Netflix is Down - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/video/netflix-down-xmas-eve/ <comment><USER2> You'd think Netflix would learn by now to move back to their own gear.

EDIT: Downvote away; its practically dogma on HN to use AWS. How much downtime are people willing to tolerate for a "superior" technology? Sure, Amazon AWS has some great ideas and tech, but you might as well give up if your business depends on EBS in us-east-1 _at all_

<comment><USER3> The gear isn't the problem: the dependency on a single data center is the problem. It requires _a lot_ of software engineering effort to maintain a service that works when a data center suddenly goes away. To be fault- tolerant, Netflix has to do this engineering regardless of whether or not they own the servers. But if they use Amazon, they don't have to actually fix the _servers_ when they break, freeing up engineering resources to fix the software.

(Why doesn't Amazon offer transparent replication? Because the price of replication is unbelievably high and most people can't believe how high it is. If you want to write to 12 replicas around the world, budget five seconds for your transaction to complete. Compare this to a MySQL database on an SSD that can do millions of writes on the same entity group in the same amount of time.

This doesn't even include the cost: 12x the storage cost, and 12x the bandwidth cost for data going from your frontend to all of the backends.)

<comment><USER4> You're blowing this a little out of proportion.

Replicating a few petabytes of _static videos_ is not rocket science nor cost prohibitive for a company the size of Netflix. Nor is engineering a system that can withstand a datacenter outage. Especially one as trivial as Netflix which is largely read-only. Thousands of systems of higher complexity are engineered to that standard, many of them are much larger than netflix.

You rarely hear of Google outages, or iTunes, or Youtube, or [insert six dozen other popular brands], do you? Yes it can happen to the best of them, but the EC2 outages are really piling up lately.

<comment><USER5> _You rarely hear of Google outages_

[http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/10/gmail-experiences-a- widespr...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/10/gmail-experiences-a-widespread- outage-most-users-affected/)

 _,or iTunes_

[http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/11/19/itunes-match- down-...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/11/19/itunes-match-down-as- apples-icloud-issues-continue)

 _,or Youtube_

[http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/10/youtube- goes-...](http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/10/youtube-goes-down- not-googles-best-day/)

Everyone goes down, but EC2 has been buggy as hell from what I can tell.

And before everyone says Netflix should `just` move or add more bandwidth...

[http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/netflix- uses-32-...](http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/netflix- uses-32-7-percent-internet-bandwidth-119517)

They represent a huuuge amount of bandwidth usage!

<comment><USER2> So work with eyeball networks and move your gear to the edge; dumping it all in AWS and hoping for the best is failing (at best). Do all the auth/billing/recommendations/transcoding in AWS, and push all the video content out to boxes at the ISPs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Soon it will be news when the N. Virginia services are actually up! I don't want to be too hard on Amazon because what they've built is pretty amazing, but I really have to wonder what's different about the N. Virginia site ... And why they're not having similar failures at the other sites.

<comment><USER7> Based on some rough second hand estimation [1] it is an order of magnitude larger then all other AZs and is about as big as them all combined.

[1]: [https://huanliu.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/amazon-data- center-...](https://huanliu.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/amazon-data-center-size/)

<comment><USER8> What is an "AZ"? Availability Zone? "AZ" is not a very Google-friendly acronym. <:)

<comment><USER9> You guessed correct!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Netflix is down because Amazon is down, so we had to watch shows on Amazon (prime) instead. Funny how that works!

<comment><USER11> I had the same experience. When watching movies with my SO tonight, I explained that Netflix uses AWS and that AWS was experiencing problems. We started watching a movie on Amazon prime and she asked "So I guess Amazon Video isn't using AWS?"

<comment><USER12> I tried to watch a movie rented from Amazon over Roku last night (not Prime) and it was unwatchable. It would get stuck on some scene for seconds to minutes, occasionally letting loose a bit of audio.

The movie was Inception. Maybe there's some irony in there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Someone's Christmas Eve just went south. Godspeed.

<comment><USER14> Seriously. Instead of getting angry at Amazon I'm going to wish them a happy Christmas Eve and hope their collective pagers go quiet soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> <http://status.aws.amazon.com/>

Amazon CloudSearch (N. Virginia) - CloudSearch issues

"6:00 PM PST We are continuing to investigate the issue. Domain creation and indexing operations continue to be unavailable. Changes to existing domains may have severe delays in being processed."

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (N. Virginia) - Elastic Load Balancer issues

"5:49 PM PST We continue to work on resolving issues with the Elastic Load Balancing Service in the US-EAST-1 region. Traffic for some ELBs are currently experiencing significant levels of traffic loss."

</comment><comment><USER16> This really sucks for the engineers. Not a fun way to spend xmas at all.

<comment><USER17> If you're netflix, I'm sure you have staff/engineers at the office 24/7 during this time of year specifically. At least, I would hope they did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Having been in a similar position in the past, I actually feel bad for all the people at amazon and netflix that'll need to work late tonight...

<comment><USER19> They are getting OT/Holiday pay I'm sure. So they will be ok.

<comment><USER20> Compensation isn't actually the point here...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I hope y'all have Home Alone on DVD…

</comment><comment><USER22> The net says it is mostly on the East coast but I am in California just a few miles from Netflix HQ and it is down for me on my iPad. I should try on the Apple TV since they mentioned that it is working on other devices. I will be curious to hear the post mortem of the outage from both AWS and Netflix. The timing I am sure doesn't help with Christmas Eve around the corner and probably many engineers not reachable quickly.

<comment><USER23> Apple TV in St. Paul, MN failed so I don't think the east coast thing is true. Parents are not happy campers. I get the feeling all iOS devices are include.

<comment><USER24> If Netflix can deactivate clients based on device size; that'd be pretty neat. People on tablets–Netflix on my Nexus 7 is out–would usually be watching stuff alone (kids may huddle around an iPad though) and for Christmas, a movie on a large screen is probably more important to keep going.

Makes me think that apps should consider using Push notifications to tell consumers about issues; e.g. instead of a cryptic error number; say something like "Netflix servers are overloaded at the moment, NetFlix may not work on your mobile device".

Not sure if that will piss off people more, but something like that instead of an error number would probably be better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interesting that Heroku rode this one out. Any Heroku engineers want to tell us your LB setup? Do you use ELB?

<comment><USER14> Heroku did _not_ ride this one out. I have an app right now behind a failed ELB.

<https://status.heroku.com/incidents/479>

Edit: Make that two apps.

<comment><USER25> Oh right. I just checked Heroku.com.

<comment><USER26> heroku.com is up for me (near NYC) as are the Heroku-hosted sites we have at work.

<comment><USER14> It's not every app for me either. It appears to be a subset of apps that use the ssl:endpoint add-on to implement HTTPS.

<comment><USER27> And its not all sslenpoint sites either. We've been up through the whole thing. Which is critical seeing as we are a gifting company that provides an easy last minute gift!

<comment><USER26> Great timing!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Amazon movie rental over Roku is cutting in and out, and I can't watch Netflix (over Roku) at all. Colorado.

</comment><comment><USER28> A pedantic note: In the title "EVE" should capitalized as "Eve"

</comment><comment><USER29> Are they insured against a contingency of this calibre? Does Amazon provide/offer such an insurance?

<comment><USER14> Amazon EC2 has a Service Level Agreement (SLA)[1] that guarantees 99.95% uptime in a rolling 365 day period, and provides for service credits. Of course, a huge customer like Netflix can and probably did negotiate their own SLA terms.

[1]: <http://aws.amazon.com/ec2-sla/>

<comment><USER29> I was wondering if they'd pay damages and how would that be calculated.

I don't think free service for a while would cut it with a contingency of this sort. Maybe someone has first-hand information of their contract (or any other big player) and can answer to this publicly.

<comment><USER4> I don't know the Netflix contract but I've been involved with a few big (telco) SLAs. The penalties are usually calculated with a points-system and a multiplier that raises according to the duration/impact of an outage.

E.g. the first 15 minutes of an outage may cost 1 point per minute, 15-60 minutes 2 points, and so on. You also have multipliers for the severity (partial or full outage, customer impact, affected countries, etc.), time-of- day, and so on.

Collected points may then later be traded in for dollars or a nice lawsuit.

Corporate lawyers love to go nuts on these things, an enterprise SLA can easily span a hundred pages of legalese.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> you would think they would have learned to build redundancy into these types of systems.

<comment><USER22> Usually Netflix do well when AWS has an outage... At least in the past that was the case, so it really pick my curiosity on what is the difference with this outage vs the others. In addition it will be interesting to know if the timing of it -aka just before XMas- did affect the responsiveness of the engineers/team for both Amazon and Netflix.

<comment><USER14> The difference is that elastic load balancers are the things that actually implement the redundancy in AWS, and if one goes down and another can't be immediately started in it's place, no traffic will be getting to the instances that sit behind it.

I believe AWS has been working on a solution to this, but thus far haven't released anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Clearly the work of "The Grinch who Stole Christmas...."

</comment><comment><USER31> I just got finished watching something on Netflix?

<comment><USER32> You don't seem to sure of yourself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Cloud with a single point of failure. Merry XMas!

</comment><comment><USER34> How is anyone supposed to enjoy the holidays with their families if they aren't consuming media?

<comment><USER35> 1) some families like to watch stuff together

2) not all netflix subscribers have families

<comment><USER34> Fair enough. I for one enjoy expressing anti-television sentiments, with and without company.

<comment><USER36> [http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly- mention...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-mentioning- he-doesnt-own-a-tel,429/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What is the purpose of Xmas Eve if you spend it watching TV just like any other eve. Just saying.

<comment><USER12> For many of us, watching a movie on TV is anything but just another evening.

Everyone is different, and no one needs to justify their time to anyone.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Financial resources for IT certification course, exam, or otherwise? - <AUTHOR> Any programs out there either federal, state, or local to Kentucky, USA that can provide financial assistance in IT Certifications? (Specifically Cisco CCENT, but anything is welcome)
I have fairly easy access to the training material but more is always better. I'm more specifically worried about the exam cost itself. Even though it's only roughly $150 that's still a lot when you don't have that.
It may not be helpful but I wear two hearing aids and receive my hearing aids through Vocational Rehabilitation services locally and plan to ask them as well. I was just curious if anyone knew of anything else possibly?
I'm not looking for personal loans, student loans or anything like that. Just simply maybe organizations or government programs that are out there.
Thanks in advance guys! <comment><USER2> For something like a Cisco certification, Cisco might provide assistance.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I will have a look at their site and see what they have available.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it worth learning web development now? - <AUTHOR> I was researching and planning on jumping into a dev bootcamp in the coming months. Actually its a back to back bootcamp, one for rails and one that teaches  Node and mobile.
I am wondering if it's worth it to invest the time and money to become a good developer at this stage in the game?
My main concerns are A) if there really is a shortage that could use filling and B) when I have honed my skills a solid base (around 1 year in), would there really be a job for me?
I would love to hear your opinion!
For reference I am 25, my background is in IT and I am currently at a senior management level in a marketing function. <comment><USER2> Yes, it is. The market is going to continue to grow (although it is possible that the field will continue to split into more specialized subfields than 'front-end' and 'back-end'), some of which may eventually have little connection to the 'web' as we still know it (possible example: 'devops').

</comment><comment><USER3> Why wouldn't there be a place for you? Web technologies are only going to increase in importance. If you're worried about competition, you'll need to get over that. Fear of competition comes from a scarcity mindset. Instead of focusing on what other people are doing (the competition), choose to focus on increasing your own skills and value. If you do that, you'll naturally surpass those people who choose to become complacent and put in the bare minimum. You have a marketing background, so that helps a great deal. There's no shortage of talented developers, but there are a shortage of talented developers who know how to market themselves and present their ideas and value to clients. If you're skilled at what you do AND you know how to market and sell that value to clients, the sky's the limit for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not so much competition, but I have heard a lot recently about there being a web dev bubble of sorts. Especially with me being 1 year out from being a solid junior dev I just wanted to get the take of those in the field already.

I REALLY appreciate the input!

<comment><USER4> My sense is that there's a salary bubble, but not a job bubble. I think it would make sense to expect average webdev salaries in a few years to be lower than today's. Still seems to me like it's a good time to start learning, though!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Programming is becoming a key skill almost like writing and math for any interesting job. First, there is the web platform (see why JavaScript is important there here: [http://radar.oreilly.com/2014/07/next-generation-web- apps-wi...](http://radar.oreilly.com/2014/07/next-generation-web-apps-with- full-stack-javascript.html) ), then there is the maker movement, according to Neil Gershenfield, the 3rd digital revolution [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0RDrSKenGo](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0RDrSKenGo)

</comment><comment><USER6> there might be an abundance of CS majors these days, but its been argued that there still is a lack of _quality_ CS majors ([http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/01/08/are-there- too-m...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/01/08/are-there-too-many- students-going-into-computer-science/)). so if you can do the dev bootcamp and become a super hacker, then its worth it.

on another note, McKinsey predicts there will be a shortage of data scientists in the upcoming years, of 140-190K. ([http://www.mckinsey.com/features/big_data](http://www.mckinsey.com/features/big_data)). If you are good at math/statistics and are willing to learn how to code, data science boot camps may be something to consider (see below). Right now a lot of data scientists are people with PhD's but this likely won't be the case in a few years. My guess is data science bootcamps will start sprouting all over the place very soon (perhaps its lagging the dev bootcamp wave by 2-3 years..)

[http://www.thisismetis.com/data-science](http://www.thisismetis.com/data- science) [http://www.thedataincubator.com](http://www.thedataincubator.com)

<comment><USER7> This is a good point, and I would add, _marketing_ is one area where there's a huge need for data science, business intelligence, analytics, data visualization, etc. You might specialize in using web technologies like d3.js in building analytic dashboards for marketers, or focus on A/B testing, SEO, and other areas that require an overlap of marketing knowledge and web techniques.

<comment><AUTHOR> Funny enough my idea is to spend my web project time building a marketing focused application. Any type of marketing analytics or marketing automation tools are quite expensive so I thought it would be cool to be able to make some simple automations myself later on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think it can always be useful to make a basic website. You can use it to prototype any idea you have, at work or during your free time, and see if you like doing that and want to keep improving your web dev skills.

</comment><comment><USER9> So you want to take a pay cut ???? Why ? Senior Marketing Management is a pretty good gig!

<comment><AUTHOR> I find it's not very flexible. The only jobs I seem to be able to get are in corporates and they pay alright (always below market though), but they grind the crap out of you and usually treat you like crap until your CMO level. Even then its probably not majorly different. I kind of feel 90 hour work weeks are better dedicated to development.

Also not too many openings at the moment to move into. I think of the bootcamp at least as a good opportunity to learn a new skill since I made a major move and quit my job anyways. So worst comes to worst I can go back to the marketing jobs but this time with a new skill.</comment></comment>


What We've Learned from .NET Core SDK Telemetry - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2017/07/21/what-weve-learned-from-net-core-sdk-telemetry/ <comment><USER2> They even know when you build your applications, what does ms not know about people now a days...</comment>


Ask HN: what do you think of my new blog - <AUTHOR>

I'm starting a new blog (http://codeinput.com) I want your suggestions and you ideas about<p>* The blog template and header<p>* What the blog posts need to focus on (what is more interesting)<p>* Is the blog domain name good and memorable?<p>* Do you have any other suggestions or idea that can help<p>Thanks, I need your ideas to get me started <comment><USER2> I think it's a good start, and I like the layout.

The easiest thing for you to blog about will be your current problems and interests as they're related to software.

If you post things like that, without worrying too much about whether the posts are "interesting," at the very least your blog will stand as a personal journal of your progress that you can refer back to it yourself.

I have a blog, and I refer back to it all the time. Do I have a large readership? No.

In your other post an HNer suggested you blog in your native language, which I take it is Arabic. If you're interested in increasing readership, this isn't a bad idea - there are many fewer Arabic language development blogs than there are English. By choosing English, you're "competing" with the thousands of English blogs out there.

So maybe, blog in both languages? It can't hurt. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> Included to make it a link: <http://codeinput.com>

Didn't you post pretty much exactly this a few days ago?

(quick search) <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=583009>

<comment><AUTHOR> yup this one i was asking for my writing</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it possible to make a successful social network that bans bots? - <AUTHOR> Or any sort of automated access/third party tools in general?
Because I've noticed in the last few years that pretty much every major site and service now seems to be open to users using bots and third party tools for them. Twitter allows them, as well as sharing things like blocklists. Reddit allows them, with stuff like automoderator and gimmicky responder bots being commonplace there. And pretty much every chat system has them too, with Discord and Slack being notable examples.
But is it possible to run a successful social site without that? I know that in the past, a lot of sites and forums banned users that tried using third party tools and services and often severely limited the amount of accounts you could have in general.
So could that still work nowadays, for a site that isn't simply for a small community/about a very specialised subject?
Or do social media sites need bots and a developer API in general in order to succeed? <comment><USER2> >'But is it possible to run a successful social site without that?'

Yes. Snapchat pretty much has been successful in operating with a private API and banning bots and users who use third party apps or tweaks to access its service (They actually have a DRM vendor to do this for them).

But I find it very interesting how long they can fortify their API from external parties whilst competing with other social media companies who support third-party devs.

</comment><comment><USER3> >'Twitter allows them'

In part Twitter is successful because it _allows_ bots. They make a huge percentage of their userbase. If they cracked down on them, they'd wipe out millions of 'users' and their value would go down.

It also depends on the kind of bots you mean, spam bots should definitely be stopped. But allowing users to post through a bot or an api is great but only for big sites, if you have people automatically posting on a small site it kills user engagement.

> 'is it possible to run a successful social site without that'

It definitely is, the number one reason most social sites fail is that they try to micro-manage their users and the owners think the site will run itself.

Bots and third party tools have a place but only when you have a decent sized site and active community, but they're not necessary.</comment>


Since November the UnrealIRCd official installer has contained a trojan - <AUTHOR> http://www.unrealircd.com/txt/unrealsecadvisory.20100612.txt

<comment><AUTHOR> Simply sending "AB; _command_ \n" to the IRC server will execute _command_ on the server. Does nobody check checksums anymore? Taking six months to detect this is ridiculous.</comment>


Google Chrome White Flash Bug – still not fixed after almost 9 years - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=311 <comment><AUTHOR> I was hopeful that it will be fixed in v60 chrome, but it is still there hurting my eyes.

Do you know any other bug that is known and live for this long in sw used by millions of people?</comment>


Seattle now decade's fastest-growing big city in the U.S. - <AUTHOR> https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/114000-more-people-seattle-now-this-decades-fastest-growing-big-city-in-all-of-united-states/ <comment><USER3> It's fast-growing, but the land-use policy is still oddly parochial in may ways: [https://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/24/do-millennials-have-a- fut...](https://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/24/do-millennials-have-a-future-in- seattle-do-millennials-have-a-future-in-any-superstar-cities).

The vast majority of the city is still zoned for single-family housing: [https://www.theurbanist.org/2017/10/23/the-path-to- eliminate...](https://www.theurbanist.org/2017/10/23/the-path-to-eliminate- single-family-zoning-in-seattle). Just allowing multi-family housing and eliminating property requirements would do a huge amount to alleviate affordability and income inequality problems.

<comment><USER4> Its REALLY intense living here - I lived in the bay from 2004-2014, and moved up here for better COL. I'm riding the wave now, but its getting ever higher and my income needs to increase by the same amount. I'm a developer, but not a superstar - I make more than the median dev income, but that is not enough to afford any sort of permanent housing much of city limits.

I am hoping for an economic shock at this point - anything to shake loose all the people holding onto their investment houses while the values are going up, and maybe then all the brand new apartment buildings that wouldn't be able to find tenants might convert to condo's. Supply is desperately needed - <USER2> renting is a bloodsport (far more than NYC or even the SF bay, if a little cheaper).

Its literally my #1 concern about the area. If the wave rises to the point that I can never achieve housing stability without a 1.5 hour commute, I'll move (just as so many of my friends here have). Colorado and Portland are next, but even there the whispers of NIMBYism are getting louder. I'm beginning to think at this point that the economy is out to get everyone who's under 35 - the only place there are jobs that pay well enough to afford anything are vastly more expensive.

<comment><USER5> We're still more affordable per sqft than most top international cities and many US cities -- I think the mentality of needing a large sqft unit, or yard, or single-family home in Seattle needs to change. We have a ton of parks if anyone needs space. For the quality of life, I still think Seattle is very affordable.

That being said, I completely agree that zoning needs to be overhauled.

<comment><USER6> Only a few cities are more expensive than Seattle ATM, like LA, SF, NYC, Boston maybe.

It isn't as simple as upscaling zoning, you need roads to go with it. West Seattle has horrible traffic these days because they built a bunch of high density housing around California Avenue. They did add rapid bus transit, but everyone still drives even if they have an apartment.

<comment><USER5> Yes we're between 5th [0] and 7th [1] depending on the measure, which is think is appropriate. Most of the places I'd rather live globally are more expensive [2].

[0]: [https://nested.com/research/rental/2017/us/all](https://nested.com/research/rental/2017/us/all)

[1]: [https://www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/real- estate/T006-S001-mo...](https://www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/real- estate/T006-S001-most-expensive-u-s-cities-to-live-in-2018/index.html)

[2]: [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/admin/1000000054865...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/admin/100000005486592.embedded.html)

<comment><USER6> As far as international cities go, very few offer better than Seattle salaries for software engineers. Maybe maybe Zurich, but definitely not Paris or London.

<comment><USER4> And yet, in the mid 100s in salary one can't afford a place here.

<comment><USER6> Compared to other international non-US cities? Seattle is still very affordable. Places in Zurich aren't cheap. Heck, even Vancouver is more pricey.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> At this point Seattle is a fairly crummy city in a fairly nice location. The region and climate are nice but the traffic is hell, the crime is bad and the housing costs are astronomical. The tech salaries are high, but it doesn't make up for the otherwise poor quality of life.

<comment><USER8> Is the climate actually nice? I could not live in a place where it's cloudy most of the year.

<comment><USER9> Seattle has the highest amount of rainfall per year of any mainland region.

<comment><USER10> This is just flat out wrong. We do get more cloudy days than any major city in the U.S. but we don't actually get that much heavy rain. This is at least partly offset by the fact that the temperatures are much milder year round. Seattle barely gets any snow in the winter, and rarely gets very hot in the summer.

See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle#Climate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle#Climate).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It won't be for long! Taxes and spending in Seattle have shot way, way up, far in excess of the recent population growth.

<comment><USER12> The insistence that Americans migrate away from high-tax areas doesn't seem to be supported by the facts. Connecticut and the Bay Area are losing population, but so are heartland states like Kansas. Seattle is the fastest-growing area in the country, but close behind is Texas. I don't think partisans on either side of this question have an empirical leg to stand on.

<comment><USER13> Kansas isn't losing population and neither is the heartland. Both have been growing slowly and non-stop since the mid 1960s. Kansas hasn't had a single population decline, year over year, in about 50 years.

Kansas:

2000: 2,694,000

2010: 2,859,000

2017: 2,913,000

These are all consistently increasing year after year:

Nebraska, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Indiana, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Ohio.

Illinois is hit or miss, however it's up a million people over 20 years.

Michigan is the only one that has particularly struggled. Its population remains above where it was 20 years ago; it's about 50k people (~0.5%) below its 2004 record high.

Connecticut is definitely struggling, they've seen zero growth over seven or eight years, and comparatively little growth over 40 years despite being an affluent state.

<comment><USER14> I disagree with this in spirit. The rustbelt is not losing population but it is stagnating compared to rest of the nation. I'm from Ohio and I noticed something startling looking at population stats - before 1970 population was increasing at double digit rates many decades. After 1970, very low single digits (some decades less than 1% growth). In 1970 the population was 10,652,017, while in 2017 it is estimated at only 11,658,609. The population is barely replacing itself.

If you look at other rust belt states you will see a similar trend, and I believe it is due to people moving away looking for work, starting in the 70s. The decline of the auto and manufacturing industries here is likely to blame. The same trends generally apply for Illinois, Michigan, Kentucky and Indiana. In Pennsylvania the trend started much earlier which maybe follows the steel industry decline. Anecdotally much more than half of the people I keep in contact with from high school and college in Ohio have moved away, myself included.

<comment><USER13> That's why I was very specific when I pointed out that the population growth has been slow. There was no confusion about rapid growth (although some of these states are growing quite solidly, Minnesota for example).

The parent was clear about the claim: Kansas and similar heartland states are losing population. It's false.

Over decades there's a massive difference between gaining 0.3% (or similar) population per year and losing 0.3% per year. Kansas gained 1/3 more people over 50 years. Had that gone the other direction persistently, they'd barely exist as a state today. Contrast that with Germany over that time, which has seen maybe 5% growth. Germany would have loved to have 33% growth over 50 years. Or the Baltic states, which are more comparable in size to a Kansas - zero net growth over 50 years. Now that's stagnation.

Or put it into more concrete economic terms. With the additional 1/3 more people, Kansas has an extra $38 billion in annual GDP output today, a total of ~$160 billion. Had they gently gone the other way, and declined slowly over time, it would be more like $60 or $70 billion today. It's a huge difference. They have a GDP per capita higher than Sweden, so when you can organically add 1/3 more people to that, it's a very meaningful economic result.

<comment><USER15> The parent was specifically speaking about migration patterns, and Kansas is losing population through migration. It is currently able to make up for that loss through having babies, but that isn't very relevant to the argument on whether Americans are more likely to move to or from high-tax locations.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


McMindfulness: How mindfulness became the new capitalist spirituality - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/radio/tapestry/mcmindfulness-and-the-case-for-small-talk-1.5369984/mcmindfulness-how-capitalism-hijacked-the-buddhist-teaching-of-mindfulness-1.5369991 <comment><USER2> Clinical psychologist who teaches and practices mindfulness here.

I often hear the argument that the current applications of mindfulness in corporate or otherwise commercial settings are a perversion of the original teachings. While to some extent it's true that teachings have been adapted and the adaptations are sometimes (maybe often) problematic, the assertion that mindfulness training doesn't belong in the boardroom seems silly to me. Attention and acceptance training (the two fundamental aspects of mindfulness in my research supported but not definitive view) don't belong to Buddhism or any other system or set of teachings. The underlying science of mind training can be applied wherever we see fit. There's no "what mindfulness is about and what it's not" in a corporate versus holistic sense. There's only the strength of the programs and how much value people derive from them, and if 20 executives are able to sleep and handle their stress a little better, there's nothing wrong with that.

The idea that mindfulness creates better killers or justified immoral behavior also seems spurious to me. What we're teaching is an awareness of what's happening inside of experience. Mindfulness is not a magical stress and conscience lowering switch. It's simply greater awareness of the nuances of our internal state. That internal state is where moral judgment and discernment live, so it's hard for me to see how that would systematically produce harmful or immoral actions.

And to the extent that we have a large number of poorly trained teachers selling a poorly designed product AS mindfulness, THAT in my mind is the larger issue, rather than the context or clientele. I saw a teacher once tell a student that her overwhelming obsession with her physical pain WAS her being mindful. This and the reverse problem whereby mindfulness is equated with dullness, sleepiness, or numbness are the real dangers in my view.

<comment><USER3> > I often hear the argument that the current applications of mindfulness in > corporate or otherwise commercial settings are a perversion of the original > teachings.

Buddhism teaches that you should tackle the coarser causes of suffering first. If there is a thorn in your foot, no one is suggesting you should go do a good sit to deal with the pain. First you remove the thorn, then you sit.

In my opinion mindfulness at work (or anywhere) can be beneficial, but if we only use it to paper over the structural problems that make work life stressful for so many, we are losing the opportunity to eliminate the coarser causes of suffering.

Think of it as an 80/20 rule. Probably eighty percent of the suffering at work comes from twenty percent of the causes. We should be tackling those, and that requires political engagement. It may even require oppositional methods in some really bad cases.

<comment><USER2> I agree that in a larger sense, there are often greater problems at work than the internal regulation of attention and stress.

From working with clients however, you might be surprised just how often people come in not realizing that they have what is essentially a giant thorn sticking out of their foot! Usually this looks more like chronic lack of sleep, a bad relationship with their spouse or even a toxic work environment, but shut inside their ball of stress and the narrow anxious attention that accompanies it, they miss the forest of causes for the more immediate trees of anxiety, tension and panic.

You might be surprised how often a person says "oh my god I'm tired and stressed because I haven't gotten a good nights sleep in 10 years!" after a little awareness training.

<comment><USER3> What we're all really looking for in most workplaces is love and attention [edit: acceptance], but we express that by working harder and harder in order to 'earn' it.

In my opinion this is the most beneficial buddhist 'practise' for western society: "You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere."

If that were taken to heart, believed and practised, you would get rid of 80% of most people's suffering.

<comment><USER4> I am definitely not an expert on Buddhism, but "nobody in the universe deserves your love more than yourself" doesn't sound like Buddhism to me. Is that an actual classical teaching?

<comment><USER3> It is a direct quote from the buddha.

The point of it that some people don't start practise because they don't believe they deserve to be happy.

<comment><USER5> I believe it is at best misquoted from the actual canon: [https://tricycle.org/magazine/you-deserve-your-love-and- affe...](https://tricycle.org/magazine/you-deserve-your-love-and-affection/)

The quote from the canon: _Searching in all directions With your awareness, you find no one dearer than yourself. In the same way, others are thickly dear to themselves. So you shouldn't hurt others if you love yourself._

<comment><USER3> Now _that_ is interesting.

I heard that quote from a respected Zen master!

This is why I love HN. Thanks for the correction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I once got an offer to teach a yoga and meditation class at a company. The stated goal was to give employees tools to handle stress better. I pointed out that the result of mindfulness would most likely be that people would see how harmful a stressful environment Is and either try to change it or to avoid it. Never heard back :)

The same happened with yoga. We picked a very small part of the tradition as in asana and removed most of the spiritual aspects. Almost nobody teaches pranayama or meditation in any meaningful way. It's basically a different form of aerobics or calisthenics.

<comment><USER7> Hehe. This is what I basically wondered when someone told me that mindfullness was helping her cope with pressure of work life.

The new decolonization movement in India has been thinking quite deeply about this and other developments where Indian traditional knowledge is taken to the US and then copyrighted, patented and trademarked, and then sold around the world, incl. India. Amusingly, with American marketing being so brilliant, Indian knowledge has in recent history become far more popular once it was "U-turned" in this way. Lots of interesting work being done.

Interestingly, you can also see similar developments as those done to appropriate non-Western mathematical/scientific knowledge in the centuries prior within Europe. Yoga, and Mindfullness are en course to being de-rooted and turned into Western inventions, by rewriting histories or by silencing them. SOAS for instance has one guy who was anointed a Mahant, and he writes books with another guy who says Yoga is a cynical rebranding of Swedish exercises. It's all very very curious.

I suppose, if a foreigner flatters an Indian, he'll give you every bit of wealth he has (and then cry foul later). Hehe.

<comment><USER8> "SOAS for instance has one guy who was anointed a Mahant, and he writes books with another guy who says Yoga is a cynical rebranding of Swedish exercises."

I'm assuming you mean James Mallinson. I met him briefly in Jaipur and had been wondering who the white guy with dreadlocks was that I kept seeing around (here in the US it's considered racist by people of color to wear dreads if you're not black). To make a long story short, he doesn't practice yoga, is largely a rich guy that likes the "sadhu lifestyle" (he's a Baron in the UK), and studies ancient texts in the way a typical white academic would. But I will say for all my skepticism going into it, I read his "Roots of Yoga" and it was great.

It's clear that the practice of yoga is syncretic and means many different things to many different people. We definitely should criticize all the white girls in the west that are using Yoga as a brand for their calisthenics, teaching without knowing anything about pranayama or dhyana. Their style of practice is so far from any Hatha practice I've done you can't even consider it the same thing. Most of those standing postures they do I've never encountered from my Hatha teachers. What these white western women are doing is for the most part awful and pretty racist.

However, we should be equally skeptical of Hindutva making claims about what Yoga is while ignoring the long, syncretic history and how it grew and exchanged practices with Buddhists, Sufis, Jains, and all sorts of other sects and groups through thousands of years.

<comment><USER9> Why would doing yoga in a way that you consider 'wrong' as racist. That's an incredibly ignorant statement. There are hundreds if not more branches of hatha yoga, not to mention all the other kids of yoga. There is no racism in doing it this or that or a completely different way. You might criticise that they call it yoga, still it's not in any way racist.

Please open your mind.

Thank you, A fellow hatha yoga practitioner.

<comment><USER8> It's not about the asana being "right" or "wrong", and in many cases I'd say it doesn't even matter what the asanas are in your practice, as long as they're moving the practitioner towards dhyana. But would you not admit that there is a lot of cultural appropriation around yoga in the west? Girls on Instagram with "Namaslay" shirts and dream catchers and sanskrit tattoos? Taking, packaging, marketing, and selling things in this way is racist.

Of course the modern practice of asana in the west isn't inherently racist, and you don't need to only be doing postures that were written down in old books. But wearing an Aum shirt and never understanding the deeper cultural contexts of what it is you're wearing and practicing is racist. I've had conversations with people that have practiced yoga for years and literally have asked me "what's asana?" and had never heard of pranayama. Were they racist? No, probably not, but it does speak volumes to how yoga is sold in the USA.

<comment><USER6> I don't think you should be using the word "racist" here. Seems people are culturally disinterested but "racist" is something else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I apologize for the tangent, but:

> Google engineers [are] working 60-70 hours a week - very stressful.

Is this true? I worked a hard 35 hours a week when I was at Google. Granted, I was a junior engineer, but the fact that I could get away with that and have it not affect my career unduly always makes me surprised to hear descriptions of Google as a sweatshop.

Can any Googlers say whether this has changed in the few years since I left? I know they're a massive company so generalizing can be hard, but this is so far from my experience that if be surprised if it was true of enough of the company to make anything approaching a blanket statement. I've always thought that it would be nice to go back to Google to retire in a few years.

<comment><USER11> Not a Googler, but I'd tend to assume they made the number up. Long hours are part of the mythology around silicon valley companies.

<comment><USER10> Yea, it's not strictly 100% rational of me but to see someone just grossly lying (or being confident in his ignorance) about a fact I know otherwise makes me skeptical of anything else he might have to say..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've always found the Japanese adoption of Zen to be very interesting historically. As a "technology" or body of techniques, the advantages one can gain from meditation, enhanced awareness, and asceticism are well-documented.

Where I would caution practitioners is to be very wary of religious invitations to ego death and loss of control over chakras (Never "open" your chakras - which are a physiological metaphor for very important aspects of your Self. These aspects should be disciplined and controlled, never "opened.")

Everything below your heart represents your base passions and failure to discipline these most of all turns you into an easily manipulated slave.

<comment><USER13> Do you have any advice for someone looking to learn more about that? Any good places to start?

<comment><USER12> I wish there was something neatly compiled.

Plato's model in the Republic, when read as a manual for elites wishing to control society on every level, is revealing in how people are enslaved through their own lack of discipline.

This clicked, for me, with the physiological metaphor in my previous comment when I realized that self-discipline often follows a path upward from control over sexual desires, to control over hunger, to control over one's emotions (the heart) and on up as you master each lower level.

Conversely, failure to exercise discipline over the upper levels, over time, slides you down into the basest level, like an infant, where you lack control even over your own biological functions. Apply the microcosm of your own self to the macrocosm of society and the same principles are in effect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> When you see mindfulness taught and promoted like some sort of relaxation technique or that if you just think mindfully you're going to cope with stress better, then it's easy for someone coming from a Buddhist practice to say, that's not mindfulness—at least not in the same spirit of the word.

I took transmission of the precepts twice and the 2nd time was with Thich Nhat Hanh who called them the "Mindfulness Trainings" instead of the "Precepts". That's how I came to know mindfulness. It is intertwined with refuge, the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. It's a faith in the precepts. It's not a practice one can do on their own nor a practice that's separate from meditation.

If you relate corporate mindfulness with Buddhism, it is a perversion. It's a different practice and it's dishonest to promote it otherwise. Call the practice whatever you want, call it mindfulness, call it prayer, call it feel- goodness, but it's deceptive to call it a Buddhist practice if you ignore its underpinnings.

<comment><USER15> My impression is that most people promoting mindfulness are often keen to avoid the association to Buddhism or at least downplay it, not exploit it, to avoid a resistance to picking up a religious practice.

Gil Fronsdal in his "Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation" jokingly talk about how organizations holding courses in "Mindfulness based stress deduction" carefully avoid the "B-word", and then go on to give a pratical introduction that barely mentions Buddhism.

Quite a bit of mindfulness meditation material has been published by Buddhist monks and teachers that have taken care to stress their utility as methods separated from the Buddhist tradition. Fronsdal's courses is one example. Bhante Henepola Gunaratana's Mindfulness in Plain English is another popular example that takes great care to explain its position in Buddhist practice and then promptly point out that his book is a practical guide to the meditation practice, not a guide to the spiritual aspects, and mostly ignores Buddhism from then on.

When talking about mindfulness in a secularised form, we are usually talking specifically about mindfulness based meditation, not the other aspects, or at least to a lesser extent other aspects. To me that was what made it palatable, as I'd had a casual interest for a long time, but found spiritually focused descriptions very off-putting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It strikes me as odd to depict improving soldiers' performance as a distortion of mindfulness without mentioning the long history of meditation in the martial arts.

<comment><USER17> That's because the current _mindfulness_ (something about that term irks me) trend originated in hippie circles. Or at least, everybody I came cross using that term was of a notable flowery persuasion. Not meditation, mind you. But _mindfulness_.

So it's not surprising that some are shocked to find a core part of their identity is used as a tool to improve those parts of humanity they despise the most.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can someone tell me why it's socially acceptable to have these mindfulness things in work? I'm sympathetic to the argument that religions should be largely kept out of the workplace, so this isn't a "checkmate atheists" argument. But if some guy came into my office and started saying we're going to recite the rosary with all the "Jesus" and "Mary" parts replaced with something generic like "the universe" I cant imagine he'd get away with it.

<comment><USER19> This is explained in the book:

"Successful branding stories are often characterized by disruption, which turns an established industry or experience upside down. The MBSR brand is one such disruptive force, with Kabat-Zinn's talking points including pithy quips such as: "The Buddha wasn't a Buddhist," or Buddhists "don't own mindfulness" because it is "an innate, universal human capacity." Potential customers are thereby assured that MBSR is a non-religious product, yet still offers the best bits of what the Buddha taught. In Kabat-Zinn's words, his version of mindfulness is "a place-holder for the entire dharma."

The Western world has co-opted an aspect of Buddhism, which works to improve productivity, and discarded the part that doesn't fit its worldview; the other pillars of Buddhism. This enables it to be sold as non-religious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ironic that Ron Purser hijacked the term McMindfulness from Miles Neale who first wrote about it back in 2011. In fact, the opening of Neale's essay "McMindfulness and Frozen Yoga" sounds an awful lot like this post (not to mention Purser's own 2013 article "Beyond McMindfulness").

Ref: "McMindfulness and Frozen Yoga: Rediscovering the Essential Teachings of Ethics and Wisdom" (2011)

[https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a8e29ffcd39c3de866b5...](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a8e29ffcd39c3de866b5e14/t/5b5303d91ae6cf630b641909/1532167130908/McMindfulness.pdf)

<comment><USER19> Purser acknowledges that Neale came up with the term in his book, and e.g. here: [https://insighttimer.com/blog/ronald-purser-mcmindfulness- we...](https://insighttimer.com/blog/ronald-purser-mcmindfulness-western- mindfulness-movement/) so I'm not sure that counts as hijacking. Especially as hijacking implies not retaining the original meaning of the word.

<comment><USER20> Purser mentions Neale once in the book then takes the word and the entire concept for his own use. I don't want to be rude, but that's the literal definition of hijacking.

<comment><USER21> No, the literal definition of hijacking is to forcibly commandeer a running vehicle.

<comment><USER20> The original definition of hijack refers to the seizure of goods in transit, typically contraband. Vehicles were involved as well, but it was really about prohibition booze. Exclusive application to vehicles didn't come about until the mid-late 60s. Since then, it's been applied to ideas, concepts, and even things like meetings and parties. Basically, taking things by force for other means.

<comment><USER21> Yes but I think most people think of eg storming an airliner cockpit as "literal hijacking" and the notion of hijacking "ideas, concepts, and even things like meetings and parties" as metaphorical.

<comment><USER20> That doesn't change the definition or the etymology of the term. Why are you getting bent of shape about it? Or are you just hijacking the comment for lulz?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As with everything - context is required.

Mindfulness is only one aspect that is part of a system that is the 'eightfold noble path' which have to be taken wholesome:

right view, right motivation, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right endeavour, right mindfulness, right collectedness / stillness

They're of equal importance, if not higher: particularly #1, #2 and in the context of the discussion: #4: right action.

</comment><comment><USER23> "The problem is that the way they brought these into institutions was very non-confrontational, very non-oppositional, in order to to get a foot in the door. And so they're working with these other elites in these institutions and over time they became co-opted in my opinion. So by not offering a challenge to these corporate interests, the radical revolutionary potential of these practices have been neutered."

Somehow I have a feeling that this desire for meditation practices to be "radical revolutionary" in terms of political economy is more Californian than traditional Buddhist...

<comment><USER24> No - Buddhism sees its central ideas to be radical and counter-cultural - particularly that one's actions should come from ethical principles rather than just conforming to a group.

<comment><USER23> Does it teach working laymen to embrace radical and countercultural ideas? That's not my impression of Buddhism in Thailand, Burma, Japan, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Embracing mindfulness practices literally saved my business this year. It has turned me into a machine, my productivity has skyrocketed. I work alone and from home most days, procrastination was a massive issue - but now just clearing my head twice a day through a simple routine ensures I never shy away from anything.

I am not interested in the religious aspect, as much as I respect the fact that the practice as we know it evolved through the ages thanks to Buddhist and Hindu monks. I don't see a problem with it: one doesn't have to be Christian to appreciate Latin calligraphy, or to be Muslim to appreciate algebra.

This said, the critique against corporate entities coopting the practice is predictable and inevitable. If any human technique or technology can be put to good use in order to make money, it will be. It doesn't mean we shouldn't use it. A pen can be used to write a novel or a prison sentence, it doesn't mean the pen itself is bad or that we are somehow "betraying" the intentions of the original inventors of pens.

(Edit: i also don't think I could ever really meditate with other people... I bet most of these corporate congregations actually achieve very little and are just another social occasion for the people involved).

</comment><comment><USER26> The idea that the only source of stress comes from work or that you shouldn't separate mindfulness from the rest of Buddhist teachings seems wrong to me. Buddhism takes generally useful philosophy and adds a bunch of supernatural bs to it that isn't need get the benefits.

IMHO Daoist philosophy got it right and is the secret to removing stress and anxiety from almost everything. Daoist teachings have been adopted into traditional cognitive behavior therapy now called "dialectic behavioral therapy"

I learned this when I was in my 20s in college during huge bouts of depression and social anxiety and haven't been depressed in 20 years.

My son who was recently suffering from social anxiety disorder was practically cured by it.

Strip down these mindfulness systems their simplest, and discard all the supernatural mumbo jumbo, incense burning, and ritual chanting. It's easier to digest and remember.

If you just try to imagine that the past and future don't really exist, that categories and divisions of reality are wholly created models of it by our mind, and that we can relinquish and let go and let negative thoughts or events wash over us like water, you can get a long way to ignoring most of the stress inducing phenomena in your life unless they are really salient.

At least that's what's worked form me. Should some starstuff on the pale blue dot really get worked up by wholly changeable and artificial deadlines? You can view them as important and plan for them yes, but don't let your cortisol levels flare when things don't go according to plans. Plans are changeable, life and health is more important.

</comment><comment><USER27> Absolutely appalling. This is something that I've intuited happening for many years now, but couldn't quite find the words to describe. This phenomena is pervasive and, dare I say, integral to the functioning of capital in the 21st century.

People are more alienated now than ever before in the course of history, so it follows that the machinations of capital come to a pseudo-religion in order to pacify dissent. It's staggering, and should give everybody on Hacker News pause.

</comment><comment><USER28> Lots of the goals of mindfulness are useful, but I find the term overly reductive, and the way it's taught too abstract. Ask yourself if the more shallow goals of mindfulness make sense. For example, Thich Nhit Hanh constantly says it's about presence, peace and happiness.

But you can't be happy all the time, and shouldn't be. If you're happy, can you experience the moving emotion of a really tragic movie? Can you get angry about social injustice? We need a range of emotions. Really we should want to manage them better, not just always try to be happy, as if that's the state we should always be in.

Also, thinking about the past and the future is useful, as long as you have a practical purpose for it. Thinking about the future is a great motivator, and can make us happy. Oh boy, my birthday is coming up! I almost have enough money to buy that house! And the past is a great teacher to learn from. Dwelling in a negative way is bad for us, but that can apply to the present, too. Really we should just not be absent-mindedly preoccupied with negativity, regardless of time.

<comment><USER29> I am (morbidly?) curious how Thich Nhat Hanh is experiencing life after a severe stroke; he is around 93 years old and has been paralyzed and unable to speak for about 4 years now; we'll never have a clear view whether a lifetime of mindfulness practice has helped him make peace with this compared to other elderly stroke sufferers, or whether the damage to his brain has changed his experience a lot. I've sometimes felt that the only way to get through a massive life upheaval is to have prepared for it in advance - in more common geeky terms, "I have already planned a secret so I can verify if I ever meet my clone" is something you can only do in advance; possibly a state of being OK with dementia or brain damage and waking every day not knowing where you are is something you can only prepare in advance while healthy, so those habits carry on after the point where you need them but no longer have the wherewithal to create them.

 _But you can 't be happy all the time, and shouldn't be._

Dr David Burns, psychiatrist frames it to patients that people can expect 5 days of happiness and 2 crappy days in a given week, and if you don't have 5 happy days you should adjust something, but if you don't have 2 crappy days, then you're bordering on manic and should adjust something the other way. But then he considers a few minutes of feeling bad enough to count as time to take note and adjust for it.

My take on this is that "you should be happy all the time" is the wrong way to look at it, more "you shouldn't be unhappy against your will, because of negative thoughts circulating in your head which you are ignoring and hardly aware of". Being aware of your thoughts so you understand why you are unhappy and then you are informed enough to take action if you choose to; but since a lot of the reasons for unhappiness are fixations on the past and the future, on the incorrect idea of permanence of the ego or disconnection of ego from rest of world, or sadness at being imperfect, then becoming deeply aware of these thoughts implicitly involves them dissipating away as you understand how ridiculous they are; and with the sad, depressing, distorted thoughts fading away, there's room for plenty of happiness in mindful pursuit of ordinary activities. Thich Nhat Hahn uses examples like brushing your teeth or washing your food bowl - these shouldn't be hurried through so you can get to the rest of your life, these activities are your life and you should be aware of your desire to hurry through them and be elsewhere which is making these activities feel worse than they are. You need to do them, you don't need to wish-you- weren't-doing-them-and-feel-sad. They need doing, you are doing them, you may as well pay full attention to them and enjoy doing them. Alan Watts says "Zen spirituality isn't thinking about God while peeling potatoes, Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes", and "mindfulness isn't an activity to do while sitting, mindfulness is just the way a Buddha sits (and the way a Budda does everything)".

 _If you 're happy, can you experience the moving emotion of a really tragic movie?_

If you're sad about not driving a Lamborghini and your startup customers leaving and your partner being angry at you, and depressed about ageing and your joints hurting, are any of those things helping you experience the emotion of a really tragic movie? Yes I say a person who is generally happy and content with life including all its problems can still experience the emotions of a movie. (But would they want to? Can a person who is happy and content really feel angry at treading in dog poop? Maybe they can, but would they want to feel angry about such a thing?).

 _Thinking about the future is a great motivator, and can make us happy. Oh boy, my birthday is coming up! I almost have enough money to buy that house!_

Which is fine in a measured way - but do be mindful that this happiness is a fantasy about a future which has not happened, and might not happen, and almost certainly won't happen perfectly in every way. To be excited for the future is one thing, to base your happiness on being able to buy that house is to invite suffering when you hit an unexpected bill and the house seller pulls out of the market or someone else pays more, etc. Mindfulness as "be aware of your thoughts, don't let them push you around" rather than "get rid of your thoughts"

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Mindfulness is being commercialized for the purpose of selling books and apps, argues a person in a book that he is trying to sell.

<comment><USER31> And if the system works sans-ethics, is that a problem beyond moralistic gatekeeping?

Since the main objection in the article was the military coopting the practice - The basic tenants of mindfulness, as I understand them, are not anybody's property - no matter how compelling the publisher's advances are.

And let's be honest with ourselves - the stationary and toilet paper the military buy have the implicit eventual aim of making them better at making things dead. I'm not convinced mindfulness training for troops is the problem here.

Sure, there are rogue teachers, but that has applied to everything from spurious gurus through to homebrew religions. At trial of sounding callous, caveat emptor surely?

Nothing Mindfulness (as a brand) teaches is a super-secret arcane mystery fercryinoutloud! If nothing else, the government spending time and money on it can only do wonders to validate it and cement it in the public conscious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> "when push came to shove, if it threatened the centres of corporate power, these experiments in industrial democracy were basically unplugged and defunded"

This sounds like when he got to having to tackle actual issues, he didn't have the political tools necessary to effect real change. Of course if the establishment was all on board to guarantee worker happiness, you wouldn't even need mindfulness in the first place, but the problem right now is that you can't replace the establishment and the establishment doesn't care about you. He might want to look into working with unions and how to structure their demands and policies in a way that will reduce people's stress. You don't enact democracy by telling the current tyrant how cool it would be if all his serfs revolted and took his head off.

</comment><comment><USER33> It's not new; since the last half of the 20th century, there's been an often unstated business religion that says that if you concentrate hard enough you'll develop a psychic dominance that will make you successful (in sales and management.) IMO the only reason it gets connected to Buddhism is since the people who propagate it now are unaware of its origins (in Silva Mind Control/Leadership Dynamics/Holiday Magic), and to give it a classier, older pedigree.

The reason it seems like a bastardization of Buddhism is because it's not really Buddhism at all, just a spurious justification of why the people who are making the most money are making the most money, namely their more perfectly ordered minds (rather than their connections and luck.)

</comment><comment><USER11> If they wanted to provide a tested therapy as an option to staff, that would be fine. It unfortunately generally seems to be some poorly thought out program slapped together by management.

My mother used to be a nurse, and they brought in some people who were apparently actual Bhuddhists of some sort. She found the whole thing offensive for religious reasons.

On the more practical front, they were encouraging medical staff to all put their hands in bowls of beads as an everyday activity. Not exactly the greatest idea given that they want to keep everyone's hands sterile, and no one washed the things.

</comment><comment><USER34> This notion has long exited and is something which Buddhists are all to aware of. Attachment, Value, What is there to hijack anyway when all is illusion?

It is just unfortunate that what humans have created within this inherent existence is a reliance on money and laws protecting ownership.

If you read the Heart Sutra it will help you understand a little bit of the struggle of absoloute reality and inherent reality.

Om Mani Padme Hum

</comment><comment><USER35> "corporate mindfulness"

AH ha ha. Military intelligence.

Oh well. I'd guess that Buddhism has wandered about as far from Buddha's original teachings.

</comment><comment><USER36> Mindfulness being trendy is a great thing. No matter how much people pay for it or how well do they do. Wrong mindfulness is better than no mindfulness. The more people become at least slightly more mindful - the better world we are going to live in.

</comment><comment><USER37> Research suggests Mindfulness increases empathy and reduces anger and fear. Wouldn't reframing soldiers or CEOs worldview to be more compassionate galvanize more positive change than trying to convince Sundar Pichai or soldiers that they are bad people?

<comment><USER38> research does not indicate that [0]. mindfulness meditation isn't real, people only believe it because it comes from the Mysterious East and it's Ancient.

[0] [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/mindfulness- no...](https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/mindfulness-no-better- than-watching-tv/)

<comment><USER39> You have a good citation for your first sentence, but not for your second.

<comment><USER38> It's like a religious person asking you to prove God isn't real. The science favoring meditation in general is shoddy (such as [0]), when a metaanalysis shows no evidence of a key claimed benefit to something, you'd want to be able to demonstrate a flaw in the metaanalysis.

It's very much like acupuncture. Fake, but because it's steeped in tradition, people will fall for it. Many Westerners have really uninformed views about East Asian / Asian culture, which is why I believe that's the reason meditation has the sway with people who would never convert to something like Islam.

I comment about this all the time. Not once have I ever gotten a single good reply challenging my claims and providing any good evidence that mindfulness meditation is "real".

bonus: "Specifically, the moderation results showed that a significant increase in compassion only occurred if the intervention teacher was a co- author in the published study"

[0] [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/transcendental...](https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/transcendental- meditation-pseudoscience/)

<comment><USER37> On [0], this "Meta-Analysis" was only for pro-social behavior and the longest study they looked at had people meditate for a total of only three months. You are right science does not have rigorous research to support some of claimed benefits of mindfulness meditation, but calling it fake and citing a sourc that starts its article by declaring meditation pseudoscience does not exactly seem rigorous either. I think the answer is somewhere in the middle: there are definitely benefits to mindfulness meditation, but we need more research.

<comment><USER38> What quality evidence exists for a proclaimed benefit of mindfulness that is unique to it, and not standard for relaxation in general?

<comment><USER40> The following well-conducted studies compared mindfulness to various other 'treatments':

Alsaraireh, et al. (2017). Mindfulness Meditation Versus Physical Exercise in the Management of Depression Among Nursing Students. Journal of Nursing Education, 56(10), 599-604.

Cherkin, et al. (2016). Effect of mindfulness-based stress reduction vs cognitive behavioral therapy or usual care on back pain and functional limitations in adults with chronic low back pain: a randomized clinical trial. JAMA, 315(12), 1240-1249.

Costa, A., 2016. Turning towards or turning away: a comparison of mindfulness meditation and guided imagery relaxation in patients with acute depression. Behav. Cogn. Psychother. 44, 410–419.

Fissler, M., et al., 2016. An investigation of the effects of brief mindfulness training on self-reported interoceptive awareness, the ability to decenter, and their role in the reduction of depressive symptoms. Mindfulness 7, 1170–1181.

Kuyken, W., et al. (2016). Efficacy of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy in prevention of depressive relapse: an individual patient data meta-analysis from randomized trials. JAMA psychiatry, 73(6), 565-574.

<comment><USER38> Thanks, I'll look into the studies you mentioned.

Edit:

"CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE:

"Among adults with chronic low back pain, treatment with MBSR or CBT, compared with usual care, resulted in greater improvement in back pain and functional limitations at 26 weeks, with no significant differences in outcomes between MBSR and CBT."

I don't consider this evidence in favor of mindfulness. The claim I make is that mindfulness is merely meditation. The benefits ascribed to it are, I claim, that of relaxation.

One other study compares physical exercise to mindfulness, but this isn't a comparison with non-mindfulness relaxation. Also not great evidence. Same with another. There's also one my IP can't access.

Also, I am aware that transcendental meditation isn't the same.

What would convince me mindfulness meditation may indeed have some unique positive property: Study or even better metaanalysis with good quality and reasonable sample size demonstrating that mindfulness meditation performs significantly better than other forms of relaxation. Costa's comes closest to this but the sample size is not very large. I do suspect there may be a placebo effect at play.

<comment><USER40> I would have agreed with your comment 10-15 years ago – but now, the evidence is overwhelming. I don't have time today, but I will reply your comment in a day or so (will also cite several meta-analyses). Meanwhile, you can take a look at the many links I provided to your earlier (above) comment – they cite many research studies as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> The teachings don't matter. What matters is the technique of mindfulness.

If you do the technique then you will get results.

Your reason for doing it, your philosophy of what and why. That matters not so much.

It's like a marijuana joint in this way. Call it a spliff, reefer or doobie. What you call it ain't gonna make a speck of difference to the high it delivers.

So I say let the capitalists hijack it. Let them wrap it in whatever narrative they like. As long as they do it.

Because it WILL make you smarter.

</comment><comment><USER42> I would like to know what an actual Tibetan monk or Zen master thinks about this. Westerners have a tainted "Gentle Jesus meek and mild" conception of spiritual practice that seriously impairs our judgement on these matters

</comment><comment><USER43> It just seems like the newest iteration of capitalism repurposing some ideology in an Orwellian way. As Weber observed a long time ago despite Protestantism shunning pleasures and material possessions, Protestants make extremely good capitalists.

The same thing seems to be happening with Buddhism. I'm not Buddhist but a pretty central teaching seems to be to let go of the self and to end desire, whereas among the new caste of CEOs it seems to have been repurposed into a tool to pursue ones mundane goals more effectively, and as a sort of social signal among rich people who have so much wealth that buying a sports car doesn't even convey any meaning any more. So now in addition to being rich which is a precondition, you also need to reject all your wealth and meditate in some bizarre ritual of one-upmanship.

In many ways I wish we could just go back to the olden days when those people would do coke and throw lavish parties because at least that's honest rather than Jack Dorsey meditating in a private retreat while minorities are being chased down on the street by a mob organised on twitter.

</comment><comment><USER44> Can anyone tell me the difference between mindfulness and just deep breathing?

<comment><USER22> the latter involves a conscious decision making of breathing in a specific way. whilst mindfulness is a conscious decision of knowing how and when one breathes, without necessarily forcing breathing in a specific way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds.

2 Cor 11:14-15

</comment><comment><USER46> _[deleted]_

<comment><USER47> Just participating in a culture or practice does not mean one is appropriating it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Keep in mind Buddhist "mindfulness" is the repackaging of existing "Indic" ideas. This debate has been settled before. Repackage it as you like, as long as it reaches and helps people in need.

Is capitalist mindfulness doing that? I'm not sure. If you don't like capitalist mindfulness, do something about it.

</comment><comment><USER49> In a capitalist society, any sufficiently popular idea will eventually get turned into a way to sell products.

</comment><comment><USER50> This doesn't matter. Someone who actually practices mindfulness will reap benefits. Capitalism has no power over the method.

<comment><USER51> Capitalism will quite happily reap the benefits by squeezing their mindful employees just a little bit harder.

<comment><USER52> And mindfull employees will notice that and leave.</comment></comment></comment>


On Meeting People from the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.zaccohn.com/2011/04/meeting-people/

<comment><USER2> "Real life" friends - met by chance

Internet friends - met by interest

I think that says it all - I've met many internet people over the years, and they've all been the most incredible, 'three-dimensional' people. The internet really opens up the opportunity to meet people you can relate to on every level - people you'd never have gotten in touch with otherwise.

<comment><USER3> About five years ago online dating was looked down upon but since then i have been seeing lot of people getting married to people they found online. Same way finding interesting friends is best done 1-1, as its rhe depth not the breadth of the relationship that matters. Its the same reason i use [and started] <http://letslunch.com> and have met over a dozen great people over lunch, Because frankly i don't have time to goto meetups which happens on a specific day and on specific time, wheres in conferences/networking events people are always ought to meet as many people as possible and even while chatting without you, they are peeking over your shoulder to see who they are going to talk next.

<comment><USER4> Have you thought about opening letslunch in other cities? Whether it be doing it yourself, having others do it or open sourcing the code. It should work equally well in certain other cities or regions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I met my wife this way. Both had accounts on a LiveJournal-like site, both gravitated to the same circle of friends, mutual interest became more and now she's been my best friend for 7 years. We've met others (on our honeymoon driving through Houston, on our move to Baltimore when we passed through Ohio, going to a wedding of two other friends who we met this way and who met each other that way).

They are the deepest friendships. You don't become friends over the Internet without good communication - everything else is secondary.

<comment><USER6> My experiences absolutely confirm this. I met my wife on LiveJournal, and we were only together in person for a week before we got married (and later she moved to the UK).

When the bulk of your relationship is done over the internet, it absolutely forces you to learn how to communicate, from the start and continuously throughout the relationship.

I'm quite certain that if 'normal' people had to do this there'd be a lot less marriage breakdowns - and possibly a lot less marriages that were never really going to last.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've never been overly weirded out by meeting people from the Internet (going to Gooncon came close), but I will say it was definitely strange the first time some completely random stranger came up to me in a bar and said "You're Jarin, right? I follow you on Twitter!" Strange in a good way though, I bought the guy a beer :)

<comment><USER8> I'd never go to somewhere like Gooncon, too high a possibility of meeting people who take everything on SA seriously in real life.

Do you ever get a sense of The Truman Show going to cons and meetups with people from the internet? I'd imagine it's really strange to find all these random people who know your name and a shit-ton of information about you at these events.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not weird (or at least it never was for me), because you know all those people too! The point of the article was that people "on the internet" are real people too.

<comment><USER9> I think shii's point was more about 'lurkers' showing up and trying to talk to you like they know you, even though they've never even communicated with you online _or_ offline.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love this article and the stories it contains. I have the same distaste about the word "networking" and what it seems to imply these days, which I think has limited me a bit with making friends in certain circles (ex: entrepreneurship). I don't seem to have a problem with becoming friends from other online communities, though. Half of my "real life" friends are from offroading/truck communities where I've been mildly participating for only the past year.

I think I'm hesitant about "networking" within the entrepreneurial community because of the "Maybe we can help eachother out" sorta thing mentioned by the author. It seems like networking in this way is merely for personal gain. As a result, I have exactly zero entrepreneurial-minded friends.

That being said, anybody want to be friends? Seriously.

<comment><AUTHOR> Like I said in the article, I do! Email me and say hi. firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I met my husband on the internet, back in 1996, when it was considered unusual and weird to do so. We're about to celebrate our 11th wedding anniversary.

I met one of my very best friends and business partners online in '97. We talk nearly every single day and have worked closely together for years. We co-own a company together. - We've never actually met in person. We'll be doing that for the first time in 14 years next weekend.

I have other very close friends that have started as online friendships, as well.

</comment><comment><USER12> I haven't found a big difference in the quality of friends met online vs in person.

What has been different is how well those friendships persist. Finishing school, changing jobs, moving to a new city or neighborhood, or simply changing schedules can put you out of touch with "real life" friends. But I can still log on to the same websites, and my online friends are still there. Such a change might even put me closer to them.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've always enjoyed meeting my Net friends - starting in the 90's, when I still did business trips; I'd try to find somebody to take out to lunch on my company's dime. Ha.

</comment><comment><USER14> I've met lots of people from online. Some networking events have their invite lists on Facebook. If so, I look up the people attending and message the ones I have the most in common with. It turns out that these people become the best friends I make at the meetups!

</comment><comment><USER15> Most of my best friends I met through the internet, or through friends I met through the internet. Specifically, the internet introduced me to one largely internet-assembled social circle that did the rest.</comment>


Ask HN: Any good resources for learning Chinese? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I have some CJK tools, but honestly think Pleco ([https://www.pleco.com/](https://www.pleco.com/), as a sibling commenter pointed out) is the best tool available by far. You can add-on as many dictionaries as you like.

I re-launched a website today Chinese Flashcards: [https://www.hskflashcards.com/](https://www.hskflashcards.com/) \- navigate cards with swipes on mobile, hjkl and arrow keys. It's in a very early state at the moment, though

\- CLI tool for looking on hanzi characters here: [https://cihai-cli.git- pull.com/](https://cihai-cli.git-pull.com/)

I split it into library components so you can use the stuff under the hood piecemeal if you do Python:

\- [https://cihai.git-pull.com/](https://cihai.git-pull.com/): python library for accessing cjk data

\- [https://unihan-etl.git-pull.com/](https://unihan-etl.git-pull.com/) extract data from the Unicode's Han Unification (UNIHAN) database ([https://unihan-etl.git-pull.com/unihan.html](https://unihan-etl.git- pull.com/unihan.html))

</comment><comment><USER3> HelloTalk app gives you immersion by constantly texting or voice calling Chinese users to practice language. I highly recommend. It's very easy to use it on a daily basis to keep seeing Chinese characters and also practice speaking.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm a Chinese and I'd recommend you to browse those Chinese specific websites/use Chinese apps. Following are some of them.

zhihu.com alternative to quara.com

weibo.com => twitter.com

baidu.com => google.com

douban.com => imdb.com (Why not watching some funny Chinese TV shows :))

douyin => tiktok

You may not retrieve correct information/opinion there, but it's a good way to learn Chinese language.

</comment><comment><USER5> [https://www.skritter.com](https://www.skritter.com) for writing

Pleco for dictionary

HelloTalk for connecting with natives

</comment><comment><USER6> Do you intend to learn writing Chinese or speaking Chinese? They are different.

<comment><USER7> Not OP but what are some good resources for learning to read and write Chinese?

<comment><USER8> Just grab any introduction to Chinese textbook, they are basically all the same. Get a pencil and paper and practice words. Once you get better make some small sentences. Repeat.

This is how I learned Japanese (including the around 1.5k Chinese characters they use). This was pre-internet, but I don't think the internet really brings much, you can't beat a textbook, pencil and paper.</comment></comment></comment>


Trade a Lexus for a phone number? In Iraq, prestigious digits can cost a mint - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/world/wp/2018/02/13/feature/trade-a-lexus-for-a-prestigious-phone-number-in-iraq-the-best-digits-cost-a-mint <comment><USER2> It seems that in the US people have been more obsessed with spelling things with their phone numbers. A practice likely tied to a time when television advertisements and phone numbers needed to be remembered to be effective. I find that I ignore almost all phone calls from numbers I don't recognized due to the prevalence of telemarketers, so I can imagine how this sort of hierarchy of numbers might appeal to certain people.

<comment><USER3> There's only a couple numbers I actually remember... My grandmother's whose hasn't changed in 50+ years, my own google voice number, the one I use for everything, don't even know my actual cell phone number. I have contacts in my phone for that.</comment></comment>


Use of 'language of deceit' betrays scientific fraud - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26127-use-of-language-of-deceit-betrays-scientific-fraud.html?cmpid=RSS%7CNSNS%7C2012-GLOBAL%7Conline-news#.VAH4ccdWgR0 <comment><USER2> It seems to me that every researcher will have a different level of 'amplifiers' in their writing, so this will be a really hard classifier to train generally.

</comment><comment> shawn-furyan A 30% error rate is far, far too large for this to be useful as a first line filter. Even error rates of less than 1/3 of that (10%) lead to combinatorial effects that make for very unreliable tests. At best, this would be a corroborating test, and not a very strong one at that.

<comment><USER2> What I, if I were a reviewer on this paper, would have liked to have seen is a ROC curve—basically, if you tweak the cut offs, can you get fewer false positives at the expense of more false negatives. Assuming fraud in science is rare (I think even the gloom-and-doom-iest reports put it under 20% for any kind of research misconduct, not just fraud), even a moderately low false positive rate will flag a lot more papers than a perfect true positive rate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A quote: "Diederik Stapel, the infamous "lying Dutchman" who in 2011 admitted to inventing the data in dozens of psychology research papers, unwittingly signalled his deceit through the language he used. As well as inflating the certainty surrounding his results, Stapel included more science-related terms to describe his methods when writing up his fraudulent "findings" than when describing genuine results.

"Researchers who have analysed Stapel's papers say they can separate his genuine research from the fictional with about 70 per cent accuracy. Now they are studying a larger sample of papers from many different scientific fraudsters, to see if the detection method works more generally."

Just think -- if psychology were a science, researchers could use scientific tools to detect fraud -- tests that were not conducted, lab measurements that were fudged, images manipulated to create a false impression, as happens in real scientific fields.

In extreme cases, we could detect fraud by simply repeating the experiments, using the clear protocols published along with the results. But in psychology, investigators are completely dependent on what people say, not what they do. If Stapel were in a real scientific field, he would never have gotten away with his many verbal frauds, and fraud detection would be child's play.

Another quote: "Stapel, who worked at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, used more "amplifiers" – words like "profoundly" and "extreme" – in his fraudulent papers, and fewer "diminishers" – like "merely" and "somewhat"."

Imagine a real scientist trying to defraud his university and granting agencies by using words like "profoundly" and "extreme" about his lab results. But in science, such descriptions would make no difference -- the lab results, _the evidence_ , would decide the issue.

It's important to understand that in psychology, because of its status as a pseudoscience, how you describe your work is more important than the outcome of experiments, and one can cheat with words. In a real science, Diederik Stapel would have been exposed within days of entering a laboratory.

<comment><USER4> > In a real science, Diederik Stapel would have been exposed within days of > entering a laboratory.

You ignore the fact that scientific fraud exists in other sciences; and that this article talks about extending the use of this tool to different sciences.

<comment><USER3> > You ignore the fact that scientific fraud exists in other sciences

It's not the topic under discussion, but scientific fraud certainly exists among scientists, with one important difference -- real scientists are exposed by comparing their work, their evidence, to reality. Stapel was exposed by comparing his words to his work -- work often not even conducted. There was never any serious prospect of comparing Stapel's work to reality, because his work didn't try to address reality -- that's science's purview.

In science, reliant on physical evidence, how you describe the evidence shouldn't matter, the evidence should speak for itself. Reliable evidence should bring different, similarly equipped observers to the same conclusion. In psychology, the reason there's no consensus on the meaning of evidence is because the evidence is extremely poor, freeing different psychologists to draw different conclusions from the same evidence.

> this article talks about extending the use of this tool to different > sciences.

Yes, that's true, they do talk about it. But until they actually try to apply it, it's not a legitimate topic of discussion.

You haven't asked an obvious question -- where are the falsifiable psychological theories, theories that can be proven false in practical tests, but that resist falsification? Where are the time-tested theories that would make psychology one field, like physics or biology, and that would justify clinical practice?</comment></comment></comment>


Yahoo's fantasy football debacle – and why it was being compared to Obamacare - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/08/25/yahoos-fantasy-football-debacle-and-why-it-was-being-compared-with-obamacare-last-night/

<comment><USER2> I was one of the lead devs on ESPN's "League Manager" Fantasy Football engine rewrite back in 2002.

The Yahoo outage reminds me of that experience. League Manager had no clear project or product management leadership. After four months of 60h weeks, most working 7 days, we ended up in a late-August crapstorm when we launched an incredibly buggy product. Things stabilized in about week three of the NFL season and I took the next three weeks off to recover, telling myself that the Christmas bonus would be worth sacrificing my time, energy, health, and relationships.

My key lessons:

0\. My bonus was $1500. Not only was it not worth it, it was a slap in the face.

1\. No death march projects like that ever again.

2\. The opportunity cost to work on a project like that wasn't worth it, given the tiny rewards. An instructive lesson that helped push me towards entrepreneurship - working hard isn't a problem, but it is when the rewards are controlled by someone else.

3\. In retrospect, I'm incredibly thankful that social media didn't exist. The closest we had were user forums. A quick perusal of said forums ensured a crappy day due to the vitriol and hate thrown towards the dev team, who were busting their humps to fix the product. I remember one commenter who sympathized with the dev team -- whenever I was down in the dumps, I would read his comment to trudge on. It motivated me for weeks.

For anybody on the Yahoo Fantasy Football dev team, it gets better. Take some time, reflect, and do your best to integrate the lessons you've learned here as you decide what to work on down the road.

</comment><comment><USER3> I got majorly screwed in my draft yesterday because of this. What was strange was that it only affected about half of the guys in our league. That still means half of us auto-drafted though.

Yahoo just emailed out their solution to everyone:

"Dear Yahoo Fantasy Football Users,

Yesterday evening we encountered an issue with a portion of our Fantasy Football drafts and one of those affected was yours.

We're so sorry for the inconvenience. To fix your league, the Commissioner needs to use the reset draft tool and reschedule your draft date and time. Please note, the new draft time must be at least two hours out from your original draft.

If you need assistance, please contact customer care

Thanks and again we apologize,

Yahoo Fantasy Football team"

Doesn't really solve anything for anyone. I've been trying to get my league commissioner to re-draft or at least open up a vote for a re-draft but he has deemed that unfair to everyone else. There goes my season.

<comment><USER4> If it's a pay league, I'd demand a refund. It _might_ be unfair to make everyone that was unaffected redraft, but it is _decidedly_ unfair to have a draft in which members of the league weren't able to draft through no fault of their own.

If it's not a pay league, then it might not be the end of the world. You'll never be able to get the same sense of pride if you do well though. :-\

Maybe you could propose a vote from the other members, as a first step, and hope that they aren't as short-sighted as the commissioner?

<comment><USER3> It is a pay league, but it's a little tricky because the commish is one of my best friends/former roommates. Since it's fantasy football, I've taken to just talking a whole bunch of shit until action is taken. It's looking like we'll re-draft sometime this week I think, fingers crossed!

<comment><USER5> Commish is pushing back against a re-draft? Safe to say he wasn't hit with the auto draft bug then right?

<comment><USER3> Bingo

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oh god.

I'm a developer for a fantasy soccer, football etc. site and this is my ongoing nightmare. Fantasy sport provides some interesting challenges as a developer, but the fact that you are operating with deadlines and windows outside of your control and server loads that vary by a factor of 5-10 in minutes is... challenging.

If your site stumbles at the wrong moment (and we have on several occasions) you are basically screwed. You can't call FIFA or NFL and ask them to delay the event for a few hours while you put out a fire, or finish developing that new feature.

I can feel my stress level rising even as I'm writing this...

<comment><USER7> Relax. You are not the person responsible for the site being up. That's Ops, QA, and support's job. All you need to do is provide a working product ahead of time to the other teams to load test it and figure out stopgaps for any holes found.

You can of course expect to be working at launch time, crushing random bugs and pushing fixes to production. But those should be minor issues. If everyone else has done their job, you will never have a Yahoo-esque outage, and you certainly shouldn't be held responsible.

For the downvoters who don't find this comment helpful, I worked for four years in CBS's fantasy sports operations team, handling hundreds of thousands of hits per second (dynamic content) and tens of gigabits of sustained traffic on launch days, and we never blamed the developers for an outage. (We did, however, have them on hand to look at problems)

<comment><USER6> Well we're a small shop, so I am Ops, QA and support ;)

<comment><USER7> Well then, i'm sorry to hear that! But still, try not to get stressed if you have problems doing the job of 10 different people. My suggestion is to focus on making the application robust against errors and invalid data, and determining the performance limits of various parts of your application stack, then making sure you allocate headroom for the expected traffic _well before_ the event - none of this automatic scaling business.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How could i grab a website and execute js on this site to get the complete dom? - <AUTHOR>

Hi everybody,
is there a way to grab the website and execute the javascripts? Some Websites inject Content via Javascript and Ajax and it would be great to get these.
I am porgramming in Ruby. Maybe there is a way to do this with NodeJS?
Thank you for your help <comment><USER2> Selenium is capable of doing this and has a Ruby driver (library from which it can be controller).

<http://selenium-client.rubyforge.org/>

</comment><comment><USER3> You can do this with Node+jsdom or PhantomJS.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. PhantomJS looks great.</comment></comment>