Smartphone contact tracing has failed everywhere - <AUTHOR> https://eclecticlight.co/2020/07/25/smartphone-contact-tracing-has-failed-everywhere/ <comment><USER2> I'm surprised this isn't mentioned in the article or any comments, and I'm wondering whether I'm missing something about the significance of this.

But I thought the biggest problem was that Google and Apple didn't build a contract tracing app - they built a _framework_ for local governments to build apps on top of. This leaves the work of marketing the app and driving adoption to each government (as well as building and operating the service, which is also significant).

When I first heard about this, I thought they were going to build a pair of apps for Android and iOS. It would come as part of an OTA update, and everyone around the world would be presented with a yes/no dialog asking whether they wanted to participate. Local governments would then be provided access to a SaaS that would let their contact tracers enter the tokens of known positive cases.

I'm fairly sure that this would've resulted in significantly higher adoption rates.

I have no idea what the point was, to require every government build/market/operate their own version of the exact same app. Maybe so that the backends could be independent? If so, I imagine there would be other ways to work around that, like offering a cloud service and/or an open source backend implementation for governments to self-host.

<comment><USER3> Apple and Google are probably stuck between a rock and a hard place with this contact tracing.

Between them, they have exact positions of a vast majority of individuals, at least in western societies. They could have done useful contact tracing at the press of a button, even historically, for every major event such as large concerts, churches, night clubs which we know were the most important situations to contact trace. They could have done this with the data they already have.

This would however set a bad precedent on how this data is shared. Law enforcement is one thing, medial tracing is another. So instead they set out to build this BLE tracing toolkit, which is something that at best is intended for future use, when everyone has the requisite hardware and software installed. It wouldn't reach more than a minority of users today which severely limits its usefulness, all for the possibility of reaching into situations such as bus rides, where nobody really knows how contagious these situations are because we simply do not have enough knowledge of the virus yet. Real world measurements are also likely to be noisy (where someone carries their phone in their hand and another in their backpack with a water bottle) even if we could set a hard limit on a safe distance, which we can't.

So maybe we will get something useful in the future, for the price of not exposing the data already available today.

It is amusing that the BLE tracing toolkits were sold as a way of not having to expose your location data to Google and Apple, the exact entities who already have fine grained location data on most people.

<comment><USER4> >They could have done useful contact tracing at the press of a button, even historically, for every major event such as large concerts, churches, night clubs which we know were the most important situations to contact trace. They could have done this with the data they already have.

Apple definitely could not have done this because they don't have this data.

<comment><USER5> Even assuming for a second that Google stores the location of every user (they didn't store mine), how would they do contact tracing when they don't have access to data on iOS devices? Even assuming they did, what key would they join on?

But no, a confident blanket assertion is made without providing any evidence.

<comment><USER6> They definitely store location for the majority of users who use Google Maps, their location history is both very accurate and opt-out buried in settings menus. I don't have numbers on percentages given that Google likely doesn't share this data, but I feel safe in assuming that less than 5% of Google Maps users have turned off the location history feature.

<comment><USER7> Many potentially dangereous contacts happen inside where positioning doesn't work. Maybe in a restaurant the location could be inferred because you enter and leave through the same door. But in the subway/metro/underground? Also every high-raise building would create lots of false possitives by people that did not get close.

<comment><USER8> Google location is still very good in buildings and subways because they wardrive open wifi routers to help triangulate you. So when I'm near a wifi router with a particular MAC address that google has seen before, they've got me.

Agree with you on high rises and false positives, but then again, if air is circulated in the building or everyone uses the same elevators, might be worth notifying them.

[https://support.google.com/maps/answer/1725632?hl=en](https://support.google.com/maps/answer/1725632?hl=en)

<comment><USER9> Phone barometers can be used to get a pretty good idea which floor of a building you're on.

[https://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2011-10/so-um-why- doe...](https://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2011-10/so-um-why-does-new- google-phone-have-barometer-it/)

[https://www.engadget.com/2012-09-06-stmicroelectronics- detai...](https://www.engadget.com/2012-09-06-stmicroelectronics-details- pressure-sensor-in-your-galaxy-s-iii.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ignoring the headline, it seems like the article equates quick, widespread adoption of these apps as "success", and anything else as "failure". Although it does note:

> Conventional contact tracing methods also haven't been faring well.

Despite this, it doesn't even bother to identify the _many_ reasons tracing apps might not be widely adopted yet, in particular privacy concerns (although it does mention that "draconian" approaches are the only ones _proven_ to work so far, as if that proves that privacy respecting approaches can't be useful at all.)

Even more fundamental than privacy, though, is _do people even know that these apps exist_? Personally I've only heard some rumblings about the Google/Apple api, and not much more, and I'm guessing I'm far more aware of the existence of these apps than many people.

Ultimately, it's far too early to declare "failure" on this front.

Edit: According to 9to5 Mac, there are still no apps in the U.S. using the Apple/Google API as of June 18. [https://9to5mac.com/2020/05/19/how-to-turn- on-off-covid-19-c...](https://9to5mac.com/2020/05/19/how-to-turn-on-off- covid-19-contact-tracing-iphone-ios/)

<comment><USER11> Agreed. And I hate headlines like this that mislead their audience. Headlines must be stand-alone true as >90% of the people who happen to see the headline aren't going to read the article. A headline like this will leave many with the impression that contact tracing apps don't work, not that they just haven't gotten much buy-in.

(Which of course becomes self-reinforcing... If the vast majority of people who see the headline are led to think the apps _don't work_ , then they won't want to adopt them... and low adoption is, of course, the very "failure" discussed in the first place...)

This may seem like a small thing, but the apparent license-to-lie-or-at-least- use-half-truths-in-headlines that many media editors (because editors, NOT journalists, control the headlines) believe they have is maybe the biggest problem in media accuracy we have. We are bombarded with 10-100 times as many headlines as we can possibly hope to read, which is a constant background noise of half-truths.

And yeah, of course a headline won't be able to tell the full story. But it should be accurate enough and not misleading. The excuse of "but you have to read the full article or you're just lazy" is a ridiculous cop-out for a license to lie.

<comment><USER12> " A headline like this will leave many with the impression that contact tracing apps don't work, not that they just haven't gotten much buy-in."

That would be an entirely accurate impression, contact tracing apps have a proven track record of not working so far. That one contributing factor is the lack of buy-in in the population does not detract from that point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I live in Ireland and our contact tracing app (using Google+Apple tech) seems to be doing well. There was about 1 million install 1-2 days after it launched, currently standing at 1.4 million installs (population is 4.9 million), along with some positive contacts reported:

[https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53525712](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53525712)

It was also donated to open source.

[https://www.nearform.com/blog/ireland-donates-contact- tracin...](https://www.nearform.com/blog/ireland-donates-contact-tracing-app- to-linux-foundation/)

While that is useful I think each country will face its own challenges with adoption.

<comment><USER14> Does your Irish app require the app to be open on iOS?

<comment><USER13> Not that I'm aware of. The app just reads the data your phone is already collecting.

It's making use of the api that Apple and Google added to iOS and Android. Which I believe once enabled is using Bluetooth beacons to keep a list of other phones you have been nearby. That's all done by phone, not the app.

If you test positive, then you are expected to use the app to upload the list of phones you were in contact with. Notifications will then be sent to all those phones through the app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If the German app would have been less privacy aware, it wouldn't even had 16 million downloads in Germany. The decentralised approach was and is the only one which at least worked a little bit.

</comment><comment><USER16> Contact tracing apps were NEVER going to work. There are numerous fundamental technical problems but those aren't even worth getting into, because people won't use this shit.

Smartphone contact tracing is an absurd silver bullet pipe dream from a bunch of hammers who see the world as full of nails. It won't work, can't work, and will not ever work.

How much more effort are people going to waste on this?? Every time this comes up on HN the horde mass downvotes anyone who dares to dissent. It's been almost five months now.

<comment><USER17> I agree that it won't work in Europe or the US and it was absurdly over-hyped, but mobile-based helpers have been effective in Asia. The critical difference is that Asian countries can _mandate_ this sort of thing, since their populations seem to be culturally more willing to accept a higher degree of illiberal state control over their lives (for the good of society at large). If the app had to be installed and configured in every smartphone sold, and you were forced to show it to police spot-checks on the streets, adoption rates wouldn't be a problem.

This is obviously unfeasible and undesirable in most Western countries (at the moment...) so we're left with a voluntary scheme that is only as effective as typical voluntary schemes (i.e. not much).

<comment><USER18> Grouping as "Asisan countries" is wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Did I miss something or are low adoption rates and bluetooth issues the only indicators that decentralized tracking has failed, as pointed out in the article?

The lack of statistics about success/failure otherwise seems to imply more of a "we don't know for sure"?

<comment><USER20> Specifically, it seems that adoption rates are so low as to render the application nearly useless.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, the overall conclusion is that smartphone contact tracing probably isn't working, but we can't know for sure because the megacorps who designed it did so in such a way that makes it almost impossible to measure if it's actually working. The only app we know has definitely been ineffective is Australia's centralized solution, in large part because they do actually have the ability to collect statistics on its effectiveness.

We do also know that Germany's app was just outright failing to send alerts to users of many common, popular devices due to limitations on background tasks: [https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-coronavirus-tracing-app- criti...](https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-coronavirus-tracing-app-criticized- over-warning-failures/a-54305099) Obviously there's no way to know exactly how many people should've been sent a warning and weren't either, by design.

<comment><USER22> It's trivial to tell whether it's working with some ordinary surveys and research.

No "megacorps" have done anything to make it impossible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Very wrong. Smartphone contact tracing is successful. (e.g. in South Korea.) It's only decentralised smartphone contact tracing that failed.

<comment><USER24> "Only draconian access to personal data, as used in South Korea, seems to have brought any positive results."

The article quickly glosses over this fact (and leaves out Taiwan) and labels this successful system for stopping COVID-19 spread as draconian. I imagine that the NSA/CIA/FBI already has such a system in place that maybe it would just needs to get scaled up to cover everyone in the US. It's too bad the people in the US can't trust their government to ramp up and use such a tool to stop COVID-19 and then shut down the system afterwords. The Patriot Act proved that once given special powers any limited time provisions just keep getting extended forever. Some people born after 9/11 are adults at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> If you have google maps installed on your phone and location turned on, every time you visit a restaurant you already get the message of "how did you like xyz, please rate and help other visitors"

You are already living in a surveillance state. The difference is unlike in other places in the world you can complain and shout about it.

<comment><USER23> Another difference is that you aren't using this data (which are collected anyway) to contain the epidemic. I can't figure out why.

<comment><USER26> My hopeful guess is that their APIs and policies make the data impossible to access in anything but an aggregated format.

<comment> IX-103 It has to be policy. If they only had aggregate data, they couldn't do the whole timeline thing.

They did release some results on peoples' movement patterns during the pandemic "lockdown" ([https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility/](https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility/)).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Good. Why are people suddenly okay with building likely-permanent surveillance systems for temporary outbreaks? How would Apple ever reasonably remove this feature?

<comment><USER28> Well, the Apple/Google mechanism is not useful for surveillance.

<comment><USER29> It is if you build Bluetooth scanners everywhere in a city and correlate the scan data with other surveillance data, as simple as pointing a camera at whoever passes by a scanner.

<comment><USER28> Indeed, if you start with the contact tracing platform, add a mass surveillance system to it, you end up with a mass surveillance system. Note that a surveillance system like the one you propose doesn't need the contact tracing platform to work.

<comment><USER29> But it does make it a heck of a lot cheaper to build and scale. You need far fewer cameras and can spread cheap bluetooth beacons densely across the area. And you can put beacons in places you can't use cameras.

<comment> IX-103 Wait, so how are you matching the beacons (cryptographic random values) back to individual users?The back end only gets that information if a user tests positive and agrees to submit the data.

Even then there is no reason to store that linkage so server compromises won't leak this information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Korea did this successfully but you have to give up a lot more privacy. This protect my privacy, and expecting it to work great is some fallacy.

<comment><USER31> Maybe, but privacy is worth protecting, more than ever.

<comment><USER32> Over lives?

<comment><USER31> It's a false choice.

But even if it were true, yes, over lives. People already died fighting for my liberal rights, I'm not willing to trade any of that for some temporary safety.

I'm from a Warsaw pact country. Seeing westerners so willing to give up their rights these days is so deeply disappointing.

<comment><USER33> The false choice here is actually that you can sacrifice lives and still expect to have freedom.

The alternative to not giving up privacy for contact tracing or similar measures is to be locked into your home medieval style while the plague runs wild in the streets, which is a significantly stronger limitation of freedoms.

The choice isn't between liberty or safety, just as it isn't between economic health and lockdown, it's between intelligent and proactive measures or carnage. Without public health there's no liberty. If our systems fail to protect the health of our populations those rights will go out the door sooner or later because it proves that those values are useless.

It's completely paradoxical to argue that I'm free although I can't go to work, I can't safely go to the restaurant, I can't meet my friends without being afraid of contracting a deadly disease, but I'm free because I have privacy.

<comment><USER34> Locking yourself up for fear of a <1% chance of dying is very much a choice.

<comment><USER35> That 1% depends on a wide variety of contexts. It isn't 1% for everyone, 1/3% of those who didn't die seem to have debilitating persistent problems, and even if everything is fine with you, you can pass it to someone who passes it to someone who dies from your unwillingness to act for the greater good. To do anything but protect yourself is fundamentally selfish.

<comment><USER36> _It isn't 1% for everyone_

True. If you're younger (really, under 60) and healthy it's much less than 1%.

 _1 /3% of those who didn't die seem to have debilitating persistent problems_

Unclear if you mean 1/3 of all infections, which is far too high, or 1 to 3 percent, which is possibly reasonable, although again it's going to be skewed towards older and unhealthy people.

 _even if everything is fine with you, you can pass it to someone who passes it to someone who dies from your unwillingness to act for the greater good_

At some point people have to be responsible for themselves. If you're severely allergic to peanuts, then that's something that you have to watch out for; we don't ban peanuts for the general public. If you're at high risk for COVID then you should take appropriate precautions, but it's unreasonable to demand that everyone else be forbidden from seeing their friends and family for months or years.

<comment><USER35> Any levels of fatality is relative to how overwhelmed the health care system is, and the access to care that people have. We've seen it as high as 15% already in some places. This is a GLOBAL pandemic; any spread within your community can eventually make it to the Amazon in Brazil where it's ravishing local communities that don't have access to modern hospitals.

Your statement seems to emphasize that the focus should be on the youth, who are also dying of this disease. But the careless nature of dismissing the fatality rate of those over 60 or with co-morbidities is really unbelievable. So my parents, who are otherwise healthy and I expect to live for DECADES more should die now so you can go out and see your friends? Or those who are young with diabetes that might otherwise have an entire full life? The level of selfishness of such a statement is just off the charts.

If you were to kill just ONE person and be caught you'd be in jail for many years, purposefully (murder) or by accident (manslaughter). Yet passing a disease that has brought the world to its knees around is somehow ok? When did those who get affected by your actions get to weight in and vote on this? Or do you feel you can just unilaterally decide that it's fine for others to die _unnecessarily_? And for businesses to suffer because the disease keeps going and others DO care about their own safety and those around them?

Furthermore, the CDC just acknowledged it may be as high as 1/3 of those recovered with persistent issues [1]. Even if it were 1-3%, why is that ok for that 1-3%? 1% of the global population is approximately 80 million people. How many of these would have solved climate change, found a cure for covid, or otherwise positively impacted the planet? That's worth not just saying indoors collectively for a short period to prevent? It keeps going because people DON'T do what's in the best interest for all of society, or even their future self.

You're basing your assumptions on an extremely short time span of data, but we know that many viruses can strike far later in life with devastating consequences, or a lifetime of flare ups. We simply don't know, but Dr. Fauci has repeatedly warned people about such a possibility. How can you calculate such risks when they're unknown?

Peanuts are something that can be easily regulated and limited to those who are allergic. They pose no global threat, and don't hop between people. Those allergic can also carry epipens. There is no epipen for covid (yet?). Until then we have an unusually highly contagious virus that spreads from a very high percentage of asymptotic carriers.

Already in the US over 1/3 of Americans who died in WWII have died since March that largely wouldn't have otherwise [2]. It's July. Please reconsider your actions.

[1] [https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6930e1.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6930e1.htm) [2] [https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm)

<comment><USER36> _But the careless nature of dismissing the fatality rate of those over 60 or with co-morbidities is really unbelievable._

Exactly the opposite. By pushing the narrative of everybody being roughly equally vulnerable, we've failed to protect those who are most at risk. In a reasonable world, we would have locked down nursing homes immediately, with workers quarantined on site. (And paying them a ton of money in compensation). We also would have said that nobody over 60 or with health complications should be working outside of the home, even in essential businesses. Instead we panicked over young people going to beaches.

 _So my parents, who are otherwise healthy and I expect to live for DECADES more should die now so you can go out and see your friends?_

Your parents, like mine, should take appropriate precautions. I'm not going to visit them or anyone else at elevated risk without a recent negative test, nor should they allow me to. But it's not reasonable to transitively extend the moral blame for infections back to patient zero.

 _The level of selfishness of such a statement is just off the charts._

Lockdowns cause massive harm to mental health, children's education, and people's livelihoods. And even physical health, as "elective" procedures like cancer screenings are cancelled. I could say that you're selfish for ignoring them, but instead I believe that we're all trying to do the best we can, and we have different conceptions of the costs and benefits of various actions.

 _Or do you feel you can just unilaterally decide that it's fine for others to die _unnecessarily_?_

Every day everyone does things that indirectly raise risks for other people. Do you quarantine yourself during every flu season? Do you ever take unnecessary car trips, thereby increasing the risk of other drivers and pedestrians suffering a fatal accident? If you want to argue that the current situation requires placing the entire country under house arrest indefinitely, you're going to have to show your work.

 _Furthermore, the CDC just acknowledged it may be as high as 1 /3 of those recovered with persistent issues_

"Persistent" as defined in that study is 2-3 weeks, which is not an unusual amount of time to recover from the flu.

 _That's worth not just saying indoors collectively for a short period to prevent?_

If I believed that a strict one month lockdown would eliminate the virus, I'd be all for it. I don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Example of the success of the German app: [https://www.lra-bgl.de/t/das- landratsamt/aktuelles/details/n...](https://www.lra-bgl.de/t/das- landratsamt/aktuelles/details/news///zwei-neue-corona-faelle-im- berchtesgadener-land/) (sorry German)

In the region of Berchtesgaden a asymptomatic person for a warning from their app and was confirmed positive. Due to the app that person didn't spread further.

Now we can argue how many of such cases we need for calling it a true success and then we can discuss if a single case makes the news if that's a bad sign ... on the later it's important to mind that certainly not every case makes that news and it's from a region with low virus load to begin with.

</comment><comment><USER38> Italy's Immuni wasn't downloaded enough to be a significant sample; people are too worried about their bloody battery performance and "what if I'm flagged and gub'mint makes me isolate home". The National Health Service's effort to run a population wide serological sample was also declined because "what if I'm positive and I need to stay home". The fucking chemical reagents expired in the meantime.

It's these times when I have to make an effort not to praise regimes for their efficiency in enforcement... or it's just theater and marketing and human nature is rotting their process to the core as well..

<comment><USER39> Comments like "what if I'm flagged and gub'mint makes me isolate home" makes me think of people who object that the problem is idiot users who don't recognize a clearly superior product. If people don't trust the government, that's a failure of that government.

<comment><USER17> We've seen the same phenomenon across countries as different as Norway and Italy. Some fears are primal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> > the reliability of distance estimates using Bluetooth signal attenuation

Take a look NOVID [0] the app CMU professor and graduate students built.

It uses ultrasound to be accurate within 1m.

It also approaches the utility of contact tracing in a completely different way.

[0] [https://www.novid.org/](https://www.novid.org/)

<comment><USER41> Must be just lovely for pets at home or is it outside of the frequencies that cats can hear (up to 79 kHz)?

Also this thread is filled with people complaining about bluetooth spying capabilities and now you post an app with bluetooth always on AND microphone always listening?

<comment><USER42> Thanks for asking. I'm the founder of NOVID. Our app has a pet mode if your pet does not like it. This doesn't seem to have been a problem. The microphone is also not always listening. It turns on for 2 seconds when needed. The complete app source code has been given to a university security research team for review, and they will see that the microphone is used only for its intended purpose: to process ultrasonic frequencies.

<comment><USER43> Out of curiosity, why not make the app source-available?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> > One of the potential advantages of a centralised model is that it would > allow the use of machine learning to adapt thresholds to minimise error...

This is a cop out. Machine learning isn't magic. If the proximity measurement doesn't really work without ML then it's probably not going to start working with ML. Besides, if you really wanted to do it in a decentralized app you could use federated learning, no?

<comment><USER45> ML could be an overstretch, but centralised approaches definitely do allow for more analysis and a deeper rules-based approach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> The thing that still blows my mind about the whole contact tracing solutions in Europe is that the servers do not federate with themselves, and that you can only keep a single country specific app active at the time.

This leads to the situation where people that usually cross the country's borders will only use a single app which may not track all of the contacts. So far, the current solution is IMHO useless - but I keep on using it.

In my case I just keep one app active at all time (the one from my home country), but it would be more effective if with a single app I was able to track the contacts with people from other countries too.

Stupid simple example: I live in Switzerland (SwissCovid), and ideally when I cross the italian border I'll need to activate the italian contact tracing app (Immuni), but contacts with people that use a different app won't be counted even if they are infected - which totally misses the point of having a contact tracing in the first place :(

</comment><comment><USER47> There has to be a clever way of doing this that isn't super invasive. Having businesses record their customers and retain the only copy seems like a good compromise except something like personal phone numbers would be abused.

Maybe best would be something identifiable only to the authorities but recorded and held only by businesses. Something like driver's license date of issuance and first name. In theory that would be meaningless to my local coffee shop or grocer; but if I tested positive contact tracers could go there and get that info (maybe just the day of my visit, or afternoon, etc.) and then correlate and contact others who visited during that time.

<comment><USER23> South Korea already solved this problem: [https://www.zdnet.com/article/south- korea-to-use-qr-codes-to...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/south-korea-to-use- qr-codes-to-contain-covid-19/)

There is QR code provider and QR code scanner. QR code provider includes Naver (Google in South Korea) and Kakao (WhatsApp in South Korea). QR code scanner is mandatory at venues. QR code is a random UUID. Venues keep UUID (but do not know real world identity), providers keep UUID-to-identity mapping (but do not know real world activity), KCDC gets feed from both venues and providers, join them, and do the contact tracing. In particular, it is legally mandated that only KCDC can do the join.

<comment><USER41> Asia has solved a lot of the issues surrounding the pandemic months ago. While American and European economies will be crushed by Corona (it's I bet it's not even half time) due to conspiracy theories, ignorance and egoists and adult babies crying about wearing a mask, Asia is getting back to ramp up their economies.

They are far more capable of shutting new clusters down AND CONTROL IT. When we send people into quarantine in the West, we plea for them to stay home and everything is trust based because we want to keep our free society. Effectively, only very large local outbreak cases enjoy oversight by authorities.

Taiwan's pandemic game was on point before WHO finally let the rest of the world know about what has been suppressed in China for weeks if not months. Due to China's pressure they aren't part of WHO or UN and had no "official" global way to tell the rest of the world. They did, but were dismissed due to the massive hubris in the West and the geopolitical game China is playing.

SARS 1 is still on everyone's mind in Asia while many Americans outright deny Corona's existence even in July 2020. It's nuts.

<comment><USER48> Yes such a shame we can't focus on our economy, just because of outdated things like liberty and human rights.

<comment><USER49> The Economist's Democracy Index as of 2019 rates favorably enough most East Asian democracies that have been handling COVID-19 well so far; some of them score higher than the US or half of European countries.

It doesn't seem like "capable of containing a highly infectious disease" and "oppressive" go hand in hand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> This is completely missing what is likely the primary obstacle to adoption, at least in the US. Apple and Google require an entire state to commit _exclusively_ to using a single app. Even though they use a protocol that would easily interoperate across jurisdictions and apps effectively.

City governments which could move much faster are unable to do anything. States are on fire dealing with others things. They also all want some smaller scale trial to happen first, but no one can do that according to Apple/Google policies. So they are all stuck in a chicken and egg problem...

(This is all according my sources working directly on such apps which were ready to deploy 3 months ago — but were completely stopped by the policy; I'm interested to hear if anyone is aware of reasons why this might not be accurate).

<comment><USER51> I think this is intentional to prevent confusion/abuse. The national app also gets singled out on the Play Store.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I disagree with the failure claims except for lack of adoption.

How can unreliable distance measurements be an issue? Actual viral spread over distance is a much, much bigger uncertainty. Even improving distance measurements to the nanometer wouldn't make much of a difference considering transmission prediction. Sometimes the virus bridges tens of meters, other times it fails to make landfall in a prolonged skin on skin situation.

Measuring impact is a simple polling research problem: if you want to know this kind of thing (and I think you should) you need to accompany your PCR tests with a tiny little questionnaire collecting data about why the test was done. Failure to collect that data is entirely unrelated to the app.

</comment><comment><USER53> Contact tracing has unfortunately also failed as in "is buggy": [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23947323](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23947323)

To be clear, I've installed the tracing app, having the idea that it can only help to isolate hotspots, which however is mainly the health authorities' task. And 16+ million downloads (of how many eligible smartphone owners?) in Germany still makes Corona Warn-App a chart breaker I guess.

</comment><comment><USER54> Just pay each person a $100 if they download the app, or whatever. People react to incentives, and downloading the app brings no personal benefit. Change that.

<comment><USER55> Really, I bet $10 would be enough to get a high adoption rate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> There's no mention of China in this article. China had a pretty large-scale tracing system using smartphones. Has that also failed?

</comment><comment><USER57> I'm pleased to see this. I'm privacy forward and there is no doubt this information will be abused by private and public entities. We simply need to deal with this another way without giving up yet another bit of privacy.

</comment><comment><USER58> This is looking at it from a technological angle. However, what about the social/financial aspects?

If I am told to self isolate for any duration of time, will the government provide 100% of my lost wages? Will they support businesses who could be put in real trouble from someone having time off? What about potential repeated cases of isolation?

Most people (including myself) will do anything to avoid being on their radar, and will not cooperate under any circumstance due to the reality that losing money is simply not an option for me, or my employers (where I could be replaced within a day, and that's my job gone).

Sadly, most governments haven't got well thought out policies, thus reducing the potential pool of users who'd engage with contact tracing (whether done via smartphone or manual like the UK).

We desperately need a UBI, for everyone, every month, forever, regardless of status (though, if you earn over a certain amount I'd agree with limiting the UBI, like for million/billionaires).

Otherwise, as we saw recently, someone infected over 70 people because she didn't isolate, because she needs food and a roof, it was a case of infect people (and risk them dying) or...dying because she can't afford rent/basics?

Yeah...This pandemic has exposed that capitalism is fucked, and during the worst virus outbreak this century there's no support for those that need it.

Even if I _wanted_ to isolate, I couldn't _afford_ to. Therefore I cannot comply with any contact tracing efforts.

<comment><USER35> All of this is true if you test positive with or without an app. The app helps you know you might be asymptomatic and spreading it to people that you know or don't know, who can then die from it or otherwise be seriously injured.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> "Contact tracing" was the new "blockchain" for a while. It is a technology with great potential, but I don't expect a truely effective, well-designed solution to be deployed at a large enough scale to be useful for years to come. I think it will eventually mature enough to be useful for future outbreaks - even for more benign disease. For now, though, I want to see the technology spend a little more time in the oven.

<comment><USER35> Do you actually have specific criticisms or is this just a vague feeling? To say it's not well thought out is a baseless accusation.

<comment><USER59> I don't think it's poorly thought out. I just think the tech is immature and the current incarnations will have to quickly improve or be superceded by something significantly better in the next few years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I find it odd how many people get paranoid with tracing but still use Facebook or google products...

</comment><comment><USER61> It's because the privacy-at-any-cost camp, like the EFF, raised hell and prevented Apple from making an app themselves. So only cash-starved state governments can make apps, which is unlikely to happen.

They have blood on their hands.

</comment><comment><USER62> Not possible until UWB is ubiquitous.

</comment><comment><USER63> I was suspicious of the effectiveness of contact tracing apps, which have to rely on something as unreliable as Bluetooth to estimate distance across different kinds of hardware, different kinds of software drivers and in different situations. That got worse with some governments wanting to collect location information through the contact tracing apps 24/7 and centralize it.

 _> It would appear that no government has thought this out properly yet._

This seems to be true at least in India, where the app is a centralized one that doesn't use the Apple/Google framework The app tracks the location of users at all times (it asks for that permission) and hence cannot use the APIs since Apple and Google prohibit such apps from collecting location information. Since it requires background location access and Internet connectivity, it's a good addition to drain batteries quicker.

The government also famously declared that the app would be open sourced so that it could be improved and issues fixed. That turned out to be a farce with the source released only for the Android version, and that too for an older version of the app with some code removed (the code on the Play Store was newer). They stopped releasing updates of the source. They didn't release the source of the iOS app, which was supposed to be "shortly" (that was around two months ago). They didn't fix the issues that people raised on GitHub. Yet the government claimed that the app was effective and put out some numbers on it being useful (without any backing data or any way to verify those claims).

It gets even worse. The app being a platform for contact tracing is only one facet. The goal that wasn't widely disclosed was to have private companies build on top of the app and its server side data to create platforms on health data collected from hundreds of millions of people. Note that India doesn't have a data privacy or data protection law, leave alone anything to control health related data in the hands of crony capitalists and opportunists.

Now all talk about contact tracing and its effectiveness is muted or nowhere to be seen, though the app is being pushed as a requirement to give people permission to travel and for other purposes.

The platform has become, and is continuing to become, what some people feared...and that's getting farther from handling COVID-19 or a public health crisis.

</comment><comment><USER64> You don't want to install a tracing app for "privacy reasons" fine.

Just make sure you don't have any of: Google's location history turned on, any FB app (FB/Instagram/Whatsapp), TikTok, 4sq/swarm, Tinder, Happn, or any app that has fine-grained location permissions.

<comment><USER65> Ah yes, the waterproof "some bad things are happening, it must mean that this other bad thing happening is also fine"-argument.

"Most people infect their devices with malware from the internet, let's all preinstall malware to every device because it has the same end result."

<comment><USER64> > Ah yes, the waterproof "some bad things are happening, it must mean that > this other bad thing happening is also fine"-argument.

Ah yes the good strawman fallacy argument

Funny how the contact tracing app requires _no_ special permissions. None. Every extra data is completely optional.

Sure it is your choice to not install the C.T. app and install other data- hoarding apps but know what you're doing.

<comment><USER65> > Ah yes the good strawman fallacy argument

It isn't, that's literally what you said. That we should be okay with contact tracing if we have anything else that uses the fine-grained location permission.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Contact Tracing is not recommended (and basically pointless) for mild respiratory illnesses like Coronaviruses because for the vast majority of people, they are asymptomatic or lowly symptomatic, and the spread can be extensive.

Its only recommended for more serious viruses like Ebola.</comment>


A guide to Truffle, the Dapp-building tool lowering barrier to entry for devs - <AUTHOR> https://litepaper.com/resources/truffle <comment><USER2> Don't make me click only to then have to scroll.</comment>


Big Banks Had a Spectacular Quarter Despite All the Rules - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-21/bank-profits-near-pre-crisis-peak-in-u-s-despite-all-the-rules <comment><USER2> _Despite_ all the rules? My friend, who do you think the rules are _for_? Compliance departments are EXPENSIVE, which means that only big banks can afford them. Which means less competition. Which means higher prices and profits for the few that remain.

<comment><USER3> Yes. Before the 2008-2009 financial crisis, ~100 new banks were founded every year.

From 2010-2015 there were 4 new banks _total_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> All right, I'll bite. If me and my SO wanna buy a house, how should we go about approaching the next financial crisis to get a good deal on one?

Who predicted the last one correctly, and what are those people saying now?

I'm under the assumption that the regulations put in place after the last financial crisis are impotent, and that the people in the finance industry have little incentive not to do it again. Is this an accurate statement?

<comment><USER5> Peter Schiff predicted the housing bubble. He also claims that the current housing bubble is even bigger as the market imbalances have not been fixed (government interference and bailouts intervened in the natural free market process, if left to free market forces there would be a lot more failed banks).

He's also a gold bug. Other than housing bubble he claims there is a massive bubble in stock market and also that the next crisis will be a currency crisis as people lose confidence in US dollar.

He would probably suggest to invest in gold and in markets outside of US/EU.

Disclaimer: I am not saying I agree with Peter Schiff just describing his view, so please don't down vote me.

<comment><USER6> Peter Schiff is always predicting a crash, his call on the housing bubble is more of a stopped clock type scenario.

<comment><USER7> > Peter Schiff is always predicting a crash, his call on the housing bubble is > more of a stopped clock type scenario

You're absolutely correct that he sounds like an inevitable broken clock outcome. However, his premise on why and how the last bubble was going to explode, was extremely well supported by argumentation & data. He didn't just say it, he argued it out and supported the premise, and he was right. It wasn't luck, it made perfect sense, and he wasn't the only person using the same argument details.

He's right this time that they've blown another huge bubble in asset values via cheap money / hyper low interest rates. The Fed has finally gotten to the point where they're openly admitting to that (Yellen just did so recently). This is the third time in 20 years they've generated vast asset bubbles with cheap money. Schiff is wrong on the timing because he has persistently underestimated how long the Fed could keep the bubbles inflated via said cheap money.

Raise interest rates just to the average level of the prior 50 years, and see what happens to the housing market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The rules put in place are a joke. Next bust is coming and everyone will pretend again that they didn't see it coming. And again nothing will be fixed and the tax payer will pay the bailout to the banks and their investors.

<comment><USER9> Have you bought a home in the last 5 years? It's not easy to get a loan. I had to verify all of my financial documents pretty thoroughly. Not only that, but my loan stipulated I still have enough cash to cover the mortgage for like six months. Not many people have $20 grand laying around _after_ they buy a house.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Difficult to comply with (aka expensive) regulations create a barrier of entry that helps these entrenched megabanks. Also, in finance, whenever regulations impede business, after some time bankers learn how to circumvent the regulations with new products or business process changes.

<comment><USER11> The answer to this is new laws and rules

D.C. needs to refactor legacy

See Goodharts Law, Buffets institutional imperative, and numerous other similar arguments in other contexts: we must keep evolving

Government is no different. But the banks and reps get in the way of this on purpose

They have good reasons to do that. IMO the public has good reasons to reject this and require them to evolve as well

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wasn't that literally a decade ago, not adjusted for inflation?

How do the financials compare with other, unregulated sectors over the same period?

</comment><comment><USER12> Restrictions breed creativity, eh?

With the restrictions came huge increases in the stability and effectiveness of significant bank operations (e.g. clearing of over the counter derivatives, derivative reporting and all that).

This shouldn't be surprising.

But, it is interesting to see whether the restrictions have bred the stability that they were designed too, or if banks are just shifting risks to new areas.

</comment><comment><USER13> Those will get handy when the next crisis strikes (amplified by the vast capital held by index funds and resulting selling spree, infrastructure credit defaults, another round of real estate depreciation, etc.)

If "the market moves in the direction of maximum damage" maxim is correct, I'd also add some runaway inflation to the mix.

</comment><comment><USER14> Raising interest rates certainly helped.

Also, this article is discussing revenue, not profit.</comment>


China Is Facing a Ticking Demographic Time Bomb - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-10/china-is-facing-a-ticking-demographic-time-bomb <comment><USER2> By 2050 the median population age in China will be 50. It is going to be interesting to watch through a filtered media. Tick-tock</comment>


Ranch Nation - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/18/dining/ranch-dressing-history.html <comment><USER2> In 1957 Procter & Gamble bought Clorox Chemical Company, which at the time made only bleach. The Federal Trade Commission challenged the merger on anticompetitive grounds -- specifically, that ownership by dominant conglomerate that makes soap, detergent, and cleaners, and spends enormous amounts on advertising, would dissuade other entrants to the liquid bleach market, a chemically bland product whose marketshare nonetheless appeared to correlate with advertising -- and ordered them to divest Clorox. A prolonged court battle ensued, eventually decided by the Supreme Court in 1967 [1], which held that they indeed must divest.

The new, but still Oakland-based Clorox then embarked on a plan to be a little brother to P&G, acquiring a diverse array of marketable brands -- many cleaners, but also Hidden Valley Ranch in 1972, at the time still a hometown California phenomenon, and still a dry packet of mix to which consumers had to add buttermilk to make [2].

Clorox first reformulated the dry mix such that it could be made with milk, then in 1983 they began selling a premade, shelf-stable bottle of it [2], which was instrumental in helping it attain the popularity it has today.

Clorox has a very approachable blog entry [3] about Hidden Valley Ranch, where Curtis Stettler, a former longtime product developers for KC Masterpiece and Hidden Valley, recounts the history of the product line from pre-acquision to today, covering some wacky 90s flavors along the way, and insider comments that recount flavors surviving decades of branding renames, and frustrations with bacon bits trying to poke through the packaging.

[1] [https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme- court/386/568.html](https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/386/568.html) [2] [http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/number_1/2005/08/ranch_dr...](http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/number_1/2005/08/ranch_dressing.html) [3] [https://www.thecloroxcompany.com/blog/this-day-in-clorox- his...](https://www.thecloroxcompany.com/blog/this-day-in-clorox-history-we- buy-hidden-valley-ranch/)

<comment><USER3> >then in 1983 they began selling a premade, shelf-stable bottle of it

I was born in '83 and I still remember my mom mixing ranch dressing by hand in a special ranch dressing mixing bottle [0] that they sold. I always wondered why she mixed it by hand back then.

[0] (image of bottle a few screens down): [https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the- ranch-dressing-served-at-re...](https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-ranch- dressing-served-at-restaurants-the-most-delicious-I-can-t-find-anything-even- close-in-a-bottle)

<comment><USER4> In the book The Hidden Persuaders (1957) by Vance Packard he describes research into failing pre-made products that revealed the buyers (homemakers) felt less self-worth if they weren't required to undertake at least some of the preparation. (IIRC cake mixture was the case study.)

There was also a similar response by pharmacists when drugs first appeared on the market requiring no preparation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Ranch is most popular in the Midwest, according to the Association of > Dressings and Sauces.

I believe that. I've seen it brought to the table there in Mexican restaurants alongside free salsa without even asking. They just assume you'd want it. At first I thought "Oh free queso, great", but no, just ranch.

> Valley Ranch is no more. Steve Henson sold the brand to the Clorox company > in 1972 for $8 million;

There is something ironic about what used to be chemical company known for selling bleach (at that time) to owning the most iconic American ranch dressing.

</comment><comment><USER6> Let's have more food-related threads on HN now and then, people :)

I have been wishing there were more of those here for some time. They can be pretty interesting, not just to read but to try out the stuff. I remember one of the earliest ones I saw here, titled something like "What are your food hacks?" [1]. It was a good one. IIRC, PG also chipped in with a recipe for rice and beans for ramen-profitable (or yet to be that) startups. The punch line was "put <the stuff> in the cooker and forget about it" :)

\- where <stuff> was rice and beans, and some condiments, like salt, oil, pepper, whatever.

[1] Probably can still find that one via hn.algolia.com or the search box at the bottom of the HN page (which uses algolia).

</comment><comment><USER7> Ranch is a gateway.

If you really want an eye-opening flavor experience, try dipping pizza in toum (Lebanese garlic sauce).

<comment><USER8> Toum + olive oil + a little salt is also great for marinating grilled chicken in. Thanks because TIL its name!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Working in kitchens when I was younger really put me off of mayonnaise and salad oil, especially cleaning the deep fryers. I used to mix up batches of ranch starting with 5 gallon buckets of "heavy duty" grade commercial mayonnaise. Large amounts of mayonnaise still make me wince a little...

When you work with these in industrial quantities, they inevitably ruin your clothes and insinuate themselves into your person.

There's nothing like coming home reeking of fryer smoke and mayo for a couple of months to make you want to trade the fries for a house salad -- vinaigrette on the side please.

<comment><USER10> I worked in kitchens all through high school and college. I never minded the industrial food service stuff. I still have 5gal buckets that I use for things. Everything that comes out of them smells like pickles (these buckets are years old). I had a coworker who alleged that her boyfriend could taste whether she was serving on Buffalo chicken day a day later. The pay in tech is so much better that it's not even comparable but I kind of miss working in food service. Knowing how fun it isn't to stand over a grill ruined all the "we cook everything in front of you" type restaurants for me though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> We very nearly had a ranch fountain at our wedding but decided against it...

</comment><comment> d--b As a European I don't understand this. Here, salad is merely consumed as an "oil delivery device", it's all about the dressing. So, accordingly, not one bit of salad should remain dry. Ranch is thick, therefore annoying to use on salad, because it doesn't drench the whole thing. Unless you shake the salad, you'll have plenty of dry leaves. ewwww.

Pretty good with fries though.

<comment><USER12> Explain, then, the Caesar salad, king of all salads.

<comment> d--b Well, I really dislike the Caesar salad, for obvious reasons stated above.

But maybe an explanation for its success is that it's fried chicken with dip "disguised as a salad". The salad in the caesar salad is just to pretend it's healthy.

Also the name kind of rules

<comment><USER12> There is no chicken in a Caesar salad, let alone fried chicken. Where are you eating? Is this something they serve at Cheesecake Factory?

It's named for the dude who came up with it, for whatever that's worth to you.

<comment><USER13> Chicken Caesar salad is wildly popular in the US, and it's probably far more popular than original-style Caesar salad.

I'd even go as far as to say that Caesar salad has become something like pizza, where the assumption is that _of course_ you put toppings on it.

<comment><USER14> > Chicken Caesar salad is wildly popular in the US, and it's probably far more > popular than original-style Caesar salad.

Chicken Caesar is, for fairly obvious reasons, far more popular than traditional Caesar as a standalone meal, but it's probably far less popular than traditional (or, at least, not featuring chunks of meat) Caesar overall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "and the pasta sauce "Alfredo" served at places like Olive Garden"

Shots fired!

</comment><comment><USER15> I looked it up, and I guess I have to say I'm impressed it's not been reformulated into a mix of corn & soy product.

</comment><comment><USER16> It is popular in rural PA as well, literally the #1 condiment.

For the non-American's out there "Ranch" is basically an oily, less flavorful version of Tzatziki, where the white stuff is based on mayonnaise rather than greek yogurt.

<comment><USER17> I would say the defining quality of ranch is that it contains buttermilk, unlike most mayonnaise-based dressings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Legalize ranch

</comment><comment><USER19> This article's got me jonesing for some Ranch now

</comment><comment><USER20> It is wrong to eat chicken wings with ranch: they can be eaten undipped or with blue cheese dressing.

</comment><comment><USER21> In the decades to come, men will look back on articles such as this and curse the existence of we moderns for our extravagant wastefulness.

<comment><USER22> I bet you're fun at parties.

<comment><USER23> Whenever someone uses that phrase, I now tend to picture this beautiful monologue by Will Oldham in the movie "A Ghost Story": [https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6bs2o5](https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6bs2o5)

It's long and depressing (what do you expect for a downer monologue at a party?) but I think worth you while to watch, so that you too can have a comparison point for the future.

<comment><USER24> I absolutely loved that movie. It was so much more than I expected that I couldn't stop watching it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Blue Team Rust: What Is "Memory Safety", Really? - <AUTHOR> https://tiemoko.com/blog/blue-team-rust/ <comment><USER2> One thing I've realized with Rust is that its guarantees are a moving target. Today we can guarantee (barring compiler errors) memory safety in safe rust, but not unsafe rust.

But that story is improving. For one thing, we have people working to build safe abstractions for more unsafe use cases, at zero cost. We also have people improving fuzzing, and in theory safe rust code grows at a much faster rate than unsafe rust code, so fuzzing is far more tractable. We have people working on proving more about rust code, even when unsafe is around.

I'm quite excited to see how far Rust is able to go, I don't believe the state today is the end at all.

<comment><USER3> While some patterns that call for unsafe today might be eliminated in whole or part, code that violates the ownership and borrowing rules will have to remain unsafe. I think fuzzing is not guaranteed to reach all unsafe code paths, nor provide full test coverage. Ideally, you want a) some sort of formal proof that the unsafe code cannot violate memory safety, b) 100% branch coverage for unsafe code, or c) both (because profilers and proofs can be wrong too :)

edit: grammar.

<comment><USER4> What I really want is an integration of automated proof checking with unsafe code, allowing completely safe rust programs.

Additionally, this could be extended to safe code to allow removing overhead from safety in things like bounds checks and Rc.

<comment><USER5> This requires a formal semantics for Unsafe Rust. It's a hard problem, albeit one that's being worked on.

<comment><USER4> I'm aware that however it's done it'll be hard.

Does it really require formal semantics for unsafe rust though? I'm not familiar enough with rust to give an example, but if you imagine there's the unsafe rust level and beneath that the "machine code" (not actually machine code, just at the abstraction level equivalent to it) you should be able to hand write what the rust code is doing, without requiring the compiler to construct the machine level operations.

With a formal semantics the proof checker just checks that the written proof (at rust level) matches with the rust code, but requires as you said an understanding of how unsafe rust interacts with the proof, whereas with a proof written at machine level, you don't need to understand the rust semantics, you just need to translate the rust to machine level and then check the proof there.

Perhaps the machine level could be some layer in llvm? I'm only a little familiar with compilers, and hardly at all with more complicated compiler theory, but this seems reasonable to me.

<comment><USER6> > With a proof written at machine level, you don't need to understand the rust > semantics, you just need to translate the rust to machine level and then > check the proof there.

This approach would only be able to verify a particular compilation result as safe. If you want to verify that it will always be safe, you need to be comparing against the behavior of future compilers, which requires some kind of contract about their behavior. "Formal semantics" is the technical term for that contract.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Bounds checks are more effective than the stack cookies a C compiler might > insert because they still apply when indexing linear data structures, an > operation that's easier to get right with Rust's iterator APIs.

Not only that, bounds checks always work, while stack cookies are possible to bypass either by luck or by information disclosure.

<comment><USER8> The key thing with bounds checks is to hoist them out of inner loops. If you don't have that optimization, people will turn them off because of the performance impact. Except in inner loops, the performance penalty isn't usually that bad.

<comment><USER5> > The key thing with bounds checks is to hoist them out of inner loops.

The compiler can't always hoist the check on its own, because program behavior might depend on the bounds check occurring in the loop. But you can write an assert!() outside the loop to hoist it explicitly, and verify that the bounds checks are optimized away - or use unsafe unchecked access when they aren't.

<comment><USER9> How do you write the assert? I've not heard of that before.

Oh you mean `assert!(array.len() > 100); for i in 0..100 { array[I]; }`

I don't think that _guarantees_ that bounds checks will be hoisted. It's just a strong hint. I mean in this case it will almost certainly work, but in more complexes cases it might not and the compiler is still free to emit bounds checks without telling you.

It would be nice if there was an explicit way of forcing an error if the bounds check was not hoisted. Similar story for lots of other optimisations - autovectorisation, tail call optimization, etc.

Some game developer made a good point that sometimes fast is correct, i.e. it's actually a bug if autovectorisation or whatever doesn't happen, so you really need a way to guarantee it.

<comment><USER10> In Rust, the way to force removal of bounds checks is to use iterators rather than a for loop.

<comment><USER9> I don't think that forces their removal either. It just happens to help the compiler enough that it can remove them automatically most of the time.

As far as I know the only way to _guarantee_ that bounds checks are not used in a block of code is to use `unsafe`.

<comment><USER11> Iterators do indeed not force the removal of bounds check, but that's simply because they don't exist to remove in the first place. That's because iterators actually do use `unsafe` internally. They are a safe abstraction.

      // This is unidiomatic. Don't do this.
      for i in 0..100 {
        // Oops! Array indexing. Here's a nasty bounds check!
        array[i] * 2
      }

      // Very unidiomatic. Never do this! Not even as an
      // optimization. You should properly use safe abstractions
      // in stead.
      for i in 1..100 {
        // Oh, NOOOO! This isn't supposed to be C!
        unsafe { array.get_unchecked(i) * 2 }
      }

      // This is still unidiomatic unless you want to use
      // it to explicitly show your code has side-effects.
      // However, we're completely rid of the bounds check and
      // yet it's perfectly safe perfectly safe.
      // The only way this could be unsafe is if rustbelt's
      // formal proofs, reviews, audits
      // and (probably) MLOC of thoroughly tested and
      // possibly fuzzed code using this in practice
      // have all somehow missed an unsoundness bug
      // in one of the more used safe abstractions in the
      // core library for years.

      for a in array {
        // Look, Ma! No indexing, therefore no bounds check!
        // Internally `get_unchecked` is (conceptually) used
        // but it's perfectly safe!
        a * 2
      }

      // This is idiomatic Rust. Again, there's no bounds check
      // to start with, since the save abstraction knows
      // exactly how many elements are in the array and
      // that the borrow checker will ensure nobody can
      // possibly invalidate its indexing.
      // Ditto what was said above that the safe abstraction
      // is pretty much guaranteed to be sound.
      a.iter().map(|a| a * 2).collect()

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Really well written article with a nice diagram that concisely explains all the memory safe/unsafe areas of a rust program.

<comment><USER13> The diagram arrows of »Only valid references«, »No dangling pointers«, and »No data races« only point to the Heap Memory but should also point to the Stack Memory. One reason is that a function can borrow a stack pointers to other functions it calls at which point for the other functions there is no difference whether they are stack or heap pointers. Valid references are relevant the same way. Other reasons are that the borrow checker prevents data races for data on the stack, and it also disallows to pass a stack pointer as return value which would be a dangling pointer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The pervasive mention of "C/C++", as if C and C++ were the same language with the same failure modes, soured the whole thing for me, for reasons:

In modern C++, C bugbears are just not a problem that demands much attention; I had one (1) memory mistake in five years, caught in initial testing.

There are still plenty of bugs, of course, but they are overwhelmingly specification bugs: code is doing what was asked for, but what was asked for was wrong.

Babysitting the borrow checker steals attention from preventing those actually very common problems. In effect, the borrow checker has also consumed all the time then spent tracking down and fixing the bugs it prevented avoiding, and all the time spent adapting to bad interfaces it caused that more or less worked.

Attention is, _by far_ , the scarcest resource every programmer manages. Anything that burns attention without adequate return is actively harmful. Coding at a higher level, using powerful, safe libraries trusted not to cost too much, is how C++ programmers get the safety that Rust coders grind out on the borrow checker. C++ has many, many features, not in Rust, meant specifically to help capture powerful semantics in libraries that raise the level of coders' attention.

The large and still growing suite of such features, and the powerful libraries written using them, account for the almost exclusive use of C++ in all the highest-paid, most demanding applications in fintech, medtech, HPC, CAE, telecom, and aerospace. Rust will never be able to call those libraries.

Still, Rust is the only extant language plausibly gunning for C++'s role. It starts with the advantage of leaving behind many of C++'s worst backward- compatibility boat anchors, but its focus on low-level safety features detracts attention from the high-level coding support that makes them decreasingly relevant. Rust is adding features and users at a rapid rate, but C++ picks up, easily, _many_ more new users in each week than the total headcount of Rust programmers working in that week, and will continue. To be remembered in ten years, Rust will need to become useful to many, many more programmers than it is now winning over (HN buzz notwithstanding).

Gunning for C++ is a losing strategy. Planning to coexist with C++ will have better results. Rust is an overwhelmingly better language, on every axis, than C, Go, Java, C#, ObjC, Visual Basic, Delphi, and COBOL, all being coded today mostly by people who will and often should never use C++. Every conversion from those is a big net gain for the world. Rust will pick up few C coders, despite that this would produce the greatest benefit to society, just because almost all who might jump already did. But the rest are wide open.

Promoting memory safety is not the way to win those, either because they have it (at enormous cost) or don't value it. To win those coders, Rust needs to take memory safety as given, and promote fun, performance, and a future.

Java won big in 1995 by offering Microsoft sharecroppers a way out. Rust could be the way out for a new generation, if only it can raise its sights from C's too familiar failings.

</comment><comment><USER15> Op - thanks. A great read. Helpful and informative.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm getting an increasingly bad taste from rust. In spite of the hype 9 out of 10 rust programs I download end up with a panic in my first 10 minutes of using them.

Javascript is a memory safe language yet there is plenty of broken code written it it.

Memory safety is a critical step forward but its wasted if it's paired with an ecosystem that thinks memory safety means that software doesn't need to be correct or is so fixated on reimplementing things for "memory safety" that understanding the problem domain and actually making things that work falls by the wayside.

<comment><USER17> > 9 out of 10 rust programs I download end up with a panic in my first 10 > minutes of using them.

Do you have some examples? Firefox, ripgrep and fd are the only programs I use that I know are written in rust (I know only a small part of Firefox is in Rust), and they work fine for me

<comment><USER18> Also bat, the alternative to cat, is written in rust, works fine for me.</comment></comment></comment>


Washington Post settles $250M lawsuit filed by Nick Sandmann - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/newspaper-kentucky-teen-settle-lawsuit-over-dc-encounter/2020/07/24/89e069b0-cde9-11ea-99b0-8426e26d203b_story.html <comment><USER2> In case it wasn't obvious (with overwhelming probability) he received a tiny tiny fraction of the headline 250M number. Those initial lawsuit magnitude numbers have little to no relationship with what numbers settlements happen with.

<comment><USER3> I would love a tiny fraction of that 250M number, even half a percent, only a tiny 1.25M will do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Weirdly enough, this is one of the things I like most about the "old media". When they screw up, they're on the hook and have enough resources to be worth going after.

<comment><USER5> They screw up a lot but on the hook is very very rare

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wish it was possible to sue them over the fake noose bullsh*t they pulled recently to fuel race tensions.

</comment><comment><USER7> Fake news _does_ pay, it seems.</comment>


PSA: Everyone on Google+ now has unlimited invites - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/C9DyW.png

<comment><AUTHOR> If you don't have a friend on + yet, email me and I'll invite you.

<comment><USER2> rawk... \m/

email sent...</comment></comment>


Health is a human right - <AUTHOR> https://www.dawn.com/news/1450968/why-public-finance-is-key-to-delivering-the-human-right-to-health <comment><USER2> Was it Nietzsche who said such similar things in one of his books? We are born as indentured servants to the state. The state let's us live as long as we continue to pay our debt which is called euphemistically "tax." The implicit agreement between the baby and the state is that the state promises to protect and to create pleasant environment for the baby to live a healthy and happy life. It's no surprise that we keep our side of the agreement and pay our taxes but the state never completely keeps his promises. Under these circumstances it would be useless to talk about human rights.

</comment><comment><USER3> This gets complicated in the details. One good example is colorectal cancer testing. Recently in the US testing has been recommended for people ages 45-50 even though detectable colorectal cancer in people under the age of 55 is extremely rare and happens only in an extremely small fraction of the population. Based on cost of tests and expected results this regimen will cost society over $6 million per cancer found and current treatment regimens are not expected to save most of those people. Where are the lines drawn? Should we spend millions per case on people with colorectal cancer when we don't even have a fully reliable treatment regimen? What about other rare diseases? This idea that health is a human right implies heavy handed decisions about who gets what care. Pretending that there is plenty of money for all potentially needed care is ridiculous. This raises extremely awkward issues regarding the balance between preventive care and treatments and should force us to reevaluate how we treat elderly sick people.

</comment><comment><USER4> On what basis is health care a human right?

I would claim that rights either provide some protection to the ruling class (the right to life means not executing unpopular leaders) or are derived from other rights.

So in this case, we could claim the right to life provides the basis for the right to health care.

Note the right to life is not absolute, e.g. capital punishment and military drafts (being forced into life-threatening situations at gunpoint.)

But googling "on what basis is health care a human right?" yields nothing convincing on the pro side, i.e. they all just assume health care is a human right.

>HEALTH is a human right. When people are not able to access the healthcare they need, especially if this is for reasons of cost, their human rights are denied.

Continuing...

>Universal health coverage is built on principles of equity and fairness, with health services allocated according to people's needs and the health system financed according to people's ability to pay.

That statement has a familiar ring.

Here's an anti-right argument -

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1126951/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1126951/)

>To propose that health care be considered a human right is not only wrong headed, it is unhelpful. Mature debate on the _rationing and sharing of limited resources_ can hardly take place when citizens start from the premise that health care is their right, like a fair trial or the right to vote.

I would test the rights argument with a few questions --

1) Would the right to health care justify certain impositions on the population, a la jury duty? Would governments have the right to draft people to work in medicine?

2) If we could keep someone alive forever at the cost of $1 bil/day, would we be required to do so?

3) Would the right to health care provide governments the justification to override market mechanisms?

Or said another way -

4) Would governments have to repeal anti-competitive laws that limit the supply of health care?

</comment><comment><USER5> I couldn't disagree more. Health care is great and I want everyone to have it but how can it be considered a right. Is food a right? Is shelter a right?

I support socialised healthcare but a right is very different to a reasonable service for a society to provide to those in need.

<comment><USER6> The UN recognise food and shelter as human rights, along with health. See Article 25 [http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human- rights/](http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/)

<comment><USER7> So if the UN declares something, it is a priori true?

I haven't heard any good arguments for the existence of positive rights (the system becomes inconsistent).

<comment><USER6> I don't think that distinction is particularly useful. 'Negative' rights can be reframed as positive rights, and often need a positive enforcement component to even be useful.

Consider your right for property ownership. Strictly defined as a negative right, others have an obligation not to infringe your property rights. Great if everyone is cooperative, but if somebody violates your rights you need somebody to assert a positive duty.

I'd like to think we've advanced, as a society, enough to consider more than just enforcing survival rights. Would you suggest people should have no rights to education either? This is also a positive right.

<comment><USER8> Not OP, but yes, I agree that education is not a right. It's something a society should provide, but it's not a right.

And with a negative right like property, you are free to defend that right yourself, no need for an external force. You can't do that with healthcare or education, which requires someone else's labor to exercise. That's an unjust basis for any service, since all labor should be voluntary.

<comment><USER9> That's nice. So when the Zetas take your land, it's all good?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


"Technology widens existing disparities" - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/09/us/taking-a-tire-iron-to-techie-triumphalism.html <comment><USER2> This is a fantastic article. I appreciate this bit in particular:

> Mr. Toyama used to share that worldview: "I am a recovering technoholic," he > writes. Then he moved to India, to lead the Microsoft lab, and observed a > phenomenon that he would come to believe was universal: "Technology's > primary effect is to amplify human forces." When computers entered rural > schools, for instance, guess who held the mouse? Upper-caste boys. > Technology wasn't an intrinsic leveler or a bulldozer to archaic structures: > It just gave people new, improved tools to be lovely or horrible to each > other in all the old ways.

Technology lets you do more and more extreme versions of what you were going to do anyway. It should come as no surprise that the most newsworthy outcome of putting laptops in the hands of schoolchildren is teachers using them to spy on kids. It's a predictable outcome of the social dynamic, one which technology itself can only amplify, not change.

Of course, technology can be a component enabling larger trends of social change. Consider the industrial revolution. A strong argument can be made that modern technology is a prerequisite for modern liberal democracy. But the immediate impact of industrialization was not liberal democracy throughout Europe. That followed about a century later, on the back of human forces.

<comment><USER3>
      Then he moved to India, to lead the Microsoft lab, and
      observed a phenomenon that he would come to believe was
      universal: "Technology's primary effect is to amplify human
      forces." When computers entered rural schools, for instance,
      guess who held the mouse? Upper-caste boys.
      Technology wasn't an intrinsic leveler or a bulldozer to
      archaic structures: It just gave people new, improved tools
      to be lovely or horrible to each other in all the old ways.

I don't know what to say but that's just gut-wrenching. All the high-altitude "Loon" balloons [1] and lightweight "Aquila" drones [2] won't make much of a difference if it were up to the local warlord in Central Africa or strongman in India to decide who gets to live in shacks with uninterrupted power, much less "who holds the mouse". Now, does it?

If true change is desired, tech powerhouses like Google & FB cannot but develop a political will to address the chronic root causes behind the problems of technological disenfranchisement, among the world's downtrodden.

[1] [http://www.google.com/loon/how/](http://www.google.com/loon/how/)

[2] [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/technology/drones- beaming-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/technology/drones-beaming-web- access-are-in-the-stars-for-facebook.html)

<comment><USER4> Furthermore some tech like Facebook and Twitter can be "weaponized" to ruin entire previously stable economies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article's beginning is eyeroll inducing, but when it gets to covering the actual critiques of how technology has shaped and influenced the world good points are made.

I've noticed similar things. I'm not sure how we really get to the point where technology is a force used for leveling the playing field and not a force used for exacerbating it.

But I do know that it's important for the people who care about these things to engage with it. I know we'll be even worse off if the tech people that care about how tech impacts the world and care about leveling the playing field drop out of the field.

Tech has become increasingly soulless. None of us can afford to let that trend win.

<comment><USER6> If technologists shouldn't try to change the world, who should? I guess we should just roll over and do whatever the politicians and bankers want, they've done such a brilliant job so far.

<comment><USER2> It wasn't technologists that overthrew King James II and declared the supremacy of Parliament, founded the United States, freed the slaves, pushed for universal suffrage and civil rights, etc. It won't be technologists that end the war on drugs, bring marriage rights to everyone, implement universal healthcare and basic income, etc.

Having gone to engineering school, I used to have the same arrogance for superior role of engineers in society. As I have gotten older, I have come to realize that while engineers are important, other people play very important roles in progress.

<comment><USER7> The internet has been incredibly powerful in giving isolated queer folk a place to come together and organize.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> During the stone age militaries and governments wielded stone.

During the bronze age militaries and governments wielded bronze.

During the iron age militaries and governments wielded iron.

We shouldn't be surprised that, during the information age, militaries and governments wield information.

The utilization of technology, like any tool, can be used for bad or good or positive or negative or might or right. It is agnostic to propriety and to morals.

When techies magnified the power of technology in the 80s, they used to herald information and its decentralization as something to magnify the power of the people.

Today when techies magnify the power of technology, they herald its use by large corporations or mimick the interests of their military. They think they are champions for people, for decentralization, but the vocabulary changed without their knowing about it and the excuses are more plentiful than good intentions, manifestos or philosophies.

<comment><USER9> More or less, computers were developed by governments for designing nuclear weapons, processing and decrypting intercepts, and so on. The PC revolution did foster decentralization, but it was an accident. They're correcting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > "Technology's primary effect is to amplify human forces." [...] It just gave > people new, improved tools to be lovely or horrible to each other in all the > old ways.

I think this encapsulated most of it, followed by:

> In each arena, he writes, technologists ignore "the unavoidable role of > social forces."

Yes. In my early-career, I think I had bought into this foggy notion that somehow everything could be solved if you just made a clever-enough technological solution that somehow realigned people's incentives and desires.

After working in a large company for a while, I've gradually come to believe that a lot of sub-par technology exists because nobody faced the social/organizational problems first.

</comment><comment> norea-armozel I think the article is on point with regard to the likes of Schmidt and Gates and other folks in the Silicon Valley culture, but for the rest of the tech world there's always been a stronger sense of skepticism towards the transformative properties of technology.

Institutions and norms still matter regardless of how cheap the next iPhone can be made. And if you still have institutions and norms that promote something like racism or homo/transphobia then you're going to still have those around no matter what technology is employed. If you can't change minds, then you can't change how technology will be used.

</comment><comment><USER11> >When computers entered rural schools, for instance, guess who held the mouse? Upper-caste boys. Technology wasn't an intrinsic leveler..

Of course it's not an _intrinsic_ leveler. Who claims that? But wasn't it "technology" that made it possible for the rural school to have a computer _at all_? That looks like leveling to me - between urban "haves" and rural "have nots". Sure, most of us would want this leveling to happen faster - but over time each kid will get their own mouse (or whatever), and we can move on to concerns about how the brahmin kid's computer is nicer. That's progress.

>It's a world full of trained engineers — and many college dropouts — who cannot be expected to grasp human dynamics any more than political scientists understand Java code.

What a ridiculous false-equivalency. Engineers live in the world and thus develop some understanding of "human dynamics" whereas non-coders do not get exposure to coding just by living their lives.

>If family dinners and school lunches were painful for you, "disrupting" eating with a venture-capital-backed protein drink like Soylent can seem like liberation.

This is cringe-worthy. Psychologize much?

>Talented chefs don't believe their sauteeing skills entitle them to reimagine Web browsers, but talented technologists feel entitled to reimagine cooking

Because technologists cook too! Especially anyone who'd create cooking technology! Another false equivalency. Technologists: live in the world, use products, cook, clean, travel, eat, buy, ... whereas non-engineers (for the most part) do not code, or design electronics, etc.

>"If you're a concert pianist, it doesn't mean that you have any special knowledge about how to cause social change," Mr. Toyama told me. "And yet that's the equivalent of the thinking that many entrepreneurs engage in."

Really? We're a bunch of idiot savants with Dunning-Kruger? Screw you Toyama.

>But Mr. Toyama disagrees: "Technology — even when it's equally distributed — isn't a bridge, but a jack. It widens existing disparities."

Evidence please? And what if disparities are widened because everyone gets a 50% boost? Don't do it?

I'm the first to agree that handing out a tablet to every kid is no panacea, and that programs where that happens are poorly planned. But naive, poorly executed attempts to introduce technology are hardly evidence of futility. Silver bullets have never tended to be as effective as holistic efforts with measurement and feedback loops. A critique of tech as silver bullet is certainly justified. A critique of it as inherently malignant is not.

<comment><USER12> > >But Mr. Toyama disagrees: "Technology — even when it's equally distributed > — isn't a bridge, but a jack. It widens existing disparities."

> Evidence please? And what if disparities are widened because everyone gets a > 50% boost? Don't do it?

Well, it's not _evidence_ , but Paul Graham said the same thing in one of his essays (don't remember which one, sorry). He said that technology is a multiplier. Instead of the distribution of talent (or perhaps productivity?) going from 1 to 10, now it goes from 1 to 1000.

So PG's position is that it's not just 50% boost for everybody. It widens differences more than just by scaling existing ones by a constant factor.

<comment><USER13> I'm not convinced that widened differences are a real problem. They are certainly a perceived problem, and they seem to give people emotional flutters about the envy center, but I'm not sure what there is to "solve" about that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I like this article and I definitely agree with Toyama's view, however my emotional reaction might be summarized as "Meh, welcome to the party... even though you're a little a late we're glad you showed up"

A lot of the points in the article are of course right in line with many of the arguments that RMS et al have more over the years.

The assertion that 'technologists' (as opposed to concert pianists etc) feel entitled to enact social change is simplistic and misleading. Those who feel entitled in this way are in general just wealthy ego-maniacal control freaks... and in the current age technology is one place where the money is, so that's where they are. That said, there seems to be a bizarre tendency to give 'technologists' a free pass on ideas and actions that are quite obviously negative for free society and human rights.

Of course, powerful monied interests trying to reshape societal for the perpetuation of their own power and ideology is nothing new... meet the new boss, same as the old boss. At least the article does a good job of attacking the false notion the power of technology to transform is unequivocally positive.

<comment><USER15> >That said, there seems to be a bizarre tendency to give 'technologists' a free pass on ideas and actions that are quite obviously negative for free society and human rights.

I think tech billionaires occupy the position of the "new, cool rich". I don't know if it's our (Western? US?) culture or humanity in general that likes seeing underdogs (or, more often, people who can paint themselves as underdogs successfully) win, but there seems to be a long history of the powerful becoming out of touch and against the interests of the many (Either by ignorance, indifference, or very occasionally deliberate malice), new powerful people emerging (Sometimes but not always replacing the old powerful people), and people thinking of them as heroes who "made it" for a while before they've been around long enough that it's clear they've become out of touch and against the interests of the many, if they weren't in the first place.

The free pass is the sheen of new power, rather than entrenched power, and it wears off quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > "Technology — even when it's equally distributed — isn't a bridge, but a > jack. It widens existing disparities."

As an unqualified statement this is too absolute. Some technology decidedly levels the playing field. As always the key is to be mindful of the consequences of your actions.

</comment><comment><USER17> The only case where I think tech can become anything other than a tool is if it somehow contributes to something like a phase transition in how the physical a social world works (think benevolent and actually independent AI or something like that).

</comment><comment><USER18> Look at a graph of log GDP for the world or the US over the last 200 years. Why does it keep going up? Mainly because of technology. If you want an accurate, rather than pithy, summary of the effects of technology, it would be "technology gives us more and better things" or "technology makes the world richer". Distribution is an issue, but without technological growth there would be nothing extra to redistribute in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER19> 'Techies' already know that technology is not god. I don't criticize computers for not dissolving class disparities for the same reason that I don't criticize an amortization table for not solving poverty. This doesn't make me some sort of uncritical devotee to the church of technology. I never had the premise that technology would solve all problems to begin with.

</comment><comment><USER20> The article could be extended and mashed up to obtain an interesting, perhaps useful, alternative conclusion.

A quarter century ago there were very popular pop psychology books by a guy named john gray whom I believe is still alive on the difference between men talking about problems and women talking about problems with the claim of an unusually accurate stereotype is men, especially tech men, mostly talk about problems to fix them as best they can (however poorly that may be) and women mostly talk about problems to air their grievances and de-stress and if they wanted a best effort repair, being strong women they'd have already done it themselves so men should F off, shut up, listen, and not tell them what to do. The above is a gross and inaccurate summary based on failing memories of an entire series of pop psych books from a long time ago, but I don't think I totally messed up my summary. At least not on purpose.

Anyway looking at the article thru 25 year old pop psych glasses in a crazy extended mash up, the author is bent out of shape because worldwide whenever problems are discussed the only response is the "manly response" of trying their best to fix the problem, however incompetently. So far the author and quarter century old pop psych are in sync. They diverge at my suggestion that perhaps attempting the "womanly response" of actually listening would be worth a try when confronted with a problem. Or maybe 25 year old pop psych is best left in the dustbin of history. But it is interesting to think about a bit.

I've made a lot of money for longer than many HN readers/posters have been alive by fixing stuff. When I've gotten really stuck, sometimes its helped to actually listen rather than wielding keyboards and screwdrivers and soldering irons. Just saying anecdotally the obsolete pop psych stuff is occasionally not totally useless.

Note I'm not trying to ignite a flamewar about women in tech. Especially since "shut up and listen" isn't necessarily only useful when talking to women, and I'm not even claiming that a quarter century old pop psych worldview is true or universal or even generally useful, although I am claiming its super creepy deja vu to hear a modern retelling of part of the story, admittedly with different conclusions. Its just that the author describing (male) techies trying to solve the worlds problems totally sounds like something John Grey would have written. I wonder if the author read the same books and quite possibly unconsciously is channeling John Grey or something.

</comment><comment><USER21> We changed the baity title to a representative sentence from the article.

<comment><USER22> Unfortunately, the current title doesn't convey that the article is about the criticism of technologists' views. How about something like "A critique of technology-based solutions to human problems"?

<comment><USER21> That's true. Happy to change it again if anyone can suggest a more accurate one. The "tire iron" thing is over the top, though.

<comment><USER22> Thanks. I've updated my previous comment with a proposed title.

<comment><USER21> I'm loath to use language that doesn't come from the article itself. It's almost always possible to find something in the text that works (if not a title, then a representative phrase).

Edit: I've taken another crack at it. (Previous title was "Technology's primary effect is to amplify human forces".) Part of the problem here is that the columnist seems to want to turn this into a dramatic, even violent confrontation (spike-studded tire iron? how silly). It's not clear at all that Toyama holds such views. Indeed his actual quoted words are more moderate than the frame the columnist is putting on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Aiming an Axe at Asinine Alliteration.

</comment><comment><USER24> > the critics are often Luddites who struggle with their toasters

I think that's just a coincidence and not really the cause. You can find luddites nowadays on hn who understand technology.

> if you're a concert pianist, it doesn't mean that you have any special > knowledge about how to cause social change.

Haha such as Victor Borge, Tom Lehrer, and more.

What about actors like Schwarzenegger and Regan?

Recovering Alcoholics try to change the people around them too. Sometimes even if the people around them don't have the same problems.

The humans are the problem and not the subset of human techies.

I admire the Toyama for blowing the whistle, but I think he's nearly as blind as he was before realizing all this.

<comment><USER25> I believe this criticism is answered here: "Of course, such thinking, endorsed by no one beyond the world of technology, would be of limited force. But the technologist worldview has become widely influential."

No one's listening to recovering alcoholics outside of AA and maybe their families. Schwarzenegger, Reagan, Borge, Lehrer—these are all individuals, influential in their own way, but not commanding entire social movements with uncritical followings. (Well, maybe Reagan did/does.)

<comment><USER24> I suppose we are both technologists. Did you think that giving poor kids in India an ipad would solve some of their problems? I didn't think that, and I still don't. You can find credulous dopes that do, but this implicates dopes and not technologists or does it?</comment></comment></comment>


Despite backlash, Microsoft sticks with controversial "GVFS" name - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@DuroSoft/despite-backlash-microsoft-sticks-with-controversial-gvfs-name-57d6e175af9c <comment><USER2> It seems as though changing to GitVFS or GitFS would be so much simpler, and more descriptive to boot. I hope they handle this better. Mozilla had a similar problem with Firefox in the early days. Initially it was called Phoenix, but the Phoenix BIOS people objected. So the product was rebranded Firebird. The Firebird DB people had a problem with this, and while Mozilla WAS taking this seriously, they didn't communicate with anyone outside for nine months before rebranding as Firefox. It would have been trivial to let the Firebird people know a rebranding was in process, but instead the argument went on for months with Mozilla looking really bad in the process. Mictrosoft should really rethink this.</comment>