godDLL

No, that would be old news. I was never, ever the guy to pick up my phone aimlessly. It was always to a) swipe away the bullshit, and b) do the important thing. I don't think I am in any way affected by the dopey loops the news pull on you. In fact, I check out news when I overhear something or when there is no development for weeks on an issue that directly affects me. Never otherwise.

I don't own a TV since 1999 at least.

You mean can I guess at what number you're thinking of?

With the appropriate amount of shame, no, I can not.

Please clarify your position in a legible manner if you have one.

What is your advice then? It's not clear. That's what I didn't like.

What does one do, where does one go?

You did not say nothing.

If you sit and don't engage your reptilian moving-about system it will engage anyway. You'll be looking for distractions in front of you. And then you'll be stuck on those, tripping out.

On the other hand if you were to step out for 15 minutes and then come back, just walking and looking around, thinking of what you'll be doing when back at the computer; then when you're back you'll have something to do. Good luck not getting stuck doing that. Because you will.

Turn off all notifications, time-box all calls and emails to twice a day, and reduce the use of color in the UI. Don't let yourself be prompted into getting stuck on something. You have your own agenda and the world around you can manage for 3-4 hours without your input. It really can. Make sure it can.

Being prepared is half the job.

A good workman has opinions on his tools that are deep, and profoundly negative. Also always.

So maybe not a good heuristic, and not a helpful thing to quip.

Yeah, it would have to take over my phone excepting the two CALLS windows a day.

Otherwise I'll find it very easy to BURN away.

And the most noticeable thing it did to my well being is a drastic reduction in ambient anxiety and proclivity to negative emotion. It is like what SSRI are supposed to be, but for real.

That's a new one, to me.

Thanks!

It is like, let's assume that those methods work for people; there is something to them. But they also don't make any tangible models with which to make predictions, so they are not complete. They don't operate the whole picture, just a part of a system that people will frequently mess up.

Or maybe we can say: something about maintaining focus, or starting tasks for pomo; and understanding where you're coming from, where you're going and what to adjust for GTD.

A gym analogy would be: tracking your training program is GTD, having proper form is pomo. But nutrition and sleep are missing.

It may be the artifact of thinking of these things in scientific terms, reductionist and unfeeling. And feeling is important. Your reality is communicated to you by your perception, which is seated where your feeling is to be found. Everybody has the same amount of time in a day, yet the use of it is the thing that makes all the difference in a person's life. There is a whole dimension to be explored and perhaps a science to be established in that basic aspect of reality. It has to become a book, or many books, not just a single word like "discipline" or "executive function".

This field right now resembles witchcraft. We have rituals to perform, that sometimes work. We have myths to explain the "sometimes" part, but they involve dead relatives and phantom trauma. It clearly isn't even measuring the right things or it would be possible to solve it by maths, by stats and neural networks.

And so I've been feeling around. Trying to understand what different states of mind are like, what are they conducive of, and how to key myself into one or the other.

The pomo and GTD methods I come to understand like so:

- Do something, then feel different. Body first, head follows.

- Things take time. Getting with things takes 20-25 minutes, specifically.

- You can do meaningful progress in two half-hour stretches.

- A thing that takes less than 20 minutes is a "shit shoveling" kind of thing. You gotta do some early in the day. I've seen people say "seek discomfort". Procrastination behaviours are the exact opposite of that and are habitual, and as such can be learned and equally unlearned in about three weeks time. If it has a time-limit it is about to be over with, that's how I start doing those things I don't feel like doing. I mean, one can plough through 20 minutes of pretty much anything, right? And then it's done with. There will never be a better time, I won't ever feel it easier to start; avoiding it will form a habit, and so will engaging it.

- If you keep, update, review, throw out and re-do a model of how you're doing you won't be running through these assessment and progress tracking tasks when you're trying to go to sleep or devote your attention to a task at hand. There is a category of tasks where you're "playing" where you'll focus without effort. That is because they are meaningful to you. You should look forward to this, every day, schedule and prepare for it. Fun will not just find you, happiness will not just happen, and if you don't plan for resting it won't just somehow cram itself into your schedule.

- The BURN card is about keeping moving, not getting hung up on any one thing. Gautama said attachment leads to suffering. Gurjieff said "always have an aim".

- The other cards are about "do what you can, use what you have, where you are". This may sound like some high-productivity self-coaching nonsense, but it is actually a disaster recovery strategy. It gets you out of a hole and keeps you out. A thing that's not moving is often a dead thing. Should be moving.

- Nobody can help you. Except you can help you. Really, you can. Expect delightful developments.

- Eating/fasting, sleeping/caffeinating should be done in a controlled manner if you're to help yourself. Those are the climate to which your moods are the weather. Knowing good food and the time when it is good for you, bad sleep from good sleep and how to do it are the base rock on which you build. If you don't do it, everything shifts all the time, like sand. Or sinks like a bog.

I put my monkey in a cage.

I went around and logged the things I happen to be doing in a spreadsheet for three weeks.

Assuming those are mostly the things I'll be doing going forward I've categorized them into action-cards. Those have groupings by space (home, out, job) and time (night, noon, morning).

One card is titled BURN. If you play that card you can do whatever for 25 minutes, but you can't play two in a row. I set a timer.

Then I have to choose a card to play, from the things I actually do.

Set a timer. When that's up choose a card again.

There is a card called SLEEP, it has a checklist. Similarly EAT/COOK has both instructions and time limits.

I ended up with more than 15 but less than 30 cards. And the single point of failure is in set-timer to choose card loop. This goes away after about 20 days where it becomes a habit.

There was another point of failure, but now there is a CALLS card that is limited to two times a day, and the phone is otherwise offline. Battery life is 5x.

Contentness is 1.0

Try it.

Concentration is a loaded word. It is not black and white, but feels like you're talking about a value that goes from zero to one possibly? How do you think about it?

I came to think of it in terms of attention. In a model where your awareness of time, or of change is conditional on shifting your spotlight of attention it can be defined usefully, I think.

So, in such a model your concentration is conditional on your paying attention to where your awareness is not pointed. To the interplay of things outside your spotlight of awareness.

The processes that are you but outside of the seat of your awareness already have workable models for all of that. They have good guesses. Your sensory will enrich those guesses and flow them into your reality as givens.

If you think of it like that there is a clear difference between paying attention to something, and expanding your perception of the present moment by concentration.

Sometimes I hear people use the c-word to describe uninterrupted time dedicated to a task. That is to say focus. Exclusionary attention.

How do you think about it?

10.8 was the last of agreeable direction for OSX for me.

I'm running 10.12, for software compatibility reasons. Likely here our paths will split. Versions beyond this are of no interest to me.

They must be in discord of what they are measuring vs. what their vocal audience is. Their vocal audience is probably there to browse around and engage amongst themselves, while they are measuring retention and content engagement. Those user stories are not so subtly different.

Very much this.

Back when I left there was a ceiling to compensation but no limit to exploitation. More and more would get piled onto me, more and more skimmers would be inserted between me any my salary. It just got to the point where there is not a number that would justify the way I was living.

I wasn't and didn't have in prospect a way to get the compensation in accordance to my supposed worth to any of the companies I worked for. So then I asked myself where is that money going? What am I enabling by being locked out of that much cashflow?

Following up on that direction of inquiry got me answers that I could not, physically endure. I will never be able to trust the judgement of others come before me they way I used to. The game I inherited was nihilistic to a degree incommensurate with the crowdedness imposed by growth.

Those come after, that game will not inherit. Their landscape is cynical and disjointed from the reality of people around them, aimless in it's idealism. It is possibly the right way for them to be, to survive or even thrive. For about 4% of them. Same as the nihilistic system was benefitting about 4% of us back in my time. Probably was the same back when it all ran on slave labour.

I got to understand Thiels' "competition is for losers" quip. 96% are flushed out, so this must be what the system is for. Selection, not improvement or enrichment.

But I sure know I won't be participating. You can't "change the system", it can only die to a more cynical system. I've seen it happen and I'm not playing any more.

I will not be voting. I will be doing.

My children will not go to your schools. I will be teaching.

I will not listen to a doctor that never leaves his office and is paid for my being sick.

I am too old for this shit.

You control what gets updated and when.

There we are.

> Wouldn't it have been written in electron the code-server project would not be possible.

Please clarify what is so special about Electron in that case. It was so slow they had to do it that way, is that what you're saying?

Aha. It's also the reason I'm not running my raspi as my workstation.

You should. Blog.

I have a title for you, for your first piece:

Robots trade, CEOs fidget, managers require, coders put shit out.

Three generations have grown up since. One with email, one with the Internet, one with mobiles.

I think it's time.

Add raspi to your cross platform list. Now tell me how VScode runs.

Kinda crap, is it not? Barely usable.

And how do we fix that? We can't.

I mean it's not a Commodore. It's a raspi. It streams 4K video and decodes it onto your projector on the fly.

But editing code using a popular solution is not any good.

A question, then.

Li-ion battery arrangements inside those devices seem to hold about 80% of their usable capacity and voltage for about six months, with average usage patterns. A year after that this drops to 50% of original capacity, or below. This is known, if a bit too generalized.

Yet those are not easily swapped out. And your CPU throttles, your WiFi throttles down with the battery, reducing usability. There is no "please change out the battery" alert for the user at any point.

The marketing for these devices makes no mention like "you've got about a year of usage for this device before it becomes slow".

In any of this there aren't any external factors to anticipate, unlike with the Javascript landscape example above. As a manufacturer you know your device usage patterns, you do collect some telemetry and some repairs data. You can make a projection.

My point is, those are being sold in full knowledge of the facts of their limited lifetime. With no mitigation strategies, with no concessions for user-serviceable battery replacement or how to buy those batteries. There is no battery shelf at the Apple store.

It isn't discussed much. There is no customer blowback to this product strategy. It could be, in bad faith argued that people are fine with buying something to replace it a year later.

My question is, to you, are you arguing this in good faith? Do you really think this is fine to have something called a "product" where it is actually a service, with a limited term and no end-user serviceability?

Is it OK to call something a "question" where I am asking you to ask yourself, and don't care to hear what the answer is, because I have already arrived at an opinion long time ago and see no reason to change it hence?

Please don't be offended by this, it isn't intended to rile you in any way.

I am only after some clarity, as I perceive your language to be confusing terms mightily and so making things seem more complicated than they end up being.

I remember iPhone 4s (s is for speed). You'd buy one, and then Apple would "upgrade it" via software update removing the s. Which was the thing you bought it for.

I wonder what that was about.

So you just leave Windows update on in production?

Brave man.

In a society. Hence, "social contract".

There is no Zuckerverse contract.

"Abused Github to distribute malicious code" is a legal wording, not a EULA violation. A lawsuit, not an account ban.

Let's decide how serious this is. Exactly.

I am, for one, of the opinion that it is not at all serious. Not deserving of a lawsuit or an account ban. Not even newsworthy.

I mean, this could easily become the new normal for OSS. You use it – you're not insured against anything, for there is no formal contract.

But completely sane to base your project on a package of code you don't control?

Or to lock up his Github account for exercising his prerogative onto his own code?

His behaviour is unusual, but that, you know, could change easily. It could become the normal just like that. Puff.

In my experience I would define the burnout phenomenon as reinforced, conditioned fatigue. Learned apathy. Learned hopelessness.

For me it was happening, and is happening because I care. Because I care what other people think things are. Because I care what other people think I am to them.

It is very obscure how one can learn the art of manliness. How one can be sure what things are and what you are to other people, and not be swayed all day this and that way.

Sitting there coding you get used to direct communication. I tell this to be that. I read what this does.

But then your boss comes in to boss you (as he should), and you don't switch. You listen to him talking as if you're having those thoughts, you try to understand his position and accommodate. You don't engage him like this other person that he is, rather you relate to him/her. You take them in like they're documentation, not like they're marketing material.

And now they just told you what you care about, and you take that on, and run with it. And you keep on caring about it when come home, going to bed, waking up in the morning.

You're built to prioritize dangers, and warnings, and worry above other things as a biological being. Maybe 10 to one above other things. And your boss will not be 10 parts praise to 1 part business, he can't do that. He'll be business first and niceties later.

That doesn't mean that all is hell and you should stress and punch it, but you do.

And because it happens every day by day 21 it is a habit of yours. You learn to stress and punch it, and take your anxiety home with you and never let it go. You never rest. You get exhausted. You burn out.

I'm learning to be my own man, know what is what, put up filters. Express my care as a consequence of work decisions and not as a precursor. Invoke care in context.

I see some people have this from young age. Many of them had a father, or fathers.

I'm learning this at 38, after having misplaced care all of my most statistically productive period of life, and having nothing to show for it, consequently.

Learning about the concepts of "agreeableness" and proclivity to "negative emotion" helped make sense of how this works in my life, with other people.

What I'm saying, I guess is that the article takes a systematic, top-down view to this. Looking for a solution at a societal level, telling people how much to work and when to stop. But in my experience it isn't about any of that at all.

Instead it is about knowing when you're tired and what to do about that. It is about knowing how to be when working and how to be when your boss is talking to you. It is about caring for the things you're doing and are about to do, not the things you left waiting for you at work tomorrow. It is about practicing completing things, being done with things, and not practicing worrying about things (that's your boss' job) or practicing being accommodating (again, not your job).

You're free to leave Buddhism.

You are free to leave Buddhism.

It is most certainly not a koan. It is not a thing to put you in a state were you can understand a thing.

It is a teaching. It actually tells you what to think, and how to get there.

He talks about negligence, not attending. And then he lists a bunch of games, the last of which is "imitating deformities". That example alone should get you thinking about misusing your purpose, about using the mind to escape and not be present. Inventing dragons to fight. All that.

I mean, it's all there, if you think about it for five minutes.