skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There are probably no simple solutions. But just in case, you havent already done this, just use a simple time logging tool and work in discrete sessions(20-40 minutes). (Eternity time logger is one good app, there are others). Dont worry about being precise (in terms of minutes high or low, or exact kind of task, over analysis isnt good). Instead aim for consistent use.

This allows you to work a certain number of rounds a day(instead of nebulous amount of productive time) and clarifies what is exactly happening instead on relying on internal psychological indicators of having done something or not.

Also, specifically for the ADHD part, the problem with wavering attention is that when one comes back, 'loading' the context again takes a lot of work. So write a note at the end of each session on what's done or maintain a simple task text file(again, it is easy to over organize here, so keep things as simple as possible).
100% this. Break down the tasks into smaller and smaller chunks, use an app like Todoist to track it. So create a project for each major task, and have all the todo's inside that project. You'll feel achievement as you complete each small task, and within no time you'll find you have completed the project, AKA, one big task.
You can work on your side project, or contribute to open source project(s) that you may use personally or at work.
You're lucky to have enough time to play WoW, but you can use that time wisely. Appreciate it and use it for your personal development to help you contribute back to the company!
>>but I have a feeling that somewhere there is a scientist whose professional ethics are a little less robust.

Butchers seem to have made peace with a few things. The same with their clients, lamb eaters. Let's be honest, at some point we cut corners; diabetes is the new epidemic. Most people, at least in the developed world, can stuff their faces with cheap (and poorer you are, more empty) calories.
I worked as an online freelancer for 6 years. I can relate to the story. Yes its scary and chalenging shift of career.
I finished my master and left the field. If you want to have a career in bioinformatics, there is no way you can get a good position without a PhD.
I realized that a PhD is not the best option for me at that time.

So i took a regular coding job.
Sometimes i miss the "research" part.
But i am still active in r/bioinformatics on reddit and read occasionally a paper from BioArxiv(https://www.biorxiv.org/)
How Do Blockchain Smart Contracts Work?
It’s good at home but not in public is what I meant.
A Latex template to PDF generation web service written in Rust
The point was made in the paper - since the Tesla was launched from Earth, its orbit has its closest approach to the Sun very close to the Earth's orbit, and this increases the chance of it being affected by Earth's gravity. This is because for part of its orbit, the Tesla will be effectively travelling along approximately the same path as Earth, just a bit faster. This means that it will approach Earth approximately one in every ten orbits. Hence the first interaction in 2091.

After a few interactions, the orbit becomes more funky, and interactions decrease in frequency.
I'm not your stranger, but your history made my day. I'm happy to hear that you are alive and kicking again.
Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8072730

and in 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10191540
I'd strongly object to calling OCaml an "inferior Haskell". OCaml has a much faster compiler, a great type system (sure, missing some of Haskell's more advanced type features, but adding modules/polymorphic variants), and it's strict.
> Typical app does not need to touch its window decoration, only some need.

What's "typical" though?
Not everyone is suited to the freelance requirements for self-management. Consider being part of a team or recruiting a business partner.
I have no real good recommendation (so I am thankful for all ideas in this thread), but I would not recommend Hangouts and Slack.

We use both in the company I work for and it is a pain in the ass to use. and the image quality isn't really that great.

But both are at least usable.

More important is imho that people know how to use the tools. Give people room to interrupt/ask questions. Make breaks in between your thought units a little bit longer. Because you won't have non-visual signals that someone wants to ask a question. And on the other hand: Give people the chance to bring their thoughts to an end. Don't interrupt premature.

Be more considerate and kind. Go out of your way to compensate for the non-visual signals of communications, that regularly help a lot in f2f situations.
The name for "just give us your code and we'll run it" has been PaaS for a while.
The decentralized element should be more than just a software concern. Regardless of decentralized / mutable state if the control of the state of the chain (forks etc) is a centralized concern by a small group then we're just admitting the conceptual model is bullshit and this is literally just a very mediocre technical implementation of stuff we already have.

You can't just throw out or dismiss the historical failures of the model because it doesn't fit the ongoing narrative. The DAO was a glimpse at how easy the theory is corrupted, whether it started for the right reasons or not.
Excepting those features which allow you to cull large chunks of code. Those are my favorite features, rare as they are.
A Proposal for a Universally Unique Identifier Library
I have worked remotely for three years. Here are my tips:

Slack is your best friend but if you chat for more than a minute straight about something technical call your collegue otherwise you will lose your time.

Written language is not spoken language. Sometimes misunderstandings can arise.

Do separate your work environment from your daily life. If your house is small, like mine, light off your computer during lunch otherwise you will find yourself reading some docs, checking some code, etc.

Video conferences are not phone calls. When my team need to stay focused everybody have appear.in open in the background.

Always dress like you will dress if working in your office.
I feel you man. I was a student at the swiss federal institute of technology (ETH Zürich). I was fine 2 years ago. Had a nice swiss girlfriend but my mind was obsessed with becoming a prestigious scientist.

I worried too much and lost her. It was one defining factor of my depression. You should give her a hug and tell her how happy she makes you ;)
you don't use `)` or any other object motion? You should (consider)! `:help object-motions`
What does your Side project do in a short sentence?
I'd consider whether you are relying on too many quick fix dopamine hits. Things like games, video, browsing the web, or whatever. These things can out-compete "work", since that usually takes more effort to get the same effect.
I am entirely capable of thinking in terms of distribution. It is people who suggest that small differences in biology would lead to large differences in outcomes that are incapable of that thinking and ignoring the large overlap between groups. Few people are protesting that marginal differences between sexes exist. It is just not relevant as a scientific explanation for gender distribution in e.g. CS.
> ... one of the reasons I don't like [LISP] too much for daily work, is how it encourages cleverness

I fully agree: nothing is as dumb as being too smart.

From a linguistic PoV LISP stole my heart as a lad and never really let go... I think it's much more consistent and reasoned than most programming languages, and it's wildly powerful. I can only imagine what 5+ years hacking a domain on a proper LISP machine would bring...

That said, I can't bring myself to use it in Enterprise projects because of the 'LISP curse'. While LISP got computing right, I think the type systems of the ML languages got industry right. They strike a nice balance between linguistic power, wild cleverness, and a brutal mandatory type system that means I rarely have to understand cleverness. As long as a function signature says it turns a 'Foo' into a 'Bar', I've got what I need.
I suspect it's partially an emotional response to ID cards - there's no current requirement to carry (or hold) ID, and the concept conjurers up clear images of Nazi Germany.

Regarding blinds, I doubt many people even think about it - you aren't doing anything private (or even interesting most of the time), so it just doesn't occur to you. It's also generally considered rude to stare into people's houses, so even if they can, there is a general presumption that people won't. It's quite possibly related to your last paragraph - there's no culture of shielding your day-to-day life because they has never been anything really to shield it from ("no need to hide" being subtly different to "nothing to hide" - even people with things they would rather not be public don't necessarily see the need to conceal them from the government).
If we insist on reporting by gender (that is questionable in itself) reporting must be truthful, otherwise we risk that these reports are not taken seriously.

I am sure women are better than men at a lot of things, and equally good at other things. What are men better at? We know men are better at some things than women, but currently nobody is willing/interested/daring to report on this.

Does it matter who is better? It seems yes, since lots of news are talking about how much better women are.

Come on, I am extremely positive about equality; if you are starting to antagonize people like me, something is going really wrong.
Nazi symphathizer is what a few of my friends think.

And the third of Americans that support him... are just idiots.

My friends and colleagues are more mellow than yours I guess.
Serverless: who’s on call now?
> i.e it cannot be counter-factually refuted, then it has to be handled as one possible explanation, however unlikely it is.

ergo, we must accuse all others of whichever crimes are not literally logical impossibilities.
> People seem to be drawn to creating a DSL for their problem set, and then programming in that.

ML languages strike a pretty nice balance here, IMO. Your DSL tend to be normal code with a funny operator or two, structured into happy little lists.
Effective Meetings
Ive been using goaccess (in static mode) for a while now. Its simple but i like it.
Exactly that. And don't let high price or fancy bling bling blind you.

We got some high end blue tooth speakers that are crap (but cost upward of 4.000€ for 4 pieces). I just asked Google for these things and found them to be Sennheiser TeamConnect Wireless. At least connecting to them with a MBPro when you also want to use AppleTV wireless just isn't a solution.

Never hat so much hassle with setting up conferencing. Give me a good landline for voice and a camera/Tv setup for image.
For me, the main thing that works is having a boss, someone that watches over my shoulder so to speak. I probably couldn't go self-employed / freelancer, I'd end up in your situation.
Does this depend on language? 20k lines of Perl is a different beast from 20k lines of Python, or 20k lines of verbose Java, I would expect. If not, does it suggest we should be aiming to use more expressive languages, that can get more done in less lines?
A Quick Tour Around Android Platforms #2: Android Wear
Greenland Shark, the Longest-Living Vertebrate on Earth
Daily distraction from work, :p. But at the same time, I learn something new - probably several somethings - every day; new technologies, expertises, etc. Not much I'd use in my day to day job, but it's enough for me to have a basic understanding of a broad range of subjects. Keeps me up to date, so to speak.
I wonder if he's simplifying when describing it, since the aside about no one eating the last cookie when there are only four is kind of beside the point. I can't find the original study. I definitely recall listening to an interview where the researcher mentioned having to add a fifth cookie, but of course I could be mistaken too.
Windows 95 had something similar, the ARD code.
> This community is hugely biased towards an american, transhumanist point of view.

I used to think this too, but after thinking about it a little more, I've come to the conclusion that the perception of bias towards a certain viewpoint in any thread is colored by the day of week (some old-timers frequent on weekends), the time of day (US lunch breaks and close of business), and the members who are drawn to the topics that you are interested in.

In other words, my perception of the "prevailing" bias tends to fluctuate with the time of day (I don't have a fixed schedule for visiting HN) or topics I currently have open.

Sometimes, out of curiosity, I click on a random thread (typically high comments/upvotes) with a title that I would ordinarily have not clicked on, just to get a sense of what the community is yapping about :).
Rands is one of my favorite writers on development.

http://randsinrepose.com/archives/a-hard-thing-is-done-by-fi... this article is pretty good when it comes to forgiving yourself for procrastination in terms of starting something.

In terms of finishing, for me that is a question of self-image. I am someone who completes things. I build my reputation on delivering things on time and with attention to detail throughout the project. Others know they can rely on me to do that, so they will not try to micromanage me or look over my shoulder, because they can rely on me delivering the way I always do. That image is important to me, so I will go to great lengths to keep it.

People think I am good at attention to detail (even though I have no natural propensity for it at all, outside an obsessive need to understand how things work) and they rely on me to be that person in the business environment, so I have an unwritten social contract to fulfill, and keeping that is important to me, even if the actual task I need to do to keep it is not very engaging.

That's all there's to it. Start, and finish what you started. I don't tie any kind of rewards or punishment to the process. I'll procrastinate a bit before I start, but that is part of figuring out what the thing you're starting is, and I will finish (on or before time) because others are relying on me to finish.
If you're a freelancer, find a co-working space, as it really helps to have people around you. And I suggest you should read "Living Forward" by Michael Hyatt. It helps you to structure your life/mind. Have fun! :)
I suffer the same as you, but at a younger age.

I have also been wondering if I suffer from ADHD too. Even at university I really struggled to sit there and do one thing for an extended period. I stopped going to lectures because I couldn't handle sitting in the lecture theater for an hour, I could never do homework either.

The only work that I've ever really managed to focus on and stick at for hours is physical work, like construction work or hospitality.

Like others have suggested, exercise does seem to mitigate my problem somewhat. I've found that going to the gym at lunch really helps. Don't just go solo to the gym though, or you'll just procrastinate at the gym, you need to join a group class.
And if someone flies their own ship and catches it, what is Earth going to do about it, exactly?
This webserver won't mess up with your client-side router, ideal for SPA
I don't know exactly what your "success" or "failure" looks like to you, but I will say that working in an unstructured environment (which is what you normally do when freelancing) is super hard. I'm willing to bet that if you were to get a 9-5 job you'd discover that you're actually outperforming most other people -- because the 8 years of experience you have pushing yourself.

Being "self-driven" is both a talent and a skill. Some people are naturally good at it, but everybody can get better with practice. It sounds like you have been working hard at it! I spent 5 years teaching ESL at a high school and in that time read many, many papers on motivation. One of the things I discovered is that it's still really an open question how it works. I can tell you from my own experience, though, that circumstances can change your motivations completely. That probably sounds obvious, but it works in subtle ways. Working in an office, not working in an office, having a partner (both social and work versions), etc, etc, can change things dramatically. It's not just about finding a technique to concentrate.

What I will say is that freelancing is playing on hard mode, so it doesn't surprise me that you find it hard. That may or may not have any relevance to your ultimate questions, unfortunately. If I were to bet, making your job easier will make you more successful at this point in time (though you may want to dial it up again at a later point).
You should come to work in Europe/the Uk then. Being a Christian/religious is most definitely to be the odd one out and invite "comments".
In some ultra-low power distance societies, places like Sweden, the idea that anyone, no matter how important, is ever entitled to an assistant or secretary is almost anathema.

Imagine if von Neumann had been required to do all of that in addition to making his own airline and hotel reservations, as is the case for many university professors these days.
Where can you buy best ADHD pills?
Xanax is best medication for ADHD or ADD. sometime is hard to buy Xanax from near medical stores. then you can buy Xanax online from health pharmacy.
Phone traffic on the whole has peaked recently, at least in western countries. If websites caused more calls, this should not have happened.
You should like typical ADHD to me. I had the same issues and now am doing great with major changes to my lifestyle!
>Only a third, last I checked, is in the US

Oh, that's interesting, I would have thought 2/3 or more. I'd be fascinated to see a breakdown by country; is there one online somewhere? [looks] Ah, there was one in 2011. Maybe I could do one of those polls 'What country do you live in', doesn't seem to be a recent one.

ps I didnt stay long at all on Quora or the StackExchanges, from the amazingly inept modding. Here it's awesome, inspiring even. Thank you!
For me personally there is a huge gap in "working for others" and "working for myself", with freelance work falling in the latter category. I do well in an office environment where I have influence in setting my own tasks, but having others rely on me finishing my things and meeting deadlines. Of course it helps that I find my work interesting.

When working on my own projects in my free time, motivation comes in bursts - I can have two evenings where I can hardly keep myself from working, and entire weeks where I cannot seem to get started or do anything constructive - my mind wanders off and I start procrastinating instead. I am fortunate enough that it does not matter financially to me what I complete in my spare time, but it is clear that waiting for motivation to hit me is not a viable strategy (for anyone).

First off, I find that starting is the hardest part. Once I sit in front of the code, opened and have written the first words, I can keep going for at least a couple of hours. So make sure you always start a task, even if it means dragging yourself in front of the computer.

Second, find a way to motivate yourself. For me, it is communicating clearly what my deadlines are to the people depending on it - this means I commit myself to finishing it publicly. At the same time, make sure you do not say "This project will finish in 3 weeks", but break it into chunks - "In two days, I'll have a prototype of the admin module, where you can test. Friday I expect to have all the functionality working, implementing your feedback along the way. Wednesday next week we'll have a meeting to discuss changes to module Y", etc.

There's no silver bullet, and I certainly do not envy this part of being a freelance developer, but it is possible. And remember, everyone struggles with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co_DNpTMKXk
Find yourself any activity depend on your preference (and budget) that going to make you physically exhausted. It's can be any sport or you can travel to warm / cold country of your preference for swimming / skiing. When you're physically exhausted your brain won't be so busy with your work problems.

If you actually very busy person with limited time another good option is to pick some audio book or podcast that you can listen in between your usual routine. Once you start listening something daily it's will become easier for you to switch your brain between different activities more easily. It's could be anything from fiction to language course and some of it could even be useful for your career in case you need justification for yourself.
1 - HTML was meant for static content and e-commerce never was about static content. Wow, who could have thought about this?

2 - Humans like human conversation. Oh, the biggest surprise!

Jeez, I learnt two things today!
Depending on the type of work, I find 1-2 days a week working from home to be optimal. It provides good concentration time, but I don't think I could ever consider fully-remote work, it's just too lonely. If you're not good at seeking out social interaction when you're already feeling depressed (like me), it sounds like it just wouldn't be compatible at all.
Customer retention for startups
These days you can also find kubernetes scripts that handle the Kafka installation, setup, routing, etc.

That just leaves the "simple work" of administering and tuning which, as you pointed out, is competence that's steadily growing in the industry.
As somebody who has suffered basically the exact same thing, one book that has immensely helped is:
https://www.amazon.com/Self-Directed-Behavior-Self-Modificat...

Essentially I found that I could tackle any task, but on the first flash of some other more exciting idea, feeling or sensation, I would drift off.

The book boils doing to finding your own Antecedents that Lead to Particular Behaviors that you want to change.
A Clojure learning journey
I mean many people start bodegas, restaurants, etc. I imagine that's more akin to 19th century entrepreneurship and still is by far the most prevalent form of entrepreneurship today (only like 1.3% of businesses are created in the Bay area and 1.1% of the population lives there).
It's as though Earth were a gas giant, but with the outer layers of hydrogen and helium blown away. The magnetosphere is closer in magnitude to Uranus's or Neptune's than Venus's or Mars's. We think it's why we still have water.
In my late 20s I saw a dramatic improvement in my ability to ship products I wanted to build, through aggressive simplification and feature stripping. It made all the difference.

There were other smaller ingredients, such as just getting better over time thanks to experience. Mostly though, radical simplification was the biggest improvement. I found that I would begin a new personal project, feature bloat would start right from the initial design documents, then I'd drown in the effort necessary to build it all. As I burned time, working away at attempting to finish the bloated monster, I'd gradually lose the motivation necessary to get to the finish line of a launch. So I ended up building an immense amount of stuff that I never shipped. Half or more of my personal projects would end up that way.

I believe the approach of radical simplification has the added benefit of producing superior products for the end user, as well. These days I practically enjoy it when I find feature bloat that I can throw out the window. It becomes: how much bullshit can I do away with, which accelerates my core goal to get to launch; I can get closer to the finish line, while doing less work, and that simply feels great on most any serious project.

You have to be ruthless about removing unnecessary complexity (most complexity will prove to be unnecessary, and worse, harmful). So many things in life are going to be commonly working against you in trying to build something, there's a very high value in not adding to that.