I don't know why we persist with such horrible security for an unnecessary convenience. If you have to wrap your card in foil or use a stainless steel wallet or buy special clothes, isn't the convenience lost at that point?
Yes, my girlfriend participated in a sanctioned open water swim ironically named Sharkfest. Hundreds of swimmers went from Alcatraz to shore, not one having any encounters with man eating sharks. There are great whites more out toward Golden Gate, but not so much inside the Bay. Even at that even a man eater will only feed when it's hungry so in a one time trip I think the odds are squarely in your favor.
I would agree with the business case for female coders. Females represent a large portion of the purchasing decisions for goods and also a large percentage of the user base for applications from business tools to iPhone apps. As time goes on we need women who know how to think like women so that applications and electronics are designed in ways that appeal to women. Technology products should be strait forward and gender agnostic whenever possible, but there will also be many applications and technology products where females are the primary target market. That said I'm really not sure that "for girls only" classes are the way to get results. I'd rather see everyone have access to quality training equally and focus on creating accessible entry level education that logically builds to serious college level coursework. There are also places in technology for people that aren't math geniuses. Many functional roles require advanced math, but it isn't true for every technology job. I have to wonder how many people of either gender get written of from technology fields because they are told advanced math skills are a must have for any technology education path.
Following that logic I wonder how effective the efforts will be to produce more STEM workers in the U.S.. When they say we need STEM workers clearly one of the things they mean is Computer Science, but I personally couldn't even give an educated guess as to what other more specific fields where they feel we have a supply shortage. Clearly not all paths are equal when it comes to tangible career prospects. If I were a young person looking at options, I'd really want to know which fields are likely to result in well compensated employment in the next ten years.
Why would discharging a firearm outside be cause to search a home? In this case he's undocumented immigrant so possessing a firearm may be a crime, so it makes sense to see if he has more firearms. For a U.S. Citizen or legal resident alien I don't think they should have that ability based on a minor infraction committed outside the home.
No, not specifically. I only mean in general sense that the less people understand their rights the less apt they are to defend them and the more people accept increasing government power the more apt we are to create an environment where such a regime could thrive. I wouldn't technically categorize anything currently happening in the U.S. as fascism.
Not sure of the specifics on "24", but many cop drama's like "Criminal Minds" dumb down the viewers perception of their rights. They always seem to be able to instantly find any information about anyone through online means including by hacking and there is absolutely zero discussion of a warrant or any approval. It's just OK because they are trying to catch the super evil bad guy. If your perception of the constitution, your rights and the limitations on police power where based on television, you likely wouldn't have a clue what they are actually supposed to be allowed to do. From the few episodes of "24" I've seen I believe the same issues exist there.
First: on the passage of SOPA, those damn fuckers, unbelievable. Second: If Comcast starts inspecting my traffic, I am absolutely going to lose my shit. Canceling my service is not nearly enough. It's not the job of a customer's ISP to police their activity.
A lot of the technology itself has gotten easier, the products available are robust and fully developed. The difficulty is often as it always has been in the human side of the business. People in the past didn't have options outside of IT and we used to actually be able to say no when someone wanted to bring in their own device or use some outside service. IT didn't used to have much power, but now we have almost none. Businesses pay us because we are experts in our field, but then constantly make decisions that contradict our input. So what if marketing wants some cloud thing, since when should their desires matter in the equation? I long for management that says "I don't give a fuck what you want. Tell us what you need, we can define the solution if one is warranted." My job got easier when I stopped fighting the businesses on decisions, but now I know I'm not actually doing what I think is in the interests of the companies I work for, rather just bending with the wind so nobody actually has to deal with conflict.
Yahoo isn't particularly modern. They are in transition trying to be modern while being shackled to their legacy. They are about to lose me as a customer. The new versions of their mobile apps for Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Finance ask for way to many permissions. Next time I have to get a new phone and I can't have the old versions their apps are history and so is my account. Not good for them since I'm one of the hold outs that pays for POP mail access, which I'm glad to have so I can suck down all my mail to reduce it's exposure to Big Data and do it in an encrypted format. I'm sorry for Yahoo that Google fooled us all into thinking they were "less commercial" in their early days due the lack of ads on the search page, what fools we were. Now Google is a monster we all helped create and we killed all their competition.
Anyone have a polite way of telling people that you don't want them to take digital photos of you without sounding like a paranoid antisocial weirdo?
I only use really bad blurry pictures for my own profile pics on the web and I don't let people tag me in posts, but the sheer number of pics that I show up in online without my consent means most likely Facebook and the like will ID me even though I don't participate. It really annoys me that even in party situations the social norm is not to ask for any consent or even tell people you are about to take a photo. They just want to document their social life for world to see and I want the opposite, a completely undocumented social life.
There is nothing wrong with that attitude and it isn't all that uncommon, but at the same time it's reasonable for the rest of us not to want that. I had to pay $2 extra for a magazine at the grocery store just so it wouldn't end up in my consumer profile. I don't have a solution for getting Google and Facebook paid without whoring out my personal information, but I really think I should be able to walk into the grocery store and get my discounts for being a loyal shopper without them taking every scrap of information they can and linking it into some damn profile I wish didn't exist. I can choose not to use Google and Facebook, but I really can't reasonably avoid brick and mortar stores. This future cashless society is also going to be a privacy-less society if we continue on our current path. I don't consider it to be in my best interest to have every detail of my existence known by a bunch of corporate marketing weasels. Granted, they don't actually care what I do on a the weekend, they just want to sell me more of whatever that is, but once information is recorded and organized and available online we lose all control of who sees it and for what reason.
Agreed. I read it and I don't see where it authorizes any collection, but rather states limits on retention of information collected under other authorization. Writer Julian Hattem and Rep. Justin Amash need to get their facts strait. If you want to attack the that bill the better argument would be, why the fuck do they get to keep the unauthorized stuff for 5 years? 120 days ought to be enough time to decide if the content is or isn't legally justified to retain, even at the pace of government. Instead of filtering and retaining current data of interest, they want a crystal ball that can see five years into the past even for data belonging to U.S. persons not suspected of any wrong doing. Oh, and if you encrypt it, then they have no retention limit. Then again we don't have it that bad today. Henry Ford used to send men to his factory workers homes and if they had too many liquor bottles around, they would be warned and reinspected shortly there after. I'd call that more invasive than reading my email.
To quote TFA: "Hidden in the law is âoea troubling new provision that for the first time statutorily authorizes spying on U.S. citizens without legal process,â Amash told other lawmakers. That provision allows âoethe acquisition, retention, and disseminationâ of Americansâ(TM) communications without a court order or subpoena."
I really hope someone can tell me that isn't as bad or as pervasive as that sounds. I wasn't surprised the USA Freedom Act didn't pass, but I didn't think we were going fully in the other direction.
I'd like to add to that, I am also concerned about high frequency trading and AI making stock trading decisions autonomously. One TV program talking about the industry had an industry kingpin that said that they were getting out of the "traders being masters of the universe" model and now they were relying much more on analytics and autonomous automation. I see that as a whole new level of hubris and it introduces many unknown, unknowns. The high frequency trading to me, offers little actual value to the market. If a trader buys a stock and sells it in less than five minutes, it's more likely they are trying to profit from manipulation than from a legitimate investment strategy. The flash crash was a good warning, that changed nothing.
Abso-fucking-lutely. I don't get why the media is participating in their lie or why there isn't some government action from the FTC to shut down that fabrication of their business model. Most drivers take you where you want to go for profit, period. I have nothing against Uber except that they are using the blatant lie of "ride sharing" to circumvent the regulations that apply to everyone else. Fuck anyone that engages in that deception. No responsible journalist should be willing to refer to Uber as a ride sharing service, it's a transportation service.
They have gadgets that just suck the data off your phone. My friend here in the US had one used on his during a traffic stop because the police know his history. They just plug it in suck down the data and don't say a word (before Riley). Encryption should work, but I don't think a screen lock is going to help much, though it doesn't hurt. The reality is the only %100 effective method is to never have anything incriminating on your phone EVER. GPS is a sticky wicket because your whereabouts could be recorded at a time when you couldn't know ahead of time that you were going to be involved in a criminal incident, a bar fight for example.
Some FUD for sure, but there are legitimate concerns. I personally don't want any of my health info online anywhere for any reason. This is both for potential abuse and also because I believe the health care industry and some government agencies are completely unprepared to secure this data. I also will say that the more people have to question the privacy of their health data the more it will lend itself to people editing their treatment. If a person cannot feel 100% confident that a mental health issue or the like will remain private then they will be less likely to accept treatment.
AI doesn't need autonomy to do great harm. I've said I don't see a huge risk in AI in the form of robots and I still hold to that. The kind of AI I fear is that where actual people with misguided ideas will use AI in ways that are harmful. AI could start making all sorts of decisions based on Big Data and arbitrary algorithms and people could blindly trust what the computer says without adequately understanding the complexity or the potential harm. Want a loan, the computer decides, want a job - let's see if the computer says you are OK. Want to start a public works project, the computer will tell us if it's a good use of funds. I fear unethical humans programing AI computers to things and then just stepping back and taking no responsibility for the outcomes as they effect individuals.
Just because a person creates a hashtag and they get people using it to express thoughts from a like minded point of view doesn't mean they should control it. If others later use it to speak from an alternate point of view whether productive or not, that is just what you get. If you want to hear public commentary, part of that is hearing how many in the public really feel, which isn't always pretty. I guess they'll just have to figure out how to censor tweets from people who aren't politically correct. It's OK people don't actually like open discourse, they like to talk to like minded people who can reenforce how right they are about the issues.
So what I'm hearing is that "Parallel Construction" based on NSA data, the use of Stingrays and the various creative ways law enforcement has found to get out of justifying warrants is just a misunderstanding. That is a relief, for a while there I though there was cause for concern.
Negative consequences of allowing employees to work is double edged sword. A hard worker who wants the money should be able to work extra hours without it being punitive, but someone being forced to work extra because they are salaried is a serious downside. Paying workers time and a half is good, but it gives employers a disincentive to allow a worker who wants to, to work a 50 hour week. Just like when we attach health care to full time job we get the unintended consequence of masses of part time jobs. It's not good for those workers to only have the choice of under-employment VS two part-time jobs. Sure now they get subsidized Obamacare, but they pay for it and so do we. Businesses should see anyone willing to work for cheap as a gift and treat them as such rather than penny pinching treating them like expendable garbage.
True, maybe there should be no overtime exemption for anyone making less than say $85,000. It's hard for me to see how a business can justify really owning your time for $23,660. It's easier to swallow the idea that someone who is highly compensated would be expected to be fully invested in their job.
When you decide it's time to focus on a certain thing you may have to force yourself not to physically or mentally abandon the task at hand. It will suck, but you'll be happier when it's done and you feel like you accomplished something. Then the rest of the day or the weekend or whatever you won't obsess about the thing you didn't do and beat yourself up about it. Your mind will be more at ease and you'll be better able to enjoy life in the moment when the appropriate thing to do it enjoy the moment. Don't spend leisure time doing things that tax your body and mental resources in the same way study and work tasks do. Be active and present in the real world. For reading some people do better with a physical paper book; there are no tabs to wonder off to, and sometimes it's easier on the eyes. Whatever the format of your reading, take notes or make highlights, don't allow yourself to just passively scan without absorbing. I have a lot of issues with distractions and sound. If there is to little background noise or if there is background noise of a type that starts to engage the mind more than the task at hand, either can be an issue. Sometimes I like coffee shops because there is enough outside activity that it makes me comfortable withdrawing into my reading. Sometimes I like certain kinds of music, but most is distracting. When all else fails and every ambient conversation from coworkers in the hall or minor noises around my home cause me to constantly lose focus I like white noise like http://rain.simplynoise.com/ or http://rwww.simplynoise.com/ on a pair of headphones. It can be very difficult to make progress on large projects or difficult academic achievements as I find the mind often doesn't deal well with tasks that can't be defined in a relatable chunk. When you have to move 50 bags of soil your brain knows what to do and how to measure progress. When you have to work a cash register and help every customer who approaches for an 8 hour period and you know you'll be fired if you don't, your brain understands the constraints. These tasks also allow you to use your mind for other things while carrying out the task. When you are trying to do a small part of a large task that you can't finish in one work session and you will actually have to have your mind involved in task instead of your own thoughts or external stimuli it can be a mental battle. You have to identify an achievable action to focus on or set a certain goal that you can break out of the larger task. Examples would be like reading the next three chapters or spending five hours working on the widget design. It's important that you not let excuses about why there is some intangible road block that needs be cleared allow you to dismiss the task. If you can't proceed because of a problem then figure out the step you need to take to resolve the problem and take that step, right now. If you spend more than an hour trying to build focus into a task, just stop. It's counter productive to waste a bunch of time sitting around distracting yourself on the internet and wishing for the will and desire to manifest. That kind of behavior is exhausting to your mind and gets you nowhere. If you spend too much time thinking about having to do a task rather than doing it, it adds an artificial mental weight. As cliche' as it may be "Do or do not, there is no try."
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know why we persist with such horrible security for an unnecessary convenience. If you have to wrap your card in foil or use a stainless steel wallet or buy special clothes, isn't the convenience lost at that point?
Yes, my girlfriend participated in a sanctioned open water swim ironically named Sharkfest. Hundreds of swimmers went from Alcatraz to shore, not one having any encounters with man eating sharks. There are great whites more out toward Golden Gate, but not so much inside the Bay. Even at that even a man eater will only feed when it's hungry so in a one time trip I think the odds are squarely in your favor.
I would agree with the business case for female coders. Females represent a large portion of the purchasing decisions for goods and also a large percentage of the user base for applications from business tools to iPhone apps. As time goes on we need women who know how to think like women so that applications and electronics are designed in ways that appeal to women. Technology products should be strait forward and gender agnostic whenever possible, but there will also be many applications and technology products where females are the primary target market. That said I'm really not sure that "for girls only" classes are the way to get results. I'd rather see everyone have access to quality training equally and focus on creating accessible entry level education that logically builds to serious college level coursework. There are also places in technology for people that aren't math geniuses. Many functional roles require advanced math, but it isn't true for every technology job. I have to wonder how many people of either gender get written of from technology fields because they are told advanced math skills are a must have for any technology education path.
Following that logic I wonder how effective the efforts will be to produce more STEM workers in the U.S.. When they say we need STEM workers clearly one of the things they mean is Computer Science, but I personally couldn't even give an educated guess as to what other more specific fields where they feel we have a supply shortage. Clearly not all paths are equal when it comes to tangible career prospects. If I were a young person looking at options, I'd really want to know which fields are likely to result in well compensated employment in the next ten years.
Why would discharging a firearm outside be cause to search a home? In this case he's undocumented immigrant so possessing a firearm may be a crime, so it makes sense to see if he has more firearms. For a U.S. Citizen or legal resident alien I don't think they should have that ability based on a minor infraction committed outside the home.
No, not specifically. I only mean in general sense that the less people understand their rights the less apt they are to defend them and the more people accept increasing government power the more apt we are to create an environment where such a regime could thrive. I wouldn't technically categorize anything currently happening in the U.S. as fascism.
Not sure of the specifics on "24", but many cop drama's like "Criminal Minds" dumb down the viewers perception of their rights. They always seem to be able to instantly find any information about anyone through online means including by hacking and there is absolutely zero discussion of a warrant or any approval. It's just OK because they are trying to catch the super evil bad guy. If your perception of the constitution, your rights and the limitations on police power where based on television, you likely wouldn't have a clue what they are actually supposed to be allowed to do. From the few episodes of "24" I've seen I believe the same issues exist there.
First: on the passage of SOPA, those damn fuckers, unbelievable. Second: If Comcast starts inspecting my traffic, I am absolutely going to lose my shit. Canceling my service is not nearly enough. It's not the job of a customer's ISP to police their activity.
A lot of the technology itself has gotten easier, the products available are robust and fully developed. The difficulty is often as it always has been in the human side of the business. People in the past didn't have options outside of IT and we used to actually be able to say no when someone wanted to bring in their own device or use some outside service. IT didn't used to have much power, but now we have almost none. Businesses pay us because we are experts in our field, but then constantly make decisions that contradict our input. So what if marketing wants some cloud thing, since when should their desires matter in the equation? I long for management that says "I don't give a fuck what you want. Tell us what you need, we can define the solution if one is warranted." My job got easier when I stopped fighting the businesses on decisions, but now I know I'm not actually doing what I think is in the interests of the companies I work for, rather just bending with the wind so nobody actually has to deal with conflict.
Yahoo isn't particularly modern. They are in transition trying to be modern while being shackled to their legacy. They are about to lose me as a customer. The new versions of their mobile apps for Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Finance ask for way to many permissions. Next time I have to get a new phone and I can't have the old versions their apps are history and so is my account. Not good for them since I'm one of the hold outs that pays for POP mail access, which I'm glad to have so I can suck down all my mail to reduce it's exposure to Big Data and do it in an encrypted format. I'm sorry for Yahoo that Google fooled us all into thinking they were "less commercial" in their early days due the lack of ads on the search page, what fools we were. Now Google is a monster we all helped create and we killed all their competition.
Anyone have a polite way of telling people that you don't want them to take digital photos of you without sounding like a paranoid antisocial weirdo?
I only use really bad blurry pictures for my own profile pics on the web and I don't let people tag me in posts, but the sheer number of pics that I show up in online without my consent means most likely Facebook and the like will ID me even though I don't participate. It really annoys me that even in party situations the social norm is not to ask for any consent or even tell people you are about to take a photo. They just want to document their social life for world to see and I want the opposite, a completely undocumented social life.
There is nothing wrong with that attitude and it isn't all that uncommon, but at the same time it's reasonable for the rest of us not to want that. I had to pay $2 extra for a magazine at the grocery store just so it wouldn't end up in my consumer profile. I don't have a solution for getting Google and Facebook paid without whoring out my personal information, but I really think I should be able to walk into the grocery store and get my discounts for being a loyal shopper without them taking every scrap of information they can and linking it into some damn profile I wish didn't exist. I can choose not to use Google and Facebook, but I really can't reasonably avoid brick and mortar stores. This future cashless society is also going to be a privacy-less society if we continue on our current path. I don't consider it to be in my best interest to have every detail of my existence known by a bunch of corporate marketing weasels. Granted, they don't actually care what I do on a the weekend, they just want to sell me more of whatever that is, but once information is recorded and organized and available online we lose all control of who sees it and for what reason.
Agreed. I read it and I don't see where it authorizes any collection, but rather states limits on retention of information collected under other authorization. Writer Julian Hattem and Rep. Justin Amash need to get their facts strait. If you want to attack the that bill the better argument would be, why the fuck do they get to keep the unauthorized stuff for 5 years? 120 days ought to be enough time to decide if the content is or isn't legally justified to retain, even at the pace of government. Instead of filtering and retaining current data of interest, they want a crystal ball that can see five years into the past even for data belonging to U.S. persons not suspected of any wrong doing. Oh, and if you encrypt it, then they have no retention limit. Then again we don't have it that bad today. Henry Ford used to send men to his factory workers homes and if they had too many liquor bottles around, they would be warned and reinspected shortly there after. I'd call that more invasive than reading my email.
To quote TFA:
"Hidden in the law is âoea troubling new provision that for the first time statutorily authorizes spying on U.S. citizens without legal process,â Amash told other lawmakers. That provision allows âoethe acquisition, retention, and disseminationâ of Americansâ(TM) communications without a court order or subpoena."
I really hope someone can tell me that isn't as bad or as pervasive as that sounds. I wasn't surprised the USA Freedom Act didn't pass, but I didn't think we were going fully in the other direction.
I'd like to add to that, I am also concerned about high frequency trading and AI making stock trading decisions autonomously. One TV program talking about the industry had an industry kingpin that said that they were getting out of the "traders being masters of the universe" model and now they were relying much more on analytics and autonomous automation. I see that as a whole new level of hubris and it introduces many unknown, unknowns. The high frequency trading to me, offers little actual value to the market. If a trader buys a stock and sells it in less than five minutes, it's more likely they are trying to profit from manipulation than from a legitimate investment strategy. The flash crash was a good warning, that changed nothing.
Abso-fucking-lutely. I don't get why the media is participating in their lie or why there isn't some government action from the FTC to shut down that fabrication of their business model. Most drivers take you where you want to go for profit, period. I have nothing against Uber except that they are using the blatant lie of "ride sharing" to circumvent the regulations that apply to everyone else. Fuck anyone that engages in that deception. No responsible journalist should be willing to refer to Uber as a ride sharing service, it's a transportation service.
They have gadgets that just suck the data off your phone. My friend here in the US had one used on his during a traffic stop because the police know his history. They just plug it in suck down the data and don't say a word (before Riley). Encryption should work, but I don't think a screen lock is going to help much, though it doesn't hurt. The reality is the only %100 effective method is to never have anything incriminating on your phone EVER. GPS is a sticky wicket because your whereabouts could be recorded at a time when you couldn't know ahead of time that you were going to be involved in a criminal incident, a bar fight for example.
Some FUD for sure, but there are legitimate concerns. I personally don't want any of my health info online anywhere for any reason. This is both for potential abuse and also because I believe the health care industry and some government agencies are completely unprepared to secure this data. I also will say that the more people have to question the privacy of their health data the more it will lend itself to people editing their treatment. If a person cannot feel 100% confident that a mental health issue or the like will remain private then they will be less likely to accept treatment.
AI doesn't need autonomy to do great harm. I've said I don't see a huge risk in AI in the form of robots and I still hold to that. The kind of AI I fear is that where actual people with misguided ideas will use AI in ways that are harmful. AI could start making all sorts of decisions based on Big Data and arbitrary algorithms and people could blindly trust what the computer says without adequately understanding the complexity or the potential harm. Want a loan, the computer decides, want a job - let's see if the computer says you are OK. Want to start a public works project, the computer will tell us if it's a good use of funds. I fear unethical humans programing AI computers to things and then just stepping back and taking no responsibility for the outcomes as they effect individuals.
Just because a person creates a hashtag and they get people using it to express thoughts from a like minded point of view doesn't mean they should control it. If others later use it to speak from an alternate point of view whether productive or not, that is just what you get. If you want to hear public commentary, part of that is hearing how many in the public really feel, which isn't always pretty. I guess they'll just have to figure out how to censor tweets from people who aren't politically correct. It's OK people don't actually like open discourse, they like to talk to like minded people who can reenforce how right they are about the issues.
So what I'm hearing is that "Parallel Construction" based on NSA data, the use of Stingrays and the various creative ways law enforcement has found to get out of justifying warrants is just a misunderstanding. That is a relief, for a while there I though there was cause for concern.
Yes, but it will be safer for damsels in distress who get tied to railroad tracks. Laser, cuts rope, Superman can relax.
Negative consequences of allowing employees to work is double edged sword. A hard worker who wants the money should be able to work extra hours without it being punitive, but someone being forced to work extra because they are salaried is a serious downside. Paying workers time and a half is good, but it gives employers a disincentive to allow a worker who wants to, to work a 50 hour week. Just like when we attach health care to full time job we get the unintended consequence of masses of part time jobs. It's not good for those workers to only have the choice of under-employment VS two part-time jobs. Sure now they get subsidized Obamacare, but they pay for it and so do we. Businesses should see anyone willing to work for cheap as a gift and treat them as such rather than penny pinching treating them like expendable garbage.
True, maybe there should be no overtime exemption for anyone making less than say $85,000. It's hard for me to see how a business can justify really owning your time for $23,660. It's easier to swallow the idea that someone who is highly compensated would be expected to be fully invested in their job.
When you decide it's time to focus on a certain thing you may have to force yourself not to physically or mentally abandon the task at hand. It will suck, but you'll be happier when it's done and you feel like you accomplished something. Then the rest of the day or the weekend or whatever you won't obsess about the thing you didn't do and beat yourself up about it. Your mind will be more at ease and you'll be better able to enjoy life in the moment when the appropriate thing to do it enjoy the moment. Don't spend leisure time doing things that tax your body and mental resources in the same way study and work tasks do. Be active and present in the real world. For reading some people do better with a physical paper book; there are no tabs to wonder off to, and sometimes it's easier on the eyes. Whatever the format of your reading, take notes or make highlights, don't allow yourself to just passively scan without absorbing. I have a lot of issues with distractions and sound. If there is to little background noise or if there is background noise of a type that starts to engage the mind more than the task at hand, either can be an issue. Sometimes I like coffee shops because there is enough outside activity that it makes me comfortable withdrawing into my reading. Sometimes I like certain kinds of music, but most is distracting. When all else fails and every ambient conversation from coworkers in the hall or minor noises around my home cause me to constantly lose focus I like white noise like http://rain.simplynoise.com/ or http://rwww.simplynoise.com/ on a pair of headphones. It can be very difficult to make progress on large projects or difficult academic achievements as I find the mind often doesn't deal well with tasks that can't be defined in a relatable chunk. When you have to move 50 bags of soil your brain knows what to do and how to measure progress. When you have to work a cash register and help every customer who approaches for an 8 hour period and you know you'll be fired if you don't, your brain understands the constraints. These tasks also allow you to use your mind for other things while carrying out the task. When you are trying to do a small part of a large task that you can't finish in one work session and you will actually have to have your mind involved in task instead of your own thoughts or external stimuli it can be a mental battle. You have to identify an achievable action to focus on or set a certain goal that you can break out of the larger task. Examples would be like reading the next three chapters or spending five hours working on the widget design. It's important that you not let excuses about why there is some intangible road block that needs be cleared allow you to dismiss the task. If you can't proceed because of a problem then figure out the step you need to take to resolve the problem and take that step, right now. If you spend more than an hour trying to build focus into a task, just stop. It's counter productive to waste a bunch of time sitting around distracting yourself on the internet and wishing for the will and desire to manifest. That kind of behavior is exhausting to your mind and gets you nowhere. If you spend too much time thinking about having to do a task rather than doing it, it adds an artificial mental weight. As cliche' as it may be "Do or do not, there is no try."