I was diagnosed with ADHD at 38, and never expected to hear that diagnosis. Main reason was my misunderstanding of what ADHD is. Like most people, I just naively associated ADHD with hyperactive kids, and thought I was just lazy and having procrastination issues.
Now that I understand it so much better, I start to recognise it everywhere. After reading first paragraph of the article, I immediately though: Laurie must have ADHD!
For ADHD the things that often help are: breaking tasks up into smaller tasks and having a way of tracking progress. You don't want to do that on a screen, your phone is a distraction device!
I write my to-do lists on a paper notebook so I can tick them off. But the label printer idea is also a smart one! Though maybe a bit over-engineered, but I guess that was just a way for Laurie to procrastinate on the solution ;-)
Genuine question: isn't this everyone? Don't we all find large tasks hard to start and so we procrastinate? Isn't it common general advice for all people to break things down into smaller steps so you can get going
Alice, Bob, and Charlie would all say "I find getting up the hills of San Francisco difficult". But "doesn't everyone find that hard" conflates the causes and severity of the difficulty for the three of them in a way that isn't useful for making their complaints feel heard, or addressing the complaints such that they don't have that issue.
For example:
Alice could get an electric wheelchair.
Bob could take public transit / Ubers up, or get rides from their friends.
Right. But then when someone says "I see the symptom of broken legs everywhere now. When the blog author said they had trouble getting up the hills of San Francisco, I just knew they must have an undiagnosed broken leg", it's fair to be more than a little skeptical.
It seems silly because a broken leg is obvious and easy to diagnose. So the idea that someone has an undiagnosed broken leg is absurd.
A lot of illnesses are not as easy to spot. Even illnesses that have clear diagnostic factors might be undiagnosed if no one has done the right tests. For instance, gallbladder disease. Easy to test and diagnose, but only if someone has gone to the doctor and the doctor has done the right tests. If you've experienced gallbladder disease, you know the symptoms. So you might start noticing them in other people who just think its indigestion or a pulled muscle or whatever.
That analogy ignores what was actually confusing about this topic. A better analogy would be:
Alice has a medical problem related to hill walking so she walks up the hill wearing sneakers, Bob also had a medical problem related to hill walking so he uses a handkerchief to wipe off his sweat while walking up the hill, and Charlie, the out of shape adult, also uses sneakers and a handkerchief but not in a medical way even though his feet hurt without sneakers and he does sweat.
ADHD-I has a range of symptoms where the person needs 5 or more that are significantly disruptive to their life for at least 6 months.
So when someone reads the first paragraph and immediately thinks the author has to be ADHD because they talk about 1 of these symptoms that in isolation the majority of the world has, I ask "but aren't we all like this?"
Most symptoms of ADHD are things almost everybody experiences from time to time, some even regularly. What makes ADHD is combination of many symptoms cranked to 11.
ADHD is the difference between having difficulties starting some tasks and being absolutely unable to start a mundane task until you curl yourself into a corner and cry.
That being said, things that help people coping with ADHD can totally help people not having ADHD but suffering similar issues (case in point: planning and handling tasks)
> ADHD is the difference between having difficulties starting some tasks and being absolutely unable to start a mundane task until you curl yourself into a corner and cry.
Can't agree with this enough.
I'm currently suffering from absolutely crippling procrastination.
I'm a successful respected principal engineer with 25+ years industry experience but in the last couple of years my procrastination has got so so much worse. I've just got through my third PIP (Performance Improvement Plan) in the last 18 months. Thankfully my employer believes in me and continues to give me a chance, but they're not a charity and they've made it clear that I need to continue to perform or I'm gone.
For example, the last PIP I knew exactly what I had to do, it was agreed in advance and completely fair. I should have had no problem completing everything without having to work silly hours. I just needed to grind my way through it and apply my experience and expertise as and when needed (when to escalate, etc). Instead I sat on things for weeks and weeks until the fear and panic of not being able to provide for my family (I'm the sole earner in the house) started to really hit and give me the necessary motivation. It was an immensely stressful position I put myself in. (To be clear, the company is awesome, they're very supportive and they really want me to succeed.)
Taking any significant time off isn't an option. It's not burnout (been there, done that). I can't afford not to be working. We're stretched very thin already due to other medical problems amongst my immediate family but we can get by if I'm working. Changing companies isn't going to solve anything either; my current employer is not the problem. I am. Anywhere else would probably be far worse.
It is utterly crippling at times; and the majority of the time. I can sit at my desk for days and do 30 minutes of "work" each day. Then the deadlines hove into view and I'm doing a days worth of work in 30 minutes.
I'm awaiting an official ADHD diagnosis and expect to be diagnosed with Inattentive type. Hopefully medication will make things easier for me.
I should have gone down the diagnosis route many years ago but, guess what, procrastination.
When I was this way there were two things going on
1. It was one of the most stressful times in my life
2. I didn't know I had sleep apnea so was always exhausted
2 was a much quicker fix than 1 and boy did it makes things much more manageable and at least get me going in a positive direction.
Also for the meds part they are literally life changing for me so hopefully they help you.
Good luck out there hope you find something that works :)
With mental illnesses there is no clear limit between normal and sick. However there is a point when it's really hurting the person afflicted.
For example procrastination: everyone procrastinate more or less, but in people with ADHD, procrastination happens even when they actively don't want to procrastinate, and even when it hurts them right now to procrastinate.
Another example : depression. It's not easy from an external point of view to see where is the limit between sadness and depression, however at one point the sadness has no objective reason, and is so overwhelming the brain that the person cannot function normally or is able to mentally fight it
I get that this is partly HN devils advocacy and partly a very human bias towards thinking all brains are your brain, but it's like saying that everyone has creaky joints so people with arthritis are just complaining too much.
Inattentive type ADHD makes you physically incapable of concentration. Procrastination is a symptom of the underlying problem, which is that the attention mechanism in your brain is chemically broken. People with this disorder are forced to 'manually' drive executive functions in a way that people with fully functioning norepinephrine synthesis systems can't really understand.
It is surmountable, but it's very hard and it's an 'invisible' condition. The sad thing is that most people with this (actual, real, chemically identifiable) condition spend most of their lives internalizing that they are lazy and worthless and desperately wishing they knew how to not be that. I have vivid memories of thinking those things when I was in elementary school. I am relatively high functioning now because I understand that my mind needs external control loops to keep me halfway productive but it comes with a whole lot of constant anxiety and shame that I can't do anything about.
No, most people have never found themselves staring at a pile of unpaid bills and collection notices, while knowing there's work they should be doing that would pay those bills...and feeling physically and mentally incapable of starting that work. Not "I don't wanna" or "I'd rather play games right now," but "I know I should do that, I know it would make my life better and I want that so bad...but I just can't."
It's horrible, and definitely not something that applies to just about everyone.
I do need to push back because I think what you're describing here is an emotional dysfunction, not an executive dysfunction, and I think the former really is a nearly universal experience to some degree or another. Maybe not all the time but certainly some of the time.
I had never experienced this exact scenario before my thirties but I ran into an exceptionally busy period in my life where I found myself overwhelmed with tasks and accidentally ignored my credit cards for a couple months. I eventually realized this, but I put it off for at least another month, even though every other day I was thinking about it and I wanted to solve the problem, knowing it was an easy problem to fix and that I had the time to solve it despite being busy. The reason I didn't was because of fear, the dread of the unknown (how bad were the overage charges going to be?) but also a fear of being faced with such an obvious failure, even though objectively I knew the loss would be trivial.
I think this drives most forms of procrastination, certainly everyone I've talked to about it (parents, friends, coworkers) describe it in similar words, comparing it to the anticipation of touching a hot stove, etc.
I don’t think you understand depression. There’s a big difference between depression and sadness … like the difference between purple and green. They are just not comparable. This is not shades of a different color.
My personal experience is: “I’m sad” and that can mean… “I want to cry”
But If im depressed can be like “I’m happy.., and yet.. I don’t see the point of living.”
Then maybe it was just a choice of words. My main point was that being depressed is not the same as being sad like being happy is not the same as being manic.
I think with many things in psychiatry, yes this is a common experience, but part of a diagnosis is actually about it becoming a real problem in your life. We all have aspects of a lot of different things that become disorders depending on the impact they have in your life. Not a psychologist, but this is how I understand the distinction, and why the diagnostic criteria are set up the way they are.
There is a long running conversation within the medical profession about the usefulness of marginal diagnosis. When everyone has ADHD how do doctors help the people who really NEED help with ADHD. Who 'really' needs help is of course subjective.
I think we can all agree that we are in a period of over medicalisation and we've combined that with a misconception that doctors/drugs/science can cure, and even should cure, everything.
Well people differ. Look around at your colleagues, some have dry eyes and lower back pain from working hours without interruption on a boring task.
Others, like myself, are easily distracted, quickly bored and only work hard with a specific goal in mind. Working on smaller tasks makes it easier to not be distracted. I feel this is more important for people with ADHD.
But you are right, in the end it is useful strategy for everyone :)
Everyone experiences some symptoms of ADHD, ASD, etc. A genuine diagnostic is given when these symptoms become a big problem for daily life, work, social stuff, etc.
Every digital to-do app I've tried turns into another notification to ignore, or I end up doomscrolling instead of checking tasks off. The receipt/label printer idea is a little extra, but I get the appeal of making the process more tactile and even a bit fun. If it works, it works!
Same story for me. What has really helped is trying to make initiating useful and desirable tasks easier and seeking distractions harder. Bit by bit, cultivating that mindset changes things for the better over time.
The trap is usually "I've figured it out and this new system will solve my life" only to be burned out days or weeks later because this only addresses the symptoms and not that cause.
Cultivating a more friendly environment has been a great help for me. That and taking notes.
I rmemember what truly worked for me, as a chronic case, was a 1 day workweek. Granted I did work normal days, but I only mean things that cost motivation like side projects. On other days I even stopped myself when I started to kid myself about 'doing it'. It made me feel gross but that gross feeling helped when the scheduled day comes.
I stopped doing it for some reason. But I remember it worked. For what it is.
The one thing that is often a dead giveaway is how many stimulants seem to have the opposite effect on people with ADHD.
I have ADHD, amfetamines help me relax, caffeine causes me to fall a sleep, some anti-allergy medication can cause me to stay awake for 2 days straight.
I read that in some countries doctors can prescribe mild sleeping pills for babies to help them stay calm during long flights. They always advice to test it before going on the flight, because some babies can actually become hyperactive from that medication. If that happens, there's a good chance the baby has ADHD.
I think it still varies a lot between individuals. Caffeine often makes me more anxious, the effect on mental energy levels seems kind of random (either short burst of energy or just more tired mentally). Yet when I tried methylphenidate it made my mind calmer, clearly reduced anxiety and helped focus while increasing energy. At the same time it gave me pretty bad insomnia, stomach issues etc.
The best I can describe it is that I felt calmer in my mind, but overstimulated in my physical nervous system.
I think it depends on what sort of ADHD it is and what stimulant. I feel somewhat more alert after a coffee, but cocaine does nothing. Amphetamines calm the noise from my mind, but make it more difficult to sleep if they're long-release ones.
This has been the most difficult part for me. I see people in reddit subs talk about how stimulants changed their lives. They are suddenly alert and productive and happy with the world. I get medication envy. I take adderal and fall asleep. Other stimulants I either get no effect or I get anxiety and zero benefits. It's very frustrating.
It’s diphenhydramine, or Sudafed. Also sometimes sold as Unisom but to be distinguished from the Unisom that is Doxylamine. My 18-mo old had the paradoxical reaction.
- diphenhydramine aka Benedryl is an antihistamine with a common side effect of sleepiness
- doxylamine aka Unisom is also an antihistamine but these days people only really use it as a sleep aid or for nausea
- psuedoephedrine aka Sudafed is a decongestant. Not sold over-the-counter because it can be used to make meth. It's a stimulant and appetite supressant
Finally, there's "Sudafed PE" aka phenylephrine, which is also sold as a decongestant but it (literally) doesn't work
Kinda disappointed the article doesn't mention what happens with the remaining items at the end of the week...
I'm guessing most of it goes to the trash/landfill. But maybe some of it is packaged up again and distributed back into other bin stores? Maybe they keep it for a while in storage in case some week they have a haul too small to fill als the bins?
> Also, most airlines that take payments on board also run the terminals in offline mode.
Anecdotal, but most airliners I have recently flown with seem to have switched to online POS terminals, though they do still seem retain offline payment functionality as a fallback. I've seen payments being made, only for the flight attendant to return back to the passenger a few minutes later to inform that the payment was declined. This was over the ocean, so definitely no ground communication.
Airplanes for commercial flight all have VHF/HF or satellite connectivity, the've had that for a long time already. It's used for functionality like ACARS, voice connectivity, remote monitoring / diagnosis, etc. I can imagine this can also be used for payments and other low-bandwidth functionality.
Most airplanes also have WiFi access points on board, even when not offered to passengers. Typically these use hidden SSIDs. Speaking to an airplane tech once I know these are used for flight-crew handheld devices such as the POS terminals and iPads.
I happen to have a few friends that are pilots (all working for the same company) and they told me that their entire fleet already has Starlink terminals retrofitted, though they aren't offering that to passengers yet.
I guess what I'm trying to convey here is: the era of airplanes being 'offline' is already behind us.
NewPipe has a few features that I like, but let's be real: most people use NewPipe for the 'privacy' feature AKA: blocking ads.
At the risk of being downvoted for having an unpopular opinion: but if circumventing ads is your goal, then just get Youtube Premium in instead of paying for piracy.
Because contrary to popular belief, the majority of that subscription fee is actually distributed amongst the content creators that you watch. And for the majority of genres this pays the creator more than regular ad-revenue.
I don't buy merchandise because I don't like waste, so apart from direct donations (PayPal/Patreon), Youtube Premium is my preferred way of contributing my favorite content creators.
I think the privacy is more about not giving google a comprehensive view of everything you do on the platform than just not seeing ads. If you didn't want ads, you could just watch regular youtube website with ublock origin, even on android firefox supports it.
Most on HN have already fallen for the dichotomy of scrooge mcduck-style capital vs proudhonist pirates.
Meanwhile publishers are caught between these dueling retards and getting squeezed on both ends. Don't forget the scrapers that will hammer your server until it's offline while swapping IPv6s the entire time
"Why isn't anyone building anything anymore durrhurr???"
Depends a bit on the country and era of the sleepers ('ties' in US), but traditional wooden sleepers are treated with creosote [0], which is tar/oil impregnation.
I'm no expert on this subject by any means, but I happen to volunteer at a museum where we have steam trains running. We build our tracks to look traditional, so we use wooden sleepers and no ballast. Most of our sleepers are donated from the commercial railroad companies, typically they are old stock but we also receive used ones occasionally. In my part of the world wooden sleepers aren't common anymore, so it's getting harder to find usable ones. This is a concern for us, as apaearantly there aren't any suppliers left in our part of the world for new ones. At our museum they typically last for about 15 years, mainly because we place our sleepers directly on the soil (no balast). The tar/oils will eventually dry out and the wood will just rot/decompose naturally. Wooden sleepers are considered chemical waste in my part of the world, though I do believe we are allowed to let them decompose fully as biomatter, which goes quite quick if in contact with moist soil. Though we typically dispose our used sleepers at a specialized waste facility, I'm not sure how they process it there.
Oh, and in case you are wondering: no, they don't burn, so we can't use them as firewoord for our steam engines ;-)
Appearantly in the USA, at least as of 2008, around 90% of all track was still using wood [1]. I didn't expect that. For most of the world we have used concrete sleepers for a long time already. Plastic sleepers are also common nowadays, which are typically made from recycled materials.
> Appearantly in the USA, at least as of 2008, around 90% of all track was still using wood [1]. I didn't expect that. For most of the world we have used concrete sleepers for a long time already. Plastic sleepers are also common nowadays, which are typically made from recycled materials.
This is for a few reasons, but the two primary ones are that wood is very cheap and plentiful in the US compared to most of the rest of the world, and we haven't banned creosote in the US like most of the rest of the world, so creosote treated wood is still the most common type of railroad tie.
I just wish it would do 4K resolution out of the box.
The hardware can do it, it's just that the system settings won't show you the 4K resolution option for some reason. But you can do some hacks to make it appear and then it works just fine.
You need to install a nondescript app called 'Samsung Good Lock' from the Samsung store (not available in Play store), and use that to side-load an app called 'Multistar', which is an app to tweak display settings. From that side-loaded app you need to tap the 'I Samsung DeX' which does various setting changes to "Make Dex even more friendly", it doesn't specify what it does exactly, but it'll make the 4K resolution option appear in the system settings.
This all feels real sketchy and I don't understand why Samsung doesn't just enable 4K resolution officially, because the hardware is clearly capable of it.
With every OneUI update there are rumors that it'll natively support 4K, but so far that hasn't happened AFAIK. Admittedly I haven't used Dex in a while for myself, but judging from recent Reddit posts this hack is still needed.
According to the Samsung Store it is developed by developer 'Good Lock Labs'. According to this Wikipedia source [0] they developed this app 'in cooperation with Samsung'. Browsing through the sources I did find a 2016 article from Samsung themselves [1] about Good Lock, indeed confirming it is theirs.
Also, it looks like Good Lock is now also available on the Google Play Store, and there it lists Samsung Electronics as the developer [2].
I guess this does make it less sketchy of an app to use, but it still feel wrong to have to do so many weird steps to get a menu option working.
Aye, to some degree they are, but I'm also glad that android is open/hackable enough that goodlock lets you add these additional preferences. (I also use it, for me it was for ultrawide resolutions)
For those unaware: the Volkswagen Up! is a small, low-budget car produced by VW group, it's also sold as the Škoda Citigo and Seat Mii. AFAIK it was only sold in Europe and Latin-America.
A family member had a early-gen Up!, and the OEM display (build by Navigon) that sat on top of the dashboard was removable, but used a proprietary connection, not USB. I believe it snapped on with magnets, which I remember thinking was quite nice.
The detachability was mostly for anti-theft reasons I presume, but quite quickly an aftermarket started to form to replace the OEM screen with other options, including phone mounts. I don't think VW envisioned that, but I thought that a detachable mount for aftermarket satnav, phone mounts or other accessories was quite smart.
I did wonder why they didn't just make it a phone mount as standard so you can basically BYOD, which could lower the price of the car further and probably be a better experience anyway.
> Volkswagen Up!: infotainment is just a USB port and a phone clamp.
Thanks to your comment I looked into it again, and I'm pleasantly surprised to see the newer generation Up! actually does have a OEM phone mount now, how cool! From what I just read it uses an app to integrate with some of the car's features.
More car manufacturers should do this for their budget cars. Have a few physical buttons for controlling built-in functions (namely HVAC), and let the user's phone provide the entertainment, navigation and other driving aids. Maybe even ditch the radio interface, and just have an amplifier and speakers build in.
It's a shame that phone OSes are moving away from on-device 'driving mode' in favor of Android Auto and Apple Carplay. I get it though, larger screen makes for easier controls and thus safer to interact with while driving, but still...
Should all VW drivers have a "I hate Hitler" sticker on their car too?
Because in case you aren't aware: VW was started by the German Labour Front (part of the Nazi party). Adolf Hitler himself oversaw early development of the first models.
Why the need to apologize for the CEO of the company that you buy products from? Should we also have an "I hate Foxconn" sticker on every Apple device?
After WW2 Volkswagen didn't change their name or Nazi branding (if you haven't seen the uncropped version of the VW logo you're in for a surprise) exactly because people in Allied countries refused to buy German cars after the war. Even if VW or BMW or Mercedes had rebranded and apologized it would have made no difference. Their ties with Nazi leadership was too strong for any apology to be credible. What Frenchman would buy a Nazi car over a French car in 1950s? And so the German car companies focused on domestic sales, which meant they had to appeal to humiliated (former) Nazis for sales for which any rebranding would have been a negative.
German car companies absolutely were boycotted after WW2 in much of Europe (and rightly so) and boycotting Tesla for Musk's antics is consistent with that.
At least some people are probably putting "I hate Elon" stickers on because assholes are out there destroying people's cars because they have beef with Elon, and they don't want said assholes to destroy their car. It's lamentable that people are willing to act so poorly that they think it's OK to destroy innocent parties' property as a form of protest, but so it goes.
I needed to replace the 12v battery in our Tesla a few months back, and was surprised to see a protest out front. I laughed to myself, glad I had driven my Porsche to the service center instead.
Thankfully, I said to myself, none of our non-Tesla cars have problematic histories.
While I think Musk seems to have duplicated Jobs' Reality Distortion Field*, the second CEO-ing of Jobs didn't strike me as quite as severely attaching Apple to Jobs as all of Musk's businesses are now with Musk. For example, quite a lot of the industrial design of that era is (and was) strongly associated with Jony Ive, not Steve Jobs.
I think at best, out of all of Musk's business empire, the closest you get to a Jony Ive-esq "it's not Jobs" is that Gwynne Shotwell is well regarded and seen as being highly competent in her own right; the second closest is that Linda Yaccarino gets named a decent amount in the news, but even then she's very much in Musk's shadow. The public perception of Neuralink and The Boring Company is just "Musk announced his company, [Neuralink|TBC] did ${thing}".
The majority of the owners of the other shares voted to compensate him more (by market value of shares that cannot be sold for 5 years, not cash, which is a relevant distinction) than Tesla has ever made in profit.
And since the compensation is equity, comparing it to profit, which is cash, makes no sense. One can discuss if the market price of the equity is too far removed from current profit, but surely even Elon doesn’t have any influence over what millions of investors around the world choose to pay for Tesla shares.
Should majority owners of a business not be able to vote on compensation?
Will an increase in sales primarily increase his compensation or profits?
I do find it surprising that such ridiculously generous pay was approved by shareholders and think it rather prove what GK Galbraith said: "The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself".
On the other hand there are limits, and at this point I wonder whether shareholders will decide he is a liability and not pay him so well in future. If I was a shareholder I would want to sack him.
I've seen the video. His excuse isn't good enough.
It's not just that I live in a city with small brass plaques on the pavement, in memory of those who were made to disappear last time[0].
It's not just that protestors projecting the image of the guy himself in the middle of that salute, on the walls of his own factory in Brandenburg, was enough to warrant an official investigation because such symbolism is unlawful in Germany[1].
He tried to support to the AfD political party in Germany, who were already suspected of being an extremist party (and have since been officially determined as such), and where several party members had already faced legal problems for using banned Nazi slogans[2] while their former friends at the EU level dropped them for trying to rehabilitate the image of the actual SS[3].
This is who they were before Musk chose to support them. And you trust his word on the innocent interpretation?
It's not like Musk has otherwise got a reputation for being particularly trustworthy — Musk got away with calling someone a pedo by claiming it was a joke; he's been punished for claiming that an offer to buy Tesla for 420/share, which can only be interpreted as a joke, was serious, and that he's really upset to be accused of saying anything untrue; he's mislead people about how close his cars are to full self driving, leading to out-of-court settlements[4].
My post is being downvoted, but it was serious advice though.
Especially in RF hardware design, you will have to plan for the hardware revision to inevitably have problems. And in hardware design, a new revision will take at least another week for a new prototype to arrive.
OP is on rev 5, so I'm assuming that the schematics itself will have been validated already, if the schematics haven't changed between v4 and v5 then it's not unrealistic to subtract the schematic validation part from the planning.
However, OP does also mention having made many routing / placement changes, and trying to move components under a heatsink and such. This is where all sorts of unforseen problems can arise. Especially with high-speed, RF, impedance matched design you can run into so many unforeseen RF black-magic problems. Trust me, I've been there.
In hardware, especially when RF is involved, it's not about how long the testing/validation itself takes, but the turnaround time to get a new prototype produced.
It does seem like the schedule question here is not if testing takes two weeks, it's if rev 5.1 actually fixes the issues, and how long testing revs 5.2 and 5.3 will inevitably take.
Now that I understand it so much better, I start to recognise it everywhere. After reading first paragraph of the article, I immediately though: Laurie must have ADHD!
For ADHD the things that often help are: breaking tasks up into smaller tasks and having a way of tracking progress. You don't want to do that on a screen, your phone is a distraction device!
I write my to-do lists on a paper notebook so I can tick them off. But the label printer idea is also a smart one! Though maybe a bit over-engineered, but I guess that was just a way for Laurie to procrastinate on the solution ;-)
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