mister_hn · 6 years ago

that's out of 60 minutes time

sshine · 6 years ago

This is a weird side-effect of Americans reacting to recent EU GDPR legislation.

dokem · 6 years ago

I’ve also learned a number of knots. The only knot I ever really tie is the tautline hitch. The average person cannot string up a piece of rope and remove all slack because all they know is the granny or square knot. This knot is also incredibly simple and versatile. If you are reading this do yourself a favor and learn this over the next 5 minutes. The bolin should also be learned because the tautline hitch cannot be used for rescue purposes.

mkl · 6 years ago

> Only thing I regularly tie nowadays are my shoelaces.

For that, in much less than an hour, you can learn the Ian Knot: https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ianknot.htm

It makes shoelace tying very fast and secure (the GIF at the top is how long it actually takes!).

nsomaru · 6 years ago

I find myself unravelling mentally when it comes to remembering knots and the like

SPBS · 6 years ago

Yeah I think the zeppelin bend is the greatest knot ever, extremely secure and 100% jam proof (jam proof means the knot is easily untied even after extreme loads). I can’t think of any other bend that has those two properties, usually it’s one or the other

gwd · 6 years ago

> Bends are rarely useful for me since I rarely need to join two ropes together, but if you are going to learn a bend, you might as well learn the most beautiful one.

I'm sure I've used a sheet bend at least three times in the last year in random situations. I haven't used the zeppelin bend, but I would say having an easy-to-learn-and-tie-but-effective knot "in your kit" is quite useful; you never quite know when it will come in handy.

throw1234651234 · 6 years ago

Figure eight bend > square knot.

JustSomeNobody · 6 years ago

Add Alpine Butterfly and that's a pretty solid list.

darkkindness · 6 years ago

Someone close to me taught me how to square knot, so my hoodie-tied-around-my-waist would stop slipping, as I was using a double overhand knot before.

I'd also like to add that learning knots is honestly more of a 5-minute commitment to learn than a 1-hour commitment, but it's definitely still a commitment.

peteforde · 6 years ago

Whatever floats your boat, I guess.

I don't understand why some folks are determined to see everything through a React lens. It makes sense for Facebook, which is why they made it. If you're doing CRUD, you are just torching your productivity.

Here's an example of tabular data, sorted, paged and filtered in 115 LOC including templates:

https://expo-pjf.herokuapp.com/demos/tabular

No transpiling, no API endpoints, no Redux.

peteforde · 6 years ago

Quota was hit. Temporary: https://expo-pjf.herokuapp.com/

nurettin · 6 years ago

Excited for jsf, asp.net, Wt and UniGui. Full circle is complete.

aitchnyu · 6 years ago

Jose Valim responded to me saying its a fast, simpler, stateless and scalable solution compared to stateful solutions. For an example of stateful Java/ .Net app, I use a site that randomly logs me out, logs me out after inactivity, opening stuff in tabs are hit and miss (older ones let tabs mirror each other in background), normal UI actions has unexplainable pauses.

https://elixirforum.com/t/phoenix-liveview-is-now-live/20889...

zacym · 6 years ago

Don't forget GWT!

peteforde · 6 years ago

Citation, please.

I can't yet prove that you don't understand what we're doing, but if I failed to communicate the end result, well, that's on me. It's a hard thing to summarize quickly, and I'm working on it all of the time.

choward · 6 years ago

Do you still use it?

peteforde · 6 years ago

The combination of websockets and morphdom vs Ajax polling and DOM updates is a major leap forward. Check it out!

enraged_camel · 6 years ago

Eh, I always use substr, split and so on if possible. They make the code way easier to read than with a regex.

swiley · 6 years ago

Regex don’t do transformations? All they can do is match strings.

maccard · 6 years ago

I spent an hour learning the basics - wildcards, whitespace, escape symbols and Character ranges are enough for them to be useful.

collyw · 6 years ago

There is a way of thinking when you deal with regexes that took me a while to get.

Reading the first chapter of ORiley's Mastering Regular Expressions was what made me get it and that was maybe an hours worth of time.

sgillen · 6 years ago

Both things change how you think temporarily. I think they both do so in such a way that you can identify and emotionally deal with stuff that would otherwise remain unresolved.

mapcars · 6 years ago

>since I started to smoke weed.

There are some similarities in the effect, yes. But the problems with weed is it's effect is temporary and it messes up your awareness. Also you can not do in in many public places. Should I mention that certain types of meditation make you even more intoxicated? :)

Synaesthesia · 6 years ago

That’s fine but doesn’t mean people can’t get benefits from mindfulness! Both could be good

tudorw · 6 years ago

Mindfulness is a lot cheaper :)

aasasd · 6 years ago

Weed does open the eyes to how much more relaxed you can be, both emotionally and physically: turns out that normally I have muscles tense that I never even knew about.

After that, you begin listening to your body and the brain more, and to track the state of them both instead of taking it for granted. That's how the way to ‘mindfulness’ starts. You learn that the two states are in a feedback loop: if you're tense, you get angry and anxious, which gets you more tense. To break the loop, you could of course hit a blunt, but that's not always an option, or at least not always the best one. Alternatively, you can take some time to free the brain from being hung up on the worries and to free the body from being contorted by tenseness.

unityByFreedom · 6 years ago

Mindfulness is easier than getting weed. You can be mindful of your breathing for 5 seconds, right now. That's all it is, you just sit there letting thoughts come and go, trying to bring focus back to your breathing for 20 minutes. IMO it's better than coffee for acquiring focus and lasts the whole day.

tarsinge · 6 years ago

Also another trick (without going full formaliser spaced repetition): reread the same thing the next day, and then a week after. Boring but very effective for long term retention.

dragonsngoblins · 6 years ago

I've always been confused by people talking about losing things like keys/wallet a lot. I take them out of my pockets and put them on a flat surface when I get home which means they are always in one of like 4 different places tops, but in two of them the vast majority of the time (dining table or desk).

Surely there are natural places those things end up?

elbows · 6 years ago

The American Red Cross has Adult CPR/AED/First Aid classes where the classroom portion is only an hour. There's an online component that you have to do beforehand, so the whole class is probably closer to 4 hours, but I think if you took only the classroom part you'd come out with a decent idea of how to perform CPR.

skocznymroczny · 6 years ago

How to call an ambulance, what kind of info to give, how to put people in a safe position, how to determine if they're breathing or not, how to protect yourself when offering first aid to someone else.

JshWright · 6 years ago

Step 0: Tell a specific person to call 911, or do it yourself if you're alone.

If the person isn't responding and doesn't appear to be breathing, move them to a hard, flat surface (if possible). Put your hands one on top of the other (both palms facing down) and interlock your fingers. Place your hands in the center of the chest (at approximately the level of the nipples) and push hard and fast, letting the chest recoil fully between each compression.

If you're pushing hard enough, you will feel popping and cracking as the bones and cartilage of the rib cage move/dislocate. If you're allowing the chest to recoil back up fully between each compression you really can't push too fast (going too slowly is the far more common failure mode).

There... those are the important bits of adult CPR (for the layperson).

The courses are hours long so that the Red Cross/AHA can justify the fees and sell textbooks.

ghaff · 6 years ago

A broad first aid course will take more than an hour. (The Wilderness First aid courses I've taken are a full weekend.)

However, you can cover a lot of the basic things you're likely to encounter in civilization pretty quickly (if very cursorily). Probably most important is the basic approach to take, things to watch for, blood safety, etc. It's not going to be a real first aid course but a quick familiarization of things to watch for and actions to take. (Cleaning wounds, etc.)

hnick · 6 years ago

They listed three things, and they're all different.

Choking & CPR in an hour - easily. When I did my course it was a few hours but in a smaller group there'd be no problem covering it in less time. Though to be fair, we did have to read a document and answer a 70 question assessment before being allowed in the room.

First Aid? Probably not. I did a full day course. Here in Australia that includes bandaging for snake bites, what to do for jellyfish (don't pee on it, thanks), how to handle crushing injuries, etc. Apparently in the US they focus more on weapon trauma wounds though we did a bit of that too.

wenc · 6 years ago

Agreed. Which brings me to something I learned in an hour (from Ricky Yean's insightful piece on "mindset inequality" [1]) and which I'm still learning recognize in myself -- i.e. the disadvantaging qualities of a poverty mindset.

Quote from article: "Being poor makes you suck at using money as a resource. My time was always cheaper growing up, so I got used to opting to spend time rather than money. I had to fix this way of thinking when we raised our first seed round, but it took quite some time. A simple decision to hire a new employee, for example, took a very long time–to the point that it cost us growth."

When you're raised in poverty or a poor student (like I was), resources are expensive but time is cheap, so the tendency is/was to use my own time to save a couple of bucks here and there.

When you're no longer a poor student, this poverty mindset can actually work against you if you apply it to everything. It can be growth limiting step. When you have money, time is much more precious and and the time/money trade-off looks very different. In many situations, money is "cheaper" than time. One therefore needs to learn how to redeploy that money to access cheaper less expensive resources than time. But if you have a poverty-mindset, you never learn how to do this and hence are at a disadvantage in life, even as you become middle-class or better.

Take oil changes for instance. 5W20 non-synthetic oil costs about $10. An oil change costs about $25 here in Chicago, and can be done in 15 minutes -- and done impeccably. The difference is $15. If I were to do it myself -- without the right tools, plus I don't have a garage and it's really cold outside -- it would take an hour and it would be a sloppy job. $15 is a fraction of what I make per hour, and I figure if I pay someone to do it, I can redeploy that time (plus any number of 1 hour chunks spent on things where I have no competitive advantage) to thinking and cultivating myself or even just relaxing (idleness is crucial to creative thinking), the culmination of which is top-line growth, and I figure I'd make back that $15 (3 times a year = $45/yr) many times over.

It's ok to DIY for fun and for self-enrichment (I admire handy people), but as a universal prescription, it can potentially be a rate limiting step for many people.

Side note: if you're landlord/homeowner however, DIY is very high leverage (vs. paying tradespeople) and one's payback can be huge. One has to make that calculation for oneself.

[1] Silicon Valley founders who grew up poor can’t shake “mindset inequality” https://qz.com/602770/silicon-valley-founders-who-grew-up-po...

hanniabu · 6 years ago

And then you need to find a place to take your oil.

wcarron · 6 years ago

I do lots of mechanical work on my motorcycle and car. To be honest, I think you're right. Changing oil is a pain. Getting ramps out and driving the car up on it and then taking the oil to autozone is more hassle than it's worth.

However, there are tons of things people should know about their cars and how to change the oil _is_ one of them. You should do it at least once, just to have done it and understand it.

I'd also recommend learning to: replace the serpentine belt, replace cabin and engine air filters, replace a battery, replace head/taillight bulbs, change a tire (including patching it), change your own brake pads and even your own brake rotors (those are real money savers), and probably learning to bleed the brakes, too.

The most complicated thing on that list is rotors. And that only takes like... a breaker bar, 4 sockets, brake cleaner and some caliper grease. Even if someone won't do that, everything else is doable and quick and cheap.

throw1234651234 · 6 years ago

In my experience, multiple places manage to mess up changing my oil in magical ways. It's also an opportunity to do an overall maintenance check under the car.

With that said, if I spent the amount of time working on my career I spent on cars, I would be better off, so you aren't wrong.

Just explaining the reason why I STILL change my own oil, despite realizing the time cost.

snowwrestler · 6 years ago

Plus you have to get rid of the old oil, which usually requires a trip to a garage type business anyway. So you're not even saving a trip.

EADGBE · 6 years ago

Perhaps "being able to change your oil" is actually "knowing how to change your oil" or "why you should change your oil". The knowledge is the power in it, and it compounds into a lot of menial DIY tasks that one may or may not be interested in always doing.

harrisonjackson · 6 years ago

You are right; I probably could have thought of a better example, but the oil-change seemed to apply to more people.

Personally, I'd say I've saved a lot of money learning to fix a sprinkler, replace a ceiling fan, unclog a drain, fix a leaking faucet/pipe, painting the interior of a house, etc - more of the homeowner DIY than the car owner. The equipment needed for these is usually less than the cost of hiring a professional to do them.

blitz_skull · 6 years ago

THIS. My dad is a mechanic, and so is my father-in-law. They both stare at me, mouths agape, when I tell them I went and gOt mY oIl cHaNgEd.

I calmly explain that $15-$30 is more than worth it to me. It saves me an hour or so of tinkering around, cleaning my own tools, and I really, really HATE grease on my hands. Probably my #1 biggest pet peeve.

ethhics · 6 years ago

I can add that 3 of 3 multi-family dwelling leases I’ve signed in Texas have a specific prohibition to changing oil.

0xffff2 · 6 years ago

My lease in the bay area explicitly forbids it. That said, my neighbor does all kinds of work in the carport and no one has narced on him yet.

ghaff · 6 years ago

I'm not so sure. You're probably a lot more likely to actually save someone's life with an abdominal thrust than you are with CPR--outside of some specific scenarios like drowning.

harrisonjackson · 6 years ago

You've probably already optimized most of your painful workflows, but as a developer, you could probably be saving a ton of dev time using your own Zapier integrations.

I use the following workflow all the time for slackbots and prototyping a new feature:

Step 1 Zapier Webhook - Triggers on POST request to hooks.zapier.com/abc123 (Zapier provides this URL for each "Zap" while you are setting it up)

Step 2 Zapier Code Step - (python or javascript) basically a lambda function - parse your incoming POST request and do whatever with it

Step 3 Some sort of Output - send email/slack/sms

Realworld example - I submitted an iOS app that got rejected because of their community management policy - basically I needed to add a way for users to report abusive content. It took me 15 minutes to add this using the above Zap. I probably could have added it to our API in a similar amount of time, but forwarding each report to slack and aggregating them in airtable would have added to this - not to mention building out a web frontend somewhere to see/review them.

We also have a bunch of slackbots to pull stats and run jobs. Zapier enables us to do a lot of "chatops" with less code and more flexibility.

edit - I used to work at Zapier - loved the product before I worked there and still do

Eliezer · 6 years ago

It's spoken tongue-in-cheek, but in fact I don't know of any other intros including all of my own other efforts that I would make that claim about. Writing Bayes intros that actually work and introduce the most critical concepts is hard. Read the Arbital intro and compare others before you assume I'm joking or that the joke is false.

username90 · 6 years ago

No, he just said iff you learned it in an hour then you must have read that article. If it took you longer then you didn't necessarily read it.

kqr · 6 years ago

Similarly, Excusez-moi; parlez-vous Anglais? is how you get a French person to speak English.

mbar84 · 6 years ago

Haha, I wonder if they assumed you were doing something that's very Japanese, namely having much more humility about your skill level than is actually justified. So they just assumed you're perfectly fluent but you were being very Japanese about it.

Grue3 · 6 years ago

FYI, "hanaseimasen" is not a correct negative of "hanasu", it should be "hanashimasen". Also an easy way to say you don't understand anything is "wakaranai".

markussss · 6 years ago

I had a year of French at school, and my teacher kept saying all year that no matter how much or little we learn from his classes and exercises, as long as we are able to say "I don't speak language X, do you speak language Y?", everything would be so much easier when dealing with strangers in foreign countries. It also helps a lot to add a "please" and "thank you".

This piece of advice helped a lot in both Germany, Ukraine, and Russia.

Kaiyou · 6 years ago

Reminds me of the old joke..

A: I'm sorry, I don't speak English.

B: But you just spoke English, how is that?

A: I'd answer this, but like I said, I do not speak English.

jansan · 6 years ago

In Japan I was at a German language insitute and asked the Japanese guy at the reception if he spoke German. His reply was "Leider nicht"/"Unfortunately not", which I thought was a fantastic reply for this kind of question. Very simple, yet much more sophisticated than a simple "Nein"/"No".

alexis_fr · 6 years ago

Please don’t learn “I don’t speak X”, this is useless and it kills the interaction. Instead, learn a movie quote. This will get people to joke with you and will start off a discussion, “Where did you learn that” and all.

— “Pas de palais ? Pas de palais” - see here for example: https://youtu.be/ghiMU3seRVM - “Je m’appelle Juste Leblanc” — or even asking for a local celebrity is more fun.

geowwy · 6 years ago

Agreed! Forgot that one

Broken_Hippo · 6 years ago

Norway is much the same. Not only that, but even if you do manage to be understood in Norwegian, you might find that you don't understand the local dialect at all.

nnq · 6 years ago

Maybe bitcoin and crypto are not valuable... but the mathematical ideas of blockchain are, after the bubble dies they'll just become boring pieces of crucial infrastructure that sit in the background but they'll be there, it's the only way to ensure data auditing and integrity, and sooner or later people will be ok with paying 10x or 100x storage and compute costs for auditable integrity.

It's just that the real deal insight behind blockchain is not sexy and not something that's easy to make money from...

ravenstine · 6 years ago

We're all using blockchain every day when we use Git.

unlinked_dll · 6 years ago

wrapped cables save lives!

52-6F-62 · 6 years ago

Ugh. Some guys take that technique too far and destroy cabling. I had some teams do this with power cables we rented out and they could take a 50ft coil of 4/0 copper cable and turn it into a kinked, broken mess with that technique and it always messed with our coil process that worked much like other users mentioned.

A lot of teamsters, gaffers, and grips did not like having to carry a 50lb cable further than they had to so many loved they could lay the cable down, pick up one end, and walk with it to the junction in order to lay them. (Temporary power, I mean).

As the one responsible for the department looking after that gear, those figure-eight cables were a nightmare because we'd have the prime experience of re-wrapping them all so that we could store them. That caused a time-pinch when we had to handle intake and loadouts at the same time.

I don't do that work anymore, but it's personal hahaha

myself248 · 6 years ago

Oh yeah. I've seen numerous extension cords that just twist into an unrecognizable mess after a few weeks because of internal stress, in the hands of folks who don't know better. My own cords, of similar build quality from similar big-box stores, last decades and still coil and lay like new.

criddell · 6 years ago

> So much more useful!

The only cables I really deal with are network cables and extension cords and I've always just done the wrap-around-your-palm-and-elbow-method. What am I missing out on?

taneq · 6 years ago

Seconded. I spend a fair bit it time around tradies in my current role and I’ve absorbed a ton of stuff just by osmosis.

JackFr · 6 years ago

Face the wheelbarrow the direction you want to go before you fill it.

greyhair · 6 years ago

Thirded. I worked as a farm hand on a nearby dairy farm through high school, then six years as a mechanic before going to college. As a farm hand, you learn early how to arc weld, or cut steel with an acetylene torch, along simple carpentry and plumbing, as well as mechanical maintenance on equipment. It isn't all just feeding and milking cows. You also learn to deal with shit. Literally tons of it.

almog · 6 years ago

An example of that technique: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PicTsgj5lA

jackbarclay · 6 years ago

Wrap them around a piece of scrap cardboard.

kaybe · 6 years ago

Careful coiling and then securing the coils with string in 3-4 places workes well for me. Coiling should be done while paying heed to the cable's preferred direction, if there is any tension it does not work well.

nolanhanz · 6 years ago

Rolled up newspapers work well for this too, albeit I doubt a lot of us here get a newspaper delivered everyday anymore

anotherevan · 6 years ago

For multi-cored cables such as extension leads I would worry about the wear on the cable of all those smallish loops.

For a bit of rope it would be fine, though.

almog · 6 years ago

Unless I missed a quick hand maneuver, the storage technique you demonstrate, while result in a neatly coiled cable, doesn't involve a counter clockwise twist for every clockwise one, thus creating tension in the cable. For thin cables (and guylines), the figure 8 coil is a better technique. It is just as fast to perform and each twist in the cable is canceled out by a twist in the other direction thus creating less tension in the sheath, and potentially extend the cable lifetime by introducing less inner breakage points.

Here is an example for how I store guylines attached to my tarp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PicTsgj5lA

adventured · 6 years ago

I think when I self-taught how to read public corporation financials, I did it just by looking up various definitions over time. There are not very many that matter. I did that when I was quite young, so I'm confident most any adult with even very basic financial literacy can do it in an hour to get started.

So for example, Uber, on Yahoo Finance (fairly simple data presentation):

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/UBER/financials?p=UBER

Columns displaying full fiscal years (you can change that to quarters optionally). And rows showing specific financial information, such as "total revenue" or "gross profit."

There are ~22 rows in a column year in the Yahoo data sets, each displaying different financial data. Of those, maybe a dozen are particularly important for an amateur to know.

So you'd look up the definitions for eg: revenue (sales), cost of revenue, gross profit, operating expenses, SG&A (selling, general and administrative expenses), operating income, income before tax, income tax expense, interest expense, net income. Another that can be useful as a new or amateur investor, is EPS, or earnings per share.

Investopedia is a reasonable option for learning the definitions, although there are numerous sites that will work fine.

Shouldn't take more than an hour to look those up and learn them at a basic level. After a bit of practice, you can scan a multi-year profit & loss (P&L) statement in a minute and have a great idea of how a company is fairing.

A balance sheet can be more complex, although it can similarly be boiled down to a dozen or so things that by far matter the most. You can get the definitions for those things and learn them in under an hour, then practice reading balance sheets.

Then last but not least for an amateur interested in such, would be to acquire practice at scanning through annual and quarterly reports filed by companies with the SEC. They're often obnoxiously long and overflowing with low-value bullshit, however only a small amount of the content tends to matter. I think the best way to keep that under an hour, would be to have someone mark off the segments worth always looking for / looking at in the filings, such that you can learn to jump to those sections to pick out important information. Beyond that, getting good at digesting company SEC filings will take a lot longer than an hour.

I wouldn't attempt to take on all of these things in under an hour, it'd be unreasonable. An hour each to get started however is doable. Starting with the P&L statement.

jacknews · 6 years ago

in an hour

VLM · 6 years ago

Hilariously, I think most Gen-Xers learned from playing Railroad Tycoon computer game where the detailed score sheet is the three sheet financials. For a short period of time in the late 80s there were plenty of 12 year olds who understood quite a bit about financial statements and what they imply about how a game/business is being run.

I don't know the modern equivalent that motivates a game player to learn to read financials.

Obviously you can/could/do play RRT "just one more turn" all night long until 4am every day just like the Civilization series of games, although actually learning how the numbers interact with each other and in-game behavior probably took one hour spread out over time. None of the concepts are terribly complicated once you memorize the definitions and important ratios.

Honestly you could get a basic start at reading financials, if provided with experienced tutoring, in an hour of clock time while playing RRT.

It was kinda ridiculous half a decade later in high school taking econ class and seeing the dry and boring way they tried to teach reading financials. You could replace an entire multi week unit of the class with perhaps three class periods of playing RRT.

funklute · 6 years ago

It's super useful if you're on the phone, having to spell out a list of letters, e.g. a postcode

Ensorceled · 6 years ago

So you’re not saying “no, not bee, DEE” the rest of your life.

Waterluvian · 6 years ago

Because life is fleeting and it's neat and what are you doing in traffic anyway?

Bnshsysjab · 6 years ago

honestly me reading credentials over phones would probably end up making this a positive roi investment within months. ymmv though.

And no, the credentials don’t warrant a ‘eavesdropping’ threat model, they barely matter at all.

notelonmusk · 6 years ago

Since you mentioned sorting 'on paper', here's the sorting algorithm you'd use as a human sorting papers :)

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-manual-sorting-algori...

saalweachter · 6 years ago

Frankly it is easy as an adult, even if falling is probably worse.

You would not believe how uncoordinated children are, and how much better you are at using your body a few years after it finishes growing and you've had some time to get used to it.

(I mean, developing proper instincts about stopping and turning can take some time, but just mastering going slow and not falling down isn't too hard.)

quickthrower2 · 6 years ago

Yes that’s a big problem. Not sure on the solution to that, but over time you get used to it. Just think of it like any other math exercise.

Danieru · 6 years ago

That's the point! Thinking about money should not be a cause of stress in your life. If money is stressful then budget/expense tracking is what you _need_.

Since we got married me and my wife have been tracking every expense down to the penny. The net result has been no fights about money, everything was known and obvious from the records. Every so often we come together, look at the numbers, and decide things. You might decide an expense is worth it, or you might decide an expense is not worth it. Without measurements you cannot make that decision, with measurements you are in control.

Once you are in control money should become a tool, and a source of freedom to spend on what you value.

UnFleshedOne · 6 years ago

That means you spend too much. It is good to know such things in advance. Not knowing never makes anything better in the long run.

pvinis · 6 years ago

I don't think any of these are something you can learn and remember in one hour.

It's a good start though.

mathieuh · 6 years ago

It definitely took me longer than an hour to learn IPA, but aside from that, definitely. I have an amateur interest in linguistics so I picked it up through reading Wikipedia articles on obscure languages, I would say I use it at least once a week.

Very helpful when learning languages that have sounds that aren't in a language you already speak, because your brain tends to map those sounds to similar sounds you already know.

Like how English speakers can't distinguish between French [u] and [ou] (/y/ and /u/ in IPA). Even if you can't hear it you can read about how to articulate it.

SkyMarshal · 6 years ago

What's IPA? Googling that is gonna show a of links for beer.

wila · 6 years ago

A couple of years ago I saw a cartoon for learning Korean script. Unfortunately I did not save that. It was similar to the cartoon posted by HN user rococode about Cyrillic script down here.

Anybody here knows what I am talking about?

iliaznk · 6 years ago

Ы-ы-ы... :)

ZoomZoomZoom · 6 years ago

I always wondered why in English the constant and the letter π pronounced as /paɪ/ when the Greek letter is obviously /pi/. It really grinds my gears, there's no pie in π!

Does Enlgish routinely localize foreign alphabet names? If so, it's bad practice. I believe no one in the world learns English alphabet pronouncing it arbitrary, and not as /ˈeɪ/ /ˈbiː/ /ˈsiː/.

shoo · 6 years ago

In your opinion, what does Voss' book do better?

There's also a Farnham Street podcast with Voss: https://fs.blog/2018/01/chris-voss/

dmichulke · 6 years ago

Plus, it's also a book on active manipulation (in a wider sense) and an even better when read after "When I say no I feel guilty" which deals with defending against manipulations.

None of them can be read in an hour, nor can they be made a habit in a month.

totololo · 6 years ago

Are you using price negotiation as an example or are you reducing negotiation to price? Because these writers will say negotiation is everywhere (in relationships, dating, friendships, corporate politics, getting good customer service, any sort of search for a favorable compromise in any sort of way).

nxpnsv · 6 years ago

That rings true, I spent a weekend in the 90s to teach myself. I taught a bunch of people to juggle since - usually with an instructor an hour to reach something like juggling is achievable.

kqr · 6 years ago

"Cooking for Geeks" is another newcomer-friendly resource in the same vein.

colechristensen · 6 years ago

Other good books in this vein are Ratio by Michael Ruhlman and On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee

lisper · 6 years ago

I would start here:

https://www.improveyoursocialskills.com/basic-social-skills-...

Like any other skill, you are not going to master it in an hour. But an hour of study and practice can produce dramatic results.

mason_jake · 6 years ago

Agreed on learning blackjack. I went to Las Vegas about a month ago and spent the four-hour plane ride trying to memorize some of the pattern in a blackjack strategy chart. I didn't memorize all of the actions for every possible hand combination, but I learned enough to be dangerous (read: enough not to make dumb/obvious mistakes). I ended up quadrupling my money (only a few hundred dollars) and have been playing really well on a blackjack app on my phone.

Practice makes perfect is really the maxim here.

CyberMacGyver · 6 years ago

The best resource I have found is a fantastic old book - Straight and Crooked Thinking[1]

[1] http://www.neglectedbooks.com/Straight_and_Crooked_Thinking....

scarejunba · 6 years ago

Sure. Let’s say you have some mundane task: you’ve got some number of people with varying dietary restrictions and they want to go to dinner together. You don’t know which places can accommodate you. Don’t do it yourself. Just ship the info over to someone you pay $25 to do the work. You can then use the time more productively.

Eventually, you can see the MTurk / Upwork folks as just slow executing programs. For some jobs, some guy in Southeast Asia will do it for $4. Don’t even think about it.

This works across the spectrum: want to clean up formatting in a doc? Ship it over. Want to transcribe a video for captions? Ship it over. Want a quick scraper for a few websites? Ship it over.

The objective is to not be the bottleneck on any task.

Get a quick idea of what the labour looks like. Southeast Asia at $5 is great. Americans at $15 are a waste of time. South Asians at $8 will break even. Eventually, every hour of your time is spent on the time that is special about you.

monktastic1 · 6 years ago

Although there are forms of "do nothing" meditation (which are, ironically, very easy to get wrong), most forms of meditation are precise ways to train attention and awareness. Quite different from the kind of "do nothing" where your mind wanders mindlessly into boredom.

username90 · 6 years ago

Nothing strange, you just spend more time processing information than average people.

My mental model is that any point the brain is dividing its resources between execution of current events and processing old events. If it spends too much time processing old events then it has no resources over to properly execute in the now.

When this happens some people just drop the unprocessed tasks from the queue to free up resources while others (like me and you) starts experiencing immense stress forcing us to drop what we are currently doing instead.

One way is not the other, sometimes I wish that I could execute better in the now but sometimes others wish that their brains didn't automatically drop important experiences without properly processing them first.

How to fix this? One way is ADD medication, increasing your dopamine forces your brain to focus on the now and drop old packets. It helps me execute better but I definitely become less creative and have a harder time remembering what I did when I took them. I might feel more creative when I'm on them, but most of those thoughts will be gone without a trace since they weren't properly processed.

hnick · 6 years ago

I have this too, and as the other posted said it might be ADD-related. My mother and sister were both recently diagnosed, I'm meant to find someone but it's been on my todo list for months now... while I look out the window :)

mrpoptart · 6 years ago

name checks out.

kendallpark · 6 years ago

And expiration date!

kalyantm · 6 years ago

Agreed. Touch typing + learning vim changed the way I work and boosted productivity to another level

caro_douglos · 6 years ago

I had a conversation with a friend who is an attorney and they blew me away with their off the cuff typing speed. It ended up inspiring me to get better at something I did all day....for someone who’s not sure where to start I’d start with gtypist typespeed or speedpad. Don’t forget about mavis beacon!

tarsinge · 6 years ago

Second this.

Also more specific but if you are french the keyboard layout is not great for programming (because []{}';. are not straightforward). I’m more happy since I switched to QWERTY layout for programming. Since I touch type I can easily switch depending on the task.

RBerenguel · 6 years ago

After a few years of also failing like this I combined learning touch typing with switching to Colemak, and that finally made it stick (though ruining me for normal qwerty, but it was worth it). It takes a while though and there will be a really frustrating period when you can’t type either qwerty or Colemak.

jholman · 6 years ago

Ugh.

I continue to be skeptical that there's any substantial performance improvement. The published research is obviously ambivalent-at-best. And my anecdotal life experience also make the Dvorak typists look pretty mediocre (including the ones who've been doing it for a decade).

On the other hand, a very real cost is that if you want to pair, or receive coaching from a mentor, or coach someone, or just let a significant other type a quick email on your laptop, that works poorly. Though you could view that as a perk, I suppose. Also keybindings optimized for physical layout on QWERTY will no longer apply to you, which can be inconvenient.

tempestn · 6 years ago

The fact that the Bogleheads forum is a useful source of information doesn't imply that Jack Bogle was right about everything.

baot · 6 years ago

The reasons in the link are fairly ridiculous

xchaotic · 6 years ago

The argument that US businesses are already exposed to international issues anyway is a good. By investing in a US index you are unintentionally diversified

roenxi · 6 years ago

That counts as financial advice; or gets close enough to it that it will probably run afoul of the same problems. Financial advice is all fun and gains until there is a down year and someone loses 10% of their savings. Or worse.

The hard challenge in the field is how to attract customers that are not quite savvy enough to figure out how to open their own brokerage account but not people so clueless as they'll go into old age with a 100% allocation to stocks. The more accessible the higher earning (ie, riskier) options are to unsophisticated the more catastrophic the backlash will be when the bad years arrive.

In a sense the regulatory system evolves to make the cheap-management options harder to find and tailored financial advice easier, because the people who aren't already in the market are going to get eaten alive making rookie allocation errors.

lotsofpulp · 6 years ago

Does it get much easier than target date retirement funds? Vanguard’s TDF basically have no fee at sub 0.1% expense ratios.

unicornmama · 6 years ago

I don’t invest in pillar 3 because the banks charge a medieval 1-2% management fee.

huhtenberg · 6 years ago

For those from Canada - that's a Swiss version of RRSP basically.

apexalpha · 6 years ago

I don't know, for people who neither have the time, skill or will to invest individual companies' performance a low-cost, very broad ETF is pretty universally excepted as your best bet.

This doesn't mean there is no risk.

imtringued · 6 years ago

That doesn't change anything. 12 years ago I knew nothing about programming. Does that mean I shouldn't start with some easy language that might turn out not be sufficient as I get more experienced? No. Starting is the hardest part, gaining experience is something that happens during the journey.

tempestn · 6 years ago

I agree; one should educate oneself. That's why my advice was to "learn how and why" rather than to simply do it. The danger with the financial sector is that there is a ton of biased, bad advice out there. So you need to take some care and critically evaluate what you're learning. Having done that myself, I'm a strong believer in low-cost, diversified investing. (Which usually means passive indexes, but the important things are low cost and diversification; occasionally that's not incompatible with active funds.) For most people who don't want personal finance as a hobby, an hour should be enough time to learn why a simple portfolio of low-cost index funds is a solid choice, and then they can confidently stay the course, rather than trying to time the market or pick winners and ending up worse off for it, as many do.

rb808 · 6 years ago

there are Vanguard ETFs in some European stock exchanges. https://global.vanguard.com/portal/site/home

But Vanguard aside there are loads of low fee ETFs from ishares, amundi lyxor, etc eg https://www.xetra.com/xetra-en/instruments/etf-exchange-trad...

neop1x · 6 years ago

There are many ETFs which can be invested in in Europe. See the screener https://www.justetf.com/de-en/find-etf.html

jmcqk6 · 6 years ago

Betterment does this, with auto-rebalancing when things get out of balance. There are other services that do this as well (wealthfront is one).

If you're just interested in index funds themselves, then take a look at vanguard.

carapace · 6 years ago

In re: hypnosis in general the books I recommend are: "TRANCE-formations" by Bandler and Grinder, and "Monsters and Magical Sticks: There's No Such Thing as Hypnosis?" by Heller. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/956297.Trance_Formations https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/447454.Monsters_and_Magi...

As for self-hypnosis, you can learn it from a book or a website, but you might also want to check out the people locally who are into hypnosis and self-improvement.

Personally, I get really good results from a very simple induction. It has a lot of names, "Betty Erickson’s Induction", "See, Hear, Feel Induction", "5-4-3-2-1 Induction", and so on. It's easy to remember and reliable. This is a good write-up of the process: https://www.practicalhappiness.co.uk/media/download_gallery/...

That should be enough to get you started.

FWIW, although I'm not a hypnotist I know a lot about it, AMA.

sillysaurusx · 6 years ago

Sure you can. If you said 10 minutes I'd agree. But if you can learn a bit about programming in an hour, you can learn enough cooking in an hour to make a yummy meal.

The simplest example is a pork steak. Throw it on the skillet and wait awhile. Turn it over and wait awhile. You now have a pork steak. It's delicious.

RobertRoberts · 6 years ago

I taught all my kids how to cook. You are right, you can't learn _everything_ about cooking. But you can learn one meal you really like.

I pick a new one I want to perfect every few months, look up recipes and try them out over and over until I get it the way I want. (you have to eat anyways) And after doing this for years, I am always told I should open a restaurant. (but that is silly hard work, and everyone can cook)

schindlabua · 6 years ago

Seriously. I moved out of home with 0 cooking skills and after a few years of having to feed myself I feel like I'm becoming just average. It's amazing how many variables there are to control when doing even the most basic task like sautéing onions:

Sautéing in oil allows you to really crank the heat, using butter you have to be more careful. Cutting in larger chunks is great for some dishes and bad for others. The whole timing thing is probably the hardest to nail, going easy on the heat allows you to get in some other prepwork while the onions are doing their thing, but you also don't want to spend hours cooking so you want to crank it to the point where your prep and the onions will be done at the same time.

How far do you take the onions? How far do you take them if you want to throw in more veggies into the same pan? When do you add spices if you want them to get a bit toasty aswell? And sautéing large amounts of onion (1kg+) is a whole different calculus.

Cooking is this endless fractal of problems to solve and optimize. Kinda like programming innit.

pawelk · 6 years ago

Cooking is a skill one can develop their entire life, like most skills. But in my opinion it's perfectly achievable to go from zero to one or even a few basic meals in an hour. Even more so if you have a slow cooker and follow a recipe.

RobertRoberts · 6 years ago

Watch this, incredibly simple method that made me actually like omelettes. (I hated them growing up)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s10etP1p2bU

"Really good" is subjective. It's the very notion something is possible and that you can do it that I see as valuable. Practice makes perfect, nothing can be perfect the first time you learn it.

52-6F-62 · 6 years ago

Binging with Babish has a great series on basic dishes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBGoJUxxRqU

He covers the American omelette which is my go-to. Usually with spinach, red bell pepper, red onion and sometimes mushroom filling. Often with some old cheddar and they are monstrously simple to make mediocre and not too difficult to make very well.

joncrane · 6 years ago

Second the tortilla chips. I used to fry them in a pan but I figured out how to get decent results in a microwave.

My go-to is to spread butter on them then nuke them.

Two weeks ago I went to Costa Rica and did a horseback/boat/hiking tour and there was a shack high in the mountains where we stopped and the guide made lunch. I was delighted to find that one of the three foods provided was fried tortillas. I insisted on helping. Frying tortilla chips in soybean oil in a wok on a wood fire in the cloud forest with no electricity or running water is a little different than nuking in the kitchen, but once you have the knack for it, it's pretty easy to pull off.

You never know when your weird cooking skills are going to come in handy!

RobertRoberts · 6 years ago

Yep, I think this is a natural tendency to someone who has /tried/ to cook over a period of time. And doesn't mind eating leftovers repurposed. I find myself doing almost exactly what you described, only my chips came out terrible and I have not since tried again. (I have made my own "dorito" flavoring though of plain chips, and you can make some neat combinations)

giardini · 6 years ago

Marksweep says:"My pallet is pretty easily amused"

I'm fairly certain it is your palate, rather than your pallet, that is amused! (although the visual image conjured by your verbal construction is very amusing.)

RobertRoberts · 6 years ago

That cookbook looks interesting. I have run into scientific cookbooks before and understanding why and how things work (like caramelizing onions) makes cooking with them easier to get the results you want.

gulabjamuns · 6 years ago

Why not wash them?

ihodes · 6 years ago

This depends on how the eggs are processed prior to you purchasing them, so beware. Cf. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/09/11/336330502/wh...

rhlsthrm · 6 years ago

Why not in the fridge?

oh_sigh · 6 years ago

Maybe the right advice is to just store eggs how you found them in the store. If they were refrigerated, then keep them in your refrigerator - if they were not, then keep them out on the counter.

choward · 6 years ago

You aren't from the United States are you? They are already washed when you buy them here so you have to put them in the fridge.

sixdimensional · 6 years ago

I’m totally buying the pants argument!

52-6F-62 · 6 years ago

I do most of the cooking at home for my partner. She could cook perfectly well, but I think she's out of practice these days and I don't mind doing it.

It makes ordering or going out more of a treat, too.

Also, your comment made me realize I probably stay in pants too often.

RobertRoberts · 6 years ago

I have tried to "fix" rice in the past and I have never succeeded. I am surprised this works for you. I have found that if I measure correctly and turn down heat appropriately my rice comes out the with very little variations.

monetus · 6 years ago

Good advice on the water. Similar to how people learn ovens, it helps to learn pans. The best method I've tried so far is a ~2:1 ratio (adjust to desired texture) in a 14" wide, lidded, enameled skillet. I'll try the oven again soon to compare, but that particular pan on a stovetop is hard to beat. Learn your pans.

auiya · 6 years ago

OP didn't say anything about ratios or scaling, just offered 1c rice as that's generally enough for 2-3 servings at a time. And it just happens that 1c water is generally the right amount for this and is easy to remember.

RobertRoberts · 6 years ago

I wanted to demonstrate that it can be simple, but you are right there are a lot of variables, but I think they are small. The size/type of pot you use may affect water amounts.

But I found it very useful to learn to cook with whatever you have available to you. And then learn to adjust. All of these things take tiny amounts of time and yield great results. (mainly through practice of course)

choward · 6 years ago

As I understand, cooking rice usually has a constant amount of water lost to steam. You need to have a rough idea of how much water your rice actually needs to absorb and how much is lost to steam. In my experience with my setup, rice usually requires an equal volume of water and 1 lost 1 cup of water to steam. So 1 cup of water requires 2 cups of water, 2 cups of rice requires 3 cups of water, etc.

So y = x + 1 where y is the cups of water and x is the cups of rice. 1 is the number of cups lost as steam.

Each time you open the lid you lose steam, so you may have to take that into account. I use a rice cooker and don't open the lid so I don't worry about that though.

groby_b · 6 years ago

Given ordinary cookware, and picking a pot that's not completely out of proportion to the rice, the 1:1 works just fine. You don't lose steam (well, not much) because the lid stays on. Takes 20 minutes, pretty much without fail.

Yes, you can get more complex. Maybe it even produces better rice. But the secret to homecooked meals is - for most people - simplicity :)

pjmorris · 6 years ago

The rice cooker is easiest, but there's another scheme: use an abundance of water and cook the rice like spaghetti. I learned the technique from a Lynne Rossetto Kasper cookbook, and it's never failed me.

reitoei · 6 years ago

You can completely use a linear ratio. Google any world class chef's recommendations, they will all recommend a fixed ratio e.g.:

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-cook-the-perfect...

Rice cooker instructions also use a liner ratio.

Cooking rice isn't rocket science.

sdotsen · 6 years ago

you guys are doing it all wrong. take it from us Asian folks. it's called the finger test. the amount of water above the rice should come up to the first line on your finger as you're touching the rice. yes you have to stick your finger in the pot.

having grown up where our main staple was rice, my parents never made burnt or soggy rice. oh and having a rice cooker prob helped as well.

boring_twenties · 6 years ago

Strongly second the first two, strongly oppose the third. Omelettes are far too difficult for a beginning cook. Fritattas on the other hand are trivial (you just pour the eggs/milk into the pan after you've cooked the filling a bit).

52-6F-62 · 6 years ago

I regularly make my own dressing as well! I have a few basic recipes—most are pretty much the same as yours. One I like in the summer especially is a really simple one:

+ 2 parts olive oil

+ 1 part honey (try and make it good wildflower or clover honey)

+ 1 part squeezed lemon juice (add some zest as well if you're feeling energetic—I hate cleaning graters)

+ Salt & pepper to taste

sailfast · 6 years ago

If I only had an hour, i'd focus on a simple intros of really fundamental techniques kinda like the OP indicated, and not necessarily cooking everything in that time.

Knife skills. Keep them sharp. Mise en place. The importance of salt and pepper. Searing techniques for cooking meat and how not to do it. Roasting vegetables 101. The basics of finishing pastas and reducing sauces. The fact that you can make your own dressing in no time.

You can probably cover all of that quickly and in enough time to ask the right questions moving forward and begin your jorney - IF you had a curriculum. If it's self study it takes longer to figure out what you don't know :) For me it all started with "why does my Grilled Cheese suck? This should be easy" and it's been all downhill.

The Food Lab by Kenji Lopez-Alt was a big window into this for me because of the approach around time and temperature, and the book takes you through all of this stuff by section.

larrywright · 6 years ago

It’s also a relatively easy way to impress a potential romantic partner. Learn how to make a few basic dishes (and perhaps a decent breakfast if you’re optimistic).

I’m years beyond being young and single, but being able to cook and being able to dress yourself (and for the occasion) will set you apart from the crowd.

drabbiticus · 6 years ago

You could call it a hack, but it's also the standard way that lots of asian families make rice if they don't have a rice cooker and how I've done it ever since moving into an apartment and didn't want a bulky machine in limited counter space.

For a comedic take see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45wHe9KdmrQ for How to Cook Perfect Rice by Jo Koy

RobertRoberts · 6 years ago

I meant my comment as an introduction to the idea. But yes, leave it on. You can peak and test quick, but when I was starting out cooking rice I wasn't careful about the lid and ruined plenty of rice by letting too much steam out.

Yes, time varies, just wanted to layout how simple it can be to learn a useful skill in a short amount of time.

boring_twenties · 6 years ago

Lids can and should be transparent.

billbrown · 6 years ago

Yes, I follow the same ratio in a rice cooker and it's perfect.

RobertRoberts · 6 years ago

I have tried lots of ratios rice/water, and I think the brand/type of rice, stove and pot properties all greatly affect the results. Not to mention the subject "goal" for the results we all like. (maybe you like your rice wetter/stickier than I do?)

Do you add the oil, salt and pepper before cooking?

Sohcahtoa82 · 6 years ago

Eggs in the USA and Canada are washed before being packaged and sold in grocery stores. This washing eliminates a natural protective coating, which allows bacteria to permeate the shell. This means the eggs now require refrigeration.

mpwoz · 6 years ago

Teaspoon. "Tbsb" is usually used as abbreviation for tablespoon

kirubakaran · 6 years ago

http://wiki.c2.com/?TeaspoonsVsTablespoons

bostonpete · 6 years ago

Marriage is not a strictly religious institution.

Broken_Hippo · 6 years ago

I don't think my spouse and I could fill an hour a week with this - plus we would dread the conversation. It sounds like work.

Don't get me wrong, we talk about it. If one of us has thoughts about it, we share at the time or soon after. But it isn't like we lead busy lives or have children or in general, have a lot of upheaval in our lives. We are both over 40, and aren't changing rapidly at this point. There simply isn't that much to discuss.

janniks · 6 years ago

Is there a good translation available somewhere?

scandox · 6 years ago

Yes indeed I had neglected the "To whom"...which reminds me how often I think a message is aimed at me (egomania) when in fact it has an audience I am not even aware exists...

dangus · 6 years ago

I couldn’t think of a worse suggestion for a typical person looking for money management skills.

Sure, half the book isn’t about bitcoin, but half of it is, and that’s a problem for the 99% of people that will and should never interact with Bitcoin.

PeterStuer · 6 years ago

While the short video series is indeed also criticizing the traditional econo 101 money account (I'll leave it to the discretion of the viewer whether that critique is deserved or not), it does also address and explain the traditional views in a concise and accesible way in under an hour.

prmph · 6 years ago

PG's arguments seem cogent enough, until you realize you need to still go up one level, to understand that wealth is power. No, not that wealth gives power, but wealth _is_ power in and of itself.

And power may not be a zero-sum game exactly, but it is close to it

teekert · 6 years ago

I wanted to start running Home Assistant using Docker (on my main server instead of a dedicated Raspberry Pi with Hass.io) and came across this page [0], search for "Docker Compose", I copied the yaml, ran docker-compose up -d and boom. Shortly afterwards I added mosquitto and sabnzbd to the yaml and all three now update very easily and everything became very portable. Before I was keeping docker commands somewhere in an md file.

Edit, I hope to learn Traefik reverse proxying in one hour next ;)

[0] https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/installation/docker/

z3t4 · 6 years ago

Indeed economy security is one of the corner pillars of success. Think of it as part of the hierarchy of needs. But you can be upper class and still feel miserably, then you think if only my startup takes off I will be happy. But that will only lead to more work, not happiness. It's better to do something you love, be around people you love, etc, which is more likely to lead to success.

psychoslave · 6 years ago

Well, there is two side of it: - of course, meditation is an art that you don't master in the minute (and that most likely can always be further strengthen); - anyone which has a bit of free time can practice it, all it asks is the will to improve its meditation skill to quickly feel practical benefits.

mac1175 · 6 years ago

In regards to what can be learned in an hour, a roll with someone gives you an idea of what it is like to be on the ground with someone in a fight without striking, biting, eye gouging, etc.It is a decent simulation if what would happen when on the ground and the idea that if someone doesn't honor your tap, you can be in big trouble.

vfinn · 6 years ago

Thank you for the story! I helped my brother who was choking on a cough drop. Didn't use Heimlich, but nevertheless it was a scary experience. I hesitated to which one is the correct move. Edit: As far as I understand, one uses Heimlich if hitting on the back while bent doesn't work.

epanchin · 6 years ago

You need to adjust for inflation.

koolba · 6 years ago

This is a good example why one should understand compound interest. Through in a payment schedule and amortization as well.

The bank is giving you $X to buy the house. You’re paying off a piece of it each month (your mortgage payment). Part of that goes to the interest on the loan, the rest goes to principal. The interest each month is based upon on the remaining principal. That means your payment starts off being mostly interest and gradually becomes mostly paying off principal.

You could say, “But I can just save the full price and then buy the house with no interest!”. Sure you could. But you’re forgetting that you’re living in the house (or renting it out...) while you’re paying it off.

PeterStuer · 6 years ago

I have many reservations and am very critical of the financial system. But the concept of interest on loans is not a "scam'.

The interest in it's simplest form is just a value appreciation of the time value of money [1]. Would you rather have $100 today, or $100 next month? How about $100 today vs $102 next month? Still rather in the today camp? How about $105 next month? That is the interest. It is the value derivative of having the money 'now' vs having the money 'later'.

Where things can get scammy is in the complex type of credit products on offer (tying in all sorts of opaque references to things presented as neutral which are far from), and how things are communicated to the borrower.

Tip: If you are considering a loan, always ask for a full repayment plan showing you which payments are due each month, and the resulting reduction in the amount due (your payment first covers the interest accrued in that month, and only after that covers principal reduction). If there are variables in the loans formula, ask for simulations that cover the most likely evolution scenario, as well as the extremes. Every financial institution has such a payment plan calculator. Long ago I have written one which afaik is still in use today in a non-trivial financial services company.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/timevalueofmoney.asp

throwaway744678 · 6 years ago

Depending on your country, the law may require the bank to actually print the total cost of the loan on the contract as well. You'd have a better argument with revolving credits, the rates of which are generally much more predatory.

6gvONxR4sf7o · 6 years ago

If you lend me $X at 3.5%/yr for 30 years and I can earn 7%/yr elsewhere, like by investing in a S&P index tracker. Say there's no minimum payment on your loan, just to keep the math easy. In 30 years, I'm going to owe you 2.8 * X (via 1.035^30). My investment of that $X loan has grown into 7.6 * X (via 1.07^30). After tax, call it 6.5 * X. After I pay you off, I've earned about 3.7 * X.

If the initial loan was $400k on a $500k house, then yeah it sucks that I've payed you $1.1M, a clear overpayment, but I wont be sad because I'm coming out ahead by about $1.5M.

In reality, loans come with minimum payments, so you can't come out quite so far ahead. What this all means is if you can do something better with your money, (e.g. market tracker at 7% on a 3.5% loan), then just pay the minimum and do that better thing with the rest. If you can't (e.g. market tracker at 7% on an 8% loan), then pay it down as fast as you can, or don't take it in the first place unless there are other factors.

tzebby49 · 6 years ago

We are currently in a world where it is very difficult to find interest rates >2%. I found a tezos staking pool at approximately 5% recently.

criddell · 6 years ago

I'm reading *Atomic Habits right now and the author talks about how building small improvements on top of each other can eventually deliver great gains. The trick seems to be identifying just what it is to work on.

jmmcd · 6 years ago

But that's not compounding in the sense of compound interest.

collyw · 6 years ago

I am pretty sure that only applies to certain people. I stay fairly skinny no matter what, though I do move about a lot.

glastra · 6 years ago

Adaptive thermogenesis says otherwise.

cko · 6 years ago

You’re talking addition and subtraction, compounding deals with multiplication.

glofish · 6 years ago

It is not how it works at all.

The fallacy here is that a human body is a machine with well-defined intake and output.

How would one even know what is "exactly" the right amount?

Over a year we consume 1 million calories. If one were just 0.1% off of systematically eating more (or less) than required then according to your model one would end up being 200 pounds fatter or 200 pounds leaner ... do you think that anyone can regulate up to 0.1% accuracy to what they actually need?

eating a little more or less has absolutely not discernible effect the body adapts to it.

joshspankit · 6 years ago

3% is the high-end of the “consumer” (aka “chump”) interest rates. In fact, since inflation is about 3%, over time your money doesn’t grow. (Though, if you’re earning less than inflation your money is actually decreasing in value, so maintaining is better than that)

cecilpl2 · 6 years ago

The S&P500 with dividends reinvested has averaged a real (post-inflation) return of 7% annually over the last 100 years or so.

solipsism · 6 years ago

The underlying concept that applies to much of life is feedback loops. Compound interest is just one example of a feedback loop.

seiko988 · 6 years ago

Considering time in the day and human walking speed, it turns out that if people cannot walk to their destination within 10 minutes, they will opt to drive. So if you are looking for a place to live in the city, be aware of your walking radius (walkscore.com will map it for you)

johnlbevan2 · 6 years ago

Great resource - thanks for sharing

truculent · 6 years ago

So, essentially: compound interest is something wealthy people are good at because it's useful when you are wealthy. Not because learning about compund interest will make you rich?

Kye · 6 years ago

This is so true. I invested what little money I had to spare in music. Everything I made with it went back in. The return is more than I would have gotten from interest or things like stocks and bonds.

~2% is great if you're doing okay financially and have a good career. It's useless if you have any marketable skill that would benefit from spending what you can spare on tools or services. A pair of good mixing headphones in 2017 paid for itself by 2018. It would have only been an extra $2 in a savings account. That investment paid for a MIDI controller that came with Ableton Live Lite. That helped pay for an upgrade to Suite during a sale less than a year later.

All the money I spent on the controller and Suite upgrade would amount to barely $30 a year in savings interest. That's not going to help me with the tiny but still greater income built on those investments.

Kye · 6 years ago

>> "It is possible with the right mindset. In an investing group that I'm part of, my story is the norm - not the exception."

Two words: selection bias. That your path worked for you does not mean it's the only wise path for every circumstance. The path of most people around me is their savings get destroyed by surprise medical or repair bills because they were born into poverty and never get a chance to build meaningful savings. So it's better to spend it on something while you have it on things that can't be taken away in a bankruptcy.

Most people (in this context) make the mistake of spending it on drugs, worthless trinkets, junk food, etc. Most aren't encouraged to pursue skills that can pay the bills. Or they're actively discouraged. "Crabs in a bucket" is a real mentality. People I grew up around have it. I had to hide my interest in entrepreneurship just to protect it from sabotage.

I'm glad you were in a situation that enabled your path! It's great that you were able to thrive through early savings. I don't know when you came up, but cheap and functional cars are hard to come by in a post-Cash for Clunkers world and police are more aggressive with the homeless/car-homed. Your path is not as viable in the US in 2019.

clarry · 6 years ago

A bit of calculation would show that a lot of people have no chance of building "great passive income" in 10 years. They simply do not have enough income to save that much.

"I started with $200" tells us nothing useful.

I can start with $5 and have great passive income if I'm making $100k and wife is making $70k and both of us are capable of saving a good chunk per year.

I can start with $5000 and have little more than extra pocket money after 10 years if my salary is in the $20k to $30k range and I'm capable of saving $100 per lucky moon.

GP is absolutely right, compound interest does not do much if you don't have much. There is nothing ridiculous about it.

croon · 6 years ago

Honest question: What's the distribution of savings going into your portfolio in those 10 years?

Quick napkin math doesn't grant you any "great passive income" from "$200" and "extra pennies" for 10 years.

I'm not trying to be rude, but with incomplete data you're sending both the signals you want, as well as completely opposite signals. The latter suggest that in reality you just made a lot of money for the last 5+ years, which completely invalidates what I think you wanted to convey.

antibland · 6 years ago

> This is such a victimhood mentality and a ridiculous statement.

Do you think you'd say this to the poster's face in an in-person conversation? I find it's too easy to communicate in this way on the Internet, but it appears hurtful and over-the-top. Nasty comments can affect peoples' lives and we rarely see the fallout of how we hurt others in this way. Let's all tread more carefully and be a little nicer to each other.

whamlastxmas · 6 years ago

Calling someone being poor a "victimhood mentality" is possibly one of the most privileged, out of touch things I've seen on HN.

Why don't you go tell all those families on welfare to just go make more money and change their mindset.

inscionent · 6 years ago

Nice personal attack. Your anecdote is nice, but is that is all it is.

solipsism · 6 years ago

> In an investing group that I'm part of, my story is the norm - not the exception

That is a hilarious example of selection bias.

dang · 6 years ago

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Your comment would be fine without the second sentence.

Spooky23 · 6 years ago

Habits are hard to break, it’s important to seed good ones.

Saving that $300 puts you in a better place than someone who squanders all of their cash. When I was starting out at work, nothing irritated me more than people bitching about how underpaid and poor they were, who somehow found the cash to burn up their earnings in cigarettes and to be out drinking all weekend.

auiya · 6 years ago

That's quite a concerted way of displaying his complete lack of empathy. Imagine if he put the same effort into bettering humanity rather than chasing wealth and snubbing nose.

refurb · 6 years ago

So it sounds like it can significantly increase your wealth.

haddr · 6 years ago

All are in public domain now. Read the one i mentioned as it is shorter read. If you like it then go of the other one.

xhruso00 · 6 years ago

By using these techniques Google thinks that I am a bot and after 3 queries I have to fill CAPTCHA.

ahmaman · 6 years ago

Couldn't agree more! It's amazing how people can research the best gadget for days but when it comes to taking a mortgage its out of a sudden "I don't have time to research this"

VLM · 6 years ago

Its all in what you want to do. The barbell prescription book goes into great detail on medical research on the effects on blood chemistry and general health of the ratio of muscle to fat and so on. For that, it doesn't matter if all the muscle in my body is in my left calf or stabilizers or whatever. On the other hand SS and similar IS vital if you're going to work a blue collar job and lift and install plumbing all day long at a construction site. Another topic is the machines make it virtually impossible to hurt yourself no matter how dumb you are WRT liability insurance reasons, so they're quite safe, whereas everyone doing free weights eventually ends up in the ER self inflicted.

Overall the machines are BOTH a good gateway and a good terminal activity. Wanna move up to free weights, can do! Wanna just have better blood sugar and osteoporosis outcomes for the rest of your live and never move up to free weights, can do!

Free weights do nothing for stabilizers anyway. Run the trig and static engineering numbers. Sine of 10 degrees is about 0.2 so for people starting out, benching 50 pounds with ridiculously bad form only loads the stabilizers (triceps, maybe?) with 10 pounds at 10 degrees off ideal, and even noobs start triceps extensions way more than 10 pounds. And "experts" have perfect form so there's "zero" load. Due to trigonometry you can't work your delts merely by using ridiculously poor form when bicep curling. The whole stabilizer issue is a bro-science thing that requires not running the math or engineering statics vector diagrams.

swader999 · 6 years ago

Don't do it while driving or near water. Same goes for trying to sleep - avoid this around water too.

geekus_maximus · 6 years ago

https://www.healthline.com/health/diaphragmatic-breathing

One can vary the pattern to determine what works best for them. For me it's "in for 5, hold for 5, out for 5". As in breathe in slowly over five seconds, hold for five seconds and than exhale over five seconds.

throw1234651234 · 6 years ago

Because you already knew Haskell and you knew what open sum types are. You learned some semantics.

hartleybrody · 6 years ago

Quizlet is great if you're looking for pre-built decks, as you mentioned. As far as I'm aware, there's no spaced repetition feature, which is the main value in Anki.

Also, one of the values to me in using Anki is creating the cards myself. It allows me to mull things over and decide what part of a fact is important, and how I'd like to recall it.

Relatedly, the value isn't necessarily in reading someone else's study guide before a test, it's in creating your own study guide. That process helps you understand and retain the material far better.

iudqnolq · 6 years ago

You can pretty easily search for quizlet decks and then import them into Anki so long as you don't need two-way automatic sharing. Google for extensions, depends on Anki version

justinclift · 6 years ago

Oh, interesting idea. Recently learned to do gasless MIG welding, as it's pretty easy and the gear is cheap. Similar to stick in that way.

Wanted to learn it a few years ago, but didn't have a suitable place I could do so. Hadn't thought of "in the shower cubicle".

pjmorris · 6 years ago

The key for reading HtWFaIP is to understand and practice sincerity.

"The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made." - Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux

Don't be that person. Cultivating genuine sincerity is part of your own self-respect. If you genuinely do that, you can safely read HtWFaIP.