10 ms·

Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

114 points by fogus 16y ago

alexkiwi 16y ago
"If you get regular Facebook updates, Twitter updates, or any other kind of updates which steals your attention, even if its just for a few seconds, I'm willing to bet that you're working at 50% of your full capacity." Leechblock is incredible for this reason, its saved me so many times. Great read although I disagree with cutting out tea, forcing myself to take tea breaks every few hours of the day has lead to some great discoveries.
- sourc3 16y ago
  I agree with the caffeine comment. Believe it or not there is a balance when it comes to coffee. Having a cup of tea/coffee every day is not the same as having a cup every 2 hours. As in everything, it is not strictly an on/off switch. Other than that I totally agree that sleep exercise and food make a great difference. Eating fat with carbs for 3 meals a day will not help you get the mental focus either.
  - jlindley 16y ago
    I took it to mean that the author is either on or off with such things, and couldn't merely cut down. I'm the same way. One cup of coffee a day is an impossible dream for me, I'd have to totally quit instead.
    - sourc3 16y ago
      If you are in an environment where there is decaf coffee I suggest mixing half caf/half decaf. You cannot really taste the decaf and get in half the caffeine, although it's not a real fix, it should help a little :)
- xxpor 16y ago
  You could try drinking decaf tea.
  - alexkiwi 16y ago
    herbal tea does not contain caffeine, although its not really tea, it is delicious. I make a mean blueberry + orange combo
- mpg33 16y ago
  along with avoiding caffeine(except some green tea)...i would include exercise, particularly cardiovascular activities such as running
sandis 16y ago
I agree with most of the article, but this – "But in the time he has booted to his Desktop I've already answered 3 emails [..] Vanity slows you down, whether its your choice of VM, OS (read: OSX or Windows) or anything else". – is hardly an argument when choosing desktop OS.. just put your PC to sleep and next day it will "boot up" instantly, especially OS X.
- radu_floricica 16y ago
  You can actually map the power button to Hibernate in windows. It's not not complicated either... just a click somewhere in Power Settings. Makes life a lot more pleasant.
- Skroob 16y ago
  The implication that you can't really be productive, or at least as productive as him, without using Linux with emacs and a tiling WM really tainted the other, better advice in this article for me.
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    The good thing about product related blogs like this is that it reminds me of which products not to buy. I would have a hard time buying a product from someone who wrote a blog entry lacking as little content and exhibiting as much as ego as that one did. To put another way, there was nothing in the article that didn't fall into one of three categories: 1) Are obvious to most developers. 2) His/her opinion, but not substantiated by any evidence, and probably disputed by as many as would support. 3) Look like possible outright lies. Not a blog entry I'd consider writing, much less on my company's website.
evilmushroom 16y ago
Ignoring the fact that I prefer to multi-task--- I do not have 5 minutes of downtime with context switching. If I'm thinking about a certain problem--- it helps to stop and skim my twitter feed for a couple minutes while thinking about it.
- daten 16y ago
  I agree. While interruptions in something like watching a movie in the theater might break my concentration for several minutes, I find context switching to help my productivity at work. I can get stuck on a problem without a distraction where changing my focus briefly usually helps give me a fresh perspective and allows me to solve the problem faster.
  - lhnz 16y ago
    This is actually a good point. Something that is fun and engages my mind when it's dulled and flat is actually quite a useful tool. When I get back to work I am much more switched on. I think you just need to remember to define your breaks properly.
adamilardi 16y ago
1. Get around 7 hours of sleep every single night: 10+ is better 2. Avoid caffeine entirely (coffee & tea): Blasphemy. Please remove this item 3. Maintain your tools: 100% agreed 4. Dont be vain: Be vain when it counts. You don't want the perception of your work to suffer when it's among people who don't quite understand technology. 5. Avoid Social Networks: I hate to say it but avoid hackernews also. You can sink hours into this site. Hackernews is entertainment not actual work. Good entertainment though! 6. Work off a TODO list: 100% agreed 7. Use a tiling WM: OK 8. Use Emacs for Everything: To each his own 9. ...Use Conkeror for the rest: DITTO 10. Always keep looking: 100% agreed If you do something the same way every time you will be left behind
- lutorm 16y ago
  HN is mostly entertainment, but I read it for posts like this that give an insight into the tools that people use. If you find out about some awesome tool this way, it's time well spent.
  - adamilardi 16y ago
    I get insight from it also but I'm saying spending an hour a day on social news is not working.
geoffc 16y ago
coffee, vim and screen do it for me :-)
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- daten 16y ago
  Another poster mentioned "tmux" in reply to this comment but they deleted their post before I could reply. I had not heard of tmux before. Apparently it's an alternative to "screen". I would have upvoted you for making me aware of it. http://tmux.sourceforge.net/ http://tmux.sourceforge.net/
  - mdg 16y ago
    Original comment was something like: "Obligatory 'Have you tried tmux?!?!'" I deleted it because I thought HN might think I was trolling or something.
  - lutorm 16y ago
    Another alternative I just heard about is "nx" (though it's commercial). It can resume entire remote desktop sessions as well as single windows. I've played with it a little, but I think I like tmux better.
  - silentbicycle 16y ago
    Tmux is fairly new, BSD-licensed, and has a much smaller/cleaner codebase than screen. It's quickly gotten features that people have been struggling to add to screen for years. (It comes with dwm/xmonad-style layouts out of the box, for one.) If you already use screen and are happy with it, it's probably not worth switching, but if you're starting new, I'd suggest learning tmux first. You might want to get a fairly recent version of the source, though - it's in the main OpenBSD tree now, and it has been improving pretty quickly. If you use Unix & ssh at all, definitely learn one of them. Yesterday, if possible. One of these days I really need to write about getting started with tmux...
    - 16y ago
mdg 16y ago
In regards to number 7: >7. Use a tiling WM I recall reading a Plan 9 pdf on the Acme editor (sorry cant find it right now). A unique feature to that text editor is that it is heavily mouse-based. This is contrary to many peoples (myself, at the time, included) belief that both hands on the keyboard equals increased productivity. I used to be 100% dwm. The euphoria of navigating around with your home row was great (vim + vimperator + dwm). When I purchased a MB, I left my tiled-wm ways and have not really missed it. Switching my hand from keyboard to mouse feels more natural than a lot of awkward <Ctrl+__> or <Alt+__> commands. Plus, most TWMs I have used require a decent amount of time upfront to become accustomed to all the keybindings. The time difference in switching between mouse and keyboard vs just using the keyboard is so trivial that it really isnt worth the plunge in my opinion, though if you think you might like it better, by all means try it. Something such as a unified desktop (OS X, Haiku, Gnome, KDE) will make you more productive rather than a window manager that optimizes for pixel real estate.
- yozhik 16y ago
  I recently started using Bluetile (http://www.bluetile.org/ http://www.bluetile.org/). It has all of the keyboard bindings, but there is also a dock that allows mouse control of major features. It's been a pretty easy transition for me because of this.
- javert 16y ago
  Like the author, I use the Awesome window manager. I think you have a perfectly valid perspective, but just want to speak for the other side. The main benefit I get from Awesome is having 9 workspaces ("desktops"). I use my mod key (in my case CAPS but it can be Alt or anything) plus # to get to any workspace. I have web browser on one desktop, email on another, IM on another, terminals on another, programming on another, and it's really, really easy to switch around. This was a HUGE improvement for me over Windows (and even Gnome), just in terms of managing multiple windows/applications running at once. Also nice to be able to get two windows to share the screen with a keystroke, if I need to look at two things at once. And in the same vein, tiling is really nice for IMs, because on the workspace for IMs, I can see all my chats at once. Normally for other tasks, like web browsing, I just switch into the tiling "mode" that doesn't tile (i.e. application is "maximixed").
joshklein 16y ago
#1 tip to improve productivity is to not read productivity posts.
hippich 16y ago
So what about this NEO keyboard layout. Did anyone tried it? While I understand where from performance can come when you are typing email, I am not so sure about keyboard shortcuts. Anyone?
- loup-vaillant 16y ago
  This layout is for Germans. If you don't write German, don't use it. Use either Dvorak or an optimized layout for your language (if one has been done). Personally, I use Bépo[1] a Dvorak-like layout optimized for French (same principles, different stats). It also happen to be far better than the Qwerty layout even for English. [1]: http://bepo.fr http://bepo.fr Ah, and most short-cuts are independent from the layout. But if you set up you software such that short-cuts are optimized as well (Alt + home-row-key for instance), then they'll become easier and faster too. That's probably what the guy did (he uses Emacs almost exclusively). A good place to start would be http://xahlee.org/emacs/ergonomic_emacs_keybinding.html http://xahlee.org/emacs/ergonomic_emacs_keybinding.html
marknutter 16y ago
He lost me at "avoid caffeine entirely."
thought_alarm 16y ago
> If you're not on a tiling WM, you're constantly switching between the mouse and keyboard. Can someone explain what the author is talking about? I'm not up to date in the latest Linux WM fads. (honestly, I thought the problem was finally solved years ago) When I'm working, 95% of the time I launch apps and select windows with the keyboard, on both OS X and Windows.
- silentbicycle 16y ago
  A tiling window manager (such as dwm, wmii, awesome, ion, and xmonad) automatically tiles windows for you, and has multiple workspaces. Usually, you can just switch between them by alt-1 to alt-9, move windows between workspaces w/ shift-alt-1, etc. If you're mostly working with shells & reasonably large emacs / firefox / etc. windows, they're really nice. With a little muscle memory, the whole window UI thing suddenly becomes a nonissue. If you ever used ratpoison, it's a better design in the same general space. I'd personally recommend xmonad if you use Haskell, dwm otherwise.
cageface 16y ago
I gave up caffeine myself a few months ago. It was rough for the first two weeks but now I sleep better, have a more even energy level throughout the day, and find I'm more patient with both people and machines. The only thing I miss is the smell of coffee and having something warm to drink on cool mornings.
- narrator 16y ago
  Cold turkey is a damned hard way to give up caffeine. I find slowly dolling out powdered caffeinated drink mix to myself in water at smaller and smaller doses to work better.
  - cageface 16y ago
    I went from coffee -> black tea -> green tea for a bit and then just stopped altogether. If you're a heavy coffee drinker then cold turkey will indeed be painful. Hopefully you have tolerant & patient loved ones.
- proee 16y ago
  I got off coffee for two weeks to as an experiment. Note I currently drink about 2 cups a day. My energy was much more balanced - could wake up fully alert. However, I felt depressed the entire two weeks. Generally just very SAD. So I got back on the drug after two weeks and with the first cup of coffee I just burst out into laughter. I literally could not stop laughing for about a minture (huge smile on the face). Now that I'm back on the drug my energy levels are up and down but I'm not in my depression hole. Anyone else experience depression when going off coffee?
  - Zev 16y ago
    Not coffee, but, I had a similar experience with Coca Cola a few years back. I went from drinking 1.5-2L a day[1] to none[2]. Of course, I dropped caffeine and picked up sugar instead (turns out, its really cheap to grab a Brita filter and a large jug of sugar flavored like Iced Tea to mix into water..). Now, its slightly more balanced. I try to only have sugar or caffeine when I'm not at home. 1. A glass when I came home from school (around 1:30-2pm), a glass when having a snack (around 4:30pm), and a glass at dinner (around 7pm) 2. My college has a deal with Pepsi -- none of the dining halls have Coca Cola and there is only one or two vending machines that have it on campus.
Periodic 16y ago
> A means 'will loose significant value if not done today', B means 'important, but will not loose significant value if not done today', C means 'optional'. I find that very often, 'optional' means 'will eventually cross off because it doesn't get done'. I hate having a to-do list that just piles up. Be honest about whether you're going to get something done or not.
edwtjo 16y ago
No caffeine huh.. I guess I'll be moving on to alcohol[1]. [1] http://xkcd.com/323 http://xkcd.com/323
swah 16y ago
The LudumDare developer that impressed many folks the other day was using Eclipse!
techiferous 16y ago
About sleep: I recently read that the typical American gets about 6.5 hours of sleep per night and that most people need about 8. Over the last year-and-a-half, I've averaged 7.5 hours of sleep although I do best with 8. On weeks where I average 7 hours of sleep per night, I notice a decrease in thinking speed.
joubert 16y ago
Self-Discipline is a great productivity boost.
sdwytkeisjeufjw 16y ago
Reading the preface (matrix like), I thought: You as me are here in the bed for sleeping so do it well. Vanity, emacs and other comments are not the red pill IMHO. Clojure rocks, so I hope the author go back to blogging about clojure, examples and applications that I enjoy reading for free.

114 points by fogus 16y ago

"If you get regular Facebook updates, Twitter updates, or any other kind of updates which steals your attention, even if its just for a few seconds, I'm willing to bet that you're working at 50% of your full capacity." Leechblock is incredible for this reason, its saved me so many times. Great read although I disagree with cutting out tea, forcing myself to take tea breaks every few hours of the day has lead to some great discoveries.

sourc3 16y ago
I agree with the caffeine comment. Believe it or not there is a balance when it comes to coffee. Having a cup of tea/coffee every day is not the same as having a cup every 2 hours. As in everything, it is not strictly an on/off switch. Other than that I totally agree that sleep exercise and food make a great difference. Eating fat with carbs for 3 meals a day will not help you get the mental focus either.
- jlindley 16y ago
  I took it to mean that the author is either on or off with such things, and couldn't merely cut down. I'm the same way. One cup of coffee a day is an impossible dream for me, I'd have to totally quit instead.
  - sourc3 16y ago
    If you are in an environment where there is decaf coffee I suggest mixing half caf/half decaf. You cannot really taste the decaf and get in half the caffeine, although it's not a real fix, it should help a little :)
xxpor 16y ago
You could try drinking decaf tea.
- alexkiwi 16y ago
  herbal tea does not contain caffeine, although its not really tea, it is delicious. I make a mean blueberry + orange combo
mpg33 16y ago
along with avoiding caffeine(except some green tea)...i would include exercise, particularly cardiovascular activities such as running

sandis 16y ago

I agree with most of the article, but this – "But in the time he has booted to his Desktop I've already answered 3 emails [..] Vanity slows you down, whether its your choice of VM, OS (read: OSX or Windows) or anything else". – is hardly an argument when choosing desktop OS.. just put your PC to sleep and next day it will "boot up" instantly, especially OS X.

radu_floricica 16y ago
You can actually map the power button to Hibernate in windows. It's not not complicated either... just a click somewhere in Power Settings. Makes life a lot more pleasant.
Skroob 16y ago
The implication that you can't really be productive, or at least as productive as him, without using Linux with emacs and a tiling WM really tainted the other, better advice in this article for me.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  The good thing about product related blogs like this is that it reminds me of which products not to buy. I would have a hard time buying a product from someone who wrote a blog entry lacking as little content and exhibiting as much as ego as that one did. To put another way, there was nothing in the article that didn't fall into one of three categories: 1) Are obvious to most developers. 2) His/her opinion, but not substantiated by any evidence, and probably disputed by as many as would support. 3) Look like possible outright lies. Not a blog entry I'd consider writing, much less on my company's website.

evilmushroom 16y ago

Ignoring the fact that I prefer to multi-task--- I do not have 5 minutes of downtime with context switching. If I'm thinking about a certain problem--- it helps to stop and skim my twitter feed for a couple minutes while thinking about it.

daten 16y ago
I agree. While interruptions in something like watching a movie in the theater might break my concentration for several minutes, I find context switching to help my productivity at work. I can get stuck on a problem without a distraction where changing my focus briefly usually helps give me a fresh perspective and allows me to solve the problem faster.
- lhnz 16y ago
  This is actually a good point. Something that is fun and engages my mind when it's dulled and flat is actually quite a useful tool. When I get back to work I am much more switched on. I think you just need to remember to define your breaks properly.

adamilardi 16y ago

1. Get around 7 hours of sleep every single night: 10+ is better 2. Avoid caffeine entirely (coffee & tea): Blasphemy. Please remove this item 3. Maintain your tools: 100% agreed 4. Dont be vain: Be vain when it counts. You don't want the perception of your work to suffer when it's among people who don't quite understand technology. 5. Avoid Social Networks: I hate to say it but avoid hackernews also. You can sink hours into this site. Hackernews is entertainment not actual work. Good entertainment though! 6. Work off a TODO list: 100% agreed 7. Use a tiling WM: OK 8. Use Emacs for Everything: To each his own 9. ...Use Conkeror for the rest: DITTO 10. Always keep looking: 100% agreed If you do something the same way every time you will be left behind

lutorm 16y ago
HN is mostly entertainment, but I read it for posts like this that give an insight into the tools that people use. If you find out about some awesome tool this way, it's time well spent.
- adamilardi 16y ago
  I get insight from it also but I'm saying spending an hour a day on social news is not working.

geoffc 16y ago

coffee, vim and screen do it for me :-)

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
daten 16y ago
Another poster mentioned "tmux" in reply to this comment but they deleted their post before I could reply. I had not heard of tmux before. Apparently it's an alternative to "screen". I would have upvoted you for making me aware of it. http://tmux.sourceforge.net/ http://tmux.sourceforge.net/
- mdg 16y ago
  Original comment was something like: "Obligatory 'Have you tried tmux?!?!'" I deleted it because I thought HN might think I was trolling or something.
- lutorm 16y ago
  Another alternative I just heard about is "nx" (though it's commercial). It can resume entire remote desktop sessions as well as single windows. I've played with it a little, but I think I like tmux better.
- silentbicycle 16y ago
  Tmux is fairly new, BSD-licensed, and has a much smaller/cleaner codebase than screen. It's quickly gotten features that people have been struggling to add to screen for years. (It comes with dwm/xmonad-style layouts out of the box, for one.) If you already use screen and are happy with it, it's probably not worth switching, but if you're starting new, I'd suggest learning tmux first. You might want to get a fairly recent version of the source, though - it's in the main OpenBSD tree now, and it has been improving pretty quickly. If you use Unix & ssh at all, definitely learn one of them. Yesterday, if possible. One of these days I really need to write about getting started with tmux...
  - 16y ago

mdg 16y ago

In regards to number 7: >7. Use a tiling WM I recall reading a Plan 9 pdf on the Acme editor (sorry cant find it right now). A unique feature to that text editor is that it is heavily mouse-based. This is contrary to many peoples (myself, at the time, included) belief that both hands on the keyboard equals increased productivity. I used to be 100% dwm. The euphoria of navigating around with your home row was great (vim + vimperator + dwm). When I purchased a MB, I left my tiled-wm ways and have not really missed it. Switching my hand from keyboard to mouse feels more natural than a lot of awkward <Ctrl+__> or <Alt+__> commands. Plus, most TWMs I have used require a decent amount of time upfront to become accustomed to all the keybindings. The time difference in switching between mouse and keyboard vs just using the keyboard is so trivial that it really isnt worth the plunge in my opinion, though if you think you might like it better, by all means try it. Something such as a unified desktop (OS X, Haiku, Gnome, KDE) will make you more productive rather than a window manager that optimizes for pixel real estate.

yozhik 16y ago
I recently started using Bluetile (http://www.bluetile.org/ http://www.bluetile.org/). It has all of the keyboard bindings, but there is also a dock that allows mouse control of major features. It's been a pretty easy transition for me because of this.
javert 16y ago
Like the author, I use the Awesome window manager. I think you have a perfectly valid perspective, but just want to speak for the other side. The main benefit I get from Awesome is having 9 workspaces ("desktops"). I use my mod key (in my case CAPS but it can be Alt or anything) plus # to get to any workspace. I have web browser on one desktop, email on another, IM on another, terminals on another, programming on another, and it's really, really easy to switch around. This was a HUGE improvement for me over Windows (and even Gnome), just in terms of managing multiple windows/applications running at once. Also nice to be able to get two windows to share the screen with a keystroke, if I need to look at two things at once. And in the same vein, tiling is really nice for IMs, because on the workspace for IMs, I can see all my chats at once. Normally for other tasks, like web browsing, I just switch into the tiling "mode" that doesn't tile (i.e. application is "maximixed").

joshklein 16y ago

#1 tip to improve productivity is to not read productivity posts.

hippich 16y ago

So what about this NEO keyboard layout. Did anyone tried it? While I understand where from performance can come when you are typing email, I am not so sure about keyboard shortcuts. Anyone?

loup-vaillant 16y ago
This layout is for Germans. If you don't write German, don't use it. Use either Dvorak or an optimized layout for your language (if one has been done). Personally, I use Bépo[1] a Dvorak-like layout optimized for French (same principles, different stats). It also happen to be far better than the Qwerty layout even for English. [1]: http://bepo.fr http://bepo.fr Ah, and most short-cuts are independent from the layout. But if you set up you software such that short-cuts are optimized as well (Alt + home-row-key for instance), then they'll become easier and faster too. That's probably what the guy did (he uses Emacs almost exclusively). A good place to start would be http://xahlee.org/emacs/ergonomic_emacs_keybinding.html http://xahlee.org/emacs/ergonomic_emacs_keybinding.html

marknutter 16y ago

He lost me at "avoid caffeine entirely."

thought_alarm 16y ago

> If you're not on a tiling WM, you're constantly switching between the mouse and keyboard. Can someone explain what the author is talking about? I'm not up to date in the latest Linux WM fads. (honestly, I thought the problem was finally solved years ago) When I'm working, 95% of the time I launch apps and select windows with the keyboard, on both OS X and Windows.

silentbicycle 16y ago
A tiling window manager (such as dwm, wmii, awesome, ion, and xmonad) automatically tiles windows for you, and has multiple workspaces. Usually, you can just switch between them by alt-1 to alt-9, move windows between workspaces w/ shift-alt-1, etc. If you're mostly working with shells & reasonably large emacs / firefox / etc. windows, they're really nice. With a little muscle memory, the whole window UI thing suddenly becomes a nonissue. If you ever used ratpoison, it's a better design in the same general space. I'd personally recommend xmonad if you use Haskell, dwm otherwise.

cageface 16y ago

I gave up caffeine myself a few months ago. It was rough for the first two weeks but now I sleep better, have a more even energy level throughout the day, and find I'm more patient with both people and machines. The only thing I miss is the smell of coffee and having something warm to drink on cool mornings.

narrator 16y ago
Cold turkey is a damned hard way to give up caffeine. I find slowly dolling out powdered caffeinated drink mix to myself in water at smaller and smaller doses to work better.
- cageface 16y ago
  I went from coffee -> black tea -> green tea for a bit and then just stopped altogether. If you're a heavy coffee drinker then cold turkey will indeed be painful. Hopefully you have tolerant & patient loved ones.
proee 16y ago
I got off coffee for two weeks to as an experiment. Note I currently drink about 2 cups a day. My energy was much more balanced - could wake up fully alert. However, I felt depressed the entire two weeks. Generally just very SAD. So I got back on the drug after two weeks and with the first cup of coffee I just burst out into laughter. I literally could not stop laughing for about a minture (huge smile on the face). Now that I'm back on the drug my energy levels are up and down but I'm not in my depression hole. Anyone else experience depression when going off coffee?
- Zev 16y ago
  Not coffee, but, I had a similar experience with Coca Cola a few years back. I went from drinking 1.5-2L a day[1] to none[2]. Of course, I dropped caffeine and picked up sugar instead (turns out, its really cheap to grab a Brita filter and a large jug of sugar flavored like Iced Tea to mix into water..). Now, its slightly more balanced. I try to only have sugar or caffeine when I'm not at home. 1. A glass when I came home from school (around 1:30-2pm), a glass when having a snack (around 4:30pm), and a glass at dinner (around 7pm) 2. My college has a deal with Pepsi -- none of the dining halls have Coca Cola and there is only one or two vending machines that have it on campus.

Periodic 16y ago

> A means 'will loose significant value if not done today', B means 'important, but will not loose significant value if not done today', C means 'optional'. I find that very often, 'optional' means 'will eventually cross off because it doesn't get done'. I hate having a to-do list that just piles up. Be honest about whether you're going to get something done or not.

edwtjo 16y ago

No caffeine huh.. I guess I'll be moving on to alcohol[1]. [1] http://xkcd.com/323 http://xkcd.com/323

swah 16y ago

The LudumDare developer that impressed many folks the other day was using Eclipse!

techiferous 16y ago

About sleep: I recently read that the typical American gets about 6.5 hours of sleep per night and that most people need about 8. Over the last year-and-a-half, I've averaged 7.5 hours of sleep although I do best with 8. On weeks where I average 7 hours of sleep per night, I notice a decrease in thinking speed.

joubert 16y ago

Self-Discipline is a great productivity boost.

sdwytkeisjeufjw 16y ago

Reading the preface (matrix like), I thought: You as me are here in the bed for sleeping so do it well. Vanity, emacs and other comments are not the red pill IMHO. Clojure rocks, so I hope the author go back to blogging about clojure, examples and applications that I enjoy reading for free.