skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
How much spare time do you have, what are your living conditions like, your energy levels, hours of sleep, computer speed, monitor size, task management approach?

I ask because you need to:

A. build an environment conducive to producing.

B. practice discipline.

Like you, I had some half-baked blogs and projects that were doomed for failure. After way too much wasted time it was obvious that I wasn't living a lifestyle congruent with my goals. No successful person ever prioritized Facebook over their project. I was lying to myself and had to snap out of it.

So I began applying a version of the Broken windows theory* - which argues that if you prevent small crimes it discourages large crimes - to my life. (In this case the smaller crimes were procrastination and the larger crime was not getting my shit together like I know I ought to).

The rules were simple:

1. Everything I did had to align with my goal to produce. I got a faster laptop, dual screens (this makes a difference, trust me), began sleeping well and eating well, rationed consuming to 2 hours a day, stopped drinking (hangovers are dumb...for now at least).

2. Apply discipline everywhere. I made my bed first thing each morning, the apartment was always spotless, I worked out every day. Even began doing stuff like not using auto-correct on Chrome - fight your lazy brain and spell the word correctly dammit. The idea was to practice discipline as much as possible so as to train it like a muscle.

End result: I learned how to code, built a product, quit my job and am now at 500 customers.

So you can do it. It's just going to cost you - dates, meetups with friends, a slight drop in Facebook-notification-induced-dopamine. But, I assure you, the joy from creating something that people enjoy eclipses all of that.

This approach is geared more for an all in lifestyle change. If you just want to be a better blogger, even a fraction of the above will do.

Worse than the fear of commitment is the tinge of regret. Took almost a decade to figure that one out.

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory
Realize that money is the be-all and end-all your existence. But it worked for me, so it probably won't work for someone else. Also realize that nobody knows what they're talking about.
Not at all. I'm not logged in to my Google account at my day job and I still got relevant search results when I arrived. DDG wouldn't after months of use at home.
I think that's sort of the point, instead of having aliases, this is a low-effort way to have even people who prefer to use GUI clients (like me) to have an easy-to-use/install unified command line workflow. I'm very tempted.
This might be better done in a Password Manager. Whenever you register, make a record of the address you've used in your Password Manager, along with your password. Because I've also moved around quite a bit and have some older addresses under certain accounts, I make a note of this so that I can accurately say what my address is if I'm calling customer service, etc. Of course, I try to update all of my addresses, but sometimes I either forget to or cannot update my address.
Since I find these book recommended on HN a lot, I guess it's my turn to share them as well.

The War of Art [1] and Do the Work [2] both are excellent books about making things and why it's hard. I found them motivating not only because of the solutions in the books but also just because someone describing the problems I have with creating, so clearly, is helpful to read. It's nice knowing you're not a crazy person and that these are problems a lot of people go through. They're also very short and easy to read. So give them a shot.

[1] http://www.stevenpressfield.com/the-war-of-art/

[2] http://www.stevenpressfield.com/do-the-work/
> What are the revolutionary things that are starting right now that will be obvious in retrospect?

- The taxing of robotic / AI systems, to offset the losses in tax revenue from human labor. Regardless of whether I agree with it, it's guaranteed to happen. It'll dramatically reshape taxation.

- CRISPR (gene editing broadly). There won't be a major pharma/biotech company on earth that isn't working with it, within 10-15 years. We'll be able to cure dozens of major and minor diseases in a few decades using it. The public mostly has no idea what's coming nor how fast. The mainstream media has only just begun to cover it from time to time. There will hardly be a person in the developed world that doesn't utilize gene editing for something in their lifetime, within a generation (whether for improvement or therapy). This century we'll permanently strip dozens of diseases & serious medical problems from the human genome, it'll be akin to what vaccines have accomplished. CRISPR will also solve the antibiotic resistance problem (the first headlines on that have finally begun to show up, in a few years it'll be widely agreed with).

- Gene software. There will be a $100+ billion company created in the genetics space around software. AI + personal gene technology is interesting 15-20 years out. Persistent micro regulation of the genome through editing + AI guide. Instead of responding with gene altering treatment after disease has well set in, we'll quickly move to the next logical level which will be frequent early course correction & disruption. It'll make the most sense to have AI doing this for us on a productivity / cost effective level. Improvement (not therapy due to disease) will also obviously be a major segment. It'll take a while (50-70 years?), but eventually our bodies will be treated more like genetic software platforms; we'll likely deploy into ourselves some kind of human genome operating system, that will have updates & patches as improvements come along.

- Bio-reactors, growing organs, etc. Vast progress has been made here and it's moving very fast. 20-30 years out we'll have the ability to grow most organs for routine implant. Today it's a very, very (barely existent) small niche segment vs the traditional transplant market. This is interesting as well in line with CRISPR:

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603857/crispr-may-speed-p...

- The scale of the worlds that will be built in VR and the demands that will place on all computing resources. It's not something that is being widely considered right now, even on HN you'll routinely run into high skepticism about the scale of what's coming. Whatever scale you think it'll be at in 20 years, multiply that by 100x, you'll probably still be undershooting.
Eat the world while you still can, fool.
tmux is pretty handy for keeping a long-running session open on a server for development work.
1Password (or other password managers)
There is no confirm release date as per this issue [1].

[1]. https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/pull/17021
Nothing in this comment to justify it being downvoted.
Isn't it more likely that the admin is using the post to ferret out compromised reddit accounts in an upvote network?
I am like that too. I need to push myself towards creation every single day, otherwise I slip into the consumption trap (still happens once in a while).

This is what helps me:

- Think backwards. How many years do you have left? How many days? Time is running, we only get to live once

- Stop consuming in the morning. Instead of checking emails, news etc on your smartphone, I get up and write down all the things I want to do the day. Then I start working on the top items

- Enjoy traction. Once you release something you'll get hooked on the data. How many people like my post? What's the feedback I receive. When I see that there is traction, I get excited and I enjoy interacting with the community

Btw: You are already contributing :) Look at the feedback here.
As an extremely dedicated procrastinator, the most insightful idea I have found regarding this topic is something called "The Procrastination Doom Loop"[1]

I'd also highly recommend a book called "The War of Art"[2] which was written by a procrastinator who eventually made good.

I'm still struggling with procrastination, but my personal feeling is that the key is probably to create a routine where you just execute your productive work during a set block of time everyday, much like a job. This is just so you don't have to decide whether or not to do the work "now" which will break the procrastination doom loop. Good luck!

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/08/the-pro...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/War-Art-Through-Creative-Battles/dp/1...
I live and breathe LoseIt! (http://www.loseit.com)

I've been logging my caloric intake since 2009. Logging my food keeps me accountable for what I eat and forces me not to eat so mindlessly and without knowing what I put into my body. While I don't usually go back 3 months from now to figure out what I ate or whatever, in the long run, I am able to use the long-term data to understand my eating habits vs. my weight and BMI.
The Lost Art of Denotational Semantics
Seems exciting, but popularizing a new file system is extremely hard.
Well sort of but scale is different, yeah?
"Baby" does not count because it's not German, and it can be traced back directly to imported pop culture (Movies). You are right about "Mädels", it's not exactly the same as "girl" though (rather girly) - you would never say "Mädchenabend", that's cringy.
Hetzner Private Cloud
All the frameworks, languages, libraries, datasets, courses, papers, videos, groups and tools (have I missed any?) are here for us to combine and configure however we like. We might be overwhelmed by their volume and think that we have nothing original to add, but we can still remain creative in how we combine and mix them. All this content is like lego pieces, we can have lots of fun putting them together in new ways. That's why they shouldn't be a barrier, but an ingredient to creativity. The trick is to seek what you enjoy, then creative energy builds up.
I think staffing costs would make this difficult if it's even possible.

How many staff run a modern airline on a cross-Atlantic trip, maybe 10?

With an 8 hour trip time, that's 80 hours of staff time for about 300 passengers. Or about 1/4 hour per passenger.

The Hindenburg had 61 staff and a 60 hour journey for around 3600 hours of staff time for 36 passengers. Or about 100 hours per passenger.

400x staffing costs is a yawning gap and it seems like you couldn't bridge it without selling an entirely different service. Which is too bad because it sounds awesome!
How to approach building globally scalable infrastructure for web app?
> Look at how partisan WikiLeaks is - look at the countries that it doesn't publish information on, look at the candidates it doesn't try to discredit.

Before we get carried away by the attitude: "Johnny does it too...", why don't we focus on the information that has been published. The crimes that have been exposed by Wikileaks ?
From a pragmatic point of view , it would be stupid of Wikileaks operatives or anyone in their position to antagonize all sides. Where would Snowden be today if he did not have the Russians to help save his life?
In any case, as I have stated, focus on the crimes laid bare before us now. They can always leak more later.

>Listen to others who were a key part of Wikileaks talk about Assange's behaviour towards others, , look at the comments that his sexual behaviour was going to get him into trouble long before this case blew up.

His sexual behavior is irrelevant to the expose.
Having been a similar situation myself my advice for you would be to first of all stop blaming yourself for being lazy, or not doing enough. I don't know if you are but it's easy to fall into that trap.

My most unproductive period was when I was trying to do too much, all sorts of things, with insane deadlines. It really had an opposite effect on me wherein I started procrastinating a lot and then felt guilty for wasting another day. Weird part was that I wasn't even having fun with my time. It was just a weird state where I was working without actually accomplishing anything.

Anyway, I got my mojo back when I just said fuck it and said goodbye to those imaginary deadlines and started doing the so called time wasters like watching Netflix, reddit, hn, etc 100% guilt free. Instantly without the pressure and guilt, the quality of work and more importantly stuff started getting done again. It may be a unique case but try it for a few days. Maybe it'll work for you too!
DOM interactions are a future feature, I'll update asm-dom to pure WASM without JS when they'll be supported!
I schedule out my time.

For instance, Wednesday and Friday are dedicated to nothing but writing blog posts. I tend to spend half the time researching and the other half writing.

By the time Wednesday rolls along, I'm pretty eager to start writing. I usually keep a buffer of a month's worth of posts.

Then the rest of my time is spent producing content of other types (courses, etc.) and consulting.

Luckily I don't use FB, IG and barely use Twitter. HN and Youtube still soak up a pretty decent amount of time, but I use various browser extensions and other tactics to keep myself in check. In fact, I blogged about that[0] a few months ago and this combo works better than anything I've ever tried.

[0]: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-overcome-procrastinati...
What you're seeing and describing is endemic to the entire field of programming. You will encounter it at every level. Frameworks keep being invented left and right which address solved problems, or solve non-existing ones. Meaningless busywork. This will never stop: it is human.

Don't fight it: embrace it. Navigating this wasteland is part of your job. A keen eye for separating wheat from chaff is a valuable asset.

Learning to code is only step 1 in learning to program. Learning how to choose your tools, and what to ignore, is just as important.
Design babies. I think we're no more than 20 years away from that becoming a rather mainstream thing to do. It will start off with people wanting to eliminate genetic diseases and other potential health problems from their babies before they are born. But I'm sure the the Paris Hiltons of the world will want their babies to "look perfect" too and have other enhancements. And eventually that will probably become more mainstream, too.

Before then I think we'll also all but have solved cancer through immunotherapy and gene editing, but it will probably still be out of reach for most people who won't be able to afford the drugs (especially in countries without a single-payer or nationalized healthcare system).

Solar and wind power will produce at least 70% of the world's electricity needs in 20 years. Probably close to 95% of the new cars sold in the market will be EVs by then. There may still be 20-30% ICE cars on the road by then, depending how aggressive governments decide to be about it.

I think we'll have solved both fusion power (but not yet deployed at scale) and have quite powerful quantum computers in 20 years. I don't know where "AI" will be in 20 years, but our current notions of AI will probably be rather quaint.
If you sign up for Credit Karma, they automatically do it for you ;)

When I purchased my house and signed with a mortgage company, they did ask me to list all of my addresses that I had ever lived at.. and asked me why I lived at so many places.
Personal preference. I prefer to get the local master up to date first. A more-sophisticated alias would/could verify that the local master is buildable, testable, etc. before doing the rebase.

What I like most about using aliases for topic branches (a.k.a. feature branches) is that any team can define its preferred workflow and encapsulate it.
Schedule for the upcoming AlphaGo matches
I sold a ukulele to a friend of mine for ~10btc back in 2010. I have sold most of it probably getting awarded "worst citizen" by the Swedish IRS.

Best affair I ever done was to lose those coins until I stumbled upon them in 2015.
The Moral Importance of Understanding Consciousness
> Maybe in future journalists will re-invent themselves as purveyors of pure factual reporting

If you think this was ever the case, rose colored glasses are in effect.
I think most people be the primarily to Corbyn's viewpoints on terror (not foreign policy, as we have discussed, most of these groups are not governments), and polling bears this out.

This speaks volumes about his character, and I think to the extent his party would allow him he'd wreck incentive to work, yes. Obviously Corbyn's opponents do note this policies, which are based us an unfounded utopia where everyone can work for the NHS, nationalising rail won't make it as shit as the last the it was nationalised, and police officers cost GBP 7.50 a year.
>One out of three of them, yes. That's what happened in the Quantas flight. Would Direct Law still work under those conditions?

Yes, of course. I'm not sure what you're thinking is the alternative. If the aircraft stopped being controllable even under Direct Law when one of the flight control computers failed, then there wouldn't be any redundancy.

>Should that have happened in the Quantas flight described in the article?

No, because none of the flight control computers crashed. The issue was caused by bad sensor data.

>Hm. If that's true then the obvious thing for the pilots to do would have been to go into Direct Law mode, but I don't see that mentioned in the article.

It is not what they are trained to do, and probably isn't really a sensible response. Flying the aircraft without any protections isn't particularly safe either.
Apex Ping: Uptime Monitoring Service by TJ Holowaychuk
"Team Foundation Server" (Microsoft's version control server) is what goes through my mind... poor choice of naming...
That board would have fitted fine in the old SMT pick and Place machine and solder reflow oven I used to use in around 1998 - 2004.

I think the cost is driven by this being a one off project. That makes one off costs (programming the pick and place machine; profiling the board in the oven; making solder stencil screens; PCB artwork etc) more expensive. I know the costs of these have dropped considerably since I was doing this stuff (2000), but they still add up.

It also means that you don't get economies of scale when buying components. It's usually cheaper to just buy reels of 5000 components than to buy a couple of hundred. (And it makes handling them much easier if you're using a machine to place them!!)
The Self-Medicating Animal
That's fast! Thanks PyCon 2017 organizers!
Ask HN: What are the Madrid and Barcelona tech scenes like?
Hola HN!

I'm a software developer considering moving to Spain for non-career-related reasons. That said, the job opportunities there are a huge factor in whether I'll actually go.

I've narrowed down to Madrid and Barcelona as the two best options, at least regarding jobs. So I'm asking for the opinions and advice of HNers who have lived & worked in both those cities:

What shape is the tech sector in?
What types of work are available?
What do salaries look like, vs London/Berlin/Paris levels?
How limiting is it to not be fluent enough in Spanish for use at work, beyond chit-chat?
Is contracting/freelancing possible, without Spanish fluency?
Is there is an obvious leader between the two cities, tech-scene wise?
Are there any unintuitive factors to consider?

---

A bit of personal context, if it helps the advice to be a bit more concrete:

* I'd be going for senior developer roles. Most likely at small-mid size companies. Larger ones possibly, for the right job.

* My past jobs have been in the capital cities of Europe's strongest economies. I'm aware that moving to Madrid or Barcelona will likely involve a pay cut in absolute terms. But this is a trade off I'm more than happy to make.

* I'm currently functional in Spanish but I have a long way to go until fluency. That's one of my goals in moving to Spain. So I'm not put off by the language barrier for day to day life. It would be more of a near term concern if non fluency is severely career limiting, for example if it becomes a problem once you are anywhere above entry level positions, as is the case in some countries.
Misleading title. Boeing doesn't make aircraft engines. This is a GE Aviation design.

Which happens to first see service in the Boeing 777X, but there's no reason to assume it couldn't go into other airframes or even other manufacturer's aircraft.

To attribute it to Boeing like that makes no rational sense. More information on GE's site:

https://www.geaviation.com/commercial/engines/ge9x-commercia...
No I mean the 'majority' as in the 51.9% who voted Leave, due to the poor turnout, corresponds to about 1/3 of the electorate.
PointerKit: a proof of concept framework to use a mouse on iOS
I played through all civ's. This is probably a game that ate most of my gaming time. And i think it's because of the same thing as for you, that you are building a most efficient system for your goal. Recently i discovered "Factorio" and i think it will take over the civ for me. And steel even more of my time :(

Edit: be warned, it's really addictive...
I wonder would it be possible to use it somehow with Linux (in kernel space, not with fuse, because fuse has work slower because of necessary context switches from kernel to user space). I mean it is interesting can a wrapper kernel module be written for interfacing with Rust code, or there are some obstacles that would prevent from doing it efficiently.
Slick stuff.

But can you use this in practice and not know what git is doing? Aka is this really not a leaky abstraction?

I ask sincerely; having known git for years I can't objectively answer this.
That's an interesting and scary idea, but keep in mind that a lot has happened since WWII. Back then industrial-mechanical cryptography was seen as this magic wand that made all communications completely inscrutable. Then the Polish and British and others went to such crazy lengths building brute-forcing machines, etc, to actually break these ciphers, and since then the idea of an infallible crypto system is out of style.

So I think the strategy is much different and much more durable now. The military designs ciphers to be resistant to theoretical future quantum computer architectures. They fund research every year to prove various properties of crypto systems. And I'll bet there are lots of fallbacks for any critical infrastructure.
Corn-Tracking Robot May Save Us from Starving in the Future
Your alternate theory is likely to be the correct one. As a general rule with very few exceptions, read espionage tales published in the popular press for entertainment not accurate information. The first rule of spying is : EVERYBODY. LIES.
Good luck developing something better and more stable than zfs...
I'd remove reference to millions to make the article less clickbaity. Otherwise, good use of flamegraphs.
Do film directors delete their old films?
Musicians delete their old music?
Photographers delete their old photos?
Why would you delete your old code?
A sense of curiosity