Your Office Chair Is Killing You - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/10_19/b4177071221162.htm

<comment><USER2> I am going to share my experience, hopefully this will help someone: about 3 1/2 years ago, I went through a brief period of long hours at my desk (I had just previously had a hiking accident, dislocated shoulder, broke bones, and found that a period of long-hours and hard work took my mind off of recovering from shoulder surgery).

During this brief period I developed blood clots in one leg from sitting too long, and was really lucky to survive two large pulmonary embolisms. I often share this story as a warning to others. BTW, I average wilderness hiking for about ten hours a week (gentler walks when recovering from surgery) and that was not enough to prevent the blood clots.

Now, I use a 20 minute timer to get me up and walking around for a few minutes, 3 times an hour. Frequently standing and walking around is a recommended habit! Bad sitting habits almost killed me, and I needed over two years to mostly recover, so please take this seriously.

<comment><USER3> I also recommend a timer. I use water for my timer - drink lots and keeps you going to the bathroom often. Unfortunately, this isn't good for solving hard problems that involve much concentration, but my back often needs a break.

<comment><USER4> I use Gnome built-in timer (see keyboard options). You can use WorkRave.org, or similar program (google for "RSI break program").

<comment><USER5> Xwrits is good, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Older people who move around have half the mortality rate of their peers._ Well that proves something. No chance of mixing up causation there.

<comment><USER7> I assume that's sarcasm?

<comment><USER8> If you are healthy enough that you can more easily move around, you may also live longer.

If you have assorted health issues you may also not be inclined to move around much. The "not moving much" may be the result of other health issues, not the cause of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've tried sitting on the Salli Twin (<http://salli.com/eu/Frontpage>) for a few minutes and am seriously contemplating buying one soon. It made me sit proper and comfortable from get-go. On normal (even expensive) office chairs I tend to numb my lowerback/legs at some point of the day.

Bonus: It's also been built with men's genitals in mind (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HIt3D7Ivfc>).

<comment><USER10> Hi, I created an account just to respond to your post. I used a Salli MultiAdjuster for a couple of months. I'm a guy, and my genitals couldn't tolerate it for more than half an hour or so. Fortunately, I didn't pay to use the chair. A local high-end office furniture store let me borrow it. I'd recommend looking for a similar store in your area. I still haven't found a good chair.

On a non-chair related note, to those of you who take breaks, I strongly recommend that you consider taking exercise breaks rather than simply walking around or stretching. Google "grease the groove". I'm currently GTGing pull- ups and overhead kettlebell presses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm awaiting the arrival of a Herman-Miller Embody, which is my engagement present! It's very expensive, but...er...'worth it'. Meaning I've trialed it for a week and loved the feel and the way it subtly encourages movement while sitting. It simply blows away anything I've sat on, including the Aeron they loaned me until it arrives. The fiancee got a ring - but surely a really good chair is much more worthwhile for a developer who works from home a lot?!

[http://gizmodo.com/5071571/herman-miller-embody-review- the-b...](http://gizmodo.com/5071571/herman-miller-embody-review-the-best- chair-weve-ever-sat-on)

<comment><USER7> I was excited about the Embody, but when I tried it for a couple of hours I found that the whiffle-tree structure, which equalizes the pressure across the back, allowed my lumbar spine to collapse into C-shape. I was so disappointed...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't know why every chair has wheels. I hate chairs with wheels. Every office I've been to, I end up sitting on one leg, the other stretched out. And I can't push my feet against the wall and lean back because of the blasted wheels! But when I go home to my beloved $20 chair with no wheels, no armrests, and only lower back support, I feel great.

<comment><USER13> Chairs with wheels make it easier for me to lose any ergonomic positions I had found, because of the wheels.

What chair do you use at home?

<comment><USER12> It looks like this: [http://coastalmoonwalks.com/db1/00033/coastalmoonwalks.com/_...](http://coastalmoonwalks.com/db1/00033/coastalmoonwalks.com/_uimages/chair.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I mentioned this in another thread, but I got this stool: [http://www.amazon.com/Safco-3442BL-Extended-Height- Swivel/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Safco-3442BL-Extended-Height- Swivel/dp/B001MS719M/ref=pd_sbs_k_3)

I'll switch between reclining with it(I have a multi-level home desk setup and can stretch my legs out), sitting at the edge of the seat with the legs on the ground, sitting using the footrest, or standing.

</comment><comment><USER15> Get a treadmill desk:

<http://frog.posterous.com/the-treadmill-desk-returns>

<comment><USER12> How feasible is this? Can anyone share their experiences?

<comment><USER16> I am going to use a "Twist Board" at one of my desks, and a compace elliptical at the other. Both desks are going to be converted to standing desks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I bought a standing desk couple weeks ago. [http://www.amazon.com/Euroflex- Stand-2dUp-Mobile-Workstation...](http://www.amazon.com/Euroflex-Stand-2dUp- Mobile-Workstation-Charcoal/dp/B000BGHSGC/ref=pd_sbs_k_1) So far I feel much better when I work standing, but my body still needs to get used to it. So I sometimes work sitting at the regular desk.

</comment><comment><USER18> Sit in any any regular chair, and don't lean back. Simple, similar to the "stool perch" recommendation, free and universally available.

<comment><USER16> This is something I'm skeptical about in this article. I know that I can sit in such a way as to give my spine an S curve. However, I also know that I inevitably curve my back if I am sitting down for long stretches of time.

<comment><USER19> I bought a Swopper chair to use at home. I would say it definitely helped me sit up straight at home.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I can't believe that some ergonomics researchers are actually endorsing my crazy idea of setting up a treadmill and walking while working.

Maybe I have to try that now. It's a pity that treadmills are so pricey.

Incidentally, the ability to move around in different positions while reading is a major reason I bought the iPad.

<comment><USER21> You can often find great bargains on used exercise equipment, as it's often bought and then rarely used. Check craigslist.

<comment><USER16> What about one of these instead of a treadmill?

[http://www.amazon.com/Stamina-40-0045C-InStride- Electronic-S...](http://www.amazon.com/Stamina-40-0045C-InStride-Electronic- Stepper/dp/B000AMX3AM/)

The same company also makes a compact elliptical.

<comment><USER22> its impossible to cheat while standing on a treadmill, but those things you can just stop.

<comment><USER16> I'd call the ability to "cheat" a plus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Anyone have a good chair recommendation that doesn't cost $500? The stool concept struck me as a great idea, until I saw the price. (Maybe I should be in chairs?)

<comment><USER23> Here's the thing. Don't be put off by the expensive price of ergonomic chairs. I bought my Aeron chair in 2002 and have used it every day since. It's made a huge difference in my back and neck.

The chair cost be around $700 at the time, so that's <$100 per year or <$0.50 per day.

Also the chair came with a 12 year warranty. A couple months ago the pneumatic cylinder went out. I called a local Aeron deal and since I bought the chair from a authorized dealer, they sent somebody to my house and fixed it for free.

<comment><USER20> Yes. If you have the money, and you've already been to the dentist [1], spend the money on a chair. Either you will (god forbid) not live to be forty years old -- in which case you won't miss the money -- or your forty-year-old self will thank you. So will your fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty and ninety-year-old selves.

(This is not to say, by the way, that you might not experience chair-related pain in your thirties, or even earlier. But the odds do seem to go up in middle age.)

My only concern -- highlighted in the article -- is that my Aeron isn't enough. I'm amused to find that experts think the thing is too low -- it _is_ too low. But maybe that was partly because my pneumatic cylinder was about to go out -- mine just went. Fortunately my chair is also under warranty!

I'll look into these wacky standing chairs.

\---

[1] Slightly off topic, but: I wish, when I was in my twenties, poorly paid, and absent-minded, I'd gotten email every six months saying "the dental checkup you're about to skip will eventually cost you something like $10k or $15k in root canals and crowns. Or, alternatively, you could lose your teeth and spend forty years cursing your bridgework and dentures."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There was a pertinent discussion about height adjustable desks few days ago, see here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1285775>

I highly recommend them, if you can get one for your home office (or if you work in a office that allows desk of your preference). Some people go even further and get a treadmill underneath the desk, but I like to switch between sitting & standing personally. Standing up while working gives me an active feel to it, and I find myself avoiding procrastination since my legs would get tired if I were to spend hours surfing the Web (sure, I could adjust the height so that I can comfortably sit again, but the decision becomes more 'conscious' in a sense).

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't think chairs are the biggest problem facing office workers. Desks and monitors that don't adjust well are.

</comment><comment><USER26> I use a big inflated ball that sits on a base with coasters. I've seen some with back support, but mine doesn't. It forces you to keep some weight on your legs, like the perching mentioned in the article. But it has an additional benefit: you can't help but bounce a little bit. You're body's not designed to remain static for long. Overall, I feel less lethargic and less prone to neck and shoulder pain.

Most people have weak core muscles due to chairs with backs, so if you're going to try out this kind of chair, don't be surprised if you can't do it for more than an hour a day at first. Also, it may not be a good idea if you're tall, since the ball can only inflate so much. If the angle between your upper legs and your body isn't greater than 90 degrees it probably won't work for you.

I still have a normal chair. If you're working crazy hours, you need to give your supporting muscles a break sometimes.

Oh, and it's really cheap: mine was about $60 if I convert from my local currency.

EDIT: here's an example, but don't buy it online if you haven't tried it: [http://www.opentip.com/Sporting-Goods/Dynaflex-Fit- Chair-p-1...](http://www.opentip.com/Sporting-Goods/Dynaflex-Fit- Chair-p-1159204.html)

<comment><USER27> "Standing desks and chaise longues are good options. Ball chairs, which bounce your spine into a C-shape, are not."

<comment><USER26> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_Chair>

A ball chair is not an exercise ball chair. Looking at the illustration on Wikipedia, it's clear that a ball chair forces a C-shaped spine. Your spine will stay in an S-shape if you sit upright on the "chair" I'm referring to.

<comment><USER28> Seeing as that design is never mentioned in respects to ergonomics and certainly wouldn't "bounce" anything, I strongly suspect the quoted passage was referring to the inflated balls you sit on.

<comment><USER26> You're right. That's one of the disadvantages of linking to the printer friendly version of an article. You miss out on those "link" things that made this "interweb" thing famous:

<http://images.businessweek.com/mz/10/19/0509_chairs.pdf>

I'm just going to continue as usual, using the ball chair and alternating with a normal chair if needed. My spine feels great and definitely has a more natural shape when sitting on the ball vs. a normal chair.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have a Stokke Balans chair (e.g. [http://www.ergodepot.com/Variable_balans_by_Varier_p/v100.ht...](http://www.ergodepot.com/Variable_balans_by_Varier_p/v100.htm)) which works really nicely to align your spine and allow you to move around. Unfortunately the pressure on your shins becomes uncomfortable after a while, and if your back muscles are weak it takes a while to be able to use it for a while without fatigue.

</comment><comment><USER16> A cheap standing desk option:

<http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/00115992>

This can be setup with the desk surface at standing height. The smaller shelves become under-desk storage or monitor stands.

There is also a wider model of the same desk that currently goes for $159.

</comment><comment><USER29> 1.5 months ago I got rid of my chair and made my desk work at standing level. I love it. My body feels better. I can't ever foresee myself going back. I was originally going to buy a good chair but I didn't see the point when it seemed that standing would be better, cheaper, and allow me to be more flexible with my space.

<comment><USER30> What kind of work do you do?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Okay, how about sitting down on the floor with legs crossed and a small portable desk for your computer? This is exactly how I'm sitting now, and it's less painful than sitting on the cheap $20 plastic chair I own.

<comment><USER32> I'm curious about this too. Many Buddhist monks sit cross-legged (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitting#Cross-legged>) for long periods of the day, and I haven't heard of them having any health problems due to this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> There's also a PDF accompanying the article, with pictures of some of the chairs:

<http://images.businessweek.com/mz/10/19/0509_chairs.pdf>

Rant (stop reading if you're not interested): Posting it here, since we're all so obsessed with printer friendly versions of articles, because we can't stand clicking to view the second half of an article. Unfortunately, the printer friendly version doesn't contain links like this one.

</comment><comment><USER33> After so many articles and discussions like this one here and reading about iclubby and emperor workstation, I took the task to my hands. Couple of days back, I hacked together a good reclining chair that is a lot comfortable then sitting. I wrote a quick mail with images here.

<http://anil-bkdsb.posterous.com/my-work-station-1>

<comment><USER34> Your images try to pull from gmail, thus don't load.

<comment><USER33> Added the images now. Thanks for pointing that out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Chaise longues? That'll work. I sit in a sort of feet-up semi-recline as it is.

Maybe I just need to bring the patio furniture into the office.

<comment><USER25> Mark Pilgrim, IIRC, uses a Poäng chair. I thought this was a bad idea at first, but if you can get the keyboard and monitor adjusted right, it could be quite comfortable.

<comment><USER8> Interesting. Had no idea what a Poäng chair was, but when I Googled I saw that the tilt of the seat and back is pretty much how I set my chair.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I've been thinking of setting up a standing work environment. Anyone have articles or recommendations for setting one up?

<comment><USER36> After estimating the height I needed to raise my desk, I bought some cinder blocks and pavers from Home Depot for about $10 and just put them under my desk legs. I used some old books to prop up my monitors, but blocks of printer paper work well too.

An anti-fatigue mat is an excellent investment, but even with that be prepared for a few weeks of achy feet/legs. You get used to it eventually, but man, it feels nice to crash on the couch in the evening.

<comment><USER35> That sounds like a solution but I like elegance. Hah.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I wish the article had given an explanation for their claim that lumbar support doesn't help anything. They say the spine needs to stay S-shaped, and that's exactly what lumbar support is designed to promote, so what's the problem?

<comment><USER6> I think the point is that postural support muscles have special metabolism that does good things when they're active (generating force) for extended periods of time. A chair that molds you into the shape doesn't make the muscles work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> what about sitting on a big bouncy ball?

[http://blog.makezine.com/upload/2010/03/toolbox_take_a_seat/...](http://blog.makezine.com/upload/2010/03/toolbox_take_a_seat/ExerciseBallChairGirlSide2.jpg)

<comment><USER39> From the article Standing desks and chaise longues are good options. Ball chairs, which bounce your spine into a C-shape, are not.

I'm not sure if "ball chairs" are the same as you mean, but I guess they're.

<comment><USER40> I've been sitting on a medicine ball for a while, and I agree that there's a big tendency to slouch into a C-shaped back. However, if you are conscious of your posture, it is possible to sit with an S-shaped back. At least, that's my subjective, anecdotal experience.

A side effect of sitting with good S-shaped posture on a medicine ball is that I don't really "sit" any more. Instead, I straddle the ball as if I were riding a horse.

However, for me the reason I switched to sitting on a medicine ball has nothing to do with back posture and everything to do with preventing a recurring pilonidal abscess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I alternate between sitting on a normal chair and kneeling on the (carpeted) floor and sometimes kneeling on a bean bag chair. Kneeling is also nice because its easier to randomly stretch.

</comment><comment><USER42> I would be interested to know if sports like cycling also have some kind of the negative health impact caused by the long periods of "sitting down".

<comment><USER43> yes and no.

Cycling puts an unnatural curve in our lower back, very similar to sitting in a chair, and due to the way the muscles work, cyclist end up with tight hip flexors and hamstrings and stretched spinal erectors (sorry, I've been out of Physiology for a while so can't remember the exact names of the muscles) which can further exacerbate the problem. Compare a cyclist with a runner, and you can see a noticeable difference in posture.

However, I wouldn't call it a 'negative health impact', as the activity is improving your health. Just be sure to stretch, and counter the muscle imbalances that the sport produces.

Many sports have similar results because they are unnatural. For example, snowboarders in big mountain areas end up with a unnaturally strong/tight oblique muscle on one side and one stronger leg. Surfers likely don't have this issue because the majority of their exertion occurs during the paddling phase and the length of time actually spent riding the wave is quite short.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> any studies on the kneeling stools?

<comment><USER45> "Ericson and Goldie studied spinal shrinkage of three different types of chairs while performing video display unit work and found that subjects shrank more when sitting on a forward sloping chair with knee support than on a conventional chair.[3]

Drury and Francher studied the original Balans kneeling chair in 1985, concluding that overall it was "no better than conventional chairs and could be worse than well-designed conventional office chairs."[4] Lander et al. conducted another experiment in 1987 comparing the kneeling chair with a conventional chair and concluded that their experimental data "do not support the manufacturer's claim that the Balans chair is likely to decrease complaints of [lower-back pain]".[5] A 1989 study on a sample of 20 subjects concluded that the Balans chair promoted greater lumbar curvature than the "straight back chair" during relaxed sitting, typing and writing and that it could contribute to treatment of lower back injuries.[6] A more recent study from 2008 confirms that "ergonomically designed kneeling chairs set at +20 degrees inclination do maintain standing lumbar curvature to a greater extent than sitting on a standard computer chair" and suggests that "Further research with a greater number of subjects and on different chair designs is warranted."[7]"

Links to references on the Wikipedia page: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kneeling_chair>

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> All the advice like standing, breaks, etc., is very important. Productive, too!

But you can ALSO help by investing in a chair specifically designed to prevent the pressure on your leg veins. The only one I know of is the HAG Capisco, and we have had them for two years now.

They are worth every penny.

The only downside is that, because your weight is all on your feet and ass -- not your thighs -- if you sit with poor posture, your ass will fall asleep.

But this is really a feature, since it reminds you you're not sitting right and should stand up.</comment>


Simple Tricks Helped Me to Finish My Side Project - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/3-simple-tricks-helped-me-to-finish-my-side-project-1d6ffc50430a <comment><USER2> This isn't a good article.

The title is distilled clickbait.

The 3 simple tricks in the article don't have their value or necessity proven in the article; they're just stated.

The conclusion of the article is "I built an app"

>As we have finished the alpha version, we are calling it as a success. We need 5 more weekends to upgrade the design before we launch beta. Want to be a part of it?

So it's essentially marketing couched in mediocre productivity advice.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Everyone has a million dollar idea but not a million seconds to make it a > reality. That's why all these million dollar ideas fail. Only a very few of > them becomes successful.

Don't agree, there are no million dollar ideas. I adhere to the execution is everything, "ideas are free" line of thought.</comment>


The future of SaaS hosted Git repository pricing - <AUTHOR> https://about.gitlab.com/2016/05/11/git-repository-pricing/ <comment><USER2> Good timing. This is what good marketing and agility looks like.

I've been impressed by GitLab. They moved very fast and made good progress recently. It is great to see competition, to what many (at least in start up land) considered a done deal in terms of a winner as far as hosted code is concerned. Remember someone was telling me "if your code is not on GitHub, it doesn't exist".

But then remember getting a sticker shock when we got a quote for GitHub Enterprise a few years back. Ended up picking Atlassian instead, besides the price it was the better ticket workflow, or maybe it was the wiki, I forgot. Anyway, I would have liked to have more choices at that point to look at. Now GitLab is a choice as well.

<comment><USER3> I have mixed feelings. Gitlab always reacts to Github stuff. It's a bit "too much" for my taste actually.

The Gitlab team seems awesome but these posts always read a bit forced- friendly. Yay we are all friends in this space and we see this and that trend and here are some benefits of gitlab over the competition in a thinly vailed "switch already" piece. I wish they'd just write "these price changes could suck for you, it's a good time to switch to us now". I got a similar vibe from the posts in reaction to the "this is wrong with github" posts.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, it is transparently desperate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really have to tip my hat to GitLab marketing the past few months as they've done a phenomenal job. I do wonder what will happen to their pricing once they raise additional rounds of financing? What happens to their pricing once their investors want to see a return on investment? I like the carpe diem business strategy, and of course I like free, but I'm a bit skeptical at the long term viability of a business and market that seems to be racing to the bottom.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for asking, I tried to explain this better on our website after reading your questions: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab- com/commit/836c494f...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab- com/commit/836c494fff2b95f39ed0b29945af525e571125c1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> >With such tangible business benefits, it is no wonder why Google, Amazon, and Facebook have been using microservice development practices for over a decade.

At one point Google and FB were trunk based monolithic repositories, and I haven't heard that has changed. If it has not, this might not be the best example for micro services leading to many repos.

<comment><USER8> Better examples are NetFlix and Twitter.

<comment><USER7> Are netflix and twitter trunk/monoliths? If so do you have links?

<comment><USER9> [https://blog.twitter.com/2016/the-release-of- pants-10](https://blog.twitter.com/2016/the-release-of-pants-10)

> Today, Twitter is excited to announce participation in the first major > release of the Pants open source project: 1.0.0, an open source build tool > for monorepo-style source repositories.

They (for the most part) had two repos as of 11/2014\. They certainly were moving towards one. Here's a public thread mentioning the two repos: science (mostly jobs, shared code) and birdcage (mostly services). [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/pants- devel/60Vzkole...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/pants- devel/60VzkoleMxc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I see this as an upcoming trend in all SaaS. Across the industry, the cost of resources is headed towards zero.

Blame it on Amazon and Google who are making online compute, memory and storage ridiculously inexpensive if you know how to use it right.

So SaaS companies should and will have to price on a different dimension.

I think:

Charge to cover the resource prices. But if your resources are small amounts of storage for code, round down to zero.

Charge per user. It's simple and predictable and a good proxy for budget.

Tier around features.

Sell a totally private on-prem version. Companies will pay big bucks if they _need_ your product features and compliance.

So yeah, basically exactly what GitLab is doing. They really are doing a great job at trying to build an open source business.

<comment><USER6> Thanks Noah

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> >> The rise of microservices, an approach to development in which you structure your software into smaller individual service-oriented units. Each microservice then runs its own process and they communicate with each other through APIs. This software development approach is known to have four primary benefits: agility, efficiency, resiliency, and revenue

Off-topic, but what?! I understand there is a lot of hype about "microservices" right now but I don't think the upsides of the propagated approach are as clear-cut or uncontroversial as the post makes them out to be.

The article defines "microservices" as the act of splitting up an application into many small, individual programms that talk to each other via RPCs.

How does structuring my code into lots of small programs improve revenue of all things? Or are you talking about the revenue of code repository hosting providers and "microservices" consultants?

Also, this approach surely does not improve resiliency and efficiency per se. It actually does the opposite in my opinion. All the additional RPCs are only adding _more_ points of failure (unreliable IPC) and overhead as compared to straight in-process method calls.

And who's saying that "a microservices architecture" improves a dev teams "agility"? How does one even measure agility? The article is stating this like it's an established fact. In my [anecdotal] experience, spreading an application out over lots of individual repositories and binaries makes it harder to work with, not easier.

>> With such tangible business benefits, it is no wonder why Google, Amazon, and Facebook have been using microservice development practices for over a decade.

The fact is that these are a massive software companies with thousands of engineers. Naturally they run an incredible amount of internal software and services. I think this is often conflated with the idea that splitting up a given application into smaller and smaller parts to produce more individual "services" automatically makes it better somehow.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for having a clear seperation of concerns and well defined interfaces between individual modules. Doing that has been best practice since I started to code. But the latest "let's split our codebase up into 20 different binaries and repos, because microservices" fad is just bonkers.

<comment><USER4> It's just a popular reason you might need a lot more repos than you once did. Insert your own reason, be it organizing docs, static sites, more skunk works, etc. I doubt the point of the post was to advocate microservices, so making the discussion here about it is distracting.

<comment><USER12> What's interesting is that FB and Google both use a single large repository. Not sure about Amazon. In fact, I don't know that I've ever read a detailed article about how Amazon handles things like source control internally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd like to see a migration guide for bringing a small organization (company) from GitHub to GitLab. Not the Git part, but rather how to map organizations and organize repositories.

GitHub's new pricing seems incompatible with smaller studios and agencies who encourage collaboration from non-developers or which frequently hire outside contractors. Make it easier to understand how those migrations might work.

<comment><USER14> I'd like to see how to transfer all the issues (closed too) + pull requests.

<comment><USER15> You should be able to just use the importer and it'll automatically take all the issues and PRs over.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A small factual error - the article states N/A for unlimited users at bitbucket but according to their pricing page[1] unlimited users is $200/user/month.

[1] [https://bitbucket.org/product/pricing](https://bitbucket.org/product/pricing).

<comment><USER15> A merge request is open to fix that now.

<comment><USER6> We merged it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > That is why it is not surprising that GitHub has announced free private > repositories

I think this might be an error.

</comment><comment><USER18> > Due to the rapid growth, GitLab.com's performance slowed down.

Not sure why Gitlab is still not able to scale the platform.

I run Gitlab on a 2 CPU 4GB RAM VM and it performs very well(even with fairly large repos). There is also the known issue with Gitlab CE itself being resource intensive, but in the case of the version hosted on Gitlab it seems to be a scaling issue.

<comment><USER19> Should Gitlab allocate a whole 2 CPU 4GB RAM VM to each user for free?

<comment><USER18> Where did I mention that Gitlab should allocate a 2 CPU 4gb RAM server for every user?

The point of the comment was to show that Gitlab performs well when there are appropriate server resources, hence the reason for Gitlab.com not performing well is because it has not been scaled up/out or both.

<comment><USER20> Like pekk, that's not how I read your comment. It makes sense, once explained...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Chaos at Condé Nast - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/12/style/details-dan-peres-book.html <comment><USER2> The fashion magazine business was about selling pharma and cosmetic ad space in front of people who can both read and yet still choose to read about celebrities. I don't know how it survives now.

Was writing for newspapers and magazines around this time. Never for Conde Nast, but my impression was nobody in that business knew how to make money, it had already been made and they were just spending it like a third generation inheritance. They rode coattails in and while there were a few sharks on the corporate side, below the first name or two on the masthead it was hangers-on all the way down. It was a bubble.

The '00's were this odd period where it was easy to be seduced by the idea you could be famous for being clever. Men published and even read literary fiction. Before it became the troubled former child star of content it is today, Vice was actually a funny and subversive upstart. Book launches were society events. Being a columnist was a thing. It's hard to see how excesses of that period could be relevant today.

I commented on them in a previous thread about reddit, odd to see them here again. If Conde Nast is still staffed by people who cut their teeth in that era, they're going to need restructuring.

<comment><USER3> > The fashion magazine business was about selling pharma and cosmetic ad space > in front of people who can both read and yet still choose to read about > celebrities. I don't know how it survives now.

Your opening point was poorly articulated. The US has a literacy rate of 99%. Similar rates prevail throughout the developed world.

<comment><USER4> those must the the readers mentioned above [https://twitter.com/LovelyGeezer66/status/122965701535142297...](https://twitter.com/LovelyGeezer66/status/1229657015351422977)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > "It was obviously bad that this culture existed the way it did, but it > started because they valued creativity and the kind of people that were > creative."

No, no, no. Being an asshole is not a signal you are creative. It's a signal of limited market options for the people that have to put up with you. In this case, there were a limited number of "cool" magazines in NYC to work at an extreme amounts of competition for the limited spots.

You know what group of people are crazy creative and not assholes? Session musicians. It's literally their job to show up and make up something good on the spot, but equally importantly, not derail the production with bullshit. And you know why? Because the people working with them have lots of other options for the most part.

<comment><USER6> Takes me back to the 10x programmer converstaion on HN a day or two back. People are really bad at identifying what actually makes people productive and so you have a million people who not only think that being productive excuses being an asshole but that somehow being an asshole is inextricably linked with their productiveness. Imagine is we had a group of people who insisted they wear red jumpers because that's what 10x-ers do. Oh wait, that's literally fashion and that's literally a mechanism people in creative industries signal they're the right type of creative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a cesspool coated with gloss.

Even when they talk about it today you can smell the pretentiousness, grandiose fake nihilism and the sorry-not-sorry in their words.

And these vapid know-it-alls are still calling the shots today in terms of "culture", bad words and cancel culture. It's mostly not in print but these people have an amazing capability of putting themselves close to power and money.

<comment><USER8> > fake nihilism

Who would fake _nihilism_? And why?

<comment><USER7> Because when faced with the meaningless of everything it's cool to look cool and detached while behind closed doors shitting yourself and popping pills left and right trying to maintain that image.

<comment><USER9> Your initial comment is on-point, except I don't think any of these people are identifying with or as nihilists.

They are invariably politically leftists. Which is where contemporary "bad words and cancel culture" come from.

The irony of being ostensibly "leftist" while flashing a 0.1% lifestyle of "knowing the room service menu at the Ritz by heart" and getting high in first class.

You may be referring to a particular brand of "excuse me for being a degenerate occasionally, but you know my heart is in the right place and I'm a friend of the proletariat" sort of leftism, but it's definitely not a nihilism and they'll definitely parrot the right leftist lines at parties or they'll lose their little perch in a heartbeat.

<comment><USER10> I think leftism has a particular appeal for culture types because it's traditionally been the case (until 1980 or so) that capitalism didn't really have much of a place for culture - which was traditionally a poor product, and the better it was as culture, the worse it sold.

There's also the traditional aristocratic looking-down-upon-the-bourgeois for their grubby and banal mindsets, which has got sort of subsumed into leftism because there aren't many aristocrats left. Adorno is a kind of good exposition of this sort of thing.

Lastly, it's very traditional. The French revolution, at least in the early stages, was basically bankrolled and sheltered by L Phillipe de Orlean, the first prince of the blood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > In one seven-week period Ms. Ozturk sent at least five emails to staff > canceling meetings

There are a number of other parts of this article that look bad, but why is this one a big deal? At the more meeting-intensive jobs I've had, it's near the center of the bell curve.

<comment><USER12> There's nothing wrong with cancelling meetings. In fact, I appreciate my managers doing so. (More than I appreciate them _having_ meetings...)

<comment><USER13> Well if we have to choose i'd prefer to not have them scheduled in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Unfortunately, this is mostly about _The Chaos at Details_ , some kind of vapid lifestyle magazine, happily defunct.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, was expecting more about the Conde Naste digital media stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> [https://archive.is/08mqw](https://archive.is/08mqw)

</comment><comment><USER16> It's astonishing to read about this grandiose waste and look at all my friends who went into this industry only to be given sub-poverty line salaries and working hours to kill a horse.

Eventually I realized that publishing, like much of the rest of New York, is built on the principle of 1%er ideology, where the actual workers get hosed and say "Thank you," while a select few kings (mostly queens now) with the right connections, family background, and bravado live very high on the hog.

<comment> core-questions This shouldn't really be any surprise, it's basically been the publishing business model for a century.

More interesting still is how some 1%'rs (e.g. Bezos) will operate something like the Washington Post at a loss simply to retain the actual power that having a top tier media company provides, in terms of narrative control.

> select few kings (mostly queens now)

It's still going to be investors behind the scenes who really pull these strings. The name at the top of the masthead isn't the owner....

<comment><USER17> Bezos isn't a 1%er. He is 1.

Billionaires are way above the 1%.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Andrew Essex published a response today about the "Dudes Who Dish" article being credited to Kurt Andersen when he didn't write it: [https://www.cjr.org/first_person/details-conde-nast- andersen...](https://www.cjr.org/first_person/details-conde-nast-andersen- ickes.php)

</comment><comment><USER19> This is fascinating. As a writer and coder, I find the subsumption of longform culture into the a niche blogosphere genre gives me chills.

Say what you will about Condé Nast, this implosion is poignant for anyone who has dreamed of supporting themselves with mere words.

These days, the only "reader" that seems to pay enough for my keyboard time is Babel. ;)

</comment><comment><USER20> > At 48, Dan Peres is already an old hand at being a former magazine editor. > Condé Nast shut down Details, the men's glossy that he had been editor of > for 15 years, in 2015

Wait, if my math is correct he became editor at 28. Was that common at the time? (circa 2000)

<comment> daniel-cussen Well those magazines (Details and similarly GQ) try to project a young-and- successful image. They want the readers to think that's the target audience, or the real audience. It ties into interviewing young and successful artists, athletes...sometimes entrepreneurs too. It's aspirational.

So I could totally see them promoting a 28-year-old man to editor and thereby manufacture a bit of stardom to help with their image.</comment></comment>


Doctors Tell All, and It's Bad - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/11/doctors-tell-all-and-its-bad/380785/?single_page=true <comment><USER3> The sad truth is that this is due to a variety of problems at a variety of levels. Of course, all that follows is highly dependent on the team, hospital, and location.

A the lowest-level, you have doctors who're just assholes. Unfortunately, they don't do a good job at filtering out abrasive personalities upon entry to medical school. In fact, I'd say in some ways they self-select for that type of person. I've worked with heads of departments at huge hospitals who've openly discussed their salaries with me in patient rooms or brushed off a patient's concerns in a condescendingly paternalistic manner only to laugh with colleagues about it the second they step out of the patient's room. I've argued many times with specialists running their own clinic about their exorbitant fees and clever ICD-coding skills -- that some brag about developing -- to squeeze every penny out of insurers, all justified by "we've got to make a living." Assholes in medicine run rampant.

Up one level and you have the sheer morbid nature of medicine that physicians deal with on a day-to-day basis. I've given chest compressions to trauma patients with self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the head, and cleaned maggots out of a patient's festering diabetic foot. To the outsider, it is all incredibly shocking and gruesome, but as a physician you grow callous to it. Unfortunately, many times that means growing callous to all emotions and stunting your ability to empathize. Mix that with a superiority complex and you get things like Hispanic Hysteria Syndrome.

Go up a level and you've got a huge logistical and resource problem. Hospital physicians, particularly residents at teaching hospitals, are often overloaded with responsibilities and patients. They often feel they cannot give every patient and every obligation full and thorough attention because they are being bombarded by pages for new admissions, calls from other staff, etc. I have seen residents breeze through a list of patients, only giving minimal attention to each, just to avoid being chastised by a superior for not fulfilling all responsibilities in the short time allotted. And when you are severely limited to the number of open beds you have, and you've got a crowded ED, it becomes a game of who can we push out the fastest without killing.

At a higher level, you have a hospital who needs to keep the lights on, needs to pay salaries, needs to maximize profits and yet treat patients as best as they can. Unfortunately, many hospitals are being swindled by suppliers who're working through group buying organizations [1], inflating costs and making it difficult for hospitals to hit their margins.

There's a lot more I could go on about.

<comment><USER4> If you find time, please do go on about it. It's very interesting.

<comment><USER5> +1 (Yes, I know it's bad form, but in since point counts on comments are invisible this is the only way to let the OP know that others are interested)

<comment><USER6> OT, but you can see the score of your own posts.

<comment><USER7> Sure? The problem is that kyro can't see any potential upvotes on sillysaurus3 specifically asking for more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm a medical resident at a prestigious teaching hospital. I hate to admit it, but I've lost my empathy already.

The experience most interns have on day 1 is a massive increase in responsibility and work load as compared to medical school. Whereas most medical students in their 4th year "manage" (under the very close supervision of residents) 2, 3, or maybe 4 patients, on day 1 of intern year they are suddenly expected to be responsible for upwards of 10-12 patients (under supervision, but considerably less supervision than med students). Interns go from spending most of their time studying and learning medicine, to being suddenly, constantly busy with often mind-numbing tasks. We interns joke that we are nothing more than secretaries, doing tasks for our boses all day without time to sit down and think for ourselves, despite the M.D. we just spent years earning. Eventually, we get better at prioritizing, we learn the system, and we learn by doing.

But, early in intern year, we can't prioritize, we don't know the system, frankly we can't even keep which patient is which straight in our heads. But, regardless, we still have n number of tasks to do by the end of the day.

Spending extra time talking to patients isn't part of n. Empathy isn't an item in n. Figuring out a patient's priorities for their health aren't an item. Those are extras.

And to get home on time, after my 12-14 hour shift, all I have to do is my list of n tasks, which is substantial. So, we quickly learned that long conversations with patients are the enemy of getting home on time. And pretty quickly, we start to eliminate those conversations. Then, we figure out that other things patients need, like empathy, a careful history taking and detailed physical exam, family discussions, etc also stand in our way of getting our work done on time.

Eventually, we learn the ability to keep our patient's complex medical problems straight and become much more efficient at getting our work done quickly. So, realizing we have more time, some of us go back and start to do the things that really matter to patients, like those things listed above and in the article. But, we've already learned, or forced by the system to learn, that we can get away with not doing those things, so as soon as we get a little extra busy or are a little extra tired, those are the first things we skip.

Then, suddenly, we start second year and can now be asked to work 24-28 hours straight, and now we have 18-24 patients instead of 10-12 that we are responsible for and the system again drains us of the very thing we enrolled in medical school to be.

<comment><USER9> What's keeping us from creating more physicians to meet the (obvious) demand?

Why the hell should you need to pull 24-28 hour shifts?

<comment><USER10> > What's keeping us from creating more physicians to meet the (obvious) > demand?

It takes a lot of money, resources, and existing doctors' time to train a new doctor. One thing that's likely to help a bit is the move to nurse practitioners and physician assistants for much of primary care.

<comment><USER11> If we had more doctors, it seems that it would also cost less to train more doctors (assuming that more doctors made the average doctor's time less costly). An unfortunate feedback loop there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _Spend a day in an emergency room, and chances are you'll be struck by two things: the organizational chaos and the emotional detachment as nurses, doctors, and administrators bustle in and out, barely registering the human distress it is their job to address._

There is a difference between 'spend a day' and 'work long-term'. Medical staff are normal people; there's no training that makes you immune to compassion fatigue. When you go into an ER and it's all new to you and chaotic, it seems crazy that _these people are in pain_ and _those people just don 't care_. But do it every working day of your life, and you have to buttress your emotion against it. Not to mention that it's a fine line to walk, showing enough compassion. If you let emotion get the better of you, you'll be less effective in your actual job of helping people. Throw in the occasional patient that is trying to pull the wool over your eyes, and you become to what looks to outsiders as a callous, uncaring individual. It's not to say that all ER staff are saints, but whenever considering the ER environment, don't forget to view it from the shoes of the people who work behind the counter long-term.

My own realisation of this buttressing: I used to work as a medical tech in what was essentially an outpatient clinic that did some patients on the ward. I remember one day, several years in, casually wandering up to the ward with my equipment, when I turned the corner and was met by a wailing wall of family coming the other way. "Oh yeah - hospital is not a nice place to be. Normal people only come here when something is really bad...".

<comment><USER13> Imagine the mental fortitude necessary to be a "life and death" doctor as I put it (also includes ophthalmologists since loss of eyesight is a very bad thing), _knowing_ that some of your patients will inevitably die, and that sooner or later you're going to make a mistake that will kill one.

<comment><USER14> Everybody dies... Everybody makes mistakes... It's all just a matter of delaying the inevitable. Worst case, you fail to delay it at all (or maybe hasten it a bit).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was just talking to my wife about this. I've recently been to the doctor because of some headaches I was having. They did some blood work, and when it came back I got a call from the doctor saying we should check my liver function again in 3 months. I wasn't very concerned because ever since I was a kid I have heard that (I guess some normal values for me are outside the range considered normal for most people).

This week, I logged in to their patient portal because I wanted to look at some previous blood test results. I was absolutely startled when I saw that my AST and ALT counts were pretty high, about twice the upper limit for what is considered normal.

But then I realized that I had that blood work done around the time I had started strength training and increased the amount of protein in my diet. A quick online search revealed that a single strength training session increases AST and ALT levels for up to seven days. Considering I had been exercising multiple times a week, it was completely normal for my levels to be elevated.

Now, why didn't the doctor simply ask me if I had been strength training? Such a simple question would have explained the abnormal test results and saved me some distress.

<comment><USER16> your doctor knew it was probably unimportant, could be caused by a myriad of things, and a repeat blood test in a few months would be normal and mean they could forget about it.

Because of the patient portal with its ability for patients to access info they don't understand the significance of, you were "absolutely startled" and "distressed". If you didnt have access to those results then you wouldn't have been concerned.

Regardless of all that, you should still have repeat LFT's because you don't know for sure that "strngth training" was the cause of the problem.

Honestly, Doctors find navigating the minefield of clinical decision making difficult enough, trying to make judgements on sensitivity/specificity of tests and investigations, positive predictive values, remove confounding, drug company propaganda, publication bias etc etc without patients trying to get into it all as well. Should I spend 1 hour explaining to every fucker with a headache why a CT head is more likely to cause brain cancer than it is to diagnose it?

The solution to the US healthcare woes is NOT more patient autonomy and decision making. The solution is moving towards a less money orientated system and trying to encourage altruism and alignment of patient's goals with doctor's actions.

<comment><USER17> _Should I spend 1 hour explaining_

Yes, absolutely. Medicine needs to descend from its status as a high priesthood and be a little more accessible.

<comment><USER18> The question is if that's the best possible use of his time to improve the lives of the most patients.

A stereotypical micro vs macro problem where the best possible micro solution is likely not the best possible macro solution.

To some extent its a systemic problem with levels of support. Every customer that calls into a call center claiming space aliens are controlling their minds should not be transferred to argue with the VP of software development for an hour.

<comment><USER17> Possible solutions: reduce the scarcity of doctors capable of explaining ionizing radiation, add more non-doctors who can do more than just draw blood and check vitals, etc. Part of the macro problem is that a lot of micro problems are caused by insufficient communication and a lack of patient knowledge.

<comment><USER19> They're called "nurse practitioners" and it's a massively growing field.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's unfortunate that medical care has become almost adversarial. Our system is set up to treat acute conditions, but most people are being seen for chronic problems and our understanding of causes and training for treatments of chronic problems is woeful at best. Worse, both patients and doctors want a pill to make everything better.

After dealing with poor health for 30 years; I finally took my health into my own hands. After a series of self-experiments and a lot of journal reading, I now feel like I'm finally reaching health, but every time I see a doctor, it's the same battle ("OMG, your cholesterol is 239; you are a dead man walking!" Yeah, I don't think so).

There is a lot of good information out there, but there is also a lot of complete crap, and doctors have to deal with truly informed people as well as people who only think they are informed. Worse, much of their continuing education is not much more than paid infomercials, making it hard to trust they are getting truly balanced information.

Add to all of this the fact that you have seven minutes with your doctor to work it all out, and it is failing.

There are a few things that can be done, IMO, to help:

1\. The AHA, ADA, AMA, AND and other medical organizations need to stop taking so much money from corporate sponsors.

2\. Education about and treatment of chronic conditions need to be treated very differently than acute conditions. The treatment for Type 2 diabetes should not default to Metformin.

3\. We need more time with doctors to work on treatment plans that can be carried out.

4\. Medical school and continuing education needs far more, unbiased education about the value/dangers of nutrition, environmental contaminants, etc, in chronic disease. Alzheimer's prevention starts in a person's 30's[1].

Unfortunately, we see the same kind of care given for stiches as for metabolic syndrome. And it's not working.

1\. Based on a current hypothesis that it is the effect of "Type 3" diabetes.

<comment><USER21> There is metamed which can help you with the research. It seems to have helped at least some people.

[https://www.metamed.com/](https://www.metamed.com/)

(Found a long time ago via LessWrong: [http://lesswrong.com/lw/gvi/metamed_evidencebased_healthcare...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/gvi/metamed_evidencebased_healthcare/))

<comment><USER10> Thought I remembered the name of this one.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5296694](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5296694)

One of their first medical advisors was a disbarred doc who lost his license for writing online pharmacy prescriptions. I'd do some serious research into credentials before throwing in the $5-50k they charge.

They also had a "health researcher" whose primary credentials were "eagle scout": [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5296594](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5296594) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5296724](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5296724)

<comment><USER22> So, obviously you can't retroactively become professional, but it looks like they've cleaned up their act since then.

[https://www.metamed.com/ScientistsDoctorsResearchers](https://www.metamed.com/ScientistsDoctorsResearchers)

They have a Chief Medical Officer, and all but one of the researchers is an M.D. -- the guy who was ordered to suspend his medical license is gone, and so is the eagle scout.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> People overestimate the state of medicine with respect to autoimmunity, which is funny in a way because they are largely completely in the dark as to how fast medical research is moving in all fields, and think that many types of near future treatment are a lot further away than is in fact the case.

The workings of the immune system are rather like the workings of metabolism: the present vast knowledge, the stuff that takes years to learn and which encompasses many disciplines as no one person can know enough of all of it to make a career of that, is actually basically just a sketch of how things work. It is a map at the high level. When it comes to the all-important details there are decades of work left at even at the present pace and with the damn impressive biotechnology the research community has now in order to get to even a moderately complete picture.

So there's a reason why many forms of autoimmunity are really hard to diagnose, and why you'll find that a great many diagnoses of exclusion are mild autoimmune conditions: here's what's wrong with you, it's the bucket we put people in when you have some symptoms and all the tests we have come back negative or with ambiguous results. Those tend to be the ones where nothing can be done at present. The author of the article should at least be happy that she is one step up from that situation.

The immune system has so many ways of running awry due to malprogramming that there really should be more work done on more gentle ways to reboot it - <USER2> out all immune cells and start over with the patient's stem cells to repopulate it. Aggressive reboot methods involving chemotherapy have been pretty effective when trialed, but that's not something you'd want to do unless there was no alternative.

The advent of biologics for immune suppression have turned the research community away from the possibilities of the wipe clean and start over approach, however, which I think might be a mistake in the long run.

<comment><USER24> I agree, research into autoimmunity and chronic inflammation generally in western medicine seems very weak. Its better in traditional chinese and ayurvedic. Elimination diets are one form of "wipe clean and start over approach" that works for some people

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Speaking of adversarial - many people do not know that if they leave a facility against medical advice (AMA), insurance will probably not pay for any of the treatment and they'll be stuck with the bill. So, if you get into a situation where you strongly disagree with the physician or where you aren't being cared for properly, you need to be careful how you extract yourself.

<comment><USER26> Hmm, this startled me so I looked it up and it seems that the research on the matter shows that this belief is the result of misinformation on the part of physicians and patients [1] and that studies [1][2] have shown that of the small percentage of patients whose insurance didn't pay after leaving AMA, the reason for rejection was mainly because of problems with the bill itself.

[1] [http://www.uchospitals.edu/news/2012/20120203-billing.html](http://www.uchospitals.edu/news/2012/20120203-billing.html)

[2] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22331399](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22331399)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Maybe it is because doctors receive so much training or maybe because we are at our most vulnerable when we see them, but I think we lose sight of a few important points when we talk about doctor-patient relationships versus other relationships --

* Doctors are human. Some will do extraordinary things. Some will make mistakes. Some will be assholes. Many will do all three at some point in their lives.

* Medicine is a business. There are financial incentives pushing and pulling on the doctor's behavior. Not saying it dictates everything they do, but denying its existence is folly. Just remember, there is a financial transaction involved every time you interact whether you see it or not.

* No one cares about your well being more than you and those that love you. Yes, doctors are well educated and, yes, they definitely want to heal you. But they aren't going to stay up all night researching your symptoms, the treatment options, the drug interactions. Your loved ones may start from a far less informed place, but they will give every thing they have to heal you. To them you are a best friend, a sibling, a child, a spouse. To doctors you are one patient out of dozens or hundreds. This backseat google-doctoring infuriates medical professionals, but it is unavoidable. This isn't a condemnation, it is just reality.

<comment><USER28> " _Some will be assholes._ "

Agreed, I'm just glad I'm in a position where I can simply walk out on a doctor being an asshole to me. And then proceed to the next practice over.

If enough people do that, things would be much better. Unfortunately, that's not always possible.

<comment><USER29> This is the problem with socialized medicine. You don't really have the option and you're stuck with whatever doctor the system gives you.

<comment><USER18> Why? You're conflating a hyper authoritarian scheduling system with a vastly superior simple and cheap billing system.

There is no particular reason both have to be implemented at the same time. Maybe its culturally popular but there's certainly no technical reason.

I live in a former 1st world non-socialized medicine country and I have no option in where I go for medical care other than on a very meta level of which employer I work at and where I live ... in an emergency (heart attack, car accident) the ambulance drives me to the closest ER, there is no free market deciding which is "better". In a non-emergency, my cheap health insurance contracts with precisely one large medical chain in my area, so if I'm willing to do something like medical tourism and fly to another state I could select a new doc, but again no free market ...

<comment><USER30> > former 1st world non-socialized medicine country

This is a painfully accurate description of the USA

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Some questions:

1) How far along are we in terms of those computers that were predicted in the 80s to one day replace doctors? Not trying to antagonize but I can't see any harm in having a row of booths with terminals that patients can log into and start answering questions about symptoms, being led through the "troubleshooting" steps, etc. There's a lot of time spent just waiting around in hospitals, waiting rooms, etc. Maybe you could have a swipe card that saves your progress on the terminal, combines it with the lab results. The system wouldn't replace a GP just yet but it would instead work alongside the GP.

2) Are there any crowd-sourced solutions available yet for these cases where doctors clearly have no idea? Someone enters all their symptoms and people discuss online and try to come up with some possible options.

3) How much are insurance companies responsible for the sorry state of health care in the US? I was speaking to my friend who says that he pays $850 bucks a month (up from $800 a month last year) on top of what his company pays. I've heard other stories about people basically being a slave to their company because they can't leave due to the generous benefits. I've also heard that insurance companies pay back only 60 cents in the dollar, so to make up the same $100 a doctor was previously earning he now has to charge about $170 (the other option is to be cut from the network of doctors used by the insurance company). And is this the logical conclusion for health care? Will Canada/Australia head the same direction? Seriously, there is a massive opportunity for the US to fix some of these problems now, yet it just seems that you guys are heading in entirely the opposite direction.

<comment><USER9> (working in a health IT startup)

On 1:

So, the big thing is that you never actually want to _replace_ the doctors. Their egos won't allow that, they'll see it as an existential threat (which it is), and most importantly: you don't want to give that kind of power to a device which doesn't function as a moral agent.

On 2:

Sometimes, you'll be getting advice from somebody like tptacek...sometimes, you'll be getting advice from losethos. I wouldn't trust my healthcare to random bozos on the internet.

On 3:

Almost all of it is their problem, I'd say.

The increased focus on billing and everything else means that the doctors have to deal with madness they wouldn't have to otherwise. The fighting and billing cycle can take literally a year, so no honest doctor is at an advantage _not_ billing everything they possibly can, and any institution (read: hospital) is _going_ to force that sort of hand-wavy arithmetic (because of the opposition of insurance providers, in turn because of previous bad actors).

The amount of money thrown into these maws anyways (from both insurance and Medicare, a weird issue unto itself) serves to raise the price floors so that you can't even pay for yourself if you want to, because you're literally on a different marketplace.

The companies also go and force you to use doctors that aren't necessarily convenient to you, maybe many miles away. If you try to use a local physician, well, tough shit, you might have to pay for them anyways.

I could go on and on and on and on...

It's a fractal of sadness.

<comment><USER31> Thanks for the insights

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> _The rhetoric of medical reform draws mostly on economics: Experts differ over, among other things, how to structure "insurance mandates" and what constitutes "overutilization" of a rapidly expanding array of high-tech procedures and diagnostic tests._

Sounds like the tell-tale signs of socialist dysfunction, from which all the other problems stem. The solution is simple, but, unfortunately, poorly understood and highly resisted: restore a free market for health goods and services.

<comment><USER33> Free market solutions don't work for health goods and services, because free market solutions require a feedback loop that is unavailable. At the provider level, in many cases you only have the option to be a repeat customer if they _don 't_ give you good service the first time round. At the level of the insurance agencies themselves, an unfettered free market approach pushes them in the direction of denied claims and policy rescissions (as we've seen!), and the customer doesn't (and often can't) discover they've made a bad choice until too late.

One thing that _would_ be good about a more free-market-y approach would be an increase in transparency about costs; but that's something that would be an improvement under a socalist or any other model as well.

<comment><USER34> Free market solutions work just fine. I fled the semi-socialized US system to enjoy the unfettered free market medical system provided by India at least twice, and will probably do so for future medical treatments.

Many medical services are repeated even if good service is provided. For example, 2 years ago I injured both my L5/S1 and L4/L5 disks. 2 years ago L5/S1 was treated, but the L4/L5 was left alone since it did not cause any problems. This year my L4/L5 started causing serious pain - the first guy did a great job so I went back. Another part of the feedback loop is reputation - if one of my friends needs similar treatment they'll probably go to the same guy unless they are very sensitive to cost (I didn't go for cheap).

I have no idea where this meme that free market health care looks like the US comes from. Maybe Canadians don't realize there are more possibilities than simply Canadian and US health care?

<comment><USER9> So, erm, what about all the poor people in the US that can't take a journey out to Asia when they need care?

(I don't automatically disagree with your free-market assertion, mind you...we have quite a captive one here. You just need to use a bit better justification.)

<comment><USER34> I didn't claim that medical tourism is the solution to all problems. I merely claimed that there are highly effective free market medical systems. I.e., the world is bigger than simply USA and Canada.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Some thoughts and observations by a practicing anesthesiologist:

1.Improving patient outcomes, improving patient satisfaction, reducing medical errors and curtailing costs etc are very hard problems. There are no easy answers. Doctors know about this( because this affects us also) , routinely discuss it, try to solve/amend whatever is in their power but the overall nature of these problems is such that without nation wide measures and policy changes no concrete improvement can be achieved.

2\. Becoming somewhat emotionally detached/blunt etc is a requirement for the job. There is no survival without it. It happens to all doctors. It happens to family and friends of people who end up in hospitals for months. Even with the detachment adverse patient outcomes do affect the treating doctors and this emotional trauma piles up over the years.

3.Same for abrasive personalities. There is so much push and pull going on between doctors of different specialties, between doctors and nurses, between doctors and administration, between doctors and insurance companies, between doctors and patients and their relatives that anybody not strong/abrasive/assertive enough looses his ground which affects both the doctor and the patients under his care adversely.

4.Generally a lay person reading up things on his own doesn't bring anything useful to a discussion with the doctor. Sometimes there are real options in which even the doctor is not sure of benefit/risk ratio. The patients should take decisions in these cases. Same for major operations and interventions. But for majority of cases average lay person is better off following the advice of his doctor than relying something he read on internet.

5\. A job of doctor will probably be one of the last jobs to be replaced fully by machines. Just like parenting.

6\. Doctors are not against technology or threatened by it. For example a lot of lab tests that are automated now were performed by hand by pathologists.They are very happy to use these new technologies. Their role hasn't diminished. The lack of enthusiasm for health IT software is because most of it sucks.It adds to workload, doesn't provide any value, and adds another layer of responsibility/anxiety. Most doctors will run to anything that only marginally improves their ability to handle workload.

And the list can go on.

Some interventions that might work are:

Checklists. simple, easy to use and practical checklists .

Mandatory leave/ time away from patients. The more acute/emergency oriented/high stress specialty , the more the need. For example I think specialists in Anesthesia/critical care/emergency medicine/gynecology/neonatology etc should have 3 months of leave away from patient care every year to stay sane.

>fulfilled doctors make for more-satisfied patients. Tackling the problems of Kaiser Permanente's Colorado medical group, he took the counter intuitive step of demoting "patient-centered care" as a goal, and elevated "preservation and enhancement of career" for doctors to first place. He restored to them the sense that their work is, as Barron Lerner's old-fashioned father put it, a "rare privilege" to be pursued with a sense of responsibility, rather than harried accountability.

ABSOLUTELY TRUE!!

There is promise in healthcare analytics, predictive analytics and things like auto flagging of unusual events. Doctors are used to analytics and algorithms and will embrace any good solution to these.

Similarly, machine learning/AI can play important role in things like reducing medical errors and postmortem of adverse events. These should be combined with training for human factors.

Continued medical education in its present form is very ineffective. Continuing medical education and remedial training/retraining etc need to be customized and focused to meet specific objectives.

</comment><comment><USER36> Son of a doctor here. My dad told me not to go to medical school. Reading this makes me so glad I listened.</comment>


Facial recognition rolled out by London police sparking human rights concerns - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/facial-recognition-london-police-accuracy-human-rights-crime-database-a8422056.html <comment><USER2> Mainly what it will likely be used for is similar to how cell phone tower data is used today. It gives you a list of people in an area at a given time, which you can correlate with other information like whether they are there often or out of habit, and whether they are breaking a routine.

Add ALPR camera data, and a public records graph, and using those selectors against other areas means you can narrow a list of suspects fairly quickly.

Arguably, surveillance merely polarizes crime instead of reducing it, where if good people are too worried about the consequences of defending themselves, it creates an effective %100 success rate for committing crimes and an insignificant chance of eventual charges - there is little disincentive to to criminals becoming super aggressive.

London is already the most surveiled city in the western world, and yet still notorious for violent street crime. Adding facial recognition to the current regime of cell towers, ALPR, cameras at every corner, cab cameras, and public transit cameras, is meaningless.

What is most likely is that facial recognition will be used the way it is used everywhere else in the world - for political pacification, not crime reduction.

<comment><USER3> "London [...] still notorious for violent street crime"

Which I find fairly strange all things considered - the crime index ([https://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings.jsp](https://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings.jsp) \- admittedly this might not be the most accurate source) shows quite a gap between other similar cities like New York - a fairly common comparison. As a resident of a few years now, I definitely wouldn't say I felt London to have that kind of feel, if anything violent crime has the effect of being shocking because it is so uncommon.

I find it quite disheartening to see London's relatively soft-touch approach lose out over "automated" policing, there's quite a bit of grumbling lately over the reduction in actual people on the streets, mainly over police cuts.

<comment><USER4> It is one of those glass half full things. If you have been the victim of a mugging then you will start seeing scooter-gangs everywhere, before you never noticed them and crime was only something you read about.

Incidentally these guys are quite a London thing, so if you are at the traffic lights on your bike/scooter/car and you see two or more scooters with no number plates and pillion passengers then you might want to start saying your prayers.

The former chancellor of the exchequer had his phone nabbed by the legendary moped gang thieves so it is not only in areas that are deprived where crime is a problem. Don't walk and text in Central London, you will only be asking for it.

They wear helmets and balaclavas underneath so I do not see how facial recognition can help. Only arming the public with fully automatic assault weapons can deter these ultra-violent thugs who happen to normally be only 15 years old.

<comment><USER5> "ultra-violence", great clockwork orange reference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We have reached the levels of desperation whereby the police are willing to employ a technology that clearly does not work, in order to pursue a goal of policing with fewer police officers.

You only have to look at the widespread increase in CCTV use in Britain. Now when you get mugged in London the police can get you a little video of your hooded attackers for posterity. Except they only have time to go through the recordings if you got murdered, otherwise you will just get a crime number.

<comment><USER7> I would like to know where you get that

1) It clearly does not work (as opposed to "it has a low accuracy" which just means they will have to filter manually) and

2) They are pursuing a goal of policing with fewer police officers and

3) Having a working solution would mean they could police with fewer police officers (cameras can't detain suspects or intervene when problems arise, AND police officers don't carry a mental database of all suspects like a computer could have, so having cameras does not replace having police officers).

<comment><USER8> Scooter crime is exploding in London and police numbers have been falling for a decade.

Personally I've had 3 scooter thefts on the past year, including a bike jacking at a red light - more a robbery than theft.

All these criminals wear balaclavas even if they're not wearing helmets, and they're used to using countermeasures against CCTV, so facial recognition isn't likely to make a big difference to them.

<comment><USER9> Three in the past year? That's insanely unlucky. Do you carry baskets of iPhones around council estates?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What I am afraid is that we could get an even worse problem then the DNA and fingerprints issue where so called experts will put innocent people in prison. "The computer tells us that X was at the crime scene without reasonable doubt, with the AI software could measure this blurred image and the computer experts are sure that is almost impossible for the software to be wrong.

<comment><USER11> But as long as they don't rely on this single evidence, that should be fine right? If someone's hair, fingerprints all match the ones in crime scene, even if the software only have 90% confidence, it should be good enough. Btw from a blurred image, it's fundamentally impossible to have around 100% accuracy.

<comment><USER12> Do not underestimate the ability of juries to be swayed by impressive sounding claims. Nor their ability to be swayed, and dismiss clear mitigations, by one dominant or eloquent individual.

"Our facial recognition has over 90% accuracy" from the prosecution's expert can easily become "clearly guilty" in the jury room.

<comment><USER13> > 90% accuracy

I found this article helpful to understand why 90% accurate isn't as good as it sounds: [https://www.badscience.net/2009/02/datamining-would-be- lovel...](https://www.badscience.net/2009/02/datamining-would-be-lovely-if-it- worked/)

He goes I to more detail in his book, bad science with a more detailed explanation. It fools everyone because it is counterintuitive.

<comment><USER14> Please be sure to attend every jury trial for criminal cases and communicate this to the jury.

<comment><USER12> Snark aside, it's important. There probably _should_ be someone adequately numerate on every jury.

Most juries will have around half, perhaps more, who've done nothing at all mathematical since school 10-45 years previously and think percentages are in the difficult part of maths (ie it's more than basic arithmetic). HN is going to be very unrepresentative for numeracy. :)

You want them to achieve "beyond reasonable doubt" conclusions from probabilities, percentages, false positive rates and perhaps standard deviations, well you may as well be making your case in French or Ancient Greek that they can pick a few part-understood bits from.

Or hope for an eloquent statistician on the jury!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> How soon before Amazon offers "policing" via mechanical turk?

That's not a joke.

<comment><USER16> You're being downvoted, but that's a pretty realistic scenario, at least from a technical perspective. I can easily imagine a system which uses facial recognition to narrow down to a choice of a few "best matches" (using police mugshots, passport or driver licence photos, or whatever they have at their disposal) and then crowdsource it via Mechanical Turk or even something like Recaptcha to select the right one.

<comment><USER15> A down vote without a comment / explanation doesn't help much, if at all. It's vague. It's lazy. It provides no context. As the definition of communication goes, it's pointless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you assume one of the main directives of British police is to frustrate radical political change and forestall revolution, none of their actions are surprising.

<comment><USER18> I don't see it as being that grand, at least not at the moment. I think we are very far from something like May '68 or Soviet revolution. A lot of theory has been dedicated to figuring out why we are in this situation in which there is a completely inactive working class with very little drive behind them; various explanations have been given, though - Marx's critique of ideology, Althusser's explanations of ISAs and RSAs, Debord's of society of the spectacle, the Frankfurt School's concentration on mass culture changing what we define as being rational (and the closing off of the "extremes", for it is no longer "reasonable" to operate outside of the "democratic" system etc.) all the way to newer ideas; I'm reading "Willing Slaves of Capital: Spinoza and Marx on Desire at the moment, which carries the following rather provocative tagline: "Why do people work for other people? This seemingly naïve question is more difficult to answer than one might at first imagine, and it lies at the heart of Lordon's Willing Slaves of Capital."

<comment><USER19> The Snowden leaks highlighted how the intelligence and law enforcement services in the UK surveilled the likes of the Open Rights Group, Oxfam etc.

If you were part of these organisations you were labelled a 'domestic extremist'.

It is already happening. Has been for a long time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't know what policing is for anymore. Crime is a part of the cost of a free society. Fighting crime with such tools takes away a lot of freedom. This is a power grab, I cannot imagine it helping anyone. Maybe it will solve a few petty crimes, but it is a squeeze on freedom in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER21> I realize it's partially rhetorical, but I keep saying to the people who are trying to shove this onto us, "You first."

Police still fight wearing and using body cams. Governments are becoming more obstreperous, recalcitrant, and outright -- and arguable, illegally -- uncooperative with respect to Freedom of Information Act and other like document production procedures and requests.

It seems, the powers that want this, want no aspect of this "transparency" for themselves.

I'd like to see a private initiative and cameras take to tracking the elite and the "nothing to hide" people.

Their actions and behavior already tell me, that they have plenty to hide.

Let's see them "live their everyday life", as they've known it, in the face of relentless tracking and "accountability".

</comment><comment><USER22> Is this something that will eventually spread to every single democracy? In a vacuum it does not sound that awful. You can identify illegal actions and individuals rapidly and effectively. As democracy entails a regular shifting of individuals, it seems that the chances of any given democracy choosing to consistently reject such utility in the longrun approaches zero. Even if the vast majority oppose it, opinions quickly change after a frightful act when whatever minority seeks to act such systems can effectively leverage the fear to achieve their goal.

And if the answer to this question is yes, then where does it end? Or will democracies invariably end up sacrificing any and all freedoms and rights of privacy, that can be sacrificed, in the name of security?

</comment><comment><USER23> Genuine question: With the GDPR in effect, don't all CCTV operators in the EU more or less need to have facial recognition in order to comply with any "please show me any images you have of me and then delete them" requests? (obviously they wouldn't need to run the facial detection always, only on select faces when requested)

<comment><USER24> > _With the GDPR in effect_

GDPR is interpreted and enforced at the national level. I'm going to go ahead and assume the British data regulator won't rule against its own government.

<comment><USER23> Sure, how about private companies who have CCTV then? Could someone just 'ddos' a supermarket chain by getting a hundred people to all ask for their CCTV footage?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Surely someone will come up with a device that can mask your face from cameras without literally putting a mask on. I dont know what that would be or if that would be made illegal or not, because surely they couldnt make a literal halloween mask illegal. I would buy that device.

<comment><USER26> Surprised no one has mentioned UV-emitting LEDs embedded in a hat. No visible light emitted, but looks like a spotlight to cameras & hides the face in the blinding light.

<comment><USER27> Isn't that damaging to your eyes? Also, good UV filters do exist, it would just be a bit more expensive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> As a security concerned British person, this throws multiple red flags to me.

1\. A Country that failed to upgrade it's NHS systems from Windows XP after 10+ billion pounds of investment and subsequently got hacked, leading to many deaths - scares me. The data they are collecting is _very_ intimate. If it was leaked, somebody could track persons of interest (government officials, politicians, journalists, undercover police, etc), tell whether somebody is having an affair, make correlations between friends groups - tonnes of data. They could potentially figure out where you work, where you go for lunch, who you meet, who you phone - it's just too much.

2\. Today it's about catching "known" criminals, tomorrow it's about predicting future criminals and sending them to state "rehabilitation" camps (just look at China), selling you data to the highest bidder (it's happened on the Council level in the past) or some other ridiculous use. Blocking websites on the internet used to be about removing exploitation of young persons, now it's used to block pirating of copyright material.

3\. A right to be forgotten - if you've done nothing wrong, you shouldn't be tracked. I can understand the need to hold this sort of data for a short period of time, but after this it should be deleted. I think privacy is a fundamental freedom, along with freedom of speech, freedom to travel, etc.

4\. The accuracy of facial detection, even if it's 99.99% for 70 million people, is still 7000 mistakes (at a massive simplification). It's actually worse than that, both the real accuracy of face detection and the error rate for specific people. It's also "easy" to trick. When it works it works well, but what about the person who is incorrectly detained, potentially injured for a crime they never committed? And that's not even taking into consideration that a lot of these face detection algorithms tend to be subtly racist (over trained on locals, badly trained on foreign persons).

5\. Lack of oversight for such a powerful technology - to collect data on this magnitude is absolutely insane and needs multiple groups of people to keep it's use in check. Not just government based but also separate non-government groups which receive funding elsewhere.

That all said, I can understand the clear benefit - remove the human element from tracking these people. But with any powerful technology we must always ask - at what cost? I think this inflicts too much on a persons basic freedoms.

</comment><comment><USER29> I think this was used in the recent gazzete newspaper shooting to identify the perpetrator.

</comment><comment><USER30> If the police are lacking in criminals to lock up I can suggest a few thousand in various northern cities that they've been refusing to investigate for 10-15 years.

<comment><USER19> What are you referring to?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Human rights vs protection from criminals/terrorists is a delicate balance. I am curious what are the human rights that get violated by having cameras that identify illegal activities.

<comment><USER32> > I am curious what are the human rights that get violated by having cameras

Privacy is a human right.

<comment><USER33> We live in a world where the rights of criminals are given more respect than the privacy of their victims.

<comment><USER19> How so?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook and Zynga to end close relationship - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20554441 <comment><USER2> This is a flesh wound for Facebook, but IMO will probably be lethal for Zynga. Without the "virality" (read: spamming) offered by Facebook their games have no hope of any sustainable user base.

They can pivot into _actual_ casual games (a la Popcap), but that space is already crowded and Zynga has no real advantage over anyone else, and plenty of disadvantages.

<comment><USER3> This doesn't change that much for Zynga, they've known for a while that it's mobile or bust for them, and all their acquisitions and movements show they've bet entirely on that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Could this turn out to be the nail in Zynga's coffin? Seems like investors are getting cold feet, staff reductions, and a general malaise seems to surround the brand. Losing that access as a key partner to Facebook and becoming just another user is going to force them to make very rapid changes to adapt.

<comment><USER5> I think the nail in the coffin was the last quarterly report. At this point Zynga is priced right around the liquidation value of the company. Nowhere to go but up (or out of business)!

Long Zynga 2014 calls in the hope they pull off a miracle of online gambling.

<comment><USER6> Somehow online gambling seems like a great fit for Zynga.

<comment><USER4> Huge fit but with massively regulatory oversight, so they'd be at the whims of the regulators.

<comment><USER7> Admittedly so, but Vegas casinos seem to thrive under a similar regulatory climate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I name this Praziquantel Day.

(Praziquantel is a drug used to kill tapeworms.)

This is very, very _good_ for Facebook. They are upgrading their brand and image by doing this.

The major reason Google+ Games did not succeed is that preferential treatment was given to mainstream developers (e.g. Zynga) who didn't expect us to thrive and therefore gave us their second-string stuff, as opposed to indie developers who would value us and the access we could offer them and give us a very high (brand-defining) level of quality. Having raised this issue, and having proposed an alternative strategy that _would have worked exceedingly well_ , is the major reason I am no longer at Google.

<comment><USER9> Facebook gave preferential treatment to Zynga too, so that can't be the reason Google+ Games did not succeed. Perhaps it is more relevant that Google+ is not widely used and those who do use it are less likely to be into things like Farmville (demographics).

<comment><USER10> Facebook gave preferential treatment to Zynga only after they proved that they were the most popular. They had to fight their way there - it didn't start that way. It's still a bit dangerous to do so though because users' tastes may change, so good on Facebook for removing their special status.

As you said, Google+ had no such information, and gave companies special status out the gate before proving their popularity. If Facebook did the same thing, their top apps would probably look a lot different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can't see how this isn't the death knell from Zynga. Maybe I am missing something, but Zynga loses all their mass appeal. Maybe there is a self contained group that runs under the radar screen at their site, but they lose much of the social connection.

Facebook can find other game makers. There is no other Facebook for Zynga. Facebook also gets rid of some unwanted Spam.

</comment><comment><USER12> They could just resort to actual email spam, would anyone put it past them?

<comment><USER13> They would if it worked, but email spam is mostly solved these days. Everyone uses a spam filter.

<comment><USER12> I was thinking more along the lines of "get 100 credits in this game by giving us your gmail password/control over outlook so we can send to people in your contacts list" rather than outright blind spamming.

<comment><USER2> I imagine that GMail, Yahoo, AOL, and all of the major email providers would slam that door shut pretty quickly. Much faster than Facebook closed the door on inter-friend spam.

After all, a webmail provider gets _nothing_ from such behavior, and it represent a giant security liability.

<comment><USER14> One could wish. I'm still getting spam from linkedin and couple of others "social networks" (badoo and similars) even after reporting every email from them as spam.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Facebook is also enforcing new terms for its developers: From December on, applications that run on external domains instead of appearing as an iframe inside facebook will be severely restricted in their access to facebook[1]. This move is supposed to force indie developers to move their games to facebook where they can't use AdSense (it's not allowed by facebook) and can only use facebook's own payments system (it's mandatory).

Zynga could have used this 2 year time window to grow an independent social gaming network, but they failed to do so. It was inevitable that this would happen.

[1] [https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2012/09/05/platfor...](https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2012/09/05/platform- updates--operation-developer-love/)

<comment><USER16> My reading is that those restrictions are only for games off Facebook, not all applications. Interesting that they would make that distinction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Best for both, and it will release zynga from FB exclusivity agreement. Facebook's platform and business has changed dramatically in the past 24 mos. And zynga can focus on growth on other platforms in addition to maintaining a presence on Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER18> So in the article they say "Zynga's stock fell 13% on the news" - my first reaction was how can you go 13% below zero?. Is that wrong? (actual drop was $.17 since they are trading at $2.50)

</comment><comment><USER19> >>> Zynga now has its own games platform, but players will no longer be able to share their progress on Facebook.

Isn't every app allowed to share certain things on a user's FB page? Why wouldn't this be possible for Zynga games?</comment>


Reviving a 19 Year Old Test to See If an Employer Is Worth Working For - <AUTHOR> https://alcamine.com/blog/reviving-a-19-year-old-test-to-see-if-an-employer-is-worth-working-for <comment><USER2> It's absolutely shocking how many companies don't understand how important these points on the Joel Test are. I forget who made an amended version of this list to change "best tools money can buy" to "giving developers wide allowance in buying tools and hardware which make their job easier. Sometimes this is a 3rd or 4th monitor; sometimes it's a $1500 chair that is so comfortable and makes back pain disappear so that one can concentrate on a feature/bug fix for hours without needing to get up and stretch (yes, a personal thing for me), or non-standard-issue software/tooling like GitKracken or RedGate or BeyondCompare or Sublime Text....

Managers complain about spending so much money that's not in the budget but how much does turnover cost you in terms of lost productivity and recruiting fees?

(And speaking of recruiting fees: why are companies willing to pay $20k or more to recruiters but only a $500 for a referral from current employees? Recruiters in the midwest pay $1000 or more for referrals who get hired -- companies are telling their employees that it's in their interest to tell their qualified friend/lead to contact the recruiter instead of doing an internal referral.)

<comment><USER3> What's the standard issue alternative of sublime text?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would like to hear some comments about: "I like having dedicated testers on my team but many places don't anymore and if you have a good process in place for automated testing you can do just fine."

In the 1990s, I recall (perhaps wrongly) one of the Microsoft books talking about one tester for every two developers.

At the tail end of the 1990s, I worked as a developer in a group with a QA team, and they caught bugs, including ones where it took me a while to even see there was a bug. Which means that I couldn't have written the tests for them.

Nowadays, I do consulting/contract programming, and my clients always do manual testing of what I shipped them, before signing off on the payment. That's in addition to the unit tests I write. And they find bugs.

So, what does it mean "if you have a good process in place for automated testing you can do just fine"? Does it mean that it's okay to let your users be your QA group, since there's a process for handling that?

Or is it something else I don't know about, given that I'm a one-person developer?

<comment><USER2> Dedicated testers can be quite skilled at figuring out ways to break software (sometimes annoyingly so). As a dev I'm usually thinking of how to make my apps work, not how to make them fail.

Unit tests: certainly good, but on one team I recall there being the phrase that a good integration test was worth 1000 unit tests: if the individual parts work but they don't work together correctly as a whole system then what practical value was our unit test?

<comment><USER5> The unit tests and integration tests serve different primary functions. There may be some overlap, but if you're good at writing them, then you already know about that and can minimize that.</comment></comment></comment>