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Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?

1460 points by newsbinator ↗ HN
A lot of what hackers do takes years of building knowledge upon knowledge. That's also true for physicists, marketers, salespeople, managers, etc.

Are there any quick wins that 30 ~ 60 minutes of intense concentration can generate?

For example an average person, if focused, can learn to read (but not understand) Korean decently in under an hour.

A person can also learn a few guitar chords and possibly play a carefully-chosen song in that time.

But those aren't valuable skills in themselves.

Do you know of any simple + valuable wins in your area of interest?

("valuable" intentionally left vague)

1,102 comments

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mister_hn
Git. It has few commands and can be rapidly learned in one hour, mastering commands such as

Git fetch

Git pull

Git commit

Git push

Git merge

Git log

mk89
This.

I would add -> understand how git works. The difference between merge and rebase, what Head is, what Tip is, etc.

mister_hn
that's out of 60 minutes time
phaemon
No, it isn't; you can learn git internals in less the 60 mins. They are really simple. It's people's imagined model of how git works that is complicated so they assume git itself must also be complicated.
skrebbel
I doubt people with no prior dvcs experience can learn git in an hour. The interface is abysmal, it uses multiple terms for the same concepts, it's a mess generally.
arvinsim
Although it is important to know how they can be used in the CLI, I find that I using a GUI speeds up my workflow.

I would just settle for understanding how they work rather than dive deep into the CLI syntax intricacies

jaredsohn
If a developer using github, learn the keyboard shortcuts for github.com

? shows a list, 't' shows a directory tree and lets you search for a file.

tus88
I wonder what % of HN readers don't already know Git.
vinhboy
Learn how to use deals site to save a ton of money: https://slickdeals.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=9

I can't overstate how much money you will save by simply setting up alerts on sites like SlickDeals and learning the basic lingo like YMMV, B&M, PM etc...

At the very least learn about the TofuVic's purchase point for toilet paper so you don't waste money wiping your ass.

hombre_fatal
How doesn't that just become a way to buy crap you don't need, or to undo any potential savings you might gain by losing time hawking over a "deals" forum?
cientifico
It's weird that they forbid any user from Europe because of data privacy law.
sshine
This is a weird side-effect of Americans reacting to recent EU GDPR legislation.
adamnemecek
Basic reverse engineering. Download hopper and hack away. Nothing more hacker than that.
lsiebert
How to do various knots comes to mind. Square knot, A sheet bend, clove and trucker's hitch, prusik, the alpine butterfly knot, and bowlines can all be learned rather quickly, then practiced so they can be remembered easily.

http://paracord550milspec.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/How...

arvinsim
I remember learning these before but due to not finding any use case for them, I already forgot how to do them properly.

Only thing I regularly tie nowadays are my shoelaces.

EDIT: Grammar

dokem
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.
superhuzza
Just so you're aware, the bowline is considered somewhat dangerous because it has a high chance of being tied incorrectly.

The only real advantage it has over a double figure 8 is that it's easier to untie after dynamic cinching.

https://rockandice.com/climb-safe/climb-safe-rethinking-the-...

sunstone
Interestingly, the bowline and the cat's claw are the same knot, but the cat's claw uses two rope ends rather than one and it's very simple to tie, unlike the tricky bowline.
ken
The bowline has other advantages. It's also much faster to tie than a figure-8 follow-through, for example. I imagine it takes less rope, too.

We use the bowline (without backup) in industry. I've never heard of anyone having an issue with it. Any equipment is dangerous if you set it up halfway, walk away, and forget to finish. That's why you never do anything halfway. That failure mode is not specific to knots, or any particular knot.

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mkl
> 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!).

pbhjpbhj
IIRC it's just "Ian's way of tying a reef/square knot".

Make sure you're not tying a granny and you're golden. If you have problems with long laces, or ones that come undone, then a surgeons knot can help.

I tried Ian's method for a couple of weeks and reverted back, it was too fiddly for me.

svrtknst
Not that it's not a neat knot (repeat that for a tongue twister!), but I chuckled a bit at:

> With practice, I can now tie my shoelaces in about one third of the time of a conventional knot!

So... 1 second instead of 3? Amazing ;)

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kqr
This ties in to how I like to say the rope may be one of the greatest inventions of mankind.
nsomaru
I find myself unravelling mentally when it comes to remembering knots and the like
contravariant
That's nothing, you should see what the mathematicians get up to when they try to figure out if two knots are different.
taneq
Many of the most useful knots are very easy to learn, there's no need to be afrayed!
mantap
My favorite knots to add to your list are adjustable grip hitch (AGH), siberian hitch, and zeppelin bend.

The AGH is super easy to tie and very versatile. The Siberian is useful for tying a rope around a static object such as a pole or a tree. 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.

SPBS
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
ken
Two interlocked bowlines will get you this.
gwd
> 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.

pps43
European death knot is much easier to learn than zeppelin bend.
pge
very much agree - I would suggest as a starting point learning a couple basic knot families and then the more important of how to apply them. Keeping it simple - learn a clove hitch, a figure 8, and a bowline (maybe also a sheet bend). Those cover almost all the use cases you will come across without having to remember many knots. Is an alpine/butterfly better than a figure 8 on a bight for a loop in the middle of a rope? yes, of course, but it’s one more thing to remember. If you like knots, learn all the good ones, there’s a knot for every use. But if you just want to have sone practical knowledge that is used rarely, learn just three or four very versatile knots and when to use them.
SamuelAdams
Also two-half hitches and the taughtline hitch. Ever need to tie a rope to a pole or a tree? Two-half hitches is your friend. It's also really easy to undo.
pps43
The problem with knots is that there are so many, and even the most popular ones have serious problems.

For example, everyone recommends bowline, but it's unsafe without securing the working end. Everyone recommends square knot, but it's easy to tie incorrectly (getting a granny knot instead).

Figuring out which knots to learn will take a lot longer than an hour. Here's my list:

Overhand loop, figure eight follow-through, adjustable grip hitch, trucker's hitch, kalmyk loop.

JustSomeNobody
Add Alpine Butterfly and that's a pretty solid list.
shpx
The Ian Knott for tying your shoelaces a little faster
Broken_Hippo
The problem with this is practical use. I so rarely need to knot something securely or in a special way that it doesn't seem worth the time to learn. I can look things up if I find a use.

What practical uses do you use knots for?

darkkindness
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
There's a growing realization that you can completely side-step the need for Single-Page App frameworks like React using websockets and the morphdom library.

Projects like StimulusReflex (Rails) and LiveView (Phoenix) allow developers to build complex, reactive modern apps faster and easier by rejecting the need to even have client state.

https://github.com/hopsoft/stimulus_reflex

https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix_live_view

I haven't been this excited for a web technology since Rails came out.

jes5199
neat! Of course, this makes me want to run React serverside...
peteforde
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.

jes5199
I just think that React components are more readable and more maintainable than erb templates
escanda
Your mind will be furtherly blown when you realize this has been working for decades in JavaServerFaces!
nurettin
Excited for jsf, asp.net, Wt and UniGui. Full circle is complete.
aitchnyu
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
Don't forget GWT!
peteforde
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.

dokem
I made similar functionality for Django a few years ago called Sniper. You write all your dom modification code as an Ajax request handler. In his handler you yield out a sequence of dom modification objects and sniper handles the rest. I couldn’t understand why this wasn’t a more popular approach.
peteforde
The combination of websockets and morphdom vs Ajax polling and DOM updates is a major leap forward. Check it out!
rayalez
Cool! Is there such thing for Flask? For Node?
aeternum
Regular expressions fall into this category. While they might take longer to master, you should know the basics after an hour.

I've been surprised at how often people convert long lists line-by-line. You can sometimes take what was a multiple-hour task and complete it with a handful of cryptic characters.

agungsukma
Yes, regular expression. Saves me from lines of substr, split, join, etc.
enraged_camel
Eh, I always use substr, split and so on if possible. They make the code way easier to read than with a regex.
Izkata
It really depends on what you're doing, and at least being aware of what regex can do will help with deciding which is better for a given situation.

For example, I remember once replacing a buggy 3-4 lines of python based on split/etc with a single regex: match all \d+ (it was for extracting IDs from a user-input string)

aliceryhl
Simple transformations can easily become complex to do with regex, so I've started using vim macros instead.
swiley
Regex don’t do transformations? All they can do is match strings.
TJSomething
Transformation by substitution is part of most dialects of regex, in the form of capturing groups.
aeternum
Regex grouping expressions along with find & replace enable transformations.
leokennis
If I have a list of names I’d like to reverse:

John Smith > Smith, John Anna Peterson > Peterson, Anna

I can write:

(.) (.)

And replace with:

\2, \1

Not sure if that’s part of some “official” regex spec but it works more or less everywhere.

(Of course if it was an actual list of names I’d have to be a lot more intelligent with double names etc.)

jeltz
Almost. All regular expressions do is match strings and find the starts and ends of whole matches and match groups. And this is an important distinction since match group support adds quite a bit of complexity to the theory behind regular expressions and also increases their usefulness by quite a bit.

Regular expression libraries then often can use these boundaries, for the whole match and for groups, for transform the string (e.g. replacing what was matched by a group with some other content).

sauravs
agree...regular expression is like magic to me
maccard
I spent an hour learning the basics - wildcards, whitespace, escape symbols and Character ranges are enough for them to be useful.
jeltz
Can you really learn regex in one hour? I learned them so long time ago and in a gradual way that I have no idea how long it would take if you focus on it, but I feel like it would be more than an hour since I think most people would need to play around quite a bit to really grasp them.
collyw
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.

johnlbevan2
I found this site fantastic for improving my RegEx skills - https://regexcrossword.com/. Most people find solving puzzles more fun than reading text books, and the hands-on experience / forcing you to think rather than just read, can really help things stick in your memory.
smaddox
Mindfulness meditation. Sitting with your thoughts and emotions, experiencing them, and understanding them, rather than avoiding them or distracting yourself from them can have a dramatic effect on your life. And 10 minutes a day for a week can get you far enough to see some real benefits, like reduced stress and increased awareness of unhelpful thought patterns.
samfar90
I don't want to sound ridiculous, but I've gotten the same benefits that you seem to describe (I have never tried mindfulness) since I started to smoke weed.
sgillen
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.
sshine
I'm sorry, but there is a fine line between dealing with stuff and smoking weed, one of which involves dealing with stuff, and the other postponing dealing with stuff.
saiya-jin
That's simply not true. I've dealt with hard stuff in my life (ie very long term relationship went into tough sudden breakup) with weed. It gave me a good perspective on it that holds to this day, it made me close the whole topic completely very quickly (1-2 weeks at max) in a rather pleasant way.

I've set my life priorities with help of weed. They still hold to this day. I've done some of the best decisions on direction of my life with weed. Looking back +-10 years ago, damn those were some fine decisions. Weed gives me, when alone, often semi-constant stream of very creative ideas just popping out of sub-consciousness. I've come up with ideas for startups at least 50x, often to find later somebody is already well into executing it (often in areas I normally don't touch, ie self-belaying machines for climbing, or self-shaping moving wall for climbing - I never ever saw/heard about any of those, but it seems they are quite popular in US).

The rate, amount and depth of those ideas just isn't there when sober. The rate is so high that I sometimes don't manage to record them all.

All this was done alone, just me and my emotions. YMMV, but for my introvertish personality type, it works wonders. There are drawbacks of course, like with everything else. But postponing dealing with issues is more of an alcohol style effect.

sshine
Okay, so I won't try to rob you of that experience. I've felt creativity and perspective when doing psychoactive drugs, too.

The rate of good ideas (or rather, the feeling of that, as it is) was called "interpretation madness" by one podcaster.

When you relate alcohol with postponing one's emotions, perhaps this is because you've seen that happen. So have I.

But I've also seen dozens of friends get stuck in their emotional (and educational) development for years because of weed.

Don't forget the hashishins - the drug is literally named after a bunch of assassins who smoked to forget.

saiya-jin
Yeah, that's why I mentioned YMMV. I've seen people turn aggressive on weed, but then again they were broken personalities to start with, and alcohol wasn't faring much better. I've witnessed one lady mentioning seeing blood run down the walls during whole trip. Tons of people just giggle with little additional insight. Don't know, maybe mindset thing.

It's a mind altering drug, can be quite powerful, can create (easy to shed) psychical dependence. As we say back home about fire - good servant, bad master.

jmcqk6
>But I've also seen dozens of friends get stuck in their emotional (and educational) development for years because of weed.

Weed has different effects on different people. Assuming that weed will have the same effect on everyone is obviously a bad assumption.

There are tons of stories about many different things (gluten, msg, sugar, caffiene, coffee, tea, ice cream, tylenol, etc. etc.) having different effects on different people. Sometimes those differences are completely perceptional, and sometimes they are physical, but the outcomes are definitively different.

It's a deep cognitive bias to ignore this fact.

samfar90
This statement , "postponing dealing with stuff.", is not true, at least not for everyone. At least in my case and according to several testimonies I read/heard.

I have never been more apt to deal with issues than since I started smoking weed.

sgillen
I think different people use it differently. Certainly a lot of people use it to postpone dealing with stuff.

I do think it’s possible to use it as a tool to help you deal with stuff though, and I think that’s what the person I was replying to was doing.

mapcars
>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? :)

samfar90
I am curious, like what types of meditation ?
mapcars
I'm sorry I will not give direct answer simply because it should not be taken lightly and without proper atmosphere and an experienced guidance can go out of control.

But if you keep your interest and intention to try experience something different - I'm sure you will find out.

samfar90
And also, the effects of weed do not appear to be temporary. I still get the benefits (minus the drawbacks) hours and days after the last joint.
Synaesthesia
That’s fine but doesn’t mean people can’t get benefits from mindfulness! Both could be good
tudorw
Mindfulness is a lot cheaper :)
collyw
Depends. I get better effects from meditation after having just completed a ten day course. But it takes a lot of time to get there and to keep doing it on a daily basis. If you used that time for something that earned you money I doubt it would work out cheaper.
aasasd
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
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.
samfar90
I will try mindfullness some day
hombre_fatal
I find Sam Harris' Waking Up guided meditation lessons the most useful (can find it on mobile app stores, the 30+ lessons are free and start off short and simple).

Until those, I thought meditation was inherently coupled with eastern mystic bullshit with zero benefits for anyone who didn't want to buy into a bunch of other baggage.

He has a book by the same name as the mobile app. The first chapter (read out loud here) is what first started convincing me that mindfulness was something I should seek out and develop: https://samharris.org/podcasts/chapter-one/

I started doing it while laying in bed before falling asleep. Ended up with a daily morning practice sitting up on my bench.

[dead] fellow_human
Interesting that other cultural practices are dismissed as mystic bullshit by default, until a white man introduces it. That makes it more trustworthy other white people.
psv1
This is has nothing to do with "cultural practices" or the skin color of whoever introduced it. It's more about answering the question "Is the evidence in favor of this practice strong enough to try it for a while?".
henryaj
No, the 'mystic bullshit' is very real in e.g. vipassana (for example, anything about "vibrations") regardless of the race of the speaker
dr_dshiv
Why are vibrations associated with mystic bullshit? I've noticed this too, but I don't understand.
collyw
The positive effects (for most people) are also very real as well, in spite of the "mystic bullshit".
wdrw
There's definitely 'mystic bullshit' in Vipassana, but it's not the 'vibrations' part (the Vipassana course emphasizes over and over again that the sensations you're supposed to watch for are real, physical sensations - pressure on the skin, temperature, sweat, itching - nothing mystical)
nothis
Wow. Rest assured, I still consider these cultural practices mystic bullshit.
fellow_human
What cultural practices are you referring to? Every non-white cultural practice? That would be proving my point.

I never stated there was value in every non-western cultural practice, only that the value that actually does exists is easy to dismiss away as "superstitious beliefs" (or mystic bullshit) until one of the "in-group" convinces us otherwise. No doubt, it's a good thing science now backs up meditative benefits to an individual, but it shows a certain level of arrogance if everyones culture is bullshit or backwards until [insert popular science guy] has confirmed otherwise.

hombre_fatal
Well, in my OP that you responded to, I used "eastern mystic bullshit" to explain where I was coming from and why I initially rejected meditation. It was always only something I'd hear brought up from a dread-locked vagabonding white guy with a mandala tattoo on his chest and the desperate need for deodorant.

Sam Harris makes the case that you can save the baby (mindfulness) from the bathwater (superstition, etc.) and that these practices were onto something because we share a common human experience.

Why not listen to his first chapter that I linked? I can almost guarantee that you would agree with him. You are just having a knee-jerk reaction to what you think is going on. Harris covers the exact things you think you're trying to point out.

Also, let's drop the skin-color bullshit. I reject all religion and superstition the same way I reject astrology, which is why I need a rationalist approach to have my mind re-opened to some of these ideas like mindfulness which are almost always couched in superstition. Sam Harris is precisely trying to do this and he starts that chapter making the case for it to people like me who immediately cringe at a loaded word "spirituality".

fellow_human
Fair enough, I did probably knee jerk or interpret things in the wrong way. Will give it a go perhaps. I'm currently using the headspace app which I suspect is a similar approach.
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Timpy
I think Harris's perspective is more like, "There's some good stuff here if you ignore the mystic bullshit." That's my take on it, and the message I get behind. I don't care if the person who introduced it happens to be an ethnically Jewish man. Incidentally I have the same take on Western religions, especially the one that I grew up with. I enjoy and appreciate practices from foreign cultures, the "foreign-culture-ness" of something does not lead me to dismiss it. The mystic bullshit part is what I dismiss, in every culture (especially my own).
ipnon
Until neuroscientists began researching meditation, the practice was coupled with various Asian cultural practices and beliefs, some from ancient times. It is reasonable to be doubtful of the efficacy of meditation when the evidence is effectively socio-cultural.

Sam Harris is a neuroscientist, so he has scientific credibility when he promotes meditation as a beneficial practice.

[dead] sjapkee
>Mindfulness meditation

Absolutely useless thing which for some reason is shoved into each thread.

maccard
Rather than dismissing the parents comment, would you tell us why you find it useless and add to the discussion?

Personally I found mindfulness to be helpful in unwinding, and I've found that my concentration levels are generally higher than they were before I started using it. It may not be the most efficient technique, but it's been a benefit for many people, me included.

0xffff2
Not GP, but I sympathize with their sentiment. I think I'm generally pretty "mindful", but I've tried meditation probably half a dozen points in my life (each for a week+) and it has never felt like anything but a waste of time to me. I really don't know how to express it in any more detail, it simply didn't feel like I had accomplished anything of value with that time.
wawhal
1. Have you tried mindfulness meditation? 2. Which type of mindfulness meditation have you tried? 3. Why do you think it is useless when most people find it useful? 4. With what goal did you try the meditation that it seemed useless?

You cannot throw a word "useless" without emphasising the "use".

marc_io
I've learned some of the most useful things in my entire life through mindfulness meditation.
nroets
I upvoted, but I found that it's a bit different from what you describe: It's a technique to stop obsessing about the past and the future.

For example, many people are so focused on planning for the future that it's unhealthy. Mindfulness can help to distract their minds for the unhealthy though pattern.

Either way it's good to work through a few different courses and find something that works. For example MBCT.

ken
Learn to tie the basic knots. 3 to 5 knots will cover 95% of the situations you'll ever encounter. They're easy to learn. When someone tosses you a rope, you have no excuse for not knowing what to do with it.
zepolen
When someone tosses me a rope I'll toss it to you ;)
harrisonjackson
CPR/Choking/First Aid course is probably close to an hour.

How to change your own oil - probably lots of other money-saving home and auto DIY things...

Speed reading and memory tricks can be a multiplier on learning other skills.

How to use automation tools like Zapier and IFTTT - again, a force multiplier.

You might be interested in this book https://www.amazon.com/First-20-Hours-Learn-Anything/dp/1591... - the author has a youtube video that covers it pretty well in 15 minutes - similar to 4-Hour chef, too

RobertRoberts
I would add a few things I learned to improve your memory:

1. Care about the subject

2. Focus on memorizing it: This may seem dumb, but how many times have you forgot where you placed your keys? If all you do is momentarily state to yourself "I set my keys here" when you put them down, it's almost hard to forget.

3. Don't eat white sugar or white flour processed, or other foods that may cause you to loose concentration. (I tested this theory when trying to memorize stuff. Crazy the effect it has)

4. Associate a picture (with an action or something outlandish) with the item. You can take a list of 20 items where most people get only a max of around 4 items, I can memorize the entire thing by making a story with the items. No practice needed, it works the first time for most people. Works for memorizing directions as well. (too long to explain the entire process in a comment)

These are just shortcuts though... (from a few memory courses I took in the past)

tarsinge
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.
unkulunkulu
I would argue you better practice recall than rereading, i.e. put some notes after reading, make an abstract, expand on it with new thoughts next day, in a week etc. Just rereading might be a) boring b) constantly giving you a sense of familiarity, which is not knowledge. When I have to reread something that is not too deep I sense that I have made a mistake first time by not really thinking about the text.
dragonsngoblins
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?

RobertRoberts
We have a similar technique, I put my stuff in the same place all the time. But only because I was sick of misplacing them for many years.

I think there are a lot of people that don't have tendencies towards systems/self rules to solve issues like this, so they casually smash through life care free and forget where they put their keys "this time". (based on many people I know)

dragonsngoblins
It isn't a system I developed to remember though, it is just... I put them somewhere sensible where they won't fall behind something or scratch anything etc.

My keys are often in different places, it is just that the list of "sensible" places isn't very large so if I have forgotten checking them all takes practically no time

EDIT: I should say not a system I developed consciously, I do have ADD so my habit of putting things in sensible places generally might be an adaption to that, though if so it happened before I even had keys to lose

RobertRoberts
We may be mincing words, but when I say "system" I mean "I decided to try and only place my keys in reasonable places, always... and these 4 are the most reasonable."

Where other people may have made no considerations at all where they put stuff.

dragonsngoblins
I feel like "System" is a bit of an extreme term. "Sensible" also means natural. Like, either they go on the kitchen counter, the dining table, or my desk, or occasionally the arms of the couch usually because those are the places that have space to put things like phone/keys/etc when I empty my pockets.

The only considerations are: Is the place convenient (read nearby when I'm likely to be putting things down)? Are they a flat and stable surface?

That's it. I feel like if people don't make those sorts of considerations surely they are just dropping shit on the floor

boring_twenties
> 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

Must be nice :)

ken
> CPR/Choking/First Aid course is probably close to an hour.

What can you teach in only an hour? I work with some people who teach basic first aid, and the shortest course any of them does is 4.5 hours.

elbows
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
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
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.

XaspR8d
Step 0 is the really high-yield tip here because it applies in so many emergencies. The natural shout of "someone call 911" is so often less effective: even if folks aren't halted by outright shock or confusion, their disorganization and/or assumption that somebody else will do it introduces miscommunications and delay. Nearly everyone takes to direct, simple instructions much better and faster.
hnick
All accurate but you missed the real step 1, which is arguably the most important - Check for danger. It was drilled into us repeatedly in our course because it's extremely obvious but always easy to forget during a situation.

Our first aid teacher told us a lovely story of a child on his bike who got zapped by a downed power line. The next two family members trying to help him also died because they just rushed in. Not a great day for them.

In other situations, something as simple as pulling the park brake in a traffic accident can save a world of problems. Regardless, don't even get close enough to physically check them if you aren't sure it's safe.

DRSABCD (Doctors ABCD) - Danger, Response, Send for Help, Airways, Breathing, CPR, Defibrillator.

https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/conditionsandtrea...

JshWright
There are certainly special considerations, but in the vast majority of situations where CPR is necessary, there is no external hazard to worry about, it's just Uncle Jim's diet and lifestyle catching up with him.
hnick
Often it's obvious, and checking takes no more than a second or two. It's just important that you do it.

Even if you find Uncle Jim on the floor at home, don't run in assuming a heart problem because maybe he tripped on some water and you'll do the same :) But if he starts choking right in front of you, go to town.

JshWright
I don't disagree with you, but as someone who walks into a _lot_ of emergency scenes, it's really rare for there to be a hazard to worry about. Is it a thing you should consider? Sure. In reality it doesn't come up often enough to warrant "top billing" in a high level overview of how to do chest compressions.
TuringTest
In any emergency scene, the first thing to do is check for traffic to prevent the victim or yourself from getting run over (sometimes merely because you need to cross the street: while running to provide help in an emergency situation, you're likely to forget looking both ways).

If any one of those emergency scenes was outdoors and you didn't think of this, you're doing it wrong. And even if you've always remembered to do this yourself, it's essential that you explain it to others so they will remember it as the first thing to do.

ghaff
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.)

mellonmarshall
A basic Life Support Course is like 2 hours (maybe 3). Actually did it in the morning then spend the afternoon testing everyone.

A Essenial First Aid at Work course is 8 hours (this is the legal requirement for FAW in the UK)

A Full First Aid at Work is 32 hours.

A EMT-B in the USA (min needed to do, to get on an Amblance) is 50 hours

The basic training for amblance in the UK is about month with a week training in driviong with blue lights

Want to be a Paramedic well that is a 3 year degree

Want to be a Nurse that again is a 3 year degree (and no you can't do one and swap for the other)

Want to be a doctor well that 5 years plus a few more years training on the job.

Ok if you want to get a medical Gas Qual well you looking at about 8 hours or so. Patient and casualty handing are both about 2-3 hours each.

hnick
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.

kasey_junk
I’m always amazed when the “change your own oil” option comes up in these discussions as it’s a very classic example where having specialized tools s and doing it a lot really speeds you up. And it’s a dirty job without a lot of intellectual interest. Further you can get it done for you in 10 minutes for approaching minimum wage.

Unless you work on your car for fun and have things like a lift sitting around it seems like a fairly useless thing to do yourself.

wenc
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...

harrisonjackson
I agree with you for most DIY home projects you maximize your own earnings more by paying someone. Mowing the lawn is a great example when I think about my parents refusing to pay someone else despite being able to afford it.

I still think as a landlord there are some things you come out ahead on though. You can learn to fix a sprinkler and do it in an hour (maybe 2 counting home depot run). You'd probably have to pay someone a few hundred dollars for even a basic fix. If you own 50 properties of course this wouldn't make sense, but if you are a first-time homeowner then I'd say do it at least once.

Everyone should have that moment of a broken sprinkler head spraying you straight in the face while you figure out where the water shutoff is.

wenc
Absolutely -- most landlords either have to be handy or they have to access to cheap contractors (they "know a guy who knows a guy") to make any money at all on rentals. Otherwise repairs will eat up most of the margin.
boring_twenties
I'd be careful with those "impeccable" $25 oil changes. The only time I've ever tried one, they threw out the filter housing along with the old filter, and just "installed" the new filter without the housing. This was immediately before a 400 mile road trip through the middle of nowhere. Good times. Never again.
wenc
As with everything YMMV. Oil changes are so commoditized that it is more likely for nothing to happen. I don’t know where you live but 25 is kinda of a standard price in most places I’ve ever had an oil change at.
hanniabu
And then you need to find a place to take your oil.
wcarron
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
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.

runamok
Yeap. The oil change franchises pay minimum for a reason. One just removed and lost the oil change plastic door under the car and another forgot to put the cap on which led to me spraying oil on my engine on the highway and a lot of smoke...

Pay a bit more and use a competent mechanic you trust IMO.

snowwrestler
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
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
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.

the_watcher
These are all things I wish I felt more comfortable doing. When I buy a home, I plan on getting better at all of these, and investing in doing them with my kids while they're young. I'll always remember how much money my most handy friends saved in college while always having the nicest apartments.
blitz_skull
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.

JMTQp8lwXL
I've always been under the impression that for people living in multifamily housing, changing oil yourself isn't an option. It isn't "your" driveway (everyone else parks their car in the same garage), and I've never seen anybody do it. Lease terms might actually prevent oil changes, but I haven't confirmed that any place.
ethhics
I can add that 3 of 3 multi-family dwelling leases I’ve signed in Texas have a specific prohibition to changing oil.
0xffff2
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.
eschneider
Without a doubt, CPR.
ghaff
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.
viggity
my gf's daughter (age 5) had a cyanotic spell last night (turned blue from being frightened and crying). She straight up stopped breathing. Having the CPR steps drilled in to my head put me on autopilot, which was really reassuring, even though it's been awhile since I last took the class. Thankfully the sternum rub caused a lot of pain and her to start crying (and thus breathing) so I didn't need to call 911.
maremp
I’m always curious how people use IFTTT, Zapier or aletrnatives (e.g. Shortcuts on iOS). I’m a developer and I like to automate a lot of the stuff I do, either with bash commands/script or nodejs/python for more complex stuff, and user scripts in the browser. I can’t find a good use-case for IFTTT and I feel like I’m missing out on a big part here. I’m not sure if I’m not thinking about it right, or if it just doesn’t apply to my workflow.
harrisonjackson
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
If you have even a small amount of math talent, you should be able to grasp the key ideas in Bayes's Rule that quickly iff you read https://arbital.com/p/bayes_rule_guide.
schoen
The biconditional is a pretty strong claim here (especially considering that you yourself have written well-regarded introductions to this topic).
Eliezer
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.
OrderlyTiamat
> iff

You're certain there is absolutely no other way? ;)

sshine
I know Bayes' rule, so I must have read this article.
username90
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.
tsumnia
Learning that learning takes more than an hour, no matter the domain. You said it yourself: "A lot of what hackers do takes years of building knowledge upon knowledge". Understanding a skill takes time, energy, and discipline to improve is all you can do.

Everything else is simply spending an hour "doing something". If you keep the "something" to a smaller set of "things", then maybe you can learn something over several one hour sessions.

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
sellingwebsite
Sales. If you only have 1 hour to learn anything, learn sales. That's a skill that can come handy in many areas of life, not only in business.
tasssko
Where would you start? I’m in the “learning sales stage” of my career and have stumbled on Sandler sales training. I’ve talked to a really excellent sandler trainer (link down below). The gist of what I discovered is that I must learn new habits when making sales calls (i.e more listening, better questioning, resist making assumptions). None of these things take an hour. However here is a YouTube video by the Sandler Trainer I talked to. It will take you less than an hour to watch and you could learn something. https://youtu.be/I4qrQz8h0AM
eugenekolo2
* Filing taxes if in the US.

* CPR

* Cooking a couple of meals

geowwy
If you're going overseas, learn a little bit of the local language.

  1. Hello
  2. Goodbye
  3. Please
  4. Thank you
  5. Me
  6. You
  7. Him/her
  8. This
  9. That
  10. Here
  11. There
  12. Do you have this?
  13. Where is this?
  14. How much money is that?
  15. Where is the toilet?
  16. Digits (0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9)
You'll be surprised how much of the language you pick up naturally just by memorising some basic words and using them.
nxpnsv
This really is good advice. I’ve found a little goes a long way in improving your experience.
lisper
I always try to learn how to say, "I'm sorry, I don't speak X" in language X. When I was in Japan I got an unbelievable amount of leverage out of being able to say, "Sumi masen, Nihon-go hanasei masen" which, of course, means "I don't speak Japanese" in Japanese. The local's faces would light up and often they would respond in Japanese despite the fact that I had just told them that I don't speak Japanese.
kqr
Similarly, Excusez-moi; parlez-vous Anglais? is how you get a French person to speak English.
lisper
Je ne parle pas Francais. :-(
bigwavedave
That's why the parent told you how to ask in french if a person speaks English ;).
eps
The full handshake sequence is usually longer that this.

They will first reply with "Non", often coupled with a wounded look.

Then you have to start speaking in a very broken French, ideally with a monstrous accent (though this comes naturally).

And only then they will suddenly re-discover their long forgotten English skills, which will turn out to be quite decent.

switch007
I agree. The French are clever (and very nice people). They know you’ve just learnt that one phrase in order to unlock their English: you have to work a bit harder. They want to see a bit of pain first.
mikorym
French mathematics is famous for being written as prose and by extension for being much more instructive than an English equivalent (provided that said mathematics was discovered by a French person).
hardlianotion
How does that explain Bourbaki?
mikorym
What do you mean... Bourbaki is in French.
shantly
This is very relevant to my interests. My French doesn't go past "haltingly read newspapers" and "acquire food, shelter, and directions in a French-speaking region", so would any of this prose-heavy mathematics be available in English translation? Are there any particular authors you have in mind?
mikorym
I can't speak French, so my comment is based on what other mathematicians tell me.

Unfortunately, Grothendieck, Galois and as far as I know, Bourbaki is not fully translated. And unless someone actually spends many years doing it, a lot of it never will be.

I also think Russian is useful, especially to read some old texts from the cold war era. But a lot of the books are translated (but not the papers). Kolmogorov's books and probably quite a few others were translated not very long after they were written.

But, to be honest, I think knowing French and Russian is more of a personal pursuit than a necessity to access the mathematiacs. Galois wrote down very little and his memoirs (written by someone else) should be the interesting historically. Grothendieck should also be interesting, especially to see his unrelenting commitment to translate everything to category theory. However, for almost any topic, somewhere, in English, there would be a good source. Bourbaki was never really "completed" and I am not sure whether it's useful to read those texts (rather than the stuff that was inspired by them).

I can recommend Lawvere's books, especially Conceptual Mathematics since it's even accessible for high school students. My main interest is in category theory and set theory, so it may well not be what you are interested in.

I've also seen really useful stuff in the internet era, like Category Theory for Programmers by Bartosz Milewski.

testplzignore
Parlez-vous [random broken Spanish] parlez-vous [more Spanish]. Merci.
dharmon
Exactly this. There is a crossover point where their pain of listening to your horrible French exceeds their enjoyment of watching you suffer, and that's when they let you off the hook.

In Paris in the summer this crossover point is higher since I think they're pissed they are stuck in the city for the summer dealing with tourists rather than frolicking in the countryside.

IanCal
> Then you have to start speaking in a very broken French, ideally with a monstrous accent (though this comes naturally).

I think "Comment apple two" is a great opener for this.

eps
Nice... probably should be "Comma Apple Two" though :)

PS. To clarify for others - It's a bastardized version of "Comment tu t'appelle?" which means "What's your name?" or more precisely "How do you call yourself?"

alexis_fr
“Parlez-vous Anglais” will get you nowhere, but “Pas de palais, pas de palais” is how you earn a nightful of drinks by a French guy.

Seriously, don’t learn boring words, we already know someone doesn’t speak French. Learn movie quotes and you’ll kickstart a discussion. Learn awesome movie quotes and you’ll have something to discuss about.

mbar84
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
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".
greggman2
they weren't wrong.

hanasemasen = can't speak

hanashimasen = don't speak

It's arguably more proper to say "nihongo ga hanasemasen" (I can't speak Japanese) than "nihongo wo hanashimasen" (I don't speak Japanese). The first is a statement of my personal abilities. The second could easily be a statement of my attitude. "nihongo ga hanasemasu kedo nihongo o hanshimasen" (I can speak Japanese but I don't speak Japanese)

For whatever reason I've never heard wakaremasen (can't understand) but only don't understand (wakarimasen).

mattchamb
I read it as something like はなせいません which doesn't match 話せません or 話しません
levythe
Wakaremasen would imply that you are incapable of or forbidden from ever understanding. It would be very strange.

I've honestly never heard anyone use ga before hanaseru. It's always been wo that I've heard.

jrockway
I have asked my Japanese friends about this and they are usually convinced after discussion that "ga" is the correct particle to use here. But "wo" sounds fine.

I think it is very much like "was/were" in English. "If I was to give you a cookie..." / "If I were to give you a cookie..." "were" is "correct" (as though there is such a thing in English), I think, but "was" sounds fine. "Was" looks pretty abrasive in writing but say it out loud and you'll notice that you hear it a lot.

Grue3
Well, the original wording was "hanasei masen" and I assumed the OP wouldn't know about the potential form at their current level. Potential form when talking about knowing the language doesn't sound right to me, but I can find example sentences using both potential and normal form. In natural language I think normal form would be used. Potential form of "wakaru" is "wakareru" which happens to be a verb with a completely different meaning "to diverge/separate/divide", so I don't think anyone uses it and it makes little sense anyway.
glandium
Wakaru doesn't have a potential form because its meaning includes potential. So wakareru is unambigously "separate/split/divide"

Now, I never realized... the interesting thing is both wakaru and wakareru use the same kanji: 分かる 分かれる (although there is also 解る or 判る for wakaru)

lisper
> I assumed the OP wouldn't know about the potential form at their current level.

You assumed correctly :-) I thought that adding a "sen" suffix to any verb was the only way to negate it. Wakarimas = I understand. Wakarimasen = I don't understand. (Yes, I read Shogun :-) Japanese is apparently much more subtle than I realized.

markussss
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.

jobigoud
It doesn't always work though… I just had an issue with a Spanish airline (of all things I would assume all their employees would have to speak some English), where the session expired, the online payment went through but the ticket reservation didn't. I called the number and asked if Se habla Inglès o Francès? and no, I had to use my broken Spanish to sort it out. The lady was very helpful though.
Kaiyou
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.

AnIdiotOnTheNet
Brian Griffin : Hola! Um... me, me llamo es Brian. Ahh, uh, um... Let's see, uh, nosotros queremos ir con ustedes.

Migrant Worker : Hey, that was pretty good, except when you said, "Me llamo es Brian," you don't need the "es", just "me llamo Brian".

Brian Griffin : Oh! So you speak English!

Migrant Worker : No, just that first sentence and this one explaining it.

Brian Griffin : You... you're kidding, right?

Migrant Worker : Que?

jansan
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
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.

lisper
I think this is a terrible idea.

For starters, I can tell you from firsthand experience that saying "I don't speak X" does not "kill the interaction." It is invariably taken as ironically humorous, and a sincere effort to fit into the local culture. I've never had anything but a positive response to it, and I have traveled extensively throughout the world.

Furthermore, putting myself in the listener's shoes, if a foreigner walked up to me and recited a random movie quote in broken English I would be utterly nonplussed. I mean, think about it: a random stranger walks up to you and the first words out of their mouth are, "No palace, no palace." I can't imagine any reaction other than: WTF?

jrockway
I think people have varying opinions on this. Many of us don't really want to launch people into a phony conversation -- you convince the other person that you understand the language, then they talk for a while, and then they realize that you didn't understand anything they just said. Now your newfound friend thinks you like wasting their time.

This happens all the time in other contexts. "Have you seen movie X?" "mm yeah" "what did you think about the part where <20 minutes of explanation>" "oh you know I didn't actually see the movie I just didn't want to say no". The reason people do this is because they hate saying no, and 50% of the time having seen the movie / heard the song / know the celebrity / is not actually relevant to the anecdote. But when it is, you sure look like an idiot.

acjacobson
I find also 'Excuse me / Pardon me' is extremely useful in the local language.
geowwy
Agreed! Forgot that one
victorvation
Excellent list! I'd also recommend adding "What is this?" to the list, and for extra credit, do some research on the vernacular / polite way to address strangers in public ("Excuse me" also works for this in a pinch, although not in all cultures!).
jeltz
Here in Sweden most people are comfortable speaking English so if you address them politely in English they will probably be more comfortable and less caught off guard than if they have to decipher phrases in broken Swedish, no matter how well meaning.

Still probably a good idea to learn some words so you can read signs.

Broken_Hippo
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.
pgt
The most valuable question to know in every language is, "How do you say <English word> in <your language>, please?"

For example, in Xhosa you ask,"Uthini ngesiXhosa 'to run', nceda?" => The answer is "baleka." :)

ehnto
I was just in Japan, and really felt my lack of basic language. I picked it up quicker than I expected, but without having someone who knew both English and Japanese it was hard to know if I was getting it right. By the end of the trip I had a few interactions in Japanese and it felt great, I really wish I had learned before going over to get the most out of the knowledge.

A few items to learn I would add to your list:

* Sorry, I do not understand

* May I (take a picture/sit here/...)?

* That was delicious (or simply the word for delicious)

* I only understand {my language}

The reason I mention the last one over simply "I do not understand" is it makes it clear that not only do you not understand, you probably won't understand if they try again. It also lets them know a language you would understand so they can get out a translating app. It was easy enough to translate from English to Japanese up front, but nearly impossible to hear the Japanese, write it out, and translate it to English. So you'll need the native speaker to translate in that direction.

jobigoud
> 8. This 9. That

Now I wonder if there are some languages that don't differentiate between these two.

weiser
How a blockchain works.
arcticbull
They said valuable haha, a solution on a decade long quest to find a problem isn’t really valuable.
nnq
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...

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arcticbull
> ...after the bubble dies they'll just become boring pieces of crucial infrastructure that sit in the background

Well if the value is Merkle trees we can just say that ;)

> ... it's the only way to ensure data auditing and integrity

It isn't.

> ... and sooner or later people will be ok with paying 10x or 100x storage and compute costs for auditable integrity.

They won't.

ravenstine
We're all using blockchain every day when we use Git.
unlinked_dll
How to properly wrap cables. A/V and cable techs are super anal about this and it takes just a few minutes to learn, it will change your life.

Cables should never be coiled in the same direction. It creates kinks when unwound and make it extremely likely for knots to form (ever leave your headphones in your pocket?).

If a cable isn't being installed permanently it should be "wrapped" using a technique called "over-under". Hard to describe in text, so here's a video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpuutP6Df84

Personally I disagree with his method, what I do is do the "over" loop by placing my palm over the cable, and on the under loop, put your palm under the loop. Then when you pull the loop to your fixed hand, you always keep your palm down when laying it. Very quick way, eventually becomes fast with practice. Also useful to unroll kinks from the cable when you wrap it, and always tie the bastard off because if one end falls through you'll get knots.

Wistar
Also known as "figure-eighting." Guys who do stadium setups for televised sports are champion cable figure-eighters.
52-6F-62
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

kqr
I don't think this is the most important thing out of all things you can learn in a full hour, but it is easy enough and not well known enough that I encourage you to keep spreading the message.

My father in law was very surprised when I could just walk away holding one end of the coiled garden hose and it uncoiled itself neatly with no kinks. The trick was, of course, that I was the one who wrapped it this way the day before!

rkagerer
I gotta try this next time I stow an extension cord
mikekchar
Wow. I was super skeptical about this thread and clicked on it "just in case I'm missing something". I was. As a nomadic developer, I'm always coiling my cables and I am always cursing my cables because they get tied up or ruined. Now I know it's me! Thank you!
myself248
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.
gwd
Haven't seen the videos, but I was taught the "proper" way of wrapping audio cables when I took an audio recording class, and now I obsessively wrap all my cables that way. So much more useful!
criddell
> 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?

foobarbecue
You are missing out on what the previous comments and links are telling you -- you're twisting your poor cables to death.
criddell
It's a long slow death then. I have some cables (extension cords) that are thirty years old and I don't think I've had one fail yet.
gwd
> What am I missing out on?

The person who showed me how to do it said, "If you've done it right, you should be able to do this"; and with the coiled microphone cable in one hand, she held one end with her thumb and tossed the rest of the coil outwards. It uncoiled in the air and landed in a straight line, no tangles or knots.

Basically, if you do this: 1) The cables are less likely to be damaged, 2) the cables are a lot more 'weildy': they don't get tangled in interminable knots, and expand very easily. The cables themselves remain looking nice as well, and don't get ugly kinks in them.

justinclift
Went looking for YouTube video's to demonstrate the throwing of said coiled rope.

This came up, though the technique for coiling looks different:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFokJdx12yo

Suspecting (without trying it), that it might work out as the same type of coiling though.

rollulus
I’ve been taught this technique as the “roadie wrap”.
galfarragem
I learnt this while working in trades. Working with trades people or handymans will teach you a lot of practical skills that are useful in daily life.
taneq
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
Face the wheelbarrow the direction you want to go before you fill it.
greyhair
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.
MS90
I'm willing to bet that cattle ranchers and dairy farmers deal with more bullshit per capita than any other profession.
ticmasta
but they don't even have BAs and PMs...
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almog
The principle that induce this technique is that every time you create a loop in one direction of a cable, you twist the cable, the exact same twist that would have occurred if you held a cable with both hands and twisted one side (as if you were squeezing water out of wet cloth.

This technique as well as figure 8 with I use on guylines (when hiking with my tarp), create a counter clockwise twist for every clockwise twist, thus eliminating the tension that causes cables/guylines/ropes to eventually tangle up.

oeuviz
So let us proceed to the real challenge: christmas lights. How can you avoid the guaranteed swearing the following year?
jackbarclay
Wrap them around a piece of scrap cardboard.
thewelder
then cut some 1" slits in it to keep them in place.
geerlingguy
Alternatively go buy a few of those orange plastic extension cable wrap things from the electrical aisle at a big box store (either the plastic ones that are flat, or the big circular ones with a handle). I've had them for a decade, and every year I wind up my cords on them, and they always unwind easily the next year.
kaybe
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.
jpindar
Instead of string, I use twist ties, which also come in handy for attaching the lights to things when deploying them.
nolanhanz
Rolled up newspapers work well for this too, albeit I doubt a lot of us here get a newspaper delivered everyday anymore
anodyne33
This is opening up a can of worms akin to talking about penetrating oils (PB Blaster, WD-40, ATF/Acetone mix). I've always been and over and roll guy short of 50' cables and back in the day when we had analog snakes that were nearly 3" in diameter and 200' that lived in a road case you didn't have any choice but to over/under unless you wanted to see a half dozen guys cry at the end of the night and the beginning of the day.
erikcw
I’m also a fan of the chain sinnet[0] (or daisy chain) - works really well for storage, including semi rough handling such as tossing in the trunk...

Here is another guide [1].

Note that for longer lines, it is helpful to first fold the line in half to shorten. Also works great for extension cords since both the male/female end are handily together [2].

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_sinnet

[1] https://www.animatedknots.com/chain-sinnet-knot

[2] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zXG95quOE7Q

anotherevan
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.

erikcw
The YouTube video I posted shows how I like to do extension cords. Lots of large , loose loops. Works great.
the_watcher
I have a slightly different method, but the outcome is how I've been wrapping ski ropes my entire life.
Havoc
>It creates kinks when unwound and make it extremely likely for knots to form

99% sure that's a side benefit not the reason.

The way the audio techs explained it to me was as a method of reducing stress on multi-strand copper inside. i.e. the reason why it unwinds cleaner is because said tension isn't there.

bfirsh
+1 I did stage work when I was younger and this was one of the most valuable things I took away from it.

Over-under is good for long, thick, delicate cables (e.g. mic/guitar cables). For shorter, thinner cables (e.g. USB cables) I use this technique: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXMG917XsvU

I have done it so much I can now do it quickly without looking at my hands, so I just automatically do it before putting a cable away or in my bag.

I now never have to detangle birds nests of cables. Over the course of the ~15 years I have been practicing responsible cable storage, that must add up to a lot of time.

almog
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

lazyeye
Humility
Jeff_Brown
Extremely valuable. In an hour you can learn why it's important. Mastering it could take a lifetime.
tasogare
I would say learn your partner’s erogenous zone.
sshine
If only finding a life partner took an hour, too.
citilife
Learn how to read quarterly earnings (and other financial documents).

It's amazing how simply it is to see if a company is making money / losing money and how that'll impact your view of the world.

For instance, Uber as it is today, is going out of or dramatically changing its business. Might not see that from all the hype, might not see it from all the user, but the terms sheet doesn't quarterly earnings doesn't lie ($1B in losses quarter-over-quarter).

Has helped me (and friends) reduce losses and improve earnings by identifying good / poor investments.

vast
And how to learn it?
adventured
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.

VLM
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.

rubicon33
Losses, for years, are true for many successful and still around tech businesses.

Twitter is just one example. They didn't turn a profit until 2018.

I wouldn't write off Uber just because they're burning cash. Often this is done to secure markets by undercutting competitor pricing, or, aggressive R&D for future growth. Both of these tactics show losses for months, if not years, before things come to fruition.

soniman
I agree that learning how to read a financial statement is valuable, but you might want to look further than just "is this company making an acccounting profit." Uber's core business is highly profitable, that's why it's valued at $45 billion.

When you're reading a financial statement, look at each business unit's profitability separately, especially if those units are in fact separate businesses. Ubereats is not Uber's bread and butter. Look at cash flow and compare it with investment in growth via R&D and marketing. Look at how much cash the business requires in the form of working capital and on-going maintenance capex vs growth capex.

I would suggest googling Warren Buffett's primer on look through earnings. Greenblatt's "Little Book that Beats the Market" can also be read quickly.

pge
I might start even simpler than that - learning how to understand the three basic financial statements (income statement, balance sheet, cash flow) and how they interrelate. This is super helpful in any job and in managing personal finance because understanding the statements provides a framework for understanding the dynamics of money (for example, understanding depreciation reminds you that the new car you just bought is declining in value, while the interest on your car loan is an expense).
soVeryTired
> but the terms sheet doesn't quarterly earnings doesn't lie

There's an old saying that "profit is an opinion". It's harder to lie about revenue, but profit and loss can be adjusted by any number of accounting tricks that are perfectly 'legitimate'. Even auditors can miss the less-legitimate tricks.

A company might want to seem less profitable for for tax-reasons or because it's in a profit-sharing agreement (see Holywood Accounting). Or it might want to seem more profitiable to seem more stable (see Carillion and Interserve in the UK).

Reading a quarterly account does give a certain perspective on the health of a company, but quarterlies can be spun agressively by the company too.

pknerd
Any recommendations from you side as learning resources?
ta1234567890
Meditating. You can learn in 5 minutes.

One of the easiest ways is using an app like Calm or HeadSpace.

Alternatively, just sit down wherever you fee comfortable and won't get interrupted for a few minutes, close your eyes, then count your breaths from 1 to 10, then repeat, start from one of you get lost (very common).

Regular meditation practice can help you in many ways, the most valuable to me is the improved ability of staying present, which seems to improve a lot of different aspects of my life.

Mizza
Learning how to solve a Rubik's Cube using the "beginner's method." Maybe not as valuable as you were hoping, but getting the methods down feels good and gives you a new hobby of competing against your own best times.
onorton
I remember that I couldn't be bothered to learn the algorithms for the middle layer so I just learnt F2L (First 2 Layers) to solve that part. Never learnt the advanced stuff beyond that though.
ghurkan
I learned how to solve Rubic's cube when I was in high school as some kind of party trick, with the beginner's method. Years later, I still remember the movements and recall them in a short notice. Couple of months ago I attended a conference where companies where giving out swag and gift cards to those who give their contact details or watching a demo. After the demo, they told that if I can solve a Rubic's cube and be one of the first 20 to do it, they will give $25 gift debit card. I solved it in a couple of minutes and got my card and had delicious Buffalo Wings with it, so, definitely worth it :)