Hacker News Disease - <AUTHOR> http://mattmaroon.com/2009/05/01/hacker-news-disease/

<comment><USER2> Matt, good fellow that you are, this post had many excellent points about the music industry and how last year's executives were incented to _not_ get it.

However, I must take issue with you singling out "intelligent" people for thinking other people with expertise are idiots. I invite you to have a drink (on me) at any sports bar in Toronto and we will trip over people who think that various professional players, coaches, and analysts are idiots.

And likewise if we seat ourselves on any transit bus or train we will have no trouble earwigging a dozen conversations in which people with no experience or expertise in government will denounce their elected representatives as idiots, and then toss in the unelected civil servants as being twice as dumb.

I suggest what you are seeing on HN is a fairly common phenomenon. So while I liked your insight into the executives and their entirely rational behaviour in beating a reluctant and bloody retreat, I take issue with the title.

It's simply Peanut Gallery Disease.

<comment><USER3> Very good point, and I'll be taking you up on that whenever I get back to your lovely city.

<comment><USER2> I look forward to it. And by the way... The people second-guessing Toronto's Mayor David Miller? Obviously they're idiots!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The curious thing is, this post is an instance of what it complains about. Matt is not so far as I know a formally trained psychologist. So to the extent he's right, he disproves his own argument.

The truth is, while intelligence isn't knowledge, it can be rapidly converted into it. In fact that would do fairly well as a definition of intelligence.

And in any case, credentials aren't knowledge either. Ultimately you have to judge any argument by what it says, not who said it.

<comment><USER5> "while intelligence isn't knowledge, it can be rapidly converted into it."

For subjects with depth, this is wrong. And I think that's part of the reason why HN discussions of many subjects with some depth (politics, finance, economics, legal issues, and so on) often seem shallow. I'm not an expert in any of those areas, and maybe my judgement is wrong. But I am an expert in the physical sciences, and Matt's post looks pretty spot on as a diagnosis of what's wrong with some of the HN threads related to the physical sciences.

None of this is to say that HN isn't still a great forum. But it remains at its best on the subject of startups and (to a lesser extent) related technical subjects.

<comment><USER6> I wholeheartedly agree. Intelligence can only be rapidly converted into _superficial_ knowledge. I've never heard of anyone who became an expert in Quantum Field Theory in a couple of years without having a background in Physics, that is for sure. I know people who became reasonably good programmers in a couple of years, though... but programming is more of a skill than true knowledge.

Hackers should focus on hacking and be more humble when treading on unknown territory, imho.

<comment><USER7> To get an idea of the amount of work required to gain "depth" consider these famous lists:

HOW to BECOME a GOOD THEORETICAL PHYSICIST

by Gerard 't Hooft

This is a web site (still under construction) for young students - and anyone else - who are (like me) thrilled by the challenges posed by real science, and who are - like me - determined to use their brains to discover new things about the physical world that we are living in. In short, it is for all those who decided to study theoretical physics, in their own time.

<http://www.phys.uu.nl/~thooft/theorist.html>

See also:

Herring Brain Box <http://large.stanford.edu/herring/brain/>

<comment><USER6> I knew Hooft's page already. Thanks for the other URL. I did some work on Experimental Physics years ago, then discovered that I was more into Applied Math. No plans to become a theoretical physicist, but I still read some stuff on it once in a while, just for kicks...

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure if the t'Hooft page is a joke or not. Looking over the Herring Box is a humbling experience. A common hope that a lot of children have is that even though there was no way that anyone could _read_ every book in the library it might still be possible learn everything by choosing only the good books. The herring box makes me feel like even this goal is impossible. People really are discovering valuable knowledge at a faster rate than any one individual could learn and comprehend it all.

<comment><USER8> _I'm not sure if the t'Hooft page is a joke or not._

It is no joke. Nobel laureate in physics t'Hooft wrote the page to give serious advice to people who aspire to understand theoretical physics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hacker News Disease? This issue is as old as the oldest of: armchair coaching, backseat driving, parody ballads, cocktail parties, in-laws, or op-ed columns.

What he's really saying is that he doesn't like hearing people's opinions when they're not experts, especially if they're condescending, dismissively rude, or disrepectful. I feel the same way, but not enough to write a long post on it-- I'm more of the type to provide my own comment for temperance or move on to a thread where people are being less judgemental and know-it-all-ish.

I think his best bet, on a site like Hacker News, is to avoid reading the comments for border-line inappropriate posts about YouTube takedowns, Disney acquisitions, international trade, etc. All the hacker-specific topics are bound to have some experts floating around here, though.

When there's not an expert on a given topic, I do like to hear polite advice from other smart people that may have had an alternative idea in mind that didn't occur to me. This site has always been good about that. It's one of the benefits of having smart people floating around since knowledgeable people aren't always handy.

<comment><USER10> I hate the term "judgemental". It is almost as stupid and self-contradictory as "opinionated".

<comment><USER11> So much for maintaining objectivity...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not a disease at all. Playing around with objects and concepts that you don't understand is perhaps the very definition of "hacking".

Why dabble in things that you don't understand? Why treat the world as if it were one big toy? Why pretend that duct tape is a reasonable substitute for the correct part, as designed by an expert? Because it's fun! And educational. As many people know, a good way to learn how to do things correctly is to begin by doing them wrong, and then let experience, the laws of nature, trial and error, the advice of friendly, expert onlookers, and the guidance of your peers guide you toward something better.

Obviously you can take this too far. There's a difference between armchair lawyering and actually practicing law, just as there's a difference between armchair quarterbacking and actually playing quarterback. But every quarterback started out as someone having fun, and every expert, trained lawyer got their start by being an inexpert, untrained, full-of-crap college sophomore with an interest in the law. Hacker News isn't a law firm. Its knobs aren't connected to anything vital. [1] Why not fiddle with them? You might learn something.

\---

[1] How would you recognize someone on HN who probably _is_ a real lawyer, or law student? They take pains to explicitly _disconnect_ the knobs before they frob them, by saying something like: "I am a lawyer, but this is not sound legal advice. Blah blah blah highly meaningful defensive boilerplate blah blah blah." Usually the disclaimer is three times longer than the post itself.

<comment><USER8> _How would you recognize someone on HN who probably is a real lawyer, or law student?_

Often enough, by their very reluctance to contribute opinions in threads that are discussing legal issues. I AM a lawyer (although I'm not particularly experienced about many of the legal issues that show up most on HN). I often don't hazard an opinion at all, because the thread leaves me feeling I have too little sure knowledge of the relevant facts to offer an opinion. Someone who spouts off an opinion instantly after reading an "Ask HN: . . . ?" post is, as you correctly suggest, almost certainly not a lawyer.

<comment><USER12> _I often don't hazard an opinion at all, because the thread leaves me feeling I have too little sure knowledge of the relevant facts to offer an opinion._

Which is very sensible of you, of course. As a professional, you have to act with a certain degree of professional detachment and care. Your words _matter_ in ways that mine do not. You charge _money_ for your words, because they have a power and authority that mine lack.

But what you seem to be saying is that we, the general public, have a choice: We can discuss legal issues amongst ourselves. We can not discuss them at all. Or we can abandon the discussion of legal issues to lawyers and people who can afford lawyers.

Does anybody really think it would be a good idea for the public to just be quiet and leave the issues of IP law to credentialed experts? Isn't that just how abominations like the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act happened in the first place? It turns out that large media companies can afford to hire a lot more experts than the EFF can. And that just because a lawyer understands more about law than you do doesn't mean he's more inclined to use that power in your interest than you are.

Lawyers understand the law. But citizens _make_ the law (very indirectly, of course). And citizens suffer the consequences of laws. So it's our job to care about laws. Even if our mental models of how they work are a little... rough.

(Of course, it would be great if the public had better grounding in legal education, just as it would be great if we all knew more quantum mechanics. This is why so many people love Larry Lessig in the first place -- the guy writes books for non-lawyers.)

<comment><USER8> _Of course, it would be great if the public had better grounding in legal education, just as it would be great if we all knew more quantum mechanics._

A lot of lawyers do volunteer time and effort to educate the general public about the law, and I am one of them. I write mostly about the law of parental freedom in education, my chosen legal specialty, and I welcome questions about that area of law from anyone.

I think people are more accepting of expert opinion about quantum mechanics than they are of expert opinion on the law because most people have preexisting lay opinion about the law before they seek advice. But, yes, we should all be talking with one another in a democratic republic as the law- making powers revise laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "People tend to overvalue the skills they have, and undervalue the ones they don't. Even the most knowledgeable, intelligent people around are rarely experts in more than one or maybe two unrelated subject areas."

Very good point. I might add that people whose expertise provides a comfortable income are especially likely to think of themselves as experts on things they know nothing about. I hope that they learn to contribute their intelligence to doing nonprofit community service and solving intractable social problems.

<comment><USER13> I found that quote interesting because I've always considered myself to feel exactly the opposite. Okay, I can create / run / manage every part of a website from the ground up, but people who really get Calculus make me feel retarded. What about scientists who create new chemical compounds and molecules and crazy stuff like that? Way over my head. Quantum Physicists? Forget it. Doctors? They have to fix bugs which involve an essentially innumerable number of variables!

I feel there are all sorts of industries and occupations that are far more difficult to learn and require far more intelligence than my skills in programming, design, and systems administration. Most I think I could probably learn and excel at, given a long enough timeline, but others I feel are likely beyond my grasp. I see no way I could ever become a Mathematician, for example.

<comment><USER14> I think it is significant that all of the professions you mentioned are science based. I feel exactly the way you do about engineering and science jobs, but less rigorous fields do not have the same effect on me.

I think this might be why we are all willing to judge the efforts of politicians, managers, etc - what they do seems to simply require having an opinion and acting on it. In the sciences, though, we know that you have to be really knowledgeable to be successful.

<comment><USER13> I feel the same to an extent; I wonder why that is.

At the same time, I don't claim I could walk off the street and build a better house than a construction worker, or fix broken pipes better than a plumber. I couldn't even be a better politician; they are better at social hacking such as faking sincerity. I have a low threshold for that stuff. Still, I consider sciences harder in general than those, even if that isn't actually true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As the one who directly responded to Matt about the Lessig issue, I still stand by my statement. Indeed, many of the thoughts in Matt's post did in fact occur to me, and I still decided to make the argument that suing Lessig is a bad idea. I find it amusing that Matt decides to believe with no evidence that my views and the views of others are not thought out.

On a different note, I agree with the idiocy of arguing about fair use without any background in it. You will however see that I never brought up fair use in my writing. All and all, I'd say that Matt has badly mischaracterized the discussion that went on. I invite you to review it for yourself.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=586154>

Also Matt, something to consider about the Lessig issue. Even if he loses, Warner's loss will be bigger. The more exposure the public gets to big business's senseless ideas about copyright, the quicker it will be killed off. When did RIAA's suits against individuals stop? When some court cases got serious publicity. The RIAA won the court cases in question, but what mattered more was the fact that the public was exposed to what was going on. The current iteration of copyright law and precedent is outdated and eventually it is all going to change. In the mean time they should just keep quiet and earn as much money as they can off of an outdated system. Suing Lessig strikes me as an effort to change the direction copyright reform is moving in. That simply is not going to happen.

</comment><comment><USER16> "That's what they did, and it's what I'd do too, and I have standardized tests to prove that I'm at least not an idiot. But everyone in the tech industry just assumes they're stupid and they don't get it."

Well, as you say, the alternative is that they're knowingly using the legal system to bully people into bankruptcy to stave off having to actually produce value for the money they're getting. We may _hope_ that they're ignorant or stupid, because the alternative is worse.

</comment><comment><USER17> Why did you call this "hacker news" disease? While I read the article and enjoyed some of it, you're still making a point that has been said many times before: smart people tend to think of themselves as smart, and think of others as inferior to them. This happens in a lot of places, it's not just hacker news. So I'm still a bit puzzled as to why you did this--it seems these days that sticking "hacker" or "hacker news" in front of a title is meant for readership and less to make a thought-provoking point that might not have been made before.

</comment><comment><USER18> Very thoughtful post, thanks for sharing. One observation:

If, as Matt describes, an executive at a major music label realized the emerging trends of the industry but chose the path that would maximize his stock options over the next 2-3 years at the long-run expense of the stockholders, this would be illegal, and not constitute the "no-brainer" decision that Matt describes.

Executives have a fiduciary duty to stockholders to place long-run stockholder interest above their own. In fact, if this was found to be the case, he would most likely lose these options as well as suffer other legal ramifications. (disclaimer: not a lawyer, I just read blogs about lawyers :) You can argue that executives rarely do this, but nonetheless the legal obligation exists. I would like to think that those executives who take the attitude of "i just want to get my money and run, who cares about the long-term state of the corporation" is the minority, rather than the majority.

<comment><USER3> Does the law specify a timeline? Even if it did, would it be possible to prove that the CEO knowingly optimized for 3 year gains at the expense of 20 year ones?

An executive's options sink or swim with the company's share price. If a company's investors really want their executives to focus on the horizon, they should adjust compensation accordingly. Lengthen CEO tenure, and give stock/option grants with 10 year vesting periods.

People will always act in accordance with their own incentives. That's the fundamental principle behind the free market. The only way to get a CEO to focus on your long term success is to tie his long term success to it too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's also the huge mistake of assuming that people and organizations always make well-considered and rational decisions. This is particularly true with strategic decisions made by large organizations.

<comment><USER20> The argument is fundamentally predicated on this point, which I find extremely naive. I can and do (and did) extend benefit of the doubt, but the idea that we must always assume that people are acting rationally, and that mattmaroon is justified in getting on a soap box when people don't make that assumption, is not justified.

(Disclosure: I was linked as one of the cite examples, which I've replied to there as well: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=586345> )

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I read it, and kept wondering if he was saying that if we're not formally trained in whatever the issue is, we should assume it's valid simply because the people involved are formally trained.

It seems that it would be dangerous to take this view very far. Experts should be given weight in a discussion because they have better arguments, not simply because we assume they know what they're talking about...

I may have missed some subtleties, or the whole point :).

</comment><comment><USER22> Matt, you might be interested in Thomas Sowell: [http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/author/thomas_sowe...](http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/author/thomas_sowell/)

His entire political philosophy is anchored on the observation that knowledge is dispersed and that no one person's knowledge of the world entirely eclipses that of 12 random people.

</comment><comment><USER23> Let's not forget the culture we thrive in, both here at Hacker News and in tech in general.

Many of us are mavericks, non-conformists, even revolutionaries. We may be that way by nature, may have become that way in the field, or more likely, a little of each.

Why? Because it works.

I know people who have slaved away in the same "paradigm" for years, with a cynical view of the world, and an "acceptance" of the status quo.

But not so much for us hackers. Especially those of us starting our own businesses. It's not only acceptable to go against the grain, it's often _necessary_ for great success.

That certainly doesn't give us carte blanche to question _everything_ , but questioning _too much_ without benefit of background and experience gives rise to "Hacker News Disease".

That's the price we pay for pushing the envelope too hard and too often. We overstep our bounds once in a while and have to be put back into our place. Frankly, I'd rather have it this way and ruffle a few feathers along the way than to never make a mistake and fade away into oblivion.

</comment><comment><USER24> Don't all of these points apply to discussions of, say, "energy healing"? My view of energy healing is that it's obvious bullshit. However, there are a number of very smart people who believe in energy healing, and they have studied energy healing much more extensively than I have.

</comment><comment><USER25> Speaking of the law, I would advise anyone, whether interested in becoming a lawyer or not, to buy and work the problems in LSAT practice workbooks. It is a serious exercise in forming logically coherent arguments that will provide across-the-board mental benefits.

</comment><comment><USER26> Symptoms I'd add:

1) Recency bias

2) Mistaking "Easy to have an interesting debate about" for "interesting".

That last one's a fine line, so to clarify, an example might be "Twitter's impact on X" vs. "Friendfeed's use of MySQL to store schemaless data"

</comment><comment><USER27> "When you look at it from that perspective, it's a no-brainer. You sue everyone and everything you can. If a 65 year old woman's grandson downloads a CD of songs from Sesame Street on her computer, you sue her, sue the kid who spawned the little bastard, take the grandkid to juvenile court, and sue everyone on their block just for being within a reasonable proximity."

Perhaps not a _stupid_ course of action, but certainly a scummy one. So the sue-happy recording industry CEO isn't stupid; he's just a scumbag.

<comment><USER28> OK, I can understand Matt's rationale for the RIAA suing file-sharers, but I'm having trouble applying the same reasoning to them suing a person who doesn't own a computer at all and is, in addition, dead. ([http://www.betanews.com/article/RIAA-Sues-Deceased- Grandmoth...](http://www.betanews.com/article/RIAA-Sues-Deceased- Grandmother/1107532260))

Experts though they may be, sometimes what looks like a screw-up is actually a screw-up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The examples that Matt points out are more examples of tech culture groupthink than a phenomenon that is unique to hacker news. That is, they are ideas that are widely and passionately agreed upon within the culture to the point that disagreeing with them makes you look like a curmudgeon. This happens in lots of cultures. It is not something unique to hackers, smart people, or Hacker News.

</comment><comment><USER30> Wow HN(!) what a discussion. its.. fun.. sort of. Matt: if the philosophical underpinnings of the country you live in.. (e.g. the constitution) agreed with you, we'd have no JURY SYSTEM brother :). believe me, i (and many readers here) share your sentiments often, but respect for formal knowledge must come from knowledge itself, not prior experience or credentials. Also, as a former tech analyst who spent a LOT of time working with the labels in 1998-2000 on DRM and MP3, i can offer you this perspective: the music "industry" as we know it, only existed for a small amount of time between the first, nearly accidental, record sales, and the advent of the digital age. Musical artists as a group have never truly profited much from recorded distributed music - they have made money from live performance.. where, as you look at recent trends with companies such as LiveNation, things are predictably returning to. The execs yachts will be repo'd and among their jury may be the very people they prosecuted.

rob

</comment><comment><USER31> This actually strikes close to home. Two of the closest people to me are lawyers, and they hate discussing law with me.

The problem as I see it is that I'm interested in what the best law/result would be, and they're focused on what's likely to happen in the real world. An abstract problem for me is making sausage for them. Of course, they might believe that the sausage is also the best result, and that there is no platonic ideal solution, or they might have just learned not to care, or something else. I don't know.

In any case, if you believe in being a responsible citizen in a democratic society, you should spend some time thinking about how government should work, and part of that is how the legal system works.

If you think that's all a pile of BS we teach our kids to keep them innocent, you probably aren't wasting your time on thinking about these kinds of problems, as it's just how lawyers justify their existence (in terms of making a living).

</comment><comment><USER32> Startup CEOS are forced to learn to be proficient in numerous areas. The 80/20 rules applies well startup CEOS. They don't have to spend years in school in a specific subject to have great use of it. There is no a way a person can be an expert in programming, design, finance, marketing, and so on. However being an expert doesn't mean you have utilized your knowledge in the most useful ways possible.

Good startup CEOs are able to recognize what is worth learning and how to tie different aspect of his knowledge together. I would be willing to take advice in may areas from a good Entrepreneur.

This is why take advice from PG on everything from how to be a great programmer, entrepreneur, angel investor, and much more.

</comment><comment><USER33> with respect to point #1, not having knowledge shouldn't preclude intelligent discourse with full disclosure of knowledge. intelligent discourse tends to lead towards knowledge acquisition.

</comment><comment><USER34> "I can't tell you how many times I've seen someone post a legal question on Hacker News, and get dozens of replies from people who aren't attorneys."

The only problem I could see with that is if the one posting the legal question has any expectation that he'll get replies from attorneys. I think that's unlikely.

The part about dozen of replies from people who aren't attorneys is completely expectable given that it's Hacker News, not Attorney News.

<comment><USER35> Not to mention the fact that "legal" posts on HN are more likely to be prefaced with "I'm not a lawyer, so don't take my advice seriously".

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> _The CD is plainly marked for extinction, to be replaced by digital downloads, most of which will be traded from one person to another for free._

You made me realize that we don't really _know_ this. It does look like it, but what if networks and PCs (Windows) really were universally filtered? (Which is happening) It's unlikely, bad - but possible. Prediction can be tricky, particularly of the future.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think the reason for the upper quartile underestimating their abilities relative to the others is related to the fact that bright people tend to overestimate the intelligence of people they have casual contact with. Which would result in lowering their own self-appraisal relative to the others.

</comment><comment><USER37> Doesn't he mean mistaking knowledge for intelligence?

<comment><USER38> No. There is another interesting issue there, but in this case, it is really smart people thinking that smarts trumps domain expertise (knowledge).

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is a boring, windy, piece of garbage writing.

</comment><comment><USER40> Any chance I can earn points for not responding?

</comment><comment><USER41> Pretty good, and true in its way, altho like many things on HN, it just touches the surface and doesn't go further down to the core issue.

Which is:

Intelligence (capability) is not knowledge (facts), AND knowledge (facts) do not equate to wisdom (judgment).

Many people here on HN pretend to have knowledge they don't, that's true. But they also do not have or exercise wisdom, or reason.

For an example, just go back to that thread where I baited that misogynist jerk time_management into revealing his true colors.

He may have been stating facts up to that point, and people defended his statement of facts or debated their factualness, but nobody else questioned that _selection_ of "facts" -- and the motive behind stating them.

If only other people would study the art of rhetoric.

</comment><comment><USER42> I felt I needed to comment on this because it hits too close to home and I qualify - 1) dealt with IP vs. another music lable (hint!) 2) we have our own IP lawyers 3) the music labels want you to assume they have a "battery" of lawyers 4) they probably do but they're entangled in other litigation issues or they don't want study the finer points so they issue pre-emptive attacks or don't do anything at all 5) even on our side of the fence, the best IP lawyer/s don't want to study the finer points of the argument (you'd wish they'd do that) 6) in the end, it becomes a question of will and who has the war chest. I understand where Matt is coming from but it looks different when you're neck deep into this.

</comment><comment><USER43> There was a similiar discussion not long ago about 'everyone is a damn expert'. It could be described as copy-and-paste sindrome. Read in one tab of the browser and write in the next, without digesting or even understanding. Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V for faster scoring.

</comment><comment><USER44> Honestly, the technology sector is better than every other sector

</comment><comment><USER45> I only skimmed "The Future of the Recording Industry", but it seems to be a case of exactly this.

"Though not mathematically proven (which would be virtually impossible) it logically seems as if DRM must actually cost artists and labels money on recorded music sales."

So recording industry execs could increase short-term revenue - which is what they care about - by changing their strategy. How does this sit with "they're not stupid, and they know the situation far better than you"?

And now you claim that the industry is doing what you advised/predicted. So it seems that intelligent people can analyse situations where they are not in possession of as many facts as other intelligent people, and still come out with a more correct answer. (Or at least, an answer that appears more correct given the industry's actions at the time. Possibly it already had the correct answer, and was just moving slowly.)

Maybe these intelligent people will be wrong more often than not, but looking at incentives: if you're right, you look like a prophet or at least get to feel self-satisfied. If you're wrong, everyone forgets; you lose nothing except the time spent thinking and writing, which was probably fun and educational anyway. You probably don't even need a reward for being right to make this worthwhile.</comment>


Advanced Topics in Programming Languages: A Lock-Free Hash Table (2008) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ-719EGIts <comment><AUTHOR> This is a fantastic talk that demonstrates the design of a Java-based Lock- Free hash Table using "Compare and Swap" (often called "CAS" by the speaker).

There are very few memory barriers / fences, and the "State Machine" analysis was new to me. It seems like the "State Machine" methodology might be broadly applicable to other concurrent data structures.

This talk is for those who are already familiar with atomics, so its best to familiarize yourself with "Compare and Swap" at very least before watching: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compare-and- swap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compare-and-swap)

It might be old, but hopefully someone out there finds it as beneficial as I did.</comment>


Getting people to buy imperfect produce - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/17/success/imperfect-produce/index.html <comment><USER2> Is the Ugly Fruit problem a myth? The crop scientist Sarah Taber argues it is a myth: [https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/2/26/18240399/food- waste-...](https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/2/26/18240399/food-waste-ugly- produce-myths-farms)

I'm too far removed from the situation to make an educated call but I am inclined to believe her.

<comment><USER3> Article doesn't contain the word 'taste', which is my take on the problem. I'd rather people were breeding produce for taste rather than being pretty on shelves and easy to transport. In Italy, produce on the shelves is generally not as pretty as here, but it tastes better.

Other than that, though, valuable information.

<comment><USER4> Personally, I agree. I think that's a food culture and logistics situation. Most of these kinds of efforts are on reducing food waste, which is in line with shelf-stable, unbrusable food.

I have suspicions that because of the young age and the frontier culture of much of US history, the US doesn't have much of a fresh/healthy food culture. I also think the past couple generations of microwaved/processed foods (which has their own benefits) and more recent improvements in year-round food has erased what little cultural knowledge of seasonal and local foods we had. There are a few movements, like Alice Waters, making some change, but I think in general it's very lacking compared to many other countries.

Farmer's markets are where you can find fresher, more seasonal food. They often carry a lot more varieties. Including ones that either aren't familiar enough to the average person, or lack the shelf-life and durability of the mainstream varieties.

<comment><USER3> I definitely think things are changing for the better in the US, slowly but surely. When I was a kid, "parmesan cheese" was that green shit in a can.

Now, even here in remote, small-ish Bend, Oregon, I can get real Parmigiano Reggiano at Costco at a reasonable price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My wife and I tried Imperfect Produce for a few months, and we were very disappointed with it. For one, an alarmingly large portion of our produce came expired (not just bruised or misshaped or anything like that, but outright expired, even moldy in some instances). And if that wasn't enough, we consistently had mistakes in our orders—things we ordered wouldn't arrive at all, with no notice, and we would sometimes get produce we didn't order. Their customer service issued us a refund + credit in every instance, which makes me think this is a regular occurence, but after the about the 5th mistake we decided we had had enough.

And even if everything had gone swimmingly for us, their selection is incredibly inconsistent, and their prices on some items were barely better than those at our local New Seasons (which isn't known for low prices). Plus, the delivery time is a pretty large window that ends late into the evening, so you can't rely on the produce for your dinner that day.

I love the idea, but they have a lot of issues they need to sort out first. I personally was put off by it and would never try it again or recommend it to anyone.

<comment><USER6> At that point, you should just buy a real CSA share, instead of Imperfect Produce, which is sort of trying to be a fake CSA.

[https://www.localharvest.org/csa/](https://www.localharvest.org/csa/)

<comment><USER5> I haven't looked into it in years, but last I checked, CSA shares where I live are really expensive for what you get. And at that point, I'd rather just get my produce at the local New Seasons—it's much more consistent and convenient, and the quality of their seasonal produce is really good in my experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a myth in the USA.

Ugly food doesn't make it to the store, it becomes something else which has a longer shelf life.

Food past it's prime goes into the dumpster, without any chance of a discount or price reduction.

Source: The organic potatoes I tried to buy from ALDI which were very sprouted because it was the end of winter begining of sprint and the spuds wanted to grow into plants but the clerk's manager told me, "I can sell them to your for full price, or I have to throw them away."

Writing an email to ALDI corp yielded no response on this matter.

I am a gardener, I could have prevented food waste in this situation.

<comment><USER8> Employees selling discounted goods to friends is a big source of losses for many retail shops.

That's why they normally have very rigid discounting rules. Discounts are allowed on the day of expiry for example, and the discount percentage is based on how many hours till closing time.

If the goods are bruised and not yet on the day of expiry, they don't allow discounting, although the product can be binned.

Some food gets wasted, but employee fraud would be far larger any other way.

<comment><USER9> Employee fraud can actually be an employee perk. I worked at a grocery supermarket before. No perks or discounts are offered to employees. Sub quality food is actually a great perk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very little produce actually goes to waste... What do you think stoufers puts in their frozen stews? Where do you get carrot cubes in your soups? Where do you get bananas for your strawberry banana smoothies? Where does tomato paste come from?

The nicest looking stuff is put on the shelf and the ugly stuff is just ground up into your everyday food items.

<comment><USER11> I'm holding a dataset (not from the US), let's go over it. Numbers are in %weight from initial produce. Loss is an actual final loss - products left in fields.

Cucumber: 30%

tomato, strawberry, peppers: 10%

Eggplant: 20%

Kolorabbi: 25%

<comment><USER12> Gleaning needs to make a comeback, perhaps? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleaning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleaning)

Edit: Not trying to be flippant, I really think people should promote this. If some produce gets regularly left behind, let people come in to pick it up and either use or distribute it.

<comment><USER11> Gleaning was great when we had villages with small fields interleaved. It's impractical and irrelevant the way modern industrial agriculture is structured.

<comment><USER6> Gleaning is still a thing.

[http://endhunger.org/gleaning-network/](http://endhunger.org/gleaning- network/)

[https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/usda_glea...](https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/usda_gleaning_toolkit.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't think most people have a problem with eating imperfect fruit. If I picked an apple from my tree and half of it was bad I would cut it in half and eat the other half. But if I see a half ruined apple at a supermarket I will pick a good one because they are both the same price.

<comment><USER11> The more relevant aspect is people who see half-ruined fruits at a grocery step outside and go to another one. It's mainly the big supermarkets who refuse to buy mixed quality produce.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I get that it's a problem that farmers breed pretty and durable produce at the expense of flavor, but my understanding is that "imperfect produce" is generally sorted and used for juicing and other processed ingredients. They wouldn't care about aesthetics of raw food.

</comment><comment><USER14> Spam. This company is such a ripoff. You get mostly normal produce at average prices. There's literally no point. Just go to the grocery store...

<comment><USER6> > The company, they argued, is not in the business of food waste so much food > surplus: It buys excess products that farmers can't sell to supermarkets, > but could sell to restaurants, canned and processed food companies, or, as a > last resort, donate to food banks. "The stuff in these boxes is not ending > up in a landfill," co-author Max Cadji, the founder of Phat Beets Produce, > told me. "They're just tapping into the same marketplace as the guys who > make shredded carrots."

[https://newrepublic.com/article/152596/hungry-harvest-box- ug...](https://newrepublic.com/article/152596/hungry-harvest-box-ugly-produce- help-planet-or-hurt-it)

<comment><USER15> Isn't this very similar to how Grocery Outlet operates?

<comment><USER6> And farmer's markets, but... quietly.

[https://www.tampabay.com/projects/2016/food/farm-to- fable/fa...](https://www.tampabay.com/projects/2016/food/farm-to- fable/farmers-markets/)

<comment><USER16> That was a very well written and researched article. As a Florida produce consumer, thank you for linking that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My fiancee specifically looks for and buys the imperfect produce when she goes to the market. She sees it as an easy way to reduce food waste as there are a lot of people who specifically avoid ugly vegetables.

<comment><USER18> I'll have to train my mind to overcome my subconscious bias to ugly fruits while looking at other criteria.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> 200,000 customers is 200,000 customers more than me.

I like the founding story - inspired by the food waste at a canteen - but that waste has not always been wasted. Before we got into a problem feeding cows to cows the slops from canteens were fed to pigs.

And we all know that those ready meals are not made from ingredients as beautiful as those shown on the labels.

In some parts of the world you get the likes of Lidl, Aldi and the market in town selling 'Class 2' produce - the ugly stuff. But a big box of Class 2 veg in your home - how long is that going to last before you need to throw it out?

Spending $115 to get a box of the stuff three times a week for a family of five works out as the organic large box. The non-organic stuff does not add up to that, so either they are on the premium large box and chomping the stuff down or they are adjusting their order a lot.

Maybe the money to be made is in customisations to the box?

But they still are not in profit and have taken $47 million in funding. I know they have to have the vans but can't vans be financed as you go rather than paid for up front? And isn't the 'ugly' produce going to be discarded anyway so therefore tantamount to being 'free'? I am surprised that anyone has invested so much in this uber-esque land grab.

People need to do all their shopping for groceries and not just the veg if one of the green goals is to have less driving, but all these veg delivery things just add more vans and lorries on the roads.

Call me cynical but I doubt that they are serving working class poor families that can't afford cars. I suspect they are facilitating another way for people to consume and another VC funded runway with exit plan. They could sell out to Amazon Whole Foods if those 200,000 people come back for more.

</comment><comment><USER20> I noticed yesterday that the produce I buy from the asian grocery is cheaper than the supermarket.

It's also bigger. I wonder if the produce gets sorted into smaller stuff to the supermarkets and bigger to the discount produce retailers.

</comment><comment><USER21> Supermarkets seem to change their approach too. Woolworths has it's own brand of "odd bunch" [https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/search/products?searchTer...](https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/search/products?searchTerm=odd%20bunch) which is the imperfect produce at lower prices. You can buy it right next to the standard ones.

And from the customer side, that's much easier than a subscription service.

</comment><comment><USER22> This service is great if you are constantly cooking and/or consuming the entire box. It became difficult to keep up with orders and 2-3 boxes went to waste. I stopped after realizing exactly what I wanted to consume and just went to store when I needed it. It was great in that I lived next to a store. Felt like I was "contributing" by using this service but it appears as other commenters have said that this food normally did not go to waste in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER23> My problem with buying imperfect produce is that I cannot tell what imperfections are a problem (mold, rot, contains insects, etc.) and I don't really trust a corporation not to sell me something unsafe/disgusting.

(I say disgusting because even though I realize that something like fruit containing insects likely wouldn't harm me that's something I'm just not okay with.)

</comment><comment><USER24> We use a service like this. We live in a rural area and going to the grocery store is a 20 minute drive. Getting organic produce delivered to your door at non organic prices is a win win for us. We stock up at bulk stores for more shelf stable goods and only go the grocery store a few times a month.

</comment><comment><USER25> "People generally didn't buy something in grocery stores that was dinged, scratched or otherwise marred. They'd eat stuff that had so little nutrition that they might as well eat the box but woe-betide if the box was crushed."

\-- John Ringo, "Live Free or Die"</comment>


Windows 10 will be a free upgrade even for non-genuine users - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/03/windows-10-will-be-a-free-upgrade-for-genuine-and-non-genuine-users/

<comment><AUTHOR> Anyone else sense the gradual, continuous change in the way MSFT has been evolving under Satya Nadella? Four years ago, I wouldn't take a second look at MS news, and now it seems every couple weeks brings some rather interesting new thing they are trying out.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is the kind of thing i dislike. It reeks of "if you're not the customer you're the product. Why would anyone make something that cost millions free unless they could gain something else from it.</comment>


Show HN: Meet the rockstar programmer keyboard layout - <AUTHOR> http://nikolay.rocks/2016-01-23-rockstar-layout <comment><USER2> Have you seen the Programmer Dvorak layout?

@ &[{}(=*)+]!# @ %7531902468`

Top row without and with Shift

<comment><AUTHOR> i did, seems a bit strange to me to be honest. do you use it? can you give some feedback?

<comment><USER2> I do use it. It makes a lot more sense if you use something like LISP or Clojure because (parens are king).

I really enjoy programmer dvorak. As you say, re-training copy and paste is a bit of a task, but my hands feel far less fatigued typing on dvorak than on Qwerty. Now I am type-fluent in both due to necessity and public terminals, but prefer to use programmer dvorak. I really like the numerical layout because there is some rhyme and reason: Left hand from middle out: 91357%, right hand from middle out: 02468` ... so it's a lot easier to type numbers because of that break-up. I don't mind having to hit shift for numbers because it makes for faster coding.

<comment><AUTHOR> interesting. thanks for the feedback, maybe I will give it a try some day</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should Apple buy Dropbox for seamless doc sharing on iPad? - <AUTHOR>

I've read a lot of comments and reviews on the iPad. One of the major criticisms has been sharing documents and webpages between laptops, desktops, iPhones, and iPads. Should AAPL buy DropBox so it could offer a more seamless user experience? <comment><USER2> Why buy dropbox when it is cheaper and easier to just fix some of the problems with the existing MobileMe service? Stealing a page from dropbox and similar services, Apple should just make a basic MobileMe account free and let you buy additional services as needed. The service is already integrated into the desktop OS, it is partially integrated into the iPhone OS, and if they just added some polish and back-end resources they would have a decent start towards cutting off Google encroachment into their platform.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting comment because I've read that one of Apple's visions with their mobile devices is to get rid of the traditional hierarchical filesystem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh really? I had not heard that, I'm going to have to google around for some articles on this, I'm interested to read up on it. Thanks for the heads up!

<comment><USER3> I was referring to what I read here: [http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/01/29/apple_reinvent...](http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/01/29/apple_reinventing_file_access_wireless_sharing_for_ipad.html) but let me know what you think.

<comment><USER4> That is _not_ how filesharing is implemented on the iPad. I built an iPad app based on the initial (beta SDK) description & I basically gave up on using the file sharing feature once I saw how incredibly incompetent the current implementation is. Apple really dropped the ball here.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


DropQuest 2011 - <AUTHOR> http://www.dropbox.com/dropquest2011

<comment><USER2> A nice side benefit of this was discovering <https://www.dropbox.com/edu>, which doubles your space bonus from all referrals. I'm at 13.8gb now with a free account.

<comment><USER3> And I am at, what I think is, the current 20GB maximum. Weeeee :) Can't see how I would use that space though. It is too little space too keep my music, video or photos, and too much to store anything else.

<comment><USER4> I symlink all the music I care about into Dropbox, which gives me access to the music I listen to most at my office and on the road, but doesn't mean Dropbox hsa to have sufficient space to store ALL of my music. This hybrid works well for me personally.

<comment><USER2> yeah i store all of my materials for school, including high res versions of all of my textbooks so I can look them up and print things if needed. Also about 2 gb of audio lectures that are not otherwise mirrored online. I wish it had the space to store all my music, but I don't really have the money at the moment for a paid account. someday.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Me: "Cool, that was fun, and I got another gig of space."

My wife: "Yes, much better than forcing the kids to open Dropbox accounts."

(Which I did once, when I needed to share a big file!)

Doh!

</comment><comment><USER6> Walkthrough: <http://dropbox.pastebin.com/J5SkmzL6>

A lot of people are stuck, and some might just want the extra 1GB, so I thought this could help. Of course, it contains spoilers.

(I am not the creator of the list, I just found it on twitter after I completed)

<comment><USER7> I wasn't able to solve a couple of puzzles without the walkthrough, but am wondering about the solutions anyway. Will the Dropbox team or anyone else post some explanations afterwards?

<comment><USER8> [http://erroneus.tumblr.com/post/2765996497/dropbox- dropquest...](http://erroneus.tumblr.com/post/2765996497/dropbox- dropquest-2011-guide-free-space-for-dropbox)

Another blog post with slightly better explanations, found this link on IRC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Whew. That was exhilarating. And damn OS X Preview and Color Meter for not showing the right colors. (I was too late for any of the prizes but I'm very happy about the 1GB. Oh, and the scavenger hunt itself was also fun and cleverly designed.)

<comment><USER10> Ah, this really bugs me everyday... anyone know how to get round this? Currently I strip out all color profile data, but don't know if thats the "right thing to do" for images going online.

<comment><USER9> Color management is a pain. I would love to get my hands on some kind of simple guide.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There goes productivity for the rest of the day...

</comment><comment><USER12> Their blog and forum are constantly refusing connections……

<comment><USER13> yeah :( doesn't seem like they thought this one through. now i'll never know what asian cuisine they enjoy

<comment><USER12> it's quite frustrating when you know about the asian cuisine but cannot open the page!!!

<comment><USER14> Use google cache :P

<comment><USER10> It doesn't work – the referer is checked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I bombed out at <https://www.dropbox.com/votebox/3712/frozen-yogurt> and wasted my entire day. I commend Dropbox for this awesome Saturday.

<comment><USER15> Any tips on 21? (The one about shared folders and the blue picture.)

<comment><AUTHOR> hex code of pic, share the folder

<comment><USER15> I created a folder named the hex code of the color, shared it with the email address hidden in the picture, and nothing happened.

Maybe their servers are overloaded?

<comment><USER15> Definitely didn't include the #. Simply created a folder named 1F75CC, shared it with email@example.com and...nothing. Can't imagine what I'm still doing wrong, so I'm chalking it up to a bug on their end now.

<comment><USER16> It worked for me. The only thing I did differently was including the contents of the previous zip file (the image and the step21.txt) in the shared folder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is a really creative way for dropbox to engage their customers.

</comment><comment><USER18> Login only link :(

<comment><AUTHOR> <https://www.getdropbox.com/login#register> Free registration, but part of the hunt is to created a shared folder with hex. You would need to install the client and utilize your free space.

<comment> X-Istence You can create a shared folder from the web interface.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> <https://www.dropbox.com/dropquest2011/wall_of_fame>

</comment><comment><USER16> Very cool. Can anyone confirm that getting a 500 from nginx when trying to go to the forums for step 2 isn't part of the puzzle?

<comment><USER20> Correct, getting 500 errors from the server is not part of the puzzle.

<comment><USER21> What about getting 500's from the blog?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This thing was like trying to get support from Google. Step Two divide a number. Go to the forums. Then what?

<comment><USER23> With the exception that this is supposed to be, y'know, fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have a sneaking suspicion that the finish line isn't, even with the hall of fame and all that. Oh well.

</comment><comment><USER25> Dropbox <3 You ;)

</comment><comment><USER26> Dropquest can be completed in 60 seconds. Here's a list of the minimum number of steps required to do so: <http://mathiasbynens.be/notes/dropquest-2011>

</comment><comment><USER27> In case anyone has finished and is looking for more puzzles just for fun, you can try the original <http://www.deathball.net/notpron/>

No prizes though :(

</comment><comment><USER28> Full folution and walkthrough: [http://b4it.tumblr.com/post/2775347938/dropbox- dropquest-201...](http://b4it.tumblr.com/post/2775347938/dropbox- dropquest-2011)

</comment><comment><USER15> Officially giving up. Level 21 seems to be buggy - I've shared the folder multiple times with email@example.com and nothing shows up.

<comment><USER29> Same problem, but I cheated my way past -- hints at the irc channel (including a link to solutions to every problem, but I was on the last one by then ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Ughh...no clue how to play Sodoku! Any hints on that one anyone? I seriously don't know how to play it.

<comment><USER31> <http://www.sudoku-solutions.com/>

I used this. Knew the basics of Sudoku but eh, bit tedious to try and actually work it out for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is 28 supposed to have a 'bug'? Or is that the clue? Hmm..

</comment><comment><USER14> Hey guys, I'm totally stuck on 39.. any advice?? :S

<comment><USER33> you mean 29?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is it possible that Step 17 is platform dependent?

<comment><USER15> Find the HTML code for the color.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I got that, with hex and all, but when I use digital color meter I get a different reading on each of my monitors, thus the question.

<comment><USER34> Use an eyedropper in GIMP, PS, etc. to get the digital value (don't read off monitor)

<comment><USER5> Funny Acorn didn't work but PS did. Go figure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Stuck on Level 19...how far is everyone else?

<comment><USER35> Stuck on step 8. I found the secret message but I can't figure out what to do with it.

Edit: Doh! I analyzed it too deeply when it was staring me in the face.

<comment><USER20> Same here. Been trying everything since I found the message 30 minutes ago.

<comment><USER15> There's a secret word...look at the first letters of each line. Go there and look carefully at anything visual.

<comment><USER36> gah its down

<comment><USER37> Damn. I thought the fact that it was down was part of the puzzle despite how silly that seems now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> stuck on 27...

</comment><comment><USER38> Epic!

</comment><comment><USER33> help with 29?</comment>


Apple Watch Review: Bliss, but Only After a Steep Learning Curve - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/technology/personaltech/apple-watch-bliss-but-only-after-a-steep-learning-curve.html <comment><USER2> > my wife told me that I seemed to be getting lost in my phone less than in > the past. She found that a blessing.

This is the first time I've heard the value-add of the watch over the phone phrased in a convincing way.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is such garbage:

> Similarly, the most exciting thing about the Apple Watch isn't the device > itself, but the new tech vistas that may be opened by the first mainstream > wearable computer. On-body devices have obvious uses in health care and > payments. As the tech analyst Tim Bajarin has written, Apple also seems to > be pushing a vision of the Watch as a general-purpose remote control for the > real world, a nearly bionic way to open your hotel room, board a plane, call > up an Uber or otherwise have the physical world respond to your desires > nearly automatically.

Sorry, but how does being able to open your hotel room or call an Uber from your watch, instead of your phone, some kind of new revolution? Are there people who enter their hotel rooms or hail an Uber so often (i.e. multiple times in a single hour, every day) that pulling out the phone is an action worth optimizing?

There's a lot of potential in near-field communication features...such as a hotel door unlocking as I walk past it. But that has nothing to do with a wearable device; that could be accomplished with a phone as it is.

<comment><USER4> I think the author is describing how the smartphone became revolutionary for uses that were beyond its initial incarnation.

If you look at the sentence in context, the preceding paragraph says it is the smartphone that "became the basis of a wide range of powerful new tech applications, from messaging to ride-sharing to payments." I think the author was trying to say that having the world respond to your "desires nearly automatically" might open similar "new tech vistas." That's how I read it anyway.

Also, please consider the new Hacker News guideline against gratuitous negativity.

<comment><USER5> I understand the reasoning behind curating a community to promote the kind of discourse users desire, but the type of self censorship that this comment promotes unsettles me.

I feel like the "negativity" that HN is so concerned about could be dealt with through down votes. The "gratuitous negativity" edict feels Orwellian, and I question its value vs unintended consequences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm surprised (or perhaps I shouldn't be) that the one review to make it to HN so far is the one that is gushing the most about this watch.

Yes it's the NY Times, but this is a tech gadget. I would have expected a NY Times review to be lower down the pecking order here.

edit: Refreshed HN and now I see the Verge review. Oops.

<comment><USER7> Weird, I saw the Verge review at first, but after refreshing I see NY Times</comment></comment>


Things I hate about Git (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://stevebennett.me/2012/02/24/10-things-i-hate-about-git/ <comment><USER2> Once you get the essence of git (objects, graph, commits as snapshots etc) everything becomes really easy. You don't need to memorize all command just need to understand some basic concepts.

And some points about the article. Git is a framework actually, you need some workflow to use it in a team. So git _requires_ a lot of discipline from all team members. You can't just "commit" as in subversion, you _must_ understand what are you doing. So you can't directly compare git with something like subversion. And git ≠ github.

Some points are valid: bad and unclear documentation, no "included" workflows, bad command line UI. Author also didn't mention authorship issues, it's a real pain.

<comment><USER3> Any recommendations for resources on workflows for GIT?

I mostly write ML code as a single author and there's a lot of experimenting going on, so often I sit at the end of the day and write a commit message along the lines of "dicking around" or "updated some files" and feel like I might as well just sync my stuff with Dropbox and not have to worry about all the GIT commands.

<comment><USER4> This is possible the best overview of a number of tried and tested workflows: [https://about.gitlab.com/2014/09/29/gitlab- flow/](https://about.gitlab.com/2014/09/29/gitlab-flow/)

They're naturally recommending the GitLab Flow, but a good approach is to read through it and choose what might work for you. The important thing is to keep in mind that there are countless variables that will likely be different for each team -- team size, release schedule, build process, testing etc -- which mean that each team's flow will be somewhat specific.

And as for commit messages, I have developed a system which helps me write more meaningful messages with just a little bit of discipline: instead of summarising what I did, I try to figure how would I give instructions to someone to do the same. So I have things like "refactor MyBigFunction to individual methods" or "change SomeSetting to use float instead of int" or "implement NewClass".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "it's complicated": yes,it is. it's a product designed and built for people who deal with complex systems and information models on a daily basis; they're the equivalent of a professional pilot... not your feeble, senile grandmother. You wouldn't buy your feeble senile grandmother a 787, chuck her in with no training and simple expect her to fly to Bali, would you?

"I don't like it and here's a heap of examples which lead me to arrive at my preordained conclusion that it's completely broken": cool, you've found issues. If you can, fix them and share. If you can't or won't... well, there are other tools for doing version control and perhaps another might suit you better. If you have to work with people that use git, I'm sure there's some way you can generate patch sets and still get stuff done.

<comment><USER6> There are two categories of possible criticisms: the model, and the implementation.

Fixing the implementation means changing code, improving APIs (e.g. local/remote branch delete).

Fixing the model means finding an everything different system. Yes, a graph- based VCS more complicated than a linear one. But it also matches realities of collaborative software development. And reality is complicated.

As you might guess, I'm sympathetic to criticisms of inconsistency or unnecessary effort, but I believe Git (and other DCVS) to have the completely correct idea about collaborative text versioning.

<comment><USER7> My problem is not the theory. That's easy to learn.

My problem is implementation.

<comment><USER6> Ah, the easy one then.

Which DVCS implementation do you like the most?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The thing that gets me every time is the git sub-commands which have multiple orthogonal uses, without so much as a command line flag to differentiate them.

        git reset abc  # unstage file `abc`
        git reset xyz  # switch to commit `xyz`

or:

        git checkout mybranch  # switch to branch `mybranch`
        git checkout myfile    # remove any local changes to `myfile` since the last commit

\---

Maybe this would work great in a typed language where I might have `reset(File x)` and `reset(Commit x)` with different signatures... but for a CLI where everything is stringly-typed? Not so fun.

Also, god knows what happens here if there's a branch name with the same name as a file...

<comment><USER9> Many command line tools have this problem, that's why the -- operator exists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not anywhere near an expert with git, but I'm proficient enough to use it effectively with my normal workflow. I like git, but admittedly the bar was set really low by subversion.

This article raises some valid points, though. One that resonates most with me is that git exposes its entire model. I really wish there was a git-lite that just had the few basic commands that junior developers can grok and not fuck up so I wouldn't have to waste my time explaining the same stuff for the umpteenth time.

<comment><USER11> If you want a straight-forward mental model that works with git, try Gitless. Note, you will end up learning some new commands that simplify things, and you'll have to re-learn git if you work for someone that wants you to use the nitty-gritty, but every convenience has it's downside, and you just have to weigh that against the immediate benefits.

Edit: Thanks to lyall for the links. He posted below. [1]: [http://gitless.com/](http://gitless.com/) [2]: [https://people.csail.mit.edu/sperezde/oopsla16.pdf](https://people.csail.mit.edu/sperezde/oopsla16.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Linus is not a UX guy, and it shows.

<comment><USER13> However, he and many git users enamored of his style are perfectly willing to be condescending to anyone who points out the problems. Which itself is a problem.

<comment><USER14> Is hg easier to use? Or any other DVCS not created by such a bad UX practitioner?

<comment><USER15> I was a major user of hg from 2007-2012, before I succumbed to network effects. The UX of hg was more intuitive for users coming from SVN and CVS.

<comment><USER16> > The UX of hg was more intuitive for users coming from SVN and CVS

I second this. Trying to go from SVN to git left me confused and frustrated, while I found it much easier to switch to hg. Once I had been using hg for a while, I found that I had absorbed enough of the difficult/confusing stuff that switching to git was relatively painless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's been discussed on HN before, but gitless[1] is worth checking out. They've taken a structured approach[2] to finding git's most confusing UX "idiosyncrasies" and tried to address them. As a user of regular old git I can't personally speak to how successful they've actually been but it's interesting nonetheless.

[1]: [http://gitless.com/](http://gitless.com/)

[2]: [https://people.csail.mit.edu/sperezde/oopsla16.pdf](https://people.csail.mit.edu/sperezde/oopsla16.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER18> Git is pretty difficult to learn, but the customizations it allows are amazing.

To get a "fancy oneline log" output, add the following to your `~/.gitconfig`

        [alias]
            ll = log --graph --oneline  --decorate --date=short --all --pretty=format:'%ad %h %Cgreen%an %Cred%d %Creset%s'

then run

        git ll

It's great when rebasing your way out of spaghetti-commitlog situations.

<comment><USER19> I believe --oneline and --decorate (and possibly --date=short as well) are redundant when specified with --pretty=format.

I personally have this in my ~/.config/git/config:

        [alias]
            lg = log --graph --pretty=format:'%C(auto)%h%d %s %Cgreen(%ar) %C(bold blue)<%an>%Creset'

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> All fair points. So what can we actually do about it?

<comment><USER21> Use something better? Like Fossil?

I find Fossil way, way more friendly and useful for individual users and teams.

[http://fossil-scm.org/](http://fossil-scm.org/)

<comment><USER20> Well, I meant how do we actually make _git_ better? It has become and absolute standard and is not going away anytime soon. Everyone knows it, and there's a huge ecosystem around it (last but not least Github). I actually think there's a lot of benefit to that kind of standardization. Personally, I actually like git, but that doesn't mean it can't or shouldn't be improved. I don't see switching to some relatively obscure alternative (or even to mercurial) as a satisfying solution. Of course, anybody who wants to do it should feel free, but that limits your possibilities for collaboration with the community at large.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Git was inspired by BitKeeper, which is now open source. If you want the power of git without all the crappy UI, check out BK.

www.bitkeeper.org

</comment><comment><USER23> I think git was written to be distributed, hence merge being a front-and- center feature, but it is used as with a centralized repo (github/gitlab).

This leads to the UX that was initially planned becoming unwieldy. I think most organizations default to no-merge, rebase-and-commit-only mode, with master acting as the central branch to push to.

Hence what git needs to improve it's UX to a newcomer is to help define a repository to be in a "no-merge", and then help translate user's following actions:

git init

<make changes>

git commitchanges

<this lists current changes, and tracked, untracked files, and asks which are to be commited, and makes the commit>

git push

<pushed changes to origin .. automatically rebases, and prompts the user for any conflicts>

git pull

<pulls changes, automatically rebases, and prompts for any conflicts>

I'm convinced the entire workflow related to merges, and non-centralized features are what cause UX confusion for a new user.

</comment><comment><USER24> A lot of these complaints seem based on the fact that Git has features SVN doesn't and those features add complexity. Git really isn't that hard to learn. The trick is to take your time. If you try contributing to projects with complicated repos before you have a grasp on all the complexities, then yeah you're gonna have a bad time.

I could write a similar article about how FTP is so much easier to use than SVN and it would be equally silly.

That is not to say that Git isn't inconsistent and the docs are terrible, but there are good tutorials out there. If I were more helpful I'd have a link to one here but I'm on my phone.

</comment><comment><USER25> The primary goal of software development is to solve problems, not to perform elaborate rituals with version control systems or other tools (IDE's, Makefiles, etc.).

The primary function of a version control system is to recover earlier versions of the software in rare error situations where it is hard to figure out what has gone wrong. Backup to something that worked and identify the change that caused the problem.

For most software developers, a version control system should appear very simple so they can focus on solving the end user or customer or their own problem.

check-in <file | folder> o if the file is new for the project, the VCS should ask do you want to add this to the project? o check-in <folder> checks everything in the folder (directory) all at once. If the folder is new: do you want to add this folder to the project?

checkout <file | folder | project> [ <version> ] o checkout <file> checks out the most recent version of the file <file>. o checkout <folder> checks out the most recent versions of the files in <folder> and its sub-folders o checkout <project> checks out the most recent version of the entire project. The project can just be the specification of the top level folder! o <version> is an easy, human readable/understandable specification of the earlier version, a file sequence number such as 1.43, a folder or module sequence number, or an overall project sequence number (all generated automatically by the VCS -- at least by default).

        All sorts of pain and suffering is avoided by dividing the project into folders for different components and contributors and/or teams.  These check-in/check-out their folder independently.

The VCS should be very simple and take care of everything, such as maintaining a sequential overall project number as well as file sequence numbers, automatically behind the scenes.

For a single developer or a team in the same office or building or for that matter office park with a fast network, that is all you need. For remote collaboration -- such as China and USA -- then you might need one or two command to push/pull the code to remote repositories; this too should be simple!

KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm working with a small team that uses CVS and I'm I'm in charge of recommending more modern version control software. I've been learning git since it seems to be the new standard, but after reading this, I don't think we have the time it will take to learn it. Is there another open source vcs that would be a more natural upgrade to CVS?

<comment><USER27> Specifically for the requirement "Is there another open source vcs that would be a more natural upgrade to CVS": the answer is hands down Subversion for that requirement. If you want distributed or "more modern" but not git, perhaps Mercurial or Bazaar, but they're less prevalent choices.

<comment><USER26> Thank you! Subversion does seem like a great fit. Mercurial seems like it might be easier to use (Facebook uses their own customized version [1]), but we don't need distributed at this time.

[1] [https://changelog.com/posts/facebook-mercurial- git](https://changelog.com/posts/facebook-mercurial-git)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> angry-hacker I started using git as a hobbyst with the help of smartgit. It somehow made me realize what is git all about the 200x better than any tutorial. I use command line too, but things like diffing, adding files etc. it just makes life easier. Seriously you're a masochist if you don t use it. It'd free for personal use!

</comment><comment><USER28> A thought: if you think you can make git better, why not just write a DSL (domain specific language) on top of it?

I mean, it already does everything under the sun, so there's a challenge for anyone up for it!

<comment><USER28> Even better - write a chat bot for git hahaha :D make it so it can help you get out of tricky situations and not have search stackoverflow all the time

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I have not had this problem recently because moved from Windows to Mac, but at some point about 8 years ago was the way git handled windows line endings was truly maddening.

<comment><USER30> To this day I never understand how to handle line endings correctly. I mean, when I have issues, I would need to google, and then forget again. Fortunately I don't have to work on windows that much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's weird to see an exclamation point after "detached head state". Checking out a specific commit is easy to do in SVN too.

</comment><comment><USER32> Considering that svn is a half implemented VCS where everything is a branch but merging is a royal PITA I'll take Git's warts.

<comment><USER33> Yeah, at Bazaarvoice we invented our own tool to keep information about branches for simple rebase and merge of feature branches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> "In the beginning, all you want are results. In the end, all you want is control."

</comment><comment><USER35> The crucial criticism:

 _The fundamental promise of any version control system is this: "Once you put your precious source code in here, it's safe. You can make any changes you like, and you can always get it back". Git breaks this promise. Several ways a committer can irrevocably destroy the contents of a repository:_

        git add . / … / git push -f origin master
        git push origin +master
        git rebase -i <some commit that has already been
           pushed and worked from> / git push

That should not be possible.

Mandatory XKCD: [1]

[1] [https://xkcd.com/1597/](https://xkcd.com/1597/)

<comment><USER36> A previous criticism was that you had to know about a set of things including the reflog in order to use git. The reflog is one of several ways to undo the "irrevocable destruction" above. Complaining about both issues feels like double-dipping :)

Also, I suspect that many of the "hosted git" implementations out there prevent this from happening by default. I know that both of the ones I use in my day job (gitlab and bitbucket) do, but I'm not 100% certain it's a default as opposed to something our ops guys did. In any case, far from impossible. EDIT: see boaardwalk's post.

Also, svn won't protect you from `rm -rf /` on the server, while git will, which is pretty cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Git CLI, aka designed in hell!!

</comment><comment><USER38>
        Things I hate about Git (stevebennett.me)
        31 points by rbanffy 2 hours ago

Could do with 2012 in the title:

        Posted by steveko on February 24, 2012

<comment><USER39> Yes. Added.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'd like git to be aware of the grammar of the files it's diffing and merging.

It could use neural network for this for all I care. Anything but merging lines as if they contained completely meaningless string of characters.

<comment><USER40> Hi. Thanks for downvote. Although pointing me to some smart mergetool would be even more appreciated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I've been using git for 7 years now. Never used anything else for version control (besides visual source safe which I try to forget).

Never felt the need or desire to try anything else.

<comment><USER41> Genuinely curious as to why I'm getting down voted without explanation for stating my opinion.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd not downvote your comment but I'd like to point out you have a biased perception. You clearly state you never used anything else and then you say you never felt the need to use anything else.

It's not unlike a programmer who only knows GWBASIC saying they feel no need for recursion because they never wrote any code that relied on it, or named functions, because subroutines can do that. Or a C programmer who thinks class-based inheritance is superfluous syntactic sugar.

I don't mean it as an offense, mind you, but your lack of experience in DVCSs makes your opinion suspect. Spend a month actually working with Bzr or Mercurial and then, having been exposed to different solutions to the same problem, your opinions will be much richer.

<comment><USER41> My point wasn't that the others weren't good. It was that git has always met all my requirements and I never ran into any issues that made me want to try another solution.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hating What You Do - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14586131

<comment><USER2> What I hope: the comments on this article don't become yet another conference of blowhards and apologists.

The frequency at which I've seen comments paraphrased as "So you hate your work; welcome to life, now shut up and get back to it," is disheartening. I am surprised the number of people, even on HN, who see this mutual antagonism as not just a self-fulfilling prophecy, but one that can and will sustain itself indefinitely.

I honestly don't think it will. In fact, I think it already failed some time ago, and we are feeling the effects of it right now.

The article brings up the number of people who are, or at least feel that they are, stagnating at their current jobs. It also draws the connection between the feeling stagnation and a reduction in productivity and competitiveness. But stagnation isn't typically a temporally local phenomenon; a person does not usually become redundant or stagnant overnight. However, their realization that they are redundant or stagnating can occur overnight, often after ignoring the warning signs for as long as they consciously can.

But productivity isn't just affected by the feeling of stagnation and vulnerability; it is affected by the actual stagnation that an expectation of mutual loyalty causes. The worker can become lazy with the expectation that the employer will keep them on anyway, provided they aren't completely incompetent. This is a considerable threat if the worker doesn't give a damn about their work past the paycheck; what incentive do they have to be anything but as lazy as possible. They were clinging on to their jobs before, but the recession made them acutely aware that they were doing so and how tenuous their grip has now become.

This apathy also negatively affects productivity and competitiveness. But no one notices, because it is business as usual; at least it was. But now employers have started to notice, but they are solving the wrong problem; they assume the problem is one of insufficient data or insufficient supervision. They never assume that one or more of their underlying assumptions about their workforce, and what makes them most effective, might not be true and might never have _been_ true.

I hope that people wake up to the larger lesson this turmoil is wanting to teach all of us. Unproductive people working in what are effectively sinecures are not a sustainable way to run an economy based on the production and distribution of wealth. Eventually, someone will ask where all this wealth is, and won't abide a waffling, noncommittal answer.

<comment><USER3> _the actual stagnation that an expectation of mutual loyalty causes_

So you're basically advocating that employers and employees should not be loyal to each other, so there won't be any feelings or expectations of loyalty that can negatively impact productivity. That completely ignores the positive effects of loyalty, which are well documented.

You're being an armchair economist, that has identified a single relationship that he uses to explain everything.

<comment><USER4> _advocating that employers and employees should not be loyal to each other_

Unfortunately I have yet to personally see an example of a corporation being loyal in my lifetime. On the contrary I have seen the trust of family members abused by their employers.

I do believe in positive effects of loyalty, but that loyalty can only function when it is mutual. The reality I have seen for myself and my family is that corporate loyalty does not exist. Individual humans can be well- intentioned but organizational behavior is the ultimate arbiter of the relationship.

One definite misfortune of the current state is that the power relationship between employer and employee is unbalanced. In theory that relationship is a capitalistic trade of time for money, but the severing of that relationship is far more disruptive to the individual. I think much of the resentment found among employees results from the loser's choice between a poor employment situation and the uncertainty and upheaval of changing employers.

Only I can take responsibility for my own well-being.

Edit: The one counterexample I have seen is SAS. That privately-owned company treats its employees extremely well. Its turnover rate is also nonexistent.

<comment><USER5> _In theory that relationship is a capitalistic trade of time for money, but the severing of that relationship is far more disruptive to the individual._

Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. A startup I'm consulting for recently lost an employee, and it hurt us far more than the employee.

In general, a recurring trade creates wealth. Ending the trade tends to hurt whoever is getting the lion's share of the wealth created. In the case of unionized workers, that tends to be the employee. In the case of high value workers, that tends to be the employer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> On the topic of France Telecom, 24 suicides in about 18 months is a shocking number being used by unions and activists to make their case.

It's shocking that they could be so dishonest by presenting a statistically normal suicide rate as high. The suicide rate in france is 26.1/100,000 for men and 9.4/100,000 for women. France Telecom has about 100,000 employees, so in 18 months we'd expect about 26 suicides (assuming it's 50% men, 50% women).

[http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/suicider...](http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/suiciderates/en/)

Further context: most of the workers at France Telecom can't be laid off and are simply being moved from one job to another as part of a reorg. This causes stress, because workers might have to learn something new! Sacre bleu!

A chart of working hours by nation (look who is 4'th from the bottom):

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yearly_working_time_2004.j...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yearly_working_time_2004.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm glad to see the Economist raise this subject. I've known so many people who hate their jobs, it really does seem like it should be higher up on the political agenda than it is.

This article brings up two particularly interesting points for me.

Firstly, do performance measures increase productivity? Apparently, they actually decrease productivity, at least if productivity involves creative problem-solving: <http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html>

Secondly, can standard corporations genuinely recognize and implement the 'human side' of management, as the article says they should. I would argue not. The standard corporation is owned by a large number of shareholders with no personal connection to the corporation and no interest in anything other than profiting from their shares. Because of this arrangement, it is inevitable that profit is the only value that counts in corporate management. If management adopts a 'touchy-feely' approach it can only be justified if this is found to increase profits, and it would do nothing to prevent their being discarded as soon as it becomes profitable to do so. A genuine recognition of the 'human side' of management would be a recognition that humans are ends in themselves, not means to an end. But in a standard corporate structure, employees are inevitably just cogs in a profit-making machine.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the TED link. I agree with the statement that Dan states in the video about results oriented work spaces. I would like (more) to work for a company that offers this as part of the corporate culture. I think it can only work in the context of managers that can actually set realistic goals though which seems to be tough in software development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Serious advice: if you feel suicidal because of a company reorg, _DO NOT_ start a start-up.

<comment><USER9> Another consideration may be failure on one's own terms, versus being fired on a whim:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happiness_economics>

<comment><USER8> If a company reorg (something most competent people can navigate without too much stress) makes you suicidal, I'd say that the wealth of impending disasters in a start-up (only some of which feel under your control most of the time) will drive you insane much more quickly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 However you might feel about the topic, 24 work-related suicides at a single company in just two years is staggering. Do any US companies have statistics like this?

<comment><USER10> France Telecom has 187,331 employees (wikipedia). It might be "a single company", but it's 9 times bigger than Google...

Even if you restrict it to France (where I think these suicides occured), that's still roughly 100,000 employees, so 5 times Google.

Of course it's sad and France Telecom should definitely improve the situation. Not a single employee should commit suicide because of work. But it's not staggering.

France suicide rate is somewhere around 17 or 18 in 100,000.</comment></comment>


My YC Application for Veed.io - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/document/d/10nhzTADDQC4JzztGI15cBAxDzoQSunLKJhGlgiGGq8Y/edit?usp=sharing <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all, I was not able to post this all here as there is a word count limit so it's on the google docs.

Any questions, suggestions, feedback or you just want to say hi? I would love to hear from you all.

Sabba</comment>