New research suggests that we're making ourselves sick over politics - <AUTHOR> https://news.unl.edu/newsrooms/today/article/stressed-out-americans-making-themselves-sick-over-politics/ <comment><USER4> Just turn on most TV news networks.

It's the Apocalypse about everything all the time. Everything is tied together. You've got "experts" willing to make dramatic statements about anything at all. It's always "those people" causing something.

Nobody sets any context. No real information is presented. It's just paranoia and panic made to hook people into watching more.

I always have this fantasy where I start my own TV news network and it's "just news". If the topic is complex like something about the separation of powers, we do a little intro to that, then the news. I'm not sure it would be popular, but at the same time, i'm not convinced it wouldn't be considering the competition.

<comment><USER5> > It's the Apocalypse about everything all the time.

I just catch-up on the news once a week to avoid thinking about it too much. Yeah, there's madness, but a lot of it is beyond my reach. So, it's not really helpful for me to hear about what's going on more than once a week.

> I always have this fantasy where I start my own TV news network and it's > "just news".

PBS News Hour tends to do this pretty well. The experts they bring on usually do a good job of just discussing facts and describing common stances on all sides.

Part of your complaint has to do with the deregulation of the news industry, historically. In 1987, the FCC fairness doctrine was eliminated: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine)

It's no mistake that it gave rise to a massive number of pundits under the guise of proper news outlets.

<comment><USER6> > I just catch-up on the news once a week to avoid thinking about it too much.

For most people, you can probably stretch that. Catch up once a month, then catch up once every three months, then six, or twelve. Most people I've spoken too feel much better when they just quit "news".

<comment> 52-6F-62 I have mixed thoughts about it, myself. I like to keep up, but it is refreshing to turn everything off a while.

Also reminded me of this, a Lukas Nelson (of the red-headed stranger stock) song: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2lild9nfps](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2lild9nfps)

<comment><USER6> Everybody likes to keep up, that's why drugs are addictive ;)

I found that "news" (as in non-local stuff) doesn't matter to me. I cannot do anything about the things that are happening, whether or not they happen changes my life very little (i.e. "whatever party is elected, my taxes are going to go up"), but they do weigh on my mental health. Just like with cigarettes, knowing that they're not good for you isn't enough to stop smoking though, and just because I've stopped before doesn't mean that it's easier to quit this time.

<comment><USER7> Even with the local news there is rarely any actionable information. So that isn't worth watching either.

If your city was hit with a terrorist attack or mass shooting is your boss going to let you have time off work because you don't feel safe? I doubt it, it's back to work as usual.

<comment><USER6> True, I meant _super_ local news as in "there's going to be repairs on the street by the church" and what stores are closing down or opening up. I only get those from our local govt site and some private blogs, the local newspaper has changed hands a few times and is now just one outlet of a large corporation that runs the same articles in hundreds of local papers.

<comment> 52-6F-62 Oh wow. My local news (CityTV Toronto, disclaimer—have done some work for them before) covers hyper local stuff like street closures, transit closures, major construction, other incidents and success stories as well as overs a range of national and global topics. It's not bad that way at all.

Sadly a lot of smaller town local papers across Canada have been bought up by National Post much like Sinclair Media did with small TV stations in the USA. Some independents still persist but the numbers grow fewer...

<comment><USER6> I've thrown out the TV years (it'll be decades soon!) ago, so I don't know whether the local TV channel in the metro area where I live is doing something, but from what I remember when I still had one, they did not. And I get it too, the costs to provide hyper local coverage would be immense. Maybe there's a chance for a mix of citizen journalism with more polished & professional distribution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I stopped paying any attention to politics years ago and I'm a person who coordinated and planned 2 campaigns in my local state.

It saddens me that a large amount of people are stressed and consumed by a process that they have very very little impact on. Unless you live in a select few states, your state probably gets 2 electoral votes for your senators and a few more based on your district size. If you live in Montana, Alaska, North or South Dakota then you're getting the minimum of 3 electoral votes.

It's really more about outrage culture at this point I think. I actually wonder how much harm is done by the election process in how it makes people think problems are being debated or solved when no legitimate debate is taking place and no real solutions are being implemented.

Also, it doesn't matter which political party you are on.

If you're a "left" leaning person who wants socialized healthcare, we never really got that. We got something that had some of the same words and ideas, but in the end nobody could actually go to a doctor without wealth being a large factor.

If you're a "right" leaning person you probably want a smaller government that spends less and we never get that. For every reduction in law hundreds are added. One step forward, 99 steps backwards.

<comment><USER9> It's actually the people in the small states whose votes are disproportionally powerful, since Wyoming voters elect the same number of senators as California voters and everyone's house district is within an order of magnitude size wise.

New Hampshire gets ridiculously outsized attention in election years, as a small state, early primary state, and a swing state. Truly the trifecta and probably the state where an individual's vote matters the most.

As for the last couple paragraphs, as someone who possesses an ideology I am disappointed I don't always get my way, and live in my utopia. But as someone who is aware others possess contrasting ideologies, I am glad I don't live in their dystopias.

We have a system that encourages compromises, including very ugly and unjust compromises, as a way to avoid one side winning entirely and establishing a totalitarian (or anarchist) state.

People seem to appreciate this less than they once did, but haven't done anything really to change it yet.

<comment><USER10> People forget the U.S is a democratic constitutional republic. The federal government is not the humans government. It's the governing body for the States. Hence the reason for the electoral college and the way States are represented. Each state [government] has an equal voice in the Senate (and were represented by the Senators prior to the 17th Amendment). The house had a proportionate representation because it is ultimately the humans who have to pay for the running of the federal government.

The president it the head of the day to day operations of the government. They are supposed to faithfully see that the laws passed by Congress are executed properly.

<comment><USER11> And this is why most policy should be relegated to the states. But try making that argument and you'll be branded a nutty conservative.

But really, the states have _always_ had the authority to do what people nowadays want the feds to do. Universal healthcare? The states are allowed to provide that. universal basic income? The states can do that too. Lower the drinking age? Yup, states can do that.

No one needs to wait for the federal government to 'approve' or 'allow' your state to do something. The states have ultimate, pretty much absolute authority.

<comment><USER12> Just because they technically "can" doesn't mean they actually can.

Universal healthcare requires high buy-in and very different systems from what we have now.

Drinking age is tied to necessary federal highway funding, so states aren't going to lower the age.

<comment><USER10> >Drinking age is tied to necessary federal highway funding, so states aren't going to lower the age.

Federal mandates for funds exist because the 17th amendment took away State governments representation and handed to popular human vote. Few Senators faithfully representing their State would pass mandates telling their own government they must comply or not get money. They'd likely get removed or replaced with someone else by the state government that put them there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One thing that I see making the situation worse is the lack of common cause and identity. There was always party division, but the other side was still seen as your fellow Americans. Today, not only is there an opposing side, they are seen as an enemy that must be totally annihilated. If we continue down this road it's going to be disastrous because it's going to leave no room for dissent inside or outside politics.

I'm not saying that Americans never disagreed, war'd with each other, etc. That's not the point. The point is that we're losing that belief in an American ideal that helps keep us together while we debate our issues. The more divided we are, the more we'll be ripe for the picking by those who never cared about America in the first place.

It's not just TV and social media, but a belief that America should be a hodge podge of cultures united by nothing but an empty consumerist culture. It's pretty hard for things like forgiveness, giving the benefit of the doubt, and seeing each other as human beings to actually work in such a place when there are political interests that benefit by having those principles eliminated. A hostile, low trust society clicks more ragebait and gobbles more food to combat depression.

<comment><USER14> How much camaraderie should someone really be expected to show for an opposing party that actively opposes their human rights and remove regulations protecting the environment? A hostile low-trust society might be justified for the time being, and likely was previously too.

<comment><USER13> It _can_ be justified, just as nearly anything can be justified under the right conditions. Whether present conditions, contrasting our current state with the state of the past, warrants such political lengths to divide people is questionable.

Considering that they, _like you_ , think they're right, you can at least grant other human beings the same dignity you wish to receive. Obviously, everything is subject to the situation but, from a big picture perspective, viewing yourself and others as _fallible_ , as opposed to a Hollywood-esque fight between Good and Evil, is a greater exercise in humility. Like pulling the trigger on a gun, hostility and rejection should be a weapon reserved until there isn't an alternative.

If you think there's no hope for a common understanding with Republicans(I think it's safe to assume that's whom you are referring to), then I guess all I have to say is that's kind of sad because I'm sure that you have family and friends who vote Republican(whether they tell you or not); why associate with them at all if you think a low-trust society is warranted?

Think of it this way. A Republican _might_ say:

"How much comaraderie should one really be expected to show for an opposing party that actively opposes America as an individual nation, wants to impart an economic structure that's been disastrous in other parts of the world, embraces censorship, participated in proxy wars and knowingly murdered civilians with drones, uses minorities as political tools, hates white people, expanded the surveillance apparatus, and wants to take our guns away?"

I know some imbecile is probably going to take that hypothetical quote as being my own position and attempt to argue every one of those points. Save your breath, whomever you are, because that's not at all what I'm claiming to believe.

Whether they are _actually_ right or wrong, they are Americans who, _like you_ , care about the destiny of the country. That's where your camaraderie begins. If it ends there too, then too bad, but not having that common understanding is dangerous and useful to anyone who wants to control the masses.

<comment><USER14> My response to your comment can probably be summed up by asking if you're familiar with the paradox of tolerance [1]. I can be civil to people actively working to remove the rights and safety of people like myself, but I do not accept that they have earned my camaraderie.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance)

<comment><USER15> John Rawls provides a vocabulary for talking about these issues. In Rawls view, society consists of "reasonable citizens" who want to live in a society built on cooperation and are willing to abide by rules if necessary to do so. Each reasonable citizen has, as a matter of course, a "comprehensive doctrine" which is the full set of beliefs and opinions they hold on all kinds of things: if aliens exist, which TV shows are good, when it's OK to lie. Reasonable citizens can (and usually do) disagree about many aspects of their respective comprehensive doctrines; however, they can acknowledge an "overlapping consensus" formed from just those ideas that almost everyone in the society agrees upon. For example, Americans generally agree that it should be legal to watch TV. Now, an reasonable citizen can believe something very strongly (such as a specific conception God) while acknowledging that since a large number of of citizens of the same society do not hold the same belief, it is not part of the "overlapping consensus" of their society. This overlap consensus must form the foundation for any agreement.

Rawls gives examples of things that should be part of the overlapping consensus for society to function, such as public standards of inquiry and public values. He proposes the following rule:

> Citizens engaged in certain political activities have a duty of civility to > be able to justify their decisions on fundamental political issues by > reference only to public values and public standards.

All of that is just background. You can read a summary of Rawls on SEP[1], or his book A Theory of Justice.[2]

Given all that, we can see how things might break down. In order:

1\. A citizen may not be reasonable. Jeffery Dahmer would qualify. He does not want to live in a society with rules and justice: he wants to rape and eat people.

2\. The citizens of a society may differ so much that their overlapping consensus is empty, or too small to serve as a foundation of anything. If all we agree on is that the sky is blue, but disagree on democracy vs. monarchy or which end of the egg to eat, then we will not be able to form a society.

3\. We may agree on much, but not on those key topics like public standards of inquiry. If one person believes that matters of fact should be decided by a unanimous decision by a jury of peers, while the other believes that only confession under torture can be trusted, the two will have a difficult time agreeing on a legal system.

When things do breakdown for one of the above reasons, "civil discourse" is not really possible. Other kinds of discourse are still possible, but these will be more like hostage negotiations or the arguments that precede a divorce than any kind of idealized notion of civil discourse. Which is to say, the tools required for understanding these conflicts are rhetoric, game theory, and psychology, and not political theory or ethics.

[1]: [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rawls/#ReaCit](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rawls/#ReaCit)

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Theory_of_Justice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Theory_of_Justice)

<comment><USER16> Since you seem highly educated, may I posit a question, and this isn't a challenge but a genuine exploration into your commentary. What happens when we enter with "identity politics"? For example, how does A and B engage in a topic about big vs little government if A is nonbinary and takes 'ze' pronouns, but B continually insists on referring to A as 'he' and believes that A is mistaking mental illness as gender identity?

Or, similarly, how do A and B discuss going green vs economic prosperity, when A is wearing a T-shirt espousing that black people were better off as slaves and B is a black person?

<comment><USER17> In both your examples, the offense being given is orthogonal to the discussion at hand. If the offended party can look past the offense, the conversation can continue. Otherwise, it can't.

Actually, there's two ways this can go. One is where the offender is being a jerk; the other is where the offended is being a jerk. Civility and good faith go a long way, on both sides.

(How, in your first paragraph, would A be the jerk? I have literally never in my life encountered someone who wishes to use the pronoun ze, and when I do, I'm probably going to have a hard time remembering to use it for a while. That doesn't make me a bad person, toxic, or a jerk. It makes me a person with a lifetime of ingrained habits about how pronouns work, and it may not be easy to change that after being told once. If A regards that as hostility and offense - worse, if A is actively _looking_ for offense - then we may have a hard time having a conversation. If A can recognize good faith in failure, and just smile at people who take a while to get it, then we're fine.)

<comment><USER16> (In my example, I specify that B _refuses_ to use A's requested pronoun.)

My question then becomes what happens then civility has already broken down? Say, I think "cunt" is a terrible word to call someone, and my cohort in a discussion is from a region where it's a fairly normal word, like "jerk". As we discuss, my cohort uses that word as normal, and I take severe offense, causing the discussion to break down as my cohort also doesn't wish to "cater to" me. Now what, are we just doomed to never be able to discuss even random other stuff like chocolate vs vanilla ice cream?

<comment><USER17> I'd say that a reasonable person could say, "Where I come from, that's a really offensive term. Could you not keep saying that?"

If they just keep saying it, it's clear that they don't care. That tells you that they aren't a person interested in meeting you halfway. I don't need to discuss chocolate vs vanilla (or anything else) with someone who's willing to deliberately offend me.

But if they forget once or twice, and say it, not because they don't care that it offends you but just because it's become habit, and habits don't change instantly, then cut them some slack. Your words that you say by habit that offend others aren't easy to stop saying, either.

But if you're so busy "taking severe offense" that you can't respond like a reasonable person, then maybe you're the problem. You almost certainly are if you're _enjoying_ taking severe offense. (I know, nobody ever admits to it. But I suspect that some people do, and if they were honest with themselves, they'd know it.)

[Edit: Missed your first paragraph. _Refuses_ is different from _forgets to_. Again, though, it may not be that simple. If B forgets once, a hypersensitive A might label that "refuses". Or, B could really refuse, but claim "I keep forgetting" when called on it. Those two scenarios look fairly similar - <USER2> probably have to read tone of voice, facial expression, and body language to know.]

<comment><USER16> I see, so, pushing to the extremes here and I wholly acnkowledge I'm doing so- what do you do when A is in a position with B where B informs A that B does not care if A is offended, but also if A stops engaging, B proclaims that A isn't listening to them and therefore it's A's fault?

<comment><USER17> "With those who will not listen, it is useless to have a conversation." A should say something like "I deny your interpretation of the events of this conversation" and walk away. There's no point whatsoever in continuing the conversation. B isn't going to listen; B isn't going to argue in good faith; B is just there to score points.

Will B regard that as a "victory"? Sure, but there's nothing A can do to change that. Will B claim that A isn't listening? Sure, _but there 's nothing A can do to change that._ The only thing A can change is how much aggravation and abuse A has to put up with. So A should just walk away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> We dumped the "land of opportunity" precisely because of the political climate. We both were on H1B visas, and our green card is already filed (for both of us), but the whole anxiety drove us nuts and we just moved north of the border where they welcomed us with a red carpet with permanent residency sent at our doorstep! My friends were saying we were crazy, to leave a great job, house and all but I couldn't think of myself being a slave to the whims and fancies of some American politicians. We are so much happier here :). I used to think I want to move south once there is a immigration friendly government but the more I live here the less I want to move back.

<comment><USER19> Exactly this. I have seen dozens of highly qualified, kind, intelligent people who wanted to contribute in the US leave in frustration because of asinine immigration rules.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> At some point people need to wake up and realize they actually have very little control over what the government is doing.

How long have we been talking about fixing healthcare? 20 years now? Nothing changes. And Obamacare was not a fix, just a way to shut up the population.

How long have we been demanding an end to endless wars?

How long have we been demanding actual action on climate change?

What happened when crimes of the government are exposed by Assange and Snowden? We punish the whistleblowers!

What was the end result of the Panama papers? Nothing.

What about the elite being engaged in pedophilia on a massive scale? What's that, Epstein committed suicide and the prison staff won't cooperate in an investigation? Carry on fine citizen, nothing to see here.

None of these things will change because the elite are enjoying the status quo. Now proceed fighting amongst yourselves over <insert social wedge issue here>.

<comment><USER21> No, no, no, no. Most decisions that impact your life in the US start at the city level. You CAN get involved and make a difference. It all starts there. Don't check out.

<comment><USER22> Actually, it's even more granular than that. Want to shape the future? Get on the school board. Then you get to affect what an entire generation learns.

<comment><USER23> > _Then you get to affect what an entire generation learns_

I don't think you've ever been on a school board.

In a lot of places, there are federal and state standards that effectively dictate what children have to know. So if that state test or whatever has no relativity theory on it, but lots of low end classical mechanics problems, then guess which one the high schools in your district will spend pretty much 100% of the time teaching? Everyone from the school board members, to the school teacher, to the high schools themselves will be evaluated, publicly, when the results of those tests are released. (Some schools may even be taken over by the state or shut down if the numbers are too poor.)

Most places they generally don't take chances on spending class time on topics outside those the tests focus on, it's just too risky the way most states have structured their laws. I wish I knew some kind of a way to push back against test centric thinking in education, but it's too ingrained and there's too much riding on it. At the end of the 12 years the kids have to take the ACT in most places, and heaven help you if little Jane or Johnny doesn't do well enough on it.

I always thought that if you really want to influence what the next generation learns, you should join the company that makes the tests, not the school board.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > Politics are impossible to escape

That's a bold claim to put in the title but I believe it's generally true unless you're in a position to not have to directly deal with paying taxes (homeless or so rich that someone else deals with it for you).

I would consider myself to be extremely unpolitical. Honestly speaking I don't even know who my state's mayor is, I never voted and I don't listen to the news. I simply don't care about any of that stuff because I know as an individual it's close to impossible to change anything due to how politics work in the first place (it follows money not popularity).

However, when it comes to paying taxes or health insurance penalties you can't avoid thinking about or dealing with it and it's stressful even in those short doses of having to deal with taxes a few times a year (quarterly taxes).

<comment><USER25> Paying taxes is not politics. Being stressed about that is just the same as being stressed about any other personal administration task.

<comment><USER24> > Paying taxes is not politics. Being stressed about that is just the same as > being stressed about any other personal administration task.

I think it's very much related because as soon as you talk or think about taxes you immediately correlate it to forcefully giving the government a large amount of your hard earned money.

And now it becomes political because you might not see directs benefits of that, so now you wonder why you pay so many hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxes over your life, but there's potholes in your neighborhood for years that could break a car's axle and thieves are breaking into houses with police who don't care enough to solve the mystery, all while you continue to pay some of the highest state tax in the US (percent wise).

And it snow balls from there. You begin to wonder why so much has to be spent on things you don't necessarily agree with and before you know it, you're ruminating on this stuff to the point where your heart is racing and you want to move to a private ungoverned island.

Thinking about stuff like that is super disappointing / demoralizing to me, so I try my best to avoid it as much as possible. I know avoiding bad things is usually terrible advice but this is one case where I'm more than happy to not play the game or only play the absolute bare minimum to enjoy my life the best I can.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The effect of the 24x7 news flow is to cause "learned helplessness" in the masses.

>"Learned helplessness occurs when an animal is repeatedly subjected to an aversive stimulus that it cannot escape. Eventually, the animal will stop trying to avoid the stimulus and behave as if it is utterly helpless to change the situation. Even when opportunities to escape are presented, this learned helplessness will prevent any action."

[https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-learned- helplessness-27...](https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-learned- helplessness-2795326)

</comment><comment><USER27> How did we get here? Is there any evidence that the consolation of old school media into a few companies is contributing to this problem? Over the last fews years we've gone from 50 companies owning 90% of the news companies, to only 6. I recently heard about this consolidation, and I can't help but think this may be contributing to the issue, but I haven't seen any evidence either way!

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_cross- ownership_in_the_U...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_cross- ownership_in_the_United_States)

</comment><comment><USER28> No kidding. This current situation goes beyond simple policy disagreements, but goes right to the heart of whether the US president is above the law or not. As a consequence, are there any checks on his interference in our elections? How's democracy going to work out if there aren't?

I'd like my kids to grow up in a democracy, and this deterioration is really f'ing stressful.

(If you're one of those "but it's a Republic, not a Democracy!" people - <USER3> it)

<comment><USER29> Take a deep breath. Despite what you may see on TV, it's not the end of the world.

"whether the US president is above the law or not"

Think of the situation as a poorly defined edge case. The Constitution does not say that laws don't apply to the president. However, the president has constitutional duties and powers that the other branches have no power to interfere with. So, in some situations the net result may be that the president IS effectively above the law.

But don't get too upset yet. The real check on power is the ballot box. Presidents only get 4 year terms. And in emergency situations Congress can impeach.

Let the system work itself out, and don't become overly emotional. It's not something important like baseball or whether your kid can read, it's just politics.

<comment><USER30> Even though you're getting downvoted it's worth expressing this over and over. But we're dealing with an entire cross-cutting section of society that magnifies every problem into a crisis, so it'll almost never be received well.

The constitutional checks and balances are definitely relevant and vital here, but it's worth noting how distorted they've become. Presidential power has been elevated in practice, but it's also been mythologized. Most people have idealized the role beyond it's traditional standing, and this lends itself to degrading the rules and scope of the role itself.

Congress is supposed to be a body of deliberation, but due to party politics has devolved into a purely political sphere of battle. So Congress is complicit with enabling the president to act beyond the circumscribed boundaries that are constitutionally defined.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's unfortunately very similar here in the UK: whilst most people are 'getting on with it', there's an increasing amount of division and stress due to the whole Brexit debacle.

<comment><USER32> Brexit related stress is very real, especially for residents who are EU citizens who may be very long time residents but haven't ever thought of the need to get official residency.

"Settled status" is of little comfort when they look and see a PM willing to act unlawfully.

<comment><USER33> Dunno the brits that live in Germany can just get a unlimited residency permit without any fuss.

<comment><USER34> Unconditionally? This is absolutely not the case for the UK "settled status" fiasco.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I blame the internet media for using easy click baity titles to get clicks. That's where the money is and one of the reasons we are seeing extremism happening on both sides.

The internet is allowing long format discussions that are great but the "legacy press" is struggling to adapt to this. They want to provide simplified summaries at a premium and on a time without news they have to make them up.

<comment><USER36> While there may be a magnitude difference (I personally suspect not) we have had click-bait's ancestor just from headlines.

Hard times seem to be a more reliable prediction of extremism really. In the WW1 eras before, during, and after major nations were having literal radical element armed revolution attempts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> > 22.1% admit they care too much about who wins and who loses

Recommendation: Stop framing it as "winning" and "losing".

<comment><USER37> I'd just be grateful if pundits and especially politicians would start referring to "opponents" instead of "enemies".

<comment><USER38> I looked up synonyms for opponents and my favorite is "fellow contestant"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I think that the term "politics" makes it very abstract what we're talking about. If you substitute in some salient issue, like "jailing children", then it kind of changes the tone.

It's just politics -> It's just jailing children

People are ending friendships over politics -> People are ending friendships over jailing children

"Team Red" and "Team Blue" -> Team jail children, Team do not jail children

<comment><USER40> Your desire to replace the meta-discussion of "politics" with reduction to a highly-emotional framing of a pet issue ("jailing children") is an excellent example of why the politicize-everything mindset is so corrosive.

<comment><USER41> Disagree.

You can do it with healthcare too.

Team "spent 4 years attempting to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replacing it with nothing" vs Team "Universal Medical Care for Everyone"

Or tax cuts -

Team "Gave trillions away via a big corporate tax cut" vs Team "Proposal to fund higher education via Wealth Tax"

Or environmentalism -

Team "denying there's a problem while the permafrost melts" vs Team "Wants to do something before society literally falls around us"

Or Treason -

Team "Has president in White House that literally asked Ukraine for dirt on his political opponent" vs Team "Holy Fucking Shit!"

It seems super frustrating dealing with articles that say that "politics" is stressing me out when really it's that the right has literally driven the country into the ground. What in god's name are they doing? We have a president that is literally laughing about killing immigrants days before a national shooting in Texas, who commits high crimes _via Twitter_ , and worse! What Republican is speaking out against him? And they own the senate, so we've had 4 years of deadlock.

And that's just the United States! In the UK you have crazy Boris Johnson literally doing everything he possibly can to crash the country out of the European Union because no one was willing to work with Theresa May. God knows why as the effects for the economy (and Ireland for God's sakes - they have a border between Northern Ireland and Ireland that would have to go back up - and it could cause the Troubles again!) would be horrific. Probably because he has money on it somehow. And he attempted to essentially dissolve parliament that then unprecedentedly got thrown out by their Supreme Court and the entire thing is just a shit show.

And then there's Modi, and Bolsonaro is burning down the rain forest. The thing is the entire planet looks like it's having an attack of conscience and we could be looking at a breakdown of the global order. Things have been ok bordering on decent in most parts of the world for the last 50 years, as compared to the last 500 that preceded them. But we paid for the prosperity by consuming more than we should, and, as "stuff" starts to run out perhaps people are just no longer interested in sharing with others or playing nice.

That's a really scary thought.

<comment><USER40> This compulsion to steer every discussion into simplistic partisan campaign talking-points is not good for people's mental or physical health, as the linked study suggests.

I hope you learn to disengage before accumulating too much damage.

<comment><USER42> Personally, I think it's more damaging that positions like, "Let's not lock children in cages", or "Let's actually listen to the scientific consensus on climate change rather than people paid by the oil industry" or considered partisan viewpoints. I totally get political fatigue, I'm getting really tired of all the shit going on too, but when pointing out the president blatantly committed a crime is considered partisan, the issue isn't that people talk about politics too much.

<comment><USER43> To see the problem, let me use your exact words, but simply change the issue to one you presumably disagree with: "Personally, I think it's more damaging that positions like, "Let's not murder children" is considered a partisan viewpoint. I totally get political fatigue, I'm getting really tired of all the shit going on too, but when pointing out literally killing kids is considered partisan, the issue isn't that people talk about politics too much."

I'm sure you see the problem now. I'm obviously taking a horribly slanted view on abortion and then framing the discussion under that slant. It's not only partisan but rather radically so. In particular, is the underlying _causal_ issue a desire to "lock children in cages", or is it something else? Is the underlying _causal_ issue a desire to "murder babies", or is it something else?

Beyond the partisanship problem, I'd also add that this is in no way conducive to productive discussion. Imagine I opposed abortion and came at you with that murdering babies nonsense. What is your response going to be? It's likely to be a mixture of knee-jerk emotion alongside a near complete dismissal of me as somebody who's probably quite radicalized. In any case it certainly would not lead to a mutually enlightening and well tempered debate. Yet this sort of speech is now becoming seen as something normal, and I think it's playing a very key role in both a lack of progress as well as an increasingly antagonistically divided nation.

<comment><USER41> Except, in the first case the underlying casual issue to Republicans separating children from their parents is their hatred and racism of asylum seeking immigrants. In the second case, the underlying issue to people who don't believe in abortion are often religious groups that have a history of persecuting anyone different than them, including the mistreatment of women and children.

Trying to state there are radicals "on both sides" just isn't true in degree or kind. We don't have radicalized left wing socialists shooting up schools. We just don't.

<comment><USER44> Do you think it's possible that someone doesnt have hatred toward and wasn't racist against asylum seeking immigrants yet still supports immigration control that results in children locked in cages? Do you think all ICE employees are hateful racists? Are all proponents of a wall hateful racists?

I think it's hard to understand someone's position when they are lumped into caricatures. Maybe there are other reasons. But setting up a world where people who disagree with me are all racists is a world where the people I call racist don't want to talk with me. Yet we live in a world where they vote the same as I. So if I want them to vote my way, I need to understand them. To understand them, I have to talk with them.

<comment><USER41> No. Yes, yes.

The New Colossus

 _Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"_

<comment><USER43> That poem was penned in 1883. Do you know what the federal tax rate was? No need to bother with brackets, as it was 0%. And the state tax rate wasn't much different. How did we pay for our programs for migrants and ensure they were able to achieve a decent and humane life? We didn't. There were some independent 'poor houses' which were essentially farms where people could put in a hard day's work for a hot meal and little bit of cash, but beyond that people were on their own.

The reason this is relevant is because it radically reshapes migration. It means that each and every person who came to this country managed to contribute to society and start earning a living, or they left. As a result of this each and every migrant was, at worst, a non-negative on society. They integrated, they contributed, and society was all the better for it.

Today society is much more humane, and that is probably a good thing. But it also means that each and every person who lives, or comes, to within this country can now be a net negative on society. And so this rather radically changes the calculus. It means each and every person who comes to this nation, if incapable of providing for themselves, stretches our society's finite resources that much thinner. Consequently, there is need for judiciousness and restraint if you wish for these programs, and our generosity, to remain sustainable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'd love to disengage, but at the same time there's a horrifying addictiveness to the whole thing. It reminds me of the early days of the Iraq war and post 9/11, except with no originating disaster this time. It's not just an online phenonmenon, talks about Brexit happen daily in my office.

I even got a "prepare for Brexit" ad on Spotify this morning.

<comment><USER45> Certain aspects of the ongoing soap opera that is Brexit do feel like a two- minute hate.

I've never read 1984, but the Wikipedia page rather unfortunately matches my own subjective reactions to some of the stories: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate)

I know that you have been rather dismissive of the idea that it could lead to civil war, but given the rhetorical choices of various celebrities, public figures, and so on, and given the details of various reports of violent conduct recently, I think it's going to be as bad as a population-adjusted version of the Troubles regardless of which option is ultimately taken.

This is not _why_ I have left the UK, but it does make me glad _that_ I have left the UK. Even though I'm having difficulty disconnecting, it is definitely easier than it would be if I was still on the island.

<comment><USER34> > I think it's going to be as bad as a population-adjusted version of the > Troubles regardless of which option is ultimately taken.

I'm not seeing it myself; it's not even as bad as the early 2000s days of anti-globalisation riots. There's only going to be violence if the government manage to successfully order it before they get removed, or if they somehow manage to defy the Benn act and achieve No Deal. It turns out there's even a limit to how much Farage can openly incite violence before the police finally agree to take a look: [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel- farage-...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel-farage-news- latest-investigation-knife-pen-pushers-brexit-a9124286.html)

The key is realising how much Brexit is astroturf. And Farage himself provided a nice demonstration by quitting UKIP and transferring all the attention to the Brexit party, thereby proving that it's his personal movement (with the aid of the newspapers) rather than a broader-based one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I really hope that soon we can start looking at these media companies in the same way we look at cigarette companies.

CNN,NyTimes,FOX,Twitter etc. want you addicted to their product, are EXTREMELY powerful, and are willing to damn your health for it. It's really sad.

</comment><comment><USER47> I've pretty much stopped taking in "the news", TV, internet even my home page is just a relaxing picture. Honestly, I feel way better and have realized how little "news" I need to know. Even on HN, I avoid political posts. Any news that I actually need to know comes to me via friends and family.

</comment><comment><USER48> Personally, since I started limiting social media to maybe a couple times a week, stopped watching the news shows, and trying to read long form investigative pieces of news I've become both much happier and more well informed. It's also easier to avoid unwittingly becoming part of mobs.

<comment><USER8> Where can I find long-form investigative pieces?

<comment><USER16> PBS Frontline is a series of long-form investigative pieces.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> This is why I've been practicing "strategic disengagement." Mostly, reading the news is not informative. Modern news is full of talking points pushed by whichever special interests are the best funded. It does not need to represent reality or truth especially well. The most important thing is not to tick off advertisers, owners, and the tribe of people that identify with the outlet.

And even if you could be truthfully and accurately informed? In a country of tens or hundreds of millions, these decisions are made by an extremely select few with vast wealth or great influence. I have met a few of these people and I know how the sausage is made. The rest of us are grist for their mills.

For most people, paying attention to any of this nothing more than rooting for their favorite sports team.

</comment><comment><USER50> Take all of that effort you're pouring into politics, and spend it all on yourself. Enjoy.

</comment><comment><USER51> this is exactly the kind of shit i come to hn to avoid

<comment><USER17> On the front page, each article is really small. You can just skip past them.

Clicking on it and leaving a comment is not how you ignore it.

<comment><USER52> Better than that, each article on the front page has a "hide" button so you can remove (from your view) any that bother you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> My observations having lived through Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama, is that it's always the end of the world. You always have people saying they lied or committed some crime or another and each is always so much worse than the last.The current one is always the legit criminal and the past ones are always forgotten.

The only difference now is we're willingly engaging in it 24/7\. If you can escape it or not is one question but your reaction to it is entirely on you. You can let it consume you or you can choose for it not to.

</comment><comment><USER54> Having exposed myself to a small circle of people on the internet with particular viewpoints, i've noticed politics is all i can think about lately. I can only imagine what it must be like to follow social media and have reactionary news articles thrown at you daily, something i've managed to avoid. It only makes sense that you chip off bits of your sanity every time you box yourself in with certain crowds and information feeds.

Don't trap yourself in a bubble, people.

</comment><comment><USER55> I've just recently discovered it, but I'm a big fan of the work that Better Angels are doing to reduce political polarization in our society and help us communicate peacefully: [https://www.better-angels.org/our- story/](https://www.better-angels.org/our-story/)

I think it has a lot of potential to help with this problem.

</comment><comment><USER21> Money.

Both sides raise money by stoking emotions - usually fear. This leads to a LOT of exaggeration of conduct, risks, etc.

The largest demographic glued to news channels is easily motivated to donate based on emotion and fear - our aging population. By way of example, most phone scams have fear-driven messaging and are targeted at this cohort.

Want to reduce your stress AND keep informed? Understand and accept that politics is foremost about money and getting you to open your wallet. Discount messaging on both sides as you would advertising for soap, a new phone or medication.

I don't want to minimize the impact of foreign interference here. Many countries seek to manipulate messaging, yes. Nevertheless - its the billions required for elections that drives the ugliness.

</comment><comment><USER56> Imagine how stressed Americans will be when they finally realize how dire the climate and ecological crises are due to our inaction.

</comment><comment><USER57> I'm be been alive for six presidents and the only thing that has had a direct and substantial impact on my life was Obamacare (it cost me _a lot_ of money).

I was glad when Trump got elected as I thought in might cause real change. Not because he's competent but because he's an outsider and prone to doing things the establishment would never do. He's delivered a mixed bag on this theory but I think a lot of legacy corruption has been exposed (as well as his new corruption).

It all stinks, but if you don't follow the mainstream outrage machine you can live a happy life that doesn't feel like near apocalypse every day.

<comment><USER58> > It all stinks, but if you don't follow the mainstream outrage machine you > can live a happy life that doesn't feel like near apocalypse every day.

Unfortunately this isn't the case for your peers. Queer folks, for instance, are suffering violence and a steady attack by their government. Latinos likewise. There are many people whose lives are massively impacted by politics, even if they never turn on a TV.

<comment><USER59> I'm Latino and strongly disagree with this. Many I know support Trump and actually are rather conservative.

<comment><USER58> Sure. I'm queer and have never personally dealt with violence because of who I am. But my community is definitely stressed by politics. You are saying that politics has no major impact on the broader Latinx community that could cause stress?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> People are losing sleep over political issues?

Unless your livelihood is directly tied to the issue, that's bizarre to me.

<comment><USER61> It's not bizarre if it's affecting their relationships.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> What is the solution?

<comment><USER55> I posted a link elsewhere in the comments -- check out the Better Angels organization. I think they're really on to something. They teach people how to talk about politics in a way that leads to a respectful conversation and consideration of each others views rather than a screaming match.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> "On a political sickbed a people is usually rejuvenated and rediscovers its spirit, after having gradually lost it in seeking and preserving power. Culture owes its peaks to politically weak ages."

Anyone guess who?

</comment><comment><USER29> Bob Woodward was right. Much of the left is simply "unhinged" over Trump. Some of the antiObama stuff was bad, but the last few years have been pretty incredible.

<comment> dawg- Thus far in my life I have always voted Democrat, and have not been a big fan of Trump at all. But the word "unhinged" is a perfect descriptor. The cycle of outrage and self-righteousness is counterproductive. Even worse is that we now have people _defending_ outrage, saying that "civil discourse" has been used as a bludgeon in the past to silence minorities and other oppressed groups. I get it, it has the ring of logic to it. But what's happening on Twitter nowadays is not the same thing as the sit-in lunches or freedom riders in the 60s. Not at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> It's not politics that people are getting stressed out about. It's fake news.

Let's call it for what it is.

[https://money.cnn.com/2016/11/04/media/abc-news-stage- live-s...](https://money.cnn.com/2016/11/04/media/abc-news-stage-live- shot/index.html)

Fake news from ABC being called out by the kings of fake news: CNN.

[https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/20160918_Why_is_Philly_...](https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/20160918_Why_is_Philly_s_homicide_rate_going_up_.html)

[https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/politics/presidential/T...](https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/politics/presidential/Trump- said-Phillys-murder-rate-is-terribly-increasing-Its-not.html)

One of these articles is fake news.

Washington Post also likes their fake news.

Clinton questions whether Sanders is qualified to be president

[https://outline.com/5jBgBU](https://outline.com/5jBgBU)

Sanders's incorrect claim that Clinton called him 'not qualified' for the presidency

[https://outline.com/urT5KL](https://outline.com/urT5KL)

One of these articles is fake news. It doesn't matter which.

The media is attacking and posting fake news about all sides of politics. This is not a new. The media has been feeding us lies forever, what has changed is technology. We are now catching them in their lies. We are holding them to account for their fake news and this has resulted in the media crumbling.

Fix the fake news, stop giving fake news agencies like CNN or washington post any attention and your stress will greatly reduce.

</comment><comment><USER65> >It became apparent, especially during the 2016 electoral season, that this was a polarized nation

This article is quite biased. What today's liberals are feeling is what conservatives felt for the entire Obama administration. It's not new.

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/nov/10/us- elections-r...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/nov/10/us-elections- republicans-tea-party-conservatives)

<comment><USER15> According to the Pew Research Center there is evidence that America has become more more polarized since 2016.[1] This is part of a decades long trend.[2] This polarization is happening on both a rational[3] and emotional[4] level. According to some other researchers, political polarization is at its worst since the civil war.[5]

[1]: [https://www.people-press.org/interactives/political- polariza...](https://www.people-press.org/interactives/political- polarization-1994-2017/)

[2]: [https://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/political- polarizati...](https://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/political-polarization- in-the-american-public/)

[3]: [https://www.pewresearch.org/fact- tank/2019/02/05/republicans...](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact- tank/2019/02/05/republicans-and-democrats-have-grown-further-apart-on-what- the-nations-top-priorities-should-be/)

[4]: [https://www.people-press.org/2018/11/05/more-now-say-its- str...](https://www.people-press.org/2018/11/05/more-now-say-its-stressful-to- discuss-politics-with-people-they-disagree-with/)

[5]: [https://news.usc.edu/110124/political-polarization-at-its- wo...](https://news.usc.edu/110124/political-polarization-at-its-worst-since- the-civil-war-2/)

<comment><USER65> Yep, same thing. Listen to yourself. You expect me to believe a) there's an objective measurement of a well defined term "political polarization" and it has also been happening for more than 100 years or b) US liberals made up some totally arbitrary subjective standard, applied their bias to it, and came out with "Thanks Donald."

You simply can't see it because of personal bias.

<comment><USER15> A lot to unpack there, so I'll restrict myself to a single remark: your suggestion that the polarization metric used in the last paper was developed _post hoc_ in response to Trump's election doesn't match the publication timeline.

The method[1] used in the last paper has been around since the 80's and has been used to study polarization since at least the 00's. It's a popular method used in many papers; you can even get the raw data and code as an R package if you'd like to hack on it.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOMINATE_(scaling_method)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOMINATE_\(scaling_method\))

[2]: [https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/wnominate/index.html](https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/wnominate/index.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Impossible Cookware and Other Triumphs of the Penrose Tile - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/69/patterns/impossible-cookware-and-other-triumphs-of-the-penrose-tile-rp <comment><USER2> Amazingly (anyway I was amazed), Islamic mathematicians thoroughly explored non-periodic tilings a thousand years ago. Our only records of this are the tilings on the walls of mosques, and the design books for the tiles. (There might be records in archives, written in Arabic.)

These were studied in depth by Peter J. Lu in 2007.

[http://www.peterlu.org/content/decagonal-and- quasicrystallin...](http://www.peterlu.org/content/decagonal-and- quasicrystalline-tilings-medieval-islamic-architecture)

<comment><USER3> The explanation I've heard is that because Islam is strongly opposed to figurative depiction, there was more investment into abstract ornamental art as a creative outlet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My father (Professor Alan Mackay) and I visited Professor Penrose in Oxford in 1975, to discuss his new tiling pattern, and I was able to write a computer program (in Algol 60) to draw it on a graph plotter. See [http://bobmackay.com/Penrose/PenroseColour300.jpg](http://bobmackay.com/Penrose/PenroseColour300.jpg)

My father generated a diffraction pattern from this, using light rather than X-rays, and so was able to predict the pattern eventually discovered by Dan Shechtman some years later.

You might also be amused by a weave based on the pattern, with threads going in five different directions: [http://bobmackay.com/PentaTable/index.html](http://bobmackay.com/PentaTable/index.html)

I would be in the market for some of this cookware, but I suspect that it is apocryphal.

<comment><USER5> I enjoyed your CNC project gallery. What model is that wooden-frame mill from the early photos? Do you have your own 3D printer as well?

<comment><USER4> It is a BlueChick, from BuildYourCNC.

I recommend it if all you wish to cut is wood. It is not really stiff enough for aluminum. A great starter machine. Mine is starting to wear out the rails, so I am in the course of building a new one based on 8020 tubing, which is going to have a much larger carvable envelope.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Last week I read about this in "Fermat's Last Theorem":

 _While the fascinating thing about Penrose's tiled surfaces is their restricted symmetry, the interesting property of modular forms is that they exhibit infinite symmetry. The modular forms studied by Taniyama and Shimura can be shifted, switched, swapped, reflected and rotated in an infinite number of ways and still they remain unchanged, making them the most symmetrical of mathematical objects. When the French polymath Henri Poincaré studied modular forms in the nineteenth century, he had great difficulty coming to terms with their immense symmetry._

(Fermat's Last Theorem was ultimately proven by proving the Taniyama-Shimura Conjecture)

</comment><comment><USER7> "The Art of the Impossible: MC Escher and Me - Secret Knowledge" a two video BBC documentary from Penrose on his work and communications with Escher.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7kW8xd8p4s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7kW8xd8p4s)

</comment><comment><USER8> Anybody manufacture actual Penrose tiles?

<comment><USER9> No, if you mean ceramic or stone tiles for floors or walls. I spent a bunch of time digging into this when I bought my current house because I initially could not believe that these were unobtanium and that custom cutting would be the only way to install such a pattern in my bath.

In short, there are 2 reasons for this. The first is that at the physical scale required for the nifty aperiodicity of the tiling to be apparent in a typical home (<= ~100cm^2 or 16 in^2, aka the areal size of a "standard bathroom tile" in North America,) tiles are typically sold and installed not individually but in mats of many tiles adhered to a backing webbing. This is not possible with an aperiodic tile pattern where the pattern does not, by definition, repeat predictably.

So that's the first reason: practicality.

The second reason is exactly what you might expect if you have been around the sun more than 2 dozen times: Roger Penrose is notoriously litigious. He patented the aperiodic tilings he "discovered" in the late 70s, but famously sued Kimberly-Clark for making toilet tissue with one of these tilings in the 90s claiming _copyright_ violation - and won. Even though the patent is long expired, copyright lives longer.

Ironically, given that the infringing bog rolls were almost certainly roller- embossed, Kimberly-Clark's Kompetent Counsel seems to have missed a trick - their expression was NOT strictly a Penrose tiling as they are, by definition, aperiodic. You can't emboss a continuous Penrose tiling from a roller.

<comment><USER10> Oh, there is another way to do this with webbing.

The tiling can be recursively generated. (called "inflation" and "deflation") That is, starting from a Penrose tiling, another one with smaller tiles can be generated. This means that the patches of webbing can be tiled as Penrose tiles, yet be subdivided such that the result is a valid Penrose tiling with smaller tiles.

In case you are trying to imagine this... good luck. The recursive generation does not retain the large tile divisions as small tile divisions. The large tile divisions become jagged edges. This is fine; the tile industry already tolerates this issue with hex tiles on webbing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What cookware on the market actually has quasicrystal coating? Any recommendations?

<comment><USER12> Only one: Sitram Cybernox, which was discontinued about 5 years ago. They have a metallic quasicrystal alloy coating applied over a stainless body. They have a heavy aluminum sandwich base, similar to the Sitram Profiserie line, possibly thicker. They're very well built, and were positioned as Sitram's top line.

I have a couple. In terms of non-stickiness, it's somewhere between stainless and well-seasoned cast iron. Someone expecting it to compete with PTFE nonstick will be disappointed.

EDIT:

I remembered something. The Cybernox coating is very vulnerable to pitting corrosion, much more so than stainless steel. Both of my Cybernox pans are pitted from light use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The tl;dr on the headline: Penrose tiling -> quasicrystals -> nonstick cookware.</comment>


On Worrying and Rumination - <AUTHOR> https://www.pocketcoach.co/blog/guide-understanding-worrying-rumination/ <comment><USER2> I want to add, that some foods make people more nervous than others. For Example: sugar gives me the emotional rollercoaster, while greens make me more nervous, etc.

The higher the emotional energy the more dramatic the switch between emotions.</comment>


How great leaders inspire action - <AUTHOR> http://trendguardian.blogspot.com/2010/05/how-great-leaders-inspire-action.html

<comment><USER2> The speaker is Simon Sinek in case anyone was wondering.</comment>


Manual Testing, the Art That Cannot Be Lost - <AUTHOR> http://ideqa.blogspot.com/2016/08/manual-testing-art-that-cannot-be-lost.html <comment><USER2> I have a dog in this "fight", since my background is test automation and I started the Selenium project and two test infrastructure companies (Sauce Labs & Tapster Robotics). But I get so tired by these arguments. Testing is about mitigating risk and increasing development speed. If you want to go fast and there's low risk of failure, a little manual testing (with little or no automation) is fine. If you want to go fast, and there's a high risk of failure (lost revenue, reputation, etc.), go heavy on automation. If you have lots of time and risk of failure is low, do whatever you want.

<comment><USER3> Why place them on opposite ends of a spectrum (low failure vs high failure costs)? (Curious not saying it's incorrect).

At my company we do both and get very different value from them. Automated testing is great (reproducible, handles regressions automatically, can run all the time) but it's not intelligent. It can't think of things that you forgot to test, or identify dependencies between components you thought were unrelated. You can argue that you should have written better tests, but how do you learn that? In our case... Manual testing!

On the other hand, your manual QA person can't test all things at all times, and they definitely won't test the same thing over and over and over forever without finding a new gig! So ideally you take their input to learn not just how to test a particular component better (and fix specific bugs) but how to generally write better tests, so that next time their usual "tricks" won't work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In my experience, automated testing is best on engine / backend type projects while manual testing works best on user facing projects.

If the purpose of your code is automation, as in an engine, EDI, etc, automated testing works best.

If the purpose of your code is manual user interaction, manual, human testing is best.

You can get away with 100% manual testing, but you can't get away with 100% automated testing.

YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER5> > ... to [satisfy customers] you should implement exploratory/first look > testing by manual testers which are then converted into automated tests.

Agreed, that's a great way to find bugs. Another complement is to use fuzzing. With system level testing that includes UI components, finding a way to abstract that UI input and detecting display errors becomes pretty challenging. But excluding the very tip-top and lowest-lowest-bottom of the stack, much of software can be adapted to take fuzzed inputs.

<comment><USER6> Regarding display errors: Our app has a fun little bug. While navigating quickly, items from a previous tab will show up on the next tab.

Our automation is very patient and waits for everything to load and then waits another 1 second more, so the automation never sees the bug.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7>
      To start let us talk about cost. Each is costly, but each is
      costly in different ways. Manual testing is costly because for
      every development team of four there should be at least one
      manual tester. That means hiring more people, which is
      expensive. Automation testing cuts the cost of manpower by
      almost 400% you only need one automation tester for every 16
      developers, but they is also a certain level of skill required
      for automation testing that requires you to pay the testers
      more. Both are costly just in there own way.

We do automated testing, primarily. With manual testing during development and diagnosing errors (whether they are errors in our system or errors in understanding _about_ our system or errors in systems we depend on).

I don't see 1 tester for 16 developers, though. For us, it's very nearly 1:1. Now, this is embedded and I've always worked in some way related to aviation. Perhaps our needs are different. But I honestly cannot imagine a scenario where you'd have a 1:16 tester-to-developer ratio. That seems like an environment highly skewed away from QA, in a bad way.

Similarly, how is this a "fight"? You need both. Manual testing is error-prone and non-repeatable (reliably), especially in systems with tight timing constraints. It's excellent for identifying errors in development, finding problems in specifications, reproducing errors reported by users, but ultimately testers should be automating their tests. That was my job for years, I wouldn't want to spend my time flipping switches or pushing buttons in a GUI for weeks at a stretch just to verify our latest build hasn't introduced new or old errors.

<comment><USER8> I figured with good annotations by programmers and Design-by-Contract the manual or automated testing would be easy enough that there could be a low number of testers vs developers. 1:1 surprises me unless you're counting each developer writing their own basic tests or whatever. I'd be interested in hearing more about what tools or practices you use given I continuously survey safety-critical development practices.

<comment><USER7> 1:1.5 tester:developer may be more accurate.

We don't use a lot of good practices in my current office. I wish we did. We use C and fortran, one guy insists on C++ (which he calls C).

We _used_ to (before I came onto this project) do much better with using static analysis tools and good mapping of: (requirements <-> specification <-> design <-> code) <-> tests. The reason this stopped, people retired. The people that came in to replace them didn't understand the value of good practices and tools for those things because, well, they were awesome rockstar coders. And they are. But they assume _everyone else is too_. Which is a fatal mistake. They're terrible at management, but good engineers.

A major problem, as well, is that we're on the maintenance end of the system. These aren't fresh projects or clean slate projects so we're stuck with the historical code (effectively). And too much of the initial (generally good) practices and processes didn't survive the transition.

I've read a number of your posts, usually when I see your handle I make a point to read them regardless of how long they are. And sometimes I realize it's you just by the content and look for more in a thread. In principle I think we're on the same page. In practice, I made some expedient choices for myself that have kept me from being able to (on the job) make extensive use of these ideas for a while.

One other reason, though, that we'd likely keep the same ratio is just the nature of what we test here. Radios with an esoteric messaging protocol. It's only used by us and a handful of others. A test case may involve dozens or hundreds of key messages to simulate a "conversation" between two or more radios to determine how our software behaves, with thousands more sent automatically. It's made more complex by the (IMO) relatively poorly designed protocol. It was satisfactory, maybe even good, originally but has become overly complex and possibly contradictory in its specification as new features were added over the years. Which is where better design (not just code development) would be nice. I started on, but never finished, going through all the messages that could be sent and what the responses ought to be and when to try to produce a better simulator than we presently use. One of my goals was to identify where the specification was contradictory, but I haven't been given time and I'm not willing to consider it after work hours. Another goal was to make it easier, with such a high level functional model/simulator, to develop some of our other systems that rely on this same protocol (or some subset of it). Something to verify/validate our implementation against.

EDIT: In a past life I worked with LDRA as our primary static analysis tool for C. We had much better processes in place to track the relationships between spec, requirements, test procedures and code (we used Telelogic DOORS). On personal projects exploring these ideas I used Ada, and wanted to use SPARK Ada but found the documentation at the time to be sparse online, and my personal time waning so I dropped it.

<comment><USER8> "The reason this stopped, people retired."

Sorry to hear that. I'm short on suggestions for that one given I focus on getting tools adopted more than re-adopted. I'll have to look into that scenario a bit given I bet it plays out a lot.

"I've read a number of your posts, usually when I see your handle I make a point to read them regardless of how long they are. And sometimes I realize it's you just by the content and look for more in a thread. In principle I think we're on the same page"

Appreciate the kind words. I work hard to get the quality stuff out there to people like you. Hard to assess how it's being received. Comments like that and occasional emails are what I go on for impact assessment.

"A test case may involve dozens or hundreds of key messages to simulate a "conversation" between two or more radios to determine how our software behaves, with thousands more sent automatically. "

Ohhhh. Ok. I'm already seeing it based on prior experience testing both protocols and UI's. Yeah, that would take a lot of testing if specs were out of date or insufficient. With specs, you could use design-by-contract on it to support testing with interface checks and/or auto-generate tests depending on tooling. I mean, the Fortran static analysis tooling might be behind a bit... (read: nonexistent).

"but never finished, going through all the messages that could be sent and what the responses ought to be and when to try to produce a better simulator than we presently use"

Are you actually able to change the protocol in arbitrary ways so long as product functions properly in some other black box your company can control? Or do you have to maintain its existing, functional behavior for backward compatibility? If the former, you can gradually spec it out then maybe apply a protocol generator. If the latter, it might stay pretty manual with DbC, testing, and/or static analysis being best you're going to do.

"In a past life I worked with LDRA "

Oh, you got to work with one of the real ones. Good for you. I haven't been able to afford them so I keep trying to get comments on how effective or usable they are. Did it catch stuff well? Make it fairly easy to do requirements/spec/code consistency or lots of redundancy for user? On the latter, point is that high-assurance development requires a number of documents that all describe the same thing. Essentially views on the operation of the system. How easily a tool can keep them together and/or propagate changes in one to another is important to avoid people saying "screw it: i'll update that later [never]." So, I'm curious about its usability. Still no consensus on tools for that with Topcased being an open one some went with, some using traditional SCM w/ specs/docs in it, some HTML (eg LISP spec), and Karger et al on Caernarvon used Framemaker with lots of cross-links.

"we used Telelogic DOORS"

Could've been interesting but IBM acquired it for Rational suite. Nevermind.

"wanted to use SPARK Ada but found the documentation at the time to be sparse online"

Might be worth re-exploring given they've done a lot over the years. SPARK 2014 was quite an update. Almost nobody does anything with it but there is a DNS server written in it. Might contain insight on applying SPARK to protocol design/verification. Not to mention its other, potential benefits. :)

[http://ironsides.martincarlisle.com/](http://ironsides.martincarlisle.com/)

<comment><USER7> LDRA: It's been a bit since I touched it. Checking their site, we were using LDRA Testbed, our use was for DO-178B certification. I specifically was using it to develop test cases. What my memory is telling me is that we were using it to test pre and post conditions, a lot like you'd use in design by contract, on functional units of our system. I was a tester, not a developer, I didn't use its static analysis tools as much and so I don't recall much more.

DOORS: Honestly, at this point I don't care who makes it as long as it works. What's needed, and what DOORS at the time provided, is:

      Concurrent editing.
      Traceability from one document to another.
      Workflow control - I can make changes, but someone else has to
        verify/validate. Same as with any issue tracker.
      Revision control

Everything but the workflow control I can do with a simple markup language, git, and a few scripts. But in industry it seems people prefer Word documents and Excel spreadsheets.

SPARK 2014: I will, if I ever have downtime. I leave for the office at 7, go to the gym until 8, then spend the evening with friends or my girlfriend. Weekends are my only downtime these days and I'm finding myself lacking motivation to do this. I need a project to work on, trying that now.

We don't have control of the protocol as there are others making products that interact with ours (in theory, in practice it's hit-or-miss as some are more faithful to the spec than others).

One of the things, as an example, that I want to discover by go over the protocol specification are cases like this:

I can't recall the specifics, but there was a mathematically impossible requirement. It was related to the discrete logarithm. Only some of the values involved weren't relatively prime wrt the modulus. So what happened, no one implemented that part of the specification. No one tested it either because there wasn't a good traceability matrix revealing that it was untested. One day, someone realized this, implemented a test to see if this part of the spec was being done, and hey, the test failed.

This reveals major flaws in the process. 1) That specification feature should never have made it into the final. 2) The test should have been made or in- progress once that spec feature was introduced, which would've led to (1) being true.

Speaking of gym, it's time for me to go. Thanks for the pointer with Ironsides. I'll take a look at it and SPARK 2014 over the next few weeks. We're about to wrap up my current project (well, in 3-4 more months) so now's a good time to start putting together a demo to try and save the next project from some of the current issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think it's silly to make this either or. It's kind of like decision making - do you want intuition, data or both. Data may beat intuition, or vice versa. But data plus intuition beats either alone. In chess, computer plus player beats computer-only or player-only.

In testing, Automated plus Manual beats either on their own.

<comment><USER10> With cost factored into the decision equation, automated+manual often doesn't win.

<comment><USER9> True - there's a spectrum. Generally (5 or 6 experiences) I've found that the benefits of automation tend to come from repeat experiences (systems that get updated frequently) and that the weak spots of each mandate at least a modest investment in the other.

Even with only a little time, a person can see the "Oh sh*t we don't have a test case for that, but it's wrong" and enough stuff breaks over and over again that it's worth putting in at least some automation.

Of course the degree of one versus the other requires judgment and a P&L decision.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It also depends on your deploy cycle. If you want to do continuous deployment (which seems to make development teams very happy) then you need great unit and integration testing. If you're ok with waiting a week or more between deployments manual QA seems to work well. As someone who's gone 'all in' on automated only testing I will admit that things that would have been caught by more human sanity checking slipped past me, now that I'm in an environment where manual QA blocks everything it feels like the excitement of shipping has been dimmed a bit. To anyone starting a new project I'd probably recommend more automated testing than manual and something closer to 12 developers per manual tester with developer only checking in code that includes automated tests.

</comment><comment> a-saleh My question would then be, how do I best teach it? I am a QE guy, mostly doing Selenium based automation, but because we are hiring generalist devs much faster than QE people, I would really like to teach them the QE mindset, because I have seen too often that they try to work around a problem, than to highlight it in a good bug report.

Context, currently I am in a ~6 person QE team with ratio ~1 QE to 6 developers, still just a small team in a growing corporation, our product people are constantly pushing on rapid release cycle and I have heard "We will fix our failing integration test suites after the the release, now we don't have time."

In the end we mostly do manual checking of the new features, where we often can persuade our product guys to drop few too broken off the release change- log.

Only way we have so far been able to improve the testing situation was with putting rest of the team in front of a choice between spending ~50 man/days on manual regression testing or increasing our coverage ...

Anybody else in similar situation?

<comment><USER12> I'm in the same boat. I lead my QA team, both the automation and the manual testers. There are about 6 QA staff to about 24 developers, so we're vastly outnumbered. I've worked tirelessly to get any sort of quality initiative as part of the SDLC as early as possible. Code reviews, pairwise coding, TDD, anything where I can "shift left" with the testing. Otherwise we would be outmanned on every release.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> My biggest beef with manual QA is that at most places I've worked for or worked with as a consultant (~15 companies), the QA team either doesn't have the skills necessary or doesn't care enough to understand the system at the level I would want if the company is going to spend money on manual testing. Most of the manual QA people I've encountered are either doing repetitive checks that I would want automated, or they are checking features in a way that I would expect the product team to be doing.

I've started to understand why large companies that attract high-quality talent (i.e. Google) put new developers on QA... you need a developer's mindset, while not being involved in the day-to-day software development to do effective and creative manual testing.

</comment><comment><USER14> I generally push for automated testing but since you are testing the same thing again and again there is a limit to the type of bugs it can find. It just doesn't find bugs that are totally unexpected. From my experience all the really difficult bugs get detected by manual testing. I can take almost any app that has been tested thoroughly with automated tests and break it within a day by just playing with it.

I do a lot of UI stuff with complex behavior. It may be different for server stuff where the expected behavior is easier to describe.

</comment><comment><USER15> I recently read a book that covers this topic pretty thoroughly. I learned a lot of useful ideas from it.

[https://www.amazon.com/Google-Tests-Software-James- Whittaker...](https://www.amazon.com/Google-Tests-Software-James- Whittaker/dp/0321803027)

</comment><comment><USER16> In game development, there are more testers than developers. It's the job from hell.[1]

[1] [http://trenchescomic.com/tales](http://trenchescomic.com/tales)

<comment><USER8> I quickly figured out what it would be like just by imagining what gaming experience is without almost anything that makes it enjoyable (incrementally added) plus a huge number of what pisses gamers off (aka the bugs). I thought I'd hate the game by the time it was released. Also worried I might game less in general due to a negative-reinforcement effect. If I did testing, it would have to be stuff unlike what I normally played so that other stuff would just be so much better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I love this!!

</comment><comment><USER18> The state of QA, if there is such a concept, is not in a good place. To me, it's more divergently interpreted at each organization than any other role.

For example, this individual seems to work at a place where manual/automation overlap is taboo and gives rise to the issues described.

<comment><USER19> _The state of QA, if there is such a concept_

There is, it just rarely applies to software. What all but a tiny fraction of a percentage of shops do is Quality Control. Were it actually quality assurance, when I file a bug on the 35 empty _catch_ statements littering our code, there would be absolutely no debate on fixing it. But because we do quality control, dev has the option to say "no" when told to fix Pokémon-style try/catch statements.

But on to your point, yeah, software testing is not in a good place and probably won't be for a while. For starters, software development is still quite young, and formal testing is even younger than that. So give it time. But as long as job descriptions for software testers start with "we're looking for people to break software!", we're not there yet. Because if it were up to me, we'd collectively be looking for people to tell us whether or not our shit works, not find esoteric bugs. Software verification can _include_ finding esoteric bugs, but not limited to that. The difference is subtle, but very important.

An anecdote to back my point: for junior testers I will often describe a blender, coffee grinder, what have you, and then ask them to describe a list of tests with bonus points for a rough outline of a test plan. 90% of the time a candidate will come up with creative ways to break the blender (put rocks in it, flip the switch 1000x), and yet fail to come up with a test case that tests what happens when I put ordinary food in the blender and flip the switch. Because we have, as an industry, fostered this idea of the tester's role as breaking things. That is an extremely naive, immature, and limited view of the software tester's role. When we can expand beyond that view, then we might begin to stand a chance of actually verifying software instead of throwing rocks in a blender.

<comment><USER12> This is absolutely true. Every tester that we get in at our shop has the break-it mentality, but that just comes as part of how some of these people are trained to get through testing technical interviews.

Wishing that QA was more standard as part of software development is such a double-edged sword. We're going to end up with some very finely trained people who look at defects in only specific ways and no more "out of the box" thinking.</comment></comment></comment>


Lucid Motors' Peter Rawlinson Talks E-Car Efficiency - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/advanced-cars/lucid-motors-says-ecar-design-all-about-efficiency <comment><USER2> I think an important problem with cars, e- or not, is size and weight. Moving two tons of car to move 100kg of passengers and baggage is just excessive. Compare cars with bicycles where less than 100W sustained are enough to navigate city traffic about 80% as fast as in a car. There must be a better trade-off point of comfort, safety and efficiency than a modern car.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I think that electric bicycles are clearly superior in urban environments. Here in Philadelphia I sold my pickup truck and replaced it with a Tern GSD electric cargo bike, and it can do just about anything a car can do, including carry an adult passenger.

Protection from the elements and accessibility are two legitimate concerns that might be addressed by bike-cars like the PEBL in the future: [https://www.better.bike/](https://www.better.bike/)

Outside of urban environments, velomobiles with aerodynamic shells have some potential, and would allow travel at highway speeds while using much less energy. Low-Tech Magazine suggests "If all 300 million Americans replace their car with an electric velomobile, they need only 25 % of the electricity produced by existing American wind turbines": [https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2012/10/electric- velomobil...](https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2012/10/electric- velomobiles.html) \- Part 2 (link in footer is broken) [https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2012/10/electric- velomobil...](https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2012/10/electric-velomobiles- part-two.html)

[https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/09/the-velomobile- hig...](https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/09/the-velomobile-high-tech- bike-or-low-tech-car.html)

The main problem with high-speed velomobiles is they're too fast for bike trails, but are too small and low to the ground to safely share highways with cars. Most pictures/videos I see of them are on rural roads with almost no traffic. In order for them to become popular, we probably would have to completely reimagine our transportation infrastructure.

<comment><USER4> Isn't safety an issue too? You'd be turned into pizza toppings in a highway speed accident in one of those.

They do show that huge efficiency improvements are possible, but they are not there yet. I feel like there's probably a happy medium: a larger somewhat heavier car with safety features built around active immobilization and advanced materials. It wouldn't be quite as efficient as these, but it would be more efficient than a conventionally built car.

I also must point out that weight and aerodynamics are more significant for efficiency than size in an absolute sense. Aerodynamics matters the most at highway speeds. You can lengthen the vehicle and add a trunk for cargo without losing too much.

<comment><USER3> Kind of depends on the accident, doesn't it? The aerodynamic shell does provide some protection, depending on the design, and no doubt if these were mass-produced safety features could be ironed out. But if you hit a tree, you're lucky to survive regardless of what vehicle you're in.

At any rate, people ride motorcycles with no shell despite serious safety disadvantages, and society has no problem with people making that choice. I have to believe that velomobiles with a shell could be made significantly safer than motorcycles.

Of course, the biggest threat to velomobiles, bicycles etc. is the automobile, and if collisions with cars/trucks aren't dealt with in some reasonable fashion, all other safety concerns seem rather secondary.

<comment><USER5> Cars are designed to reasonably safely handle head on collisions with a brick walls at 55 MPH. I doubt a lightweight shell is going to provide anywhere near that level of protection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just because I was doing my own hobbyist research on power switching, and encountered the IGBT vs power MOSFET tradeoff:

The current path for an IGBT looks largely like a diode; it has a fixed voltage drop (0.6V in silicon), so the losses in the "On" state are linear with current. A MOSFET, however looks largely like a resistor in the "On" state, so the losses are quadratic with current.

There are also switching losses, which are a bit more complicated, but largely scale quadratically with frequency (for IGBTs there usually aren't actual formulae but just a curve from the datasheet; MOSFETs are a bit more amenable to calculation). For relatively low-frequency and high-current switching like a high-power permanent magnet motor, you will tend try to keep switching losses low relative to conduction losses; in any event IGBTs are low-frequency devices so if IGBTs are in discussion typically switching losses will be low.

As anyone who has studied asymptotic performance will know, for low-frequency applications, as current goes towards infinity, IGBTs are better. At low currents, however, MOSFETs trounce IGBTs; A resistor that drops 0.6V at 1A would have 600mOhms of resistance, and a $0.10 Power MOSFET can beat that in low voltage (<120V) applications, with on resistances on the order of 1mOhm. At 100A there are similar conductive losses.

As you design power MOSFETs for higher voltage handling though, the on resistance goes up. There are ways to design power MOSFETs with lower on- resistance, but they will make them much harder to switch and increase the switching losses to the point where that bit I said earlier about conduction losses dominating becomes not true. For switching 900V you will want a MOSFET rated for at least 1200V and now you are looking at 100s of mOhm of on resistance, so even at say 2A, the IGBT is looking quite good.

Enter SiC. I know absolutely nothing about semiconductor design, but the way it was explained to me is that the design parameters of an SiC MOSFET are such that it can block a larger voltage than a silicon MOSFET, so that the envelope shifts "up" for working voltage at any given amount of on-resistance ant gate- charge (which relates to switching losses).

Lastly, if you aren't a racecar driver, most of the time the power draw will be far below the max, so even if an IGBT beats an SiC MOSFET handily under hard acceleration (it almost certainly does), for highway cruising there is a good chance the MOSFET will win.

<comment><USER7> From what i remember when i cared about such things:

It's the gate capacitance (and gates resistance) that leads to switching losses. Usually the biggest part of the switching losses is because the transistor is not fully "on" or "off" for the whole time, but is in between when in the process of switching. The gate capacitance is probably one of the biggest problems (more for FET, but also for bipolar), that influences the speed of the transistor (presented as frequency or as slew rate). Otherwise you could just put a bunch of MOSFET-s in parallel and get much lower resistance, thus greater efficiency (and it works, to a point).

Another thing to consider is that FET-s let the current go back and a motor is an inductive load, while bipolar transistors do not. I forgot how much that matters, but it probably does plenty.

Thankfully electronics is one of those fields of engineering where you can get all the information you need from a datasheet. Unlike from those damned headphone manufacturers (embarrassments to engineering, 99.9% of them).

PS "..you will tend try to keep switching losses low relative to conduction losses.." I think you meant the other way around.

<comment><USER6> > PS "..you will tend try to keep switching losses low relative to conduction > losses.." I think you meant the other way around.

A 6 pole motor running at 10000 RPM has a switching frequency of 1kHz. Any application where you are considering an IGBT is probably under 20kHz. Cruising on the freeway uses about 15kW. Conduction losses are probably going to dominate.

<comment><USER7> Hence you will try to keep the conduction losses low relative to switching losses.

Yea, 1kHz is nothing for modern transistors. FET, IGBT or bipolar. Not that it's not worth considering them, ofc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > So he designed the Lucid around a 900-watt architecture. "It's the only one > I'm aware of," he says. "Tesla's round about 400 V. Porsche, they upped the > ante last year to 800 V."

Is that supposed to be 900 V? Considering the car can push out 750 kW, a "900-watt architecture" doesn't mean much. I would think that the IEEE would be the one place I could trust to not mess up electrical units...

<comment><USER9> Has to be a typo. 900V is the only thing that makes sense in the context of the 'reducing current' since that is the 'main loss'.

This whole article is kind of terrible though... they're talking about reducing losses by using SiC MOSFETs and using higher voltage architecture... except they fail to recognize that higher voltage MOSFETs inherently have higher impedance when on, and it causes a bunch of other potential issues.

Also, they're comparing themselves against the Porsche Taycan... which is one of the worst performing (in kWh/efficiency value) cars out there. Why not compare against the Model 3? The Model 3 uses SiC MOSFETs (although, 400V rated ones) just like they're talking about here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What makes Lucid different? Base price of $60,000 ... and no factory to build it. Why the excitement?

<comment><USER11> well until the big manufacturers actually start delivering multiple models there is ample time for start ups in this segment to establish themselves or their technology. the key is, are they looking to sell cars or their technology?

<comment><USER12> Funny. While reading, I got the strong impression Lucid wanted to sell technology rather than cars. Perhaps, they even just want to sell companies.</comment></comment></comment>


Review my website: www.sehpid.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.sephid.com/

<comment><USER2> What should I review? There's nothing on it. There's no About section No Register link (though <http://www.sephid.com/sp/register/> works) The register didn't worked (error 500) There's no visible functionality other than a search of 2 sample data items Once you login (the register DID worked, even returning a 500 error) there's nothing you can do other than search those 2 sample data items. The search functionality has a green-ish box (while it's retrieving the search results) that flashes for less than a second, making (if possible) the dead simple and only functionality of the site (search 2 sample data items) something somehow confussing (what it was saying? something relevant? why some elements danced in the page while the search was performed?) My review? That I spent more time reviewing the site than the time it took to build it. My advice? Put your shit together, plan more, add some useful functionality, test it and come back again.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. To be honest it is a pretty simple idea and lacks a lot of finesse, but figured I'd push it out to the HN community to get some blunt early feedback, so appreciated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So it is a sortfolio.com clone for a different variety of designers?

<comment><AUTHOR> I definitely do give credit to the sortfolio team for inspiration. I have some acquaintances in the architectural/designer space and I figured that they could find value in a similar service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Typo in domain that is in title.

<comment><AUTHOR> oops, thanks!</comment></comment>