basic shit like writing CRUD apps. Need to make a web app? Install Node to use NPM to install a million and a half packages to write a Hello World example. It's cool though, this project was made by so and so, even though the creators themselves aren't using it in production. God forbid you're writing an SPA, that will be 2 million dependencies. So many noob's entering the work force every day trying to be the next Mark Zuckerberg, constantly cheer-leading the latest worthless framework which is built upon the same old logic used for the past 40 years.

Managers and tech leads suffering from blogitis reading some dumb ass opinion on why he chose React etc.. and pushing the entire team and company in that direction. As far as I can tell, our webapps are still a broken pile of patches just the same as they we're 10 years ago. Only this time around, they're much more difficult to write and maintain.

On top of that we have endless meetings all day, arbitrary 1 - 5 ranking systems, biased promotions and endless arbitrary deadlines. Not to worry though, Agile and all it's pointless complexities to the rescue.

Finally, we have smug spoiled people all over this industry talking down to us about the tech we use and how much smarter they are because they hit the jackpot due to mommy and daddy's connections etc...

It's not the wild west anymore and tech isn't nearly as fun or as competitive for the individual. It's just a choice between the corporate grind or starving startup hipster.

</comment><comment><USER28> I burnt out several years ago, I was way past the point of return before I realized. I ended up changing jobs, and took a few vacations... even then recovery was slow. After that I returned pretty strong. Since then there have been a few times I recognized it happening again, but being cognizant of the signs goes a long ways towards preventing it.

<comment><USER29> Same thing. I've never held a job longer then two years. Not because of incapable of the work but because I get so burnt I shoot myself in a foot and end up "dismissed" "fired" "redundant".

I've been off work for three months now with little-to no money and it's the past three months I've only just started feeling myself again. I start work /again/ next week and I know the novelty of the new job will tick well, but when that wears off.. I will start to burn out again.

It's not stress, I can handle that fine. Its just so stale and no freedom.

I want to run another operating system other than "CentOS". Screw it, lets run OpenBSD for routing instead of $$$ DellForce9 where you have to pay $$$ to enable additional switch ports. But no, it's all got to be kept enterprise. I'm just bored of it as a whole.

<comment><USER28> I might have been more clear, when I recognize myself burning out now I dont quit my job. That's an extreme measure for extreme situations. Instead I recognize what is causing my burnout, and I try to address it. My last bout was a struggle with balancing a new baby. I talked to my boss, Nd we worked out a deal of loosening my workload. About a year later I was able to pick up more.

As for your frustration in lack of agency. It takes time to build a reputation worth trusting. I'd reccomend changing how you approach work. Think about what your bosses goals are, what the companies goals are. If you can find ways to add value, you can earn greater trust, and more agency.

<comment><USER29> thank you for the input. That's definitely something I'll keep in mind especially with my new job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I have a working theory that basically all "devops engineer" jobs of the last 5ish years are more or less automatic/happens-by-default burnout traps. Hard to tell how much is that and how much is just we're all sliding into middle age, but man I have yet to see one that wasn't a steadily ratcheting wrench of pressure to keep all the old things running while doing the next new thing every month.

<comment><USER31> Not to mention the ever increasing stack of tools and tech you need to keep up with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> 8 question survey (followed by a summary that explains the questions, but if you use browser navigation buttons it's irrevocably lost).

1\. I find it difficult to relax after a day of work

2\. After a day of work, I feel run-down and drained of physical or emotional energy

3\. I feel less and less connected and engaged with the work I do.

4\. I do not have a clear idea of the value and purpose of my job

5\. I am harder and less sympathetic with people than perhaps they deserve

6\. I am worried this job is making me harsher emotionally

7\. I feel that I am achieving less than I should

8\. I feel that I do not have time to do many of the things that are important for doing a good quality job

</comment><comment><USER33> Perhaps tech workers should unionize and demand better healthcare, 40 hour work weeks, etc.

<comment><USER34> I get the sentiment, but some perspective is in order. We're in the goddamn catbird seat. We make a shitload of money, we actually do have good health insurance, and we punch keyboards in a heated office at a desk. We're not mining coal or working in the fertilizer plant from The Jungle.

In this economy, if your work environment sucks, the door is open and there are greener pastures.

The biggest problem is really that so much of what we do is boring, and, in the greater scheme of things, pointless.

<comment><USER35> Except that this is not true. The average salary of a software engineer in Japan, Germany and other highly developed nations is only slightly better than let's say an accountant's. If we take the amortized hourly wage by considering unpaid overtime then it becomes even worse which is on par with an average high school teacher or alike. In some cases considering the unpaid overtime plus the unpaid self-studies it can get amortized to the level of a janitor. And this is a systematic problem across the industry.

On the other hand the health insurance doesn't make any difference in these countries since it's the same for all citizens so I am not sure how is that relevant.

<comment><USER36> Edit: I'm going to put this here because it clearly rubbed some people the wrong way, HN and YC were historically US focused they have since expanded but this site still has a large US population that view and post on it and with that come a bias for this group, including myself, to think in terms of the US market. My below statement, which to me is entirely benign, is basically saying that's what we do. Is it right? I don't know but frankly I don't know anything about non US markets in terms of software engineering jobs and I wouldn't attempt to make a statement in terms of those markets because I don't know them. I do know my own market though and thus you'll get posts from me in terms of that market and I'm not particularly sorry about that.

So first off this has traditionally been a US centric site, so you'll have to excuse that most things take a US centric view and we do make a lot of money in the US software industry.

Second I have never once worked a job like that and every time I see people talk about this like its the industry norm I kind of become incredulous to the fact. The US market is so good you can turn down jobs like that.

I can't help but thinking the overtime you take on is more about you and not pushing back but again maybe this is different outside of the US. Here in the US at least, what are they going to do fire you? Cool, if they do your salary probably just increased by 10-20k USD as you find a new job in < 4 weeks.

I get that what you're saying is your reality but it certainly hasn't been mine and if you push back on things more you'll maybe find it doesn't have to be yours either. It's our market and we have high leverage because how desperate jobs are for Devs of all flavors.

<comment><USER35> This is right from the website: "Join the Global IT Burnout Index"

And then there is a form to select my country. So even if HN is a US centric site, which I dispute actually, still the website in this post has nothing to do with the US.

And I get that it's different in the US, but I doubt that people don't care if they get fired. I very much doubt that.

<comment><USER36> First off I said "traditionally US centric" which it was. I maybe should have said "historically US centric" which would be more in line with what I was trying to get across. I don't think it is anymore.

And second I certainly didn't say they don't care, what I am implying though is they shouldn't care as much, the consequences right now are minimal and potentially largely beneficial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I feel like one of the worst things you can do when you burnout or are on the way to burning out, is to get a new job. Imo, swapping in stuff where stuff wasn't good before is just a way to divert your attention in a way that doesn't let you redevelop your value system in a way that you really need to. Just stop for a while. Maybe a long while. Then see what you want to do.

<comment><USER37> Some workplaces are really bad though. I've had one that was complete insanity with bosses yelling etc. Better to get out sometimes.

<comment><USER25> Absolutely agreed, but I think this is more of a specific case where the environment is totally toxic, rather than your personal mental health maintenance. As in, because you can absolutely burnout at even the best organizations, it's indicative of other stuff. If the workplace is shit, get out. Whether you move immediately into another position or not depends on whether you're burning/burnt out. If you are, then you gotta give yourself more time not working generally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This is useless, unfortunately. I answered it honestly; I'm someone with a low-agreeableness personality, and some health problems (which have been improving, but nonetheless) which leave me pretty drained of energy at the end of the day.

This test doesn't even try to account for those things, and offers me a high risk of burnout despite low-to-perfect scores for everything else.

</comment><comment><USER39> Mostly just getting tired of not having a quiet place to work and needing to grind leetcode so that I don't have to worry about being un-hirerable in my free time. Besides that I generally like being an SWE. I'm also pretty tired of private companies wanting me to value stock options equally to dollars.

</comment><comment><USER40> My burnout index is 5/6\. No surprise there.

I'm more interested in why the site reloads the top portion of the page after the initial load. You can tell, because the top image changes from the person sitting on the left side of the table a flipped one where they are on the right side of the table.

left [https://images.ctfassets.net/z2g90m75le4q/5yT1ytvHM0WLTih13Y...](https://images.ctfassets.net/z2g90m75le4q/5yT1ytvHM0WLTih13YsNM1/2449104553299970807b77a505a77f52/Captura_de_Pantalla_2020-01-29_a_la_s__15.40.40.png)

right [https://images.ctfassets.net/z2g90m75le4q/7kam7578mAMnVlgQTP...](https://images.ctfassets.net/z2g90m75le4q/7kam7578mAMnVlgQTPllI4/01e25beb926aa989c3f1fc2946743ff4/Captura_de_Pantalla_2020-01-29_a_la_s__15.40.40.png)

<comment><USER41> hear you... got 5/6 and was thinking about improving the number of clicks on that questionnaire. Sigh... How did I get there?

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> A bit (quite a lot) simplistic (but personally, I appreciate the idea).

In order to get a "low" index in each parameter, one needs to always set the best possible scenario, which is not realistic.

Even in the best possible scenario _in real world_, one could be less than sympathetic with somebody else once a month. That doesn't mean they're at "mid" level of a burnout parameter.

And not reaching the productivity potential at times is normal (and cyclical). Again, not a burnout parameter.

I see "Based on scientific questionnaires created by psychology professionals", but I doubt it's professionally assembled.

<comment><USER20> The quiz is at best propaganda and at worst psychologically damaging. Besides, you can't laugh at the optics of 1%ers whining about how hard their insanely profitable jobs are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> This is great. Any interest in expanding the Roles available in the drop-down menu to be more inclusive of other Roles within a tech company.

Speaking for myself, a tech industry Marketer, I'm pretty damn burnt out!

Thanks for creating a tool to help us visualize and keep reference of where we're mentally at.

It might be a cool feature to have the ability to save your report and trigger repeat measurements over time. With that data, you could then 'map' the mindspace of the user and how they are hopefully working towards triggers and burnout.

<comment><USER44> I like this conceptually, but I don't think I trust it to be... a reliable opinion.

I got 1.5 / 6\. Apparently this means I'm at HIGH risk, which strikes me as pretty stupid. What are other people getting?

(I am comfortable and pretty darn sure I'm not burnt out at all, answering several of these as "Never")

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Honest question, is someone not mentally drained after programming(or just working) all day? That has been my experience for my 10+ year career every single day. Am I doing it wrong?

<comment><USER45> My mental drainage is tied almost completely to how much I enjoy the work and/or work environment.

If the work sucks - I come home hating my job, hating my life, and wanting a new job. Therefore - I am much more drained.

If the work is relatively interesting or am just not upset with it - then I come home feeling energized or fine. (Rare these days - I really hate my job and want a new one)

This is why I find getting a new job to be extremely difficult. The more I hate my job - the more I need to interview and do technical interview prep to get out... Which needs to be done at home after work. But the more I hate my job - the more drained I am - thus, the less I am able to do those things. It ends up keeping you in the same shitty job for way longer than you want. It's almost like they thought about this...

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Maybe I'm not burning out. Maybe I'm just tired and intellectually drained after 8 hours of intellectual stimulation. And maybe that's totally normal.

</comment><comment><USER47> This seems to rank nearly everyone as burned-out. Reeks of agenda.

<comment><USER21> And/or (cynical view), our industry in such a state that nearly everyone IS burned out.

<comment><USER47> No, I mean it literally ranks nearly everyone as burned out. As an experiment I chose the second-to-lowest burnout score for every question but one (for which I chose the lowest score). My risk of burnout was rated as high.

That's ridiculous for answers that by any objective measure would be great.

<comment><USER48> It would be possible with some questions that the answer between 0 to 1 is more meaningful than the answer between 1 and 10. For example, "How many tires have you slashed?"

0 to 1 is much more of a jump than 1 to 10. If this was being used to rank some underlying characteristic, 0 would be low while 1-10 would be high.

Now, does that apply to these questions? I don't think so. Theoretically I can see valid cases where answering anything above 0 goes straight from low to high.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I think burnout happens when you cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel, when every week is darker than the last.

My last job offered unlimited vacation. But if I ever took any vacation I'd get a message from my boss the night before I got back with a laundry list of the things that need attention ASAP - I couldn't really finish relaxing before I was vacuumed back into the soul sucking darkness.

</comment><comment><USER50> I don't buy it. With a very low score--hey I like what I'm doing--I'm still at a high-risk of burnout. I Don't Think So.

</comment><comment><USER51> I am never sure about what a burnout really is. It is not in the DSM yet, but that doesn't really say anything. It shares a lot of properties with depression. Weird stuff.

Test is bogus of course. With nine questiI got a high risk, because I scored a bit high on cynicism. But hey, I work in the advertisement business. I am not kidding myself that I add any value to this world at all.

</comment><comment><USER52> My mind immediately went to the other kind of burnout where you shave a few 32nds off your tires.

Might need to do a few of those because I scored a 5.6.

</comment><comment><USER53> This is total scam covered with nice UI. All the results indicate burn out is high if you select tech industry.

Do not take the survey.

</comment><comment><USER54> With my luck, I found a bug. If you press one button for an answer, then press another one, I find that the button is not selected, but the length of the button is shortened. It's strange. After clicking again it seems fine.

Other than that, cynicism checks out on the results. 5.1.

</comment><comment><USER55> I'm a sucker for questionnaires, but this just seemed to simplistic. I'd say you might as well replace the questions with a single "how burnt out do you feel" input.

Would love to see how different industries compare on some of these scores.

</comment><comment><USER56> I am reminded of the "Free Personality Test"s which inevitably shows you have some grave personal problems which can only be helped by Scientology (and certainly not by those evil, evil psychologists).

</comment><comment><USER57> There should be an option for "fuck, I'm far past on being worried about this." (I.e.: the option of do you worry about your emotional state)

</comment><comment><USER58> I wonder what happens with the data collected by this website. I'm afraid to let them know anything about my mental well-being.

</comment><comment><USER59> Massive, built-in selection bias.

People who have time for (or need the distraction of) surveys like these tend to be, of course... the already burnt out.

</comment><comment><USER60> Meh. So much of these end up being self-fulfilling prophesies. Instead of telling someone they're at high risk for burnout, we should tell people to be reasonable with their work/life balance.

Burnout is as much an employee problem as an employer problem. We all need to put our big boy pants on and take some responsibility for our actions and the consequences of those actions.

Disclaimer: I don't supervise anyone.

</comment><comment><USER61> My wife has helped me to put things in place to prevent burnout, mostly little things outside of work

</comment><comment><USER62> Good site. This frog is boiled. I'll be returning periodically.

</comment><comment><USER63> I agree burnout is real, but I have never run into a someone working that doesn't make a fuss about how 'busy' they are. I feel the results are going to be 'yep, everyone is burnt out'.

<comment><USER64> I'm not busy, and still burnt out. Not having enough of value to do can also burn you out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Works fine for me. Great little tool this.

</comment><comment><USER66> I love the illustration</comment>


Go nuts with CSS3 hover effects - <AUTHOR> http://tympanus.net/Tutorials/OriginalHoverEffects/index4.html

<comment><USER2> Why is everyone shitting on this in the comments? It's a demo: you can't complain that it's hindering usability or enjoyment of the pictures when there is no context in which you might use it or enjoy the pictures. When I saw this I thought it might be nice for the website of a magazine like vogue or something: some sites are about decoration and style, usability can be at the back of the priorities. Just because it wouldn't survive A/B testing on the landing page of the most recent groupon clone doesn't mean it's not useful, cool or fun.

<comment><USER3> > Some sites are about decoration and style, usability can be at the back of > the priorities.

I'm pretty sure this is exactly the problem people had with flash-heavy sites in the first place.

<comment><USER4> Style, decoration and usability are not mutually exclusive. As with many disciplines they can co-exist beautifully. Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings wouldn't look much chop if he hadn't taken style into consideration.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, but effects like this are not style, they are a cheap veneer applied to otherwise poorly thought out designs. Fashionable kitsch integrated into otherwise unoriginal, uninspired designs.

<comment><USER5> > Agreed, but effects like this are not style

No, it's a tech demo with artsy pictures. This is very obvious.

The site is also very bad as a computer game and a travel catalogue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Touchscreen issues notwithstanding, hover effects like this are awful for usability. The hover overlay completely obscures the original image, making it impossible to read the snippet and enjoy the image at the same time.

The animation effect is more garish than anything, but this is a probably a personal quibble. It takes 200 ms for the hover effects to finish loading. I'd rather have the hover transition instantly, so I can spend less of my life watching text fade in.

The Chrome Web Store uses this to excess, with sliding panes flying everywhere. It looks great, but it's really painful to use.

<comment><USER7> There are times when I find hover effects really helpful from a usability perspective. For example, with the right parameters, you can make text preview panes expand to view the entire text panel, and if white space is well used, the hovering doesn't get in the way too much.

This said, and while I realize this is a demo to show what _can_ be done with CSS3, and while it is impressive, it gives me a headache. I wonder how long before we see Pokemon-style photosensitivity-induced seizures from CSS3 in the hands of clueless web devs.

<comment><USER8> I agree with the seizure point. I think this is a bit too "nuts." I showed it to my friend who has frequent seizures and she agreed. I would not recommend CSS moving this quickly for general use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thanks for these. I was able to enjoy them on their own merit without having to resort to fire and brimstone speculation that we're entering a new "skip intro" era.

</comment><comment><USER10> Why is everyone comparing this to flash? Surely the problem with flash was one of accessibility and graceful degradation, rather than, say, having animated elements? There's nothing wrong with animations/transitions in the right context, right?

</comment><comment><USER11> I've been visiting this site for a while, and this is the first time I got a awful stomach ache reading the comments. What is it that you want? Websites that look like they are written to work in lynx and IE4, in the pretentious name of usability?. In one breath the lament is that the older browsers are not offering features to eliminate flash, you see the it now and bitch. What a bunch of hypocrites. Just use curl to read your web pages or go back to gopher.

<comment><USER12> Are you sure the same people are saying both?

</comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell Wow, they actually _are_ proper CSS hover effects. Worked even though I have JavaScript disabled.

<comment><USER13> > Worked even though I have JavaScript disabled.

This is _exactly_ the problem.

<comment> mike-cardwell If enough people dislike this, I'm sure somebody will write a "NoTransitions" browser addon, or fork Firefox/Chrome and remove the CSS transitions functionality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> We finally killed Flash and now we get this.

<comment><USER15> This was inevitable, killing Flash just means you're now not going to be able to disable ads with flash block.

<comment><USER16> You probably want something like this: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/elemhidehelpe...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/elemhidehelper/)

Haven't used it, hopefully it will be useful when Flash is gone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For me, In Chrome on OSX the entire screen flashes blue during animation, and the page flickers constantly - anyone else get this?

Apart from that I liked the effects as a proof-of-concept.

</comment><comment><USER18> When the iPhone was released I thought it would be the end of hover. I know that's what I think about when I see something like a menu which only works on hover.

<comment><USER19> Always surprises me that developers let platform makers dictate what they can use and what they can't.

If developers chose to use stuff on the basis of what they as developers think should be used - and if that meant iphone users couldn't use them - guess who would ultimately win that battle? Not Apple.

IE would have died years ago if developers had adopted that culture en masse.

<comment><USER20> The hover is not an iPhone vs developer problem, it's a touchscreen problem. Hover feels very natural with a mouse, but there's no logical equivalent on a touchscreen.

"on hover" is a side effect of pointing at things with a mouse. With a touch screen you touch things directly with your finger, you don't hover. So you have to design your website/app with that in mind: users will touch whatever they want to interact with. That's neither a mouse "on hover", nor a mouse "click".

Of course you can forgo people who use touchscreen, or even mouse and go keyboard only... it's a choice.

<comment><USER21> _> ...but there's no logical equivalent [to hover] on a touchscreen. _

There isn't now, but there well could be.

Suppose for a moment that you get a good old cursor on iPhone and it follows your fingertip as you move it around the screen. It wouldn't even have to be user-visible. To click, you press a bit stronger, or you raise & lower your finger (`tap' if you will). The hover's back.

There's nothing inherent in touch-based technology that prevents hovers from working. Such behavior has been available way on (decent) touchpads for well over a decade now, modulo user-level configuration.

<comment><USER20> > There isn't now, but there well could be.

Or not.

On touch touchscreen it feels natural to just touch the part of the screen you want to interact with. I hate the word, but it's intuitive. It doesn't feel like something you need to learn and become familiar with. My daughter understood how to use my iPad when she was less that one year old. She just touched the screen and something happened, she was happy. Even my mother-in- law understand how to use a touchscreen.

Neither my daughter nor my mother-in-law can use a mouse: it requires too much dexterity. I've seen people hovering a mouse in front of the screen hoping that something will happen. It's less intuitive, but it's familiar to all of us on hackernews.

What I'm trying to say is that there is something intrinsically natural and easy with a touchscreen: touch - interact. We won't go back from that.

I might be proven wrong, and tomorrow everybody will do on hover with its phone/tablet with the process you describe, or the one described by grovulent, or another one. But my guess is that it will remain mostly unused, except for a few "power users".

<comment><USER22> That's some very narrow thinking backed only by your anecdotal evidence.

Twenty years ago, I'm sure people would have been skeptical if you told them that someday, they would be able to wirelessly interact with a mass network of information via a touch-responsive, glassy device that fits in the palm of their hand.

Now where would be today if we'd listened to THOSE skeptics...

<comment><USER18> C'mon, apart from the glass surface you are describing a paper or a book. The iPad is hardly a strange format.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Does anyone else get a flash of black over the whole page once in a while during the transitions?

<comment><USER24> Yes, on OSX + Chrome 15

<comment><USER23> That's my setup too

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> All those demos are very cool. They expand my design sense to see what's possible. Excellent work.

</comment><comment><USER26> The end of the Flash banner ad era is in sight. The sentiment is that this is simply replacing one evil with another but I think it will accelerate the migration from Flash so overall this is probably a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER27> If you hate Animations, then have your browser disable CSS3 animations. Any website worth its salt will use Modernizr & jQuery to gracefully fall back.

</comment><comment><USER28> While I agree with some of the comments about usability, I'm pretty impressed with how far CSS has come.

</comment><comment><USER29> Pair Original Hover Effects with <http://linkpeek.com> for epic instant preview images!

Use our screenshot service to embed self updating 75 pixel thumbnails on your site for free!

</comment><comment><USER30> Very impressive - I thing I like #10 the most! thanks

</comment><comment><USER31> Perfect for a menu of food or medicine

</comment><comment><USER32> Usability vs cool UI is always a tough one. The ones who can do both at the same time are geniuses. That's why Apple is always on top.

<comment><USER33> Only for some people. For others, including myself, usability wins every time. Even for entertainment, I want the _controls_ to fade into the background.

<comment><USER34> You said it yourself - you want the controls to _fade_ into the background.

A fade is a very simple animation to communicate what's happening, but the details of duration and exponential vs linear transition can make a simple fade seem frantic, soothing, or even invisible. When you say "fade into the background", I assume you mean a linear animation that takes about 1 second. It's pretty awesome that the world has a very specific fade that serves as a "word" in our shared design language.

Interactions are filled with interstitials and microstates, but a fade isn't really appropriate for all of them. While we try to figure them out, some folks will make animations that remind us of geocities - but others are going to express actions with animations that seem so natural we can't help but describe the action as the animation. Just as you did.

And then our shared design language will have a new word.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> buggy but cool

</comment><comment><USER36> it's like, days of Flash again !

</comment><comment><USER37> on demo6, if you move the mouse fast over them... my CPU gets as hammered as if it were flash.

</comment><comment><USER38> Crap. This will be the next flash, won't it? Should I start writing the CSS3Block extension for all major browsers now, or is the effort already underway?

<comment><USER39> You could block such things in a user stylesheet.

Animation is not the reason flash was [used] bad[ly].</comment></comment>


Create your own currency and crowdfund your projects - <AUTHOR> https://www.mintme.com/ <comment><USER2> How to violate securities regulations from the comfort of your home.</comment>


Codeine and cough: an ineffective gold standard - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2921574/ <comment><USER2> When properly studied, it turns out that the most effective cough suppressant known to man is... chocolate. (It does also cause reflux, however, perhaps not coincidentally.)</comment>


Study explains how retailers stop Linux from entering the market - <AUTHOR> http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Study-explains-how-retailers-stop-Linux-from-entering-the-market-1564385.html

<comment><USER2> If there really was a strong market demand (and supply!) for preinstalled Linux laptops, why hasn't _any_ reseller stepped up to fill this gaping void?

If the conclusions drawn by this paper are true, this is a _massive_ business opportunity. They practically go so far as to imply that close to 10% of the laptop market is up for grabs _if only_ the pesky retail oligopoly would stop sabotaging their own financial interests.

Does anyone believe this to be the case? I'll be frank : if I did, I would be investing in a new venture instead of writing this.

<comment><USER3> I doubt there's a strong demand for Linux laptops[1], but there's a fair bit of demand for _cheap_ laptops, so a free OS should have an advantage there.

[1] I'm using one now, but even most of my nerdy friends just use Apple laptops.

<comment><USER4> As I understand it, manufacturers receive fees for packaging bloatware on Windows machines, and so there's little to no savings to be had with preinstalled Linux, at least until there's bloatware to package with Linux...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What Linux probably needs is to take a page from Apple and set up a brick and mortar store where people can come in, try Linux, buy a PC, and get some advice.

Does anyone remember how Macs were sold before the Apple store? You had the mom and pop stores that had the expertise but not the volume to make an impact. You had the online stores that had the volume but if you weren't looking, specifically, for a Mac you wouldn't know there was an alternative. And then you had the B&M stores like Sears, CompUSA, etc. They had Macs, tucked away between the radar detectors and vacuum cleaners. Even if you knew you wanted a Mac the sales staff would try to pass you on a Windows PC. With "friends" like these who needed enemies.

Jobs knew he needed to switch things up so worked on retail store concept. Put it in a place with a lot of foot traffic (mall, downtown store, etc.) and make it easy. Want to check email, facebook, etc? Everyone knows you do it at the Apple store, Starbucks wifi costs money. Now you've got everyone in your store using your OS. They might not buy it right away but you've planted the bug in their ear.

For retailers it's just business. No one demands a Linux laptop and the few that due aren't a large enough market to keep them in stock and on the sales floor. If desktop Linux wants to have an impact it's going to need a lot more than a website with ISOs.

<comment><USER6> I agree. Desktop Linux must have a patron that operates much like Apple if anyone intends for it to get penetration. Canonical is the best candidate but it's not in Shuttleworth's playbook as far as I know, which imo is a real shame.

If you want to push an alternate OS, you can't bundle it like a normal PC and sell it alongside Windows machines. You need to do what Apple did, and make it its own thing: a "Mac" instead of a "PC". Someone needs to box up Ubuntu into 3-6 SKUs, slap some cohesive, trendy branding on it, and get it into sales channels as a "penguin" or whatever and NOT a "PC".

<comment><USER7> We need "Ubuntu Store". I think it's the only Linux brand strong enough just now to manage it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Three years ago I was going through High School and as you can expect, every single piece of software in the labs was Microsoft branded. Now, I'm with a lot of the same people at University and despite what some people insist, nobody has a problem using GNU/Linux. It is the only option in the labs, but still many people got the hang of it within two to three days.

Although mine is just an anecdote it still follows, that both our educational systems and our corporate environments play a big part (I'd even say a much bigger part) in keeping the OS market share as it is.

</comment><comment><USER9> No, retailers do not stop anything. 1) Nothing, absolutely nothing sells in meaningful quantities for reatailer without marketing. 2) For unknown or new products it is not in the retailers best interest to start create market for somebody elses brand/product. There's nothing to gain. 3) The brand/product must market themselves and as nobody owns Linux, nobody will do that, hence it will not sell.

<comment><USER10> _"nobody owns Linux"_

It's not just marketing, it's service and education, too.

Who trains the retailer's staff? What website do customers go to for support (and how does it compare to Microsoft or Apple?

The business model for Linux is based on charging a premium for support rather than rolling it into the retail price. There's a good reason that Redhat stores don't exist. The Linux business is incompatible with consumer channels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't think it's the retailers stopping Linux from entering the mainstream. It's the users. A vast majority of people in the market for a new computer will freak out when the see Linux, because they have no idea what it is and it has no Start button.

<comment><USER12> That doesn't explain all the people buying Macs. What it does explain is why cheap Android tablets can't make a dent in the tablet market, while the iPad, among the most expensive options, prints money for Apple every year. It's the disproportionate importance of branding.

<comment><USER13> Not to mention how relatively easy Macs and iThings are to use. This is subjective, but I think Apple's better than anyone at making computers that "non computer people" can figure out.

<comment><USER14> I don't think OS X nor iOS are much easier to use than their free counterparts, it's just that new users have at least two incentives to learn them, and so they do, without thinking too much about it.

First, they have a positive reinforcement: Mac is "hip", so you'll look cool by using their products (the fact that everybody and their mother owns one or ten doesn't seem to diminish this perception), and also a negative reinforcement because everybody knows "Apple makes easy-to-use products" so if you don't learn to use them quickly you'll look bad.

I'm sure Linux and *BSD have earned more followers by looking different or difficult than by trying to be "easy" (whatever that word means). But that's a discussion for another day...

<comment><USER11> Apple operating systems (and Microsoft operating systems too) are absolutely easier to use than Linux. For example, my Linux box regularly throws up dialog boxes that are nothing more than rehashings of error messages printed out by command-line utilities. My Mac computer and my Windows computer never do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not too long ago, Linux did enter the market. In a fairly big way. When the netbook craze was really ramping up, around about 25% of units sold were running Linux. That wouldn't have been possible if what the study says is true.

But the Linux units saw a depressingly high return rate. MSI was reporting it was _four times_ that of the Windows netbooks.

So retailers and manufacturers dropped Linux like a hot potato. Not because of some perverse supply chain structure, but because consumers had clearly and emphatically indicated that they were dissatisfied with the product.

<comment><USER16> Agreed. I used linux for 8 years on my main development notebook (a Thinkpad). That was a lot of trouble compared to Mac OS now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Retailers and consumers love Linux! It has has 61% market share. (Source: <http://tinyurl.com/ce6t8dk>).

Maybe people just don't like Gnome. (viz. <http://tinyurl.com/834bn2j>)</comment>


Some thoughts on organizational complexity - <AUTHOR> http://daltoncaldwell.com/thoughts-on-organizational-complexity <comment><USER2> _Organizational complexity can show up in odd ways in a shipping product. For instance, why does a single product, the Microsoft Surface, give consumers the option between two very different OSes: one model with "Windows RT" and another with "Windows 8 Pro"._

Can someone pen a counterpoint to this? I feel that one exists but I am not able to get it out. Basically, I see _tonnes_ of assumptions in the above and that basically, it is almost _all_ bad. Yet, there is _something_ about it that must still be working: the company behind it continues to make billions. Why? How? Is there nothing to learn from that?

It is easy to make fun of large companies and their structures and yet Dalton himself probably wouldn't mind building a billion dollar empire with the similar type of "red tape".

</comment><comment><USER3> I really liked this:

More companies die of indigestion than from starvation. \- David Packard

I think it's highly relevant right now as more and more startups are getting funded. It sometimes seems like those startups are thinking "Now what?"</comment>


Free Computer Science Classics from ACM - <AUTHOR> http://portal.acm.org/toc.cfm?id=SERIES11430&type=series&coll=ACM&dl=ACM

<comment><USER2> You can only download them using a free ACM account, and even with such account, you can't download most of them (ie, von Neumann's one).

<comment><USER3> I was going to ask about that - the Neumann one was the only one I found interesting, but I could not find an actual download link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The ACM is so utterly backward that I won't even click on their links anymore. In an era when nearly everything else is a 5-second web search away, they place barrier after barrier in front of information. What are they protecting other than their own obsolescence? Googling the titles of most papers brings up a free copy on the author's website or elsewhere.

<comment><USER5> Agreed that the ACM's Digital Library is a total waste of a person's time and always has been. Practically every important paper in physics and astronomy is available from a central location (arxiv.org) without restriction and with two clicks (one to specify the paper, the second to choose between PDF, Postscript, Latex source code, etc), and it is only a matter of time before computer science is the same way.</comment></comment>


Why You Need a Microservice Catalog - <AUTHOR> https://www.opslevel.com/2020/04/21/why-you-need-a-microservice-catalog/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone, I'm Ken, one of the founders at OpsLevel.

My co-founder John and I were early employees at PagerDuty (in fact, John was the first hire at PagerDuty). We noticed that companies running large microservice deployments all ended up building internal tooling to help catalog and track the microservices they had in production (e.g., Spotify has System-Z, Shopify has ServicesDB, LinkedIn has Service Scorecard). We saw this as a greater need, so decided to build OpsLevel, a service catalog for everyone else.

In the article above, John talks about the organizational problems that occur when you have lots of microservices and some different ways of addressing them.</comment>


The Case for Getting Rid of Borders - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/get-rid-borders-completely/409501/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Only if the people that come in are willing to assimilate into the culture that is the host. There are good reasons to keep some worldviews out of one's borders if they clash with the place's values.</comment>


Should Gittip use an ORM or raw SQL? - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/129

<comment><USER2> The correct solution is to abstract away the database from the developer. An ORM forces a square peg into a round hole.

<comment><USER3> using DAOs for database access does not preclude the usage of SQL abstraction layers and/or ORMs within that DAO.

Though taking the hardline "purity" approach of hand-coding all the marshaling of data to/from business objects into the DAO layer on a field-by-field basis, or writing an ad-hoc automation system for this task, basically reinvents what an ORM already does out of the box.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Surely there are much better ways to discuss the advantages of ORM over SQL than a bug report on github.

<comment><AUTHOR> What are your recommendations?

The advantage is that you can easily ping other developers, comment, and reference other topics.

<comment><USER4> > The advantage is that you can easily ping other developers, comment, and > reference other topics.

I didn't mean to insinuate that the discussion on github should not exist- it really should, and that's exactly what github is for. I'm just questioning the use of the page to trigger discussion on HN. Even the wikipedia page on ORM would have better content to consider.

EDIT: Unless gittip's potential use of an ORM is news-worthy, in which case I am very out of touch with hacker news. ORMs are as commonplace as databases now and have been for a while.</comment></comment></comment>


How Many Silicon Valley Startup Executives Are Hopped Up On Provigil? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/15/how-many-of-our-startup-executives-are-hopped-up-on-provigil/ <comment><USER2> I've taken Modafinil extensively while I was launching my first start-up and still working full time. For six months I was waking up at 4am every day, working until 7am, having a one-hour nap, then off to work until 6pm… Bed-time around 10-11pm. I wouldn't have been able to launch without Modafinil (I'm actually using Alertec rather than Provigil, it's a bit cheaper). Those days I took up to 1.5 pills a day (150mg) - 1 pill 1 hour before waking up, to make the most of that 3-hour slot, then half a pill half-way through the day to allow me to keep productive at work.

I still use it occasionally, to boost a specific day's productivity. I think taking it as described (and as I did while launching my first start-up) is abusing it and asking for trouble later, but using it to get an odd boost of concentration (which suddenly allows me to work like a beast for about 12 hours and get huge amounts of technical work done in that time, particularly in combination with a little caffeine) is ok and doesn't have any side-effects - just make sure you drink plenty of water (sometimes on Modafinil thirst can also seem like a bit of a distraction, but you will get a mild headache if you don't drink anything). Also, I only take half-pills now, so the max I ever do is 50mg in one day.

I'm in London, though, not Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER3> _I wouldn't have been able to launch without Modafinil..._

How do you know? Did you try?

<comment><USER2> No, obviously, but I was barely able to with Modafinil.

Perhaps better phrased: I wouldn't have been able to pull those hours without Modafinil. That, I have tried, and failed.

<comment><USER4> What? You _needed_ a drug to pull 13 hour work days with 5-6 hours of sleep? Did you try a cup or two of coffee?

<comment><USER5> Ah.... caffeine counts as a drug too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "What's so funny is that entrepreneurs apparently aren't interested in typical drugs - instead they find the one that gives them a mental and stamina advantage"

He must not pay much attention at his own TechCrunch events, as they are fueled by booze and weed with some coke thrown in for the bizdev types' girlfriends.

<comment><USER5> How much of a competitive advantage would a startup have if it strictly avoided booze, weed, and coke?

<comment><USER7> I'll let you know when I start-up :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've tried Provigil, and found it wasn't really all it was cracked up to be. The only thing it really does is make you less tired. I guess that's great if you want to be awake for 40 hours at a time, but for mental clarity and sharper thought: Drink water.

Drink a LOT of water. I bet that half of these guys taking Provigil because they need the 'edge' have never forced themselves to drink a gallon of regular old water in a day. Soda, coffee, and tea don't count. You'd be amazed how many people spend years in a state of mild dehydration.

Drinking water has given the biggest improvement to me mentally, far and away. In second place is not eating meat during the workday; but that pales in comparison to just drinking enough water.

<comment><USER9> This is why I take a Nalgene bottle everywhere with me. 32oz of pure, unadulterated h2o (depending on the quality of the local water source).

<comment><USER10> Unadulterated? Have you never heard of BPA?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Am I the only one against performance enhancing drugs?

<comment><USER3> No. I am too.

I have commented before on how offensive posts like this are for so many reasons. It ususally turns out to be me against the world. So I don't even bother anymore.

But now that I saw your question, I decided to throw my 2 cents in (again).

AFAIC, with few exceptions, everything we do is a marathon, not a sprint. So using crutches for sprints is, at best, myoptic. Any stimulant, I don't care which (food, drugs, etc.) has another side, i.e., what goes up must go down. One of the commenters on OP's site talks about this much better than I can.

I really don't care what anyone does in private. But setting aside all the ethical, medical, and legal considerations, here is my biggest concern: Lots of people come to this site to learn and exchange; I'd hate to have them walk away with the idea than drugs are a good idea for their startup, just from the feedback of their peers. That's irresponsible.

<comment><USER12> It sounds less awful than binging on coffee. Like it or not, sometimes a lot of work has to be done in a short period of time.

I don't know why some people have such an aversion to tweaking the biochemical machine whichh they inhabit, except of course with caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol, all of which are harmful and less effective for their intended purpose than manufactured drugs.

I don't think any drug has done as much damage to my body as the intense stress that I suffer from being unable to focus on a project unless against a deadline and the attempts to complete massive amounts of work overnight wit a fuzzy-headed caffeine-fueled incompetence.

I know I sounds dangerous and iconoclastic here, but I think many people would share my point of view if they weren't conditioned since they were 5-years-old with "drugs are bad" propaganda in their schools.

<comment><USER7> An opposite view is that people don't like drugs because they see so many kids today being prescribed them like candy and it turns out sometimes thats not good for them. "Drugs are good" can often do just as much harm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> FYI, the worst side-effect of Modafinil (beyond addiction) is that it makes your urine smell bad (or worse depending on what kind of diet you already have.) When Modafinil metabolizes it breaks down into sulfur and sodium, so you get salty smelly urine.

<comment><USER14> How do you know it's salty?

<comment><USER13> ...

<comment><USER15> Well, if Zen didn't kill you...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Some of that might be useful about now... :)

I'm lucky (depending on how you look at it) in that I seem to be able to work long hours fairly reguarly without drugs.

</comment><comment><USER17> Sleepless vs sleepers, are we approaching the world of <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beggars_in_Spain> ?

<comment><USER18> Don't get too carried away with the hype about Provigil. It allows you to sleep less and may cause a mild increase in focus, with possibly fewer long term effects than amphetamine-type drugs (speed, ritalin, etc). IE Provigil users don't seem to turn into tweakers.

It is safer but less effective than good old fashioned amphetamine for actually getting stuff done.

If you're just a regular person trying to live a semblance of a balanced lifestyle (for this purpose I will include working a regular 8-to-6 job) the biggest effect of provigil is likely to be to make you say 'so what?'

If you are used to the caffeine-shakes and twitches that come at the rough end of an all-nighter, Provigil can take that away to some extent. The psychological price you pay for doing this too often is unknown, though.

Having said that, it is useful to get you out of a jam if you stay up partying all night and need to drag yourself to work the next morning.

And best of all, if you are in the UK, the NHS pays for it all. In other countries you often have to pay up to several USD per pill and it can take up to 4 pills to be effective.

Edit: Based on my experience, I would consider use of Provigil during a true work crunch or crisis that can only be solved by a burst of long work hours. However, if your masters get used to your performance at that level under those conditions, you might learn more about the expression 'burning the candle at both ends' than you want to know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is interesting, but honestly who cares if it's widespread. It's their respective bodies, as long as they aren't hurting anyone else, they can do whatever they want.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's all fun and games until your first psychotic episode.</comment>


Do Animals in Chernobyl's Fallout Zone Glow? - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/nuclear_power/2013/01/wildlife_in_chernobyl_debate_over_mutations_and_populations_of_plants_and.single.html

<comment><USER2> I visited Chernobyl a couple of years ago and was stunned by the amount of large fish in the waterways (a canal now cut off from the Dnieper river, IIRC). It seemed you could almost walk from bank to bank on the swarming fish.

It made me wonder if this is what European waterways were generally like before us humans fished and fished and fished and polluted the Rhine, Danube, Volga, Dnieper, and other major European rivers.

<comment><USER3> Apparently this forest on the border between Belarus and Poland is quite amazing (It was mentioned in "The World Without Us"):

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a nice article. There's a problem with a lot of science reporting that people just report the controversy. Most people cannot assess a scientific paper (if the article bothers to link to the actual research) and so it'd be great if media could do a breakdown - "suitable sample?" "randomised?" "controlled?" "peer reviewed?".

Some old reports:

Wildlife preserve not scientifically justified (<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6946210.stm>)

Significant impact on biodiversity and population numbers (but also that this is a polarised debate) (<http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/14250489>)

Chernobyl birds have small brains ([http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9387000/938...](http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9387000/9387395.stm))

Insect decline (<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7949314.stm>)

</comment><comment><USER5> I would like to know the opinion of others more knowledgeable: can't it just be because humans have such a long life span? So, maybe the animals die before the radiation actually has any effect?

<comment><USER6> Cancer is kind of associated with long life span in general, even without external radiation flux, but there are other ways that radiation can be harmful. A given amount of radiation received is more likely to damage cells that quickly divide (especially gametes) and cells that have little or no provision for repair.

So at relatively high levels of radiation you could well see that individual organisms tend to do well enough but have children with more birth defects, are more frail, have their vision deteriorate faster, etc.

I'm not sure that the radiation levels even in the Chernobyl exclusion zone are high enough for that, necessarily, but there's unfortunately a pretty wide gulf between "no effect" and developing cancer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> the problem with some parts of the article is that in the hard high level contaminated parts we have small animal populations and in the exclusion zone parts not highly contaminated we increasing animal populations coming form other areas. Without some way methodology to weigh or readjust the numbers with new weights any study will generate error prone conclusions.

Not only that but when an animal has a shorter life-span due to radiation where do the effects show up? Its not showing in the population increase as the dying happens after the animal has given its maximum number of offspring as the study is studying long-term radiation effects from long-term radiation.

</comment><comment><USER8> Well... one cool thing about Chernobyl is those black mushrooms in the reactor, that do radiosyntesys (yes, they "eat" radiation, awesome).

But no, they don't glow, quite the opposite (they absorb a wide range of electromagnetic frequencies to its internal use).

<comment><USER9> Could you provide a link for more information about those mushrooms?

I like thinking about those natural anomalies that you know some brilliant mind will attempt to mimic with technology, and that is one function that could have serious potential.

<comment><USER8> [http://www.zmescience.com/ecology/chernobyl-fungus- radiotrop...](http://www.zmescience.com/ecology/chernobyl-fungus- radiotrophic-08122011/)

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

<comment><USER10> "Since ionizing radiation is prevalent in outer space, astronauts might be able to rely on fungi as an inexhaustible food source on long missions or for colonizing other planets,"

It's an interesting thought that our future Buzz Aldrins and Neil Armstrongs may be sustained by a diet of radioactive mushrooms. That sounds like a Marvel origin story.

<comment><USER11> One important detail is that the funguses are not necessarily radioactive [x]. They absorb the gamma radiation, that it's similar to the X-rays. After a radiography, x-ray or gamma-ray exposure the things don't become radioactive. But too much radiation kills almost anything. This process is used to produce irradiated food (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation>) that is safe for eating (when the irradiation is done properly).

[x] The funguses inside Chernovil are surely radioactive because they also absorb the water that is contaminated with radioactive elements. Don't eat them :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12>
      "Those studies found mammal diversity and abundance equal to
      that of a protected nature reserve, with rare species
      including bears, lynx, river otter, and badger as well as
      introduced herds of European bison and Przewalski's horses.
      Bird diversity is even richer and includes 61 rare species.
      Whooper swans—never before reported in the region—now appear
      regularly."

I love how the best conclusion you can get from this research is that even nuclear fallout is better for the environment than the presence of humans in the area.

</comment><comment><USER13> wow, the title reflects how epic is the development of journalism standards.

<comment><USER14> I would assume they were playing too much of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Series[1] or used it as source when writing the article title. Even half suggesting that animals would glow is link bait and just silly. I mean, it's not like animals glowed after the atomic attacks on Japan or anywhere nuclear weapons have been tested. Granted that there's differences in the radiation, but still it's kind of specious reasoning.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:_Shadow_of_Chern...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:_Shadow_of_Chernobyl)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is the money quote:

>The prevailing scientific view of the exclusion zone has become that it is an unintentional wildlife sanctuary. This conclusion rests on the premise that radiation is less harmful to wildlife populations than we are.

I don't consider myself an environmentally focused person, but the effects humans have on the ecosystem cannot be overstated. I'm not saying the effects are negative or positive, just that we as a species need to be very cognizant of the changes we cause, and we need to think critically about what ramifications those changes have.

<comment><USER2> Species that have much lower lifespans than humans are less likely to develop cancer in their lifetimes. These species particularly benefit from the lack of humans around Chernobyl more than they suffer from the high radiation.

<comment><USER16> Animals are a lot more tolerant of death and mayhem, too. For example, if radiation caused e.g. a 10% incidence of horrible birth defects, a lot of animal populations could survive that just fine, but humans would be horrified at the very idea.

<comment><USER17> Humans will survive just as well.

'Being horrified' is not a credible threat to survival.

In fact, in both cases the affected individuals of any species will die and the rest will go on.

<comment><USER16> Of course humans will survive, but they'll avoid the area if they can.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Gravity experiment - <AUTHOR> http://www.mrdoob.com/projects/chromeexperiments/google-gravity/ Google Gravity Experiment , check it out. <comment><USER2> I was showing this to a friend a couple of years ago when we accidentally discovered, to our delight, that it's orientation-aware. If you're using Chrome on a Mac laptop, try tilting your machine to see how it affects the elements on screen. (Theoretically, it should also work on most iOS devices and other laptops with motion sensors, but I haven't really tested it extensively.)

Prior to that discovery, I had no idea that a non-mobile browser could access motion sensor data. Turns out that on a MBP at least, the data comes from the Sudden Motion Sensor[1], which is also responsible for parking disk drive heads if you drop your laptop. Pretty cool stuff.

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

A couple more links for the curious:

[http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/device/orientation/](http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/device/orientation/)

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/WebAPI/Detecting_de...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/WebAPI/Detecting_device_orientation)

EDIT: Almost forgot, but I actually created a little drawing experiment based on this: [http://peterjmags.com/accelosketch/](http://peterjmags.com/accelosketch/). Try clicking around and tilting your laptop to draw.

<comment><USER3> iOS didn't always expose device orientation events in javascript browser. In particular, one of the first apps I wrote, for iPhone 3GS, specifically could not be a browser app for this reason.

Objective C is a hell of a programming language to learn just to access motion sensors.

<comment><USER4> And for anything else devices do that could have been done in a browser..

Nothing like that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach when you realize you have yet another memory leak, zombie object or mysterious exception in the main run loop to debug!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting to see this posted here. It's a Chrome experiment almost as old as Chrome itself.

<comment><USER3> And in many ways, i think it demonstrates that the idea of using physics engines to manipulate the DOM is still pretty cool, and underutilized.

<comment><USER6> Pretty cool? Yes. Under utilized? I know of one page on the web that does it, this one, and I think that's more than enough :)

<comment><USER7> Using physics in interfaces gives naturalistic motions right out of the box, you get nice animation curves for free essentially. Of course if you want flat pages, then this doesn't matter, and I do agree with providing flat versions of useful stuff, but if you want something that has a good feel for any gui animation, then integrating physics makes a lot of sense. Not so that you notice it, but rather so that you don't.

<comment><USER8> Even with flat UI. The motion of natural 'objects' is very much wired into us. If you have elements moving in a 2D plane, their motion is typically perceived as more 'pleasing' when they obey physics often at a subconscious level. Its a bit like the golden ratio.

<comment><USER7> Sorry, by flat I was meaning basic unanimated pages, not just 2d. I should have been more clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Fun little project. However--I'm now slightly concerned that websites have access to accelerometer data without any kind of privacy prompt? There must be a browser setting here somewhere, but again, would love to have different settings by default.

<comment><USER10> I'm curious, why would the accelerometer invade your privacy? Is there a significant difference between your mouse or keyboard and the accelerometer?

<comment><USER11> Fingerprinting devices for one [http://blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2013/10/10/stanford- researc...](http://blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2013/10/10/stanford-researchers- discover-alarming-method-for-phone-tracking-fingerprinting-through-sensor- flaws/)

<comment><USER12> I wonder how many bits of entropy that fingerprint has, though. 8 bits would make for an impressive and scary looking demo, for example, but for ad tracking it would be useless.

<comment><USER13> I don't think ad tracking is the scary application...

<comment><USER12> That's a good point, and p = 1/256 is definitely good enough to convince a judge or jury.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Maybe I am missing something, but why is this interesting? Is it because you copied the source from the google homepage and didn't change the links?

<comment><USER15> Do you have JS enabled? The whole page falls down when interacting with it. The physics are quite nice actually and you can toss the elements around.

<comment><USER14> I have javascript enabled but I use a firefox plugin called ghostery and didn't realize that I needed to disable it.

<comment><USER16> Funny... I have ghostery, noscript (with some whitelisting) and a bunch of other plugins but it worked just fine for me. Something else than ghostery, perhaps?

<comment><USER17> I only had to turn ghostery off for it to start working.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is old, still mrdoob's site is always worth checking out. [http://www.mrdoob.com/](http://www.mrdoob.com/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Old stuff, but cool because it uses Google's legacy UI that _didn 't use to suck ass as it does today_

<comment><USER20> Funny, I hated that black bar. I think the current one is much more in spirit with what they were before its introduction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I did a similar thing a while ago (inspired from this experiment) on the website of the institute where I'm working at: [http://loopasam.github.io/experiments/ebi- gravity/](http://loopasam.github.io/experiments/ebi-gravity/)

</comment><comment><USER22> same, same but different [https://github.com/franzenzenhofer/box2d-jquery](https://github.com/franzenzenhofer/box2d-jquery)

(we are currently reviving the project, i.e.: added collision events, other stuff to follow)

</comment><comment><USER23> Many years ago when X-Window was in its youth there was a smart little program that made it possible to do that to the screen of anyone else that was connected by network. Try to imagine the first time your working screen simply falls to pieces and melts. :-)

</comment><comment><USER24> Reminds of this wonderful study in usability: [http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/25059665/CustomerForm.htm...](http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/25059665/CustomerForm.html)

</comment><comment><USER25> I think seeing this is what originally got me into web development.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is a few years old. Still cool though.</comment>


Andreessen Horowitz Leads $68m Series A in Sandbox VR - <AUTHOR> https://a16z.com/2019/01/28/sandbox-vr/ <comment><USER2> Wow, three different ways to blast and kill things. How silly. San Mateo is not a San Francisco location. Wow, six people stand in a circle, what fun. How much does it cost?

The Muybridge photographic experiments were at Leland Stanford's Stock Farm, now Stanford University. There is a metal plate celebrating the work at the barn.</comment>


Reddit alternatives - <AUTHOR>

I spend a lot of time on Reddit, but I'm starting to get annoyed about the user interface. I find myself clicking a lot on the random link and openning a plethora of links.<p>For the moment I'm trying gsick which I'm liking quite a bit. But I was wondering if you people knew of some other sites I could look into. <comment><USER2> You should totally check the Reddit Enhancment Suite(<http://redditenhancementsuite.com/>). It adds a lot of useful functions. Otherway I think digg.com should be similar, it was a predecessor of reddit that was crashed by it and now is trying to emerge again with a new team.</comment>


Can Self-Compassion Overcome Procrastination? - <AUTHOR> http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/can_self_compassion_overcome_procrastination

<comment><USER2> Probably good advice, but the first thing that came to mind in reading the article was [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DIETlxquzY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DIETlxquzY).</comment>


VMware Photon Linux - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vmware/photon <comment><USER2> Previous:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9407848](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9407848)

</comment><comment><USER3> What is the purpose of this linux ?

<comment><USER4> Containerization. Similar to Project Atomic, CoreOS or RancherOS.

The unfortunate side is that it's a 992MB iso in comparison to a 224MB Debian installation or even a 20MB RancherOS install.

It's bloated.

<comment><USER5> Unless we're just using "bloated" as a snarl term, it has to mean "too big for what it's being used for", which is distinct from "too big for my preferred way of solving the problem".

For example, most editors are larger than ed. However, ed can't support the same kinds of workflow that most other editors can. Therefore, those other editors are not bloated because ed is smaller: ed can't do the same jobs.

So, is it 992 MB because it does a different job, or is it 992 MB because they didn't care about size?

<comment><USER6> > So, is it 992 MB because it does a different job, or is it 992 MB because > they didn't care about size?

The ISO is 992MB because it includes _three_ different installations (micro, minimal, full).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Decorating Moscone… and Crazy Predictions For WWDC 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://www.cocoanetics.com/2012/06/decorating-moscone-and-crazy-predictions/

<comment><USER2> _jumping into the shark-infested waters of TV set production_

Agreed. It doesn't pass my basic test of rumored products. Would I buy it? The answer in this case is no. I have a relatively new 1080P TV which works just fine. It cost me less than $500. I don't think there's anything Apple could do that would entice me to replace it. This coming from someone who owns a wide variety of Apple hardware. If they can't convince me to buy one then we've got some serious problems.

I'm really starting to think the TV rumors are just total misdirection. I think Apple is happy to let everyone assume they are slaving away to compete with Samsung, Vizio, LG, etc when in reality they are preparing to compete with Microsoft's Xbox and Sony's PlayStation. This won't just be a software update for the AppleTV. Has anyone else noticed the Mac Mini is absent in the rumors of updated Macs? Wouldn't surprise me if it's redesigned, renamed, and becomes the new iTV device running iOS6 with an entirely new TV UI to ship late this year. This will give Apple the horse power to really compete with high end console games in a box that is still quiet and small enough to be in your living room. In the short term there will be lots of iOS ports but by this time next year I think you'll start seeing some serious high end console games appear. (the existing AppleTV sticks around as basically an accessory to the iTV and iOS devices)

<comment><USER3> I disagree on the MacMini front. MacMini is the de facto server offering from Apple. Since they discontinued their actual server product many companies are stacking the relatively inexpensive MacMinis in their data centers.

So MacMinis will definitely not be converted to be running iOS 6. They will need to stay Mac machines.

If you read my article then you will know that my hypothesis is rather for an embedded iOS on-a-chip that TV makers can license and through that enable any TV with the AppleTV software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I still find it hard to believe Apple will produce a full TV set. I think an Apple projector is more likely for the simple reason that LCD TVs are big and heavy. The problem with LCD TVs are:

* They take up a lot of space in store. Having two large TVs set up takes away space from 2-3 iMacs or 4-5 MacBooks. That means only two individuals can enjoy that square footage instead of 4-5. Not to mention that enjoying the TVs actively takes away from the experience of others (A/V noise). How annoying is it when someone turns up one of those iPod docks at a store? Now imagine that happening all the time with two sets of audio clashing with each other.

* Getting them home from the store is a pain.

* "Normal" people would need installation services (wall mounting and/or discarding of an old TV set), requiring Apple to build out their own "Genius Squad".

* Repairs would be a pain. How do you lug a 42" TV to the Apple Store to be checked out by a Genius? Will Apple ship around huge empty boxes for you to pack your TV in to send it out to them? And then you have the trouble of getting it to the UPS guy and then getting it re-installed when it comes back. In-home repairs would be something new for Apple and again would require them to staff up a "Genius Squad".

* Apple hardware generally moves faster than TV refresh cycles. Want the software features of the 2015 Apple TV? Sorry, the A6 chip in your 2013 model can't handle it. Time to throw out that 30-pound piece of aluminum and glass and replace it with a new one.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I thought Apple was going to announce an Apple TV next week.

<comment><USER3> Apple is only interested in selling products with a high margin, like 50% or more. TVs don't have that.

If there will be a TV with Apple tech in it then this will be because the TV manufacturer has licensed a chip with iOS on it that runs the AppleTV flavor of iOS.

Or can you imagine people carrying home a 50" AppleTV TV from an Apple Store? If you cannot sell it in an Apple Store then Apple won't do it because Apple needs people to experience their devices in an Apple Store to allow them to fall in love it them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. Thank you for the explanation.</comment></comment></comment>


Django: username is case-sensitive - <AUTHOR> https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/2273

<comment><AUTHOR> While default industry practice is to have case insensitive username (which is obvious), django's bug is still there, not fixed for last seven years.</comment>


Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy and more sick - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/85400/moving-to-open-plan-offices-makes-employees-less-productive-less-happy-and-more-likely-to-get-sick/

<comment><USER2> It used to bug me but now I enjoy the social aspect of it. If my employer knowingly makes the environment I work in less productive (but more fun for me) I'm not going to complain.

<comment><USER3> Being less productive should affect my happiness and "fun level".</comment></comment>


W. T. Tutte - mathematician and code breaker - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._T._Tutte <comment><USER2> As an European user I kept wondering why so many biographies today on YC (there were 3 on the main page), only to figure out that probably it's because of the recently past Memorial Day[1] in US, as users read more about personalities worth remembering.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_Day>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> See also: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5779231></comment>


Spawnfest 2012: a 48 hour programming contest featuring Erlang  - <AUTHOR> http://www.spawnfest.com Hi everybody,
It's time for the second Spawnfest (48 hour programming contest for Erlang, much like Rails Rumble and Node Knockout) and this year it is scheduled for 7th and 8th of July 2012.
Our committee is currently working on sponsors and prizes. We've secured some of the big names in the Erlang community as judges.
We're very excited about this opportunity to show the world what Erlang/OTP is capable of! The contest is not limiting entrants to web applications, in fact, we'll be having nominees in different categories.
You can register your team at http://spawnfest.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everybody,

It's time for the second Spawnfest (48 hour programming contest for Erlang, much like Rails Rumble and Node Knockout) and this year it is scheduled for 7th and 8th of July 2012.

Our committee is currently working on sponsors and prizes. We've secured some of the big names in the Erlang community as judges.

We're very excited about this opportunity to show the world what Erlang/OTP is capable of! The contest is not limiting entrants to web applications, in fact, we'll be having nominees in different categories.

You can register your team at <http://spawnfest.com/></comment>


Remove the promotion panel out of promotion. Inspired by "Why I quit Google" - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@apexkid1/remove-the-promotion-panel-out-of-promotion-1f991a7c47a0 <comment> doctor-x Great view would love to see some implementations of this. Though, i still believe it should be some kind of a mix of objective(good for scale) as well as subjective evaluation, because objective evaluation is as good as the questions posed and fails when the competition is stiff. e.g., people getting same marks.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The blog is written after reading the following post by Michael lynch [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16483241](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16483241)

The idea is to simplify promotion process in tech companies using Gamification to remove surprises and external influences.

</comment><comment><USER2> Programmers promote themselves by moving to a new job at a new company. It's that simple.

<comment><USER3> Not really. Most programmers hate interviewing for new jobs.

<comment><USER4> Its not the interviews they are hating. It's the unexpected troubles which are waiting: the new manager who will cause more troubles, the infrastructure blocking from doing actual work, the commuting troubles. Only if the current troubles do become overwhelming and no improvements are in sight and the jerks are getting power over the rationalists, the developer will move on.</comment></comment></comment>


Richard Stallman on the death of Steve Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://maxschireson.com/2011/10/08/richard-stallman-offensive-remarks-on-steve-jobs-death/

<comment><USER2> I love my Mac, my iPhone, and my iPod. I'm glad they exist, even if they're expensive. I'm glad free software exists too.</comment>