skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Your anecdote is hilarious. But so true!

We aren't at peak mindfulness yet:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=mindfuln...

However I suspect that the early adopters have moved on and the people preaching mindfulness are not the same sort of people as those that have moved on from it. We are in 'Eternal September' and 'Who ruined Burning Man' territory.

Those that are actually 'mindful' and can 'do it' would probably never think they were being 'mindful', would not be going to the classes or even doing the formal meditation. Instead of plucking a raisin and focusing on how it fits in their navel they are more likely to be walking the dog with smile for friends they see en-route.

It is the same with Buddhism. Those that are first to claim to be in to it are highly unlikely to be in an way Buddhist. Their neighbour who happens to do a few things for a few people and help others out financially is far more likely to make the grade. You don't brag about being Buddhist, it is not how it works. But 'Buddhists' do.

It is like those people that insist on being called a grand title that they haven't necessarily earned. If 'a lady' insists on being referred to as 'a lady' then she probably isn't. Mindfulness is one of those things where 'mindful' people probably almost certainly aren't. The universe works this way.

A thing to watch for is that the topic of 'mindfulness' can be discussed ad-nauseum as per creationism. Anyone who hates it is going to be somewhat less than mindful about those deep in the cult. Equally those caught up by the fad are going to be going deeply un-mindful when it comes to chastising those that call the whole thing bogus.

The catch to this is that there is a bigger picture. Right now we don't have a lot of useful political involvement in the West, for instance the new UK leader was selected by 0.1% of the population, with them being very much drawn from the 1%. So we have these fairly insane politicians running the show whilst the mindful crew are telling people to do things with raisins. Exactly as per your anecdote.

The creationism idea was a deliberate 'wedge strategy' to get people talking about something silly whilst funding for serious science is whittled away. Who knows, but maybe some Heritage Foundation is behind 'mindfulness' with it being Wedge Strategy for containing dissent.

I think the analogy of the camera phone is useful for understanding these things. Cameras can default to point to the outside world or to point the other way, at the self. If you have the camera pointing at the self rather than the world then you aren't going to see the world but the world might see (and like) you. We are culturally okay with people who only post pictures of themselves, we idolise them as rock stars.

There is also a low barrier to entry when it comes to 'mindfulness'. Compared to learing something real - e.g. playing a musical instrument, speaking a foreign language, writing code in object oriented modules, being good at a sport, 'mindfulness' is pretty easy. You can't pretend to be fastest doing the local sport run, you have got to actually do it. Mindfulness is not something objective like that.
I think snacking in general is problematic for people.
Previous discussion of XNU/Secure Boot on Lightning video adapters (2013) : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5307781 .

This thread has some new information and maybe people will start playing with these more eventually.
Considerable loss in volume, but also in value?

Unlike Reddit or HN, Facebook is the worse social network for having any kind of meaningful conversation. The UI is terrible once you get past 1st level replies.
A similar story at vaguelyinteresting:
https://www.vaguelyinteresting.co.uk/the-great-romford-and-h...

Converging domain name and topics?
How are they anything but "least corrupt"? History is a long list of vested interests.
But if you don’t have Buddhist beliefs then there is no problem.
It’s 100% true. At this point in my tech career, I could start a company, but how am I going to support myself while that company is getting off the ground? I’ve worked for startups most of my career and all the founders are the same: rich and/or came from Stanford or MIT. Most have been mediocre at tech at best (that’s why they hire me) and have been poor business people and poor managers.

There’s nothing special about them except they have all come from money. Not a single one was the bootstrap rags to riches story. I know those are out there but don’t let them fool you: at least in the Bay Area tech startups (if you want to be a founder) is a rich man’s game. This is based on my experience working for about 10 startups over about 15 years.
Or you live outside the Silicon Valley bubble.
They're following a long line starting with Schumpeter (of "creative destruction" fame).

The reason for this distinction is that if you only divide the population into other-employed and self-employed, they have similar profiles in almost every way, except that the self-employed earn less. That doesn't square with the theory that entrepreneurs are somehow different from the general population -- smarter, more charming, whatever it might be.

They use data to show that the population of unincorporated and incorporated businesses closely tracks two groups in the underlying population of job titles, those which are more manual and those which are less. They also note that business types rarely change, so what you start with is usually what you wind up with.

When you make that distinction, the paradox of entrepreneurship disappears. The populations have distinct characteristics.

If you want entrepreneurs to include folks with small businesses (fine by me, regular small business is much harder than being handed millions of dollars by a VC) then the conflict with Schumpeter's notion reappears. If you go with the narrower definition, this paper has useful contributions.

An argument over the exact scope of "entrepreneur" as a word doesn't really change the shape of the data.
The difference is that unlike nuclear weapons you won't get broad majority support that this technology shouldn't be widely adopted.

When genetic therapies allow underperforming kids at schools to increase their test scores, or small kids to grow taller and play basketball with their peers, you'll have parents rioting to get those therapies for their kids.

It's not even in the same ballpark as chemical weapons. Everyone can agree chemical weapons are bad. Nobody is protesting in the street demanding their legalization. People who can benefit from gene therapy will be highly motivated and politically active.

Speaking only for myself, if you want to leave your kids behind that's fine but I'll pay every penny I have for them to have every advantage possible.
Yup. Even if the "blue app" is dying, brushing off Instagram and WhatsApp because they are less monetized is dumb. It's exactly because they are less monetized - but FB is extremely experienced in monetizing attention - that they are major levers left to pull from a revenue perspective.

I think the most exciting test for FB is whether it succeeds in monetizing WA and IG without killing engagement. I don't know if there is a comparable story of a mature network absorbing other mature networks (please share examples), but if they succeed it is evidence of a way to keep rolling their data and revenue advantage over from product to product - so who even cares about the blue app.
I'm not asking about prevention or why voter ID makes sense in general; I'm asking how it enables measurement of voter fraud. We already have a record of everyone who voted and their address and identifying information such as driver's license number or social security number. What additional information does an ID provide?
I've been skirting around the idea of practicing mindfulness, but there's something that bothers me about aeon and "magazines" like it.

The articles always seem to try to be "contrarian" or "unique" for the sake of being different - "I've got something to tell you that you don't know and you haven't thought about".

I get that it's pretty much the point of aeon, but at some point it just gets annoying. It's almost like any kind of insight into something is way down the totem pole, below some kind of "shock, contrarian, unique" factor.
After ~10 years[1] you will hopefully have developed a reasonable skill set and general competency as a programmer. Whether or not it is still interesting is entirely up to you. Assuming you've found an area of specialty in the industry... congrats and condolences: you've likely also found your rut. If you're looking for the tech industry and whatever current wave of tools/languages are popular to feed your interest, I think you will find that increasingly unsatisfying as the years go by.

The trick to keeping it interesting is to self-motivate and push yourself into areas that you find interesting/challenging which will often not be the same thing people are willing to pay you for directly in the short term. But it will definitely increase your odds of having skills that pay dividends down the road. For example, if you were into mobile development prior to 2008[2] you could pretty much write your own ticket for a few years. Similar situation more recently with ML etc. etc. all the way back to the beginning of the microcomputer era. Ignore the tech industry's flavor of the month unless it interests you and/or someone pays you to care about it. Instead, pay attention to the larger concepts and trends.

[1] Give or take depending on the individual and the languages/tools they've been exposed to. This also assumes that one doesn't spend the 10 years repeatedly learning the same lessons using languages built on identical paradigms.

[2] This was entirely possible as consumer mobile devices in various forms existed at least back to the early 90's.
Commerce is good and barriers to it should be minimal. Libraries are community property, paid for by tax payers. If you are going to borrow community property it is not a small thing.

Almost anyone can walk into a library, pick up a book, and read it there. So there is still relatively good access to information. It is the borrowing part that creates the red tape.

Even if it is simpler to create a company than get a library card, I guarantee as soon as that company tries to borrow money there will be plenty of paperwork :-)
Remember that the original comment was pointing out the extremely vacuous nature of the article, and the confusion is as to why it has been upvoted so much. I wouldn’t call this article a demonstration of the HN community being “in tune”
> At this point in my tech career, I could start a company, but how am I going to support myself while that company is getting off the ground?

You're a developer working at Bay Area tech companies? Move somewhere cheaper (or don't!) and take contract jobs. Set your own schedule, work 15 or 20 hours a week, and you'll be able to afford rent, even in expensive SF. Spend your free time starting your company.

Alternatively, save up your money and take a year or two off.

Source: I've successfully taken both approaches.
I suspect its not, but it would be nice if it did go.
My great-aunt borrowed money from a bank to start her own beauty salon. In the 1920s.

Of course, she also had a reputation for ignoring what other people said she couldn't do, and hugely enjoyed her life. I wish I'd met her.
How do you like living in Sapporo? I loved my time there through there but found it really hard to find anyone else doing tech. I even resorted to walking around the CS building at Hokkaido University just to see what was going on.

Hoping to come back to Niseko this coming season if you want to meet up!
I wonder if someday laws will be based on a formal moral foundation instead of making things illegal just because 80% of people don't like those things.

I think hacking is one of those things that are illegal because people don't like them. Ultimately, hacking is just sending messages through a wire. Objectively speaking, it isn't much different from hitting the like button on a Youtube video. Formally speaking, all messages sent over the Internet are numbers, so "anti-hacking laws" are essentially laws that make some arbitrary and undisclosed set of numbers illegal to send.
Milk can really spike your blood sugar levels as well, so I would be careful. Go for the whole fat type of milk rather than the skim milk or whatever.
I dealt with a lot of high traffic live streaming video on Facebook for several years. We saw interaction rates decline almost 20x in a 3 year period but views kept increasing. Things just didn't add up when the dust settled and we'd look at the stats.

It wouldn't be the least bit surprised if every stat FB has fed me was blown extremely out of proportion.

I'd say about half my friends in their late 20s to their mid-late 30s have deleted their Facebook. A majority of the other half of people I know have deleted it off their phones. A majority of those are highly educated professionals with a like-minded social circle in the Bay Area. None of which are in the tech industry though.

My parents and their friends seem to use it regularly still, mostly cause it was such a useful communication tool for a network they lost contact with. Replaces an address book for them.

IG seems to be saturating a majority of phone screens I see in passing. Usually stories. I have noticed a decline in my friends circle with that. People are posting a lot less as of recent. As a media person, I'm seeing less return from IG without an immense amount of effort. I believe the feed is far beyond it's max saturation level. The same thing happened to Twitter for me. You either have to go all in and game the system or relinquish all reliance on it as an important media outlet.

There is no statistical base to my findings, just something I have observed.
What's interesting to me about Instagram is that there are a ton of ads. Probably more than Facebook. But unlike Facebook, the most valuable ads run on the platform (and the ads most preferred by users) are from transactions that take place off of the platform.

When Louis Vuitton wants to advertise on Instagram they don't open the Instagram Ad Manager. They call Kylie Jenner and pay her to post a photo. And not only do users not mind those ads - a lot of users seem to enjoy them. People actually seek out those types of ads. It's incredible engagement. But Instagram doesn't make a penny.

And then the FTC, usually Facebook's nemesis, comes along and hands them a silver bullet to monetize Instagram without harming user engagement: Social Media Endorsement Guidelines.[1]

If users are legally required to disclose when they've been paid to post something via #ad or #sponsored then Instagram could easily charge a small fee for every thousand views/comments/likes on those posts. Consider it a small tax for monetizing an otherwise free platform. They could even charge accounts a small annual "hosting" fee based on the number of followers to unlock/use the legally-required hashtags or for the ability to include hyperlinks. Is Kylie Jenner going to turn down a million dollars from Louis Vuitton because she'll get a $1,500 dollar bill from Instagram? Doubtful. She puts out content users want to consume. Instagram would get paid as the platform that brought all of those users together. Advertisers could still reach their audience and users wouldn't be, ya know, stalked.

But what has Facebook done to monetize Instagram? The same thing they did with Facebook - cheap, high-volume surveillance advertising for $5/CPM. Instead of figuring out a way to monetize the advertisements that users like, Facebook decided to sprinkle their feeds with crappy/creepy t-shirt designs, drop-shipped Alibaba junk, and vitamins/CBD/essential oils that very well might kill them.

If Instagram goes belly up Zuck & Sandberg have no one to blame but themselves.

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/ftc...
Facebook has had a number of major ethical failures over the years, which have been well covered here and HN readers are more likely to fully appreciate the significance of their privacy invasion (a recurring theme with Google’s lost prestige, too) and undermining important efforts (e.g. abusing MFA phone numbers after saying they wouldn’t, hurting a substantial security improvement).
Started programming around 19 years ago, been doing it professionally for a bit over 8, and have been feeling the same thing you describe.

Aside from personal projects outside of work, I recently asked to be moved to our maintenance team instea of new development. It surprised my manager, he assumed I'd pefer new development, but so far it's been much more interesting to me.
I lost 10kgs in the past three months by doing IF. I didn't really need it but now I'm in the normal weight department instead of the slightly overweight. The best thing is that I learned how my body reacts to different occasions of hunger. By experimenting with different types of food and nutritions each time, I almost feel that now I can tune my body. Much like a digital system.
Here's a hack that seems to work. Reduce the sides of your serving plates.

We have a tendency to finish all the food that's put in front of us. So many times we continue to eat even if we are not hungry. So by reducing the plate size we end up eating less.
Lately (the past few years) I've been struggling with weight gain I couldn't reverse. I have zero self-control and will snack if food is in close enough proximity. I will also not turn down food, so living in Greece, where great food is available 24/7, is hard on me.

A few weeks ago I decided to try 8/16 IF, which basically means I don't eat past 10 pm (mornings are not a problem, I wake up late and never need breakfast). I'll usually wake up around noon, have my first meal at around 3 or 4, then have a small meal at 9 or just before 10 and that's it for the day.

This has made a very big difference. I have already lost 2 kg without even thinking about it. It helps a lot that I will eat a small meal before I'm hungry (at 9), wheras before I'd wait until 1 am when I was starving and then would eat a large meal.

It has also made compliance a breeze by just not giving me a choice. I'm unable to say "I've eaten a lot today so I shouldn't have this snack too", I would just think "eh I'll have this snack and eat less tomorrow", only for the cycle to repeat the next day. Now, if it's past 10 I don't eat anything, simple.

I definitely recommend this to anyone with compliance problems. I can also 100% relate to your hunger statement, which I learnt the last time I dieted, years ago. Being hungry just means that my body is burning fat, and I can go 30+ hours between meals without really any ill effects.
Shooting people is just pulling a small lever. Objectively speaking, it's not much different from driving a car. Formally speaking, it's the same as making physical labor illegal.

Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Just because you can pick the lock on my apartment door, doesn't mean that I shouldn't have an issue with it. Just because lockpicking is technically just sticking a 'key' into a lock, and turning the bolt doesn't mean it's the same bloody thing.

Intent matters. Outcome matters. Somebody lockpicking my door, to save my cat from a fire, or to deal with a burst pipe, or to respond to an emergency call is one thing. Somebody lockpicking my door, to have a look at my stuff, can, and should fuck off straight to prison. Or, at least, a couple of hundred hours of community service.
I feel your post sums up my thoughts well. As a developer it easier to be an entrepreneur for sure .
> Unless you're super skilled working at a company that is massive and will never run out of funds then there's practically a 0% chance you'll have a guaranteed steady job for 40 years.

I think this is a big factor. There are a lot of us whose parents lived in the "you get a permanent job with a company and then work with them til you retire" era, who saw their parents give their lives to a company and then saw that same company screw their parents over to save a few bucks. It makes it really hard to trust your employer later in life. I think for people like that, starting a company is an attempt at building a safety net.
I've lost 80 lbs from peak and kept it off for > 15 years without trying. Never gained more than 5 lbs since losing the weight. I've never dieted or restricted my diet. I eat when I have a desire to eat. I eat so called junk food and bad food (butter, olive oil, bacon, meat, fatty nuts, whole milk/half-half) daily. I generally avoid high sugar dishes and rarely drink soda but that's due to taste.

In my experience the goal is to align your unconscious desire for food with your bodies daily need.

Any attempt to control your hunger through conscious willpower will fail, because that approach reinforces the mind's belief that food is the reward.

Instead, first you must get familiar with the feeling of true belly hunger. Most people don't know what this is. Usually you eat due to mind / heart hunger which is the "craving for pizza" or "i'm starving" feeling. You are eating because of habit, reflex or emotional need.

Belly hunger is the cramping and headaches you get when you are truly at caloric deficit. Once in a while It helps to go running without calories to push yourself into hypoglycemic sensation. You will get dizzy and fatigued. Once you eat you will feel like you just did narcotics.

Now that you know that feeling of belly hunger, you should have that feeling daily (if only mildly). Keep reducing your portions until you hit that feeling regularly. Avoid seconds or having snacks nearby.

Eventually belly hunger becomes your signal to eat rather than mind hunger . And when you serve food you will serve portions that will satisfy the belly hunger and not your emotional needs.

Once you are at this point you'll be on autopilot. The other side effect is that avoiding eating will become more rewarding since you will enjoy the belly-hunger feeling (since it's natural), and the bloated feeling will elicit disgust.

When I was overweight, overeating brought intense relief and pleasure. Now the sensations are inverted and overeating makes me feel deeply disgusted (like eating a rotten apple).

tl;dr Align your hunger reflex with your biological need for food by treating your body as a dog that needs to be trained to associate hunger with positive emotions and overindulgence with negative ones.
I'm exactly like you (except I hate the feeling of being overfed). I don't need to eat for 4-5 hours after I wake up, but if I do eat something when I wake up, I'll be hungry very soon afterwards.

I've actually had fights with my dietician who insisted I eat breakfast as soon as I wake up, and wouldn't hear any of my links to published research, or even arguments of "if I'm not hungry, why eat extra calories that will just make me even hungrier?!"

Just skip breakfast and eat the first meal when you're hungry (don't wait until you're starving, or you might overeat). You're literally not missing anything.
Ask HN google authentication down?
Anyone else unable to sign into their google accounts?
It boils down to "Them that has, gets." which is hardly groundbreaking news.

All this does is very, very politely tell us in extremely PC terms what we already know: Rich white people have more opportunities in the US than people outside that group.

I'm interested in figuring out how we break down some of those barriers. I'm a woman. I've been on HN a decade. Virtual hobnobbing with all the right people has so far failed to open any doors for me. As best I can tell, my gender has played a large role in that.

My efforts to understand that, resolve that, or even just discuss it tend to be met with open hostility.

So color me unimpressed with this extremely PC way of saying "The Old Boy's Club is alive and well. No girls or brown people are really welcome."

I live with that reality every single day.
This is really a derivation of the Binet formula for Fibonacci numbers: that u_n = (phi^n - (-phi)^n) / sqrt(5), where phi is the golden ratio (1 + sqrt(5))/2.