Announcing Duck It, a new way to search - <AUTHOR> http://duckduckgo.com/blog/duck-it.html <comment><USER2> I love it. If you're looking for an article on a particular topic, this lets you skim them basically before deciding which one to read. A good sample is:

[http://duckduckgo.com/?q=c%23+custom+controls&v=d](http://duckduckgo.com/?q=c%23+custom+controls&v=d)

A quick browse lets you pick the article that seems closest to what you're actually trying to do.

Google still owns on being able to find absolutely anything (Duck Duck Go still seems limited to somewhat mainstream searches), but Duck Duck Go is seriously starting to own on sensible search features that actually improve the search experience. So many people are trying to build the next way of searching, and a lot of what they come up with is insane. I really don't want a 3d cloud of search results. It's not about looking pretty. It's about finding what I want. Duck Duck Go gets this like no one since Google.

<comment><USER3> I like the preview feature. I wish this had more features though. It would be neat to divide the search results into some higher-level buckets, so I know which links are blog postings, mainstream media, forums, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thx for the suggestion, which I also heard from several beta testers. I think this is a great idea, but we wanted to release something sooner than later.

<comment><USER3> No problem. Great site. I always welcome better search technologies.

In regards to the filtering I think allowing the user to do a bunch of cross- filters would be of immense value. Factors like type of website, author, creation/update date, etc. help bring the results down to another level of granularity.

This won't be useful for all searches, but would really help optimize certain types of queries (e.g. seeking an answer to a specific problem).

<comment><USER4> I often restrict searches by date on Google but rarely use the other options. It might be nice to have a refinement by focus of the site - is it a site mainly on the topic I'm searching for or is it a general site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think your user interface is great, but you could probably figure out a better brand.

<comment><USER6> Google was once a really silly name.

<comment><USER7> When I first saw Google, I thought someone made a typo.

<comment><USER8> Someone did...

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google#Name>

<comment><USER9> Interesting. I always thought "Google" was just a clever mix of "googol" (a huge amount) and "Go Ogle", (go look/search/etc).

</disillusionment>

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I assumed a trademark-ised version of Googol.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have to say: some great stuff going on there.

 _but_

Too jittery, too complicated results page and too many bright icons for me.

It might produce awesome results but at the end of the day search is about _information_ not a fancy UI. This is one reason Google are so successful - because there is nothing daunting about viewing their results page.

<comment><USER11> Duck Duck Go results pages actually have less on them than Google results pages. I think we're just so used to Google that we don't see 80% of the stuff that's there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Very very impressed. You do a search for droid, it asks you which meaning of droid, including the cell phone, the star wars characters, and three other meanings I didn't know existed. That questioning of which meaning of the word your looking for is an incredible innovation right there. It's also so simple a concept, too. Like so many simple ideas, I'm smacking my head that I hadn't thought of it myself. I wonder if they use wikipedia for the disambiguation.

</comment><comment><USER13> Man, props to you guys and Cuil for trying, but this has got to be an incredibly difficult market to break into these days.

<comment><USER14> There are a few differences here, I think.

It's very difficult for Bing to gain any traction because it does pretty much the exact same thing as Google. The differences aren't compelling enough to switch.

Cuil is really cool, and wants to be different, but it's been hyped up too much for how much it improves. It's a big-budget startup that needs to actually gain traction in order to be successful.

Duck It, from what I can tell is a low-budget engine that brings a slightly different twist to searching (more context). Since it's low budget, it doesn't need to be a home run hit to be successful (like cuil), and it doesn't need to be better than Google at being Google (like Bing). All it needs to do is be good enough at providing context that some small group of people goes to it when the search term's appropriate. If they can get that and build on it, then they can be a niche player. Being a niche player is a success, and at that point they can look into strategies for breaking out of the niche.

<comment><USER15> Agreed! I don't think world domination can or should be the goal of every company. There's something quite respectable about doing great work for a devoted group of customers / users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I love what you guys are doing, but the gray color of your default text is a little hard on my eyes. Could you darken it just a tad?

<comment><USER17> Black. Readability should trump aesthetics (especially on search results). Maximum contrast, plz.

<comment><USER18> It was my understanding that dark grey was actually better than black for readability? Granted, much darker than Duck Duck Go is currently using.

Also on readability: I find the search result synopsis far too wide for easy reading.

<comment><USER19> I've noticed that the increased width can make it a little awkward to read, too

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Looks interesting.

[Edit] Is there anyway to make safe search the default like most search engines do?

I'm not keen on seeing NSFW links like Encyclopedia Dramatica appearing when I'm searching from a work computer.

Most searches make you turn safe search off to get NSFW sites.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, click settings at the bottom.

<comment><USER20> Sorry. :) You replied why I was editing my reply to make it clearer. Shouldn't Safe Search be the default? Normally users have to opt out of Safe Search to see NSFW content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Impressive results, and unlike others I like your branding overall.

Minor complaints: it is a bit garish, color-wise - maybe dial down the saturation and white a bit. Fonts are too big, I prefer more info and don't need to read from across the room. On Chrome, as the page fills it starts gently scrolling down and search box slides of the screen...oops. The 'web links' section is getting kind of lost and most people won't notice it exists.

Finally, I don't like 'Zero-click Info tm' - I hate 'TMs' and you don't have one on your logo, so why here? Second, it's a service mark, not a trade mark. Third, it's only an element in your service, and branding it strongly competes with your primary DDG brand and creates pointless confusion for the user.

but overall I really like it, and think the quality of the results is very high. I will use and recommend regularly. If you are going to commercialize it with ads or the like, do so early so people don't call you a sellout later. Excellent job!

<comment><USER22> Seconding the wish for smaller presentation -- think you're a bit below the sweet spot on the info-per-square-inch curve. I feel pretty hampered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I have gone through my search history in Google and compared it to Duck Duck Go. The results are pretty good for most queries and really good for some queries. Some good results:

* [http://duckduckgo.com/?q=%09dragon+age+review&v=d](http://duckduckgo.com/?q=%09dragon+age+review&v=d) (Drago age review)

* [http://duckduckgo.com/?q=surrogates+&v=d](http://duckduckgo.com/?q=surrogates+&v=d) (surrogates)

Great overview for reviews and the engine knows that "surrogates" can mean different things.

Some lacking results:

* [http://duckduckgo.com/?q=python+unix+time&v=d](http://duckduckgo.com/?q=python+unix+time&v=d) (python unix time)

* [http://duckduckgo.com/?q=Marc+Cohn+-+Walking+in+Memphis&...](http://duckduckgo.com/?q=Marc+Cohn+-+Walking+in+Memphis&v=d) (walking in memphis)

"python unix time" does not return any matches. Google's video results are superior when searching after "walking in memphis".

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't know how you're doing it, but you are vastly superior to Google for certain topical searches that are totally spammed up over there.

[http://duckduckgo.com/?q=H1N1+flu&v=d](http://duckduckgo.com/?q=H1N1+flu&v=d)

[http://duckduckgo.com/?q=flu+vaccine&v=d](http://duckduckgo.com/?q=flu+vaccine&v=d)

</comment><comment><USER25> I like your focus on improving UI but I think you need to do some customer development work. Figure out whom to target and fulfill their search needs.

E.g.: We need search for hardcore search users. 100 results above the fold. Clear ways to influence the algorithm. Shortcuts to search for specific meta- data. Etc, etc.

</comment><comment><USER26> of the limited searches I did, it seemed to have worked. I think the best was when I searched for "schema migration django" and it came up with South at the top, whereas google has South at #4. I think I'm biased in these results because South was mentioned in the article about how django devs said no to including South, and not any of the others,which makes me think that it's the canonical one.

This is the first time I'd consider using duckduckgo for my searches, since they had a better showing on some searches I cared about, which makes me wonder what else they'd be good at. To be honest, I'm surprised.

</comment><comment><USER27> I think the design, the branding, and the result layout have some problems (certainly nothing insurmountable, just needs polish).

However the results blew me away - I consistently get _far_ more useful results than Google (at least for some technical searches). Congrats on this - the product has great potential, and with the declining quality of Google search results (and crappy competition), you have a good shot at breaking into the market.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER7> I needed a while to get used to the colorful interface, but I like that it includes favicons.

I don't think it would replace Google search for me, but since I found it to turn up good results, and it had "Add to Chrome" links everywhere, I made it my default search engine in Chrome and I'm willing to try it out for at least a week. Unfortunately, that means giving up auto-complete in my search bar.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I'd really appreciate you emailing me the results of your tryout. Auto-complete/suggestions are on the short list for new features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> 1\. I use the arrow keys to scroll in Firefox. You have made them move me up and down through the set of results. I see what you're trying for, but it's too jerky and confusing for me.

2\. If I hold down TAB and click on an item in the Zero-Click Info section, my current tab still gets redirected to the linked page. This is now how links normally behave in Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER29> I like the 'take a peek' feature. It reduces the number of times I've to return to search results.

One suggestion, on the results page, when I click the "Duck it" icon on left corner, it takes me to homepage. It's a bit confusing since I expected it to toggle my 'normal search' results to 'duck it' results.

</comment><comment><USER30> Seems nice, but I need a "did you mean" spell check. I simply can't spell well enough, and have been trained by google not to care. When I misspell something on duckduckgo it doesn't even warn me, it just gives me low quality pages created by people who also can't spell.

</comment><comment><USER31> I tried it myself, and I must agree with some other people. The branding is a bit cheesy. While some people considered Google to be cheesy in the beginning as well, the name was a bit more consistent with the brand. While almost anything can turn into a brand name simply by being unique, the names that already exist for search are traditionally derived from what Yahoo! started. Bing, Google, etc. are all expansions of this. Duckduckgo.com is easy to remember, though. As for the search, I think it is fantastic. It is very slow, but the results seem to be very good, and the interface is clean. I would actually switch to using it if the results were obtained faster.

</comment><comment><USER32> Possible tagline: "If you can't Duck It, fuck it"

</comment><comment><USER33> I've been using it for the last several weeks and at least for me it has been returning much more valuable links than Google. Part of that may be that they aren't big enough to have indexed all the lower quality sites.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Duck It builds on the core idea of Duck Duck Go that search results improve when you get useful, readable content in addition to links."

I don't understand the difference between "Duck It" and "Duck Duck Go"

<comment><AUTHOR> Duck Duck Go is name of the search engine. Duck It is the name of the new search view (one of 4 avail from home page).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hooray, thanks for showing that search isn't done and Google is stuck.

</comment><comment><USER34> Who is the targeted audience of this product? The UI reminds me a little bit of Ask.com

While I don't understand why people need this search engine, I am impressed by the traffic this site is getting.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a general purpose search engine, designed to be a drop-in replacement for the majors. However, it does have features that should appeal in particular to schools, homes, and people doing a lot of what is x searches.

Traffic has grown steadily over the past year. While there isn't strictly a need for a new search engine, some decent % of people who try it out like its unique features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Just as impressive duckduckgo team, a search engine startup from the Philadelphia are -- not the most likely of locations to see this technology come out of.

Kudos and keep up the great work.

</comment><comment><USER36> So far I've found better results.

Few complaints: 1\. The results are a little hard on the eyes to scan. The gray may be too similar to the background, and the consistently large text/different size/color of highlighted words, possible overusage of icons, I find distracting.

2\. I did a search and for some reason it picked shopping as default. Not sure why? I later realized the logo had a shopping cart on it and redid the search for the type I was looking for - and my results were great!

</comment><comment><USER37> I don't see a compelling reason to use this over google/wikipedia/dictionary/etc.

Is there a compelling reason?

edit: Also this page [http://duckduckgo.com/?q=computer&v=d](http://duckduckgo.com/?q=computer&v=d) just seems like bad flow - "ERROR!". If I want to search for computer, I want to search for computer. If the results are not what I expect, I'll modify it. At least show the results in a standard layout _every_ time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried to lay this out as succinctly as I could in the post :)

The primary reason and goal of Duck Duck Go is to get you the information you're searching for faster, and with less mental effort.

This new view in particular does that by reducing the clicking back and forth between results. It pulls out _good_ info from pages where it exists. Often you click to a page and then search for your terms within that page, only to find they don't exist or only exist in a cursory or unrelated fashion.

By displaying paragraphs of readable text, you should get a much better idea whether that page has what you want. And I hope that in some cases you won't actually have to click. The take a peek feature (hover over magnifying glass) furthers this hope.

Another way to look at part of it is we are saving you (at least partially) from the myriad of interfaces that exist on all the sites on the Internet. We pull out the good parts, via Duck It or Take a Peek, and standardize the formatting for you.

<comment><USER38> But: "Duck Duck Go knows Computer can mean different things." Isn't this a bit braggy/evident/confusing? Why not just "Computer can mean different things"?

<comment><USER37> And at least still show search results for 'computer' like the user asked for. Otherwise the page is completely useless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> you guys are doing interesting stuff. i think your interface needs a lot of work. i'm not a designer myself, so apologies for the lack of constructive criticism (as a user, it's prolly wrong anyway). i can say that i just felt overwhelmed and hard to read....i didn't want to read the results...maybe too wide....

anyway, i wanted to point out carrot2, which is a clustering engine with a beautiful and engaging interface. i really like the carrot2 website. gives me good vibes.

i have to be honest, though. when it comes down to it i just use google. like someone else said, when you're searching for error messages....

otherwise, i'm usually searching for something easy that presumably everyone gets, and certainly google gets so why do anything different.

occasionally i have "un-google-able" phrases (!), either because the words i'm searching on are super overloaded and common, or because i have a vague notion of what i'm looking for. in those cases, i try to remember to use carrot2, and possibly duckduck....but yeah.....would be nice to have an extension that identified when i was having search trouble and automatically did a look up in other search engines for me....

</comment><comment><USER31> One more suggestion... The feature to see the content that the search engine sees (I think that is what this is. It loaded so slowly that I could not quite verify.) should be on a separate page for advanced users. Basic end users neither care nor need to know about this information because most users will not be concerned with search engine optimization.

</comment><comment><USER40> I just played around with it for a few minutes, but I really enjoyed the web icons on the left allowing me to immediately identify if I was looking at a video result from YouTube, a news site, etc. I also like that you let me choose the meaning of the word I searched for.

I love the name, too. But I also love ducks and making duck sounds, so perhaps I'm a bit biased.

</comment><comment><USER41> Am I searching for the wrong thing? All my custom searches did not produce good results. In fact, some were just embarrassing. None of them had the 'zero click answer' thing. Props for trying, but all the major search engines have their own 'instant answers' as well as results that are reasonable most of the time.

<comment><USER7> What were you trying to search for?

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> When I searched for my own name, I thought it was cool you recognized my own website as the "Official Site". Then I searched for several other key phrases [cityname web design] and didn't like how it said something was the official site, just because it has the keyword phrase in the title and domain name.

</comment><comment><USER43> The design feels very clunky. I could be wrong, but my gut reaction is that the spacing seems off, colors seem off, font-sizes seem off, and the visual hierarchy isn't immediately apparent. Fix those minor quibbles and I think you've got a winner, since, most importantly, the results look very good.

</comment><comment><USER44> As others have mentioned here the search returns fantastic results in some highly-specificed domains (e.g. "schema migration django" according to user iamwil). There may be an opportunity driving a wedge into a niche, establishing a beachhead, then expanding with what momentum it affords you?

</comment><comment><USER45> Didn't Apple come down on Google with a legal hammer for the dock-like icon- zooming behaviour on their front page? (Can't seem to find the reference at the mo..) Also, "I'm Feeling Ducky"? DuckDuckGO seems to like walking those legal thin lines, eh?

That said, at first glance this seems better than Cuil :-)

</comment><comment><USER46> Fairly good search results, except for one thing: it seemed to me that the highest ranked results tended to be "aggregation sites" that contain links to the original material. I prefer to be pointed to the original sites.

This comment is based on only 5 minutes of experimenting, but is hopefully fair.

</comment><comment><USER47> this guy is winning me over. keep doing what you do.

</comment><comment><USER37> >> "We try to free you from "search yo-yo," the endless clicking forward and back between links."

FWIW, I don't think many people do that any more. If they're not sure, they just open a few results in new tabs until they get the one they wanted.

<comment><USER17> If by "people" you mean "people like you", then you MIGHT be right. If you did $25/head usability testing with normal people, I'd wager less than 5% would do this-- or even know that it COULD be done.

<comment><USER37> yeah sorry you're probably right. Seems most people don't really mind clicking back if they clicked on the wrong result.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I like this concept and I felt happy using the site. I was a bit surprised to not see any ads though! How are they monetizing it? Also, I was a bit confused with how "Duck it!" was different from normal search. Are they synonymous?

</comment><comment><USER49> Small usability nitpick: please make the search box wider. On more specific searches, the search box does not show all the search terms, forcing me to select text/drag cursor to make sure I spelled everything correctly.

</comment><comment><USER50> I would prefer you to show the full url, because it offers more info on the link.

For example, when looking at blog articles, the date the article was written is part of the url...

</comment><comment><USER14> One problem I noticed: When a youtube video popped up in the results, the summary was a warning about having JS turned off and not having flash.

</comment><comment><USER51> I would use this with a slightly improved UI. The bright color scheme with pink for keywords doesn't really work. But the results were spot on!

</comment><comment><USER52> I felt a little overwhelmed. Kinda like not knowing what is going on. But may be I'm in a tiny minority going by the other comments.

</comment><comment><USER53> the name really doesn't matter. if it's useful and people like it it could be named almost anything. good luck breaking into the search engine space guys.

</comment><comment><USER54> Ghostery blocks the display of zero-click search results.

<comment><USER55> Not sure what this means. I am the author of Ghostery.

Can you explain what you mean?

<comment><USER54> Hi, first off thanks for ghostery :). It's just that when ghostery is enabled and blocking duckduckgo tracking, the second part of the search results (Zero- Click stuff)are not showing up. Whereas when i un-block duckduckgo, it does show up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I love this

</comment><comment><USER57> It really surprised me, the searches gave extremely relevant results, I might say better than Google.</comment>


Ask HN: How to cope with burnout every 6 months? - <AUTHOR> Looking at my career, I held my first job for almost 5 years until I burned down and quit with a 2 day notice.
From there, it was downhill. Next job was 3 years, then 10 months, 12 months. Seemed to recover briefly and held another job for 2 years until burning out again. Previous job was only 8 months at a NGO doing really important work.
I've been at my current job for 6 months now and I couldn't get out of bed to do the work (I've been working from home for the past 5 years). This is what leads me to post here.
I've been diagnosed with depression a few times and I'm currently on SSRI's and feel okay.
So hanging jobs doesn't help, getting treating doesn't help.. I'm burning out again.
I love what I do (DevOps) but I'm coming to the conclusion that I don't work well with others. They start to drive me crazy and then I only have indifference towards the work.
Any advice? I'm feeling like I should quit IT. <comment><USER2> This may be unconventional but when is the last time you unplugged completely? I mean nothing electronic. No fast food. No junk. Also when is the last time you had a physical by a dr?

I say this because our bodies have a strange way of telling us we may need to pay more attention to ourselves.

You say you love your work. That's fantastic. Not everyone does. But maybe take some time to rediscover the wonders of slowing down. Get up in the AM. Slowly sip a nice hot beverage. Pet the dog. Look out the window. Go for a walk. Talk with someone you are close to about any and every topic. Read a good book snuggled up in on the couch. Etc etc. Soon the day is gone and your head hits the pillow for another good sleep. Rinse and repeat.

As far as other people. Are you listening enough before speaking or forming judgement? I had a bad habit of interjecting mid-sentence. It annoyed people. On advice from a well known self help figure I started listening and listening and listening. Then speaking. What happened was I was really relaxed about it because I wasn't competing to be heard or recognized. I turned into the voice of reason and common sense. Soon it was ask Jason what we should do. I no longer was annoyed or being annoying.

</comment><comment><USER3> Dev work has a few issues that people find difficult to deal with long term. I'll list a few:

1) Constant deadlines and the pressure that comes with them

2) Group collaboration, many people dislike the lack of control over the project

3) Technical deficits, lack of control over what you deliver.

4) Being in an office all-day, every work day.

Many people can deal with them others may even thrive but not everyone. I suspect that at least one of these items is a problem for you.

If I were you I would look for a completely different type of job and do it for a few months. Call it an extended vacation. It will give you a chance to look at your job from a different prespective. You'll get a better view of what you dislike about your career. Also focus on activities outside work. You can join a club, date more, learn a new hobby or what ever. The idea is to try new things and hopefully you'll find one that you really like.

<comment><USER4> I think I'll add one more issue on top of your great points:

Constantly shifting work requirements. It's the fun and draining part of our jobs as engineers. No single task is the same as the last. This is where the job can be exceptionally fun, but it can also be grating over time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You're not alone.

I'm not depressed as you but here what helped me after 3 months break between jobs.

\- Shutdown your cluster Forget about work at all, no phones, no computers max a netflix night with your partner. \- Adopt an exercise routine in your time off, things like: walk in the park, around the block, two blocks, functional training, running, jogging. The first 3 weeks are critical to creating a habit.

\- Talk to friends about your condition, the better you vent out you will fill better if you can't try a therapy. I did a career coach after 18 years working in IT.

\- Listen more and reduce your words by 50% a day. I listen more than I talk these days.

\- Less is important, donate what you don't have and stay with the bare minimum.

\- Read books instead of social media.

These things helped me get out from a coma after burnout feeling.

Hope this helps.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hi. I have been there. The problem is overwork ! Solution steps: 1- VACATION and DAY OFF once in a while. 2- Leave early every day for a while when you start to feel stressed. Pause each 40 minutes at work. 3- Don't let people put pressure at work. 4- Quit alcohol and other substance. 5- Wake up early and sleep early. 6- Do windsurf or other high adrenaline sport.

<comment><USER7> +1 for high adrenaline sports. Everyone is different, but I sure find that if I don't get my heart pumping from an extreme sport once a week, then I fall into a slump of boredom and lack of motivation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Actually impressive you managed to stay so long in a single job (5 years, 3 years etc) I can barely make 1 so imagine how depressed I have to be... If you don't have massive expenses such as rent, kids etc then take a long break and consider what you like doing and try to do that even if it doesn't pay much

</comment><comment><USER9> Why are you working? What's motivating you? Is there something else you'd rather be doing?

If the first two are to survive or make money. Maybe that's the issue. You can probably find something that doesn't burn you out and still pays okay. The trick would be to find something fulfilling. For that you're going to need to do some serious reflection and try to figure out what drives you, what gets you up in the morning.

<comment><USER10> Things that would get me up in the morning don't want to hire me. I'm too dependent on salary to just say fuck it and dance in a flower field all day. You have to be realistic, not everyone gets to do what they want, especially if they want to get paid as well.

I'm only in IT because it's the path of least resistance and to me it has the best benefit to effort ratio.

Ideally I want to work in a diverse IT role for a company that does meaningful things. They just don't seem to want me.

<comment><USER9> What gets me up in the morning is that I want to be able to provide. Don't get me wrong I like my job. I like the people I work with. But I have to remind myself the reason I'm in the grind is to have enough money to make life better for my spouse and future kids.

When I keep this in mind I get motivated to have a better attitude at work, to focus. Else I lose hope and get down. But I have a purpose for work, it's to provide for my family. That fills me with joy because I get to work hard for people I love.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Keep seeing a therapist. Workout. Lift heavy. Get plenty of sun shine. Get a dog if you can and exercise the dog daily. Walk, jog.

Work on your mindset. Learn to work with others, it's not that serious. If you want to be happy, you have to sometimes choose happiness over being right. Sometimes the world is not ready to move and you can't drag it.

</comment><comment><USER12> Bipolar disorder?

I think it is worth going to a psychiatrist and getting a good diagnosis. My SO suffers from something similar. Now she can have a job and all and overall quality of life has improved a bit.

We also work in a very stressful field. I've always been widely known as sane and calm, and this gets on my nerves as well.

<comment><USER13> I think it's worth looking into for sure. I ran across this when I was suffering from some depression and was trying to see how other devs deal with it. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFIa- Mc2KSk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFIa-Mc2KSk)

It's a talk about Bipolar Type II which doesn't have the same kind of full blown manic episodes as regular bipolar type I has. It has hypomanic episodes that are not often reported to the doctor because they seem like happiness or something good, or a sudden drive to do something productive.

I've been getting looked at for it myself now and normal depression meds(SSRIs) can actually negatively effect it.

It may be worth looking at OP!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm watching this talk with tears in my eyes. I can't thank you enough. I'll talk to my psychiatrist about this. Thank so much.

<comment><USER13> I'm glad this helped you as well! If you want to, let me know how it goes! If not that's fine too! I hope things look up for you soon! :D

Sending positive vibes!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Probably not a great idea if you don't have the depression fully controlled, but have you considered doing independent consulting? Pick a vertical or technology that you enjoy and hang a shingle.

It's definitely not the best way to make a lot of money, but I spent 15 years working with people for 4-24 weeks at a time and i loved it. Just keep in mind that if you're married with family it can create a tremendous amount stress with variable income. Also if you're in the US make sure you sort out health insurance...and lastly make sure you have someone to do the paperwork if you get in a hole with the depression. The IRS is not to be trifled with.

</comment><comment><USER15> Have you taken a chance and maybe explored faith and visited a local church on a sunday? It's amazing how getting your spirit filled will allow you to head back refreshed and with a different perspective on work on Monday.

Go to a synagogue, a mosque, or a temple. Just connect with a deeper reality.

</comment><comment><USER16> speaking as someone who has dealt with burnout twice, done a bunch of research on it, and just gave a talk about it:

While you may have legit issues working with others, it's not really what causes burnout. The environment of your tasks, and possibly the fallout of your limited / poor collaboration skills would be. But You can be an a-hole who hates other humans and still relish the rest of your job and not get burnt out.

The more i think about burnout the more it comes back to the ideas of Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose that Dan Pink put forth, but maybe not in the way he meant.

If you don't have tasks where you can exercise autonomy (make uncoerced decisions about it) feel like you're doing something meaningful (have purpose), and the ability to actually get better at the thing you're working at (mastery) you're pretty much going to get burnt out. If you can't find those things in your job you need to find them in your personal time. I've read a bunch of articles about this and the ones that are by people who actually know what they're talking about seem to basically boil down to those 3 ideas.

Re. quitting IT: It won't help. it's very common for people who are burnt out to think they can't continue with their profession, that the profession is the problem, but it's not true. You'll find the same situations in other professions. Switching careers with just kick the problem down the road. You may be better for a little while because you'll be a newb in the new profession and things will be more interesting, but eventually you'll be right back in the same place.

Working for yourself instead of others might make a difference, but really you need to find autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Outside of that: eat healthy, get exercise, meditate (100% serious about those). And, of course a healthy work/life balance.

Also, learning how to find good things about dealing with other humans would probably go a long ways towards improving the non-burnout related aspects of your life. Maybe if you get along with them better you'll get more meaningful tasks that you enjoy... THAT would actually help prevent burnout.

</comment><comment><USER17> Accept that you've got a limited throughput. And just chill.

</comment><comment><USER18> How long did you give yourself between jobs, to recover? Do you have the resources to take a significant length of time away from work - say, 6m+?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have the means to stay 6m away from work.

I never really took time between jobs. Maybe a week or so to take care of paperwork for the new job.

<comment><USER18> Then if your diagnosis of burnout is correct (and I'm not doubting you for a moment ) it looks like you've never given yourself a chance to recover?

I'd tentatively suggest:

1\. Significant time off. Use this time to rest, heal, exercise, and also to focus on dealing with any interrelated issues - such as depression. 2\. Critically analyse your lifestyle - is there anything outside work that you're doing (or not doing) that's contributing to your apparent continual downwards direction? (Google 'Tignum book' \- might give you starting point.) 3\. Think about the job you _really_ want, and what characteristics it should have? e.g. if regular/routine interactions with colleagues are a problem, would remote working, or night shifts, or a more solitary role, help?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Are you experiencing physical pain at all, like in your shoulders, back, or wrists?

</comment><comment><USER20> Do you live in SF? After working in tech in the bay for 6 years I've sort of had enough of the tech unicorn life. The greed and sociopathic tendencies got to me more than anything.

</comment><comment><USER21> maybe youre not in the right profession - take time off to find what matters to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> That might be it. I've considered quitting IT altogether or going all in: getting a IT manager job or starting a consulting company, or... But I don't feel prepared.

<comment><USER21> if youre not held down my a day job and have some money saved up i think now is the perfect time

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is a subject dear to my heart, so I thought I would answer in earnest.

About my personal experience, I viewed myself as a victim of burnout. It's as if it was a battle already lost once present. That fear in itself contributed to this state of helplessness to something I felt like I couldn't combat.

Each time I burnt out it was related to the stress of the job or, at least, my perception of the stress. I think mild to moderate stress takes a toll on the central nervous system over time -- if you let it. There are definitely coping mechanisms[1] you can put in place; however, I've come to believe a lot of it has to do with mindset and how you choose to see your work and interactions.

As a fellow burnoutee, I would ask you to look over your past burnouts/experiences and see which ones could you see differently? Can you find where negativity and stress started to seep into your daily life? Could you have done something to augment it? How do others around you cope with similar stress or how is their situation different?

Asking myself these questions has allowed me to find the criteria of what I need from a workplace and people around me in order to thrive. Programmers, DevOps, and the like live in our heads and I think a key burnout preventative measure is the developing the ability to get out of our heads. In practice, I think this is different for everyone. Meditation, nature, exercise have all been effective tools for me to come back into the world and leave my head.

Recently, I found an episode of Tim Ferriss's podcast that I found to be resourceful for burnout and burnout-like things. Sometimes, Mr. Tim Ferris can come off as pandering to tech entrepreneurs and name dropping -- but a lot of his content and guests is worthwhile. So, I entertain it. I continue coming back to one of the recent episodes with Tristan Harris [2] because it put into words some of the things I've thought about lately and provided a lot of other adjacent resources. The main one that peaked my interest was "The Work" of Bryon Katie [3]. Her branding can come off as new agey with a Oprah-like feel to it, but it's a solid framework that (seems) to pull from meditative and CBT practices.

I don't think there's a silver bullet to defeating burnout. I think getting to know yourself and who and what help balance your equilibrium is an underrated, essential part of life we're never taught. Best of luck

[1] - [https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/psychpedia/coping- mechanism...](https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/psychpedia/coping-mechanisms)

[3] - [https://overcast.fm/+Kebtdt5RM](https://overcast.fm/+Kebtdt5RM)

[3] - [https://thework.com/](https://thework.com/)

</comment><comment><USER4> > I've been diagnosed with depression a few times and I'm currently on SSRI's > and feel okay.

Workout, get a weight set. Put your gym in your home and follow a basic workout routine. I've been battling depression for a long time and all I can say is that working out helps more than almost everything (besides getting really good sleep).

I can't recommend making a home gym enough. I got a power rack [0] and started lifting about a year ago. I had never done any weight lifting on my own because I was too afraid to hurt myself. I just looked up a routine [1] on reddit and followed it to the tee starting from ground zero.

If you can't get a power rack then look into getting a collapsable weight set [2] and a bench. This doesn't require a ton of room and help you get basic weight lifting started until you build a routine for yourself.

> So hanging jobs doesn't help, getting treating doesn't help.. I'm burning > out again.

All I can say is you have to find the root cause of your depression (outside of just the chemical imbalance). Are you eating well? Are you sleeping well? How often are you exercising _hard_? You can do this. Don't let it eat you.

Isolate your bad habits and put fixing them above everything else. Building habits and systems helps fight depression for me because often times depression overwhelms me to the point where everything else falls apart. If you can build habits, rituals, and systems you can offload your stressors into them which might help with coping.

> I love what I do (DevOps) but I'm coming to the conclusion that I don't work > well with others. They start to drive me crazy and then I only have > indifference towards the work.

I feel this a lot, but one thing I do know is that if I'm really depressed or really imbalanced (poor sleep, not enough personal time) I get even more annoyed by people.

> Any advice? I'm feeling like I should quit IT.

Check to see if you can get some counseling. Also, see if you have any mental health days you can take. If you have a good working relationship with your direct supervisor ask to see if you can have a 1:1 and be brutally honest with how you feel.

[0]: [https://www.roguefitness.com/rml-390f-flat-foot-monster- lite...](https://www.roguefitness.com/rml-390f-flat-foot-monster-lite- rack?prod_id=12049&gclid=CjwKCAjwxOvsBRAjEiwAuY7L8sbAlCeRViagmO96AIruIRTvazGiYBbOtPOH0w6GmoceCnoFguxE1xoCf4AQAvD_BwE)

[1]: [https://thefitness.wiki/routines/r-fitness-basic-beginner- ro...](https://thefitness.wiki/routines/r-fitness-basic-beginner-routine/)

[2]: [https://powerblock.com/](https://powerblock.com/)

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm in a similar situation, but I've been working from home the past 3 years and I'm starting to think I should go back to working in an office.

Like myself, you're depressed--probably because you have a High IQ and can't stand being around other people.

Checkout out this book--a lot of people have called it a diatribe against society, but it's helped me relate to the world: [https://www.amazon.com/Curse-High-IQ-Aaron- Clarey/dp/1522813...](https://www.amazon.com/Curse-High-IQ-Aaron- Clarey/dp/1522813756)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, that book looks interesting. I'll check it out.

IIRC, I scored ~115 on test many years ago but never made much out of it. I think domain knowledge is also important.

But I do seem to be the guy in the room asking the deep questions nobody asks and often don't want to answer.

For instance, we'll be discussing moving to a new platform and I'll ask if anyone has any plans to migrate the old apps to it.. and silence ensues. Or I'll question the choice of using some technology written in a language we don't have expertise in and it looks like that question never occurred to anyone.

Or I'll ask our director if there's a roadmap about our migration to containers and will get a lame answer.

I don't know if I could do their jobs better but I always try to be on top of mine and it annoys me a lot that others don't have as much passion for this field as I do. I know it's just a job but... Oh well.</comment></comment>


Malaria Drug Promoted by Trump Did Not Prevent Covid Infections, Study Finds - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/health/hydroxychloroquine-coronavirus-trump.html <comment><USER2> This is specifically for post-exposure prophylaxis, which means (but the paper is not yet out, the news came out too early) it does not help you in _preventing_ infection after you've been exposed to an infected person.

Currently the questions on HCQ are two:

\- Is it useful to prevent infection? According to the study, the answer is probably "no".

\- Is it useful for _early treatment_ of the disease? This is what another UMN trial (completed and under review, AFAICS) plus SOLIDARITY and RECOVERY are trying to find out. So the current answer is "we don't know yet".

EDIT: I've read the paper. The differences between the two groups are very small. There are some limitations highlighted by the authors (some cases were confirmed by symptoms, rather than PCR), but at least in a mostly younger (median age 40 years) population, prophylaxis with HCQ does not seem to be effective to prevent the disease.

Zinc supplementation does not seem to help, but the authors mention that there were confounding factors.

Now, does HCQ actually help with disease treatment? As I wrote before, this is still an unknown. Other trials are needed (and ongoing) to answer this question.</comment>


Uber Self-Driving Truck Packed with Budweiser Makes First Delivery in Colorado - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-25/uber-self-driving-truck-packed-with-budweiser-makes-first-delivery-in-colorado <comment><USER3> Interesting question to pose for people here: In 2015 38,300 people were killed on U.S. roads, and 4.4 million were seriously injured - if automation saves those lives, but puts others out of work, is that not what we want? Shouldn't we prioritize life over employment?

<comment><USER4> You solve it by re-training these people for other jobs (free education) and a minimum living wage.

<comment><USER5> Retraining has been this sort of ludicrous dogma for awhile, especially since the 90's when the Clinton administration seemed to be obsessed with it. I keep thinking this year will be the year this fiction finally dies.

The solution involves real jobs with living wages, not sending former factory workers to sit in de facto community college seminars three nights a week for free.

<comment> norea-armozel I know I'm going to be the jerk here so I'll say maybe we don't need jobs? Maybe we need a better distribution of the wealth created? I know folks don't want to touch that idea with a 10 foot pole but it's a legitimate question. I'm not saying we need state socialism but maybe we do need some kind of socialism to handle these permanent changes to the economy because automation isn't going to stop just at blue collar skilled jobs. You got legal staff, financial advisors, and many more kinds of work that's on the chopping block once the automation schema is figured out for them (plus/minus time for insurance companies to figure out liabilities). Just shifting us into another bullshit job like marketing or legal isn't going to fix the underlying problem in that work is seen as an end in itself rather than a means to an end (to feed/cloth ourselves). Once we remove the myth that we need to work to live (work in the sense of working in a cubicle or around a table in an office 8-5 and commute to/from said office five times a week) then we can talk about what we should do next.

<comment><USER5> There's really no reason we can't have an advanced society with reasonably compensated skilled manufacturing jobs. The Germans and the Swiss have demonstrated as much, for example.

Once you take it as fact that it's "impossible" for workers to have rights and a proper social contract in the modern global economy you start acting accordingly and become blind to the fact that it's not inevitable at all. It's important to recognize that our policies towards the working class in this country are deliberate political choices borne of the way power and influence works in our political system, not laws of nature.

<comment> norea-armozel I think you're missing my point which is that no one should have to have a job to work or to live. Work isn't just 8-5 cubicle or factory setting nonsense. Cleaning your laundry is work. Cooking is work. Telling a story is work. Carving wooden figurines is work. But they don't have to be jobs. They don't have to follow an 8-5 schedule. And most importantly, the benefits of that work doesn't have to be majoratively sold at a discount to capitalists. To have housing, food, or medical care shouldn't come with the condition of repetitive drudgery. If a machine can do the drudgery then get the human out of it as soon as possible. This isn't entirely utopian either considering many kinds of work in textiles and plastics have been automated away. The same goes for building electronics to a point where all most people are tasked with is QA or packing (hell, I've seen machines replace people in packing and warehouse work). What has to change is our legal and social dynamics around who owns the wealth of production. Once we socialize the capital we can discuss whether or not we should have drudgery for it's own sake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The destruction of the longshoreman/dockworker career happened over the course of about 10-15 years during the 60's and early 70's. Containerization basically made their jobs unnecessary. That industry was far more unionized than truck drivers in the US are today.

To be honest, I don't think, as a society, we should be sad to see the truck driver go. It's a tough job with an awful lifestyle, and a work environment that's basically impossible for women and people of color.

What we should be concerned about is what all these people will do next - <USER2> won't have any other (labor) skills. Many of the longshoremen got "golden parachute" type payments to retire early, thanks to the negotiating power of the union. Most truck drivers, I think, will not be so lucky.

<comment><USER7> >a work environment that's basically impossible for women and people of color

how so ?

<comment><USER8> I work for a trucking company. There is plenty of diversity. Drivers mostly operate solo, it doesn't really matter what you look like or what sex you are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So in the future, what happens when no one owns a car and we're all dependent on summoning a self-driving car to get any real distance from home?

Will we have internet arguments about the rights of people to go where they like?

Will the arguments become as fine-grained as "Well, yes, if you want to go to the rally to protest the cuts in UBI, you really should expect that Uber will send one, but it's very difficult and expensive to build out the system for such peak demand events. And ultimately, that just cuts into the funds available for UBI. Why not just register your complaint on the website at [https://myvote.ubifunding.gov](https://myvote.ubifunding.gov)? Or you can just click the button on facebook."

Followed by blog posts about what a "Sunday drive" was and comments reminiscing how readers used to take drives just to explore and lamenting that this is no longer practical.

I'm all against surrendering autonomy to machines and the corporations who own them.

<comment><USER10> From the car-free point of view, you already surrendered autonomy when you scaled your regular transport needs to the point where they can't be easily fulfilled by walking.

<comment><USER11> ...and cycling!

<comment><USER12> Which can satisfy almost the same trip distances as cars, most days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Glad they tested this with practice beer; wait for actual beer delivery after GA.

<comment><USER14> If it had been spilled - no damage!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Especially in the US even a fairly simple "hybrid" self driving truck could probably provide some savings. Automate the long straight roads and let the driver take over for everything else. Depending on the route the sleep schedules could be met during the automated driving part. I guess that's what they meant with the sentence about saving 50kk/year even in the current form.

As an aside, the article mentioned that the driver was sleeping in the back...I'm sure that's no accident. However I doubt that's a safe thing to try (and only possible in these very artificial circumstances) even with a good warning/wakeup system in place it takes too long to get from the back to the front and react.

<comment><USER8> With the hours of service reform passed a few years ago, drivers are required to have so many off-duty hours and so many sleep hours per week and day. Being able to go off-duty or log sleep while the truck is traveling means higher fleet velocity, which means higher fleet utilization, which means higher revenue.

A truck with a single driver has to sit idle (or off in California) a large part of the day. Capital costs don't take a break during those hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I can't WAIT for driving to become obsolete.

Just think about how retarded our entire thinking on transportation has been.

We first tamed a massive, powerful animal, placed a piece of leather on its back, and prayed that it didn't get too moody and threw us off.

Now we strap ourselves into a piece of metal which 99.99% of us can't even begin to understand, then barrel down roads at 80mph while praying that the guy in the other lane isn't drunk/sleepy/high

<comment><USER17> Now we strap ourselves into a piece of metal _controlled by an AI_ which 99.99% of us can't even begin to understand, then barrel down roads at 80mph while praying that the AI in the other lane isn't _hacked /faulty/Tesla v0.1a_

<comment><USER18> Or that a OTA software upgrade transforms the highway into a destruction derby playground.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Hmm: "Otto spent two weeks carefully mapping the road to make sure the technology could handle it."

<comment><USER20> Yeah. And police escort to get other drivers out of the way. Also: plain highway in good weather.

This was a great publicity stunt, but there's a huge difficulty cliff between toy problems and actual driving in traffic in real-life conditions.

<comment><USER12> Early auto laws required somebody with a flag and horn to walk ahead of the car to warn horse riders they were coming. Doesn't mean the car couldn't operate autonomously anyway. These unnecessary obstacles will go away once folks become more comfortable with auto drivers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Well that didn't take long at all since Uber acquired Otto not too long ago. It's interesting to note how many precautions they took including a police escort, careful mapping, light traffic, and weather.

</comment><comment><USER22> Truckers and delivery workers are a club so to speak. Usps waves to UPS drivers. Teamsters are safe and polite driving - wise to other big rigs

Do not underestimate the disrupted's ability to disrupt the disrupter. I can so see where driver delivery drivers block driver less vehicles. And disrupters can become quite cleaver

<comment><USER23> >I can so see where driver delivery drivers block driver less vehicles.

Can't stop stupid. Delivery drivers taking time out of their schedule to mess with a computer... that isn't paid by the hour. Sure, be vindictive. You'll feel real good for the next 5 minutes.

<comment><USER22> Not the one off delivery but organized at a port or railyard or highway egress or access point

<comment><USER24> Then they're either immediately in violation of trespassing laws or "obstruction of traffic" laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I know very little about the technology in self driving vehicles, but why was the driver/monitor of this truck allowed to sit in the sleeper compartment and not in the drivers seat like the uber self driving cars in pittsburgh?

<comment><USER26> He was travelling with a police escort and support crew. And highway driving is much simpler than downtown Pittsburgh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Man, if we think this self-driving car thing is jarring, I wonder how we'll adjust to the incoming teachable general purpose biped robots...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVlhMGQgDkY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVlhMGQgDkY)

Basically, however fast we think self-driving cars are happening and requiring adjustment, that shift is like we're still on training wheels, compared to the real game-changer. We'd better figure out how to take care of those truckers and taxi-drivers, or it doesn't bode well for our adaptability as a society.

</comment><comment><USER28> It seems odd to me that a heavy driver-less truck is tested on a regular expressway with regular cars which drivers have no clue that they're actually participating in a rather dangerous test that may potentially lead to fatal casualties. It's like testing a pilot-less plane with real passengers which are not informed that their plane has no pilots. I'm glad everything went smoothly in this case, but shouldn't such testing be done in a more protected way until the technology becomes proven?

</comment><comment><USER8> Last week I sat through a presentation by the American Trucking Association. The presenter said there won't be truly autonomous vehicles (with no driver at all) for 20 years. He pointed out that airplanes have been able to take off, fly and land without human intervention for a long time, and there are still pilots in the seat. But then most trucks don't carry passengers.

In the current environment, any wreck involving a truck costs at least a million dollars. A drunk driver that runs into a truck? The family will sue and win lots of money, because that's how it works.

The real test of autonomous will be in how liability is dealt with. A fully autonomous truck will be the responsibility of the company that supplies the software, not the carrier.

Moving liability away from the carrier will open up some interesting possibilities. It would become less costly to own and operate trucks, so I suppose smaller businesses would be able to compete more easily. It also means that carriers will become commoditized, long haul carriers at first then eventually the short haul carriers.

In 30 years a carrier will be little more than an API that accepts a load, orders a truck to drive somewhere then sends an electronic bill. There's little incentive at that point for manufacturers to even sell trucks - why not just operate them too? The real money will be in maintenance and fuel.

<comment><USER29> _The real test of autonomous will be in how liability is dealt with. A fully autonomous truck will be the responsibility of the company that supplies the software, not the carrier._

Why do you think this is clearly the case? If the licensing is thorough, it probably continues to make sense to finance the liability by charging the entity that controls how the vehicle is used (a truck operating in a rural setting will probably be involved in less incidents than one operating between Boston and NYC).

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Are there going to be any jobs left? It seems like there are a lot of jobs that involve driving. This technology has the potential to displace a very large number of workers.

<comment><USER3> Lots of people were put out of work when the loom was invented. We've gone through this before many times in human history

<comment><USER31> Putting aside what s ridiculous, downright asinine comparison that was in comparison with our economy now -- what an extremely cold, unempathetic comment. People, lots of people, with families are going to lose their livelihood. Many are advanced in age, and have only known one thing their whole life. We have a responsibility to our fellow neighbor. A 50 year old truck driver is not going to pick up a coding boot camp and get hired as a tech worker, maybe a small handful but it's unrealistic.

<comment><USER32>
      > Putting aside what s ridiculous, downright asinine
      > comparison that was in comparison with our economy now
      > what an extremely  cold, unempathetic comment.

You should read about the introduction of machines in 18th century England if you think that comparison is ridiculous, asinine or unsympathetic. Start with the Flying Shuttle and the Spinning Jenny.

Hint: there was no social security or unemployment benefits then.

<comment><USER33> As has been mentioned elsewhere - there were other un/low skilled industries that people could move sideways into once they'd been displaced. Automation affected vertical industries in previous "revolutions", whereas now automation is impacting a vast swathe of un/low skilled industries simultaneously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The amount of "disruption" the coming automation is going to cause is staggering I think.

If you haven't seen it, I highly highly recommend watching this video[0] - "Madam Sandi tells your future" (by Sandi Metz) It's all about change, and how when the step changes come, and they will, you need to be ready to adapt.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOM5_V5jLAs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOM5_V5jLAs)

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't know what my reaction will be to a fully autonomous self-driving truck at a 4-way stop when we arrive at the same time. You have to decide who goes next.

I usually wave the other guy through if they appear to be in a hurry. Now, there is no other guy. Will the truck sit there and ignore me waving? And finally do the start-stop dance when I try to go?

(Or roll it's headlight eyes and mutter "humans..." when I do a rolling stop and flip it off?)

<comment><USER35> Well the laws for a 4-way stop aren't ambiguous. The autonomous vehicles will know the laws and try to follow them until one of us dumb meat-bags tries to go out of turn. Arriving at the _exact same time_ is comparatively rare, and the computer will know who arrived first.

<comment><USER36> Even when arriving at the same time, yield to the vehicle to your the right. (in the US) If you are across from each other and one vehicle is turning, the turning vehicle yields. Not even that much code to write...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Closest I've been to an autonomous drive is the brother in law's s60 Volvo. Car pulls back over the slightest dip in the road, kinda freaky how it will detect human-like movement and come to a halt.

Oh, and future, you scare me - [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cvm- yDrWIAAottR.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cvm-yDrWIAAottR.jpg:large)

<comment><USER38> Good point! Let's remove the pilot cabin. Save space and weight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> The trucking industry is huge (say 1.5 million truckers alone, plus rest stops etc), and it will largely have disappeared as a result of this. Uber may want drivers in the cab now, but when it's reliable enough, I imagine it makes sense to just have drop-off points for the last few miles.

In some sense it will be among the biggest economic transformations in recent history. There have been far bigger ones, but I can't think of one that has happened in the short timeframe expected of self-driving trucks. I don't think this point is controversial.

At the same time, I've been very curious to see the overall economic impact, especially with displacing such a huge percentage of the US workforce. Interestingly, there's already a shortage in truckers per wikipedia. I found this fascinating: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trucking_industry_in_the_Unite...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trucking_industry_in_the_United_States#Truck_drivers)

I imagine that people going into trucking see the writing on the wall. It will put a lot of truckers out of business, but the turnover is already crazy high, with many truckers already leaving the business entirely.

This could be a very interesting case study on how to manage worker displacement effectively. I don't think anyone here is seriously advocating paying more money and lives for goods just to keep trucking jobs up (although more and more on HN one has to write 'defensively' to curb misinterpretation, i.e. I feel compelled to shout that I think this is a good idea). But it would be interesting to see where truckers are getting new jobs already, and whether those industries could use more. Are truckers leaving the industry going back into some other industrial job, back to school, unemployment?

<comment><USER40> If truck driving is already a high turnover job, there won't be displacement of a nature that gets political attention. Firms just won't hire new truckers to replace the ones that leave. Trucking will be in transition a long time. The first self driving trucks will be fully attended. Then maybe they are unattended, but only on highways. Self driving in the city is likely years away.

This wouldn't be like shutting a factory or mine where people have worked for years and where they hoped to retire from. By the same token, you see self checkout machines everywhere, parking garages without manned booths, automatic toll roads, self-serve kiosks at restaurants, and self-serve gas with pay at the pump. No one ever paid any attention to displacement from those jobs because they are high turnover anyway.

<comment><USER39> What if, say, the trucking industry loses 50% of its jobs/salary in 5 years? That's a lot of displacement even in an industry with high turnover (I don't know if those numbers are realistic, but I do think there will be faster and more massive displacement than self-serve checkout and automatic toll roads).

What I'm curious about is whether whatever industries truckers are heading to now can accommodate that many more workers without problems. Just because there's a high turnover doesn't necessarily mean that wherever truckers are heading now could handle 10x the influx of employees without funny consequences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How did it get unloaded?

How did the returns (kegs etc) get back into the truck and spoils too?

Who unloaded back at the distributor?

<comment><USER9> Apparently there was a driver present. Humans augment the machine, until the robots get good enough to do that part of it.

<comment><USER22> The owner or the liquor store I worked at required the drivers to do a lot. Heavy lifting and placing product. They are defacto employees. Owner of a liquor chain has great pull. From simple product placement, sales, etc.

Uber chose this market - but why a heavy perishable delivery.

<comment><USER41> > The owner or the liquor store I worked at required the drivers to do a lot. > Heavy lifting and placing product. They are defacto employees. Owner of a > liquor chain has great pull. From simple product placement, sales, etc. Uber > chose this market - but why a heavy perishable delivery.

You nailed it yourself. It's heavy, so hard for people to move (easier for machines). It's perishable, so it benefits greatly from more frequent smaller deliveries, instead of rare large deliveries. If you don't have to pay a person to drive, you can do that. Additionally, the packaging is perfectly regular (cans or kegs, always the same size, made of a durable material).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> "Otto spent two weeks carefully mapping the road to make sure the technology could handle it."

So...if new roadworks appeared anywhere on that 120 mile stretch of road that morning, the truck would not be able to deal with it I assume?

<comment><USER43> Not necessarily. Everybody in this business is being careful and super paranoid about accidents causing massive PR and Regulatory set backs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> > AB InBev said it could save $50 million a year in the U.S. if the beverage > giant could deploy autonomous trucks across its distribution network.

Sweet words for AB InBev shareholders, not so sweet for the obsoleted truckers though.

Obviously this technology is inevitable, but I think that the authors of such technologies should also come up with political proposals on what to do with the displaced people.

Politicians should start acting _now_ and figure out how to respond to these changes. And that should be done on a global scale, because technology is very fast to spread across borders.

<comment><USER45> > _I think that the authors of such technologies should also come up with > political proposals on what to do with the displaced people._

Did the inventors of automobiles have to deal with all the farriers and people who tend to horses?

...or when milkmen were obsolete?

...or when switchboard operators were obsolete?

...or when telegram operators were obsolete?

(I could go on all week)

History is _full_ of instances where certain job roles are no longer needed and are obsoleted. This is a good thing, it means we're moving forward and progressing.

I wish everyone wasn't so afraid of jobs, but that's the consequence of being up to your eyeballs in debt.

<comment><USER46> You're not even close to a realistic comparison. As a percentage of jobs overall, people working with horses, milkmen, switchboard operators, etc didn't amount to the sheer enormity of the jobs that will be obsoleted or displaced by self driving vehicles.

There is no comparison in history to make. Nothing has happened like this before. Never.

The closest you could get would be something like the aftermath of WW2 in Europe or maybe some devastating plagues but even _that_ isn't a good comparison because those removed the people _entirely_ ; dead people don't need to be fed or swayed from starting a violent revolution.

It's not just the truckers or cab/bus drivers. It's all the industries that support them. Those will disappear too.

Just think of all the truck stops we have in the US and the amount of money that truckers spend at these places to sleep, take showers, get wifi, etc. Those will go away too.

The motels where travelers sleep at midway points in their travels will lose all that business. The auto body shops that rely on people making mistakes while driving will lose all that business too.

You're vastly underestimating the disruption if you're bringing up switchboard operators and milkmen.

<comment><USER45> This attitude continues to boggle my mind.

It's as if you think it would be better for millions of people to spend massive amounts of their lives away from their families, living extremely unhealthy sedentary lifestyles, eating truck stop and gas station "food" and operating massive machines that cause many deaths every day of the year.

You actually think it's a good thing that millions of people spend their time this way!

We have the ability to make the world _better_. We have the ability to eliminate the need for thinking, feeling, living humans to whittle away their lives sitting in trucks and being away from their families.

Yes, technology is going to force us to question to role of "work" in society, and if it's more important to earn lots of money while being away from your family and living and extremely unhealthy life, or if it's more important to earn less money, and have more time with family and healthy living.

Yes, the world is about to change - and _keep_ changing - and it's going to change whether you resist it or not.

<comment><USER47> >You actually think it's a good thing that millions of people spend their time this way!

I think you're putting words in riskable's mouth. What the comment actually said is that you were vastly underestimating the disruption in comparing it to milkmen, etc. There wasn't any judgment whether it was a good thing or not.

<comment><USER48> The percentage of Americans employed as farmers in the US far exceeded that of trucker drivers. Yes there was disruption, but those people didn't permanently go on to be the underclass unemployed of society. They and their descendants went on to more fruitful activities. The thing is, at the time, you couldn't imagine what those activities would be.

[0] [http://www.usda.gov/factbook/art/fig31.jpg](http://www.usda.gov/factbook/art/fig31.jpg)

<comment><USER49> Oh, you mean all the farmers and factory workers that made up the Midwest, which are now overwhelmingly trump supporters, largely because of the destruction of all economic opportunity in their region?

<comment><USER50> Huh? The US moved away from farming as a key employer what? 80 years ago? It has nothing to do with Trump.

<comment><USER49> Sorry, I should have reserved my comment for a day when I am not recovering from a sinus infection :) Farming, in the midwest at least, was a dying but still widely practiced profession up into the early 80's. This also includes meat farming. The farm consolidation really got into the swing of things in the mid 80's. Add in the decimation of the auto and steel (and supporting industries) and you see a period from 1960 - 1990 that had an unprecedented level of people forced out of work due to automation and lost jobs.

The Trump comment was tossed in because it's been easy to forget about this stuff as a coastal living millenial, and the recent Trump phenomenon has brought it back to the forefront.

Sorry for the initial snarky comment!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> One interesting thing here is the savings, even though there's a driver.

They say "more frequent schedules" . How ?

<comment><USER15> Not sure about US laws but in Europe there's mendatory rest periods for drivers. Drive n hours, sleep/rest m hours where m is relatively large. For an autonomous vehicle that time is reduced to zero (I'd assume)

<comment><USER51> Mandatory rest exists in the US. But i assume the guy watching over the self driving car, should follow those laws.

<comment><USER52> That assumes that it needs supervision and the driver isn't just there for the first/last mile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Like the last mile for telecom, they need to solve the last 20 foot; get me a beer from the fridge.

<comment><USER54> I suspect that what will happen initially is that a human driver will be tasked with getting the truck to and from the nearest highway entrance, with the autopilot taking it from there. This is similar to how ships operate, with local pilots guiding the ship in and out of harbors and the ship's captain handling the at sea portion of the journey.

Also, and only half in jest, Budweiser? In Colorado? Regardless of my opinion of their beers I would have expected a delivery of Coors instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Anyone think this was a media response from Uber to combat the video Tesla put out last week?

</comment><comment><USER53> So do self driving vehicles have to be licensed, such as passing a safety test? Or is the fact a licensed driver is in the vehicle good enough? That requirement is not good enough as student drivers still need a learners permit.

</comment><comment><USER56> How is it possible that no one else has already commented that Uber's first truck delivery is basically self-driving Smokey & The Bandit???

Well played Uber, well played.

</comment><comment><USER57> Video from Otto's YouTube chan :

[http://youtu.be/Qb0Kzb3haK8](http://youtu.be/Qb0Kzb3haK8)

</comment><comment><USER58> I think the logical conclusion to self-driving is just turning our roads into digital rails.

So all this work on proprietary algos/hardware for self-driving are so much in vain.

This grey area of 'well yeah, it's 'self-driving' but you still need to be ready to take over at any second' won't fly for long. Either you're driving, or we have true self-driving cars and SMART ROADS to match, to the point where you can take a nap in the back seat.

<comment><USER43> I think you are confusing the current social and legal climate for self driving cars with what the technology can do in 5-10 years.

For example, if the law says "there must be a licensed driver ready to take control at all times" then it doesn't really matter what the technology can do.

<comment><USER59> It's easier to change the minds of men than it is to build a near copy of the mind of a man

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> If I were a truck driver, I would be very worried about this tech, and be thinking how I can get some other skill...

</comment><comment><USER61> interesting that Budweiser was a large driving force in the invention of refrigerated train cars, and now they are the first delivery with the driverless truck. AB-Inbev definitely understand the importance of distribution and are always looking at new technologies to make it more efficient.

</comment><comment><USER33> The marketer in me prays they take a "don't drink and drive" ad play with this one.

</comment><comment><USER62> TL;DR. Self drive will create jobs, not eliminate them.

I read a lot about self drive putting truck drivers out of work - and I think I disagree.

My bias - I own a factory and we ship and receive goods constantly, from overnight envelopes to pallets. I would say that we get every normal form of delivery at least once a week. UPS, Fedex, USPS, dozens of trucking companies, dozen of supplier owned fleets. Shipments outbound last month were over 50,000 pounds. We are small, but that is still a lot of shipping. Enough that I know what I am talking about.

I am a self drive enthusiast. I look forward to its everyday use, and I have spent 100s of hours trying to think through the implications (and how my auto parts company will fit into it).

With this perspective, I can't see how the driver will be replaced until we have intelligent humanoid robots. The delivery and pickup environment is different in every building. Drivers are also collecting money, and delivering invoices, and doing all sorts of other tasks that the truck simply won't be able to do. Driving the truck is only half the job. Whenever I send a delivery to be done by one of my staff (we have no dedicated deliver person; it's whoever is available) then the instructions to actually get the thing there would be a nightmare to explain to a computer.

Example-- (Recent deliver to auto dealership: Go in the side door, not the front. Find Sarah; if you give the box to Jane she will not take it to the back. Find Sarah, she will get the box to Gary. They are expecting you. Remember! Side door, the one marked "Do Not Enter". The front door is for retail customers, we are a supplier and they need this right now.)

I do hope that the advent of self drive will lower costs, and thus my shipping expenses. Shipping by the pallet is not that cheap; sending 500 pounds (225 kilo) only halfway across the USA costs me just under 50 cents per pound, or about $250 USD. Freight companies can charge gigantic differences by small changes in address. I am all for their disruption. I once had to pay an extra $100 because the address was on the wrong side of an 8 lane bridge, literal highway robbery.

If shipping costs drop, then I will bundle free shipping to my commercial accounts (98% of business), not just to retail accounts. Supplier owned fleets will deliver with smaller minimum orders to be competitive. This will all cause the need for drivers/attendants to INCREASE not decrease.

Its possible that the job of "truck driver" may turn into "automated truck interface person" but that would not be a net job loss; it would be a transfer into a different category. If my shipping costs drop, then my number of shipments will go up dramatically while at the same time the size of shipments will likely get smaller. Why order by the pallet, when by the case is the same price.

As with the e-commerce revolution, this is going to happen over a period of decades not years. Even now, 20 years of Amazon later, e-commerce has not broken the 10% of retail yet. All the handwringing over lost jobs is going to happen way slower than anyone thinks.

</comment><comment><USER22> Bear with me

In can see a way where unions can make a comeback.

Lately I socialized driverless with people in my daily routine. None -even the tesla owner brother - would get into a driverless car. Safety and trust is mentioned.

Now we have workers potentially displaced. Some in unions. Some not. But associating with a union for the sake of perceived safety could be a real winner. These drivers under "x" union do not have unsafe driverless vehicles.

<comment><USER63> Good example of how unions impede progress.

<comment><USER22> Yes. Quite true.

The union is to protect workers wages and rights (they won during agreement)

Union is a five letter word. Everyone drives. Its freedom. I think one positive PR decision for a union would be to sew together the uncertainty of driver less vehicles on the Eisenhower highway system built for defense with traditional non union population.

"Our drivers Are safe. Keep the Eisenhower interstate system for safe drivers. "</comment></comment></comment>


Cyberpunk 2077 Dev Team Will Work Extra Long Hours After Latest Delay - <AUTHOR> https://www.gamespot.com/articles/cyberpunk-2077-dev-team-will-work-extra-long-hours/1100-6472839/ <comment><USER2> Game has huge scope and is very ambitious as usual for CDPR. Most likely they have lots of bugs creeping in at these final stages; Gamedev is the most complex area of development no doubt. I work in the gamedev industry professionally and at home as an indie and can only respect these guys. I can't handle crunch at all. Almost died when tried to do it.

<comment><USER3> > Gamedev is the most complex area of development no doubt

Are you actually implying that building a game is the hardest most complex task you could possibly imagine?

<comment><USER4> It might be. I'd bet the AAA gamedev industry has the worst code quality on average, due to a combination of routine crunch, large team sizes working on the same product, and an "if it works, ship it" mentality.

<comment><USER5> And the apparent state that, not only can they not get the thing made as proscribed in the amount of time - how do they make it robustly designed with mind for future use?

They're like a freshman finishing their paper the night before - hell no they didn't edit for clarity, much less added depth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sad, they should just delay it. One year crunch to finish Witcher 3? They should have better worker protection laws.

<comment><USER7> What exactly is sad? Studio is in EU, not US or Asia. There are strong labour protection laws in place. Nobody will be forced to do overtime for free. We have 8 hour work days with 40 hour max per week, 8 hour total overtime per week and 150 hours total overtime per year limit.

"Zgodnie z art. 131 Kodeksu pracy tygodniowy czas pracy łącznie z godzinami nadliczbowymi nie powinien przekroczyć przeciętnie 48 godzin w okresie rozliczeniowym.

Dodatkowo art. 151 § 3 określa, że limit godzin nadliczbowych na dany rok kalendarzowy nie powinien przekroczyć 150 godzin."

There are additional protections for parents of young children etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This news moves this game down on my interest list. Forcing your team into crunch for so long isn't healthy, and doesn't produce the best software.

It's a management failure if the game was announced too far in advance, and that shouldn't be a reason to punish the development team.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow 8 months of crunch time? That's ridiculous.

<comment><USER7> It comes down to 1 extra hour per day in accordance with local labour law.</comment></comment>


The Must Know Checklist for DevOps and System Reliability Engineers - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@eon01/the-must-know-checklist-for-devops-system-reliability-engineers-f74c1cbf259d <comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for the typo: Site Reliability Engineer (not system)</comment>


Show HN: What do you think about our Startup? - <AUTHOR>

www.spaceship.com.sg <comment><USER2> Really Cool concept. Website is nice, easy to use, but when I tried to click on, "Tell me more about Insurance" in the 5. Security, Are my Items safe section, it would not open anything it would just close the section. For me insurance is important, it would comfort me knowing, that if something did happen I was covered.

I was going to say the price seems high but I looked at local storage places and figured how many boxes would fit into a 5'x5' room and your price seems to be solid.

</comment><comment><USER3> Love the concept. Website design is clean.

One question: Is the price mentioned is SGD or USD?

IMO: Pricing seems to be on the higher side

All the best and Good Luck!!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank You!

Prices are in SGD as we only operate in SG at the moment.

Any recommendations on price point?</comment></comment>


I taught a homeless man to code - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/nov/02/experience-taught-homeless-man-computer

<comment><USER2> Awesome, I really like that.

Our hour daily private lessons for two months, this is worth more than anything else you could give to him.

We were talking about this in another HN post, I'm glad to see someone is actually doing that.

<comment><USER3> This story has been all over the tech press since August, so I'll be slightly surprised if you've missed it:

[https://medium.com/architecting-a- life/fee8f3ee97a0](https://medium.com/architecting-a-life/fee8f3ee97a0)

The high points came when he was arrested and then released.

[http://venturebeat.com/2013/10/16/nypd-releases-homeless- cod...](http://venturebeat.com/2013/10/16/nypd-releases-homeless-coder-after- arrest-in-time-for-today-show-interview/)

As it says, he's even been on the Today show.

This is an "as told to" for the Experience column in he Guardian's Saturday magazine, so it's not intended to be a news report.</comment></comment>


Webdis: HTTP + JSON API for Redis - <AUTHOR> http://thechangelog.com/post/2910383164/webdis-a-redis-http-interface-with-json-output <comment><USER2> Memcache, for example, is explicitly not meant to be run with "public access", as it is not secured against attacks. I am pretty sure the same applies to redis.

If my assumption is correct, i wonder why one should use a (potentially slower) http client or protocol in favor of the "native" protocol.

<comment><USER3> Hello, good point, but I think the idea of the author (accordingly to what I read in the Redis maling list) is to provide some kind of access control list.

I think the most interesting practical application of a Redis HTTP interface is accessing your Redis database directly from Javascript.

One of such simple ACL is to deny all the commands but the few you use, and use unguessable key names. This is good for a low level of security. There are of course much better ways... but I'm curious about how this could evolve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What is the primary practical benefit of this?

It seems to simplify doing some really cool things, but I'm not sure what those things are...

<comment><USER5> Good question :)

I started Webdis because I thought it would be a cool project, after seeing suggestions about such an interface on IRC #redis.

Other that the cool factor, the main benefits are IMO:

* Javascript clients can access your Redis base. This is already done by CouchDB, on a much larger scale. Webdis is nowhere near such capabilities.

* A "Comet" interface to Redis pub/sub commands to stream data using either HTTP chunks (or WebSockets, not implemented yet).

* A way to query your Redis server without having to write code. Point your browser to Webdis and see for yourself if the 12th element in that list is what it should be. Having a public interface doesn't mean you have to expose it to your clients, it can be for internal use.

* A remote access for heavy clients such as Flash or Air. Webdis already serves a crossdomain.xml file for Flash clients; they can query Redis themselves instead of going though a proxy that you'd have to write by hand.

There could be other ways to use it; I'm glad to see the project gain some traction, it will help me figure out what's really important.

<comment><USER6> Very good points.

Actually that's something i started doing too with Node.Js, an HTTP interface to Redis for my personal use.

At first i did go with a RESTful approach, but you quickly hit the limit of commands available versus the numbers of commands in Redis.

The choice i did was the following:

Read command are accessed through GET this way:

GET <http://localhost:8124/get/mykey>

200 {"mykey" : "mydata"}

GET <http://localhost:8124/hgetall/mykey>

200 {"hashKey": {"field1": "value1", "field2": "value2"}}

Write commands are run through PUT or POST :

POST <http://localhost:8124/set/key/value>

201 {"response": 1}

PUT <http://localhost:8124/lpush/myList/1>

201 {"response": 1}

Delete commands through DELETE.

DELETE <http://localhost:8124/del/mykey> 200 {"response": 1}

DELETE <http://localhost:8124/hdel/myHash/field>

I'm pretty happy with the result, there are some commands i'm not sure where to put though(lpop, rpop, multi, ...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why the wacky SET/GET? Why not being restful and using HTTP verbs?

<comment><USER5> (I'm the author of Webdis)

I agree with you, and to be honest this is what bothers me the most in the current state of the project. The top point in the list of TODO/IDEAS is currently "Add better support for PUT, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS? How? For which commands?".

I'd be very glad to hear about a better way to implement this. As antirez (author of Redis) and kbd pointed out, Redis supports a lot more than GET/SET. How do I make LPUSH/RPUSH/SADD... RESTful?

<comment><USER8> Please please please do not make the API dependent on HTTP method verbs. This completely breaks JavaScript apps[1] and it's an arbitrary constraint that does not benefit anything except REST zealotry.

[1] For example, cross-domain JavaScript requests can only read GET responses.

<comment><USER5> I think there should be a way to disable GET for some commands, this seems to be a serious concern. That said, you'll always be able to access Webdis using GET; you present a common case that justifies the existence of such a feature.

I have started to implement Cross-Origin Resource Sharing, which should enable cross-domain JS requests using POST (If I understood correctly). An OPTIONS call is made by the client before the POST.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's also Bone which implements SET, GET, and KEYS over HTTP(S). It also uses something similar to the Amazon S3 request signatures for authentication.

<https://github.com/solutious/bone>

</comment><comment><USER10> This is also called "CouchDB."</comment>


MySQL madness and Rails - <AUTHOR> http://www.phenoelit.org/blog/archives/2013/02/05/mysql_madness_and_rails/

<comment><USER2> At the end of the post, the author says: "this issue wont be fixed for now." I asked on Twitter for more details, and this was his reply:

> response was roughly like "We might change this in Rails 4" and > "$affected_lib should fix it on its side"[1]

[1] <https://twitter.com/joernchen/status/298836052410519552>

</comment><comment><USER3> > For comparisons of a string column with a number, MySQL cannot use an index > on the column to look up the value quickly. If str_col is an indexed string > column, the index cannot be used when performing the lookup in the following > statement:

> SELECT * FROM tbl_name WHERE str_col=1;

add index please

</comment><comment><USER4> Am I missing something?

SELECT * FROM user WHERE "string" = 0;

will indeed match all users, but

SELECT * FROM user WHERE token = 0;

will not. (Presuming the token is stored in a table column)

<comment><USER5> Rails will do the following:

User.find_by_reset_password_token(0)

      User Load (0.8ms)  SELECT `users`.* FROM `users` WHERE `users`.`reset_password_token` = 0 LIMIT 1

     => #<User id: 1,[...]

hope that illustrates it

<comment><USER4> You're right, I was testing with tokens that started with numbers, so 0 didn't match anything.

      SELECT * FROM users where reset_token = 0;

will match the token "abc";

      SELECT * FROM users where reset_token = 1;

will match the token "1abc";

      SELECT * FROM users where reset_token = 123;

will match the token "123aasfas".</comment></comment></comment>


Firefox's SSL policy is not bad, you idiot - <AUTHOR> http://noahsmark.com/2008/08/19/firefoxs-ssl-policy-is-not-bad-you-idiot/

<comment><USER2> The problem with Mozilla's policy is that their UI is horrendous and gives off the wrong impression. It throws a bunch of information that will look like technobabble at the user without a clear definition of what any of it actually means.

//edit: Did a quick mockup for what _i think_ would be a better SSL error page, <http://tinyurl.com/6qn24p> (compared to the current SSL error page, <http://tinyurl.com/6j6ymx> )

"Until you sit down with my grandma for 2 hours painfully explaining how to use some feature in Microsoft Word, you don't get to preach to the world about how Mozilla trying to keep my grandma safe is somehow against the freedom of the web."

Shame. He seems to be the only person in existence with technological illiterate relatives. Right?!?! Wait. No. I'd be willing to bet that everyone in here has had a similar experience of having to explain how to do something that we consider simple to someone else.

Technical people understand technical things because they know about other technical things to relate things to. Non-technical people don't understand things as well because its harder to relate things to them. Try explaining things in a way they (the person you're explaining something to) understands. Maybe it wont take you two hours next time.

If I had to explain SSL certificates to my grandmother (who travels a lot), I would compare them to airline tickets. First class is a SSL Certificate from Verisign (or some other company). It's the best you can buy (trust + encryption), but it's the most expensive as well. Coach seats would be the certificate created by a non-profit. It's not a first class ticket, but you're still on the plane (you still have encryption). Not having a certificate would be missing the flight after buying a non-refundable ticket. You wasted your money (no trust/encryption, its likely someone's trying to scam you).

<comment><USER3> I guess you haven't read any of the other discussions on this topic. If you don't have the identity verification, the encryption is worthless. If my grandma went to a site with a self-signed certificate - you're damn right I'd want an error message stopping her, as there's no guarantee she isn't giving away the last of her pension money to a scammer somewhere.

To use your ticket analogy: a self-signed certificate would be a ticket in coach. You have no idea what plane you're getting on, or where the plane is going. I wouldn't put my grandma on a plane where I didn't know she was going. You would? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If $20/year for a cert breaks a nonprofit, what are they doing with a website to begin with?

<comment><USER2> Looking at Verisign's prices ( [http://www.verisign.com/ssl/buy-ssl- certificates/secure-site...](http://www.verisign.com/ssl/buy-ssl- certificates/secure-site-services/index.html) ), certs range from $400 to $1500. And other certs (Digicert, etc) range from $150/single domain/year to $500/wildcard for domain/year.

<comment><USER4> Okay, more like $23/month. Still, if a non profit can't afford that for a website, why does it need that much website? Why not a static page parked somewhere for free?</comment></comment></comment>