Tech workers say poor leadership is number one cause for burnout - <AUTHOR> http://blog.teamblind.com/index.php/2018/08/20/tech-workers-say-poor-leadership-is-number-one-cause-for-burnout/ <comment><USER2> I know of a team (~20 devs, a handful of managers) in the middle of a fantastic experiment in burning out the developers.

First, a new remote senior leader took over. He doesn't visit the team or understand them well. He puts pressure on the managers to deliver projects that make his bosses happy by looking sexy, even if they cause more operational issues for the customers. Operational issues = oncall hell, so more devs burn out and quit.

The experiment is going great.

Phase two began recently. Of the three remaining managers, one quit and one was fired for not brown nosing to the remote senior leader enough. (Push back on bullshit projects? That can't be allowed). The single remaining manager is the ultimate brown noser who happily causes his devs on call hell in order to make senior leadership happy.

The devs are all looking elsewhere for work. The general mood is in a freefall. People are taking long vacations away in cities that also have lots of tech jobs.

It's all a fantastic experiment in how to implode a software organization. I really hope to meet the control group some day- they won't believe how lucky they are.

<comment><USER3> What is with companies denying remote work but then bringing in some level of management that works remotely? I've seen happen it in a few places and it feels like animal farm half the time

<comment><USER4> Worked a job at a startup once that had a 40hr "butt-in-seat" policy. The PM would be the one to record the exact time you sat down, the exact length of your lunch, and the exact time you left. This also included breaks. There would be a report to management every Friday and then a 1 on 1 with the manager if he didn't "like" what he saw.

<comment><USER4> Oh, our manager _and_ our CTO lived 2 states away and were flown in every tuesday through thursday.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are so many articles that blame leadership for all that ails a company. To me, it seems a bit like saying "most program crashes are caused by runtime errors". While both are true, there are deeper explanations that can be more helpful in starting a discussion.

In the case of crashing a program, maybe it's because of a misused raw pointer or a type error in an untyped language. As soon as you frame it that way, you immediately see possible paths forward to improve the situation.

In the case of burnout at companies, I've found it has more to do with the mindset of the top leaders (who other managers down the chain tend to emulate). The mindset is that the company is "a machine", which makes the rest of us "cogs" (or pick your favorite machine part).

The leaders may be perfectly nice and considerate people in general (or not), but regardless, the company-as-machine mindset leads them to set aside their humanity in the interests of the company. All of sudden everyone on the team needs to be replaceable, have predictably high output, etc. Those might be fine concerns for a business, but they end up blinding managers to the flesh and blood human beings in front of them and they start to see employees as the means to the greater business ends of output, productivity, growth, etc.

I believe this is an issue of human development that affects most companies eventually. Only companies with really developed leaders who, when faced with serious pressure, are able to see people as the unique and complex beings that they are and not make people feel like they somehow don't matter at a fundamental level.

<comment><USER6> This opinion is nice but not actionable. That means that it is less useful if you are in the role of an employer, wanting to reduce burnout in your org.

See my comment below for _actual mental models you can use_ to prevent burnout in your organisation.[1]

I personally find JD-R more useful, because it prescribes a model of 'jobs demands outstripping job resources', which then implies that you as manager can seek ways to increase job resources to help your employees cope. This at least suggests a direction for trial and error.

Adopting the attitude of 'all people are unique and complex beings that matter' may be nice, but it doesn't prescribe action. Therefore, it isn't as useful as 'think of burnout as JD-R or COR and perform experiments according to those models, pausing each quarter to see if burnout-related turnover has decreased'.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17850532](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17850532)

<comment><USER7> In absence of leadership, the tool firms use to solve coordination problems is management. A leader from this perspective is simply a better manager. Better at all the tasks of coordinating human activity, reading when people are feeling down, better at inspiring them, better at breaking apart complex tasks into routine ones that the ICs can more easily understand.

But leaders are practically impossible to reliably hire at rates the business owner can realistically afford, and if the whole zeitgeist of business starts paying more for effective leadership, then that just makes the problem a hundred times worse.

Leadership isn't teachable, but management is. Learning management will teach you the rudimentary skills of coordinating people to accomplish a goal, but it won't by itself make you a leader.

Firms can hire more managers, that solves the problem, I call a team with more than one competent manager, 'well-managed'. But good managers, like good leaders, wind up getting overworked across projects and so they just miss things. A leader doesn't miss anything, they're laser focused on the overall business goals of the project.

<comment><USER5> I agree that leadership isn't "teachable" in the same sense that a skill or piece of knowledge is. But it can be supported and cultivated. It's what I do for a living as a leadership coach. I don't actually instruct anyone how to lead, but rather give them them the opportunity to discover it for themselves. I've seen pretty meaningful shifts for people on the timescale of 3-6 months.

<comment><USER8> Leadership is very teachable. The military and other large organizations that need leadership that can't be gotten off the street invest in it.

Few orgs want to teach it because it costs money and the ROI is poor if the subject jumps ship. The military doesn't have this problem to the same degree for obvious reasons, but for companies that require common skill sets, it's a tough decision.

<comment><USER5> It depends what you mean teachable. When a leader is when faced with a serious challenge, the crux of great leadership is being able to set one's own ego aside and act from a place of groundedness and a clear and objective view of reality.

When human beings are in a difficult situation they all too often try to comfort themselves by seeking praise/affirmation, stability/safety, connection/relationship, etc. And in those moments we see everyone around us as a means to the end of getting one of those things that we feel is missing for us. Our ego _is_ our personality. We're fused with it and most of the time aren't even aware that we have these impulses.

Great leaders are the ones who develop an awareness of their inner world and are able to set it aside when they need to act.

Can you teach this? Sort of. There are people who do. You can call what people like me do as a kind of teaching. But it requires someone more than just instruction and practice. The person doing the "learning" has to be willing to let go of parts of themselves that had been with them for most of their life.

I've found mere desire to be a better leader is not enough. People's psychology is riddled with land mines and powerful defense that won't let them abandon a deeply held belief just because someone taught them that it was somehow counterproductive.

The people that make the leap are usually feeling "stuck" or having some kind of recurring breakdown that they just can't bear anymore and don't know what else to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here's the primary source for the survey in question: [http://blog.teamblind.com/index.php/2018/08/20/tech- workers-...](http://blog.teamblind.com/index.php/2018/08/20/tech-workers-say- poor-leadership-is-number-one-cause-for-burnout/)

How useful is a survey like this? The survey does not define burnout to employees, leaving them to guess at the definition. Can employees reliably self-diagnose burnout and differentiate it from similar conditions - i.e. actual depression? Can they also reliably indicate __the cause __for the burnout, especially if the symptoms can overlap with the cause? Let 's say you have burnout because of work overload, but you normally don't mind doing tons of work, just hate your boss. When the feelings of exhaustion/anger come up, will you point them at the work load or at your boss?

Perhaps you could relabel it as a survey on workplace discontent, but even then, I don't think it's really well made. The problem with statistical data like this is that we can see the primary source and temper our enthusiasm for the accuracy of the survey, down the broken telephone line, it will be taken as gospel(see the wage gap/sexual harassment statistics as examples).

<comment><USER10>
        > The survey does not define burnout to employees, leaving them to guess at the definition.

This sort of self-reporting is accepted in psychology. The way you determine a subject's happiness is to ask them how happy they feel.

Think about how a more rigorous alternative might work.

1\. We come up with some more precise definition of "burnout." Perhaps we define it as "an average of X 'frustration' events in the workplace over Y days, combined with a steadily declining sense of 'enthusiasm'"

2\. OK, great, but now we need precise definitions of 'frustration' and 'enthusiasm.' Is 'frustration' the momentary frustration we feel when the compiler complains about something? Is it a barely-restrained feeling of wanting to smash one's keyboard over somebody's face? For how many seconds should that feeling be experienced to qualify? Likewise with 'enthusiasm.' Same problem we had in step 1.

3\. Alternatively, we could monitor people's cortisol levels, blood pressure levels, and have them spend their workdays in an fMRI machine or something. Although even that would have limitations; that seems more likely to measure acute symptoms than something chronic like "burnout."

        > Can employees reliably self-diagnose burnout and differentiate it from similar conditions - i.e. actual depression?

With a sufficiently large sample size this wouldn't matter.

As you say, surely x% of respondents will confuse depression with burnout.

However, the value of x% will surely be nearly the same at all companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Poor Leadership is also the number one cause for parting ways with a company.

For me personally, there was never another reason to leave a company. I never experienced a toxic environment or had colleagues i couldn't stand. It was always the leadership

<comment><USER12> You've never experienced inconsiderate coworkers? Like coworkers who talk loudly on the phone in a nearby work area, coworkers with hygiene issues, coworkers who don't carry their weight or respond well to training?

<comment><USER13> All of these issues should be addressed by the manager.

<comment><USER14> Or potentially addressed directly. I've had a couple occasions where I literally told a sexual harassing manager to "go fuck himself" twice. (He was harassing the women at the office) At another company I was politely confronted about a comment I had made, we talked it out. It was unintentionally insulting and we acted as adults and I realized why he brought it up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I left my last job largely because of this. Exec-levels couldn't decide on a technical direction for the next big version of a major consumer product, then chose a _very bad_ strategy, which took nearly a year to change to something sane. Well, at least less crazy.

Meanwhile, the competition is not stupid and is not crazy and is not waiting for us to get our act together. Suddenly we have a year to do the thing that the worker-bee level Cassandras were saying was the right thing to do in the first place. Maybe 14 months to bring up hardware, port or write three major hunks of software, get third parties ramped up on development, write tools and do the million things you need to do to ship. Oh, and the team writing the OS we're mandated to use has been ordered not to talk to us and has gone dark, removing our access to their releases and documentation.

So there's a meeting of all the software folks, and management tells us "Okay guys, the next year is going to be hell. You'll be allowed to take vacation, probably, we'll tell you when." I'd seen this coming and was sitting in the back of the room with an offer letter in my pocket, trying not to be angry because a bunch of people I like working with a lot are getting shafted. I should be elated at the offer (which is quite good), but instead I just feel sad.

I leave.

Six months later one of my friends working on the project sends me a picture of his front lawn. He has been unable to find the time or energy to mow it and it is 18 inches high. Eventually they ship (late, of course), to lackluster reviews. My friend has since moved on; most of the people I know there have. They don't like talking about that year-long deathmarch, followed by a year of patching the living crap out of things in the field and struggling for market share. Meanwhile, the competition's product does very, very well.

Last I checked, the latest crop of execs there were gunning for the same crazy. Maybe technology has moved on sufficiently and the specific crazy is possible now, but I have numbers indicating things are pretty much the same. I don't know which side to cheer for. Where do they get these lunatics?

<comment><USER16> I believe they hire those "lunatics" because it's believed that engineers can't understand business.

As an engineer that has started businesses this is BS.

It's really easy to learn business skills, sales and marketing are not difficult, finance is laughably easy.

But so long as the companies are being formed to sell equity to VCs you will see them led by frat boys who the VC frat boys recognize... and they will abuse engineers.

My solution- stop working for anyone who isn't technically competent or at least recognizes engineering needs enough to get out of the way and support being efficient.

<comment><USER17> I half agree, the reality is sales is a tradecraft honed over time. If it were as easy as implied, many more of the _Tech_ founders here on HN would have had their businesses succeed. The truth of the matter is, the us vs them mentality is just as damaging as one side being arrogant. The only way for a good team to work is for each to recognize strengths and weaknesses and for leadership to keep things level headed.

<comment><USER15> I remember being at a startup full of engineers, and us trying to hire a salesperson.

Years at big companies taught me contempt for marketing and sales. But there's nothing like finding _good_ marketing and _good_ sales when you're six months to financial destruction . . .

<comment><USER16> Yes, and early in my career I was a technical sales person for a product I built... paired with a pure sales person.

I don't mean to say there was no value to his skills— but I am saying that it was not hard for me to understand enough about sales to hire a good sales person.

They would of course be a better sales person than me.

The problem is people think your CEO should be a sales person and that's s mistake.

Sales is a process that's easy to replicate.

Creating a novel software application isn't.

Ate hnicwl CEO can hire a great chief sales guy. A non-technical CEO can't hire a CTO and often ends up undermining the product.

I would have no problem being hands off with the sales department.

I have yet to meet a Non technical CEO who doesn't think he knows how to design products.

<comment><USER18> Have yet to meet a technical CEO who does not think they know sales, marketing, design, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Misleading title: the original survey question is "What is the main source of employee burnout at your current workplace?". Positive answer to this question doesn't mean that the person answering the question is himself burnt out.

<comment><AUTHOR> So, I took this title from NextBigWhat. I haven't manufactured this by myself

<comment><USER20> [EDIT] Removed previous comment as the parent apparently missed the [via] link at the bottom of the article, the same as I did.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a woefully inadequate article, and a woefully inadequate survey. So what if 'poor leadership' is the number one cause for burnout? That insight isn't useful. As an employee, I'd like to figure out how to avoid burnout. And as a employer, I'm not sure how to reduce burnout — get better leadership? How do I do that?

But it turns out there are good ideas we can try that may be found in the academic literature.

Context: I was writing up my process for preventing burnout recently ([https://commoncog.com/blog/nuanced-take-on-preventing- burnou...](https://commoncog.com/blog/nuanced-take-on-preventing-burnout/)), and I took some time to look into the academic literature for burnout, to see if it highlighted anything I'd missed.

I'll give a quick summary:

1\. The standard test for burnout today is something called the Maslach Burnout Inventory [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslach_Burnout_Inventory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslach_Burnout_Inventory), and it measures burnout along three metrics: exhaustion, inefficacy, and cynicism.

a) Exhaustion: described as wearing out, loss of energy, depletion, debilitation, and fatigue.

b) Inefficacy: described as reduced productivity or capability.

c) Cynicism: negative or inappropriate attitudes towards clients, irritability, loss of idealism, and withdrawal.

2\. The MBI is a descriptive model, which helps you identify burnout, but we need a developmental model as well (e.g. what are the various stages of burnout?). The early models of burnout described the pathway as three stages: 1. job stressors (an imbalance between work demands and individual resources), then 2. individual strain (an emotional response of exhaustion and anxiety), and then 3). defensive coping (changes in attitudes and behavior, such as greater cynicism).

Or, to put this simply: first your job demands too much of you, then you feel anxious and emotionally exhausted, then you cope by becoming cynical about work, and then you quit.

3\. Maslach found that development of cynicism is the biggest predictor of burnout-related turnover. If you're cynical about your job, you're pretty likely to think about quitting or to actually quit soon. ([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19426369](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19426369))

4\. If you look at the literature today, however, you'll find that most burnout research has converged on two development models: the Job Demands‐Resources (JD‐R) model ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_demands- resources_model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_demands-resources_model)) and the Conservation of Resources (COR) model ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_resources_theo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_resources_theory)). I'll leave you to read the respective Wikipedia articles, but the takeaway from both of them is that burnout results from when the resources provided by the job are outstripped by the demands of the job.

As a CEO or manager, your best bet to reducing burnout is to increase the list of job resources described in JD-R, that is:

> physical, psychological, social, or organisational aspects of the job that > are either or: functional in achieving work goals; reduce job demands and > the associated physiological and psychological cost; stimulate personal > growth, learning, and development. Examples are, career opportunities, > supervisor coaching, role-clarity, and autonomy.

As an employee, your best bet to reducing burnout is to increase personal resources (which are different from job-provided resources in the JD-R model). But the problem here is that the research doesn't yet know if there are effective techniques in increasing personal resources. Why? Well ...

5\. There are only two decades or so worth of research into burnout, and the research was primarily centered around the care-giving professions. Consequently, early models of burnout were thought to stem from social exhaustion (e.g. nurses and doctors dealing with death, or grief); in a 2016 retrospective review article ([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4911781/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4911781/)), Maslach herself write that this is an active field of research, and they don't yet know if you can train someone to be more resistant to burnout.

There are some interesting research directions, though. I found this paragraph in an undergrad paper from Australia (where apparently half of the nurses there leave the profession prematurely, mostly due to burnout):

> Rather, failure to recover consistently from such work stresses (in non-work > time) is a crucial determinant of chronic (maladaptive) fatigue and burnout > evolution (Winwood et al. 2007). When such recovery is effected > consistently, physiological toughness (Dienstbier 1989,1991) and enhanced > stress resistance is developed, with improved performance at work, better > sleep and reduced maladaptive health outcomes (Dienstbier 1991).While some > individuals may achieve this spontaneously, far more may benefit from specific > training to do so effectively and consistently.

The Winwood paper may be found here: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17693784](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17693784) but it's unclear if they've found a set of techniques that work for most people in most professions. I'm still reading up.

PS: I have a technique that I use myself, but it's unclear that it would work for everyone. I wrote it up here: [https://commoncog.com/blog/nuanced-take-on- preventing-burnou...](https://commoncog.com/blog/nuanced-take-on-preventing- burnout/). It's certainly protected me from burnout in startupland over the years. But, as I've mentioned, I'm interested in the research because the goal there is to find a set of general techniques that would work for most people. My technique has a sample size of one.

<comment><USER21> Thank you for writing this all up. I found this all really interesting but one question remains: what should we do when we have burnout? It's easy enough to say "just employ one of your coping mechanisms" but presumably there are real resentments underlying the situation?

I guess this is the crux really. Is burnout merely an arbitrary expression of exhaustion and overwork, which carries thoughts and resentments that may seem 'real' but are really just manifestations of stress? Or are the resentments in any way real? If they're real, I personally feel they need to be tackled in a way beyond mere coping.

<comment><USER22> The resentment may come from mismatch between personal and job goals. It could be anything, projects, salary, bosses, colleagues. It may be clear from the beginning, or pop mid-course.

With no resolution to the mismatch, it leads to self-repression of the resentment, then to cynicism, and indeed it saps away emotional energy to manage this.

So, it's important to be aware of how the job vs personal goals match. Making the job expectation known to the superiors may as well help keeping the balance. Btw, brown-nosing is a form of negotiation, sure it's not the only way.

Otherwise the burn-out will be more self-inflicted. Also, there're cases that may have no practical ways to balance (culture fit). In this case setting to oneself a limited time-frame to attempt finding the balance (improving the job goals). Then declare 'mission accomplished' and move on (taking the side of personal goals).

Low and time-wasteful work-load (9-5) may as much lead to burn-out as the sweatshop slavery kind. But both environments have those that would flourish there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Number one by a hair. 23% leadership vs. 19% overwork.

Interesting to see the per-company breakdown. I wonder about the sample size. Blind seems like a promising avenue for getting sentiment analysis inside of companies, but there is a pretty serious sampling bias, as many who sign up for Blind might already be feeling disillusioned.

<comment><USER24> Overwork is also leadership: they're setting the unrealistic schedules and they're communicating expectations that people meet are supposed to meet these schedules.

By contrast there are other places where management goes around at quitting time and throws everyone out.

<comment><USER16> I've seen many software companies where for months on end each week more than a weeks worth of new work is added to the product, without changing the deadline, because "management" keeps deciding therecare new features that are critical and they can be just slipped right in.

If you tell them they are going to increase the time it takes or lower quality, you're "not cooperative" or "not a team player"....or they tell you they will take the quality hit... but when there are any problems in the delivered product it's the teams fault, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Where is lack of vacation time categorized into this? There are too many answers.

<comment><USER4> That would be added to management

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> 91% of employees who have blind installed. Selection bias.

<comment><USER27> That means it's young engineers at FAANG saying this.

<comment><USER28> It also means employees who are not necessarily happy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> More interesting result: broken out by company, the "poor leadership and lack of direction" answer ranges from 15-35% of the vote, and it's the companies with a very public lack of direction that top the list.

Meanwhile, Facebook and Uber get great scores on the measure.

</comment><comment><USER30> Tech leadership is extremely hard. You either get at one extreme the MBA trained to think producing sugared beverages is equivalent to producing software, and at the other the formerly great coder that couldn't metamorphose himself to be able to manage people. Having all the required qualities is extremely rare.

</comment><comment><USER31> Original source: [http://blog.teamblind.com/index.php/2018/08/20/tech- workers-...](http://blog.teamblind.com/index.php/2018/08/20/tech-workers-say- poor-leadership-is-number-one-cause-for-burnout/)

</comment><comment><USER32> There's not enough bottom-up feedback in selecting and rewarding managers. Top-down-only evaluations skew behavior. An org should survey EVERYONE about their boss(es) every 6 months or so, and the bosses should be held accountable for improving their weak areas.

</comment><comment><USER33> I have seen evidence that Blind is a major source of toxicity at many companies. I would recommend not installing the app as it only serves to make you feel burned out.

</comment><comment><USER34> The five keys to a successful team based on Google research.

[https://www.inc.com/michael-schneider/google-thought-they- kn...](https://www.inc.com/michael-schneider/google-thought-they-knew-how-to- create-the-perfect.html)

"Google's "Project Artistotle" investigates why some teams work better than others. Its analysis shows that the combination of individuals making up the group is unimportant. Instead, a team's "group norms" – its "traditions, behavioral standards and unwritten rules" – are essential to how well the group performs. _Teams are successful if their group norms lead to equal speaking time for all individuals within the group and an awareness of others' emotional states._ These factors produce a situation in which members of the group feel comfortable, or "safe," and therefore more willing to contribute. Google's data show that what Harvard business professor Amy Edmondson called "psychological safety" within the group leads to an increase in the group's collective IQ and therefore its effectiveness and productivity."

"1\. Dependability. Team members get things done on time and meet expectations.

2\. Structure and clarity. High-performing teams have clear goals, and have well-defined roles within the group.

3\. Meaning. The work has personal significance to each member.

4\. Impact. The group believes their work is purposeful and positively impacts the greater good.

Yes, that's four, not five. The last one stood out from the rest:

5\. Psychological Safety.

We've all been in meetings and, due to the fear of seeming incompetent, have held back questions or ideas. I get it. It's unnerving to feel like you're in an environment where everything you do or say is under a microscope.

But imagine a different setting. A situation in which everyone is safe to take risks, voice their opinions, and ask judgment-free questions. A culture where managers provide air cover and create safe zones so employees can let down their guard. That's psychological safety.

I know, not the quantitative data that you were hoping for. However, Google found that teams with psychologically safe environments had employees who were less likely to leave, more likely to harness the power of diversity, and ultimately, who were more successful.

Engineering the perfect team is more subjective than we would like, but focusing on these five components increases the likelihood that you will build a dream team. Through its research, Google made the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle proud by proving, "The whole can be greater than the sum of its parts."

 _Teams are successful if their group norms lead to equal speaking time for all individuals within the group and an awareness of others' emotional states._

I think this is tricky if a problem and observably true. The teams I've been involved with mesh easier when each are able to commune easily and this normally means equal chances speaking time. Whenever I've seen an imbalance I can safely say it is because the person had obvious narcissistic personality traits which were always destructive long term.

<comment><USER35>
        > But imagine a different setting. A situation in which everyone is safe to take risks, voice their opinions, and ask judgment-free questions. A culture where managers provide air cover and create safe zones so employees can let down their guard. That's psychological safety.

That's all really nice, but it does conflict with #1 and #2. Being able to "take risks" means that sometimes there's failure and consequences that lead to projects NOT getting done on time, NOT meeting expectations.

Also, there's a fine line between having members with "well-defined roles" and silo-ed divisions where people literally don't talk other teams unless there's a "hand-off" (yep, people still use that word). On the other hand, to have a really good team, you need folks that will actually listen to outsiders who might not be formally or organizationally qualified. You need people that will jump in and do stuff even when it's "not their job".

I am all in favor of the intent of these rules, but applying them takes a level of nuance that the vast majority of organizations simply can't pull off. That's OK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Nah. Tech workers burnout for the same reason nurses, cops, accountants and everyone else burns out.

The drudgery of the work not meeting your expectations ( cool hacker vs office code monkey ), the open-ended nature of the work ( you will be doing this for the next few decades ), the awareness of time ( or how much of it you are wasting away at work ) and the pittance you get relative to what the company gets.

Goodness. I can't believe it's already labor day weekend. Where does the time go.

<comment><USER37> Maybe in some cases. Having been through leadership ups and downs within the same company (and even same team!) however, for my case it really is about leadership.

When I'm happy: We solicit projects from stakeholders on other teams without development resources. They negotiate among each other to decide task prioritization (our manager facilitates). We'll consult on the scope of requests. Usually stakeholders overestimate the work involved and we can make them happy right from the start by promising delivery in a fraction of the time they expected (while still leaving plenty of time for the inevitable unexpected.

Projects are usually things that have been a pain for a long time, so people are happy when they're fixed but they're not usually urgent. Is it mundane? Sure, usually. Although we do have the latitude to spice things up if we can fit something cool in within the allotted time.

When I'm unhappy: Executives have knee-jerked into another hairbrained scheme that they'll drop in six months (if we're lucky, without another round of layoffs). Nevertheless, it's all hands on deck so we're yanked off everything else to support the "new vision".

I do also think sometimes about the value of programmers vs. what they're paid, but I also know that if I think I can do better I'm always free to try. I personally prefer the security of a steady job and freedom from business operation headaches. Maybe one day that'll change, but we'll see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Could we _please_ change this headline? At the moment it's pure clickbait.

"91% Employees Experience Burnout" implies that 91% of employees suffer from burnout, whereas - firstly - there is no data in the article to indicate that this is the case.

Secondly, the question that comes closest to the 91% answer is "What is the main source of employee burnout at your current workplace?", to which 9.7% of people answered that "Burnout isn't a problem at my company." This leaves 90.3% (and a rounding error!) who think that burnout is a problem at their company and think they know why that is. This _does not mean_ they themselves are suffering or have suffered from burnout.

I'm not trying to minimise the problem of burnout, but I would strongly suggest if we're going to have a serious discussion about it we should get our facts and our data straight and not base that discussion off a poorly written and researched employee engagement puff-piece.

<comment><USER9> The headline is clickbait, it does not match the headline of the primary source: [http://blog.teamblind.com/index.php/2018/08/20/tech- workers-...](http://blog.teamblind.com/index.php/2018/08/20/tech-workers-say- poor-leadership-is-number-one-cause-for-burnout/)

It is also contradicted by the primary source's previous survey: [http://blog.teamblind.com/index.php/2018/05/29/close- to-60-p...](http://blog.teamblind.com/index.php/2018/05/29/close- to-60-percent-of-surveyed-tech-workers-are-burnt-out-credit-karma-tops-the- list-for-most-employees-suffering-from-burnout/)

<comment><USER20> Nice spot. That tiny [via] link at the bottom is a really sneaky pattern. Didn't even notice it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Same here for me

<comment><USER20> Fair play: I've removed my comment on the other sub-thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The cause is that "leadership" is generally people who don't understand technology, and the solution is to stop hiring such incompetence.

No car company would allow a CEO who doesn't understand how cars work, let alone one who has no respect for those who design cars.

But most tech companies are lead by tech illiterate MBA types who disdain engineers, and so engineers are managed by people who don't understand engineering.

I'll give you a particular example but this is not the exception, this was the norm in %85 of the dozen tech companies I've worked at:

At Amazon my boss was a guy trained to be a prison guard, who was selling pot on campus on the side, who got his job managing engineers because of a political connection. He had difficulty operating Microsoft Office. He was borderline computer illiterate.

After a re-organization my bosses' boss was replaced with a woman whose previous career was literally managing state DMV offices. Hey it's management, right?

Notably both of these people resented the fact that we were getting paid close to as much as they were (yet they with no skills, not even good management skills were still getting paid more!)

At that point between me and Bezos there were no engineers in management and nobody who respected engineering (and that included Bezos, this was early enough I worked a lot of tickets with Bezos involved, saw him literally stop us from fixing a problem in October only to go ballistic the day before thanksgiving when the problem surfaced again.)

Meanwhile Amazon has this propaganda campaign about how they "raise the bar" in hiring- and it's true I've seen brilliant engineers not hired because of the objections of the "bar raiser"— only that person was the woman whose qualifications was a history keeping he nose clean working for the state!

<comment><USER38> Amazon is getting close to a $1T market cap which makes this look more like an argument for hiring non-technical managers. You didn't provide any examples of poor management by the prison guard or DMV manager, other than some jealously about salary. Other than the bad feelings, did they get results?

When Bezos went ballistic the day before Thanksgiving, did you still fix the bug in time? If not, did it really negatively affect the bottom line? Did whatever you instead had to work on in October help the bottom line more than the Thanksgiving bug?

<comment><USER39> > When Bezos went ballistic the day before Thanksgiving, did you still fix the > bug in time?

This is the kind of line of thinking often pursued by poor managers.

<comment><USER40> Yeah, I think there is a certain mindset for whom "going ballistic" seems like a smart power move that you can use to get results, but in day to day reality, I see it as the ultimate failure to maintain control over the situation. Guys like Bezos can get away with it, but that doesn't make it smart.

<comment><USER39> It's not even the going ballistic part that gets me, but the sequence of events. Management refused to allocate the time to fix tech debt/bugs, this decision comes back to bite them in the ass, GP takes the typical tack that tries to deflect blame away from shitty management decisions.

"Could you, the devs, have fixed this bug under severe time pressure just before a critical sales period instead of when you first identified it?" -> if yes, no problem. Spiritus sancti, management is absolved of their sins.

<comment><USER16> The fix was a hacknand as for "on time", no we were already three Sadat's into the heavyvsakes week, literally hours before thanksgiving when Bezos decided to cancel everyone's thanksgiving because of his own incompetence.

I call it incompetence because prioritizing a new feature over a bug fix is almost always wrong. And Bezos surrounds himself with yes men so if he under estimated the bugs impact because a yesman was saving face that's still on Bezos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Unmentioned reason: too much personal employee debt.

What's worse than working for a bad boss/company?

Working for a bad boss/company and carrying 50k in debt.

</comment><comment><USER42> Goes with the theme that for actual passionate tech workers the reason for burnout is other people and not the tech itself. Hence adage that don't make your hobby your job is nonsense by itself.

<comment><USER43> This has been my finding. My wife is one of these super doer employee types, and I see her constantly frustrated by the people above her, and the failing processes that they implement that make her job more and more difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> This reminds me of the phrase: "If everything is urgent, nothing is urgent".

Therefore, if everyone is burning out, no one is really burning out or, we somehow extended the definition of burnout to something that can be applied to even the most minute set of complaints.

<comment><USER45> block twitter, facebook, instagram, hackernews, and reddit. BOOM no longer burnt out!

<comment><USER46> Oh dear... If you do not have a clue of what you are talking about, you'd better be off saying nothing.</comment></comment></comment>


Mussolini's Marines: Italians in China - <AUTHOR> http://www.chinaww2.com/2019/03/10/mussolinis-marines-italians-in-china/ <comment><USER2> Relevant: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concessions_in_Tianjin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concessions_in_Tianjin)

<comment><USER3> A comment on the article -

 _These guys were in constant off duty fights with US Marines of the 4th Regiment, USMC who were permanently assigned to similar duty in China. Several months before Pearl Harbor the "China Marines" were removed from China and sent to the Philippines._

The French and British also had concessions there through 1941, when they were occupied by Japan. I think the Italians there would have had a rough 1940.

<comment><USER4> All of this makes me want to re-read Cryptonomicon very soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This reminds me of the Battle for castle Itter where German and US forces fought together against the SS [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_for_Castle_Itter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_for_Castle_Itter)</comment>


Outrageous Canadian research study on Internet piracy is itself pirated. - <AUTHOR> http://www.nowtoronto.com/news/story.cfm?content=169656

<comment><USER2> It's rather sad that this type of news rarely makes the headlines, be it in Canada or America. People really don't know how inept these organizations are.

</comment><comment><USER3> It was plagiarized, not pirated.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, as the article makes clear, but "pirated" makes a better headline. :-)</comment></comment>


IRS misses XP deadline, pays Microsoft millions for patches - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9247634/IRS_misses_XP_deadline_pays_Microsoft_millions_for_patches <comment><USER2> The federal government hasn't had a budget for four years until less than a month ago[0]. Up until then, our government was funded with a variety of appropriations bills as stop-gap measures. When a large organization doesn't have a budget, how do they make long-term investments in their IT infrastructure? So, the IRS can't very well execute a major migration when they don't have a budget and they aren't going to do so a few weeks before April 15th.

Yes, this is wasteful, but what else could the IRS have done without approval from congress?

[0] [http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/23/us-usa-fiscal- budg...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/23/us-usa-fiscal-budget- idUSBRE92M02D20130323)

<comment><USER3> _but what else could the IRS have done without approval from congress?_

Patching the security issues themselves? I know this can be complex in many cases but the security and reverse engineering community have this knowledge, probably not fixing the whole issue but at least blocking it.

I've wrote an article about doing this here: [http://blog.nektra.com/main/2013/08/07/using-deviare-to- crea...](http://blog.nektra.com/main/2013/08/07/using-deviare-to-create-a- temporary-zero-day-patch/) last year.

<comment><USER4> The IRS is not paying $11M for the development know-how to maintain security; it's true that they could probably shop around and find the services they need for much less.

No, they're paying $11M so they can say "We paid Microsoft $11M! What else could we possibly do?" when something goes wrong.

<comment><USER5> threaten microsoft to swith to linux?

<comment><USER6> Something tells me you did not understand the above comment... He's saying the IRS could shift responsibility based on the fact they paid the worlds biggest software vendor 11mil... Switching to Linux puts the responsibility back in the IRS's court...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What are the reasons for the government not to switch to linux? I'm not trying to be snarky; it really seems like there are a huge number of benefits and very few downsides.

I understand that the government has a contract with MS, but it seems like it might actually be costing the government more to take advantage of the contract.

<comment><USER8> I think it would be great for them to switch but I can think of 2 huge reasons they wouldn't.

1\. Retraining the users, very few people use linux so it would be a massive undertaking to retrain their thousands of mostly non-technical workers to use a new, unfamiliar, operating systems.

2\. Microsoft Office. Say what you want about LibreOffice and OpenOffice but when it comes to enterprise grade software MS Office is unrivalved, especially concerning Excel.

<comment><USER9> 3\. And whatever other IRS-focused enterprise software they may be running, probably runs on the Windows platform.

Side note: Maybe this gets better in 10 years when lots of things have been written on the managed CLR? Although I don't think the challenge Wine has is running the C++ programs, but implementing all of the stubbed out APIs correctly... the same challenge exists with a C# interface.

<comment><USER10> 4\. As good as Ubuntu's latest version and its UI may be right now, anything other than basic stuff you want to do requires command prompt. Normal users who are not geeks can't imagine themselves doing that on a daily basis.

<comment><USER11> Still wondering how they even go by doing their job on a computer. If you ever worked in a support role, you'd know that no matter how many years of experience they have, they are most likely being confused by the UI change every time MSFT decide to be 'cool' and 'innovate' (See the ribbon style introduction back in 2007). And this is without the regular nagging of them not wanting to learn where are the options they want to modify, despite the menus and sub menus.

With regards to MS Office and MS mail client, sure they are more polished, but does that really matter? Are those people crafting an art piece every time they want to add an image to their report? Just an honest question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> And so, XP support still lives on. Actually, at $200 per computer per year, it has the potential to be quite a lucrative support, so it'll continue as long as there's demand.

<comment><USER13> It's okay. It's only tax payer money. They're not paying it out of their pockets.

<comment><USER14> Sure. Everybody knows that federal employees are exempt from taxation.

<comment><USER15> While the snark is amusing, there's a big difference between running a business with a hard budget and always being able to borrow or demand more money.

<comment><USER16> The _government_ might not have a "hard" budget, as you mean it, but you can bet the IRS does. Congress decides what they get, and you can be sure it's barely enough to keep running as-is, let alone enough to put into future investments like say, an upgraded IT infrastructure, which then necessitates emergency measures like paying MS for XP support.

Work with government long enough and you'll find the majority of "waste" comes not from spendthrift government layabouts, but insane auditing and transparency requirements (which require oodles of paperwork and three people to review it to make sure you're not wasting taxpayer money), hamstrung budgets (renting the same building at exorbitant rates because Congress will give you the money for that, but not to buy it outright, which would be far cheaper; paying for continued XP support because you couldn't get the funding for an upgrade), hiring contractors for decades-long jobs, and a legion of other controls in place to save us from government excess.

I'm by no means saying that we should let them run around doing whatever they want, damn the cost, but keep in mind that auditing and transparency have a cost, and we need to look at what's cheaper in the long run and not just in the short term.

<comment><USER15> >Congress decides what they get, and you can be sure it's barely enough to keep running as-is, let alone enough to put into future investments like say, an upgraded IT infrastructure, which then necessitates emergency measures like paying MS for XP support...I'm by no means saying that we should let them run around doing whatever they want, damn the cost, but keep in mind that auditing and transparency have a cost, and we need to look at what's cheaper in the long run and not just in the short term.

I sincerely doubt that the IRS, a revenue department, is running efficiently and is underfunded. I did a cursory search to see if I'm making up crazy claims and it seems like the lack of funding is largely self-reported.[1]

I sincerely believe that this is due to a lack of planning and just 'kicking the ball down the field.' Why go through all the annoying conversations about upgrades when you're going to retire or leave before it matters?

Microsoft first set the end of support for 2011. As a nod to their massive XP user-base, they pushed EOS to 2014. You're suggesting that the IRS is rational in paying for emergency patches to something that they received a 3 year extension on? Windows 7 was released EOY 2009 -- it's not as if they were stuck for lack of options.

This is crap planning and I really doubt that consequences exist.

[1] [http://www.taxpayeradvocate.irs.gov/2012-Annual- Report/irs-f...](http://www.taxpayeradvocate.irs.gov/2012-Annual-Report/irs- funding/) (side note: I like the "automation is bad, boo" bullet-point)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This isn't all bad news. The money to pay support and new machines will come from their "enforcement" budget. That's a win for taxpayers.

<comment><USER18> Sounds more like it is a win for non-taxpayers, doesn't it?

<comment><USER19> Nope, it's a win for both.

Not everyone that is audited is guilty of tax-evasion.

<comment><USER20> The 99% who are not audited benefit from enforcement audits against underlayers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The Dutch government also failed to complete the transition from XP to more recent versions of Windows on time. First the national government negotiated a deal with Microsoft for continued support of Windows XP ([http://nos.nl/artikel/631811-rijk-betaalt-miljoenen-voor- xp....](http://nos.nl/artikel/631811-rijk-betaalt-miljoenen-voor-xp.html)), then even the five largest municipalities negotiated a deal ([http://nos.nl/artikel/633985-gemeentelijke-deal-met- microsof...](http://nos.nl/artikel/633985-gemeentelijke-deal-met- microsoft.html)) that allows other municipalities and provinces to join.

</comment><comment><USER22> Now...I'm not sure if a _$30 million_ cost would be considered a tax write- off, esp when it's the IRS, or will it just fall under their _whoopsie daisy_ category on their annual budget (kinda like their failed Star Trek YouTube ad campaigns).

While I understand write offs when it comes to a business for costs of doing business, there are FREE alternatives (like ubuntu) that the IRS could use. I'm not anti-Microsoft (in fact I'm deving an app for windows phone right now), but seems to me that whoever is managing the IRS' budget are idiots, and _their_ decisions really need to be _audited_.

</comment><comment><USER23> Can someone explain how this is tech or startup related? It feels like a, "Haha, look! The IRS missed their deadline just like I miss my tax deadline every year!"

Edit: That reminds me, I need to do my taxes.

<comment><USER24> Did you miss the part about Microsoft and Windows XP patches?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I believe we're doing the same thing here at the Government of Canada.

</comment><comment><USER26> Since the government has paid for the additional patches to be created, can Microsoft please send them out to everyone running XP that can't afford to buy a new computer?

</comment><comment><USER27> I wonder what retail companies are doing about all of their POS (point-of- sale) computers running XP.

<comment><USER28> Those point-of-sale computers are probably running XP Embedded, which has a longer support window.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Now I wonder, considering the financial and other non accountable damage at this point, John Koskinen should or should not be sacked?

From 2008 to 2014 it's a _long time_ for any migration to take place. Six years? They could have migrated to OpenVMS and have a team write custom software for them in six years for Christ's sake!

<comment><USER30> He's only been in charge a few months...

<comment><USER29> Sorry, I didn't knew that... My bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> paid for with taxpayer money - so it should be made public. we own those patches!

<comment><USER32> It's support, not purchasing the rights to the product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Good god, why do these agencies not run on Linux or BSD? Think of the money that could be saved.

How is this a responsible use of taxpayer money?

<comment><USER8> I think it would be great for them to switch but I can think of 2 huge reasons they wouldn't. 1\. Retraining the users, very few people use linux so it would be a massive undertaking to retrain their thousands of mostly non-technical workers to use a new, unfamiliar, operating systems. 2\. Microsoft Office. Say what you want about LibreOffice and OpenOffice but when it comes to enterprise grade software MS Office is unrivalved, especially concerning Excel.

It would be much more expensive in terms of hours lost to make the switch.

<comment><USER34> It would cost them a tenth of this XP license nonsense to fix whatever makes LibreOffice or Calligra "not enterprise grade enough" for them.

And they are switching to 7. Inherently, they have the retraining costs already, and Lubuntu or Zorin is much more linear a change than going from no- search no-dock quicklaunch to Windows 7.

<comment><USER35> The government, for various reasons, is not really in a position to direct their employees to fix LibreOffice to make it suitable for them. They also aren't in a position to offer a grant to some organizations/individuals to do the work. They need something that exists at this moment. If free software proponents (myself included) want the situation to change, then _we_ have to improve the status of free software in the enterprise (either by improving its image if the software is ready, or improving the software if it's not).

EDIT:

Also, retraining to Windows 7 is not really an issue. The issues with going to * nix are numerous. Non-COTS applications that'd need to be ported/recreated. Email infrastructure (what's the state of support for MS Exchange in the * nix world? That is, any applications that integrate as well with Exchange servers as Outlook?). I forgot about the server side in my other post. So much is running on Windows servers. SharePoint has become the de facto document sharing system, this is nicely integrated with MS Office, any * nix equivalent? Exchange is their email server, but does far more than just email - keeping contacts up to date, calendars, shared/group inboxes. Is there a singular application that can replace Outlook in the * nix world? Would they have to switch to 4 or 5 applications to do what _one_ application did before? Will they play well with each other and properly share information (that is, if I create a calendar event in the calendar app will it be integrated well enough with the mail app to let participants now, and then re-sync later on once they've replied? I've never tried to do that in the Linux world, what applications support this?).

EDIT AGAIN: Anyone know how to insert a * next to a word without triggering italics? * <space> nix just doesn't flow right.

<comment><USER8> Addressing the Exchange part, no they're really aren't any good nix applications capable of using exchange. Thunderbird can do it with a plugin but you aren't getting contacts or calendars and you'll only get email if the guy who setup the exchange server allows IMAP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Alternatively, Windows 7 / 8 is such a disaster that the IRS is paying a few million dollars (out of their 10 billion dollar budget) to stick with something that works.

To me, that seems like a very prudent decision.

<comment><USER37> I think Windows 7 is quite solid. What's wrong with it?

<comment><USER36> Ah - I meant the collective "Windows 7 & 8". Windows 7 is fine, but has already been replaced by Windows 8, so why not Windows 8? Windows 8 introduced Metro, which is hated and not really an option for the enterprise, so 8.1 has sort of removed it (but not fully). And Windows 7 support ends in 2020.

In short, it's not a confidence-inspiring roadmap, and I think waiting a year is a valid choice.

<comment><USER38> 8.1 did not remove metro at all, it just made the desktop a little easier to find.

Maybe it's time the FBI upgraded to touch screens anyway.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tesla's keyless entry vulnerable to spoofing attack, researchers find - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/10/17842136/tesla-key-fob-hack-theft-spoofing-relay <comment><USER2> > It's worth noting that Tesla cars are already fairly theft-resistant, since > the always-on GPS tracking often allows victims to track and retrieve their > cars after they've been stolen, which in turn encourages car thieves to look > elsewhere for a payoff.

Stealing a car and stealing a car successfully are two different things.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wasn't this fixed with the latest release which provides a pin to drive option for the owner to enable. This works as a two factor for driving since you must have the fob(or the signal) and the pin</comment>


GA Tech's Online MS CS Admits ~400 (out of 2,361) for Spring 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.gatech.edu/2013/12/09/online-master%E2%80%99s-program-admits-400

<comment><USER2> It would be interesting to see a breakdown of undergraduate degrees represented. I was accepted with a Computational Media major and have seen Mechanical Engineers also be accepted.</comment>


"Yes, but what are your credentials, Mr Stross?" - <AUTHOR> http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/07/yes-but-what-are-your-credenti.html <comment><USER2> Ah, this isn't actually a student writing an essay, this is a high school policy debater. Their topic this year is space. If you aren't familiar with this activity, it has some pretty outrageous elements--300 wpm speed-reading, often surface-level analysis, and preference for gamesmanship over quality of argumentation. But if you put the right kind of work into it, you do learn alot.

The reason the student needs the source is that 'quals' are used to quickly legitimize a person's argument. In policy debate, unrefuted arguments are considered _true._ Thus, there's little time for intelligently evaluating what a person is saying, as long as they have 'quals' and you can get to the next piece of evidence ('cards'). The most outrageous argument from a PhD might be preferred in debate over a rational argument from an intelligent person, like Charlie Stross. edit: That's why he can't just say 'as Stross says...' like the commenters suggest. As an example, this past year my debate topic was mental health. I often cited Robert Whitaker, who is a finalist for the Pulitzer prize for psychiatric journalism, was the former director of publications at HMS, and has written two books on psychiatric medications. Yet, because he did not have an MD or PhD, debaters sneered at his qualifications, rather than evaluate his arguments.

I also find it highly likely that Stross's article is being used because of this paragraph "Historically, crossing oceans and setting up farmsteads on new lands conveniently stripped of indigenous inhabitants by disease has been a cost-effective proposition. But the scale factor involved in space travel is strongly counter-intuitive."

This is because debaters often don't respond to the other's policy proposition, but rather _kritik_ their position by indicting the philosophical ideas behind it. For example, an affirmative debater might advocate colonizing a planet, and a negative debater could ignore this and talk about how the affirmative is really based on white-power dominance of other cultures, and thus they should lose.

My quals: debater in a different type of debate

<comment><USER3> I debated in High School and College. I don't think you're giving competitive policy debate a fair treatment here.

On the surface it seems stupid to think that an un-refuted argument should be considered true. But arguments are evaluated that way in policy debates for a very specific reason -- the purpose of debate is not to discover the truth, it is to win an argument. That's the whole point of the activity. If you don't like it, you don't have to play.

That's actually the reason I quit during my sophomore year, but it doesn't make debate a worthless activity. Nothing taught me to work harder or think faster.

Debate is like working out. It's not real, so certain considerations go out the window. Under your logic, running on a treadmill is a bad idea because you're not actually going anywhere. But the point of debate isn't to discover the truth, it's to sharpen your understanding and wit.

Where debate goes wrong is when you stay in it too long. After a certain point the skills become harder and harder to transfer to other parts of your life. And a lot of the people in it, as you might be able to imagine, are pretty arrogant know-it-alls.

After I left debate, I had to re-socialize myself back into the world of normal people who don't argue with each other all day for fun. It sounds like I'm exaggerating, but all my friends were debaters and all my time was spent researching, debating, or arguing with them about literally everything. That's just how debaters tend to spend their free time.

<comment><USER4> > Under your logic, running on a treadmill is a bad idea because you're not > actually going anywhere.

I find this style of debating tedious in the same way. Why run on a treadmill when you can run outside?

<comment><USER5> 1\. It's raining 2\. It's cold 3\. Poor air quality 4\. Running surfaces are all paved 5\. Lack of water 6\. High temperature 7\. UV exposure 8\. Desire to watch a movie much higher than desire to exercise. 9\. Required proximity to person, for example taking care of a sick loved one. 10\. Uncertainty about the amount of time available to run

<comment><USER4> A bunch of excuses but no really good reasons. Besides, my question was a rhetorical response to a metaphorical device.

<comment><USER6> One might even say, it was a statement whose goal was to win an argument, and not to uncover underlying truth? ;P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What is the difference between a fiction writer and a troll?

One of them spins fictional tales which, while based on enough facts to help the reader suspend disbelief, are ultimately driven by the desire to create a specific emotional effect. Every word is calculated, every character (including the narrator) is designed with an eye toward eliciting a specific response from the reader. A successful work invites the reader to collaborate in the construction of a mental universe which is vivid enough that the reader truly and deeply experiences the emotional state that the author is trying to evoke. Of course, once the reader escapes the spell and gets a good night's sleep, he or she usually recognizes that any similarity between the fictional world and the actual world is likely to be purely coincidental... although some works of fiction are so powerful that the reader's personality is forever altered, only sometimes for the better.

Whereas the other one gets paid by a publisher.

So let me issue the usual warning: The reason we don't feed trolls is not just to discourage them. Feeding trolls is unhealthy for _you_. They drag you away from reality and (see xkcd/386) interfere with your sleep. We must be cautious about trying to conclude _anything_ about the nature of education, credentials, society, or _even the troll itself_ from the words of a troll, or while under the immediate influence of the words of a troll. All we can conclude is that we have buttons and those buttons can be pressed.

<comment><USER8> After reading the article referenced, the author does sound kind of trollish. E.g.

> in the hypothetical case of a planet-trashing catastrophe, we (who currently > inhabit the surface of the Earth) are dead anyway. The future extinction of > the human species cannot affect you if you are already dead: strictly > speaking, it should be of no personal concern.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd like to just note here that email@example.com_ isn't my correspondent's real email address. (I wasn't expecting a blog entry to go viral, and didn't check whether numpty@... is taken; it may be banned -- it's a mild insult -- but please don't go sending any mail that way on my account.)

<comment><USER10> Why not use email@example.com instead?

<comment><USER11> For the same reason why nothing kills suspension of disbelief in a movie like someone dialing a number that contains "555."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sadly, many if not most people seem to confuse schooling with education and credentials with competence.

It's toxic in multiple ways. First is the assumption that those who have learned on their own as Charlie has are incompetent. Worse still, is the assumption that people with some certificate or degree automatically have whatever technical/language/business/artistic skill their paper says they do.

In some cases, especially the hard sciences, the connection is strong. In others, such as literature, it's hit and miss. In a few fields, such as business or film, a PHD is probably a _negative_ indicator. Those headed for the top get lured away before going that far with formalized training.

<comment><USER13> > Those headed for the top get lured away before going that far with > formalized training

I am by no means someone "heading for the top" and maybe this was just an oddity. But for me PhD was one of the most unstructured things I have ever done. There was little that could be called "formalized training".

For most part you was left to your own devices. There were long to medium term milestones that needed to be hit. But that was about it.

If you needed to learn something new for your work, you just did it on your own using whatever learning methods suited you. Sometimes there were classes that could help. But for the most part, by the time you are actually in to your research, there wouldn't be many classes that are suitable for you anyway. At least one of my lab mates lived the autodidact's dream ;) [Even me to some extent, now that I think about it]

"Formality" was required only when writing out research. (This was technical field; you need the precision)

Anyway just a note.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's sad that we don't seem to train young people to assess ideas themselves rather than trust in things like degrees (which can be meaningless depending on the quality of the institution that issued them)

But I think there's a big caveat here in that "email@example.com" doesn't seem like the sharpest tool in the shed. That sounds harsh but it is important because stupid people tend to be more trusting in authority figures. For good reason.

Evolutionarily speaking someone who is lacking intelligence is less likely to survive and following someone who seems to excel in that area increases their chance of survival greatly. Less than intelligent people being in positions of authority seems like a relatively new development in human evolution since I'd assume it stems from the transfer of wealth between generations (which wasn't possible until technology gave us the ability to create and maintain assets of some significance). So for most of human history a stupid person was better off following an authority figure and I'm sure the instinct is still embedded in people like this.

Which in turn makes him trust in meaningless pieces of paper that convey authority rather than his own assessment of the ideas presented.

<comment><USER15> Evolution doesn't say that at all, evolution predicts that the fittest for their environment will survive. Given that the number of children one has is inversely correlated with 'intelligence' it would seem that the stupid are more fit to survive by nature of their willingness to pass on their genes.

Social Darwinism is not the mode of operation for industrialized nations so it's debatable whether there are any significant evolutionary fitness functions in place in the first world.

<comment><USER16> Meta: It's always strange how few people question the dogma that evolution influences _every last detail_ of human behavior.

But I wouldn't make that statement outright. It is heretical.

<comment><USER15> Like most of science, rhetoricians rely on a poor understanding of what evolution actually says to foster ideas that have no basis in any meaningful scientific understanding of the topic, but seem to make common sense.

The funny thing about evolution and rhetoric is that evolution is usually used to create acceptance for the policies that will make the fitness function a reality. (eg. mutilating the reproductive organs of those who score low on IQ tests)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've noticed this form of anti-intellectualism is becoming more prominent in recent years. It is almost as if people are being taught it.

When presented with an _argument_ that they cannot debate, people will demand a "citation" or "credentials". In both cases, they are pretending like you have made a logical fallacy.

Saying "I've got a degree in auto-body repair from West Alameda Tech, therefore, java is a terrible language" is obviously pointless. You can see how the degree has no bearing on computer science.

But if the degree _were_ in computer science, the argument would still be argument from authority. But the debators then switch to debating whose degree is better.

You find this a lot in political debates whereby somehow, politicians (who often do not have very useful degrees, as they tend to be lawyers rather than engineers or scientists) somewow are magically transmorgrified into "authorities" on whatever subject they have an opinion about.

And you-- as an engineer, or scientist or economist, are expected to somehow cite credentials that are superior to theirs.... as a politician? Any credential would be superior to what amounts to being a paid liar, but of course this is letting your debate opponent set the terms anyway, and thus your PhD in computer science with Donald Knuth as your thesis advisor means nothing compared to the authority of some ex-TV comedian who managed to parlay that fame into a senate position.

Another variation of this is the demand for a "citation", invariably from opponents whose citations, if you can drag one out of them, are to blog posts, which are themselves essentially another variation of the argument from authority.

The real problem here is, these are tactics whose effect, of not their purpose, is to eliminate reasoning and thought from debate.

They are excuses to ignore the quality of an argument and thus ignore the need to address that argument, or make a counter argument. Instead, they jump to the position of arguing from a logical fallacy, which precludes from possibility the idea that their opponent might be making a good, logical, rational argument.

If you find yourself asking people for citations or for their credentials, check to see if you've narrowed your objection to a particular fact, or if you can argue against the logic they are using.

Otherwise, they should rightly consider you to have conceded by trying to move the debate onto a false basis, where, _at best_ your position rests on a logical fallacy.

</comment><comment><USER18> I have generally replied to the question "What are your credentials?" with a simple, confident, "None."

</comment><comment><USER19> Although there are some standout exceptions the hacker community is obsessed with credentials.

Most of the job listings I see, on a daily basis call for a computer science degree, and its almost never qualified with (or equivalent experience).

This is a recent phenomenon and I have a feeling it has to do with the glut of comp-sci graduates that got stuffed in the pipeline since the first dot com bubble. Now they are mostly just hiring their own kind to perpetuate an artificial scarcity and keep their value up.

I miss the days when I could work, and learn, alongside a motley crew of developers from all kinds of backgrounds, and the cream, not the credentialed, would rise to the top.

<comment><USER20> That is corporate jobs, not the hacker community. I don't have so much as a single college credit to my name and the harvard educated CTO of my company didn't even mention it when I got hired. Stop reading monster.com job posts thinking it has anything to do with "hackers".

Hackers care about code, full stop.

<comment><USER19> Maybe SF is different, but I'm talking the Boston/Cambridge area, those are not "corporate" companies. Just an amazing coincidence those companies are mostly in college towns? I really wish you were right, but I'm not seeing it.

<comment><USER20> Boston/Cambridge is an academically oriented area, not as startup/private sector focused. Of course MIT-land would be obsessed with credentials.

<comment><USER19> Boston/Cambridge _is_ startup land on the east coast. I'd say about 90% of the job listings I see for startups or web companies are in boston or cambridge. Bigger "more corporate" companies are situated around route 128.

<comment><USER20> YC disagrees.

<comment><USER19> YC disagrees with facts? I said "on the east coast"

<http://www.startuply.com/#/in%20massachusetts/1>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I find these personal attacks in the form "you don't know what you're talking about" all over the Internet, and highly annoying.

I'm not sure if that's a flaw with me, or with everyone else.

It seems entirely reasonable to engage with things one doesnt know about, and writing being one valid way of doing so.

Mentally tag everything ever written as if the author had said "IMO" at the end. Even people who do know what they are talking about can be wrong or interpreted wrongly. This is almost a variant on the theme of proof by appeal to authority.

<comment><USER22> Almost everything on the internet should be prefixed by "IMO". That said, a well-reasoned argument's correctness does not vary with author.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What I see: The student is either a troll or a detail-oriented, quick-to-anger idiot. The student's first email is fairly polite and could result just from a lack of internet search skills. But in the student's second email, the tone completely changes--the student is deliberately attacking Stross and trying to provoke him. Starting with the student's second email, I believe that the student is not looking for a calm, thoughtful response from Stross anymore; the student just wants Stross to admit that he is in the wrong.

</comment><comment><USER24> This sort of reminds me of situations where people here comment on, say, legal issues related to tech. Someone always comes up with the argument that the poster doesn't know jack about the law, and they should shut up. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have a rational argument about it.

</comment><comment><USER25> Regardless of whether or not credential requirements are founded, those are some pretty dickhead email responses. Why cuss at someone asking a genuine question?

Internet tough guys are so cool.

<comment><USER26> To be honest the emails he got could have easily annoyed him and seem to have come from someone who believes he is not interrupting into someones time (especially after the first response which is reasonable for someone without "citable" credentials).

I'd like to think he gets a large amount of emails a day and the fact that this person wanted credentials but decided to email rather than research further could have hit a nerve.

Just look so far as the final response shown:

> _I think that you shouldn't write articles under the mindset that you know > what you're talking about..._

<comment><USER25> sure, I admit the emailer went on to judge, but his initial email was:

> Hello, I'm citing your work for a debate article I'm using > about space > colonization and how it is improbable. I do > need credentials however, and > I've yet to find them online. > If you could reply with your credentials > that'd be great.

No harm in that email, very simple.

But then the blogger went on to whip out his e-peen and tell the kid to go to his wikipedia rather than just write "I'm a self taught novelist who thoroughly researches his topics he writes about but doesn't have credentials in the traditional sense".

EDIT: I apparently have no idea how to do quotes on HN despite my valiant attempt to do so. I apologize.

<comment><USER27> Regarding formatting: <http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc>

      Using two spaces indentation can work

_Italics also work._

<comment><USER25> Thanks for that!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fred Wilson: "Blown away" by Xobni - <AUTHOR> http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2007/09/xobni.html <comment><USER2> I just came across this old jwz article that is somewhat pertinent:

[http://www.mozilla.org/blue- sky/misc/199805/intertwingle.htm...](http://www.mozilla.org/blue- sky/misc/199805/intertwingle.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> "I realize that many of you don't use Outlook anymore and have moved on to Gmail or some other better way to do mail."

For me that says it all. Maybe it'll be useful in corporate environments that force people to use outlook, but beyond that I'm not so sure it has much of a shelf life.

<comment><USER4> The enterprise market is:

(a) mind-blowingly huge; (b) totally accustomed to paying serious money for software; (c) almost universally dependent on the Microsoft stack for supporting end users, and that means Outlook for optimal integration with Exchange, Active Directory, etc.; (d) totally addicted to e-mail.

Admittedly, it's also (e) resistant to change and chock-full of drones content with maintaining the status quo. Still, if the Xobnis are persistent, if they keep working on this thing, they'll have a gold mine on their hands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Found it slow on my personal IMAP account.

It blew me away at work. I'd shell out 10 bucks for what's out today, and 50 bucks if it would (relatively accurately) bring the very most important messages to the top of my inbox (messages from my boss, where my boss is cc'd, or from people I historically reply to ASAP). Maybe also auto- suggesting/creating rules to filter out e-mail that's not junk, but not super relevant. Maybe 100 bucks for that.

</comment><comment><USER2> It's starting to sound like xobni might replace loopt as the "most successful" yc company?

<comment><USER6> We have a long way to go before we reach Loopt's success. Loopt is making some serious dough. We have a lot of work to do, but it is great to hear from users how much they like what we have built.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How does Xobni relate to this research?

<http://tlau.org/research/papers/kushmerick-aaai06-nectar.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER8> Great! My congratulations to the Xobni guys. I've asked Fred to give me an private beta invitation.

</comment><comment><USER9> Will xobni work on Thunderbird, or will it always be Outlook only?</comment>


US Federal Ban on Making Lethal Viruses Is Lifted - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/health/lethal-viruses-nih.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> The intention seems legit, despite the concern. Quote from the article:

 _The pathogen to be modified must pose a serious health threat, and the work must produce knowledge — such as a vaccine — that would benefit humans. Finally, there must be no safer way to do the research._

<comment><USER3> "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

<comment><USER4> Getting a bit off topic here, but I've always interpreted that aphorism differently, and apparently the history of the saying agrees with me.

I've always interpreted it as being a corollary to "actions speak louder than words". Simply saying something, or having the intention to do something does not mean it will actually get done.

<comment><USER5> I just assumed it meant both. On the off topic though, I've always liked: "Words without actions lack credibility; Actions without words lack clarity." \- John Stott.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For more background, and since this article is surprisingly short:

This is a better article: [https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/12/nih- lifts-3-year-ban...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/12/nih-lifts-3-year- ban-funding-risky-virus-studies)

This ban that's being lifted stems from a few incidents, but really the driving force was Ron Fouchier's [0] gain-of-function study where his lab made a few mutations that enabled transmission of the bird flu (H5N1) virus between ferrets. All they had to do was make five mutations and it was suddenly more dangerous (here's the paper [1]). Ferrets may sound random, but they can become infected with human flu virus and show similar pathology to humans - they're a model for humans.

I remember hearing Fouchier speak in Washington at a biodefense conference right after the study came out. He was (is?) pretty much a celebrity among scientists, but the policy folks had a different opinion...

Pretty sure these things will escape from the lab at some point. I've personally handled some B. anthracis (causes anthrax) that was supposedly non- viable only to find out later that it was almost certainly still alive. (Not this case, but here's an example [2] mentioned in the article.) There would (hopefully) be more regulations on BSL3+ organisms like the viruses being discussed, because anthrax is relatively friendly, but like any other field, all it takes is one incompetent person.

[0] [https://www.erasmusmc.nl/MScMM/faculty/CVs/fouchier_cv?lang=...](https://www.erasmusmc.nl/MScMM/faculty/CVs/fouchier_cv?lang=en)

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4810786/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4810786/)

[2] [https://www.cdc.gov/anthrax/news-multimedia/lab- incident/ind...](https://www.cdc.gov/anthrax/news-multimedia/lab- incident/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> You know how when you watch movies and because you know so much about tech you can tell that most of the stuff done in movies regarding hacking etc is bullshit and not real.

Now I have a lack in knowledge of biology at this level, but can someone maybe explain to me how all those disease mass extinction movies cannot be real? I feel like my lack of knowledge here causes my concerns when reading stuff like this article.

<comment><USER8> Ebola is one such virus. In terms of evolution these viruses tend to burn out by killing the host. Evolutionary pressures push viruses towards symbiotic equilibrium. Thus in the worst case scenario there will be survivors who are immune or the virus or the virus will burn out until the only strain left does not harm humans. The later was the case with ebola.

<comment><USER9> If anything Ebola is too lethal. It tends to burn out locally before it can spread far from its originating point though if someone should immediately travel after becoming infected it could spread to a new location. But in the majority of the cases so far it has burned out before it could spread to a new village, though the largest outbreak to date claimed in excess of 10,000 lives and spread quite far.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/health-31982078](http://www.bbc.com/news/health-31982078)

All it will take for Ebola to be a truly massive killer is a small mutation that would reduce immediate mortality or that would increase the incubation time. Either one of those would greatly increase the number of people that a single outbreak would affect. I'd rather not have to live through that.

<comment><USER10> You can just move to Madagascar and close the ports.

<comment><USER11> Except [http://www.who.int/csr/don/15-november-2017-plague- madagasca...](http://www.who.int/csr/don/15-november-2017-plague- madagascar/en/)

<comment><USER12> I guess GP was referring to the game Plague Inc.

<comment><USER11> More like Pandemic 2, but yes. These games have a winning strategy of infecting Madagascar first and spreading before the ports are closed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This was posted a few days ago. It's a talk about the dangers of man made viruses by Intel's chief medical officer: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKQDSgBHPfY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKQDSgBHPfY)

2 minutes in he talks about how a strain of flu escaped from a lab in 1977 and killed (and is still killing) millions of people.

</comment><comment><USER14> Now, I don't want to seem anti-science or anything, but this seems like a massive disaster just waiting to happen, in light of the incidents that led to this ban and also, even more to the point, the 2001 anthrax attacks.[1] Couldn't they at least restrict this research to labs far away from major population centers?

The analogue with software development, I'd say, is when people periodically point out that nuclear power plant or ICBM control systems _still run on 8-inch floppy disks!!1!_ and therefore allegedly need to be completely rewritten. That rationale likewise fails to meet my tempting fate threshold.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks)

<comment><USER15> It's possible that it's very difficult to engineer a virus that can do better than anything nature has come up with. Evolution has had billions of years to try all the attack vectors. A worst case 12 Monkeys-style disaster seems unlikely.

But I'm ignorant of this topic. Without handwaving or pointing at the worst case, how much should we worry? Is there any evidence that a genetically enhanced virus can be devastating? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_virus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_virus) doesn't have much.

<comment><USER16> Maybe.

Evolution selects for virulence, not death toll. After all, your hosts can't spread you if they're dead.

<comment><USER17> > After all, your hosts can't spread you if they're dead

Arguable. Dead bodies can and do spread disease.

<comment><USER16> I don't have a source at the moment, but there's evidence that infectious agents become less deadly over time. There seems to be evolutionary pressure to not kill hosts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't trust people's due dilligence enough to be okay with this.

Edit: remember when Ebola was never supposed to leave the CDC fascility and a nurse was exposed to it and left the hospital? That's what happens when there's the highest level of scrutinity and security.

</comment><comment><USER19> Setting the stage for every biohazard movie ever made.

<comment><USER20> That's ok, Project Wildfire will be automatically activated.

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

<comment><USER21> Wouldn't activating wildfire have been a complete disaster in the book?

It's been a long time since I read that. The part about the guy's seizures freaked me out for a while.

<comment><USER22> "Wildfire" was the protocol for responding to the detection of the alien organism rather than the failsafe that wasn't.

<comment><USER21> oh, I thought wildfire was specifically the bombing that would have caused massive growth of the organism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> My only concern is North Korea.

They have a strong desire to match american machismo. They probably lack the funds to build novel biological weapons their own. They are extremely good at break into computer systems. Companies excel at ignoring their vulnerabilities until it is too late.

<comment><USER24> Pretty weak concern considering Americans will sell it to you.

I'd be more worried about the lack of scruples among people. Unfortunately that doesn't create as much of a boogeyman.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> So to bring a technology angle to this, there isn't anything remotely equivalent around this for Cybersecurity where it has some parallels. Everyone understands how bad a pandemic is - the risk of lives is obviously more important than data - however with the reliance of technology lives can be indirectly affected, such as the case of WannaCry shutting down hospitals and associated healthcare technology.

Vulnerabilities researched and weaponized by the government, ended up in the public, and caused global damage. There is no oversight into how these are produced or their risks.

</comment><comment><USER26> Great ! Now this is going to open new rooms for more mistakes and may lead to more deaths which can be blamed to some scientific failure.

We humans collectively as one entity clearly have no discipline.

The current set of laws are themselves in first place not providing any peace in the lives of most people. And we have no time to fix that issue and our impulsive anxiety issue is making some weak willed men to open up new roads to destruction. It may yield some benefit but it is not essential.

I have 0 confidence in today's governments that they are capable of containing any damage caused by this law.

If entire of humanity is going to become extinct then we can take a high risk effort. All the day every time we need not take life threatening risks.

Opening up of this law means any minute now in best case scenario there is a 1% chance that there may be a deadly virus in the air u just breathed in. And based on history we humans are capable of leading ourselves into worst case scenarios and that puts the percentage of risk anywhere between 1% to 99%.

Now even if something worst case happens i am sure the human species would not go extinct as the billionaires and few millionaires would have means to survive any death prone event only with nobody left to buy their products anymore.

Kudos!

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm not entirely clear on the scenarios in which this type of research would be beneficial (I'm a physician):

\- AFAIK research on vaccines does not require altering an organism to make it more lethal. You would want to cover as broad a spectrum of serotypes/serovars of the existing organism as possible. I can see how someone might argue that you could pre-empt a more malignant variant but surely this is outweighed by the likelihood of creating systemic risk.

\- What exactly would we learn form creating new, highly virulent organisms that can't be learned using the same technology on non-virulent organisms?

\- It bothers me that this is a push to create more biological weapons from the military complex (especially terrifying considering the infantile intellects we currently have in congress).

</comment><comment><USER28> Trial and error isn't great for this kind of stuff but it works great for AI research. Let's create software that can do genetic engineering of viruses right the first time.

</comment><comment><USER29> As much as I dislike the subject, providing a monitorable outlet is better than a full prohibition. Prohibition denies important signals to things that will occur anyway.

</comment><comment><USER30> As a foreigner, for me it is not a good news from the only country that dropped nuclear bombs over innocent civilians.

</comment><comment><USER31> Sounds like we are multiplying the ways to cause species level extinction rather than reducing them.

Kewl.

<comment><USER32> As long as we progress, it will always be like that.

Technology is, in a fundamental way, a force multiplicator. It gives you power to do more things that you could do with only your biological body and mind. That power can be used for destructive means too, so it follows that as we get more power, we open new, exciting ways to destroy ourselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> An informative series from pbs narrated by Jeff goldblum on YouTube: search for "dna episode 1 of 5 the secret of life"

It's a great high level overview of dna sequencing from the discovery of its shape through the completion of the human genome project in 2000.

I'm having trouble pasting a link, maybe someone could help me out.

<comment><USER33> The downvotes seem weird to me. Maybe it felt off topic?

Dr. Francis S. Collins is in several of the videos, and the third video is all about this particular controversy of dangerous experiments at the dawn of genetic engineering(for example one guy wanted to splice a cancer causing gene in e. coli bacterium).

It seemed relevant to me. It is what the article is talking about afterall.

<comment><USER34> Hard to say. Maybe the lack of a link? I agree it otherwise looks it _would_ be relevant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Lethal viruses? No problem. Drugs? Abortion? Never!

Weird how that works.

<comment><USER36> Yes because black tar heroin produced in a basement comes with the following disclaimer: ".... and the work must produce knowledge — such as a vaccine — that would benefit humans".

Stop making everything political, if this was done under a different administration you would have applauded it because of it being a scientific effort. Chances are this was decided by a panel and not the person you despise.

Being a-political myself, it always amazes me how for BOTH parties, the political issues aren't even about the issue at hand anymore. It's about proving the other side wrong.

<comment><USER32> That's politics in a nutshell. It's never about the actual issue at hand, it's always about getting on top of the other side.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Well, shit. That law was the only thing keeping the super-villains from going through with their plans..

</comment><comment><USER38> Do you want the zombie apocalypse? Because this is how you get the zombie apocalypse.

<comment><USER39> This also how you get ants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Just when I think we can't possibly make any more amazingly stupid decisions on this planet, there we go again

<comment><USER41> A smart decision would have been to read the article.

<comment><USER42> I have read the article -- don't you think that there is the possibility for a catastrophic error with this kind of research?</comment></comment></comment>


APL Problem Solving Competition - <AUTHOR> http://www.dyalogaplcompetition.com/

<comment><USER2> Note that:

1\. Only full-time students will win the contest. 2\. This contest is tied to a commercial version of APL.

<comment><USER3> Dyalog APL is commercial, but they are open-source friendly. I work with and am sponsored by them, and we are actively working to open-source as much as is possible provided that we can continue to support the projects. Similarly, they release software like MiServer, which is a web server in pure APL as open source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Possibly worth it for the Discover APL section and _Mastering Dylog APL_ (available in PDF form free).

</comment><comment><USER5> tangential question, is it possible to version control workspaces in e.g. git?

I found this for Dyalog, but long time i havent' touched APL

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21488433/is-there-a- file-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21488433/is-there-a-file-type- for-apl-programs)

___________

same question for smalltalk: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8244502/version- control-f...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8244502/version-control-for- smalltalk-seaside)

<comment><USER3> Yes, this is possible through SALTing. It allows objects in the Workspace to be associated with human readable files in the file system, which Git can maintain.</comment></comment>