Fighting poverty accidentally stopped deforestation - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-15/how-fighting-poverty-accidentally-stopped-deforestation <comment><USER2> I take a bit of issue with the "accidentally". Having been in the deforestation-stopping business for some time it has been blindingly obvious that most approaches that were being taken were completely futile until socio- economic factors were solved for.

For example we were building satellite technology to help environmental police patrol large rainforests to be able to focus on areas with offenders. One time we managed to find a hidden airstrip for drug trafficking which was cool. But most of the time the offenders were people who just needed to feed their kids - and look there is a mahogany tree just over there that will sell for $$$. So the cops will come, give them a fine, and then they will need the money even more. So the pattern continues.

Funnily enough (NB: this is hearsay) the forests were actually better off when the area was controlled by drug gangs as the people had a source of income from the cocaine.

<comment><USER3> The same phenomenon is easily observed in modern-day Romania. There's a clear inverse correlation between the wealth of a region and the deforestation in that area.

Also notice that the price of wood is fairly stable all across EU because it's an open market after all. But the wages in Romania are far lower than the EU average so that's why the incentive to cut and sell wood is relatively higher here.

<comment><USER4> In Romania there is the issue where people still have to use wood for heating because of no access to natual gas or not enough money to buy a modern heating system, isolate the home and pay for the has, in some regions the wood is cheap in others wood is expensive.

<comment><USER5> Buying coal should be an option, no? Coal is cheaper than wood.

<comment><USER4> Yes wood is expensive you get it legally but if you have a forest 1-2 Km near your home the wood can be free. Like people own the forest, you can't cut any tree, you need to do a request and a person will come and mark some trees for you to cut (there are some criteria for what tree you can mark for cutting down). So then the expanse is cutting, moving and storing this wood .

On top of this there are people without jobs that can just cut unmarked trees.

Coal prices is also not the same in all places in the country, if you are closer to the coal source the prioce is lower because of transportation costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Little known fact: Germany was exporting wood around the beginning of the 15th century up until the point where over 80% of all forests were gone. You could say that almost all forests we have today are somewhat artificially grown.

That is why, by law, forests have to be maintained and regrown if you want to harvest wood. The earliest established Forstordnung was done in 1442 in Speyer and soon after the Kurpfalz and other states/Fürstentümer adapted it. I think the latest state to adapt it was Sachsen around 1560, but I would have to look that up to be certain.

Nonetheless I think this speaks volumes on how much some countries are behind when it comes to their established laws.

<comment><USER7> Most trees growing in Germany grow very fast. In areas with rainforests trees are much older and the ground on which they grow is very different from the ground in german forests. Once deforested it takes decades to just recover the ground, not to speak of the trees.

<comment><USER8> I heard that rainforest soil is actually pretty poor, which to me sounds weird given how much grows (and dies / falls / decomposes) there.

<comment><USER9> Your comment intrigued me, so I looked it up--I found it pretty interesting, so thanks for the inspiration.

Looks like one of the main factors is due to the soil acidity being similar to the pH of the plant roots. Also, while there is a ton of dead organic material in the soil, the high temperatures and precipitation causes it to decompose so rapidly that most of the nutrients are lost.

Finally, the clay particles in the soil are poor for trapping the minimal nutrients remaining from the decomposing material, and what is trapped is frequently washed away from the precipitation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "You know, I have often thought that at the end of the day, we would have saved more wildlife if we had spent all WWF's money on buying condoms."

\- Sir Peter Scott, Founder, WWF (1909-1989)

<comment><USER11> That's a great quote.

In a lot of countries, you have to be married to even get family planning advice, so that's a hindrance.

The US has its own problems with requiring current prescriptions ($$) for anything, including the pill.

(For non-US readers, a doctor's office visit without insurance is typically $100 in SF, if you can find one with a patient list opening. Plus filling the prescription.)

Refillable natural gas containers would also help reduce deforestation. They're commonly used in SE Asian homes, but should be expanded to areas still cutting down trees for firewood.

<comment><USER12> That's not entirely accurate. San Francisco, and the rest of California, changed the law in 2016 so that properly trained pharmacists are allowed to prescribe the birth control pill. That training is part of the standard curriculum for new pharmacists, and training is available for pharmacists who got their license before that became part of the curriculum. Anecdotally, I will also say that Planned Parenthood of California is pretty decently funded and are able to offer IUDs (Mirena) and Depoprevera (the shot) at a reasonable price, with and with-out insurance.

This practice is not limited to California, either. Washington DC and nine other states - Colorado, Hawaii, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Tennessee, Washington, and Utah – allow pharmacists to prescribe birth control.

[https://www.goodrx.com/blog/heres-how-to-get-birth- control-w...](https://www.goodrx.com/blog/heres-how-to-get-birth-control- without-a-doctors-prescription/)

<comment><USER11> That's a big improvement, but there is some fine print per pharmacy:

[https://www.cvs.com/content/pharmacy/womens- health/faq](https://www.cvs.com/content/pharmacy/womens-health/faq)

<comment><USER13> It gets better, whatever that link gives is inaccessible from outside the US, but notes "CVS.com® is not available to customers or patients who are located outside of the United States or U.S. territories. We apologize for any inconvenience.

For U.S. military personnel permanently assigned or on temporary duty overseas, please call our Customer Service team at 1-800-SHOP CVS (1-800-746-7287) if you need assistance with your order."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I came across a charity that gets a "double" or triple in a similar way. They build stoves for people who are currently cooking on open hearth. Those people then use less fuel, make less carbon dioxide, take less from the forest, and have vastly better respiratory health.

[https://guatemalastoveproject.org/](https://guatemalastoveproject.org/)

<comment><USER8> Proves that there's a lot of low-hanging fruit still that can have a much bigger impact than e.g. buying an electric vehicle.

<comment><USER15> The problem is that we need to do both. We can't escape climate change if everyone on the planet is driving a large gas guzzling SUV. So we need to both change to electric cars and also do things like this oven.

In addition, it's bad to say to developing countries "well, you have to make this change for the good of the planet, but we don't have to make any change, even though we produce much more CO2 than you do."

<comment><USER16> Both are the same thing essentially - improvements to the efficiency at the cost of upfront capital above and beyond "the norm" for such tasks. There are other variables in play too - stoves that boost fire efficiency are tech available centuries ago while electric cars are still progressing and have R&D baked in. Stoving everyone up would hit its limits for enviromental improvements before electrification of cars.

It is a matter of proportion of use as a whole that they become comparable. A single wooden shack with a camp fire produces less air pollution than a coal power plant and a single concrete tenament but ironically if you have enough campfires concrete tenaments with coal fired electric burners and heat it becomes the cleaner and more efficient option compared to many wooden shacks and firea even before you start adding scrubbers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> South Korea is another example of fighting poverty that stopped and completely reversed deforestation.

Korean peninsula in general went through extreme deforestation under Japan, especially during the WW2 era and Korean War, as supply of coal was cut off from the civilian population and redirected to war effort by Japan and Korea. In order to get fuel supply that was needed to cook food and heat homes, local hills were cleared of trees by locals.

If you watch video footage of the Korean War 1950 - 53, the hills are completely devoid of trees. The trees are missing because they had all be cut down for fuel.

If you talk to any older Korean men who were teens up until mid 1960s, they all remember walking 1 - 2 hrs one way up into the hills to collect firewood, piled mountain high on their A-frames (in Korean, jigae).

Once South Korea started getting better off, they went to coal, oil, natural gas, and then electricity for fuel source.

The South Korean government "Korea Forest Service" ministry is completely focused on restoring the depleted forests. And they seem to have done reasonably well.

</comment><comment><USER18> there's a nonprofit called "Carbon Offsets to Alleviate Poverty" where you can buy carbon offset credits that are implemented by paying impoverished people in various parts of the world to reforest their land. I'd love to see a comparison of whether that was ultimately more or less effective than UBI at the two goals of reducing poverty and averting climate change

<comment><USER19> I currently use TerraPass. Are these guys audited by third parties or something like that? Generally work in the US is more trustworthy since it's theoretically verifiable here.

<comment><USER20> Care to share why? I'd like to help, but the trouble is how am I sure that the money goes to the pockets of people who need it and not to some CEO's holiday?

<comment><USER21> tax-exempt 501(c)3 nonprofits in the US are required to file IRS form 990[1] which sheds some light on the financials of the organization. it doesn't mean that the organization is run efficiently or puts money to good use, but it does increase transparency[2]

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_990](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_990)

2\. [https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/](https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> India's birth rate in villages plummeted when TV was introduced to them. These kind of effects are not that rare.

<comment><USER8> There's a strong correlation between wealth, education, quality of life, and child birth rate. Tl;dr, improve people's lives and birth rate drops.

Which may cause its own problems (e.g. in Japan), but there's a lot of countries that aren't there yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> _> Cash payments to people in impoverished areas led to a 30% drop in tree loss_

It did not stop deforestation. It only lowered the rate of loss. Which of course is a significant improvement but still not sustainable.

</comment><comment><USER24> "Accidentally"? Bring up google maps and look at the forest cover of Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic. You don't really need the border drawn as a line.

</comment><comment><USER25> This may be a dumb question, but is there a field of study of unintended consequences?

<comment><USER26> Complexity Theory / Santa Fe Institute folks might be in this domain. Jordan Hall recommends this book for starters: [https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/thousand-years-nonlinear- hist...](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/thousand-years-nonlinear-history)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> > For local communities, selling timber and clearing land for cultivation is > an income stream of last resort.

There's also another problem that affects places like Brazil: deforestation for cattle ranching.

</comment><comment><USER28> I don't quite understand the headline. This seems like a rather obvious outcome.

The big question is: what are the limits on it? Helping the poor in Indonesia (and Brazil) would diminish deforestation, but would it do the same if you were helping the poor in the US? Ukraine? My guess is that it would do barely anything about deforestation in the US, but I have no idea about Ukraine.

<comment><USER29> What deforestation in the US? The forest area in the US has been stable since ~1900, and the volume of forest has been increasing in the last decades.

I don't have good recent data about Ukraine, but it also seems to have _increased_ the amount of forests e.g. in the period between 1990-2010. [https://rainforests.mongabay.com/deforestation/2000/Ukraine....](https://rainforests.mongabay.com/deforestation/2000/Ukraine.htm) ; this would match the general trend of the rest of Europe of an increase in forests.

<comment><USER28> Yes, but people still cut down trees. The question is how much faster forests would spread since there would be less deforestation.

<comment><USER29> Cutting down trees does not generally decrease the area of forests in the first world - it decreases the _volume_ of forests, it's essentially "harvesting the crop" because the same plot usually is replanted, and it often is _required_ to be replanted. A reasonable mental model to think of most first world forests is as an equivalent to a wheat field, with the difference that ist's harvested and replanted not once a year like wheat, but once every 20-30-50 years depending on the tree species. Cutting down more trees is the equivalent of harvesting early, cutting down less trees is the equivalent of letting it grow some more before the inevitable harvest. It's not wilderness, it's something that's managed and taken care of.

Also, forests _don 't_ spread on their own. Well, they do in some untouched wilderness, but if I think of e.g. a central european landscape, there's no free space for them to expand to - in general, all land is owned by someone who wants some return out of it, so a forest ends right where something else starts, almost all usable land is productively used if it's not a national park or something like that. A place can be a forest only if people let it be a forest - and that has nothing to do with cutting down trees, it's about the fact that seeds can't grow into saplings if someone's doing something with that land.

A forest can spread only in two cases - either someone intentionally plants one (the most common scenario, but it relies on the expectation that in a few decades it will be allowed to harvest the 'crops'), or it's a result of decrease in agriculture, as some pastureland or farmland got abandoned because it was worthless to work it, and it overgrew with trees over the years. But such abandoned land is relatively rare, because even if it does "simply" get overgrown with trees, then it's profitable to take proper care of that forest (ensuring sparsity of trees, etc) so it usually gets done.

So if we don't cut down trees, or cut down trees slower than they grow, then (assuming no changes in agricultural land) forests don't spread, the trees just grow taller and wider. Forest area remains stable, forest volume increases - e.g. the current USA situation. And, of course, no new forests would get planted, because it's not practical to do so if you expect that you'll be prohibited to harvest it once it's grown. There are more forests in Europe than before because it became more profitable to plant _and cut down_ trees rather than use the same land for e.g. pastures, so forests got planted - they did not spread on their own.

<comment><USER28> You're missing the point. The claim in the headline states that fighting against poverty helps with deforestation. My argument is that this is not absolute. It helps fight against deforestation in (some) poor countries, because poor people there cut down forests for wood and farmland. This doesn't happen anywhere near as much in first world countries. The question about those countries was there to ask about the magnitude. I was trying to underline the point that there are more variables at play than just poverty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Environmental Kuznets curve

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuznets_curve#Environmental_Ku...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuznets_curve#Environmental_Kuznets_curve)

<comment><USER31> And the best way to increase per capita income is to implement pro-market policies, that provide rights to private property and the freedom to contract:

[https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer_why_the_world_needs_cha...](https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer_why_the_world_needs_charter_cities)

[http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21578665-nearly-1-bill...](http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21578665-nearly-1-billion- people-have-been-taken-out-extreme-poverty-20-years-world-should-aim)

[http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2016/0207/Progress-in-the- glo...](http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2016/0207/Progress-in-the-global-war- on-poverty)

<comment><USER32> Not a popular insight in the western world these days, alas.

Compare [https://www.econlib.org/socialism-the-failed-idea-that- never...](https://www.econlib.org/socialism-the-failed-idea-that-never-dies/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> [https://archive.vn/4gTqu](https://archive.vn/4gTqu)

</comment><comment><USER34> This is a great example of economic harmony in nature. There has been a big debate in environmentalism whether rising incomes naturally produces more concern for and protection of the environment.

The implications of that question are, very, very important.

</comment><comment><USER35> Also an example of UBI in action.

<comment><USER8> UBI requires a country to be pretty wealthy though, have a steady, reliable source of income such as natural resources or healthy trade.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Look into the Environmental Kuznets Curve and the Demographic Transition.

</comment><comment><USER37> No shit. It also stops crime, a lot of early and unnecessary deaths.

</comment><comment><USER38> Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending upon where one lives), fighting poverty is like fighting pandemics: some places try it, and others declare it difficult* and leave it untried.

* "difficult" being the charitable interpretation of the people who will argue, at length and in print, that having poverty or having an endemic or having brutality is somehow better than the alternatives.

(in my country, it's considered shocking news that, unemployment having reached almost 4%, thousands of people showed up for food handouts during the pandemic. It's considered ongoing news that we still have double digits, about 1% of peak, of new virus cases per day. Both public mass shootings from this century are considered national tragedies)

</comment><comment><USER39> > How Fighting Poverty Accidentally Stopped Deforestation

This is garbage -

When know by fighting poverty, which is increasing wealth, it's good for

The environment, all the social rights, IQ, crime, happiness, almost all issues the rich first world people think are important. Because the people targeted become better off and can afford to worry about these issues as well.

This is why good people fight poverty, and the bad people jump ahead and fight for the things that come after poverty, because that's what makes them personally feel good.

<comment><USER40> Then why are rich people bigger meat consumers and bigger CO2 emitters than poor people?

<comment><USER41> They burn coal instead of wood. In practice both are equally unsustainable but deforestation is an issue with higher visibility.

<comment><USER40> Strange answer. Most importantly, they consume a lot more energy, be it from coal or from wood.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Not to Design a Microwave - <AUTHOR> http://jordansmith.io/ui-design-principles/ <comment><USER4> [https://johnlewis.scene7.com/is/image/JohnLewis/233182566?$p...](https://johnlewis.scene7.com/is/image/JohnLewis/233182566?$prod_exlrg$) One knob for time, other for power. All other UIs feel just wrong after using this. Microwaves usea to have this kind of UI when those came to market.

<comment><USER5> This is almost a good design, but there's a potentially dangerous flaw. Although it's not obvious in the picture, the dials have skeuomorphic fake machining marks. These marks can make reflected light look like lines radiating from the center. And the indicator mark is only a shallow depression, which is low contrast under some lighting conditions. The reflections on the fake machining marks can camouflage the indicator mark and make it hard to see. If you mostly use the microwave on full power, that's what you'll expect to see, so it's easy to miss it if the power setting is actually lower. This could result in food being heated less than you expect. It might be warmed instead of cooked, resulting in fast bacteria growth.

This can easily be fixed by coloring the indicator mark with a black permanent marker.

<comment><USER6> FWIW here's a perfect microwave. I bought it around year 2000 I think. [https://imgur.com/JMaM70x](https://imgur.com/JMaM70x)

<comment><USER5> Agreed. The newer Samsung is an inferior cost-reduced version of this design. The old version is better because the time can be set purely by muscle memory. The new version uses a rotary encoder, where you need multiple turns to set a time. The required back-and-forth movement of the hand is too complex for muscle memory. The rotary encoder skips steps if you move it too fast. The time dial does not move as it counts down, so you're forced to read the display to check the remaining time instead of just glancing at the dial.

The only real improvement is the replacement of the door opening button with a more intuitive door handle.

<comment><USER7> > _The only real improvement is the replacement of the door opening button > with a more intuitive door handle._

Actually, it's not an improvement. A door opening button is easy to operate with one hand; a handle needs two in order not to shift the microwave. At least all the microwaves I've seen have doors requiring noticeable amount of force to open. My guess is it's to avoid the situation in which a large dish rotating inside pushes on the doors and opens it.

<comment><USER8> I can open my own as well as family members' microwaves' doors by the handle with one hand just fine, without shifting it. The trick is a _snappy_ tug.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article doesn't really go into what the perfect UI would look like. It is more of a buzz feed type article.

That being said, my microwave just broke down and I headed to the store to buy a new one. I was really disappointed at the new models. The UI seems to be getting worse on them. I have a feeling they are not even trying to innovate because it has become a low margin device.

People are still trying if you are interested.

Articles:

[https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/28006/why-do- microwav...](https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/28006/why-do-microwave- oven-uis-fail)

[https://medium.com/@bn/this-is-how-a-microwave-should- work-4...](https://medium.com/@bn/this-is-how-a-microwave-should- work-4e33b5c38b68)

Art Mockups:

[https://www.behance.net/gallery/15102955/Microwave- Redesign-...](https://www.behance.net/gallery/15102955/Microwave-Redesign- Touch-screen-interface-design)

[https://dribbble.com/shots/1309476-Microwave-UX- Concept](https://dribbble.com/shots/1309476-Microwave-UX-Concept)

[https://dribbble.com/shots/1449210-Microwave-Concept- PSD](https://dribbble.com/shots/1449210-Microwave-Concept-PSD)

[https://dribbble.com/shots/3249355-Smart-microwave-UI- concep...](https://dribbble.com/shots/3249355-Smart-microwave-UI-concept)

If you have others, feel free to comment! Appliance UX/UI is a very neglected area.

<comment><USER10> While the StackExchange link is awesome, the rest are just horrible. As with all these wannabe designers they go for the wow effect. It takes about half a second of rational thought to see why.

All these art mockups are just that: art mockups. "How do I make a thing look pretty". A tired mantra of programming smays: make it work, make it fast, and only then make it pretty.

Touch screens in the kitchen. In the effing kitchen! When you are often up to your eyebrows in grease, oil, flour, vegetable juices etc.

Oh, look, you have to turn the knob to set the time. To set the power you have to touch some other area and then turn the nob again. To set the time, you have to touch that area again to switch modes, and then set the time. BUT WHY? This is solved with just having two knobs! [https://johnlewis.scene7.com/is/image/JohnLewis/233182566?$p...](https://johnlewis.scene7.com/is/image/JohnLewis/233182566?$prod_exlrg$)

Oh, look. As it starts, it shows you time remaining, and a stop button. Because you never ever in your entire life would want to, say, _adjust time_. Nope? The thought never even occured to the designer.

Oh, look, there are still multiple small buttons (that are already awkward on a vertical pane), but let's make them touch buttons! Oh, and let's leave them exactly the same as they are now, because the only reason why people don't understand how they work is because they are not touch buttons. Make them touch buttons! They will immediately become intuitive!

Oh, look, the iOS time scroller! Because that's exactly what I need: to be able to set 23h 29m 31s by scrolling through infinite lists of numbers. I wonder why is it that the vast majority of microwave uses are around 30s to 5min range on max power?

I could go on

<comment><USER11> > Touch screens in the kitchen.

And in the car, where you should keep your eyes on the road. Knobs work really well for adjusting the stereo and heater; replacing them with a huge touch screen is a terrible idea, and trying to make it less terrible with haptic feedback is a poor solution. Hopefully the current touch screen fad will pass.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would put up with a hieroglyphic based UI ten times weirder than the one depicted if it meant the microwave didn't beep.

Seriously, what is it with embedded digital electronics designers and beeping? Nothing else has a gratuitous noisemaker. I swear if the home refrigerator was invented after the cheap piezo buzzer it would emit an ear-piercing bleep every time the door opened, or maybe when the compressor cycled on or off.

Is there some sort of strange subsidy or tax consequence so that adding a beeper has negative net cost?

<comment><USER13> I'm sure that without that feedback mistakes can happen that might be blamed on UI (didn't press the start/reheat/&c. button all the way through). Similar thought process to most touchscreen keyboards which have feedback (sound or haptic) by default because it's probably going to be a hurdle for users. Reminds me of the first time I installed a Linux distro which didn't disable the system beep (Debian w/o X)… surprising how this vastly and immediately changes UX. It's actually an interesting way to practice making fewer mistakes but it's a good thing that no UI relies on system beep any more.

A big ol' beep/nobeep switch on ovens would be a nice thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> UI designer here. This guy's advice is OK-ish as far as it goes. However, he fails to exhibit the one thing that sets an actual UI designer apart from somebody with just some opinions about the practice: observational research.

The FIRST thing you do is observe. Watch people in relation to the problem you are trying to solve. Listen to them. Ask them WHY they do what you observe. If at all possible, work out what motivates them and what problems they really have (which they often will not articulate to you). Only then start designing solutions.

I'm not saying his ideas about the design of the oven are invalid. But the fact that so few people in design roles even attempt the work of exploratory research is fundamentally the reason why so much of stuff is shit.

This isn't surprising though. Observational research is often frustrating, confusing or difficult to interpret. But above all it takes a lot of time. This is also the reason why, if you have another job like coding or marketing or whatever then you will not have enough hours in the day to do effective design.

</comment><comment><USER15> That Microwave UX is certainly bad. But the design of traditional microwaves is also not defensible. If you had never seen microwave before and tried to use it, you would be quite dumbfounded. Just pressing 1 key starts heating for 1 minute but how do you do 30 seconds? Just press the start key! That's quite unintutive if you ask me. The reason people don't feel that way because most people have learned how to use microwave from their parents or friends and knowledge keeps getting passed on. On those lines, I know of no one who knows how to use other "advanced" features that most microwaves have today like thawing and food type specific heating.

<comment><USER16> I think the key thing that makes my microwave easier to use is that it has a big dial to choose the function. No clicking through menus, you just turn the dial to the function you want, then the second dial to adjust the settings, or press start to start and add time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> In my experience almost every microwave oven has terrible usability. It's as if the design problem is so simple and the "correct" design (two independent, labeled, mechanical dials for time and power) is so obvious that everyone has to make their own version of it to look cool or sophisticated or something. I guess they never user test these things, because that doesn't help sell more of them.

There really ought to be a usability certification for products like these, a verification by an independent organization that a typical user is able to operate the most important functionality with few or no errors.

<comment><USER18> The button I use the most on my Microwave is "add 30 seconds", I use it for almost everything, hitting it repeatedly to get more than 30 seconds.

I rarely want more than a few minutes of heating time, and I rarely need more than 30 seconds of granularity so that one button handles most of my microwaving needs.

Though I agree that dials would be better -- I wish cars weren't moving toward touchscreens, in my old car I could adjust pretty much everything in the car - radio, climate control, etc without looking. In my current car, there's a touch screen for pretty much everything except radio volume which is on the steering wheel.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, I have a gazillion buttons on my microwave, but the only button I really use is the Start/add 30 sec button.

If I want to adjust power I can adjust from 150 to 600, and then there's a "Jet" function, but I have no idea what that is. More than 600? 750 maybe? Who knows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My ideal:

Ten number buttons, 0-9, but each also corresponds to a useful time.

      0 10 sec
      1 15 sec
      2 20 sec
      3 30 sec
      4 45 sec
      5 1 min
      ...
      Etc

Pressing any of those would auto start immediately with the corresponding time. If you want an exact time like 34 seconds, hit the cook time button and now the ten buttons act as digits. Then hit start.

Pressing any of these while the microwave is running would add that corresponding amout of time.

I guess you'd also need a power level button and a clock set button. There, all done.

<comment><USER21> FYI this is precisely how commercial kitchen microwaves work. Next time you're at a fast food restaurant have a look and you'll probably spot one.

[https://www.webstaurantstore.com/panasonic- ne-17521-stainles...](https://www.webstaurantstore.com/panasonic- ne-17521-stainless-steel-commercial-microwave- oven-208-230-240v-1700w/609NE17521.html)

<comment><USER22> It works, and it's fast to use. But it's for commercial/professional usage, where doing a set of standard common tasks with fewer number of actions is best.

Having home/office-use microwaves work like this is basically akin to forcing an average office user expecting something like Microsoft Word, to write Markdown in Vim instead...

<comment><USER7> > _Having home /office-use microwaves work like this is basically akin to > forcing an average office user expecting something like Microsoft Word, to > write Markdown in Vim instead..._

If that average office user is going to write something (or use a microwave) more than a few times in their lives, it's worth to force them, because the (very small) cost of additional learning is almost immediately offset by gained efficiency.

Alas, what matters is short-time thinking, so UIs are designed for sellability instead of helping people do their tasks correctly and efficiently.

<comment><USER22> You're ignoring the "cognitive load" and "attention requirements" of the mythical "correct and efficient" interface. Sometimes I want to use 99.999% of my brain for something else and I want to _mindlessly_ use that microwave with the 0.0001% left. My desired thought process is "woo, woo, monkey-wuga, up- turny-power, down-turny-time, woo, woop, warmy my banana woop, woop!" or something simpler than that. And I also don't use it in a regular/predictable pattern, so auto-pressing one button for one of the "regular" time intervals might be useless for me since what I do is always irregular and sometimes irrational ("hmm, I wanna see some fireworks to light up my mood, let's microwave my colleague's USB stick labeled "bitcoins" for the lulz!").

The problem is not designing for sellability. Is not acknowledging that (1) some people _don 't want to RTFM!_ and (2) other people are OK with RTFM but want serious efficiency and correctness gains for it, "I pain, now you gimme gain!".

So you figure out who your users are and design for your users.

Now, the absolute worst is the parent article's example, where someone managed to _" design for no possible user"_ by both forcing people to RTFM _and_ providing _zero_ efficiency and correctness benefits in return. But designing for the wrong user is also bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I remember a Linuxconf AU presentation on building a better microwave - <USER2> idea being to use a low-res automotive thermal sensor array to watch the turntable, and be able to set it to "heat this to 100 degrees" and have it actually do exactly that.

There were other things you got "for free" after that - like defrost-without- cooking by ensuring all pixels remained below a target temp, but got above some other temp.

Hope that guy builds it.

<comment><USER24> Typical UX design by an engineer as it is, with wrong assumptions about user expectations. The users of microwaves do not want to heat something to 100 degrees. They either want warm food or they want to cook. Warming means, that not only surface temperature measured by sensors has to be comfortable, but the temperature of the whole meal, which depends on thermal conductivity and penetration depth of microwaves for specific food and cannot be controlled by a sensor array alone. People will just hit "start" again, if they feel it's not ready.

For cooking people will either use recipe from a book provided with microwave and thus they need just a selection of a program, or they will use more advanced microwave with oven and will want to set temperature of the oven to something like 200 degrees for 40 minutes. In this case sensor would be useful, but it's already not a microwave story.

<comment><USER23> Isn't this just you projecting the limitations of current technology on an effort to improve it though?

Users of a microwave currently expect extremely poor temperature control, and so don't even think about temperature because you get what you get. An interface which lets me heat something to exactly "drinkable but hot" is a revolutionary change in how I use the appliance though.

Same story with warming food: sure, you want it warm all the way through - <USER3> you actually know the surface temperature though, then you can model that - food that is cold inside is going to have different surface temperature decay rates to food which is warm inside, and some modeling of the observed thermodynamics means the appliance can know this.

So now we'd really be talking: "warm to safe temperature all the way through" and we can give a probability / % complete read out of how close we think we are to it. No more guessing, no more user interaction, also no burning yourself because some parts went superheated.

<comment><USER24> Theoretically speaking, you are right, and at some level of technology it might be possible to implement this. However, "drinkable but hot" setting is quite far from "surface temperature at 100 degrees", right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can anyone tell me ,why modern microwaves all have the same useless interface with a gazillion of buttons and nobs that no one in the world uses?

There's basically just one microwave I'm aware of that is actually proper design, mentioned here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16090081](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16090081)

</comment><comment><USER25> Most microwaves I've seen now seem to have the same (annoying) interface/software where you have to first select the power (always 100%), press start (it doesn't start), then select then time and press start (actually starts then).

What ever happened to the microwaves where you could key in a time and just press start?

</comment><comment><USER26> The point is not the microwave. It's UI.

Though perhaps a metastory might be "how not to write a UI essay".

(I actually rather liked this one. The off-the-rails discussion suggests either I'm an exception or the point isn't being clearly communicated.)

</comment><comment><USER27> Only button I ever use is the add 30 seconds button. Keep pushing until desired and it'll start on its own.

A big frustration is not being able to turn off the damn reminder tone though so I have to wait around to clear it when done.

<comment><USER28> Same. Any microwave that can't start with one button push is a time waster IMO. That and Cancel are the only buttons I typically use.

<comment><USER29> Why bother with Cancel when you can just open the door?

I prefer 0-9 buttons, and lots of memories, mine has 3.

<comment><USER28> Cancel time-remaining if you quit cooking early. Leaving 12 seconds on the clock won't fly with OCD types, surely?

If you wanted a minimalist microwave though, you could have it reset each time the door is opened or after a minute or two of inactivity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I don't understand the "You are Not the User" mantra. In the past I've worked in teams where we were actively using the product we were developing. Dogfooding is a pretty established practice these days. For most purposes, I was The User - the user finding bugs, performance problems, etc. - but not user interface problems. For the UI I was Not The User. The Users for UI were these hypothetical beings only UI experts could came up with.

<comment><USER24> Developers actively using their product always have expert bias and may not represent the target audience of the product. Also, in most cases it's a wrong assumption that you use something exactly in the same ways as others, so decisions based on developer or designer own experience are usually not optimal and may actually harm the users that would purchase the product or service.

<comment><USER7> Part of the "expert bias" is that you want the tool let you do the job as efficiently as possible, which is also something the users want. It's, however, not what the marketing department wants.

<comment><USER24> There are two wrong assumptions you are making here.

First of all, "Doing the job as efficiently as possible" is not a user's desire. Users always want concrete things and developer's opinion on what that could be or how that will be achieved by a particular user is very often quite far from reality.

Second, it's not a developer's job to create a tool that will help users to solve some problem in the way he thinks it is right. It is not what developer is paid for. His job is to work together with marketing department to deliver a product that is always a compromise between the business and the user, a product, that is just good enough, in a deal, which is good only then, when noone is happy with it, but everyone can accept it.

<comment><USER7> > _a product, that is just good enough, in a deal, which is good only then, > when noone is happy with it, but everyone can accept it._

I refuse to accept that is _right_ , even though it is what seems to be happening everywhere. That's probably the root of my opinion. I'm a believer in the concept of making money through providing value to the customer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I don't like that this doesn't provide any sort of suggestion for how to design a microwave oven UI, nor a video of the demonstrated model in action.

<comment><USER32> The best microwave UI has just two dials. Temperature and time. For years my microwave experience involved mostly just twisting the latter and walking away. I've gone out of my way to find microwaves with this control set. Unfortunately the most recent one I bought has buttons and settings, and I hate it. I want the dials back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I have a microwave from the Etna brand that has a big flaw in the UI. I believe the software is reused in many microwaves because the cheap ass microwave from the Lidl my parents have has the same interface.

The flaw: In the first step you need to select the amount of heating. Not in absolute numbers but in the percentage of total power (100, 80, 50, etc). So every time you need to calculate how much power each percentage represents.

</comment><comment><USER34> But how do you actually use the shown microwave then?

<comment><USER35> The instruction manual is 44 pages long [https://www.fisherpaykel.com/download/user- guide/Kitchen/Coo...](https://www.fisherpaykel.com/download/user- guide/Kitchen/Cook/Microwave%20Ovens/590262d-nz-au-gb-ie-microwave-om36ndxb- guide.pdf)

<comment><USER36> Took me 10s to find page 18 which has everything needed to use it as a microwave.

Sometimes I think users are getting too spoiled and simply refuse to RTFM.

Not to mention the article complains about the UI for an oven, confuses the oven with a microwave and then gives advice for designing iphone apps.

<comment><USER37> Do you really think that it's reasonable to require users to read user manual in order to use a _microwave_?

<comment><USER36> It's a multipurpose oven, not a microwave.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'd give a kidney for a microwave with at most two dials and a button, and no rotary encoders.

I'd give both kidneys if it could then also ping me on my phone when it's done without involving external servers.</comment>


Newfound Bacteria Fueled by Radiation - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/19/AR2006101901671_pf.html

<comment><USER2> Part of the thrill of reading Hacker News is just that it gives such unexpected fun, out of nowhere. Who knows why, but yes, the posting is from 2006. People used to think that microbes couldn't live in extreme conditions like these guys (Firmicutes - from the Latin for strong) do. They are in the same family as the microbes in animal guts.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do these come from the same place as the arsenic fueled bacteria?

</comment><comment><USER4> this is from 2006?</comment>


Insurance Man: The Life and Art of Wallace Stevens - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/02/the-thrilling-mind-of-wallace-stevens <comment><AUTHOR> Wallace Stevens has always been my favorite poet, and also somehow a strange counter-model to the modern "desk job" existence. He was an introvert who worked a whole career as a mid-level executive. And he also created incredible linguistic and philosophical gems, over and over, for thirty years. (Also, he was first published at age fourty-four.)

The disconnection between going to work every day at Hartford Insurance, and writing, say, this, is something that I have spent a lot of time thinking about, and still find fundamentally mysterious:

        I do not know which to prefer,
        The beauty of inflections
        Or the beauty of innuendoes,
        The blackbird whistling
        Or just after.</comment>


Major Music Festivals Have Pledged Not to Use Facial Recognition Technology - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ywakpj/40-major-music-festivals-have-pledged-not-to-use-facial-recognition-technology <comment><USER2> This is great that people are against this technology but facial recognition will probably still be done through social media which a lot of these attendees will stream the entire time.</comment>